Hey there faithful reader.
I'm glad to see you didn't give up on me entirely!
I know it's been a while, but if I've learned anything from making these blog things it's that you have to let them flow naturally if you want to maintain good quality.
Tournament Reports got old and I got tired of writing them for a bit so I'm trying something different. I want to try and help people get into Modern.
Unfortunately, Modern is full of $300+ mana-bases and $200 green creatures and that can make it a bit of a tough sell to people without massive bankrolls to peel off of whenever a sweet new deck pops up.
What I aim to do with this article(or series of articles) is present you, my faithful readers, with viable tier 1 or 2 decks that you can build without fetch lands, Tarmogoyfs or any of the other difficult to find staples.
I want any deck I feature to be fully functional and powerful. You're not going to see any Zoo lists with Flinthoof Boar over Goyf. No substituting Pain Seer for Dark Confidant. My hope is to bring you decks that can use slightly worse mana bases without hurting the consistency and power very much or at all.
Now before I go into the list and start typing a bunch of cards I want to suggest you get the add-on for your browser called "Auto-Card Anywhere". I know for sure it's available for Google Chrome and I assume Firefox. It'll make looking at these articles a lot easier for you by automatically pulling up a pop-up of any card I type.
Today's list is going to be Scapeshift a la Prismatic Omen.
First up, the list we're starting from.
Creatures
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Primeval Titan $20 each
Enchantments
3 Prismatic Omen $10 each
4 Khalni-Heart Expedition
Instants
2 Izzet Charm
Sorceries
4 Scapeshift $15 each
4 Search for Tomorrow
4 Explore
3 Anger of the Gods $3 each
Lands
2 Forest
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest $80.00 each
7 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn $80 each
1 Steam Vents $12
4 Stomping Ground $12 each
4 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle $2 each
1 Verdant Catacombs $50.00
I'm not going to list the sideboard because it will be very different depending on where you play regularly.
I'm marked the retail prices for each card you're likely to have to buy and as you can see it's heavily loaded in the lands. The core cards of the deck (Scapeshift, Prime Time, Omen and shock lands) are going to cost you around $200, maybe a little less if you shop around. The good news is that a lot of you will already have a lot of these cards, either from Standard or from other endeavors.
My plan to reduce the cost of this deck is to cut blue entirely. In doing this we lose 2 Izzet Charm from the main deck and 4 Swan Song from the sideboard. That's all! Now, these are very strong cards in certain matchups for sure. Being able to protect your spells from countermagic is extremely powerful but it's only relevant against a couple of the major decks.
In cutting the third color we can remove almost $700 in fetch lands from the cost of our deck. We also cut the Steam Vents and the basic Island. This leaves us looking at this:
2 Forest
7 Mountain
4 Stomping Ground
4 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
We vacated 11 land spots but replacing them is going to be at least a little tricky.
You see, the reason the fetch lands are so good is that they individually represent access to essentially any color or combination of colors our deck has to offer. They also can all find a mountain which is extremely relevant in our Valakut deck.
One thing is for sure: we need a lot more green sources. We also need them to be able to come into play untapped early on when we're doing our early ramping. Copperline Gorge fits this criteria perfectly and is readily available around $5 each.
4 Copperline Gorge
An odd thing about the manabase in this deck is that it largely just wants green mana. 1 Green gets things going, allowing you to cast all of your ramp spells and even fetching your Red mana. In fact the only thing in the deck that actually wants Red mana is Anger of the Gods! We could theoretically just fill the other 7 land spots with Basic Forest and be done with it. Instead, we're going to fill 5 of those slots with Basic Forest and leave the other 2 up for discussion.
In my eyes we have the following to choose from:
Cavern of Souls
Inkmoth Nexus + Kessig Wolf Run
Boseiju
Glimmerpost
I don't think Wolf Run does enough on it's own considering our low creature count so I'm pairing it up with Inkmoth to relive their glory from Standard. Despite their strength in that era I'm pretty sure just getting Valakut and Mountains does more if we're grabbing lands from our deck.
Boseiju is a small hedge that lets us resolve Scapeshift through counterspells and can make up some of the ground we lost dropping Blue. It's not going to be very reliable and we can't afford to play a bunch of copies but I still think including 1 is worth it.
Cavern of Souls fits into the same niche as Boseiju. It can even force in a Titan who then finds Boseiju, good stuff. I'm positive I want some number of these in the main and possibly even more in the sideboard.
Glimmerpost is a nice hedge against aggro but I'm not sure the relatively small amount of life is worth the card slots in modern. We would definitely want to play 4 of these to get the full effect.
So for now I'm setting our lands as such:
7 Forest
7 Mountain
4 Copperline Gorge
4 Stomping Ground
4 Valakut, The Molten Pinnacle
2 Cavern of Souls
Lets talk about the rest of the deck and see what's up.
After taking out the 2 Izzet Charm we have 2 empty spots to fill. The obvious candidate is Lightning Bolt and I'm positive that's the right move. While they're not nearly as versatile as the Charms they replaced they are a more powerful card by far.
While nothing else has to change it's worth talking about the loss of the fetchlands and how they reduce the power level of Khalni Heart Expedition. I still think the synergy between Explore, Prime Time and everything else is enough to keep the card in the deck but it's possible that Farseek is better now.
Here is our modified list
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Primeval Titan
2 Lightning Bolt
3 Anger of the Gods
4 Explore
4 Scapeshift
4 Search for Tomorrow
4 Khalni Heart Expedition
3 Prismatic Omen
7 Forest
7 Mountain
4 Copperline Gorge
2 Cavern of Souls
4 Stomping Ground
4 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
I feel that our changed deck will function in most games almost exactly the same as the previous Scapeshift list.
My concerns about our changes are as follows:
- Do we have enough Green sources to reliably get the ramping started?
- Do we have enough Mountains in the deck to combo off without Prismatic Omen?
- Is Cavern of Souls worth a main-deck spot despite being neither a Mountain nor a Green source?
Perhaps most importantly, let's take a look at what it would cost us to outright buy the cards for this list.
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder $1.49 each / $5.96
4 Primeval Titan $19.99 each / $79.96
2 Lightning Bolt $1.99 each / $3.98
3 Anger of the Gods $2.99 each / $8.97
4 Explore $0.99 each / $3.96
4 Scapeshift $9.99 each / $39.96
4 Search for Tomorrow $0.49 each / $1.96
4 Khalni Heart Expedition $$0.49 each / $1.96
3 Prismatic Omen $14.99 each / $44.97
7 Forest free
7 Mountain free
4 Copperline Gorge $4.99 each / $19.96
2 Cavern of Souls $19.99 each / $39.98
4 Stomping Ground $11.99 each / $47.96
4 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle $1.99 each / $7.96
Our Grand Total = $307.54
That's pretty good considering our original list was over a grand!
Also, keep in mind that these are retail prices from Starcitygames.com.
If you're patient you can catch most of the big cards for a LOT less on ebay, from local players or on some of the facebook groups where people sell cards. Most of the commons and uncommons should be easily obtainable for much less than what SCG is asking. When you buy from SCG you're paying for the convenience of going to 1 place and getting everything, you can save money if you're willing to work a little!
I know I didn't include a sideboard and that's definitely a cost to factor in. I'm positive I would want Lightning Bolts #3 and 4 as well as Anger of the Gods #4 in there. Beyond that it would defend on what you're expecting to battle.
Let me know what you thought about this exercise and if you have any ideas about other decks to look at let me know. I love talking about Magic so lets talk!
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