In Magic: The Gathering, there is a certain truth that most players come to realize at some point or another: Lands are hard to interact with. All the kill spells in the world don’t kill a troublesome land. No playable discard spell can remove land from your hand. It’s the principle on which GB Depths or GR Lands decks are built upon in Legacy. Whenever your win condition is a land, it’s going to be hard for your opponent to deal with. Louis Scott Vargas showed us how to utilize this in MTG Arena Standard at GP Denver with Bant Scapeshift.
The Scapeshift combo
Bant Scapeshift is a deck built around Field of the Dead and Scapeshift. The basic idea is that you get seven or more lands into play through ramping, and then you cast Scapeshift. Scapeshift lets you sacrifice your lands and tutor out that many lands from your library! This means you can grab seven or more lands with different names and put them straight into play. Since they all come into play at the same time, Field of the Dead will make a ton of Zombies! To make matters worse (or better, if you’re playing this deck), Teferi, Time Raveler can let you do this on your opponent’s turn. Unless they have multiple of Assassin’s Trophy or Field of Ruin, they’re most likely going to drown in a sea of the undead.
Alternate win conditions
If flashing in a plethora of zombie tokens isn’t enough to draw the auto-concede from your opponent, don’t worry! Bant Scapeshift is quite the resilient Standard deck. Even without having Scapeshift, the deck runs the tools necessary to draw and play tons of lands. Because of this, you’ll eventually start triggering Field of the Dead naturally over and over in the late game. If you still find yourself having trouble winning somehow, the deck also runs four copies of Hydroid Krasis. Krasis serves as a third win condition as a massive trampling flyer, a way to gain life, and a way to draw cards!
Full Bant Scapeshift list
You should play this deck if you like land-based combos, playing with little Teferi, and having multiple angles of attack on MTG Arena. It’s a very well-rounded deck with great inevitability and awesome amounts of power. Be sure to check out our other Deck Spotlight articles if you want to see more awesome lists!
