I use two ways, one fancy and one effective

The fancy one is using some flavour of Karn the Creator "Tron" and then tutoring from the sideboard a couple of Amulets of Safekeeping, which actually deactivates all the zombies...then the game turns into a minigame of "me trying to survive while your Teferi starts bouncing my Amulets and I recast them and sweep your board and/or take care of your Krasis in the meantime"

According to our Lord Karsten, with 2 copies of Karn in the deck, you have a 31% chance of getting one of them by t4, and then having both Amulets in play in t5...39% by t7/t8...hence the "fanciness" it's not what I'd call a reliable tactic...but that makes it even more awesome when you manage to pull the trick

With 3 Karns, 43% and 52% respectively...and with 4, 53% and 63%

I have tried a lot of different "tron" builds, and I like the most Boros...yes, I know that Green is faster and probably better, but there's a number of Nissas I can play before getting the twitches...



I play this:



Again, more funny than optimized, as usual in my builds...I like to do silly things like Binding/Prison my own PWs before a Planar Cleansing, Helming my animated-by-Sharkan Dragon Ugins for max style points, getting the Chromatic for uberpowerful Golos, Overseer+Manifold the fak out of my Shaeeli tokens when they are a lot...etc etc

Karsten wrote an article just recently on sideboard cards against Scapeshift: https://www.channelfireball.com/article ... -standard/

Ashiok
Alpine Moon
Blood Sun
Flame Sweep
Legion's End
Deputy of Detention
Unmoored Ego
Crafty Cutpurse

He didn't mention Amulet of Safekeeping though. Interesting idea, it seems a bit dorky (you still die if they make 20 zombies ...) but interesting nonetheless since you can pre-emptively play it and it'll be useful.

The effective one is playing Bant Ramp, which usually can go over Scapeshift...I use Finale of Glory instead of Mass Manipulation as finisher, found it incredible powerful with lil Teferi back up...(in fact, I hate so much the Manipulation/Melodies that I play Trostani main deck an all)

I play this:



I have found that going high in Elementals is usually more effective as Ramp than using more mana dorks or Leylines of Abundance...it usually ramps so hard that you don't even need the Finales half of the time...I mean:



That cap is from my last game...that's turn 7 and OP is Scapeshifting for the first time...enough said...notice the just 12 cards in my library...again, t7

Yeah, I saw that...the Suns, Moons, Deputies, sweepers etc have the problem of Teferi...Cutpurse is just bad and clunky...Ashiok is more interesting, and Ego is getting more and more play, I tend to have those in my Espers, sure

TWO Amulets make all zombies hilariously 0/2, hence my sideboard and rant

Best way to deal with the tokens ATM is Deputy of Detention in the Esper shell, you can bounce him with Teferi, rinse and repeat.

To kill the few first tokens it's ok, but that does nothing against the big instant speed Scapesift for in between 16(with 8 lands)-56(14 lands) zombies in your turn

...unless you have Vivien, Champion of the Wilds, I mean (or one of the red little instant speed sweepers, Flame Sweep or the ole Fiery Cannonade)

The problem isn't Scapesift or Field of the Dead, the problem, as usual, is lil Teferi

You can target 3-mana Teferi with Deputy too. It honestly seems like the single best sideboard card against Scapeshift: versatile, hard for the deck to answer, effective.

I dunno, I prefer Ego...Deputy is nice for tokens cause he makes them disapear, not like Teferi...and he looks a bit too busy if he must deal with 4 Tefis and 4 Shifts. I see him more like the best edge in the mirror match

Ego is definitely the cleanest answer. If you resolve it on Turn 3, most decks will not have a Field of the Dead on the battlefield because they need to be prioritizing mana producing lands to keep ramping. And if you can take out 3 of their 4 Field of the Deads, that's still pretty good, as it reduces their number of zombies to non-fatal until they have 10 lands to scapeshift, so you can soak a hit before sweeping.

What are scapeshifts bad matchups? It's not control decks because they don't even really need to cast it and can just outvalue you with zombies, and whenever i'm on aggro i never seem to be able to outrace them if they have a Graser or elf or two

In my experience, besides the mentioned Bant Ramp, the new more agressive Vamp shells, Jund dinos and Azorious fliers are the ones with better chance of going under fast enough

Just Switcheroo your Marauding Raptor for their Arboreal Grazer.

OK, you also need to Ixalan's Binding their Teferi.

Mayhem Devil can make Scapeshifting quite a bit more painful. Just played vs Scapeshift with my Bloody Mess and they cast 3 Krassis but never tried a Scapeshift since I had them down below 10 by the time they hit 7 lands.

Nexus is Scapeshift's worst nightmare. They are too slow to race the combo, which leaves playing around it, but their only pieces of interaction are Deputy of Detention (if they have it maindeck) and T3feri. The former is not the most effective of hate cards, and the latter can also be worked around. Of course it's possible to lose, e.g. if they're able to Scapeshift on turn 5 with T3feri on turn 3 as LSV did in the GP finals, but overall it's a tough matchup.

It's likely Vampires with maindeck Legion's End is also a bad matchup (hence all the MPL players playing it), and Andrea Mengucci claimed Izzet Wizards is also good against it (have literally not seen the deck however, don't know how true that is).

Mengu tends to be way too optimistic...but I'll try the deck, i think I jave all the cards

Do you still think Bant ramp has a favorable matchup vs. Scapeshift? I'm not having faith in the deck right now - only played BO1, but boy is Finale a bad card and I don't see how I can clock Scapeshift fast enough such that I still need to board in Negate etc and rely on countering Teferi / Scapeshift and grinding through the zombies.

I've beat it every time with my Azorius LD deck. Plenty of countermagic until I hit the combo and ruin their day.

This is a beautiful idea

Not that that'd go into any standard deck though.