The State of Modern: Titanshift, by Casey Laughman
After Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle was freed
from the Modern ban list in 2012, Scapeshift strategies started popping up here and there.
The deck has never really become dominant, in large part because there was always a faster deck that was a nightmare match-up (usually Infect). But with the format slowing down some and midrange decks becoming more popular, there’s room for everybody’s favorite volcano to make an impact on the format.
In general, there are three different categories of Scapeshift/Valakut decks: Bring to Light Scapeshift, Titanshift and Through the Breach. We’re going to focus on Titanshift decks here, because I have never played either of the other two, so I can’t speak on them with any authority.
Within the Titanshift category, there are two variants: G/R and G/R/x. The x is usually black, with a splash enabling Fatal Push, Terminate and Slaughter Games. There are also white-splash versions that run things such as Path to Exile and some of the white sideboard options that are among the strongest Modern has to offer.
I wrote extensively about splashing black here. The white versions are few and far between, so for our purposes, we’re going to be talking about G/R Titanshift.
The Deck
G/R Titanshift, by Casey Laughman
The gameplan is very simple: Play a bunch of extra lands, then kill your opponent through Valakut triggers. This is done either by Scapeshifting for a bunch of mountains plus a Valakut or two, or by resolving a Primeval Titan for a slightly slower, piece-by-piece Scapeshift. It is also possible to simply kill your opponent by making land drops and dinging them for 3/6/9/12 at a time, but this usually only comes into play against really slow control decks.
The Untouchables
4 Primeval Titan
4 Sakura Tribe-Elder
4 Scapeshift
4 Search for Tomorrow
3 Farseek
2 Summoner’s Pact
This group of cards is the very heart of the deck, and what makes it a viable strategy. Sakura Tribe-Elder, Search for Tomorrow and Farseek are all inexpensive ramp spells that help you get ahead on mana and threaten to cast either a Primeval Titan or a lethal Scapeshift on turn 4. Tribe-Elder is also a fantastic chump blocker.
Scapeshift is a mandatory 4-of in the main deck, but can be trimmed in sideboarding. If your opponent doesn’t have a way to counter it, it’s almost always instant death. Beyond that, it’s not terrible in multiples, because sometimes you need to be able to Scapeshift one turn to set up lethal the next turn, or to set up a Primeval Titan to start triggering off Valakuts as soon as its ETB trigger resolves. Or you can just cast two of them when you have eight mana and the first one gets countered. That happens more often than you might think.
The math is pretty simple, although it takes some reps to make it second nature on the fly. The default search is for six mountains and a Valakut. All of them enter simultaneously, so Valakut triggers six times and does 18 damage. Each mountain you add to the total adds three damage. Each Valakut you add does another (number of mountains x number of Valakuts x 3) damage.
6 mountains, 1 Valakut: 6 x 3 = 18 damage
7 mountains, 1 Valakut: 7 x 3 = 21 damage
6 mountains, 2 Valakut: (6 x 2) x 3 = 36 damage
7 mountains, 2 Valakut: (7 x 2) x 3 = 42 damage
And so on.
Primeval Titan isn’t quite as explosive as Scapeshift, but a 6/6 trampler that fetches two lands when it enters the battlefield or attacks ain’t chopped liver. There is a lot of removal running around the format that is dead against Prime Time, so you untap with it more often than you might think. Doing so once is usually enough to do lethal between the damage Titan does and Valakut triggers.
Summoner’s Pact is Titans 4-6, as well as whatever else you might need from a creature. It’s great in the mainboard and phenomenal after sideboarding, which we’ll get to later.
The Flex Spots
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Primal Command
1 Wood Elves
It feels so incredibly
weird to put Lightning Bolt, a pillar of the format since its inception, in the flex spots. But it’s true, because Bolt is less impactful now than it’s ever been.
It still cleans up small creatures and can bring your opponent within lethal Scapeshift range, so it’s still pretty good. But if you’re expecting a meta that’s really heavy on Grixis Death’s Shadow, Abzan and Eldrazi Tron, Bolt becomes less good. In that case, it may be worth splashing black for Terminate or even running Roast mainboard.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance adds some much needed flexibility to the deck. In addition to helping power out early Primeval Titans, some chip shot damage here and there helps make Valakut triggers lethal more easily. She can also serve as removal against much of the format and soaks up damage.
Engineered Explosives is a good catch-all removal spell. While Lightning Bolt may not be able to kill an early Tarmogoyf, EE does. It can also put in some serious work against Affinity and other aggro decks. Chandra’s ability to add RR can help cast it or activate it, as well.
Anger of the Gods is a hedge against aggro and graveyard decks. The exile is excellent against Dredge and Counters Company. If you’re expecting less of that in your meta, you can play Sweltering Suns instead; it doesn’t exile, but it does cycle, so unlike Anger, it’s never truly dead in any matchup.
Wood Elves is another piece of ramp, and works really well because the Forest enters untapped. So if you’re in a situation where you have four lands on turn three — which is very common in this deck — you can cast Wood Elves to get another Forest (including Stomping Ground or Cinder Glade) and have two mana available to cast another ramp spell or removal.
Primal Command is a personal preference 61st card, because that card has bailed me out of a lot of sticky situations. The usual modes are to gain seven life and search for a creature, but all of them can be relevant in the right match-up.
Two cards that didn’t make this deck list but deserve to be mentioned are Khalni Heart Expedition and Prismatic Omen. They’re an either/or, but both have their uses. Expedition makes good starts great and great starts ludicrous. Prismatic Omen can threaten lethal a turn earlier because it turns your Valakuts into mountains as well. Omen is mostly seeing play in lists that are running some number of Hour of Promise. KHE is falling somewhat out of favor, but if you need to go fast, either of the two enchantments can help with that.
The mana
6 Mountain
4 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Cinder Glade
3 Forest
3 Stomping Ground
2 Sheltered Thicket
2 Verdant Catacombs
These numbers can be
tweaked a little, but basically, at least 13 mountains and four Valakut is where you want to be. You have to have a critical mass of mountains for Valakut to trigger, so you don’t want to get yourself in a situation where you can’t Scapeshift for enough mountains. I like to err on the side of caution, so I usually try to run some combination of 14 mountains by cutting a fetch.
Three basic Forests aren’t mandatory, but at least two are necessary to get around Blood Moon. If you’re splashing, the third basic Forest can be a shock or a basic of your splash color.
Four Wooded Foothills are an obvious must, but the second fetch can be anything that gets green if you’re sticking with straight G/R. It’ll hit your basic forests and all your duals, which is all you can ask for.
Sheltered Thicket is an excellent new addition. The cycling ability makes it easier to keep land-heavy lands and the worst-case scenario is it’s an ETB tapped Mountain.
I’ve experimented before with a Raging Ravine, but it’s not right for the deck. For one thing, it eats Fatal Push when almost nothing else in your deck does. For another, it’s very rare to find yourself in a spot where your ideal line for winning is attacking with a creatureland.
Sideboarding
The main thing to watch out for here is to not over sideboard. This is a deck that wins by throwing hilariously large amounts of damage at its opponent’s face, and no sideboard plan is going to change that. But bringing in too many cards can limit your ability to follow through on the plan.
The sideboard is fairly flexible, with a couple of exceptions. Obstinate Baloth is the most notable, because it’s a fantastic card in this deck. The four damage and 4/4 body matter a lot against burn and other non-Shadow aggro decks. The discard clause lets you wreck your opponent’s plans to make you discard, and you can Pact for it in response to a Kolaghan’s Command or a Liliana of the Veil activation.
Here’s a really fun thing to do if you suspend a Search for Tomorrow on turn 1: When your opponent goes for Kolaghan’s Command or Liliana on turn 3, Pact for a Baloth and put it into play. Then, when upkeep comes around, stack the triggers so that Search resolves first, put the land into play untapped, and use it to help pay for the Pact. Oh, and kill the Liliana with the Baloth.
The other must-have in the sideboard is some combination of enchantment and artifact removal. Nature’s Claim and Ancient Grudge are good in whatever numbers you think your meta demands, but a Reclamation Sage is highly recommended because it can be grabbed with Pact. If Pacting for a Sage to blow up a Blood Moon and then merrily Scapeshifting your opponent into next week is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.
Beyond that, you have a good bit of flexibility
in what you put into the board. Beast Within is as close as you’re going to get to Vindicate, so it’s a good catch-all.
Anger of the Gods/Sweltering Suns, of course, are good against aggro. Hour of Devastation might be a possibility, but I wouldn’t recommend replacing all your three-mana sweepers with it.
If you’re expecting a lot of zombie fish and medium-sized Eldrazi, then Roasting them is the way to go. It’s sorcery speed and can’t hit fliers, but it kills almost the entire format. Tireless Tracker is good in midrange match-ups and against control; if you expect a lot of control, Gaea’s Revenge is pretty good, too.
Even if you’re not interested in splashing black for mainboard removal, it might be worth considering it to open up access to Slaughter Games in the board. Resolving a Slaughter Games takes a number of match-ups (Ad Nauseam and Storm, especially) from almost unwinnable to almost impossible to lose.
One other sideboarding note: Chameleon Colossus is an absolute house against Shadow decks.
Good Matchups
Jund/Abzan: G/B/x midrange decks are a huge underdog in this match-up, as they should be. They can try to attrition you out, but it usually doesn’t end well. Top decks fights aren’t real fair when you have Primeval Titan and Scapeshift.
About the only way these decks can win is to get out a couple early threats while casting early discard. They usually aren’t going to win on turns 4-8 or 13-15, but they might be able to get you somewhere in between if you can’t get your acceleration online.
Tron: Natural Tron for a turn 3 Karn into a turn 4 World Breaker/Ulamog is the only thing that keeps this matchup from being a complete laugher. They can’t really do much of anything to keep from eating a bunch of Valakut triggers and they have no way to put on early pressure.
Eldrazi Tron: Slightly worse, but still pretty good. They can go Temple-Temple into Thought-Knot Seer into Reality Smasher, but that’s about the only way they have to really race. If they don’t do that, you should be in good shape. Roast is extremely good here.
Merfolk (and most other tribal strategies): They just aren’t fast enough to kill you before Valakut becomes lethal, and they have no choice but to over-extend into a blowout sweeper.
Affinity: This one is a little less good than the other aggro matchups just because they can goldfish faster than Titanshift and can shift to the Infect plan. But if you can pick off a couple threats while still accelerating, you should be in good shape. Remember that Valakut kills Etched Champion.
Company decks: This can vary a good bit based on the exact build, but a good rule of thumb is that if a deck is really weak to Anger of the Gods, you’re good against it.
Dredge: See above. Primal Command and Relic are a beating, and they don’t really have any way to stop you from going off.
Burn on the play: There is no matchup that is swingier based on play/draw than this one. On the play, you’re usually fast enough or can gain life with Primal Command or Baloth to survive long enough to blow them up real good.
Bad match-ups
Spell-based combo: It’s very simple: If you expect a whole lot of Ad Nauseam and Storm, either splash for Slaughter Games or stay home. Even if you do splash for Slaughter Games, you’re still probably in trouble. Without Slaughter Games, these match-ups are winnable if they brick for multiple turns and that’s about it.
R/G Ponza: Sign the slip and go get some lunch. It’ll be a better use of your time.
Infect: Thank goodness this deck isn’t really a thing anymore, because it was a horrible match-up. If it does somehow come back, Sudden Shock is an option, but then again, so is a new hobby.
Through the Breach: This match-up isn’t anywhere near as bad as the others, and in fact is pretty winnable. But if they do get the stone nuts draw, you’re at their mercy because you simply don’t have any tools to fight it. This is another match-up where Slaughter Games can shore it up.
Blood Moon decks: There’s a caveat here. If they can put a clock on you, then it’s a terrible match-up. If they don’t, then you can usually just remove the Blood Moon and combo off.
Burn on the draw: This match-up gets exponentially harder on the draw, because they can start pressuring you so much that you have no choice but to walk into a Skullcrack with one of your lifegain spells. It’s still not the worst thing ever, but winning two out of three is way easier if you’re going first twice.
Contingent on the Exact Build Match-ups
Death’s Shadow: The Grixis builds are a better match-up because they’re so graveyard dependent and have slower threats in Gurmag Angler and Tasigur. The faster, more aggressive builds are a much tougher match-up. In either configuration, they’re weak to Primal Command/graveyard hate and can’t counter a Titan even if they do have Stubborn Denial for your Scapeshifts. They also don’t have much good removal for Baloth and Titan, and none at all for Chameleon Colossus. Cast a Chamelon Colossus on turn 3/4 and it’s Coloss-ta la vista, baby.
Gameplay
Play land. Play more land. Play acceleration to play even more land. Bury your opponent in Valakut triggers. If that fails, play Primeval Titan.
That’s honestly about it. Where the difference between the two win conditions mostly appears is in how you fetch or search for lands off of your ramp spells. If you have a Scapeshift in your opener and are confident you can resolve it, you can get more basic forests early, because you won’t care about how many mountains you have in play when Scapeshift does its thing.
If you have Primeval Titan to play, you’re going to want to go for duals and mountains early, so that you can set up getting to six mountains or a combination of Valakuts and mountains off of your Primeval Titan.
The one thing to watch out for is land destruction at instant speed, such as Ghost Quarter/Tectonic Edge/Fulminator Mage or whatever. This seems a little counterintuitive, but getting a land Ghost Quartered will usually not stop you from going off as long as you have a basic mountain to fetch. That’s because Valakut checks a second time on resolution (for more fun with “intervening ifs,” see Max’s article), and the Mountain from Ghost Quarter will be in play.
Tectonic Edge and Fulminator Mage will stop you from going off, however. If you have six mountains (say one of them’s a Stomping Ground) and a Valakut coming in off of a Scapeshift, then that Stomping Ground being destroyed will cause Valakut to fizzle when it checks again on resolution.
To help visualize all this, check out this awesome graphic from @RhysticStudies:
Wrap Up
It’s entirely possible that Valakut will never be a dominant strategy in Modern, but it will always be a dangerous one. With the ability to do massive amounts of damage out of nowhere, it’s never going to be a completely unplayable strategy.
It’s not super interactive, it’s not going to draw a million cards and it doesn’t play Death’s Shadow. But it’s good, it’s fun, and it lets you torment your opponents with memories of times that Primeval Titan ruined their day. What else could you possibly need?
Casey Laughman is editor of Nerd Rage Gaming. Email comments and questions to casey@nerdragegaming.com.
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