Budget Magic: $103 (18 tix) GateShift (Standard, Magic Arena)
Χαίρετε, Budget Magic lovers, it's that time once again! Core Set 2020 is here, which means it's time to start exploring our new Standard format. A year ago, Wizards reprinted Scapeshift #201 into Standard. At the time, most people figured it was a reprint aimed at Modern since there wasn't really a good way to take advantage of a mass of lands entering the battlefield in Standard. Well, in Core Set 2020, Wizards gave us the missing piece to the Scapeshift #201 puzzle in Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia. While not quite as powerful, the new land does a pretty good imitation of Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle #61 Borderless Volcano Of Roku's Island—the main combo piece for Scapeshift #201 in Modern. If we can get seven lands on the battlefield and Scapeshift #201 into six lands and Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia, we end up making seven 2/2 Zombies, which is a pretty good deal on its own and even better when you consider that every land that enters the battlefield for the rest of the game comes with a 2/2 Zombie kicker. Things get even crazier if we can get more than seven lands onto the battlefield before we Scapeshift #201—at eight lands, we can get two copies of Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia and six lands, which gives us 16 2/2s, and if we get up to 10 or so lands, we can make more Zombies than we can count! Of course, we need a bunch of lands with different names to make this plan work, but thankfully, the Guildgate archetype gives us an easy way to hit the "seven different lands" mark while coming with a bunch of additional lands-matter payoffs. Does the printing of Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia mean its time for Scapeshift #201 to shine in Standard in a Gate-heavy shell? Let's find out! Then, we'll talk more about the deck!
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Budget Magic: GateShift
The Deck
GateShift is basically a weird mashup of a Standard version of Modern Scapeshift and an updated take on the "Guildgates matter" archetype. At its heart, GateShift is a ramp deck with a bunch of payoffs for having a bunch of lands on the battlefield and having lands enter the battlefield. We also have a sweet Modern-esque combo finish that can essentially win us the game as early as Turn 4!
The Combo
As we talked about in the intro, the main goal of our deck is to get as many lands on the battlefield with the help of some ramp cards, which we'll talk about in a minute, and then cast Scapeshift #201 to get Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia and a bunch of other lands to make a massive board full of Zombie tokens for just four mana. While the combo is why Scapeshift #201 and Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia are in our deck, they both can offer some fair value as well. While not our primary plan, we can Scapeshift #201 into Guildgates to draw cards with Guild Summit #41 or even multiple copies of Plaza of Harmony #254 to gain life against aggro. Meanwhile, thanks to the fact that our deck is overflowing with ramp cards, we can simply play Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia, cast a bunch of ramp spells, and build a board of Zombies the old-fashioned way.
Ramp
When it comes to ramping, we have several options. Growth Spiral #88 starts the fun on Turn 2 while also drawing us a card. Elvish Rejuvenator #144 can whiff on occasion, but with 26 lands in the deck, our odds of hitting at least one are pretty good. Plus, Elvish Rejuvenator #144 isn't limited to basic lands, which makes it a good way to dig for Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia if we are on the fair Zombie plan. Meanwhile, Circuitous Route #635 grabs us two Guildgates, making it not just good ramp but a card-draw spell if we have Guild Summit #41 on the battlefield. The combination of these cards gives us a legitimate nut draw that is good enough to beat most Standard decks (discounting ramp). On Turn 2, we Growth Spiral #88, and on Turn 3, we Circuitous Route #635, which gives us seven lands on Turn 4 as long as we make our land drop, which allows us to Scapeshift #201 into seven 2/2 Zombies. Toss an Elvish Rejuvenator #144 into the mix pre-Scapeshift #201, and we could end up with as many as 16 2/2s on the end of Turn 4!
Golos, Tireless Pilgrim #226 is technically another ramp spell, but it does so much more than just ramp that it deserves its own special category. When it comes into play, we get to tutor a land direct to the battlefield, making Golos, Tireless Pilgrim #226 a guaranteed way to find a Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia. Then, after we have Golos, Tireless Pilgrim #226 on the battlefield, it works as our backup win condition. Since we have all five colors of mana in our deck (and lots of ways to find specific lands), we can activate Golos, Tireless Pilgrim #226's second ability to play the top three cards of our deck for free, giving us a way to dig for our Scapeshift #201 or card draw to find Scapeshift #201 to close out the game. We also have some games where we just forget about Scapeshift #201 altogether, use Golos, Tireless Pilgrim #226 to grab a Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia or two, and make a bunch of Zombies with our various ramp spells.
Gate Payoffs
The other upside of playing a bunch of Guildgates is that we get to take advantage of some really powerful Gate payoffs. While all of these cards are good in a vacuum, the Guildgate plan naturally fits with the Scapeshift #201 plan (and the Golos, Tireless Pilgrim #226 backup plan) since both care about having a bunch of lands on the battlefield. Guild Summit #41 gives us a great source of card advantage to help us hit our land drops and find our payoffs. Gates Ablaze #102 is one of the most powerful sweepers in Standard since it can often be an Anger of the Gods #116 in the early game while being a hard wrath in the late game. Meanwhile, Archway Angel #566 usually gains us 10 or more life when it comes into play, which buys us time to set up our Zombie kill. One of the upsides of GateShift is that our Scapeshift #201 combo can beat just about any deck in the format if we live long enough to pull it off, and Archway Angel #566 is a great way to stay alive while we're getting enough lands on the battlefield for a lethal Scapeshift #201.
Other Stuff
One of the risks of playing so many ramp spells is that we will end up in a situation where we have a ton of mana but no payoff. Mass Manipulation #42 and Drawn from Dreams #56 help to solve this problem. Mass Manipulation #42 is slow, but it gives us some removal. And thanks to all of our ramp, it's very possible that we can steal two or three things, which is extremely powerful. Meanwhile, Drawn from Dreams #56 gives us a way to dig through our deck to find Scapeshift #201 and our other payoffs. It has the upside of getting around Narset, Parter of Veils #61, and if we can get up to eight mana, we can potentially Drawn from Dreams #56 to dig for Scapeshift #201 and cast Scapeshift #201 in the same turn to make a massive board of Zombies.
Wrap-Up
As for our record, we finished 3-2 in our video matches but won a rematch with Sultai Command, making our total record a bit better. We managed to take down Spirits, Orzhov, and Sultai Command (twice!) but stumbled against Standard's new hotness in Temur Elementals and Izzet Phoenix.
The deck felt quite powerful—the combination of Scapeshift #201 and Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia adds an entirely new element to the Gates deck. While the Gates deck has always been good at grinding out value, it's a slow deck that can take forever to close out the game. Being able to play the good Gate payoffs and having a game-ending Turn 4 nut draw speed up the process greatly. Golos, Tireless Pilgrim #226 was also super impressive—we had a lot of wins where we'd play Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia naturally and make Zombies to stay alive, and Golos, Tireless Pilgrim #226 is perfect for this backup plan since it can tutor up Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia.
If there's a drawback to the deck, it's that we have a ton of tapped lands, which means we can occasionally get run over by aggro. While the lifegain of Plaza of Harmony #254 helps, if we miss our Gates Ablaze #102, we can get too far behind on board early and not get a chance for our Zombies to take over. On the other hand, the deck is really effective against control, mostly because of Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia. Against control decks, the land gives us an uncounterable way to build a board and pressure planeswalkers, and since Standard control decks are mostly three colors with few basic lands, Field of Ruin #308 isn't really a major concern at the moment.
As for the budget, it's worth pointing out that Scapeshift #201—all by itself—is $60 of the $103 price tag. Apart from Scapeshift #201, the next most expensive card in the deck is Golos, Tireless Pilgrim #226 at around $2 a copy. The good news is that even though Scapeshift #201 rotates in a few months, most of its price is driven by Modern demand, so it likely won't drop very much at all at rotation and will likely continue to increase in coming years. While $60 on a playset of a card is a lot of money, Scapeshift #201 is a safer investment than most rotating Standard cards.
In the end, GateShift was really fun and felt pretty competitive. It's about as close as you can get to playing Modern TitanShift in Standard. If you like ramp strategies, combo finishes, and oodles of Zombie tokens, it seems like a solid budget option for Standard. And although Scapeshift #201 itself will rotating in this fall, the rest of the deck will survive, so worse case, you can simply morph the deck into a more traditional Guildgate build and have a functional deck for another year!
Since it's not possible to build a traditional ultra-budget list this week thanks to the price of Scapeshift #201, instead we have an Arena budget list that looks to minimize the number of rares and mythics in an absolute sense. The build we played for the videos has four mythics (Scapeshift #201) and 19 rares, counting the sideboard. While a good number of these are uncuttable, we can drop the rares from the sideboard and turn Drawn from Dreams #56 into Chemister's Insight #80 and Mass Manipulation #42 into a couple of copies of Gate Colossus #315, which gives us a total of four mythics and 10 rares. It might be tempting to cut Plaza of Harmony #254, which would be four fewer rare wildcards needed, but the mana would get so much worse (along with aggro matchups, where the three life is actually very important) that I wouldn't recommend it. But if your only goal is to have a semi-functional build of GateShift for as few wildcards as possible, it could be replaced with more basic lands or copies of Gateway Plaza #247 in a pinch.
The non-budget build of GateShift stays mostly the same but gets a handful of really powerful upgrades. The two biggest are Hydroid Krasis #212 and Chandra, Awakened Inferno #875. Hydroid Krasis #212 gives us a card-draw spell that also works as a backup finisher since we can always beat down with our huge trampling flier, while Chandra, Awakened Inferno #875 is perfect for the deck, giving us a sweeper against aggro, an answer to annoying threats like Teferi, Hero of Dominaria #207 and Rekindling Phoenix #273 in midrange and control, and an uncounterable finisher. We have two in the main deck and two more in the sideboard for when the Scapeshift #201 plan becomes less consistent thanks to sideboard counterspells like Negate #40. We also get a slight mana base upgrade, with a couple of shock lands to up our untapped land count and hopefully speed up the deck a bit more. While the non-budget build isn't really any more synergistic than the budget build we played in our videos, it does get to add a couple of rawly powerful cards that can win the game by themselves if unchecked, which represents a meaningful boost in power, even if the budget build is just as good at Scapeshift #201ing for Field of the Dead #6 Encyclopedia and making a ton of Zombies.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
