During spoiler season, Shifting Woodland received a ton of hype. Players had high hopes for the card to show up in various Constructed formats. In Modern, getting to make a copy of Primeval Titan seemed like a very strong line. Shifting Woodland’s synergy with Dark Depths in Legacy had many players intrigued. This doesn’t even take into account the fact that copying Omniscience can be a game-breaking play.
While the card has largely fallen short of expectations up to this point, it finally appeared to have a breakout performance in Historic this past weekend. A unique deck dedicated to Shifting Woodland and Omniscience managed to help pro player Matthieu Avignon qualify for the Arena Championship! This archetype looks incredibly fun, and it’s nice to see this powerful land finally have its time in the spotlight.
Main Gameplan
The main goal behind this deck is to try to find Shifting Woodland and enable Delirium as quickly as possible. Your first few turns are just spent fueling your graveyard and keeping the opponent off-balance until you can play Shifting Woodland with a copy of Omniscience in the graveyard. From there, you can activate Shifting Woodland by paying four mana (notably, you can use mana from Shifting Woodland to help pay), copy Omniscience, and go to town.
Nearly every non-land card in this deck helps you churn through your library in some capacity, so finding a payoff once you have Omniscience at the ready is not hard. Payoffs in the deck include Ulamog, the Defiler, Emrakul, the World Anew, and Atraxa, Grand Unifier. Casting even a couple bombs should be enough to close the majority of games.
Obviously, the deck is very reliant on getting these big threats into play. So, finding Shifting Woodland is a big piece of the puzzle. Luckily, Traverse the Ulvenwald essentially acts as four more copies of Shifting Woodland, letting you search up the powerful land once you have Delirium.
In games where you don’t get Omniscience into the graveyard, turning Shifting Woodland into a copy of God-Pharoah’s Gift can also help get the job done. Getting to put a Hasty 4/4 Atraxa or Ulamog into play is quite strong, and it’s nice to have a solid backup plan.
Speaking of backup plans, Smuggler’s Surprise provides you with an alternate route to get bombs from your hand into play. This can be super important when facing down graveyard hate in games two and three, since enabling Delirium becomes more difficult.
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Enabling Delirium
Most of the rest of the deck is made up of cards designed to enable Delirium and keep you alive. Faithless Looting acts as a discard outlet for Omniscience and God-Pharoah’s Gift while sculpting your hand in the process. Malevolent Rumble digs deep for Shifting Woodland or your big bombs, while once again fueling your graveyard. The Eldrazi Spawn it creates can even accelerate your Shifting Woodland activation, which you can do as early as turn three.
Other cards that appear in the deck are aimed at buying you time to get your engine rolling. Vampires’ Vengeance does a great job cleaning up small creatures. This is crucial given how much pressure Energy decks can present in the first few turns. The Blood token left behind can then let you discard Omniscience, so you’re still furthering your gameplan at the same time.
Cathartic Pyre doubles as a removal spell and a way to rummage away cards you don’t need in hand. While neither mode of the card is super impressive individually, being able to have access to a removal spell that isn’t a dead card against control is surprisingly powerful. Haywire Mite is a bit unassuming, but it gives you a nice life cushion against aggro. Once it dies, it then gets you halfway to Delirium, since it counts as an artifact and a creature in one.
Plus, in Historic, players get to use the slightly upgraded version (power level of certain cards have been adjusted in both directions, even though nerfs seem more common). Thus, the card has even more merit that it normally would.
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Beating Up on Energy Decks
Part of what makes this deck so appealing in the current Historic environment is that it has a very strong Energy matchup. At this point, Energy decks have taken over the format. MTG Arena Championship, which took place this past weekend, was completely dominated by Boros energy. This deck is fully capable of getting Shifting Woodland online in short order. Meanwhile, playing cards like Vampires’ Vengeance in the maindeck proved to be a perfect metacall. Matthieu Avignon played against Energy decks a whopping eight times between days one and two, boasting a 7-1 record in those matches!
Of course, this deck still has game against a lot of the other top strategies out there. For example, control decks can struggle to interact with Shifting Woodland in a meaningful way. Not only does this strategy let you dodge most cheap removal spells like Galvanic Discharge for the most part, but your opponent will also likely struggle to mess with Shifting Woodland itself.
Land destruction is not common at all in Historic. Sure, your opponent may be able to try to disrupt you once you turn Shifting Woodland into Omniscience, but even then, you still get to cast a haymaker before they get priority again.
The biggest weaknesses this deck has is to graveyard hate and interaction for Shifting Woodland itself. Cards like Unlicensed Hearse can prevent you from reliably enabling Delirium, and Pithing Needle effects can keep Shifting Woodland at bay while on the battlefield. Luckily, Matthieu was well prepared. Haywire Mite removes many of the most problematic cards your opponents could stick, and Smuggler’s Surprise offers a nice workaround in certain situations.
This deck certainly is a work of art. It’s nice to see such an innovative build have this level of success. Perhaps it finally is Shifting Woodland’s time to shine.
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