Scapeshift is a popular combo deck in the Modern format. It uses the titular card Scapeshift to win the game with the resolution of that one spell. In combination with mountains and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle it can deal an amount of damage in excess of the opponent's life total, winning the game. The deck is red, blue, and green primarily using each color for a specific purpose. Green allows the Scapeshift deck to ramp to the appropriate land count, blue allows for searching and countermagic to support the combo, and red is for utility spells and ultimately the kill condition.
RUG Scapeshift[ | ]
The first several turns of the game are spent acquiring additional land drops. The deck takes advantage of the tendency of other decks to deal damage to themselves in the early turns of the game to develop their mana base. Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle deals damage in multiples of three, at minimum, the Scapeshift deck needs to sacrifice seven lands in order to get the triggers to resolve appropriately. Doing so, will usually result in eighteen damage being dealt, killing the opponent.
Failing to get Scapeshift into the hand is one easy way for this deck to lose to itself. One of the uses of blue in this deck is to use cards like Peer Through Depths and Izzet Charm to help find Scapeshift the turn before the combo is attempted. The next obstacle is actually resolving a four mana sorcery on your main phase in a format inundated with countermagic. The first tool in the deck is a full suite of counterspells like Remand and Cryptic Command. Secondly, the sideboard offers definitive solutions like Counterflux and more out of the box solutions with Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. Some lists even run Boseiju, Who Shelters All as a way of beating particularly countermagic heavy metagames.