Tips & Tricks

Karmic Guide has protection from black. This matters most for its interaction with Animate Dead. When Guide targeted by Animate Dead enters the battlefield, a state-based action causes the enchantment to fall off, generating two triggers. You want the Animate Dead trigger to resolve first: Guide’s trigger is placed on the stack first, targeting Volrath’s Shapeshifter. This ensures that Shapeshifter sees Karmic Guide on top of the graveyard when it enters.

This is true as long as you are killing through combat with Akroma. If using Triskelion instead, you need Battlefield Scrounger above Phyrexian Devourer, and both must be above Triskelion.

Phyrexian Devourer’s ability lets you look at the exiled card and only add counters once the ability resolves. If your Shifter/Devourer is attacking, blocking, or targeted by a Lightning Bolt, you can activate the ability while retaining priority and ensure the top of the graveyard is no longer Devourer before activations resolve. The sacrifice trigger never goes on the stack and Shifter keeps its counters.

You have multiple cards that can change the top of the graveyard at instant speed, including Volrath’s Shapeshifter itself for just two mana.

When Survival and Shifter are in play but the creature you need is buried under other graveyard cards, discard Battlefield Scrounger to Survival and, while retaining priority, activate Shifter/Scrounger to shuffle the needed creature back into the library (assuming threshold). The same Survival activation then lets you fetch it directly.

This trick can also save cards targeted by graveyard hate without giving the opponent an interaction window.

Remember: Scrounger lets you choose the order of the cards you put back into the library!

Knowing when to keep certain creatures in hand is critical: Shifter becomes a copy including mana value!

• Discard Palinchron in response to a Smother targeting Shapeshifter
• Discard Akroma in response to Snuff Out
• Discard Wall of Roots in response to Pyroblast

For Psychatog and Survival of the Fittest, discarding is part of the activation cost: the opponent cannot prevent you from changing Shifter’s form. For Shifter’s own ability, it must resolve first.

Always activate Shifter without a creature in hand to force the opponent to use two removal spells. You do not need to reveal which card you are discarding until the ability resolves: bait your opponent with hidden information!

Most commonly used to put any card on top of the library after activating Hermit Druid without a reanimation spell in hand, whether Shapeshifter, Unearth, or Animate Dead. Beyond this, it can manipulate the top of your graveyard or interact with an opponent’s Reanimate, Quiet Speculation or Replenish.

It is also phenomenal against Tinker Fling: with Duress and Cabal Therapy you can name Fling, leaving Altar of Dementia as their only win condition. If they mill your entire deck, you choose the order cards go to the graveyard, build the pile you need, and use Reclamation to put reanimation spells back on top.

Deploy Volrath’s Shapeshifter as early as possible: with Shifter on the battlefield you never have to worry about losing to mill. Experienced pilots will try to force draws with Deep Analysis or Stroke of Genius. With Shifter in play you can activate Shifter/Psychatog to increase toughness, Shifter/Wall of Roots for mana, and Shifter/Scrounger to shuffle cards back into the library. Forcing you to draw six or more cards is usually the only way to stop you.

Psychatog is one of the most versatile cards in the deck. It can function as a real clock, stall the board by threatening to become the largest creature in play, or pick off attackers one by one.

Useful tricks:

• Discard it before casting Shapeshifter and pump it to prevent dying to Engineered Plague once Phyrexian Devourer is discarded
• Discard it to remove cards covering the creature needed to combo
• Cast it when both Phyrexian Devourer and Triskelion are already in the graveyard with Triskelion underneath Devourer
• If already on the battlefield, use it to reset Shifter/Scrounger a number of times equal to cards in hand [check Rules]

Psychatog in play guarantees instant speed, uncounterable discard and a way to manipulate the top of the graveyard at will.

Name counterspells if the plan is to combo with Hermit Druid, or disenchant effects if Survival of the Fittest needs to stay on the battlefield. Removal, opponent’s combo pieces, or problematic creatures like Withered Wretch are all valid alternatives. If you have both Cabal Therapy and Duress or Mesmeric Fiend, always use the guaranteed discard effect first.

Tricks not to forget:

• Target yourself to name a card you have in hand (Akroma, Psychatog) so it ends up on top of the graveyard
• Target the opponent with multiple Therapies before using Animate Dead

These are a couple of really interesting articles about Cabal Therapy that might help a lot understanding how to use the card: Article#1 and Article#2

Post-board, cut a couple of Hermit Druids against decks with multiple forms of interaction (counterspells, removal, graveyard hate). Since there are several lines involving Druid when you have Shifter + Survival in play, it is never correct to remove them entirely.

Against other combo decks (Enchantress, Storm, etc.), Druid gives you the speed advantage to win: never cut even a single copy.

Beyond combo execution, Unearth can reanimate a Hermit Druid that was countered earlier, or bring back a Wall of Roots to block Elephant tokens again.

The most important interaction: if the top card of the graveyard is Palinchron, Karmic Guide, Uktabi Orangutan, Ghitu Slinger etc., reanimating Shapeshifter will still produce the ETB trigger, even though Unearth itself becomes the top graveyard card once it resolves, the trigger has already been generated.

The Cycling ability makes Unearth an instant-speed discard effect that cannot be interacted with: useful for pumping Shifter with Devourer counter activations.

Mainly used as Survival of the Fittest #5, brought in against true races like Sligh or heavy discard decks like Moneyball Black. But it finds any enchantment or artifact, including Triskelion, Phyrexian Devourer, or Animate Dead in the late game.

Avoid siding it in against decks with enchantment removal, counterspells, or Annul: it is easy for the opponent to turn it into a two-for-one.