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Deck Overview: Modern Suicide Zoo

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Decks don't have cool names anymore. We call them whatever shard, guild or clan they identify with and call them aggressive, midrange or controlling. Maybe we put the most important card's name in the title. When I saw the following deck 4-0 a daily, it just made sense to juxtapose the names Suicide Black and Zoo to describe this eyebrow raiser by _Matsugan:

_Matsugan's Modern Suicide Zoo

spells

4 Death's Shadow
3 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Steppe Lynx
4 Street Wraith
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Become Immense
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Mutagenic Growth
4 Temur Battle Rage
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Mishra's Bauble

lands

2 Arid Mesa
1 Blood Crypt
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Marsh Flats
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Temple Garden
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wooded Foothills

sideboard

4 Hooting Mandrills
4 Nature's Claim
3 Phyrexian Unlife
4 Thoughtseize

They synergies in this deck run really deep, and everything comes together beautifully. The phyrexian mana spells and Street Wraith both fuel Become Immense and enable Death's Shadow. Same story with the fetches and Ravnica duals. It so happens that they lands are awesome with Steppe Lynx, too, and free spells are awesome with Monastery Swiftspear. These one drops are all substantially large, and are the most efficient targets for Temur Battle Rage, which, of course, couples very well with Become Immense.

Mishra's Bauble is easily the most suspect card in the deck, but it does play well with Swiftspear and Become Immense.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Mishra's Bauble

The sideboard here is pretty sweet, too. Phyrexian Unlife is a clever way to gain life against aggressive decks while still being able to make huge Death Shadows. Thoughtseize is obviously awesome in this deck, though certainly a big enough risk against non-combo decks to leave them on the sideboard. The Hooting Mandrils seems great against anybody with Lightning Bolts, and I can't help but wonder if this deck should be maindecking some number of delve creatures. The maindeck is definitely built to be as fast as possible game one, but it strikes me as a reasonable consideration.

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