Shadow Zoo "Shadowcat"

Modern Aggro Competitive Death's Shadow Five Color Zoo

Monduck

FetchableMana (8)

• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Forest
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Stomping Ground
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Watery Grave

Reach (5)

• 3x Tribal Flames
• 2x The Royal Scions

Interaction (12)

• 4x Lightning Bolt
• 2x Path to Exile
• 4x Thoughtseize
• 2x Assassin's Trophy

Cantrips (12)

• 4x Mishra's Bauble
• 4x Once Upon a Time
• 4x Street Wraith

Threats (15)

• 4x Death's Shadow
• 3x Hexdrinker
• 4x Wild Nacatl
• 4x Tarmogoyf

Fetches (8)

• 4x Bloodstained Mire
• 2x Verdant Catacombs
• 2x Wooded Foothills

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Sideboard

Interaction (15)

• 2x Nihil Spellbomb
• 1x Path to Exile
• 2x Veil of Summer
• 2x Collective Brutality
• 2x Disdainful Stroke
• 2x Lightning Helix
• 2x Fiery Justice
• 2x Mystical Dispute

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I've been on a lot of Death's Shadow variants lately and had the itch for a more aggressive gameplan.

Additionally, I think that Once Upon a Time is broken, and found that most shadow lists didn't leverage it very well (they just didn't have enough creatures to want 4 copies).

This led me to Shadow + Wild Nacatl, Shadowcat, taking some inspiration from old "Suicide Zoo" builds of yesteryear. Including Nacatl give the deck a more aggressive bent, provides more creatures and specifically 1-drops to really start pushing Once Upon a Time. At that point, it wasn't a large leap to look at Tribal Flames for huge amounts of reach since Shadow + Cat is already 4 colors.

The last big find was Hexdrinker, which is great for the deck structurally for most of the same reasons as Nacatl, but also provides a very nice way to use excess mana as the game goes on. This turned out to be a huge get, since this type of deck can't run Horizon lands due to needing specific land types for Nacatl and Tribal Flames.

The Royal Scions are in a way a stand-in for something like Temur Battle Rage, but are a lot more effective with smaller creatures like Nacatl or Hexdrinker & offer looting to give some value in a long game when you need to find more threats.

Date added	4 years
Last updated	4 years
Splash colors	WU
Legality	This deck is not Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	13 - 0 Mythic Rares 25 - 4 Rares 14 - 9 Uncommons 7 - 2 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	1.02
Folders	Liked