So WOTC decided to mix things up a bit and get rid of the Extended format, aka the worst thing ever. I think this was a great decision due to the fact that the format was akin to being forced to watch year-old family videos of Wednesday afternoons—zero nostalgia, zero interest, just you sitting on your butt on in the middle of the week twiddling your thumbs. Essentially Extended had become something you had to do because WOTC said so, and that was that. However, Big Brother recognized its own flawed existence and decided to make a change instead of enter into a cold and bitter winter filled with recycled CawBlade and watch tournament attendance dwindle. I mean MTGO 16-man Extended queues don’t even fire, and the whole world is available to participate in those…..

Now we have Modern. No more awful family videos of last year. Now we get to watch old-school Nickelodeon, I’m talking Are You Afraid of the Dark and Legends of the Hidden Temple stuff. I couldn’t be happier with the change so how about we hop on our old Razor Scooters, head down to the card shop and start playing with some Pogs. Bring your slammers, this format is for keeps.

The first thing I want to quickly address is the banned list everyone seems to be griping about. Everyone seems to think the list is ridiculous, typically Jace owners, and I think it is a bit absurd to actually believe he was going to be legal. Has there ever been a more oppressive card in any format? Even when things are straight up unfair and get near insta banned like Skullclamp at least those games end pretty quickly. Not only did Jace just sit on the board and let you know you have no chance of winning, but he is also going to go ahead and steal the next twenty minutes of your life, the game, the match, and a piece of your soul. It’s been fun Jace, well not really, but see you in Legacy bro, take your buddy Stoneforge Mistake with you. That rant aside, everyone seems to have a card or two they would prefer to be unbanned, myself included. However, I think most people can at least agree that despite wishing they had their favorite card(s) unbanned, the format is healthy (for now) and ripe for fun and innovation.

The card on the banned list that hurt me the most was Valakut. I was really looking forward to blowing people out with Scapeshift but alas, the secret was out on that piece of ridiculousness. I still want to play with Scapeshift though, so I set out to use it as optimally as possible. For any new brew to be successful it must first be able to take down the most popular deck of the format. For Modern that means Zoo variants that pump out low-cost creatures like Wild Nacatyl and Tarmagoyf and proceed to smash face while holding a grip of burn spells. I literally searched through all of the cards in Modern for anything with the word Land in it to find synergy with Scapeshift. What I found was a bunch of tech lands like Sejuri Steppe and Landfall cards. While I was hoping to find something much better than Steppe Lynx and Plated Geopede, I didn’t think a deck entirely based on Ob Nixilis and Scapeshift was going to work. I may revisit that one at a later date because it truly does seems awesome. For now I present you with my first deck thus far in the format, ScapeZoo.

4x Steppe Lynx
4x Plated Geopede
4x Vinelasher Kudzu
4x Zektar Shrine Expedition
4x Wild Nacatl
4x Knight of the Reliquary
4x Lightning Bolt
3x Path to Exile
3x Scapeshift

4x Arid Mesa
3x Scalding Tarn
3x Misty Rainforest
4x Sacred Foundry
3x Stomping Ground
1x Temple Garden
1x Forest
1x Plains
3x Flagstones of Trokair
1x Sejiri Steppe
1x Smoldering Spires
1x Vesuva

This plays out like a Boros deck in the early game but can then finish the game in blowout fashion with a Scapeshift. Untapping with even a single landfall creature or even Knight or Kudzu on turn four can be flat out gameover if you have a Scapeshift. By casting the Scapeshift on turn four you can generate up to ten landfall triggers. This is done by keeping a sac land active and then playing and cracking another one on turn four to gain three triggers and casting Scapeshift fetching three Flagstones to legend rule each other out and getting an additional three plains. However this is in the extreme and likely unnecessary as four to seven triggers should be more than enough to finish off an opponent who has already taken some attacks from you and played some sac lands and shock lands of their own. Scapeshift allows you to search up any or all of Sejuri Steppe, Smoldering Spires, and Vesuva to ensure at least one of your creatures gets through for insane amounts of damage and end the game.

I feel like this deck is potent enough to race any of the combo decks as well as have an edge in the Zoo mirror. Most decks will not foresee needing to play around Scapeshift and will allow you to steal games easily. I believe this deck can only lose the Zoo mirror to a very heavy removal hand because they simply cannot deal with a resolved Scapshift otherwise. Combo decks usually rely on stalling out enough to win, usually around turns four to six. Scapeshift takes those precious few turns they were trying to stall for because it can represent almost twenty damage for a even single creature.

Whether or not this is simply a cute version of Zoo or an actual legit contender is up in the air. Right now I feel like the Kudzu is the weakest card in the deck, but it does fit the theme rather well. I’d be curious to hear what any of you think about the deck so please leave some thoughts and suggestions in the comments, thanks for reading!