MTG - Modern Deep Dive: Zoo Scam Teil 2

Hi again! Here’s the second part of my primer for Zoo Scam. I will talk about my thought process concerning the mana base and also show you some examples of starting hands for mulligan decisions.

Mana Base

I’m still experimenting a lot with the mana base and would like to show my process so far. It must be different from the normal Domain Zoo mana base since we’re much more black-focused. Here are some thoughts that have led to my current version:

Leyline of the Guildpact plays a very important role in the deck. So, before we even put down our first land, we have two possible contexts to work in: one with Leyline and one without. If we have the Leyine – great! We don’t need to worry that much about our mana and we can fetch at our convenience. But what if we don’t have the Leyline in our opening seven?

Zoo Scam’s biggest strength is its ability to have very disruptive and explosive starts. When thinking about which lands to include, I started by asking myself: What plays would I like to make ideally within the first two turns?

Assuming we don’t have Leyline of the Guildpact in our opening hand, we want to be able to do the following plays on turn 1:

• Ragavan - Red
• Grief scam - Black
• Thoughtseize - Black
• Hold up Fatal Push - Black
• Have the possibility to play turn two Leyline Binding - White

For our first turn we’re very much interested in Mardu colors which means we’ll mostly fetch for Blood Crypt but also consider Godless Shrine or Sacred Foundry for a possible Leyline Binding on turn two. If we want to achieve that goal, we will need the complementing Triomes for Godless Shrine or Sacred Foundry which are Ketria Triome and Zagoth Triome respectively.

Let’s look at our priorities on turn two:

• Territorial Kavu - Red & Green
• Scion of Draco - Domain
• Leyline Binding - Domain with untapped white source or four different colors including white
• Orcish Bowmasters - Black
• Dashed Ragavan - Red
• Combination of one mana spells - double Black or Black & Red

Here we see green becoming important for the first time to be able to play Kavu on curve. If we want to play Scion on curve, we will have to fetch for a Triome on turn one, meaning that we’ll fetch for either Godless Shrine or Sacred Foundry on turn two. I generally tend to play the Scion later both to protect it from edict effects and to not have to fetch for Triome on turn one. Remember that Godless Shrine will not let you cast the Kavu. Assuming we started on Bloodcrypt, we’ll want Temple Garden as the second land to have our four main colors when we play Kavu. With Sacred Foundry on turn one we will instead go for an Overgrown Tomb on turn two. I’m giving less weight to the other three possible turn two plays (Bowmasters, Ragavan, one mana spells) because their mana requirements are often met anyways.

To round out the collection of shock lands we will add a Steam Vents as it contains an untapped blue source for our blue sideboard cards, red as one of Kavu’s colors and also because it’s fetchable with Bloodstained Mire and Wooded Foothills which will be two of our main fetchlands.

That leaves us with the following shell of shocklands and triomes:

Blood Crypt

Godless Shrine

Overgrown Tomb

Sacred Foundry

Steam Vents

Temple Garden

Zagoth Triome

Ketria Triome

It is important to include at least some basic lands to have an out against cards like Blood Moon and Field of Ruin. Since most of our cards require black mana, I have included a Swamp. The second basic is debatable, it could be either Plains to be able to cast a Leyline Binding but I chose the Forest over it, since green is a very important color post sideboard.

To choose the fetchlands, we have to respect our main colors which are black and red. Additionally, we want to be able to fetch both of our triomes and our basics with as many of our fetchlands as possible. That led me to choose the following combination:

4 Bloodstained Mire fetches all colors untapped and both triomes. Fetches the Swamp. 3 Wooded Foothills fetches all colors untapped and both triomes. Fetches the Forest. 3 Verdant Catacombs fetches all colors untapped except blue and both triomes. Fetches both basics.

Which leads us to the final mana base of 20 lands:

• 1 Swamp
• 1 Forest
• 4 Bloodstained Mire
• 3 Wooded Foothills
• 3 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Zagoth Triome
• 1 Ketria Triome

When building a mana base, it is useful to check if you actually have enough sources of each color to cast your spells consistently. I’m hereby referring to one of the most important articles ever written by Frank Karsten:

Mulliganing

While mulligan decisions are always important, I find it especially crucial with this deck because of the importance of the first few turns for the outcome of the game. It’s important to know what your tendencies are when it comes to mulliganing. I for example tend to mulligan too often and really had to learn to keep some weird looking hands with this deck. When a hand is not obviously strong, I try to think: What does this hand need, to be good and how realistically is it that I draw that missing piece in x number of turns? Another heuristic that I like to use is: If a hand is missing two pieces to be strong, it’s better to mulligan it.

Here are some examples of interesting mulligan decisions:

OTD (On the Draw)

To start: any hand with a Leyline of the Guildpact is promising. This one is unexciting though, since the Grief will not see play unless we draw black card and Not Dead After All or we get to our fourth land. However, it can turn cards that otherwise would be dead into a Thoughtseize. It’s important to note that Leyline is best with Fetchlands because even if it somehow gets removed, you’ll be able to restore Domain. The Kavu’s while a bit slow represent a consistent source of pressure. This hand is not the most explosive, but it looks solid, so I would keep it in an unknown matchup. We can still topdeck Scion or Ragavan. It’s an obvious mulligan if you know that you’re playing against a combo deck like Titan or Living End.

OTP (On the Play)

With this deck, there are many keepable one-landers. At first glance, Ragavan is our only play until we find more lands. But if we draw a black card next turn, we can follow up Ragavan with a Grief scam. They will likely have handled the Ragavan so they are tapped out which makes that play safer. Also, if the Ragavan connects, we can at least play Kavu (even though it will be small) and try to start filtering our hand. Of course, there are ways how this hand could go terribly wrong, but there are also many ways of it succeeding in our game plan, which makes this a keep for me.

OTD

This weird hand was game two against a new Sultai scam list. While I could see keeping this OTP and just hope to draw gas for the rest of the game, I was very afraid of my opponent playing Thoughtseize and render our hand completely useless. Similarly, a deck with a lot of removal could simply find it off the top and destroy our only threat. A clear mulligan.

OTP

This is exactly what you want to see with this deck and in fact close to the perfect hand. At first, I was thinking about putting both Leylines into play as a pregame action but considering that you’re scamming Grief, they would have to topdeck the removal for Leyline. Being able to follow up Grief with Ragavan or possibly Scion of Draco makes this a safe keep. You can only get in trouble if they somehow handle Leyline, Ragavan, Grief and you never find a fetchland.

OTD

This was game 2 against Yawgmoth and I remember keeping the hand but after thinking it through again, I should probably have mulliganed. Leyline of the Void is nice to have against Agatha’s Soul Cauldron and Young Wolf and we’re only one land away from casting two Scions. Without that land though, this hand does nothing, which led to me stumbling the first three turns and them finding an answer to Leyline of the Guildpact and later even to Leyline of the Void. Obviously, it felt like I lost that game due to my mulligan decision. This is very close, but it probably should have been a mulligan.

Remember this is a high variance deck. There are cases in which it’s right to keep and hope for the missing piece but in other cases you should re-roll the dice and see if you can find one of the combos in a six cards hand. Going down to five is rough, since you are really lacking resources at that point, and it will be almost impossible to find a combo that is backed up by more spells.