A few months ago I called Scourge of the Skyclaves "the best Modern card in Zendikar Rising." While a very serious case could be made for Skyclave Apparition, Scourge of the Skyclaves has lived up to the lofty expectations.

Scourge of the Skyclaves has become a fixture alongside Death's Shadow in every flavor of Death's Shadow deck, helping to give the deck a threat density it's never really had. This has improved the deck's consistency and clock, while lessoning the need for cards like Serum Visions or Traverse the Ulvenwald to find more Death's Shadows. However, Scourge of the Skyclaves has picked up an unlikely friend in the most popular Rakdos version of the deck:

Mail's here!

Time Stamps:

00:05:07 - Match 1

00:26:50 - Match 2

00:52:29 - Match 3

01:25:17 - Match 4

01:45:28 - Match 5

Rakdos Shadow | Modern | musasabi, 5-0 MTGO League

• Creatures (17)
• 1 Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger
• 4 Bomat Courier
• 4 Death's Shadow
• 4 Monastery Swiftspear
• 4 Scourge of the Skyclaves

• Instants (13)
• 1 Mutagenic Growth
• 2 Dismember
• 2 Temur Battle Rage
• 4 Fatal Push
• 4 Lightning Bolt

• Sorceries (6)
• 2 Inquisition of Kozilek
• 4 Thoughtseize

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Seal of Fire

• Artifacts (4)
• 4 Mishra's Bauble

• Lands (19)
• 2 Swamp
• 1 Silent Clearing
• 2 Sunbaked Canyon
• 3 Marsh Flats
• 3 Polluted Delta
• 4 Blood Crypt
• 4 Bloodstained Mire

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Cleansing Wildfire
• 1 Engineered Explosives
• 1 Feed the Swarm
• 2 Kolaghan's Command
• 1 Kozilek's Return
• 1 Lurrus of the Dream-Den
• 3 Nihil Spellbomb
• 3 Rain of Gore

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Shadow decks are hard to play!

With tighter play we should have won the Death and Taxes match and maybe the Prowess match as well. Death's Shadow always tends to play on the edge of a knife, as you need to be extremely careful about your life total and every facet of the game because it can slip away so easily.

One issue that did come up was our opponents not dealing themselves any damage. We played against multiple decks that had pain-free mana bases and were aggressive, making casting Scourge of the Skyclaves early difficult. While the early Rakdos Shadow decks had cards like Bump in the Night and Lava Spike to take a more aggressive slant and push Scourge of the Skyclaves hard, Bomat Courier seems much more suited for a controlling metagame. I'd be interested in trying the more burn heavy list again, maybe even with Bomat Courier and less interaction.

Regardless, Scourge of the Skyclaves is here to stay!