A modern night of Spiteclasm (Mediocre Modern)

"Hey, Kyle!  Your blog says 'Playing Magic: The Gathering... without the good cards.' but you don't really play constructed anymore.  I thought your whole thing was playing through the losing bracket at high-level events.  What gives, man?  I don't want to read about dumb Anaconda Chaos Clue drafts, I want to hear about how you killed someone with a terrible card!"

Good news for you: I got bitten by the bug to do this again.  I signed up for a Modern RCQ at Intergalactic Plastic on Sunday, May 31.  They added a little modern practice tournament for FNM two days before, which is what this post covers.  My last post from a constructed event was in 2017.  At some point I went 3-0 with Spiteclasm, and I think that was after 2017, so it hasn't been quite nine years.  It was definitely 2019 or earlier, though, so it's been a long time!  

For FNM, I had to make the tough choice between Spiteclasm and Shuffleupagus.

Spiteclasm pros: 

• I won that little modern tournament on the back of Blood Moon, which sometimes just wins games all on its own.  (I won the final round of that tournament by playing turn 3 moons in both games against Scapeshift Valakut.)  I had already acquired a playset of Winter Moons and had some other important parts of the deck ready.  
• It's still a janky deck.  It's not like I'm running some kind of main stream deck.  I don't even have Skred in there right now.  "Without the good cards" would still be a correct statement.
• The deck deals well with creatures and can close out games.
• I have the deck mostly ready to go. 

Shuffleupagus pros:

• This deck is hilarious.  I haven't ever played it in Florida.  I think it wasn't well-liked near the end of my times playing it in central New Hampshire, though.  When I presented the idea, people here were very gung-ho for it.
• Deadly Cover-Up can help take care of creatures in a mono-black version, so I might not have mana base problems.  
• This is much more janky than Spiteclasm. 
• I have been working on this deck since Psychogenic Probe was in the Mirrodin spoilers.  

I chose Spiteclasm for two main reasons:

• I have a ton of Shuffleupagus cards all saved together across all colors, but I don't know the best way to put them together.
• I think Spiteclasm is a better deck and more likely to win games.
• Spiteclasm is still plenty janky! 

Here's a quick deck list:

• 23 Mountain
• 4 Blood Moon
• 2 Winter Moon
• 4 Boros Reckoner
• 4 Screaming Nemesis
• 4 Humble Defector
• 1 Spitemare
• 4 Pyroclasm
• 2 Fire Magic
• 4 Cinderclasm
• 2 Shake the Foundations
• 3 Fiery Cannonade
• 1 Fuel the Flames
• 1 Earthquake
• 1 Ashling the Pilgrim
  
  Sideboard:
• 4 Oliphaunt
• 4 Mongoose Lizard
• 2 Winter Moon
• 2 Soul-Scar Mage
• 2 Pyrohemia
• 1 Earthquake 

There were clearly some missing pieces.  Fire Magic is better than Cinderclasm, Fuel the Flames is better than Fiery Cannonade, and that Spitemare should be replaced by an Ill-Tempered Loner but those are the cards I had ready to go.  The Oliphaunts and Mongoose Lizards were in preparation for facing down Living End, which was benefitting from some recent unbannings.  I had played this deck against a Living End deck before, but it was nearly a decade ago at this point.

In the first round, I was paired up against a cascade deck, but not Living End itself, Temur Rhinos, powered by Crashing Footfalls.  On turn two, they Iced my mountain on my upkeep, which did effectively slow me down.  They played Shardless Agent on turn three, which got the Crashing Footfalls out.  I played a Boros Reckoner down on the next turn.  They attacked with their team and I foolishly blocked the Agent, forgetting the bonus effect of Violent Outburst, which they used to trade with me and get another pair of Rhinos.  Thankfully I had two Pyroclasms that I played on my next turn to wipe the board.  On my next turn I played out a Screaming Nemesis and Humble Defector.  They cast another Violent Outburst at the end of my turn for yet another pair of Rhinos.  They untapped and cast Dead (of Dead and Gone) to take out my defector.  Then they suspended their final Crashing Footfalls and warped in Quantum Riddler.  I played out the Spitemare, but I was down on life 10 to 2.  I lost on their next turn.

In the second game, my opponent had to mulligan once.  I started off fast with a Soul-Scar Mage, but my opponent hit it with Dead.  I cast Humble Defector on my second turn and my opponent suspended Crashing Footfalls.  I played the Screaming Nemesis and thanks to shocks and fetches, I was up 20 to 12.  On turn four I played a Reckoner and on turn five attacked with both and cast two Pyroclasms to win.

In the third game they froze out one of my lands on turn two again and got the Shardless Agent into Crashing Footfalls on turn three.  I risked casting Blood Moon, but they had a Force of Negation for that.  On turn four they played another Shardless Agent, but I again had two Pyroclasms to save the day, though I was down 17 to 10.  They warped in a Riddler again and I played another Nemesis on turn five.  They cast the Riddler for real on turn six and I countered with a Winter Moon.  Sadly, they had enough non-basics that it wasn't a problem and cast yet another Shardless Agent on turn seven, then attacked to kill me on turn eight.  0-1

In the second round I got the bye, the bane of those who are playing in a tournament for fun.  I know that counts as a win for my record, but does it really?  Technically 1-1. 

In the third and final round I was matched up against an Affinity deck.  They started the first game off by playing an Ornithopter, then dropped a Refurbished Familiar on turn two and a Frogmite on turn three.  I played a Boros Reckoner after that.  They then dropped the key of their deck, a Simulacrum Synthesizer.  I cast a Cinderclasm on my turn to clear things out and got in for damage.  On the fifth turn, they cast another Synthesizer and I played a second Reckoner.  After I attacked I was slightly ahead in life, 16 to 12.  On their next turn, they played a Memory Guardian then two Frogmyr Enforcers for free.  Each of those created tokens from the Synthesizer, which had gotten a bit out of hand.

They are 17/17s right now.

I cast a Shake the Foundations but didn't draw into anything that would save me and I got crushed the next turn.  

In the second game, I had four moons in my opening hand, two of each.  They started off with an Ornithopter.  I dropped a Winter Moon on turn two and they played a Refurbished Familiar.  I then played Blood Moon, which did double-duty on their artifact lands, shutting them off from useful mana and removing their affinity power.  They played a Nettlecyst on their turn, which I took out with a Pyroclasm.  I played a Reckoner on turn five and they got enough lands to run out Frogmite.  On their sixth turn they played a Springleaf Drum, Thought Monitor, and another Frogmite, but I played Fiery Cannonade to clear their side of the board.  On turn seven I played a Humble Defector and they played a Springleaf Drum.  I didn't have another wiper, so I just attacked out for two more turns to win.

In game three I had another one-two moon punch on turns two and three, though they did have a big turn three first, playing the Familiar, two Frogmites, and a Memory Guard.  On turn four, they played the Nettlecyst and attacked to put me at 11.  I played a Reckoner, finally getting something on the board.  On turn five they equipped and attacked again with their fliers, putting me to 1 life.  They immediately remarked that they could have attacked with the two extra frogs to kill me.  I cast a Pyroclasm to clear all but one of their creatures and when they attacked on the next turn I cast Fuel the Flames to take out the other and leave my Reckoner alone.  I kept attacking each turn with the Reckoner.  At one point they cast a prototype form of the Frogmyr Enforcer (because they could use their mountains for that red) but I hit it with a Pyroclasm and my Reckoner ended up getting there.  Technically 2-1.  

Okay, so that 2-1 was a lot more like a 0-2, as I should have lost that last game.  

I have a lot of thoughts about this deck and how that went:

• I miss CardCodex.com, which used to be a site that you could use to find similar magic cards.  It is now something that is used to organize Pokemon card collections.
• Should I put a few copies of Brash Taunter back in? 
• Should I go back to the snow-covered version with Skreds?  
• I should get a copy of Sophim to put in there and probably also a copy of the new Hazoret.  

Coming soon: how did it go at the RCQ?

Happy Modern Magicking!