I've played it few times, and I always feel that I need an early Path to Exile (or two) to survive to the first turns of the game. Also, Tormod's Crypt and Bojuka Bog are the cards I want to see in my opening/early-draws. EE helps just a bit in this matchup, it doesn't hit as many targets as you want (honestly, only Adept on 1), because the rest are coming back from graveyard or have high mana costs (3+).
Turn 4 for Curator is sometimes too late, and stalling the game is no longer an option. However, if you make it until turn 3 and go AF+LE, you'll probably have more chances to hit the midgame/lategame, since they run out of gas eventually.
Like you said, post-board is a completely different story...
Figured I'd chime in since I managed to 5-0 with a list heavily based on the contributions of this thread (here for anyone interested).
First off, thanks to those who shared their lists. Helped a lot when I started tinkering. The deck is a lot of fun and can do some powerful things. It plays like combo-control with a strong back-up plan (hardcast a big dumb creature).
I'm not sure I'd continue to play it heavily in a meta that's this fast. I'm by no means an expert, but in MTGO leagues I ran it to 3-2 (F), 3-2 (F), 0-5 (C), 4-1(C), 5-0(C), 1-4(C); not much better than 50% win rate with fairly polarized match-ups. Sometimes you need a two card combo on T3 to avoid certain death. If I were to evolve the deck further, I'd probably work a couple Terminus into the MB (for Settle and Crypt?) and maybe one SB.
Sidenote: Unmoored Ego is a real card against Tron and combo.
I’ve been testing all 3 versions against the other modern decks I have: Mono-G Tron, Mono-W Eldrazi and Taxes and Amulet Titan ... and I don’t know what to think, they can all have strong games, but I find it difficult to enact the control backup plan correctly.
Either I have too many removal/counters and not enough of a proactive plan or I can’t oppose the other plan easily enough, especially once it’s on the board.
It’s very likely I don’t play the deck correctly, anyone have advice or thoughts on this dilemma I have?
Thank you
P.S. I also want to second that Unmoored Ego is a very powerful card in some matchups, makes me wonder if Lost Legacy, Ego and Discard could be a valid modern strategy ...
That’s unfortunate, I did read the previous pages but I have trouble turning the information there into success for me using this deck.
I’ll try to see if the UW Control deck has more information about navigating the control part of this deck.
Thank you nonetheless.
Congratulations! You got Condescended by BloodyRabbit_01
I've seen it before in different threads of this forum, so don't take it as something personal. It's just the way he/she is.
Jokes aside, for those trying to make the UB version work: I've been there, I've done that - sleeve up the UW
@Weakatchu:
1. Cutting Tolaria West - This is wrong, it fetches not only AV and LE, but EE and Tormod's Crypt(if you play them) AND Bojuka Bog. 2. Mausoleum secrets allow to tutor for Push, Surgical, Collective Brutality and obv LE - From my experience with the deck, Push is bad (you don't want your op's creatures to come back, plus you don't always will have Revolt), Collective Brutality is decent, but it's not aligned with what your deck is trying to do (cyclers also help you to hit your landrops consistently and to dig in your library), and LE is fetchable with Tolaria (playing less that 3x is wrong IMO) 3. Mission's Briefing allows to play again all of our 1-of, and AV or LE - I've been trying to fit 1-2 copies of the card in the deck, but I still can't find the right cards to cut. My current MD is pretty tight, and I can't quite find the right spot.
Maybe the Counters package are too messy - They are, indeed.
@Namtar
The first thing you need to accept is that you are not playing a combo deck but a Control one. That's it.
For example, there will be spots where the correct line will be to play your 4/4 flyers one by one, even keeping them in hand, instead of cycling your creatures in order to dig for the AF+LE. Many times you won't instantly win after one single attack, so treat the AF+LE as a "value" effect rather than a "combo". The same goes with AF+AV. From my perspective, it's all part of the same plan: Board Pressence + Card Advantage.
Tolaria west as a 3 mana sorcery speed tutor feels slow as hell. It might be good indeed,especially tutoring Bojuka and EE vs Dredge / Humans resp.
I'll test my own brew in my playgroup, I'll tell you how it worked for me.
You are playing a Control deck, so a 3 mana sorcery speed "uncountereable" tutor can't be bad
Against Dredge your plan should be to survive until you can LE+AF (their creatures are just worse than yours) by Pathing here and there, and eventually Bojuka/Tormod if you are able to do so (but removing their GY shouldn't be your main plan against them). After SB, things change, I'm usually taking out some AV and Remands to put in Celestial Purge + GY hate such Grafdigger's Cage and Surgical Extraction. I've also considered Oust, if I have more things that I want to take out than the ones I can actually put in.
With Humans, unless they have double Meddling Mage (and even so), you have plenty of removal. Mass removal in the form of AF+LE and EE, and Path to Exile as spot removal. And after SB, again, things change. AV and Remands are bad, but Oust and Blessed Alliance (in my case, this is what I have in SB for aggro MU) help you a lot. It also dependes in your SB configuration, but from my experience, everythign changes if you approach the MU correctly.
In the burn match his only outs were Bolt or Spike off the top (I had a multiple creatures and a flippable JVP in play with two Blessed Alliance at 5 life; he had 3 lands in play with only a Skullcrack in hand). Burn does as they do and rips a bolt.
The spirits match was interesting - he ran super hot in game 3 (double Coco, rattlechains for my path, spell queller for my blocker I was trying to hard cast through Thalia).
In the burn match his only outs were Bolt or Spike off the top (I had a multiple creatures and a flippable JVP in play with two Blessed Alliance at 5 life; he had 3 lands in play with only a Skullcrack in hand). Burn does as they do and rips a bolt.
The spirits match was interesting - he ran super hot in game 3 (double Coco, rattlechains for my path, spell queller for my blocker I was trying to hard cast through Thalia).
Hi, just bought into this deck and enjoying it so far. I am on a UW build with a very similar list to the lists that have been generated by this forum, so thank you everyone that has contributed to making this a deck.
Some spice I am currently trialing is 1 Drift of Phantasms as an AF tutor, as well as being able to get detention sphere/stifle bird in a pinch. It came about after several games without seeing AF. Not too sold on it yet tbh, but will stick with it for a while yet and see what I think.
Also trying 3 Faerie Macabre as my SB gy hate instead of RiP/surgical. This one I am really liking. Its virtually uncounterable, grabs 2 cards (those pesky phoenixes) instead of 1, and also is a free, decent flying body in the graveyard that gets reanimated with LE.
Interested to hear of others thoughts/experiences with these spice cards.
I realized I should probably clarify that statement about faerie macabre - I meant it can exile 2 different targets at the same time, e.g a bloodghast and a prized amalgam
It's been a long while but I was previously very involved with the development of U/b living end as foretold. I'm going to stream a little bit of my latest version of it, mostly sideboard changes and a few maindeck changes to reflect the current environment. https://www.twitch.tv/urzatheplaneswalker
It's been about a year since our deck was created. (Happy birthday, LEAF!) I've been playing the mono blue version of the deck since it came out and I thought it might be helpful if I shared some general insights for anyone new to the deck or still interested in playing a variation of it.
I strongly believe that the full four copies of Street Wraith are a must for the deck. We are fortunate to be able to make such excellent use of Street Wraith. It is a 3/4 creature on the other side of Living End (which dodges Lightning Bolt and Fatal Push), it fits in perfectly with our creature reanimation plan and it allows us to play what is functionally a 56-card deck. In my opinion, this is one of the competitive advantages of playing LEAF -- we see our key cards (in the main deck and sideboard) more frequently than a majority of decks in Modern. (I actually think more decks should be playing Street Wraith for this reason!) The loss of life is part of the cost of playing Modern. Most decks are willing to fetch/shock to more effectively play multiple colors. The same principle holds here -- we should be willing to cycle shock with Street Wraith to improve deck efficiency and see more cards.
It seems like a few posters here have had some success splashing white in more controlling versions of the deck. Both the UW and mono blue versions of the deck have their advantages and disadvantages. While I cannot definitively state which version is more effective against the format as a whole, I do believe that the mono blue version better leverages the combo of As Foretold + Living End.
The cards that disrupt us from assembling As Foretold + Living End fall into four categories:
Given we create a highly advantageous, if not game winning game state after assembling our combo, I believe the deck should prioritize combating as many of these threats as possible. I am an advocate of efficient counterspells like Spell Snare and Spell Pierce that can situationally answer commonly played cards in the four disruption types. This makes our deck more resilient to disruption and gives us the best chance to win games. While our deck naturally answers disruption to a certain degree by overwhelming with card advantage or going on the beatdown plan, I've found these natural answers to be unreliable in many cases. Our priority should be executing and securing Plan A while only using Plans B and C in cases of emergency.
For this reason, I recommend all versions of the deck run some number of flexible answers to disruption in the sideboard. I have had great success with cards like Pithing Needle and Echoing Truth. These two cards in combination can answer all forms of permanent disruption in addition to the incredible amount of utility they provide the deck in a number of different matchups.
This post is already long, so I'll end it here. Next year, I'd like to write a primer and attend some more tournaments to get even better with the deck.
The other living end deck has 8 cards that not only find the living end but also cast it. They can more easily trade life for the cantripping ability of street wraith because they are faster at comboing out. LEAF isn't fast on getting to combo most lists only play 4 living ends and 3 ways of finding it, but still need second card for the combo in as foretold. So speed isn't LEAF strength but it does get to play very powerful control elements and thus make up for the lack of speed, Street wraith does help speed up the deck but at a great cost, and even with the speed increase the deck doesn't become much faster since it is still a two card combo.
I played the deck for a year now and decided to play the classical jund LE... I think I was wrong not playing it before, I got good results with it lately and U/W didn't stick with me still trying a blue-black version but nothing concrete yet, we are too much divided on cards like street wraith and small counterspell like we said a bit higher. I think someone needs to come up with a really good results at a scg or gp to help focus on the deck, for we split into to many thoughts at the same time and I always felt that the counter part of the deck was a bit clunky. That's why I tried U/W but path and path 2.0 (ondem, oust etc) didn't really like it and I advocate for 4 street wraith always. Even in U/W which I used 3 of them but still idk we have great tools to build around As foretold Living end but it's a bit clunky to build a decent shell which can be adaptable to the metagame. That's why I will stick to classic LE with some spice here and there for the meta and try some theory build for LEAF. Good day
p.s sorry for the clunky spelling I am a bit tired :()
Well, seems like UR might get another chance with Electrodominance.
RR cast a 0 mana spell at instant speed for free seems solid, and I've always liked the idea of Faithless looting to dig and possibly play more "bomb" creatures. Grixis already did a couple of interesting things with Goryo's and Kiki-Jikki, this might give it a nice push. Kari-Zev's expertise can give another way of casting 0 CMC cards, and wheel of fate is another way of digging hard to whatever we need.
I know, I know, that's a completely different deck...
Did anybody try changes to the Grixis Goryo AF list that was kind of popular 6 months ago or so?
Wheel of Fate seems like a ton of fun and potentially broken. Of course, the control build goes out the window, it'll be a combo deck.
On the Uw side, I managed to 3-1 at my local shop again, Path and Purge were sooo good I don't see myself going back to Ub anytime soon.
It does seem interesting as sorta extra copies of foretold, but is red strong enough to warrant playing as a secondary or third color. Casting cryptic command is a good reason to keep the mana base simple.
I think URx will have legs with a few Electrodominance as extra AF. Could still be very controlling -- I'd probably try almost a Blue Moon knock-off with cyclers for the cantrips and obviously the combo-ish finish. Hard to say if it will be competitive, but I'm excited by the possibilities.
I think it has legs. A UR variant anyways. Brew with it and goldfish a bit to see how well it works. Biggest issue is that red isn't doing a lot that is needed prior to living end if its simply splashing red. In the more combo focused goryo's as foretold deck it may fit better. Hard to say. I do see the potential for a possibly more reliable version to come of it. Though the main strength of the mono-blue version is its controlling elements and the deck simply will be another as foretold deck if it gets too far away from that.
The red splash for Electrodominance is going to be large enough that we may as well play that lovely exiling sweeper, Anger of the Gods. Red's other exiling removal is nice, as is access to Blood Moon.
Well, seems like UR might get another chance with Electrodominance.
RR cast a 0 mana spell at instant speed for free seems solid, and I've always liked the idea of Faithless looting to dig and possibly play more "bomb" creatures. Grixis already did a couple of interesting things with Goryo's and Kiki-Jikki, this might give it a nice push. Kari-Zev's expertise can give another way of casting 0 CMC cards, and wheel of fate is another way of digging hard to whatever we need.
I know, I know, that's a completely different deck...
Did anybody try changes to the Grixis Goryo AF list that was kind of popular 6 months ago or so?
Wheel of Fate seems like a ton of fun and potentially broken. Of course, the control build goes out the window, it'll be a combo deck.
On the Uw side, I managed to 3-1 at my local shop again, Path and Purge were sooo good I don't see myself going back to Ub anytime soon.
UW is definitely the best build of the ones explored in this thread in my opinion.
I also think that UW is the best iteration of the deck, I'm 7-2-2 IRL since I've started playing it
Here is my actual configuration (still missing one EE, though):
2 Field of Ruin
1 Ghost Quarter
4 Flooded Strand
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Plains
4 Island
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Seachrome Coast
3 Tolaria West
Creatures (13)
4 Curator of Mysteries
4 Striped Riverwinder
3 Glassdust Hulk
2 Nimble Obstructionist
4 Remand
4 Cryptic Command
4 As Foretold
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Living End
4 Path to Exile
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Tormod's Crypt
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Dispel
3 Negate
2 Oust
2 Blessed Alliance
2 Celestial Purge
2 Surgical Extraction
How do you feel about BR Hollow One's matchup?
Turn 4 for Curator is sometimes too late, and stalling the game is no longer an option. However, if you make it until turn 3 and go AF+LE, you'll probably have more chances to hit the midgame/lategame, since they run out of gas eventually.
Like you said, post-board is a completely different story...
Yeah, me too. Sideboarded games are rather easy with all the removal.
First off, thanks to those who shared their lists. Helped a lot when I started tinkering. The deck is a lot of fun and can do some powerful things. It plays like combo-control with a strong back-up plan (hardcast a big dumb creature).
I'm not sure I'd continue to play it heavily in a meta that's this fast. I'm by no means an expert, but in MTGO leagues I ran it to 3-2 (F), 3-2 (F), 0-5 (C), 4-1(C), 5-0(C), 1-4(C); not much better than 50% win rate with fairly polarized match-ups. Sometimes you need a two card combo on T3 to avoid certain death. If I were to evolve the deck further, I'd probably work a couple Terminus into the MB (for Settle and Crypt?) and maybe one SB.
Sidenote: Unmoored Ego is a real card against Tron and combo.
I’ve been testing all 3 versions against the other modern decks I have: Mono-G Tron, Mono-W Eldrazi and Taxes and Amulet Titan ... and I don’t know what to think, they can all have strong games, but I find it difficult to enact the control backup plan correctly.
Either I have too many removal/counters and not enough of a proactive plan or I can’t oppose the other plan easily enough, especially once it’s on the board.
It’s very likely I don’t play the deck correctly, anyone have advice or thoughts on this dilemma I have?
Thank you
P.S. I also want to second that Unmoored Ego is a very powerful card in some matchups, makes me wonder if Lost Legacy, Ego and Discard could be a valid modern strategy ...
That’s unfortunate, I did read the previous pages but I have trouble turning the information there into success for me using this deck.
I’ll try to see if the UW Control deck has more information about navigating the control part of this deck.
Thank you nonetheless.
Congratulations! You got Condescended by BloodyRabbit_01
I've seen it before in different threads of this forum, so don't take it as something personal. It's just the way he/she is.
Jokes aside, for those trying to make the UB version work: I've been there, I've done that - sleeve up the UW
@Weakatchu:
1. Cutting Tolaria West - This is wrong, it fetches not only AV and LE, but EE and Tormod's Crypt(if you play them) AND Bojuka Bog.
2. Mausoleum secrets allow to tutor for Push, Surgical, Collective Brutality and obv LE - From my experience with the deck, Push is bad (you don't want your op's creatures to come back, plus you don't always will have Revolt), Collective Brutality is decent, but it's not aligned with what your deck is trying to do (cyclers also help you to hit your landrops consistently and to dig in your library), and LE is fetchable with Tolaria (playing less that 3x is wrong IMO)
3. Mission's Briefing allows to play again all of our 1-of, and AV or LE - I've been trying to fit 1-2 copies of the card in the deck, but I still can't find the right cards to cut. My current MD is pretty tight, and I can't quite find the right spot.
Maybe the Counters package are too messy - They are, indeed.
@Namtar
The first thing you need to accept is that you are not playing a combo deck but a Control one. That's it.
For example, there will be spots where the correct line will be to play your 4/4 flyers one by one, even keeping them in hand, instead of cycling your creatures in order to dig for the AF+LE. Many times you won't instantly win after one single attack, so treat the AF+LE as a "value" effect rather than a "combo". The same goes with AF+AV. From my perspective, it's all part of the same plan: Board Pressence + Card Advantage.
You are playing a Control deck, so a 3 mana sorcery speed "uncountereable" tutor can't be bad
Against Dredge your plan should be to survive until you can LE+AF (their creatures are just worse than yours) by Pathing here and there, and eventually Bojuka/Tormod if you are able to do so (but removing their GY shouldn't be your main plan against them). After SB, things change, I'm usually taking out some AV and Remands to put in Celestial Purge + GY hate such Grafdigger's Cage and Surgical Extraction. I've also considered Oust, if I have more things that I want to take out than the ones I can actually put in.
With Humans, unless they have double Meddling Mage (and even so), you have plenty of removal. Mass removal in the form of AF+LE and EE, and Path to Exile as spot removal. And after SB, again, things change. AV and Remands are bad, but Oust and Blessed Alliance (in my case, this is what I have in SB for aggro MU) help you a lot. It also dependes in your SB configuration, but from my experience, everythign changes if you approach the MU correctly.
I’m on the way to day 2 of GP Portland with my take on UW Living End.
The story so far has been:
Bye
2-1 Tron
0-2 Grishoalbrand
2-0 Infect
0-2 UR Phoenix
2-0 Bant Spirits
2-1 Titanshift
2-0 UR Phoenix
More details to come later if I can remember.
Modern: U Living End
Standard: UW Approach of the Second Sun
So, how was your Day 2?
Looking forward to see your list!
So far, my results aren't the best.
Just 13-4-5 with deck overall. Too many draws, but that's probably my fault
1-2 vs Burn
1-2 vs Bant Spirits
In the burn match his only outs were Bolt or Spike off the top (I had a multiple creatures and a flippable JVP in play with two Blessed Alliance at 5 life; he had 3 lands in play with only a Skullcrack in hand). Burn does as they do and rips a bolt.
The spirits match was interesting - he ran super hot in game 3 (double Coco, rattlechains for my path, spell queller for my blocker I was trying to hard cast through Thalia).
Modern: U Living End
Standard: UW Approach of the Second Sun
Well, you did right anyway, good job
But we want to see your list!
Some spice I am currently trialing is 1 Drift of Phantasms as an AF tutor, as well as being able to get detention sphere/stifle bird in a pinch. It came about after several games without seeing AF. Not too sold on it yet tbh, but will stick with it for a while yet and see what I think.
Also trying 3 Faerie Macabre as my SB gy hate instead of RiP/surgical. This one I am really liking. Its virtually uncounterable, grabs 2 cards (those pesky phoenixes) instead of 1, and also is a free, decent flying body in the graveyard that gets reanimated with LE.
Interested to hear of others thoughts/experiences with these spice cards.
I strongly believe that the full four copies of Street Wraith are a must for the deck. We are fortunate to be able to make such excellent use of Street Wraith. It is a 3/4 creature on the other side of Living End (which dodges Lightning Bolt and Fatal Push), it fits in perfectly with our creature reanimation plan and it allows us to play what is functionally a 56-card deck. In my opinion, this is one of the competitive advantages of playing LEAF -- we see our key cards (in the main deck and sideboard) more frequently than a majority of decks in Modern. (I actually think more decks should be playing Street Wraith for this reason!) The loss of life is part of the cost of playing Modern. Most decks are willing to fetch/shock to more effectively play multiple colors. The same principle holds here -- we should be willing to cycle shock with Street Wraith to improve deck efficiency and see more cards.
It seems like a few posters here have had some success splashing white in more controlling versions of the deck. Both the UW and mono blue versions of the deck have their advantages and disadvantages. While I cannot definitively state which version is more effective against the format as a whole, I do believe that the mono blue version better leverages the combo of As Foretold + Living End.
The cards that disrupt us from assembling As Foretold + Living End fall into four categories:
Given we create a highly advantageous, if not game winning game state after assembling our combo, I believe the deck should prioritize combating as many of these threats as possible. I am an advocate of efficient counterspells like Spell Snare and Spell Pierce that can situationally answer commonly played cards in the four disruption types. This makes our deck more resilient to disruption and gives us the best chance to win games. While our deck naturally answers disruption to a certain degree by overwhelming with card advantage or going on the beatdown plan, I've found these natural answers to be unreliable in many cases. Our priority should be executing and securing Plan A while only using Plans B and C in cases of emergency.
For this reason, I recommend all versions of the deck run some number of flexible answers to disruption in the sideboard. I have had great success with cards like Pithing Needle and Echoing Truth. These two cards in combination can answer all forms of permanent disruption in addition to the incredible amount of utility they provide the deck in a number of different matchups.
This post is already long, so I'll end it here. Next year, I'd like to write a primer and attend some more tournaments to get even better with the deck.
TLDR: The full 4 copies of Street Wraith are a must for this deck. I've had success leveraging answers to disruption by playing Spell Pierce/Spell Snare in the main and Pithing Needle/Echoing Truth in the sideboard.
p.s sorry for the clunky spelling I am a bit tired :()
RR cast a 0 mana spell at instant speed for free seems solid, and I've always liked the idea of Faithless looting to dig and possibly play more "bomb" creatures. Grixis already did a couple of interesting things with Goryo's and Kiki-Jikki, this might give it a nice push. Kari-Zev's expertise can give another way of casting 0 CMC cards, and wheel of fate is another way of digging hard to whatever we need.
I know, I know, that's a completely different deck...
Did anybody try changes to the Grixis Goryo AF list that was kind of popular 6 months ago or so?
Wheel of Fate seems like a ton of fun and potentially broken. Of course, the control build goes out the window, it'll be a combo deck.
On the Uw side, I managed to 3-1 at my local shop again, Path and Purge were sooo good I don't see myself going back to Ub anytime soon.
UW is definitely the best build of the ones explored in this thread in my opinion.
However, I do see myself playing As Foretold along with Blood Moons. I also got hyped with Electrodominance