Geez, I did not expect all these cyclers. All hail the God-Pharao I guess ;-)
My first instinct would be to build an all in list with a ton of cyclers and no Fulminators, since we can now maybe overwhelm even Dredge.
The 2 mana cyclers all have very different purposes, we will need to test to see which config is ideal.
Not sure about the mana yet.
Exiting times lie ahead!
What's good is almost everyone are 4 toughness = bolt proof, all have cmc higher than 4 = fatal push proof. Cerodon and Sandwurm has attack that can kill eldrazi, the horror only needs to be pumped once to be able to kill eldrazi and large goyfs, and ifnir can give support to everyone by weakening the opposing team.
This is the deck I'm looking at as a possibility right now. There are still 6 slots and those can go to a couple more spells, our traditional set of Fulminator Mage + other other creatures or whatever. No Verdants bc I don't own any, but the deck could easily become B/R barely splashing green if we want it to.
These are the main creatures being considered for spots in the main:
Fulminator Mage
SSG
Faerie Macabre
Shriekmaw
Avalanche Riders
I'm not opposed to a SB where we expect to lose our GY capabilities to RIP or Leyline so we side out the combo entirely, side in a couple Steam Vents and Bring in 3-4 each of Drake Haven and Faith of the Devoted. Then just cycle them to death
I was starting to lose hope and then the final reveal blew me away, time to start plotting.
I don't think i'll try to drop the fulminator land hate package unless hard combo starts putting up results, also if you drop all the land cyclers it may be wise going up a few lands, perhaps to 22? Maybe the regular cycling will be enough as is with so many 1 cycles now?
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That is not dead which may eternal lie, and with strange Aeons even death may die.
With so many one mana cyclers now. Even if we have only one Arch Fiend of Ifnir in play.. cycling two creatures will be a board wipe to decks with small creatures like Elves, or a permanent -2/-2 for decks with larger creatures like Eldrazi. Effect does not go away because it's -1/-1 counters..
With the whole spoiler out, here are my conclusions:
Cyclers that are definitively outclassed:
Every old 2 mana cycler (outclassed by either Archfiend or Sandwurm)
Architects of Will (outclassed by Horror of the Broken Lands)
Desert Cerodon is definitely making the list too. It could take the place of the following:
Any non previously auto 4-of:
-Aforementioned 2 mana cyclers
-SSG
-Beast Within
-Tech such as MB Faerie Macabre and Shriekmaw
Fulminator Mage
Deadshot Minotaur?
Monstrous Carabid?
Street Wraith is safe unless Burn becomes Tier 0. I am also doubtful that the good hybrid cyclers leave the deck since they are still big enough and make colors less of a problem turn 1-2.
I used to run 3 Jungle Weavers and 4 Architects. These will get replaced with the 8 new 1 mana cyclers. The last cut is probably the 3rd SSG since the "mana curve" goes down a bit.
I am not positive that any 2 mana cycler is worth it. In the past they were a somewhat necessary evil to have a critical mass of cyclers. Any pair of 1 mana cycler is probably better than a Sandwurm. Archfiend of Ifnir is interesting, especially against decks with little removal. I can imagine situations where it would shine, but it needs to be tested. It might have place among the "tech" cards.
Fulminator Mage is probably our best cards against control, BG and Tron, not cutting that.
Testing decklist would be the following:
19 Lands + 2 SSG
16 Cheap cyclers + 4 Wraiths
11 cards for the combo
4 Fulminator Mage
4 Removal/Tech among Faerie, Shriekmaw, Beast Within and Archfiend
Someone on facebook told me that Sandwurm isn't a good replacement for Jungle Weaver because the reach is too important. IMO Reach is so negligible that it basically does nothing. Delver isn't even a creature in the 50 most used creatures in modern. Sandwurm > Jungleweaver
Reach does very good things vs Affinity. But to me, that's just an argument for Archfiend because he still blocks the fliers, flies himself, and in that particular matchup, he machine guns their guys post LE. In fact, he could single handedly make their Arcbound Ravager draws much less of a problem and he kills Etched Champion, which was always their other way of killing us post LE before we got them dead (besides Inkmoth/Blinkmoth).
So my thoughts on this may not be shared by the public at large. My build of LE used to always be base red. Everyone who cycled could cycle for red. This served a few goals, specifically to help protect the deck from Blood moon, but also to help me reduce the numbers of lands in the deck for SSGs. My current is like 18 lands 4 SSG, and only 1 swamp and 2 forests for basics with fetches, shocks, and pales, since under a blood moon I really won't need a mountain.
Now I can see this deck going a number of ways. To me Cerodon is the most important card out of all of these. It's bigger than other options we used to have and cycles for a single mana. I know it is not flashy but it's still bigger than the other stuff we had that was already good. So thats in for sure. If the deck was going to run a number of jungle weavers, which I think my last build has 1 of, sandworm goes in if archfiend does not seem like the proper meta choice, but that does not seem like nearly as big a deal.
I am not sold on cutting carabid or deadshot though. Being a little smaller is a fair cost to play for allowing the deck to play a super greedy base red mana base. Testing will happen for sure. Also if i have to lose Pales in some number, I really will need to reevaluate the mana base. have more 1 mana cyclers in red may be the answer to just draw into more land though, so maybe I wont need pales.
Also everyone talking about cutting Fulminator, I'm going on record right now in saying that is wrong. I have won more games because of Fulminator and Beast within than any of the actual cycle creatures in this list, most of which are interchangeable to some extent.
Also everyone talking about cutting Fulminator, I'm going on record right now in saying that is wrong. I have won more games because of Fulminator and Beast within than any of the actual cycle creatures in this list, most of which are interchangeable to some extent.
If nothing else, this is the correct train of thought. Living end actually became something to consider in a tournament setting when land destruction/denial was added into the mix and it's that component of our deck that continues to put us on the radar (even if we are still a small blip).
Unless modern becomes an all midrange creature deck format with zero spells, then the land destruction package stays because that is what gives us some form of control before living end and then sealing the game after we resolve a living end. We're not winning because we have some bodies on the board, we're winning because they can't play cards.
In games where I have been able to go turn 1 cycle, turn 2 fulminator off a SSG, Turn 3 Beast within, turn 4 cycle and cascade, literally any cyclers would have won me most games, but there is no replacing the fulminators. Period.
I think the Cerodon and the Horror both merit attention if only because the sheer size making it so you can focus more on land kill cards, but they merit that attention over other cyclers, not over core components. As far as I am concerned the following is core to the list before we even talk abotu cycling:
3 Living end
4 Violent Outburst
3 Demonic Dread
4 Simian Spirit guide
4 Beast within
4 fulminator mage
We're not winning because we have some bodies on the board, we're winning because they can't play cards.
I 99% agree. I often have situations where i have to cast living end very early in order to clear the board. If I then have only e.g. 2 weak creatures (architects) on the board, i can't win^^
I'm on board with those affirming the role of land destruction/denial in this deck. It gives us a nearly incalculable advantage against so many decks in Modern.
As for Jungle Weaver, I think it's safe to say his time has ended. Between the sudden glut of one-mana cyclers, the superiority of Archfiend and the Wurm in the generic Cycles-for-2 slot, and the utility of the landcyclers (who are still in contention, IMO, at least for those playing Blood Moon), Weaver just doesn't offer enough.
I think Archfiend is the superior 2 cycler if you are planning on running mostly 1 mana cyclers, since he is easier to hard cast and has similar utility against spirit tokens, but against an unknown meta the worm is overall going to be better. Depends if you know what you are walking into.
Best part about today's "Christmas Morning" for us is the pre-order prices: a couple of .10 cent common cyclers and a couple of 1.00$ rares. I love living end. Just waiting for foil prices
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Standard // nRG Aggro
Modern // Burn (main) and Living End (secondary) now Jund.
For fun check out my janky combo primer: Turn 3 Grixis Combo
"Can't beat em' Jund em'!"
Okay, so I'd like to share my thought process and conclusions with the new cards as well as a decklist and some testing results with what used to be essentially the worst matchup.
Obviously, as everyone knows by now, we have new toys. These cards (Desert Cerodon, Horror of the Broken Lands) are huge upgrades to what we previously were working with, and give us many options on what direction to take the deck. There are also a couple new 2 drop options in the Archfiend and Wurm, but those are much less important.
So, my thought process was as follows. We now have an abundance of 1 mana cyclers. We can now cut some of the underpowered cyclers and the flex spots for these new brutes. My immediate thought was making the manabase much easier: how about we make green a light splash? I modeled around the idea that Deadshot Minotaur (Who, by the way, is MUCH worse than Architects of Will) wasn't necessary and you could lean heavily on a RB manabase that doesn't need Green until Turn 3 (or T2 with an SSG, but that is less important). With a lot of new 1 drops, you no longer need as much mana or mana sources to function. For this reason I dropped a land to 18, and dropped an SSG as part of the flex spots being cut.
As a side note, with the new split card change, I dug through all the split cards now available to us. Granted we want to stick to Jund colors, so there wasn't much of use... except one card that caught my attention. Crime // Punishment. Or more specifically, Punishment. It hits chalice at X=0, and can be ramped up to catch other forms of hate, including enchantments which we didn't have a whole lot for before. The card is flexible, so I'm going to try 1 in the board over the third Ingot Chewer for now. We'll see how that works out.
For the manabase, I wanted enough green to consistently get 1 by T3, and then the rest to be red or black. With this line of thinking, having a basic Forest in the main would be detrimental, so I found room for it in the side to bring in against Blood Moon decks. In what would have been its slot, I put a Gemstone Mine, which helps by being nonpainful, something I really wanted to stress when building the mana. The primary reason for this stress is that the burn matchup used to be pretty terrible. You didn't do anything for the first couple turns except hurt yourself with fetches, then lets say you survive long enough to LE, then your mopy 3/4s and 4/4s give the burn player tons of time to draw the last bolt or two to win. Now, the matchup is easier, as I'll get to soon, but correcting that was my main priority.
Some notes:
I wanted to try 1 Archfiend. It's possible the answer to "which 2 drop do we play" is neither, and we should just throw a Deadshot Minotaur back in. Going back to getting our Faerie Macabres shot down post LE is gonna suck tho. That was infuriating at times.
I moved a Beast Within to the side. This was a concession to a loss of flex spots as well as a concession to manabase. I wanted to ensure that even though the manabase can support getting single green by T3 just fine, it didn't hurt as bad when we missed on it. There are 10 Green sources in 18 lands though, so it shouldn't happen often. But the more we can play with only Red and Black in the main the better, I think.
You could try to fit in 3-4 Leyline of the Void over the 2 Ravenous Traps, but good luck finding what to cut, and I still don't like the whole leyline idea in the first place.
So I decided to test the deck against Burn, partially because I was wondering if it was even worth sideboarding the Brindle Boars or if maybe we should just punt the matchup. Turns out the new changes are awesome. The new cyclers are great, and close the game spectacularly fast. You now only need 3-4 dudes in the yard to kill on T4. 1 Horror, 1 Cerodon, and 1 Carabid along with a couple cyclers in hand will do just fine - that's 18 damage. Anything more than that, such as some free Street Wraiths or the Carabid being one of the other two just make it easier. These new guys really increased our closing speed. Fantastic.
Guys, the manabase was incredible. Against burn, where you want to be as painless as possible, I never once had to play a shockland untapped. I only had to fetch for basics a few times, and even then it never cut me off a color (again, bonuses of Green only being a splash now). I always had green for Brindle Boar when needed, and many times had multiples. Gemstone Mine being painless was as spectacular as expected, and never once got used up - if it did it wouldn't have mattered anyway, I was going through my deck fast enough that I always had an abundance of lands.
The results were great, surprisingly. Game 1 is still really difficult, because even with the speed ups and the easy mana you are usually just a little short. Multiple times I had the kill with my 3 fatties and they just burned me out just before. Eidolon is still a beating (you take 4 from going off). But postboard games get easier. Brindle Boar is a great roadblock, and now that you can almost always kill the turn after going off, the burn player is extremely pressured to win before a Living End resolves. Brindle Boar, obviously, helps stop that. Block+Sac for days, bois. Drawing multiple boars feels like cheating, unless of course they have a Skullcrack... or 8. All in all, the matchup is still hard, but is no longer horrid.
I'd like to see where the deck development goes past this as people test the new cards. I also now see what WotC meant when they said they took precaution in trying to not break LE. Just these couple draft commons made the deck worlds stronger and more consistent. Imagine what else they could have done...
This comes way to late on board to help against aggro, doesn't it?
Yeahhh, that's my guess. I feel Brindle Boar is enough but its worth trying...?
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Standard // nRG Aggro
Modern // Burn (main) and Living End (secondary) now Jund.
For fun check out my janky combo primer: Turn 3 Grixis Combo
"Can't beat em' Jund em'!"
Faith of the Devoted isn't that good. you can't cast it early game, you'd rather be casting something else in the midgame, and late game you'd rather be hardcasting creatures rather than cycling them. also its too slow as an anti-aggro card
Desert-maw Wurm 5R
(Uncommon) Wurm
When ~ enters the battlefield you may destroy target non-basic land. If you do and that land was a desert, ~ deals 2 to that lands controller.
Cycling 2
3/4
OR this
Trashloam Wurm 4G
(Uncommon) Wurm
When ~ goes the graveyard from anywhere you gain 3 life.
Cycling G
4/1
Both seemingly inauspicious "limited fodder" with one being "flavorful" for the set but in our deck would be crazy. Really, any cycler with a relevant ETB ability could have pushed living end into Tier 1. I think that our deck is "weird" enough (that is, outside the normal actions of the game) that the banhammer would come swift and merciless. If not the banhammer the graveyard hate would rise much to our chegrin.
For less what-ifs:
I'm think that two Archfiend are going to be right. It's so good vs lingering souls and everything in affinity (nobody plays elves around here but it can't be bad there either). It slots right in for Jungle Weaver in my current build. I think the Horror and Cerodon are going to replace some number of Architects and Deadshots or even slot into one of the flex spots.
It's going to be fun to tinker with this deck for the next few weeks. I can't wait for the first modern night at my LGS after AKH is legal.
RW Blaze Commando Soldier Swarm BW Edgewalker Clerics i.e. All the prevention R Ogre Menial (Fallen Feromancer) Tunnelin' Infectors GB Shaman of the Pack Elves URReclusive Artificer Artifact Control GBCatacomb Sifter Sac-Attack
Tiny Leader Decks
WU Geist of Saint Traft WKembha's Cats WRG Marath Slide Control
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What's good is almost everyone are 4 toughness = bolt proof, all have cmc higher than 4 = fatal push proof. Cerodon and Sandwurm has attack that can kill eldrazi, the horror only needs to be pumped once to be able to kill eldrazi and large goyfs, and ifnir can give support to everyone by weakening the opposing team.
Much brewing and testing to be done...
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
4 Street Wraith
4 Deadshot Minotaur
4 Horror of the Broken Lands
4 Desert Cerodon
2 Archfiend of Ifnir
2 Greater Sandwurm
Spells: 15
2 Beast Within
1 K Command
1 Kari Zev's Expertise
4 Demonic Dread
4 Violent Outburst
3 Living End
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
1 Blood Crypt
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Copperline Gorge
3 Blooming Marsh
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Swamp
1 Forest
This is the deck I'm looking at as a possibility right now. There are still 6 slots and those can go to a couple more spells, our traditional set of Fulminator Mage + other other creatures or whatever. No Verdants bc I don't own any, but the deck could easily become B/R barely splashing green if we want it to.
These are the main creatures being considered for spots in the main:
Fulminator Mage
SSG
Faerie Macabre
Shriekmaw
Avalanche Riders
Thoughts?
I don't think i'll try to drop the fulminator land hate package unless hard combo starts putting up results, also if you drop all the land cyclers it may be wise going up a few lands, perhaps to 22? Maybe the regular cycling will be enough as is with so many 1 cycles now?
EDH: Borborygmos Enraged, Sedris, The Traitor King
60 Card: Grixis Delver, Living End, Shardless BUG, Ninjas
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
Cyclers that are definitively outclassed:
- Every old 2 mana cycler (outclassed by either Archfiend or Sandwurm)
- Architects of Will (outclassed by Horror of the Broken Lands)
Desert Cerodon is definitely making the list too. It could take the place of the following:- Any non previously auto 4-of:
-Aforementioned 2 mana cyclers
- Fulminator Mage
- Deadshot Minotaur?
- Monstrous Carabid?
Street Wraith is safe unless Burn becomes Tier 0. I am also doubtful that the good hybrid cyclers leave the deck since they are still big enough and make colors less of a problem turn 1-2.-SSG
-Beast Within
-Tech such as MB Faerie Macabre and Shriekmaw
I used to run 3 Jungle Weavers and 4 Architects. These will get replaced with the 8 new 1 mana cyclers. The last cut is probably the 3rd SSG since the "mana curve" goes down a bit.
I am not positive that any 2 mana cycler is worth it. In the past they were a somewhat necessary evil to have a critical mass of cyclers. Any pair of 1 mana cycler is probably better than a Sandwurm. Archfiend of Ifnir is interesting, especially against decks with little removal. I can imagine situations where it would shine, but it needs to be tested. It might have place among the "tech" cards.
Fulminator Mage is probably our best cards against control, BG and Tron, not cutting that.
Testing decklist would be the following:
Reach does very good things vs Affinity. But to me, that's just an argument for Archfiend because he still blocks the fliers, flies himself, and in that particular matchup, he machine guns their guys post LE. In fact, he could single handedly make their Arcbound Ravager draws much less of a problem and he kills Etched Champion, which was always their other way of killing us post LE before we got them dead (besides Inkmoth/Blinkmoth).
I studied stuff in college. Hard midterms...
So my thoughts on this may not be shared by the public at large. My build of LE used to always be base red. Everyone who cycled could cycle for red. This served a few goals, specifically to help protect the deck from Blood moon, but also to help me reduce the numbers of lands in the deck for SSGs. My current is like 18 lands 4 SSG, and only 1 swamp and 2 forests for basics with fetches, shocks, and pales, since under a blood moon I really won't need a mountain.
Now I can see this deck going a number of ways. To me Cerodon is the most important card out of all of these. It's bigger than other options we used to have and cycles for a single mana. I know it is not flashy but it's still bigger than the other stuff we had that was already good. So thats in for sure. If the deck was going to run a number of jungle weavers, which I think my last build has 1 of, sandworm goes in if archfiend does not seem like the proper meta choice, but that does not seem like nearly as big a deal.
I am not sold on cutting carabid or deadshot though. Being a little smaller is a fair cost to play for allowing the deck to play a super greedy base red mana base. Testing will happen for sure. Also if i have to lose Pales in some number, I really will need to reevaluate the mana base. have more 1 mana cyclers in red may be the answer to just draw into more land though, so maybe I wont need pales.
Also everyone talking about cutting Fulminator, I'm going on record right now in saying that is wrong. I have won more games because of Fulminator and Beast within than any of the actual cycle creatures in this list, most of which are interchangeable to some extent.
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If nothing else, this is the correct train of thought. Living end actually became something to consider in a tournament setting when land destruction/denial was added into the mix and it's that component of our deck that continues to put us on the radar (even if we are still a small blip).
Unless modern becomes an all midrange creature deck format with zero spells, then the land destruction package stays because that is what gives us some form of control before living end and then sealing the game after we resolve a living end. We're not winning because we have some bodies on the board, we're winning because they can't play cards.
I think the Cerodon and the Horror both merit attention if only because the sheer size making it so you can focus more on land kill cards, but they merit that attention over other cyclers, not over core components. As far as I am concerned the following is core to the list before we even talk abotu cycling:
3 Living end
4 Violent Outburst
3 Demonic Dread
4 Simian Spirit guide
4 Beast within
4 fulminator mage
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I 99% agree. I often have situations where i have to cast living end very early in order to clear the board. If I then have only e.g. 2 weak creatures (architects) on the board, i can't win^^
As for Jungle Weaver, I think it's safe to say his time has ended. Between the sudden glut of one-mana cyclers, the superiority of Archfiend and the Wurm in the generic Cycles-for-2 slot, and the utility of the landcyclers (who are still in contention, IMO, at least for those playing Blood Moon), Weaver just doesn't offer enough.
RIP big booty spider. Press F to pay respects.
Http://www.fantasticneighborhood.com/
Comedy gaming podcast. Listening to it makes you cool.
Modern // Burn (main) and Living End (secondary) now Jund.
For fun check out my janky combo primer: Turn 3 Grixis Combo
"Can't beat em' Jund em'!"
This comes way to late on board to help against aggro, doesn't it?
Obviously, as everyone knows by now, we have new toys. These cards (Desert Cerodon, Horror of the Broken Lands) are huge upgrades to what we previously were working with, and give us many options on what direction to take the deck. There are also a couple new 2 drop options in the Archfiend and Wurm, but those are much less important.
So, my thought process was as follows. We now have an abundance of 1 mana cyclers. We can now cut some of the underpowered cyclers and the flex spots for these new brutes. My immediate thought was making the manabase much easier: how about we make green a light splash? I modeled around the idea that Deadshot Minotaur (Who, by the way, is MUCH worse than Architects of Will) wasn't necessary and you could lean heavily on a RB manabase that doesn't need Green until Turn 3 (or T2 with an SSG, but that is less important). With a lot of new 1 drops, you no longer need as much mana or mana sources to function. For this reason I dropped a land to 18, and dropped an SSG as part of the flex spots being cut.
As a side note, with the new split card change, I dug through all the split cards now available to us. Granted we want to stick to Jund colors, so there wasn't much of use... except one card that caught my attention. Crime // Punishment. Or more specifically, Punishment. It hits chalice at X=0, and can be ramped up to catch other forms of hate, including enchantments which we didn't have a whole lot for before. The card is flexible, so I'm going to try 1 in the board over the third Ingot Chewer for now. We'll see how that works out.
For the manabase, I wanted enough green to consistently get 1 by T3, and then the rest to be red or black. With this line of thinking, having a basic Forest in the main would be detrimental, so I found room for it in the side to bring in against Blood Moon decks. In what would have been its slot, I put a Gemstone Mine, which helps by being nonpainful, something I really wanted to stress when building the mana. The primary reason for this stress is that the burn matchup used to be pretty terrible. You didn't do anything for the first couple turns except hurt yourself with fetches, then lets say you survive long enough to LE, then your mopy 3/4s and 4/4s give the burn player tons of time to draw the last bolt or two to win. Now, the matchup is easier, as I'll get to soon, but correcting that was my main priority.
So, the deck:
4 Street Wraith
4 Monstrous Carabid
4 Architects of Will
4 Desert Cerodon
4 Horror of the Broken Lands
1 Archfiend of Ifnir
Wincons: (11)
3 Living End
4 Demonic Dread
4 Violent Outburst
Utility: (10)
4 Fulminator Mage
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Beast Within
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
3 Copperline Gorge
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Overgrown tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
1 Gemstone Mine
3 Ricochet Trap
1 Beast Within
2 Shriekmaw
2 Ravenous Trap
2 Ingot Chewer
1 Crime // Punishment
4 Brindle Boar
1 Forest
Some notes:
I wanted to try 1 Archfiend. It's possible the answer to "which 2 drop do we play" is neither, and we should just throw a Deadshot Minotaur back in. Going back to getting our Faerie Macabres shot down post LE is gonna suck tho. That was infuriating at times.
I moved a Beast Within to the side. This was a concession to a loss of flex spots as well as a concession to manabase. I wanted to ensure that even though the manabase can support getting single green by T3 just fine, it didn't hurt as bad when we missed on it. There are 10 Green sources in 18 lands though, so it shouldn't happen often. But the more we can play with only Red and Black in the main the better, I think.
You could try to fit in 3-4 Leyline of the Void over the 2 Ravenous Traps, but good luck finding what to cut, and I still don't like the whole leyline idea in the first place.
So I decided to test the deck against Burn, partially because I was wondering if it was even worth sideboarding the Brindle Boars or if maybe we should just punt the matchup. Turns out the new changes are awesome. The new cyclers are great, and close the game spectacularly fast. You now only need 3-4 dudes in the yard to kill on T4. 1 Horror, 1 Cerodon, and 1 Carabid along with a couple cyclers in hand will do just fine - that's 18 damage. Anything more than that, such as some free Street Wraiths or the Carabid being one of the other two just make it easier. These new guys really increased our closing speed. Fantastic.
Guys, the manabase was incredible. Against burn, where you want to be as painless as possible, I never once had to play a shockland untapped. I only had to fetch for basics a few times, and even then it never cut me off a color (again, bonuses of Green only being a splash now). I always had green for Brindle Boar when needed, and many times had multiples. Gemstone Mine being painless was as spectacular as expected, and never once got used up - if it did it wouldn't have mattered anyway, I was going through my deck fast enough that I always had an abundance of lands.
The results were great, surprisingly. Game 1 is still really difficult, because even with the speed ups and the easy mana you are usually just a little short. Multiple times I had the kill with my 3 fatties and they just burned me out just before. Eidolon is still a beating (you take 4 from going off). But postboard games get easier. Brindle Boar is a great roadblock, and now that you can almost always kill the turn after going off, the burn player is extremely pressured to win before a Living End resolves. Brindle Boar, obviously, helps stop that. Block+Sac for days, bois. Drawing multiple boars feels like cheating, unless of course they have a Skullcrack... or 8. All in all, the matchup is still hard, but is no longer horrid.
I'd like to see where the deck development goes past this as people test the new cards. I also now see what WotC meant when they said they took precaution in trying to not break LE. Just these couple draft commons made the deck worlds stronger and more consistent. Imagine what else they could have done...
GB Graveyard(Rip Copter)Modern:
Dredge RBGU (AND WE BACK)
Suicide BlooUR(WotC WhyLiving End RBG
Bloo MoonUR
Legacy:
Aluren BGU
Yeahhh, that's my guess. I feel Brindle Boar is enough but its worth trying...?
Modern // Burn (main) and Living End (secondary) now Jund.
For fun check out my janky combo primer: Turn 3 Grixis Combo
"Can't beat em' Jund em'!"
I think one of those beast within is in a flex spot as is the fourth SSG but agree with the rest.
[quote from="Ashockfan »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/developing-competitive-modern/220258-living-end?comment=6033"Imagine what else they could have done...
[/quote]
Imagine this:
Desert-maw Wurm
5R
(Uncommon) Wurm
When ~ enters the battlefield you may destroy target non-basic land. If you do and that land was a desert, ~ deals 2 to that lands controller.
Cycling 2
3/4
OR this
Trashloam Wurm
4G
(Uncommon) Wurm
When ~ goes the graveyard from anywhere you gain 3 life.
Cycling G
4/1
Both seemingly inauspicious "limited fodder" with one being "flavorful" for the set but in our deck would be crazy. Really, any cycler with a relevant ETB ability could have pushed living end into Tier 1. I think that our deck is "weird" enough (that is, outside the normal actions of the game) that the banhammer would come swift and merciless. If not the banhammer the graveyard hate would rise much to our chegrin.
For less what-ifs:
I'm think that two Archfiend are going to be right. It's so good vs lingering souls and everything in affinity (nobody plays elves around here but it can't be bad there either). It slots right in for Jungle Weaver in my current build. I think the Horror and Cerodon are going to replace some number of Architects and Deadshots or even slot into one of the flex spots.
It's going to be fun to tinker with this deck for the next few weeks. I can't wait for the first modern night at my LGS after AKH is legal.
EDIT: I somehow broke the multiqoute...oops
EDH DECKS:
GBCatacomb Sifter Sac-Attack