MTG Salvation

Quote from moondemon88 »

Quote from protoaddict »

Quote from Pistallion »

How come I never see this deck anymore?

Most people never saw this deck in the first place. For as well positioned and good as I think it is and always has been, it never makes up more than a fraction of the field. Modern has a huge spread of viable decks to begin with, but the deck has a lot of things going against it as far as representation:

• It is complex to play
• Some people just never play combo
• The cards are really esoteric and will not see play in other lists, making them a "bad" investment
• It is not a list you can convert into or convert from another format like legacy, it exists only in modern unlike something like affinity which is very similar in both formats.
• Format decktype confirmation bias

Is living end really that uncommon and complex to play? The only thing i had to look up was what happens when i cascade with no available target in my library.

The deck is very uncommon, to the degree that some opponents literally have no clue what you’re doing. As for complexity, the gameplay and strategy aren’t difficult to grasp, but the tactics we employ to accomplish the endgame are often unintuitive and require a lot of baiting out.

Living end has far more ordering and forked decisions than most other decks I have ever played. Little choices like playing a shockland on turn one and passing, having 2 mana up and deciding if you cycle the 2 mana option or cycle the 1 mana cycler you are holding in hopes you see another one off your draw, Do you mulligan the landless hand that has 2 SSGs and a number of cyclers, or trying to decide when in game you need to give up on the LE plan and start trying to hard cast are all super relevant and game winning/losing things.

Decks like Jund often just have to decide how to tap out every turn.

The amount of mistakes I see my opponents make against me when I play LE is staggering and I truly believe its because the deck is more complex than most modern players know how to deal with, usually just because of lack of exposure.

All that being said, let’s not overstate anything: decks with lackluster cards in their MB like Logic Knot and Opt are typically very complex also, and require a certain finesse to pilot well.

Dramatic increase in storm at this Open event. A little rough for us if that deck becomes a dominant force in the metagame.

Odd i never seemed to notice before that it was, but it is now that i think about it. I'll have to take some note's when i play to check it out now that i think about it. People do seem confused as to what's happening a lot even when you play creatures they assume your baiting them.


This is my current list and i'll be taking it to a tournament that will be next month around where i live. I need to readjust the SB and mb for a more open meta though and was wondering if someone would help. As for the reason i only have 3 fetchlands it was just a mistake as i forgot to pull the 4th out of my edh deck and forgot about it. Never even noticed till i was organizing my deck to post a list. Really need to fgure out how to get 2 Ricochet Trap in the SB.

I seriously doubt you need 14 one mana cyclers. 12 is really plenty. I would replace them with a fourth fulminator and a kolaghan's command.

With Kommand maindeck, you'll be able to shave your artifact hate in the board. 3 chewer and 2 grip is a lot; if you want to be that focused on beating decks with important artifacts, Kommand mainboard will do a lot. I would personally recommend just getting rid of lost legacy entirely. I don't really know what's important to name in the meta. Cards like that have a problem of feeling very all-pupose, when really they're very narrow. I would cut Beast Within from the board; it's just not really a sideboard card in this deck. So you've gained 4 new slots. I'd put in some cards to help control and a simian spirit guide for matchups where you'd rather go fast. Hope you found that helpful

I think legacy is fine in a storm meta. You either get to wipe out grapeshot or you lose to remand... which would’ve beat you anyway, so no sense in playing around it.

Definitely would trim grip, 1 is fine — unless you’re expressly worried about enchantments, in which case I would swap 2 deadshot MB for 1 more Beast within and an archfiend (best creature to cast with enchantment based hate in play)

Quote from gruulsmash »

I seriously doubt you need 14 one mana cyclers. 12 is really plenty. I would replace them with a fourth fulminator and a kolaghan's command.

With Kommand maindeck, you'll be able to shave your artifact hate in the board. 3 chewer and 2 grip is a lot; if you want to be that focused on beating decks with important artifacts, Kommand mainboard will do a lot. I would personally recommend just getting rid of lost legacy entirely. I don't really know what's important to name in the meta. Cards like that have a problem of feeling very all-pupose, when really they're very narrow. I would cut Beast Within from the board; it's just not really a sideboard card in this deck. So you've gained 4 new slots. I'd put in some cards to help control and a simian spirit guide for matchups where you'd rather go fast. Hope you found that helpful

I really enjoy the added cyclers in the MB as i have found no problem with them currently and even found multiples uses for them after LE resolves due to cycling bonus for archfiend and horror. I would suggest trying it before knocking it. Honestly in my meta fulminator is pretty bad half the people either run basic decks paired with fetchs or they run typical 3 color decks mana bases we had a lot of blood moons around in the past followed up by LD decks after that. More then a few times i found the 4th fulminator actually being useless unless it was gonna target me. Fulminator used to be a 4-2 split with the faerie till someone advised me to do a 3-3 split due to my meta having both storm and dredge. I'll probably drop 1 deadshot for a k-command though. Actually if i was focused solely on artifacts i would of had 4 chewers not 3. I use the grip to deal with annoying enchantments it just has the added bonus of being good against artifacts. For lost legacy see below please.

Quote from kodieyost »

I think legacy is fine in a storm meta. You either get to wipe out grapeshot or you lose to remand... which would’ve beat you anyway, so no sense in playing around it.

Definitely would trim grip, 1 is fine — unless you’re expressly worried about enchantments, in which case I would swap 2 deadshot MB for 1 more Beast within and an archfiend (best creature to cast with enchantment based hate in play)

Ya i bring it in against Storm and combo matches only it has no other use then naming things like Grapeshot, scapeshft, etc. Usually just a key card that people need to make there deck function properly in combo. They either have the counter or don't like you mentioned. Most of my friends who have at one time borrowed the deck seem to use it the same way they use surgical extraction and bring it in against everything. I'm not actually that bothered by enchantments i mostly when built the deck wanted to make sure i wanted answers to things like leyline and RIP and realized while leyline does hurt RIP is meh and usually hurts the opponent more if you play a more control game till they run out of CA before you usually do as i have it set up i typically draw a creature every other card almost and it becomes hard to deal with.

After the comments i might do something like main -2 Deadshot, +1 beast within +1 Archfiend and revert the 4-2 on fulminator and faerie. While changing side something like -1 Chewer -1 grip -1 beast within, +2 Trap +1 ? for the tournament.

So this is the current list I plan on playing. Pretty new to playing the deck outside of randomly proxying it up every now and then. Any advice is much appreciated. As you can see I'm on that land destruction plan. Think you can really punish the lack of basics in modern right now.

A few questions I have about card choices etc..

1. How necessary are SSGs? I see a lot of lists run them but I'm not a fan.
2. My sideboard is a little all over and I don't have much in the way of a plan for storm or burn any suggestions?
3. Why doesn't anyone run Kari Zev's Expertise? The card dumps living end if you have it in your hand because drawing them feels real bad.

Any help is much appreciated!

Quote from Garrettv1 »

1. How necessary are SSGs? I see a lot of lists run them but I'm not a fan.
2. My sideboard is a little all over and I don't have much in the way of a plan for storm or burn any suggestions?
3. Why doesn't anyone run Kari Zev's Expertise? The card dumps living end if you have it in your hand because drawing them feels real bad.

1. SSGs can be a live saver at times, whether you need that extra mana to cast that Ricochet trap, or to combo off on turn 2 in response to opponent's rest in peace.

2. I play 4 Faerie Macabre maindeck actually. You just have to wait for storm players to cast gifts ungiven, put their past in flames into the graveyard, and then use Faerie Macabre to exile it. Against burn, you could SB some Brindle Boar or Gnaw to the Bone but frankly speaking, they aren't really good matchups.

3. I used to try running 1 off Kari Zev's Expertise. Frankly speaking the card is pretty situational. You don't draw into living end most of the time (unless you play 4 of them), and during those games it's mostly a dead card. In my opinion it's better to avoid adding in too much extra shenanigans and just focus on the cascading combo.

The thing I love with living end is many people underestimate the deck by far.

They usually play slower and then get rekt by a turn 2 living end with cerodon Street wraith and horror un the yard. (Hi storm decks)

On the other hand, they play around the grave and put huge amount of hate, then they discard our cascade cards, exile the graveyard and take their time. But living end draws so much that you have usually turn 5 or 6 your 5 lands and start casting things.

They react like it's a bait and don't try to play around hard casting creatures, but when you cast a 5/4 flyers that cat destroy the board easily you have to stop to play around the living end and the cascade spell and start to try to win the game. It's a mistake that many blue payers does, letting and arch fiend or horror to resolve... fearing of the living while ignoring a 5/4 flyer or 4/4 that can become 10+ when unblocked.

The beatout capacity of the deck is nothing to laugh about and the deck feel great. It has very few bad match up and it's very resilient to hate.

Plus it hard counter theese boggles decks that are rampant and trying to counter BBE jund decks.

Played a league with out the SSGs and there were quite a few times that one extra mana would have been super nice. I switched out the list a little as well.

Four avalanche riders felt like way to many and awkward so I cut down to two. I cut the Kari zev's expertise... also felt really clunky and added the three SSG. I had one more spot open so it was between a 3rd beast within going in the main for a total of four in the 75 but opted for a singleton Archfiend of Ifnir.

We'll see how this feels and go from there.

I've also really considered adding 2 blood moons into the side. Really hits a lot of decks right now. Everyone is very light on basics.

A couple other things a friend and I have been talking about is a lot of the split cards. We don't cascade into them now so they are super viable.

boom // bust
crime//punishment
cut // ribbons
breaking // entering

Boom is sweet because it has two targets so you can target your own fetch land and fetch in response and it will still resolve.

Quote from Garrettv1 »

I've also really considered adding 2 blood moons into the side. Really hits a lot of decks right now. Everyone is very light on basics.

A couple other things a friend and I have been talking about is a lot of the split cards. We don't cascade into them now so they are super viable.

boom // bust
crime//punishment
cut // ribbons
breaking // entering

Boom is sweet because it has two targets so you can target your own fetch land and fetch in response and it will still resolve.

I’ve been a blood moon advocate for the last 9 months, nothing else straight up wins the game out of our deck the way blood moon does. Haymakers are key to winning grindy games.

Re: split cards

I think the reason we don’t play them is because they inherently aren’t effects that we need access to

Really want to try Moon out in the side but idk if just two is enough. I feel like 3 would make more sense.

Quote from KotNash0r »

Quote from kodieyost »

Quote from Garrettv1 »

I've also really considered adding 2 blood moons into the side. Really hits a lot of decks right now. Everyone is very light on basics.

A couple other things a friend and I have been talking about is a lot of the split cards. We don't cascade into them now so they are super viable.

boom // bust
crime//punishment
cut // ribbons
breaking // entering

Boom is sweet because it has two targets so you can target your own fetch land and fetch in response and it will still resolve.

I’ve been a blood moon advocate for the last 9 months, nothing else straight up wins the game out of our deck the way blood moon does. Haymakers are key to winning grindy games.

Re: split cards

I think the reason we don’t play them is because they inherently aren’t effects that we need access to

Completely agree on the split cards. Boom/Bust always just feels like a bad fulminator and the other split cards are just meh. The only one i actually considered was Wear/Tear, when i played Blood Moon in the main (x2) and Twisted Abmonination plus Pale Recluse and tried splashing it via Godless Shrine. But a lot of times you dont want to have a "shock swamp" that folds to Blood Moon. So in benched it entirely. Maybe if there is a reason to play whihte.


Thank you for the input! Right now i'm leaning towards moon aswell but not completely sold on it. I will test with some friends of mine in a few days. Matchups will be Burn, Grixis Midrange (no Jace) and Affinity.

The only one of those that moon is relevant for is Grixis, the other two very easily could play blood moon.

I played 3 moon for a long time in board, now down to just 2 and considering a singleton

Quote from KotNash0r »

The only one of those that moon is relevant for is Grixis, the other two very easily could play blood moon.

I played 3 moon for a long time in board, now down to just 2 and considering a singleton

Sorry for the confusing comment. I just play against these decks a lot because i found them to be quite tricky matchups and i test a lot of diefferent sideboard startegies against them and thought you might be interested in the testing results. No correlation to Moon though for Burn and Affinity. Its just the matchups im most familiar with.

I just feel like sideboarding with LE is the most difficult aspect of the deck, especially for new players.

Ah I see — yes very interested to know how you fare vs affinity and burn post-board, good luck in testing!

Hey just FYI, your proposed "target my fetchland and then sac it" will not work. You will counter your spell because one if its targets became invalid.

RE: the split cards, the issue is that so far none do anything evoke creatures don't do. Turn//Burn Cut//Ribbons are worse unless you've maxed out on maw and can't play dismember because of life cost. Other than that, the cards aren't in our colors. It is a good thing to keep an eye out for though; if a spell that gives us an effect we don't have were printed, we'd definitely want to know.

Hey just FYI, your proposed "target my fetchland and then sac it" will not work. You will counter your spell because one if its targets became invalid.

RE: the split cards, the issue is that so far none do anything evoke creatures don't do. Turn//Burn Cut//Ribbons are worse unless you've maxed out on maw and can't play dismember because of life cost. Other than that, the cards aren't in our colors. It is a good thing to keep an eye out for though; if a spell that gives us an effect we don't have were printed, we'd definitely want to know.

You target your land and theirs. Because you are targeting their land as well... you still have the valid target so the spell resolves.

Pretty sure I’m cutting out the jund charms for something else and going down a ricochet trap. I don’t really have a plan for burn. Maybe some gnaw to the bones.