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.
Regarding Faerie Macabre, the card is too low impact for Living End As Foretold. In the matchups where we want graveyard hate, we either need to remove the entire graveyard with a one-time effect (think Storm and Dredge) or generate a continuous graveyard hate effect (like Mardu Pyromancer, Hollow One and KCI). Additionally, a two-power flyer is ineffective in closing out the game on its own.
Regarding Amulet of Safekeeping, I think the card is too narrow to see play in most Modern decks. In most cases, Damping Sphere is more effective than Amulet. LEAF should have a fairly good storm matchup anyway since we have access to efficient countermagic and graveyard disruption. Amulet isn't particularly useful versus any other strategies for it to warrant consideration.
I believe Leyline of the Void is the most effective piece of graveyard disruption for LEAF. If I weren't using Leylines, I would want some combination of Tormod's Crypts and Surgical Extractions in the sideboard.
I've written a bit about Spell Pierce on these forms. I just wanted to restate how important I think this card is in the metagame and in the context of this deck.
In my humble opinion, Spell Pierce should be played as a 3- or 4-of in all Mono Blue Living End decks. Spell Pierce is a great counter to turn one discard (situationally of course) and it helps force through the combo. It gives us much needed percentage points against some of the top decks in the format. Spell Pierce is a big reason why our deck should be favored against KCI, Storm, Bogles, Infect, Mardu, Blue Control variants (Jeskai, Blue Moon, UW, etc.) and Ensnaring Bridge decks. Also, you haven't lived until you've Spell Pierced a T3 Karn Liberated.
I have been thinking a lot about the card Gemstone Caverns for Mono Blue Living End. The card has some real upside, but I'm not sure if it is worth it.
On one hand, the allure of "stealing the play" from opponents is tempting. We can, in theory, make up the card disadvantage with Ancestral Vision and the mana advantage is maximized by the amount of countermagic in the deck. I've found that perhaps more than any deck, our deck operates more effectively on the play. I am a big fan of Spell Pierce in the deck; having the turn zero Gemstone Caverns makes Spell Pierce even better.
On the other hand, Gemstone Caverns is normally a colorless land and that is a real cost for the deck. We can't use it to cycle or counter spells in the early game and most builds already have between 3 and 4 colorless lands with Field of Ruin and Sunken Ruins. Considering the deck plays between 20-22 lands, I worry that another colorless land will render more opening hands unkeepable and hurt the deck's overall effectiveness.
If I were to play Gemstone Caverns, I would likely bring it in as the 22nd land out of the sideboard. Even then, sideboard slots are precious in Modern and even more so in our deck as most builds run 4x Leyline of the Void.
Remorseful Cleric and the new Mistcaller are definitely problematic for our deck. I've never played with Merfolk before, but I would think that Mistcaller is good enough to mainboard in Merfolk decks and in large numbers (as a 3 of even 4-of). Mistcaller gives Merfolk matchup points against quite a few strategies at a low opportunity cost. Merfolk, in that sense, would become similar to Humans -- a deck with disruptive elements that also synergize with tribal support cards. Merfolk's disruption would looks quite different from Humans', but the same idea applies.
There was an article on Channel Fireball recently about Remorseful Cleric. The author suggested Remorseful Cleric will be adopted as a 1-of in toolbox decks or as a 2-of in sideboards. This is best case scenario for us. If people believe that the current graveyard hate is more powerful or if they believe that Remorseful Cleric isn't good enough against a large enough percentage of Modern to make mainboards, then we can breathe a sigh of relief.
Just like Mistcaller, the worse cast scenario with Remorseful Cleric is that it pushes a tribe over the edge. If Merfolk, Spirits or Wizards become a tier deck, we will need to adjust back and change our spell configuration. Spirits curving Remorseful Cleric into Drogskol Captain is incredibly powerful and it's something I do not want to see happening frequently in Modern.
I believe the deck is generally well positioned right now in Modern. Any deck in Modern needs to be able to pick up "free wins" by preying on specific deck archetypes. Humans is at the top of the format. The popularity of Humans has led to a rise in Jeskai and other Snapcaster Mage decks. Our deck matches up extremely well against other blue decks like these.
I'm starting to come around to the idea that a heavier black splash is important for the deck based on the strength of Collective Brutality. I'm envious of other lists that play the card. It fills a specific hole in the deck and it improves our burn and humans matchups.
Agree! That's also what the deck's creator called it. The name just stuck with me. The other options aren't that bad though.
idutra's Deck
I have a few suggestions:
I think Leylines should be a 0-of of a 4-of in decks. In my eyes, there's no in between. Especially in our deck, where we do not have a reliable method to hard cast them, we want to give ourselves to the best possible chance to have them in our opening hand where they're most valuable. You maximize the effectiveness of the other three copies by adding a forth copy to the deck.
I don't think LEAF is well suited to play Vendilion Clique in the main deck. Clique doesn't effectively further our main gameplan of assembling As Foretold + Living End. It is actively bad in our bad matchups and unnecessary for our good matchups. I would suggest adding the fourth Living End in it's place.
I had a chance to watch some of Urza's stream yesterday. (Thanks for streaming!)
Urza, I believe that 23 lands is too many. Aside from that crazy game against Tron where you drew like 20 lands in the top 40 cards, I think land count was an issue in most of the games I watched. I think part of the deck's strength is the ability to chain cyclers together to find your combo pieces. This becomes more problematic when you break the cycle by drawing lands in between cyclers. For me, I've found 21 lands and four Street Wraith to be the sweet spot for mana.
If you feel the need to go up on lands, I'd suggest replacing one of the your 23 lands with Fetid Pools. It's not a great card, but it minimizes the risk of flooding out by replacing itself in the late game.
Does anyone have any thoughts on how to approach the Jund matchup? I'd love to hear them. I'm specifically thinking about Remand. Do you leave it in post-board?
I understand the points you raised about Ghost Quarter and Field of Ruin. I'll keep this idea in mind. It's possible you are correct, but in my experience, the third Field of Ruin is better than the first Ghost Quarter.
So it's funny you point out the mana-base as that's something I've been working on a little lately; specifically I'd like to add a 23rd land. Too large a number of the games I lose is due to not being able to find a 3rd or 4th land. I don't have any metrics tracked of exactly how many that is (especially vs. losing to too many lands) but I feel a 23rd land might be useful especially as you really want to keep nice 1 landed hands on the draw with tons of cyclers.
I've been running 21 lands, four Street Wraith and no cantrips and this has worked well for me. I've been punished for kept aggressive one-land hands from time to time, but I don't think I've ever felt the need to go much higher than 21 lands.
I did some distribution math on this some time ago. I don't remember the specifics, but 21 lands in a 56 card deck (Street Wraith) is the equivalent of 22-23 lands in a 60 card deck. I think we can get away with a tight land count considering how many cards we see early due to cycling. If you're trying to play more of a control game, maybe increasing the land count would work better for you? Or maybe your experience is more of a Magic Online issue?
I'm always trying to continuing tuning and finding different solutions.
Good! It's important to do this, but it's also important to recognize when you find configurations that work for you. Sometimes "tuning" means going over your sideboard plan for each matchup and thinking of how to best leverage your 75 to give you the best 60 cards on the play and on the draw.
On the subject of tuning, I'd be interested to hear about how you arrived at your manabase configuration. I'm no expert by any means, but I have some ideas I'd like to offer you, especially related to your manabase.
Since we are a 4x Tolaria West deck, many people use this fact to justify the presence of Ghost Quarter. The idea that you can situationally transmute for Ghost Quarter seems appealing, but I've found that this rarely comes up in practice. First, when transmuting, it is incredibly rare to prioritize a land destruction effect over one of our powerhouse targets in Living End, Ancestral Vision or Bojuka Bog. In the exceptionally rare case that we actually want the land destruction effect, Field of Ruin is just as good as Ghost Quarter in the majority of those scenarios.
With Ghost Quarter, setting yourself back a land is often a real drawback. Think about the Tron matchup. It may seem advantageous to be able to Ghost Quarter the opponent off a Tron land on turns 1-2 (where you wouldn't be able to activate Field of Ruin), but the time you buy yourself is mitigated by the fact that you've essentially lost a turn and you're that much further from gaining control over the game. (The presence of Remand and Spell Pierce in the deck should protect us from getting run over early from Tron.) Tron cares less about having Tron early against us since they play a more midrange game post board anyway, so Ghost Quarter is oddly more of a liability against them than anything else.
One of the nice things about Field of Ruin is that is fixes mana, thins the decks and disrupts the opponent at the same time. Outside of Curator of Mysteries, we don't use scry effects in the deck (or at least we shouldn't!), so shuffling the library has minimal downside. Removing a land out of the deck, when combined with all of our cycling, adds up and increases our changes of finding As Foretold. I think it's justifiable to play Ghost Quarter when using it alongside Surgical Extraction. If you're not, then I think Field of Ruin is the better fit for the deck.
Probably worth noting I'm a big proponent as playing this as a control deck rather than a pure combo deck. Almost all my matchups involve siding out some number of cycle creatures and I almost always would rather wait a turn to play as foretold w/ counter backup than push it on turn 3 blind. Same with decision between 1st turn suspend visions vs. holding. I typically suspend it, in control matchups even if I have an opening hand as foretold. I win without casting living end for any (or few) creatures probably around 25-40% of the games.
Knowing when to play As Foretold is important. It is generally a good idea against non-blue decks to cast As Foretold only when you are guaranteed to get some value from either Ancestral Vision or Living End.
It's hard to make definitive statements about play lines with the deck, but I think it's pretty safe to say it's usually correct to suspend Ancestral Vision on turn one (play or draw) if you have it in your opening hand.
I rarely sideboard out cycle creatures unless I'm bringing in some number of Nimble Obstructionist from the sideboard. I leave in all four copies of Curator of Mysteries, Street Wraith and Striped Riverwinder in almost all matchups. For me, sideboarding involves changing my configuration of countermagic, spot removal and utility spells. It's important to keep that base of 12 cyclers. In addition to serving as your win conditions, these cards help you dig through your deck to not only find As Foretold but your critically important sideboard cards.
First cards I'd cut to tune sb would be hurkyl's recall (your affinity and lantern matchups are already great, ironworks isn't that popular), dispel (control matchups are out of this world already)
Additionally, I wouldn't recommend cutting down on Dispel in your current configuration, especially only having access to three one-mana counterspells in the main deck. Setting control matchups aside, Dispel is great in the Storm matchup and it has plenty of other applications against decks like Burn, Goryo's variants.
Probably worth noting I'm a big proponent as playing this as a control deck rather than a pure combo deck. Almost all my matchups involve siding out some number of cycle creatures and I almost always would rather wait a turn to play as foretold w/ counter backup than push it on turn 3 blind.
This is interesting. I noticed that your list does feel more controlling with the Search for Azcanta and the Nimble Obstructionist in the mainboard. I suppose there's no arguing with your results, but I do question how good Search for Azcanta is in this deck, even as a 1-of. I don't believe that the effect is necessary in our good G1 matchups and I think the card does not help in the bad G1 matchups. Also, I would imagine that you sideboard it out frequently since most decks will be looking to turn off your graveyard in post-board games. Disclaimer: I've never tested the card out personally as I believe in taking a more combo-focused approach with the deck.
I honestly think rest in peace is possible the worst sideboard card against me and absolutely love to see almost any opponent play it
I completely agree here. Rest in Peace allows you to focus only on the battlefield and control the flow of the game easier. Your Living Ends are more clean X for 1s and since you almost always can out-card advantage opponents, you run them out of resources and win the game. Your coming to this conclusion speaks to how many reps you have with the deck, which I can appreciate.
Are you looking to tune the deck or are you comfortable as is with your current list?
Thanks for sharing your data. Based on your deck configuration, I can understand why your win percentages are what they are with the exception of these two. I would think your Mardu matchup isn't this good and your Grixis matchup isn't this bad. I'd be curious to hear more about the Mardu matchup and what has lead to such results.
While I'm here, I'd like to talk a bit about this deck's place in Modern. I hope this will be helpful to those who are considering picking up the deck and those who are just getting started. Please note that this represents my opinion based on observations and 100+ matches with the deck.
I came across a thread on Reddit that posed the question, "Why has Mono Blue Living End fallen out of favor?" The deck was extremely popular in December 2017 and it has slowly decreased in popularity throughout the year. To that point, here are three potential reasons why:
1) The deck has a legitimately bad humans matchup. According to MTGGoldfish.com, Humans is the most popular deck in Modern with roughly an 8% metagame share. Save drastic main deck decisions and an overloaded sideboard, we have to accept that the combination of disruption and aggression will give our deck a hard time. A fairly stock Living End As Foretold list is probably 20/80 to a stock humans list. You can splash colors or select cards to give yourself 5-10 percentage points in the matchup, but I don't see the matchup getting much better than that. Many people do not want to be that much of an underdog to one of the top decks in Modern, so some may shy away from it for that reason.
2) The deck has a direct fail rate. You can do everything right, have close to the perfect 75 and still lose because all four copies of As Foretold are in the bottom 25% of your deck. This will undoubtedly rub people the wrong way. There is a degree of variance and risk involved with playing this deck that will turn people away from picking it up. We can do things to minimize that variance, of course, but it still remains. I think you have to be OK with the fact that your deck will lose to itself on occasion through no fault of your own. This is the tradeoff we make for having access to some of the most powerful, explosive effects in the format.
Along this point, I want to stress that no deck in Modern is perfect. Our fail rate is based around finding As Foretold, but Boggles fails if they don't have any Boggles. Burn fails if it draws too many or too few lands. KCI combo fails without KCI. Affinity is an aggro deck that plays 10 0 or 1-power creatures. Every deck has its weaknesses. It's just a question of which weakness you're willing to take on and how easy you can minimize that weakness and maximize the deck's strengths.
3) The deck is difficult to build and play. People may roll their eyes on this one, but I think the point holds true. I don't think anyone can just pick this deck up and start winning with it right away. Assuming you have a decent build, you have to know which cards to bring in from the sideboard, which ones to take out, when to cast your creatures, how to play certain matchups and how to play around graveyard hate. While every deck in Modern has its own element of complexity, remember that this deck is only 6 months old and we haven't had a viable combo/control deck in Modern since Spliter Twin. I imagine that many people picked up this deck, had a rough experience, and wrote it off as unplayable.
I wouldn't be posting on this forum or playing the deck if it ended there. I'd like to offer the other side of the issue and list three reasons why I think more people should be playing this deck:
1) The deck matches up well against the rest of the Modern field. Save humans and maybe a few other hyper aggressive decks like burn, I truly believe that the deck is 50/50 or better against the majority of decks in Modern. We have outstanding matchups against control variants, midrange creature decks and other combo decks. Storm, Lantern, Tron and Boggles are all good to great matchups depending on sideboard configurations. The deck combines a fast, proactive gameplan with countermagic and other disruption which makes it good against a large percentage of the field. The additional percentage points gained by LEAF from being a rouge deck are icing on the cake.
2) The deck is legitimately powerful and disruptive. Card advantage matters in Magic and this deck generates more card advantage than any other deck in Modern. Treasure Cruise is banned in Modern and it wasn't that long ago that Ancestral Vision was banned too. Our deck takes full advantage of a bannable effect and it does so in a way that somehow makes that effect better by tutoring for it and generating it for free. The deck plays more counter magic than any other deck in Modern and it has combination of resilient and evasive threats to close the game out quickly. On a raw power scale, the base of this deck is as good as it gets.
3) The deck is a blast to play. Regardless of whether you pick the deck up to hone it or jam games at FNM, the deck is very enjoyable to play and to play against. It's unique and it's fun to watch. The intricate counter magic/gameplay and power appeals to Spike. The combo and novelty appeals to Johnny. Beating down with big creatures likely appeals to Timmy. I think I've enjoyed learning this deck and playing games with it more than I have for any other deck.
I've seen quite a few posters on this thread sharing lists that play only three copies of Living End. Based on my experience, I believe that it is correct to play the full four copies in all builds, save those that are tweaking the deck to face a slower metagame.
Against slower decks (control variants, prison variants, tron, Ad Nauseum, etc.) where there is not immediate pressure to resolve Living End, you only want three copies of Living End. However, Modern is a wide format and I feel there are more decks where having access to the full four copies is critical. Notably:
Fast creature decks (Elves, 8-whack, burn, merfolk, etc.): These decks are incredibly fast and can get underneath our countermagic and early interaction. In these matchups, our best chance of winning involves T3 As Foretold + Living End. You want to give yourself the best chance to draw these two cards in Game 1 and this means having access to the full four copies of Living End. Taking a turn off to transmute Tolaria West and find Living End will often be too slow and, in my experience, will cost you the game.
Discard decks (Jund, Grixis Death's Shadow, Mardu Pyromancer, etc.): These decks will pick apart your hand, so having redundant copies of Living End will come in handy. These games tend to get grindy. Assuming one Living End invariably gets hit by discard, that leaves you with 2 copies in your deck for the rest of the game. That may not be enough. It's best to give yourself some flex room and have more copies available for the worse case scenario.
Traditional Living End decks can get away with running three copies because they can reliably access the card through their 8 cascade spells. We're relying on ratios and percentages to find our copy (with the help of Tolaria West.) There will be times when you resolve Ancestral Vision off suspend and you need to hit exactly Living End or else you will lose. Give yourself the best chance to do so by playing four copies of the card in the mainboard.
You can always board down the fourth copy, but you can never board up.
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.
Regarding Amulet of Safekeeping, I think the card is too narrow to see play in most Modern decks. In most cases, Damping Sphere is more effective than Amulet. LEAF should have a fairly good storm matchup anyway since we have access to efficient countermagic and graveyard disruption. Amulet isn't particularly useful versus any other strategies for it to warrant consideration.
I believe Leyline of the Void is the most effective piece of graveyard disruption for LEAF. If I weren't using Leylines, I would want some combination of Tormod's Crypts and Surgical Extractions in the sideboard.
In my humble opinion, Spell Pierce should be played as a 3- or 4-of in all Mono Blue Living End decks. Spell Pierce is a great counter to turn one discard (situationally of course) and it helps force through the combo. It gives us much needed percentage points against some of the top decks in the format. Spell Pierce is a big reason why our deck should be favored against KCI, Storm, Bogles, Infect, Mardu, Blue Control variants (Jeskai, Blue Moon, UW, etc.) and Ensnaring Bridge decks. Also, you haven't lived until you've Spell Pierced a T3 Karn Liberated.
If you're playing Mana Leak, Censor, Disallow or Supreme Will, I highly suggest you test out Spell Pierce in those slots!
On one hand, the allure of "stealing the play" from opponents is tempting. We can, in theory, make up the card disadvantage with Ancestral Vision and the mana advantage is maximized by the amount of countermagic in the deck. I've found that perhaps more than any deck, our deck operates more effectively on the play. I am a big fan of Spell Pierce in the deck; having the turn zero Gemstone Caverns makes Spell Pierce even better.
On the other hand, Gemstone Caverns is normally a colorless land and that is a real cost for the deck. We can't use it to cycle or counter spells in the early game and most builds already have between 3 and 4 colorless lands with Field of Ruin and Sunken Ruins. Considering the deck plays between 20-22 lands, I worry that another colorless land will render more opening hands unkeepable and hurt the deck's overall effectiveness.
If I were to play Gemstone Caverns, I would likely bring it in as the 22nd land out of the sideboard. Even then, sideboard slots are precious in Modern and even more so in our deck as most builds run 4x Leyline of the Void.
Has anyone had any experience playing with Gemstone Caverns?
In a word, UGH.
Remorseful Cleric and the new Mistcaller are definitely problematic for our deck. I've never played with Merfolk before, but I would think that Mistcaller is good enough to mainboard in Merfolk decks and in large numbers (as a 3 of even 4-of). Mistcaller gives Merfolk matchup points against quite a few strategies at a low opportunity cost. Merfolk, in that sense, would become similar to Humans -- a deck with disruptive elements that also synergize with tribal support cards. Merfolk's disruption would looks quite different from Humans', but the same idea applies.
Back to Remorseful Cleric. This card is trouble, but it's beatable. Whatever strategies you use to defend against Arcbound Ravager can be applied to Remorseful Cleric. (For me, that means Pithing Needle and Nimble Obstructionist out of the sideboard.) Those with a heavy black splash can kill it with Collective Brutality. Like I said, troublesome, but beatable.
There was an article on Channel Fireball recently about Remorseful Cleric. The author suggested Remorseful Cleric will be adopted as a 1-of in toolbox decks or as a 2-of in sideboards. This is best case scenario for us. If people believe that the current graveyard hate is more powerful or if they believe that Remorseful Cleric isn't good enough against a large enough percentage of Modern to make mainboards, then we can breathe a sigh of relief.
Just like Mistcaller, the worse cast scenario with Remorseful Cleric is that it pushes a tribe over the edge. If Merfolk, Spirits or Wizards become a tier deck, we will need to adjust back and change our spell configuration. Spirits curving Remorseful Cleric into Drogskol Captain is incredibly powerful and it's something I do not want to see happening frequently in Modern.
I believe the deck is generally well positioned right now in Modern. Any deck in Modern needs to be able to pick up "free wins" by preying on specific deck archetypes. Humans is at the top of the format. The popularity of Humans has led to a rise in Jeskai and other Snapcaster Mage decks. Our deck matches up extremely well against other blue decks like these.
I'm starting to come around to the idea that a heavier black splash is important for the deck based on the strength of Collective Brutality. I'm envious of other lists that play the card. It fills a specific hole in the deck and it improves our burn and humans matchups.
This list 5-0ed a Magic Online league earlier this month. I don't agree with all of the card choices (Serum Visions, Faerie Macabre stick out) but with some tuning, this list has a chance to be really good.
Agree! That's also what the deck's creator called it. The name just stuck with me. The other options aren't that bad though.
I have a few suggestions:
I had a chance to watch some of Urza's stream yesterday. (Thanks for streaming!)
Urza, I believe that 23 lands is too many. Aside from that crazy game against Tron where you drew like 20 lands in the top 40 cards, I think land count was an issue in most of the games I watched. I think part of the deck's strength is the ability to chain cyclers together to find your combo pieces. This becomes more problematic when you break the cycle by drawing lands in between cyclers. For me, I've found 21 lands and four Street Wraith to be the sweet spot for mana.
If you feel the need to go up on lands, I'd suggest replacing one of the your 23 lands with Fetid Pools. It's not a great card, but it minimizes the risk of flooding out by replacing itself in the late game.
I've been running 21 lands, four Street Wraith and no cantrips and this has worked well for me. I've been punished for kept aggressive one-land hands from time to time, but I don't think I've ever felt the need to go much higher than 21 lands.
I did some distribution math on this some time ago. I don't remember the specifics, but 21 lands in a 56 card deck (Street Wraith) is the equivalent of 22-23 lands in a 60 card deck. I think we can get away with a tight land count considering how many cards we see early due to cycling. If you're trying to play more of a control game, maybe increasing the land count would work better for you? Or maybe your experience is more of a Magic Online issue?
Good! It's important to do this, but it's also important to recognize when you find configurations that work for you. Sometimes "tuning" means going over your sideboard plan for each matchup and thinking of how to best leverage your 75 to give you the best 60 cards on the play and on the draw.
On the subject of tuning, I'd be interested to hear about how you arrived at your manabase configuration. I'm no expert by any means, but I have some ideas I'd like to offer you, especially related to your manabase.
I used to run the same 2/1 split between Ghost Quarter and Field of Ruin. I think the deck creator, Hazzzard1310, even ran Ghost Quarter as a 1-of at some point. I've since cut Ghost Quarter in favor of the third copy of Field of Ruin.
Since we are a 4x Tolaria West deck, many people use this fact to justify the presence of Ghost Quarter. The idea that you can situationally transmute for Ghost Quarter seems appealing, but I've found that this rarely comes up in practice. First, when transmuting, it is incredibly rare to prioritize a land destruction effect over one of our powerhouse targets in Living End, Ancestral Vision or Bojuka Bog. In the exceptionally rare case that we actually want the land destruction effect, Field of Ruin is just as good as Ghost Quarter in the majority of those scenarios.
With Ghost Quarter, setting yourself back a land is often a real drawback. Think about the Tron matchup. It may seem advantageous to be able to Ghost Quarter the opponent off a Tron land on turns 1-2 (where you wouldn't be able to activate Field of Ruin), but the time you buy yourself is mitigated by the fact that you've essentially lost a turn and you're that much further from gaining control over the game. (The presence of Remand and Spell Pierce in the deck should protect us from getting run over early from Tron.) Tron cares less about having Tron early against us since they play a more midrange game post board anyway, so Ghost Quarter is oddly more of a liability against them than anything else.
One of the nice things about Field of Ruin is that is fixes mana, thins the decks and disrupts the opponent at the same time. Outside of Curator of Mysteries, we don't use scry effects in the deck (or at least we shouldn't!), so shuffling the library has minimal downside. Removing a land out of the deck, when combined with all of our cycling, adds up and increases our changes of finding As Foretold. I think it's justifiable to play Ghost Quarter when using it alongside Surgical Extraction. If you're not, then I think Field of Ruin is the better fit for the deck.
Knowing when to play As Foretold is important. It is generally a good idea against non-blue decks to cast As Foretold only when you are guaranteed to get some value from either Ancestral Vision or Living End.
It's hard to make definitive statements about play lines with the deck, but I think it's pretty safe to say it's usually correct to suspend Ancestral Vision on turn one (play or draw) if you have it in your opening hand.
I rarely sideboard out cycle creatures unless I'm bringing in some number of Nimble Obstructionist from the sideboard. I leave in all four copies of Curator of Mysteries, Street Wraith and Striped Riverwinder in almost all matchups. For me, sideboarding involves changing my configuration of countermagic, spot removal and utility spells. It's important to keep that base of 12 cyclers. In addition to serving as your win conditions, these cards help you dig through your deck to not only find As Foretold but your critically important sideboard cards.
I've had success playing 2x Echoing Truth in the slot typically dedicated to Hurkyl's Recall. Echoing Truth is more versatile, it gives you the effect you want versus Ensnaring Bridge prison decks while providing additional help against troublesome permanents such as Chalice of the Void or Meddling Mage.
Additionally, I wouldn't recommend cutting down on Dispel in your current configuration, especially only having access to three one-mana counterspells in the main deck. Setting control matchups aside, Dispel is great in the Storm matchup and it has plenty of other applications against decks like Burn, Goryo's variants.
This is interesting. I noticed that your list does feel more controlling with the Search for Azcanta and the Nimble Obstructionist in the mainboard. I suppose there's no arguing with your results, but I do question how good Search for Azcanta is in this deck, even as a 1-of. I don't believe that the effect is necessary in our good G1 matchups and I think the card does not help in the bad G1 matchups. Also, I would imagine that you sideboard it out frequently since most decks will be looking to turn off your graveyard in post-board games. Disclaimer: I've never tested the card out personally as I believe in taking a more combo-focused approach with the deck.
I completely agree here. Rest in Peace allows you to focus only on the battlefield and control the flow of the game easier. Your Living Ends are more clean X for 1s and since you almost always can out-card advantage opponents, you run them out of resources and win the game. Your coming to this conclusion speaks to how many reps you have with the deck, which I can appreciate.
Are you looking to tune the deck or are you comfortable as is with your current list?
Thanks for sharing your data. Based on your deck configuration, I can understand why your win percentages are what they are with the exception of these two. I would think your Mardu matchup isn't this good and your Grixis matchup isn't this bad. I'd be curious to hear more about the Mardu matchup and what has lead to such results.
I came across a thread on Reddit that posed the question, "Why has Mono Blue Living End fallen out of favor?" The deck was extremely popular in December 2017 and it has slowly decreased in popularity throughout the year. To that point, here are three potential reasons why:
1) The deck has a legitimately bad humans matchup. According to MTGGoldfish.com, Humans is the most popular deck in Modern with roughly an 8% metagame share. Save drastic main deck decisions and an overloaded sideboard, we have to accept that the combination of disruption and aggression will give our deck a hard time. A fairly stock Living End As Foretold list is probably 20/80 to a stock humans list. You can splash colors or select cards to give yourself 5-10 percentage points in the matchup, but I don't see the matchup getting much better than that. Many people do not want to be that much of an underdog to one of the top decks in Modern, so some may shy away from it for that reason.
2) The deck has a direct fail rate. You can do everything right, have close to the perfect 75 and still lose because all four copies of As Foretold are in the bottom 25% of your deck. This will undoubtedly rub people the wrong way. There is a degree of variance and risk involved with playing this deck that will turn people away from picking it up. We can do things to minimize that variance, of course, but it still remains. I think you have to be OK with the fact that your deck will lose to itself on occasion through no fault of your own. This is the tradeoff we make for having access to some of the most powerful, explosive effects in the format.
Along this point, I want to stress that no deck in Modern is perfect. Our fail rate is based around finding As Foretold, but Boggles fails if they don't have any Boggles. Burn fails if it draws too many or too few lands. KCI combo fails without KCI. Affinity is an aggro deck that plays 10 0 or 1-power creatures. Every deck has its weaknesses. It's just a question of which weakness you're willing to take on and how easy you can minimize that weakness and maximize the deck's strengths.
3) The deck is difficult to build and play. People may roll their eyes on this one, but I think the point holds true. I don't think anyone can just pick this deck up and start winning with it right away. Assuming you have a decent build, you have to know which cards to bring in from the sideboard, which ones to take out, when to cast your creatures, how to play certain matchups and how to play around graveyard hate. While every deck in Modern has its own element of complexity, remember that this deck is only 6 months old and we haven't had a viable combo/control deck in Modern since Spliter Twin. I imagine that many people picked up this deck, had a rough experience, and wrote it off as unplayable.
I wouldn't be posting on this forum or playing the deck if it ended there. I'd like to offer the other side of the issue and list three reasons why I think more people should be playing this deck:
1) The deck matches up well against the rest of the Modern field. Save humans and maybe a few other hyper aggressive decks like burn, I truly believe that the deck is 50/50 or better against the majority of decks in Modern. We have outstanding matchups against control variants, midrange creature decks and other combo decks. Storm, Lantern, Tron and Boggles are all good to great matchups depending on sideboard configurations. The deck combines a fast, proactive gameplan with countermagic and other disruption which makes it good against a large percentage of the field. The additional percentage points gained by LEAF from being a rouge deck are icing on the cake.
2) The deck is legitimately powerful and disruptive. Card advantage matters in Magic and this deck generates more card advantage than any other deck in Modern. Treasure Cruise is banned in Modern and it wasn't that long ago that Ancestral Vision was banned too. Our deck takes full advantage of a bannable effect and it does so in a way that somehow makes that effect better by tutoring for it and generating it for free. The deck plays more counter magic than any other deck in Modern and it has combination of resilient and evasive threats to close the game out quickly. On a raw power scale, the base of this deck is as good as it gets.
3) The deck is a blast to play. Regardless of whether you pick the deck up to hone it or jam games at FNM, the deck is very enjoyable to play and to play against. It's unique and it's fun to watch. The intricate counter magic/gameplay and power appeals to Spike. The combo and novelty appeals to Johnny. Beating down with big creatures likely appeals to Timmy. I think I've enjoyed learning this deck and playing games with it more than I have for any other deck.
Against slower decks (control variants, prison variants, tron, Ad Nauseum, etc.) where there is not immediate pressure to resolve Living End, you only want three copies of Living End. However, Modern is a wide format and I feel there are more decks where having access to the full four copies is critical. Notably:
Fast creature decks (Elves, 8-whack, burn, merfolk, etc.): These decks are incredibly fast and can get underneath our countermagic and early interaction. In these matchups, our best chance of winning involves T3 As Foretold + Living End. You want to give yourself the best chance to draw these two cards in Game 1 and this means having access to the full four copies of Living End. Taking a turn off to transmute Tolaria West and find Living End will often be too slow and, in my experience, will cost you the game.
Discard decks (Jund, Grixis Death's Shadow, Mardu Pyromancer, etc.): These decks will pick apart your hand, so having redundant copies of Living End will come in handy. These games tend to get grindy. Assuming one Living End invariably gets hit by discard, that leaves you with 2 copies in your deck for the rest of the game. That may not be enough. It's best to give yourself some flex room and have more copies available for the worse case scenario.
Traditional Living End decks can get away with running three copies because they can reliably access the card through their 8 cascade spells. We're relying on ratios and percentages to find our copy (with the help of Tolaria West.) There will be times when you resolve Ancestral Vision off suspend and you need to hit exactly Living End or else you will lose. Give yourself the best chance to do so by playing four copies of the card in the mainboard.
You can always board down the fourth copy, but you can never board up.