Intro
This deck is a mashup of the Living End and Scapeshift archetypes. I would like to start off by saying it is a work in progress and I would appreciate any and all help (either with the deck itself, or with this page). Having said that, I would also like to note that having tested the deck for a while now, it is extremely powerful and definitely worth looking at. I'll begin with a little explanation as to how the deck plays out in practice.
Playing The Deck
Near the beginning of the game you want to play out like a typical living end deck. I won't pretend to be an expert in the finer details of living end play (mtgsalvation has a pretty decent primer if you're interested in learning--highly recommended if you plan on playing this deck). Pretty much: you're going to want to cycle as many creatures as possible in the first 2-4 turns before resolving a living end that you've cascaded into using demonic dread or violent outburst. At this point, depending on you're opponents deck, you will be able to win if they had extended themselves too far (such as affinity, elves, hate bears or other agro decks tend to do). If that is not the case, you continue to play a midrange game using your usually superior creatures to gain a significant edge in combat. Often you will be able to deal lethal combat damage over 2-3 turns of attacking. If your opponent resolves powerful creatures of their own or removes yours, you can sit back and block long enough to resolve another profitable living end or a scapeshift once you have 7 lands out (or more depending upon your opponents life total and any land destruction they have access to).
It's important to remember that you're weaker than the typical living end deck. Winning by living end is a large part of the deck, and it does happen frequently, but scapeshift is your main wincon. The living end shell simply gives you access to 12 boardwipes and some powerful blockers to help you make your way to 7 lands.
Next I'll start on some card choices.
Creatures
This is your typical package of living end creature tech (maybe slightly smaller to account for the extras we needed to make room for). We stay to the smaller side avoiding overloading on Pale Recluse and Valley Rannet as these tend to slow you down since they cant cycle turn one. In addition, they can't be cast (we do cast creatures once we have enough mana) with much frequency and therefore are not as useful in keeping us alive or closing out the game.
Land
We play 5 basics in order to always have a target for our search for tomorrow and any Path to Exiles that get thrown our way.
We play mostly shocks in order to always have enough mountains in the deck to combo off with scapeshift.
We run two Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle in order to protect ourselves against land destruction, and to give us additional reach against lifegain strategies. One can be boarded out if it appears unnecessary.
Bloodstained Mire is our only fetch and can get any shock (and any color) in our deck.
Overgrown Tomb is a good fetch target as it can cycle any creature in our deck, and suspend a search for tomorrow.
Extra Goodies
We run a standard package of 4 Violent Outburst 4 deck:demonic dread and 3 Living End
We play the full 4 Scapeshift
A playset of Search for Tomorrow gives us speed to complete our combo before combo opponents
We also play 3 Bring to Light which can tutor up either living end (remember sometimes you'd rather tutor a cascade spell so you don't draw it later), or scapeshift.
We play the 4/3 split of scapeshift over the seemingly more powerful bring to light, since many of our games are won on a turn 6 Search for Tomorrow into scapeshift, which is not possible with the 5cmc bring to light.
Sideboard
Definitely not optimized in any way yet, but the basics are there, and I have boarded in each of these cards multiple matches
Burn is possibly our worst matchup, and Brindle Boar often wins us the game, gaining us 8 life after a living end
Affinity is another tough matchup since Arcbound Ravager protects them from living end. Ingot Chewer helps in this matchup, targeting ravager or Cranial Plating
Faerie Macabre helps against graveyard based strategies against which living end actually help our opponent
Shriekmaw is for any deck with many large creatures (Scavenging Ooze is a big offender). (usually jund and abzan).
Strategy
If at all possible, it is best to hide our secret weapon (scapeshift). It will win us a game by surprise, as a control opponent is more likely to tap out if they don't think you have something game changing in hand.
