(Description is out of date)
Welcome to Living End, My choice of main modern deck for the past 2+ years, and winner of the TappedOut Modern tournament! This deck is extremely fun and has complex lines to victory in a lot of seemingly bad matchups, so I'll try to touch on those there. I'll also give a full tournament report as it may help some people in beating certain matchups. As for competitive success, it has won a GP and was Tier 1 during eldrazi winter, then fell off the map when dredge came around, but has steadily worked its way back to tier 3 where it sits now. Anyway, onto the deck.
Well, to start off, let's go over the concept of the deck. Basically, you put decently sized creatures in the yard in exchange for cards, and then cast either
Violent Outburst
or
Demonic Dread
, which the cascade of can only hit Living End as there are no other cards with CMC less than 3 in the deck. The namesake of the deck takes all those dudes you cycled for value and dumps them straight into play, setting up a large attack hopefully for the win the next turn.
But it's not always that easy. There are plenty of intricacies with timing and playing around opponent's important spells. It's also super common to grind an opponent out casting 2 or even all 3 of our Living Ends. The grinding is helped by the utility cards in the deck, such as Faerie Macabre for stopping opponent's creatures that are in the yard from coming back too. Other utility cards in the maindeck are the Fulminator Mages, which really make the deck great. Saccing fulms and then bringing them all back and saccing then again can keep your opponent on very little mana, and in some cases leave them with just a couple lands to deal with a huge board of fatties threatening to kill them the following turn. The last utility card in the main is the Beast Withins, which kills important permanents with almost no drawback, as Cascading into a Living End permanently deals with the token it gives. This gives the deck a good bit more resiliency against certain decks. Note: Simian Spirit Guide is technically a utility card because it does something other than the norm (speed you up), but I didn't include it in this segment because it doesn't give any interaction, which is what I consider a "utility card".
Now onto my specific derivations from the standard lists: The flex slots in the deck are the 2
Jungle Weaver
s, the 19th land, and to an extent the 2 Faerie Macabres. Some people go to 20 land, some to 18, so that's all preference, though I strongly believe that 19 is correct. Which I also believe for the 2 faeries. They are incredibly important and in a sense allow the deck to function, because clearing troublesome dudes out of the opponent's yard can be incredibly important and sometimes absolutely necessary to win the game. The
Jungle Weaver
s can become a
Pale Recluse
or
Igneous Pouncer
for manafixing, the 4th Beast Within or the 20th land. And of course people do different things for the sideboard, but we'll get to that in a bit. I like my current maindeck because since we are drawing cards while cycling, we should be hitting 3 lands quite easily.
Jungle Weaver
also helps close out the game post LE by just being HUGE. He hits hard and it pretty hard to deal with.
To finish going over specific card choices, let's get to the sideboard.
4x
Brindle Boar
: this little guy is super helpful against Burn and Valakut decks, and saves you a LOT against them and any other aggro deck too (except infect). He represents 8 additional life per copy you draw which can win you the game against in those MUs. For that reason, he warrants a 4-of, though I have seen people be greedy and go 3 copies, which I'm not sure if I'm okay with.
3x Ingot Chewer: This is pretty obviously to deal with Affinity, but it hits other pesky artifacts too. To name one, Ensnaring Bridge. If you can also somehow catch a Relic of Progenitus when they don't leave mana up to pop it, good for you. You stole that one, and your opponent should feel bad about it. NOTE: Grafdigger's Cage does absolutely nothing against us, so you don't have to worry about those. You should also laugh at anyone who doesn't understand the interaction and plays them against you. Read the card, bro.
2x Dismember: This, while not flashy, helps. It deals with big dudes that present themselves either when you cannot cascade into LE or after LE has been cast. It doesn't come up all that often, but is a necessary couple slots when people work to counteract what you're doing by making sure there's big dudes in their yard too, or just by casting them post-LE.
2x Shriekmaw: This is here for kinda the same reason as Dismember, but this is better as it gets recurred by LE. It deals with pesky creatures whenever they may show up. However, you can't just jam the full 4 of these and drop the Dismember's because A) It doesn't hit all creatures, and not hitting a Siege Rhino or an Arbound Ravager can lose you the game and B) It's not an instant, which can come up. I've also seen Shriekmaw make it into the maindeck of some lists, but I'm not so sure about that.
1x Faerie Macabre: For when you need even more yard removal. This comes in against decks with lots of creatures, or decks with other pesky cards that interact from the yard that need to be removed. Looking at you, Lingering Souls.
And finally, 3x Richochet trap: This card is our absolute best against Blue decks. Counter my LE? I think not. This provides so much protection and is so good against blue decks that I'd never go below 3 in the board unless there are literally no blue decks in the meta. Also, some tips for the card - 1) If the counter of choice for the LE is a
Remand
, usually the worst possible outcome for us, have richochet trap redirect it to the cascade spell! It will give you another chance at cascading if need be, and the buff from
Violent Outburst
or the no blocking from
Demonic Dread
can be really relevant (you can choose not to cast the LE you cascaded into). And 2) You can leave back a Simian Spirit Guide in hand along with the trap and really get them good even if they're playing around it. I've baited an opponent super hard with that, tapping below Cascader+Trap mana to do something else, and then crushing their hopes and dreams with SSG+Trap.
Matchup Tips
Coming soon
Tournament Report
Coming soon, recap of all 7 rounds of regular play and the 3 matches in top8.
