Living End As Foretold
Description from Channel Fireball
Image from MTG Goldfish
If youve been paying attention to Twitch, youll have seen several different streamers picking up the new hotness in Moderna mono-blue deck that focuses on As Foretold to do busted things early and often.
As Foretold is a powerful Magic card, but on its surface, its a 3-mana enchantment that doesnt have any immediate impact on the board. As the game progresses and you put a time counter on your enchantment each upkeep, youre going to eventually gain a nice mana advantage. This goes up in value by having access to enough instants where you can use the As Foretold on both your turn and your opponents turn. But suspend cards change everything. Now your 3-mana enchantment that does nothing the turn you cast it can play some of the strongest spells in the history of Magic. Weve seen cascade combo with suspend to get these effects for cheap, but getting full control to do this turn after turn is incredible.
The most impactful of these suspend cards is one weve seen players build entire decks around. Living End will wipe the opponents board of all of their creatures while filling yours with whatever happens to be in your graveyard. The Living End strategy involves a deck full of cycling cards and cascade spells, which means that you cant actually play any cards in your deck that cost less than 3 mana or you risk cascading into them. By playing As Foretold, you get to play plenty of cheap cards in your deck to help set up your enchantment.
You dont have to stop there, however. Ancestral Vision gives you the ability to draw 3 cards after a turn-1 suspend or by casting the spell off of As Foretold for free. Letting you get ahead in the middle stages without creating dead draws later on.
For your mono-blue deck, you dont have the deepest roster of cycling creatures you can play, but recent sets have given you a bevy of options. You still have Street Wraith as one of the very best options as a cycling spell that doesnt cost you a single mana, and Architects of Will is serviceable. Curator of Mysteries and Striped Riverwinder are both a single blue to cycle and hit hard. Access to 14 different cycling creatures that cost 1 or less mana to cycle lets you play fewer lands and yet still be able to find your key spells more consistently.
Playing mono-blue also gives you access to the playset of Serum Visions to make sure that youre ready to combo off early. Seeing three cards and getting to set up your draw steps with As Foretolds, suspend spells, cycling creatures, or lands.
Remand is at its best in decks like this as youre looking to buy time to do something splashy, so sending a spell back to an opponents hand while drawing a card is excellent. Once youre set up, you want your Living End to resolve, and you can Remand whatever they have to try to fight that. Once Living End has gone off, Remand to potentially stop removal or a sweeper for a turn is fantastic. 4 Remands go a long way to both surviving and winning the game, and adding a couple of Mana Leaks to that gives you more ways to interact profitably.
You also get to play the full playset of Cryptic Commands thanks to the mono-blue nature of your deck. Tapping their team is a great way to survive another turn to set up or to force through your swarm of creatures after a Living End. A hard counter or a way to bounce problematic permanents like Leyline of the Void or Ensnaring Bridge gives this deck far more game against the wide variety of decks and cards in Modern.
There are a few different versions of As Foretold Living End running around Modern right now, and with a deck this exciting, you should definitely be prepared to face it or play it at your next event!