Was watching and chatting with 1310Hazzard in his live twitch stream a few hours ago and he was using a singleton Dimir Aqueduct and it made me smile because that is spicy as heck. Some good potential to reuse bojuka or bring back tolaria west.
Seems like search for azcanta and serum visions came here to stay. Maybe its time to try them out. Are you testing that guys?
I have tested search and visions, I've found both lean into the ability for the deck to go long but in a race they can sometimes be a liability, especially search, however the filtering is really nice so I'm not sold yet on weather or not to include them.
Search/serum do help to get the combo pieces but if we’re going to be more all-in on the combo then wouldn’t Jund living end be better at what it tries to achieve. I think the advantage of this version of living end is the potential to be more interactive than the Jund version. As such, I would prefer taking advantage of other cards like chalices or counterspells in their slot otherwise I would just go back to Jund. He did well with a 6-1 finish tho!
I put this deck together last night, playing 4 Rune Snag in place of mana leak/serum visions, and it was pretty great. The only downside is that you pretty much have to play all 4 copies of it or bust, which eats up a pretty big chunk of cards in the list. I'd recommend you guys give the card a shot though, it's extremely good in the late game.
Look at the card. Now back to Jace. Now back to that card, now back to Jace! Sadly, it isn't Jace, but if it stopped being a junk rare and became relevant, it could act like it's Jace. Crack some Worldwake. What do you have? You have a Jace, the card you wish this card could be like. Look again. THE CARD IS NOW A $75 BILL. Anything possible when you play Magic with Jace and not junk rares. This is probably spam.
For those of you playing with two copies of Search for Azcanta, have you thought about a 1-1 split between Search and Jace, Vryn's Prodigy? Both have similar uses, but man can JVP grind some value with As Foretold and AV/Living End.
Search/serum do help to get the combo pieces but if we’re going to be more all-in on the combo then wouldn’t Jund living end be better at what it tries to achieve. I think the advantage of this version of living end is the potential to be more interactive than the Jund version. As such, I would prefer taking advantage of other cards like chalices or counterspells in their slot otherwise I would just go back to Jund. He did well with a 6-1 finish tho!
Totally agree. I put this deck together and will try it out this evening, but the first thing I had to consider was the ways it attacks the metagame differently to traditional LE and cascade decks. The Jund LE deck is already very tight, with legit answers to most of the threats in the environment. It's pretty horrid in a control-heavy environment though. You have to get a little lucky to overwhelm your oppo's counters and then resolve an EoT LE (so you can untap and get in a swing before they Wrath). The U deck sacrifices the speed and consistency of cascade for better interaction (and access to 1 and 2 cc spells). Thus I do not love Supreme Will in the deck. Search for Azcanta may be another story. This is an awesome card on its own and thus it may be worth trying. I won't be giving it a go tonight though. I'll play something pretty stock to get a better feel for it before tinkering.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Some people like to win MtG matches in the Red Zone. I prefer to win the way God intended: on the stack.
JVP does not let you cast the suspend cards with Flashback.
"It's [Ancestral Vision] a legal target, since Jace's ability only requires an "instant or sorcery card in your graveyard" as its target.
It would, however, be a waste of the ability's use, because you still cannot actually cast Ancestral Vision this way. Jace's ability essentially gives you permission to cast the targeted card from an unusual place (the graveyard) that you normally cannot cast cards from. But since the ability doesn't say anything about not paying the cost for the spell, you still have to pay normally. Paying normally involves paying the mana cost of the card. But since Ancestral Vision does not have a mana cost, you cannot pay it, and the end result is that you cannot cast it, for the same reason that you normally cannot cast it from your hand." (and suspending a card can only be done from hand) http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-rulings/magic-rulings-archives/652878-jace-telepath-unbound-ancestral-vision
THIS 100X!!! If you don't agree with this then there is no amount of logic that will ever convince you that good, non-oppressive, combos should be allowed. If you don't agree with it then just don't play this game, and you certainly shouldn't feel entitled to make any comment on ban lists ever.
JVP does not let you cast the suspend cards with Flashback.
"It's [Ancestral Vision] a legal target, since Jace's ability only requires an "instant or sorcery card in your graveyard" as its target.
It would, however, be a waste of the ability's use, because you still cannot actually cast Ancestral Vision this way. Jace's ability essentially gives you permission to cast the targeted card from an unusual place (the graveyard) that you normally cannot cast cards from. But since the ability doesn't say anything about not paying the cost for the spell, you still have to pay normally. Paying normally involves paying the mana cost of the card. But since Ancestral Vision does not have a mana cost, you cannot pay it, and the end result is that you cannot cast it, for the same reason that you normally cannot cast it from your hand." (and suspending a card can only be done from hand) http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-rulings/magic-rulings-archives/652878-jace-telepath-unbound-ancestral-vision
You use JVP to cast it w/ As Foretold, JVP let's you cast it from the gy (it's not flashback), and As Foretold let's you pay 0 instead of it's mana cost.
Look at the card. Now back to Jace. Now back to that card, now back to Jace! Sadly, it isn't Jace, but if it stopped being a junk rare and became relevant, it could act like it's Jace. Crack some Worldwake. What do you have? You have a Jace, the card you wish this card could be like. Look again. THE CARD IS NOW A $75 BILL. Anything possible when you play Magic with Jace and not junk rares. This is probably spam.
I think you are a bit light on action in the main deck - I've found Cryptic Command to be one of the best cards in the deck period, and skimping on that one feels wrong. The deck provides enough consistency with the cyclers and azcanta that I would lean towards cutting SVs for more maindeck permission like leaks or having the snares/pierces main board.
I tested Macabre a bit and I found that it just doesn't hit the graveyard decks that are bad matchups for us (storm, dredge) hard enough. I feel like Leylines or more tormod's crypts to be right, probably. Also, I would much rather have engineered explosives as we are in 2 colors already and it's tutorable with Tolaria West. Reinforcements are pretty hot though
In my chat with Hazzard we briefly discussed a second bojuka bog vs tormod’s crypt. We think it is worth a try, given that they serve the same purpose (tutorable one-time GY hoser) plus it has a mana function, doesnt dilute the rest of your spells and potentially reusable with dimir aqueducts or cryptic bounce.
Okay, so I played the deck last night for the first time and have mixed feelings about it...at least on first try.
I went with a mostly stock list in the MD, adding fetches for a singleton Tarn and the Madcap/Emperion combo in the board. I know there's at least one RDW player at my LGS and didn't like the idea of auto-losing a round. In retrospect this was an error.
R1: RDW: loss 1-2 -- sometimes the MtG Gods just don't love you at all...
I lose the roll and she get's me to three in fairly quick order. I manage to LE to clear away the threats and I manage the Eidolon triggers as carefully as possible but die to bolt off the top. Note: I barely drew ANY cyclers! WTF? Game two I let her expend a bunch of the burn in her hand and then, when she's down to three cards in hand I have to gamble that they aren't all bolts or wear//tears and tap out to go for Emperion. She isn't able to kill so once I untap I just sit on my counters. She has Eidolon in play and has damaged herself to burn me so even if I don't counter anything that threatens the 8/8 , she is unable to kill the Emperion without killing herself first. G3: I mulligan to 5 and she get's the god draw. I had the Madcap Experiment but even if I don't miss my T3 land drop I would have probably lost anyway. She was just too damned fast and I was too short on resources.
R2: Jeskai control: win 2-0
I lose the roll again, but I know what he's playing so keep my 5 land/AV opener. I cycle a few things here and there and win a couple of fights over Ancestral Visions which keeps me waaaay ahead on cards. I destroy a man land with Field of Ruin at some point, but it wasn't really relevant. G2 was more of the same. I wait until have 6 mana in play before going for As Foretold. He counters, I counter, he counters again and I Dispel. I get my free AV to refresh my hand and win from their. He cast Supreme Verdict a couple of times, but I drew two LE's and Transmuted for the third.
R3: BR aggro. 2-1. This deck is a bit weird. It's a home brew, but one with a lot of good synergies. Basically, the pilot got tired of casting Death's Shadow and decided to do something a bit different. At least that's my understanding. I lose the roll (!) and mulligan (!!) and he rips my AV away with his first spell. Again, I somehow fail to draw a lot of cyclers and lose fairly quickly. G2 I suspend an AV on T1 and then somehow he does not Thoughtseize/Inquisition me on his T1 so I suspend another on T2. G3 was all about Bojuka Bog. I keep an opener with some cyclers and little else (not a great hand but he wasn't THAT fast and I wanted to protect my assets from hand destruction -- I saw TS, Inquisition AND Collective Brutality) and draw into AV. I totally drew the wrong half of my deck in this game, but I hit all 4 AV's so managed to get enough gas that it didn't matter. I get two Riverwinders and a Wraith into the yard and then Transmute for Acqueduct so I can reuse my Bog on his yard so when I LE he doesn't get Kalitas + Geralf's Messenger back as I was at 3 and that would kill me. This was the game winning play as I was able to kill him a couple of turns later with big beasts.
Lessons learned (so far):
1) If you are going to go with the Red splash, go all in. I didn't bother with SSG/Blood Moon primarily because the meta at my LGS alrady has some Blood Moon decks so people are already prepared for that. It might be worthwhile at a larger event like a PPTQ. But even then, it's not actually that good. Most decks can deal with a Platinum Emperion so you have to untap with it in play and then have counters in hand to get value from it. If I was going to play a Blood Moon deck (which sometimes just wins games) I would go back to Ponza.
2) I will go with Leyline of Sanctity in the board next time as I think the Madcap may not be that amazing against RDW, which is what I want it for.
3) Bojuka Bog (and Dimir Acqueduct) are worth playing. They were very, very good. In fact, I don't think you need 4 Leylines of the Void in the SB. So I'll run three Faerie Macabre instead, freeing up yet another SB slot. I ran two Archfiends instead of Architects of Will (non-bo with Madcap) and they were ineffective. Basically, I never ran into anything I wanted to put -1/-1 counters on so this bears more experimentation.
I will try it again. Some situations felt very good, but it needs to have more game against some of the formats major threats like RDW.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Some people like to win MtG matches in the Red Zone. I prefer to win the way God intended: on the stack.
Totally agree with you on Street Wraith, Dave. I had three in my hand at one point in G1 of the Burn Match-up and managed to discard one to hand size in the BR match at 7 life or so.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Some people like to win MtG matches in the Red Zone. I prefer to win the way God intended: on the stack.
Hi, I have been testing a U/w version as well and have really liked the way Path to Exile has performed. I don't think my mana base is quite right but have had very few problems with it. I have started to main 2 Spreading Seas in place of Mana Leak, when combined with Field of Ruin it has slowed my opponent down long enough to find my combo pieces + drawing a card is huge. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks.
YellowMimic, overall looks good with a couple flaws. One of these is that Urbrask doesn’t tap the opponents creatures of living end. This, however, is minor as your creatures will be generally be larger. Another thing is that this deck seems more like dredge than a blue control deck and will play differently. I do like it, but I feel it needs Faerie Macabre as a way to trigger hallowed one and clear the path. (Apologies if this post makes no sense. I’m still relatively new to actually posting.) cheers
^^
That version is really weird, like a strange mix of the "Blue Living End" with some kind of "BR Reanimator".
Also Hollow One is a bit of stretch here and Desert Cerodon would make more sense as a cycler (for Living End)
rather than trying to actually cast Hollow One.
Additional U/w tech, I have added Fragmentize to SB for the Artifact GY hate. I also think that Azorius Charm might have a 1-2 of in MB in place of Spreading Seas. Burn also seems to be a difficult matchup, so I have added 2 Sun Droplet to SB thoughts?
Sun Droplet is terribad. You only get one life back per turn, which is just too slow against RDW. If you really want to go for a 2CC artifact then try the Dragonclaw thing that RDW runs for the mirror. Each time a red spell is cast you can gain a life, which has a faster impact on the game. That aside, RDW runs a lot of burn spells and goes to the dome a lot. Leyline of Sanctity is definitely the best option.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Some people like to win MtG matches in the Red Zone. I prefer to win the way God intended: on the stack.
I like the idea behind YellowMimic's UR version. The only reason Jund Living End played with cyclers is because they dodge Cascade. With As Foretold there's no reason not to try a more traditional package with enablers like Faithless Looting. Being able to play with any creatures opens up a massive variety of possibilities:
- Traditional reanimator like YellowMimic's list, with game-ending creatures.
- A list that combines living end with the old Gifts Ungiven and Unburial Rites package for extra consistency.
- Lists based around any creature combo you want.
- Play Eternal Witness so you can get living end back and cast it again!
Most of these possibilities are probably bad, but the sheer size of the space having access to any creature rather than just cycling opens up means there's likely a few alternative builds that are viable.
What I like about the cycling creatures is the consistency they afford-- they are reanimation targets plus loot in one, making space for interactive spells.
I am looking to do something similar as I want to be able to cast my drawn Leylines of Sanctity. Have you given any thought to running Restore Balance, at lest in the board?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Some people like to win MtG matches in the Red Zone. I prefer to win the way God intended: on the stack.
It looks really interesting, but if you are going to go this route, aren't you strictly better off playing a Goryo's Vengeance deck? Whether you play Shoal or not, you are strictly better off with the improved creature package and the hand disruption. The transitional SB was super janky (this coming from someone who likes to change things up out of the board) and the creature selection was really dodgy. Hollow One is meh and no Griselbrand???
One thing is for sure, there are a lot of totally legit options for building with As Foretold.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Some people like to win MtG matches in the Red Zone. I prefer to win the way God intended: on the stack.
I tried Restore Balance, but I feel like most of the time I have LE or AV that I would rather cast off of Foretold, and if I suspend Restore Balance, I end up regretting it 6 turns later. We usually have more cards in hand than our opponent and lands are usually equal so it essentially kills their creatures which doesn't help us if it comes before a LE. Maybe I am missing something with it, but I haven't found a benefit to Restore Balance.
I have since swapped back to mono blue version, if feel like Hurkyl's Recall serves same purpose as Stony Silence, I have added Pithing Needles to stop Spellbombs/Relics and I feel like Path's fetching them lands is counter to my 4 Spreading Seas / 4 Field of Ruin package that I LOVE LOVE LOVE to run.
Search/serum do help to get the combo pieces but if we’re going to be more all-in on the combo then wouldn’t Jund living end be better at what it tries to achieve. I think the advantage of this version of living end is the potential to be more interactive than the Jund version. As such, I would prefer taking advantage of other cards like chalices or counterspells in their slot otherwise I would just go back to Jund. He did well with a 6-1 finish tho!
URURxUR
UWUWxUW
Totally agree. I put this deck together and will try it out this evening, but the first thing I had to consider was the ways it attacks the metagame differently to traditional LE and cascade decks. The Jund LE deck is already very tight, with legit answers to most of the threats in the environment. It's pretty horrid in a control-heavy environment though. You have to get a little lucky to overwhelm your oppo's counters and then resolve an EoT LE (so you can untap and get in a swing before they Wrath). The U deck sacrifices the speed and consistency of cascade for better interaction (and access to 1 and 2 cc spells). Thus I do not love Supreme Will in the deck. Search for Azcanta may be another story. This is an awesome card on its own and thus it may be worth trying. I won't be giving it a go tonight though. I'll play something pretty stock to get a better feel for it before tinkering.
"It's [Ancestral Vision] a legal target, since Jace's ability only requires an "instant or sorcery card in your graveyard" as its target.
It would, however, be a waste of the ability's use, because you still cannot actually cast Ancestral Vision this way. Jace's ability essentially gives you permission to cast the targeted card from an unusual place (the graveyard) that you normally cannot cast cards from. But since the ability doesn't say anything about not paying the cost for the spell, you still have to pay normally. Paying normally involves paying the mana cost of the card. But since Ancestral Vision does not have a mana cost, you cannot pay it, and the end result is that you cannot cast it, for the same reason that you normally cannot cast it from your hand." (and suspending a card can only be done from hand)
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-rulings/magic-rulings-archives/652878-jace-telepath-unbound-ancestral-vision
You use JVP to cast it w/ As Foretold, JVP let's you cast it from the gy (it's not flashback), and As Foretold let's you pay 0 instead of it's mana cost.
URURxUR
UWUWxUW
I tested Macabre a bit and I found that it just doesn't hit the graveyard decks that are bad matchups for us (storm, dredge) hard enough. I feel like Leylines or more tormod's crypts to be right, probably. Also, I would much rather have engineered explosives as we are in 2 colors already and it's tutorable with Tolaria West. Reinforcements are pretty hot though
I went with a mostly stock list in the MD, adding fetches for a singleton Tarn and the Madcap/Emperion combo in the board. I know there's at least one RDW player at my LGS and didn't like the idea of auto-losing a round. In retrospect this was an error.
R1: RDW: loss 1-2 -- sometimes the MtG Gods just don't love you at all...
I lose the roll and she get's me to three in fairly quick order. I manage to LE to clear away the threats and I manage the Eidolon triggers as carefully as possible but die to bolt off the top. Note: I barely drew ANY cyclers! WTF? Game two I let her expend a bunch of the burn in her hand and then, when she's down to three cards in hand I have to gamble that they aren't all bolts or wear//tears and tap out to go for Emperion. She isn't able to kill so once I untap I just sit on my counters. She has Eidolon in play and has damaged herself to burn me so even if I don't counter anything that threatens the 8/8 , she is unable to kill the Emperion without killing herself first. G3: I mulligan to 5 and she get's the god draw. I had the Madcap Experiment but even if I don't miss my T3 land drop I would have probably lost anyway. She was just too damned fast and I was too short on resources.
R2: Jeskai control: win 2-0
I lose the roll again, but I know what he's playing so keep my 5 land/AV opener. I cycle a few things here and there and win a couple of fights over Ancestral Visions which keeps me waaaay ahead on cards. I destroy a man land with Field of Ruin at some point, but it wasn't really relevant. G2 was more of the same. I wait until have 6 mana in play before going for As Foretold. He counters, I counter, he counters again and I Dispel. I get my free AV to refresh my hand and win from their. He cast Supreme Verdict a couple of times, but I drew two LE's and Transmuted for the third.
R3: BR aggro. 2-1. This deck is a bit weird. It's a home brew, but one with a lot of good synergies. Basically, the pilot got tired of casting Death's Shadow and decided to do something a bit different. At least that's my understanding. I lose the roll (!) and mulligan (!!) and he rips my AV away with his first spell. Again, I somehow fail to draw a lot of cyclers and lose fairly quickly. G2 I suspend an AV on T1 and then somehow he does not Thoughtseize/Inquisition me on his T1 so I suspend another on T2. G3 was all about Bojuka Bog. I keep an opener with some cyclers and little else (not a great hand but he wasn't THAT fast and I wanted to protect my assets from hand destruction -- I saw TS, Inquisition AND Collective Brutality) and draw into AV. I totally drew the wrong half of my deck in this game, but I hit all 4 AV's so managed to get enough gas that it didn't matter. I get two Riverwinders and a Wraith into the yard and then Transmute for Acqueduct so I can reuse my Bog on his yard so when I LE he doesn't get Kalitas + Geralf's Messenger back as I was at 3 and that would kill me. This was the game winning play as I was able to kill him a couple of turns later with big beasts.
Lessons learned (so far):
1) If you are going to go with the Red splash, go all in. I didn't bother with SSG/Blood Moon primarily because the meta at my LGS alrady has some Blood Moon decks so people are already prepared for that. It might be worthwhile at a larger event like a PPTQ. But even then, it's not actually that good. Most decks can deal with a Platinum Emperion so you have to untap with it in play and then have counters in hand to get value from it. If I was going to play a Blood Moon deck (which sometimes just wins games) I would go back to Ponza.
2) I will go with Leyline of Sanctity in the board next time as I think the Madcap may not be that amazing against RDW, which is what I want it for.
3) Bojuka Bog (and Dimir Acqueduct) are worth playing. They were very, very good. In fact, I don't think you need 4 Leylines of the Void in the SB. So I'll run three Faerie Macabre instead, freeing up yet another SB slot. I ran two Archfiends instead of Architects of Will (non-bo with Madcap) and they were ineffective. Basically, I never ran into anything I wanted to put -1/-1 counters on so this bears more experimentation.
I will try it again. Some situations felt very good, but it needs to have more game against some of the formats major threats like RDW.
3x Field of Ruin
4x Flooded Strand
3x Glacial Fortress
1x Hallowed Fountain
5x Island
2x Plains
3x Tolaria West
Sorcery
4x Ancestral Vision
4x Living End
2x Architects of Will
4x Curator of Mysteries
1x River Serpent
3x Street Wraith
4x Striped Riverwinder
Instant
3x Cryptic Command
4x Path to Exile
4x Remand
Enchantment
4x As Foretold
2x Spreading Seas
2x Timely Reinforcements
3x Nimble Obstructionist
3x Fragmentize
2x Spreading Seas
2x Stony Silence
2x Swan Song
1x Tormod's Crypt
That version is really weird, like a strange mix of the "Blue Living End" with some kind of "BR Reanimator".
Also Hollow One is a bit of stretch here and Desert Cerodon would make more sense as a cycler (for Living End)
rather than trying to actually cast Hollow One.
The creature choices are a bit surpring though: Iona makes sense (though 3x is a lot) but Urabrask and Gisela seem a bit underpowered when you can get Griselbrand, Emrakul, the Promised End, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur and Dragonlord Kolaghan (a better Urabrask).
- Traditional reanimator like YellowMimic's list, with game-ending creatures.
- A list that combines living end with the old Gifts Ungiven and Unburial Rites package for extra consistency.
- Lists based around any creature combo you want.
- Play Eternal Witness so you can get living end back and cast it again!
Most of these possibilities are probably bad, but the sheer size of the space having access to any creature rather than just cycling opens up means there's likely a few alternative builds that are viable.
I am looking to do something similar as I want to be able to cast my drawn Leylines of Sanctity. Have you given any thought to running Restore Balance, at lest in the board?
One thing is for sure, there are a lot of totally legit options for building with As Foretold.
https://www.channelfireball.com/videos/channel-pmayne-modern-mono-blue-living-end-2/
10 Island
2 Field of Ruin
4 Tolaria West
1 Ghost Quarter
4 River of Tears
1 Bojuka Bog
Creatures
2 Architects of Will
4 Curator of Mysteries
4 Street Wraith
4 Striped Riverwinder
2 Supreme Will
2 Mana Leak
4 As Foretold
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Living End
4 Remand
4 Cryptic Command
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Dismember
3 Nimble Obstructionist
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Tormod's Crypt
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Dispel
Also, this is a link to his video 10 days ago on a previous build:
Channel PMayne – Modern Mono-Blue Living End By Pascal Maynard // 19 Dec, 2017
https://www.channelfireball.com/videos/channel-pmayne-modern-mono-blue-living-end/
OMG Pascal tried to cryptic an Emrakul.
I have since swapped back to mono blue version, if feel like Hurkyl's Recall serves same purpose as Stony Silence, I have added Pithing Needles to stop Spellbombs/Relics and I feel like Path's fetching them lands is counter to my 4 Spreading Seas / 4 Field of Ruin package that I LOVE LOVE LOVE to run.
4x Field of Ruin
1x Mystic Gate
1x Bojuka Bog
11x Island
4x Tolaria West
Sorcery
4x Ancestral Vision
4x Living End
Creature
1x Drift of Phantasms
2x Architects of Will
4x Curator of Mysteries
3x Street Wraith
4x Striped Riverwinder
3x Cryptic Command
2x Mana Leak
4x Remand
Enchantment
4x As Foretold
4x Spreading Seas
2x Hurkyl's Recall
4x Leyline of Sanctity
2x Nimble Obstructionist
3x Pithing Needle
2x Ratchet Bomb
2x Swan Song