MTG Salvation

oh you are right the cascade effect my bad , may be wild ricochet it doesnt cut it right ? i think its too expensive

other choice is reiterate targeting the counter spell in the stack

Ricochet trap is effectively our "guttural response". It's one mana in the situations where we need it.

So if blue control shows any degree of dominance with the unbanning will we essentially be forced to run 4 Ricochet Traps in the board? Seems if Jace makes a significant impact we might be back to making sure we have 4 copies of Beast Within in our 75 as well. I honestly haven't dealt with counter magic with this deck all that much but it seems the land D plan might be thwarted pretty readily when facing a dedicated control deck.

Four traps might very well be a requirement in the new meta.

And don't underestimate our power against control decks, our land destruction plan has control aspects to it as we're denying resources. Jon Orr (who is a living end one trick) wrote this detailing how we can leverage land destruction to constrain mana over a series of turns to force through living ends.

It especially rewards knowledge of the current meta card pool, knowing that most counters sit at 2 cmc and cryptic at 4, the only counterspell we need to worry about is logic knot and that means attacking the gy proactively with faerie or saving the traps for those.

In that sense, I might throw in the fourth beast within and SSG as that lets me be more aggressive in taking the LD line both earlier and more often.

I almost think more important than 4 Ricochet traps becomes 4 Fulminators (most are already running this in some manner) and 4 Simian Spirit guides (which I cannot believe people are not).

Besides SSG allowing us to timewalk into a fulminator against blue turn 2, Ricochet and Guide in hand becomes a red Force of will for us against counter magic that most players do not see coming. It has some other benefits against blue such as being able to redirect Ancestral Visions or Spreading Seas, both plays have won me the game in time prior.

Spreading Seas doesn’t target while it’s a spell, trap says spell — just a heads up! 😁

Do note that if they’ve cast a U spell, trap can target any other spell that turn. I’ve redirected a surgical to my opponent’s cryptic command in response to an Opt that was responding to my Outburst on the stack. GG in that one

Auras always target by definition so Spreading Seas doesn't get around it.

Quote from kodieyost »

Do note that if they’ve cast a U spell, trap can target any other spell that turn. I’ve redirected a surgical to my opponent’s cryptic command in response to an Opt that was responding to my Outburst on the stack. GG in that one

Even better is when they forget that Ricochet Trap can be cast for 3R.

"Terminate your Cerodon-"
"How about you Terminate your Tasigur, instead?"

I entered an MTGO league again but with an As Foretold-based Living End deck instead of the traditional list from here, and I fared much better (well, not hard to be better than 0-5), so I'm probably moving to that deck (although I'm going to test an hybrid version that also plays Violent Outburst).

My matchups were once again 2 blue control decks (but this time I beat them), a Young Pyromancer Bad Moon deck and some sort of Jace-based control deck (which I beat because he misclicked a Cryptic Command to be honest), a Bogles deck which I beat (that looks like a great matchup), and UR storm and GB Infect which I lost to (definitely feel I misplayed vs Infect, Storm saw my Faerie Macabres game 2 and won from the hand game 3 with no GY interaction).

As Foretold is also amazing for playing critters later in the game. I'll move on to that thread ( https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/deck-creation-modern/786846-u-x-living-as-foretold ).

I cannot help but feel like the as foretold build loses to the jund build running ricochet trap. They cannot living end easily as you will likely have more in the yard, and they cannot safely ancestral against you since you can redirect it. Plus you have fulminator to keep them off as fortold and they do not.

Gonna echo Protoaddict. The fourth Fulminator is way better against control than the fourth ricochet trap. Depending on the makeup of these control decks, there is even an argument that Avalanche Riders are better to have against control than Ricochet. These decks will probably want to cast Lightning Helix on turn 2 and Jace on turn 4, if past experience is an indicator, and they'll probably have little way to win if they can't stick 4 mana (and if they tap out for Jace, thank you for allowing a window to play Living End. Your cooperation is appreciated). Especially if this return of Bloodbraid Elf brings back Jund decks that also want to cast Lingering Souls, then the broader application of Avalanche Riders might mean it has a better argument than Trap.

Edit: While the As Foretold list looks kinda cool, I'm struggling with why it's the best deck at doing what it does. If you want a really powerful sorcery speed reanimation deck, you could play Gifts Ungiven and not even need to include a full 8 cards to make your gameplan work.

Quote from gruulsmash »

The fourth Fulminator is way better against control than the fourth ricochet trap.

I don't think it's that cut and dry, there's a lot to consider. Against the likes of three color like Jeskai control, fulminator is really good but straight UW really diminishes the power of the card. And even the three color pilots can start holding fetches or fetching conservatively into basics. In these situations, the fourth ricochet trap makes a lot more sense.

And on a more abstract level, our matchup vs blue control decks generally comes down to resource attrition and constraining mana. If the goal is to say deny remand mana, i'd rather spend one mana on trap than three on fulminator. It's stuff like this that makes a difference as there's a lot of back and forth in resource management on both ends over a course of two turns. Only time that I think fulminator beats out trap is against a competent player wielding a lot of cryptic commands. If they counter/bounce, there's two targets and we can't ricochet trap that. Rule saavy players will play around the trap in that instance.

If blue control really does become oppressive, it's not a matter of 3/4 or 4/3 split but rather 4/4.

These decks will probably want to cast Lightning Helix on turn 2 and Jace on turn 4, if past experience is an indicator, and they'll probably have little way to win if they can't stick 4 mana (and if they tap out for Jace, thank you for allowing a window to play Living End. Your cooperation is appreciated).

I'm no control expert but I sincerely think that your opponents are really bad at control if they're playing like that.

I probably should have been a little more clear: the fourth fulminator mainboard is better than the fourth sideboard ricochet trap at improving the total matchup. Obviously you would put 4 ricochet traps in the main if you had the luxury of knowing you would only play counterspell based blue control decks, but we don't have that luxury. And while it is obviously not the case that Jeskai wants to play helix on 2 against us, they want to have the ability to do so against the field, which affects their manabase construction. And they also want to have double blue on turn 4. Of course tapping out for Jace against us is bad--that's the point of the aside means they would need more on the order of 6+ mana to feel safe against us. If they need that, putting 11 pieces of land destruction in the deck can be devastating. That's the context behind my comments.

The thing about Fulminator is he does what he is supposed to do and then comes back and does it again. Ricochet Trap will resolve a Living end for you, but if it is not lethal you may wind up eating a wrath and having to dig for it again. Fulminator buys you time(walks) to make sure when you get go off with LE you are going to win on your main phase or just nuke all of their land into nothingness. I can think of few more demoralizing lines of play that turn 1 cycling a 6 power dork, having your opponent play a nonbasic and casting a cantrip, and you playing a land, SSG, Fulminator and put them back to turn 0. Depending on how they planned out the cantrip they may very well be dead in the water to you at that point.

That being said, I am already running 4 fulminators and 4 SSGs main and have no plans on cutting any, they are really just that good in so many matchups. Only change I would really have to make would be running 4 traps in the board, which is pretty easy to do.

I don’t think I like 4 trap. It’s only good when trying to resolve something, it doesn’t actively “do” anything for our gameplan. I’d rather constrain mana with EOT beast within, untap Fulminator — or something along those lines

Quote from kodieyost »

I don’t think I like 4 trap. It’s only good when trying to resolve something, it doesn’t actively “do” anything for our gameplan. I’d rather constrain mana with EOT beast within, untap Fulminator — or something along those lines

These things are not mutually exclusive. I am running 4 beast, ssg, and fulminator maindeck, and 3 traps in the board. 4th trap is easy enough to add if I think its needed in the new meta, and I sure as hell won't be dropping fulminators or beasts for it.

Deck looks similar to what I run. Though I think you should supplement the Verdants with Bloodstained Mires simply because you have no G cycling costs.

Most of us are on the 3/4 Demonic/Outburst split. And I am in favor of the Kommand.

Deck looks pretty solid. I might consider a copy of shriekmaw finding its way in, but that's a minor point.

I will say, it would be really useful to see what your board is. It's meta dependent true, but your list is often influenced by what's in the sideboard and vice versa.

Fair enough, this is my sideboard for now:
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What are the legacy and games for?

I went off and messed with the as foretold list. results have not been consistent or favorable for me. is there a renaissance of people coming back to this list?