Modern Living End appeals to 3 different kinds of players:

• Absolute degenerates who would otherwise be playing Dredge
• Limited players who like beating down with weird commons
• People who actually like winning

I happen to be all three of those, so you can probably imagine how hyped I am on this deck. Let’s talk Living End.

The Basics

The basic idea of the deck is to cycle a bunch of cheap cyclers like Striped Riverwinder and Curator of Mysteries in the first two turns, then cast either Violent Outburst or Shardless Agent to cascade into Living End as early as turn 3. The Living End will both wipe the opponent’s board and bring all of your cycled fatties back from the graveyard. However, what most people don’t realise about modern builds of Living End is that it is also highly disruptive. The deck today runs the full four copies of both Grief and Force of Negation, both of which can be operated with zero mana and don’t interfere with the cascade plan. Grief cannot be hardcast, but is enabled by drawn copies of Living End (which are otherwise useless), Street Wraith, Architects of Will, and other Griefs. In my opinion, Grief is the one card that truly makes Living End viable right now. Force of Negation operates similarly, protecting you from most graveyard hate, Chalice of the Void, 3-mana Teferi, and so on. The really cruel thing about Force of Negation in this deck is that it can be used offensively; Force was deliberately worded so that you couldn’t use it on your own turn to force your own game plan through, but Violent Outburst is an instant, meaning you can cast it on your opponent’s turn and protect it with a Force of Negation.

The Deck

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This is the list that I have been playing. Most of it is fairly stock, but there are a few slots that are still in contention among Living End enthusiasts, so let’s talk about those. First is the newcomer to the deck: Colossal Skyturtle. Living End has always struggled for interaction, since it can’t run anything that costs less than 3. Skyturtle has replaced Brazen Borrower as both a way to bounce problematic creatures, trading in the ability to bounce non-creature for the ability to be brought back with Living End. Overall I’ve liked Skyturtle a lot—the 6/5 flying body with protection is really hard to deal with once on the battlefield. I’ve even cast Living End to just bring back the Skyturtle and won with it alone. . We’ve also got a couple of newcomers hanging out in the mana base. The first is Boseiju, Who Endures, which takes the place of what used to be a basic Forest. I’m a big fan of this swap—this provides a maindeck answer to most of the problematic graveyard hate cards the deck suffers against without even costing a deck slot. Losing the basic Forest really only matters against Blood Moon, but between Grief and Force of Negation the deck has enough ways to keep that off the battlefield. The other newcomer is Otawara, Soaring City, which plays a similar role to Boseiju, but can also be used to get problematic creatures off the board. I’m currently playing two copies, which can get awkward from time to time, and I could see replacing one with another Island. That being said, when Otawara is good it’s really good. I’ve had plenty of games where I’ve been digging through my deck trying to find it to deal with a Leyline of the Void or Arcbound Ravager or any other roadblock to going off. For the sideboard, 4 Leyline of Sanctity is becoming pretty stock these days. One of the deck’s real weaknesses is Thoughtseize decks, so removing the discard axis of their pressure helps a lot. I’ve gone up to 3 copies of Endurance and I’m considering moving up to the full 4. Decks that load up their own graveyard like Dredge, Hollow Vine, or the mirror are really frustrating, as are those that play the MH2 Incarnations like Solitude or Fury, since a savvy opponent can cast them early for no value so that they come back with Living End.

Tips and Tricks

Part of what I find fun about Living End—and why I recommend it—is that the basics of the deck are very easy to pick up, but there is a lot of nuance in the details if you like that sort of thing. You often want to cycle in your main phase to try to hit Grief or a black card to pitch to Grief. Furthermore, if you have both Grief and, say, Architects of Will in hand, then you often want to cycle main phase to try to hit Living End, since that is a better card to pitch to Grief. Basically, try to turn off that Magic player instinct to do everything on your opponent’s end step and do most of your cycling on your own turn. Along similar lines, cycle your Architects of Will and Street Wraiths as late as possible, just in case you draw a Grief. Once you do, it’s usually correct to cast Grief rather than get one extra cycle. Also, try not to take a creature with Grief, because that creature will just come back when you Living End and you will feel immensely silly for the rest of the day (speaking from experience here). Remember that the card you don’t take off Waker of Waves goes to your graveyard. It’s often correct to choose a useless card (like a Living End) just to put the other card in your bin. With your mulligans, you should be much more afraid of 4-land hands than 1-land hands. One land plus a bunch of cyclers will usually get you there, but a land-heavy hand will often put you on a course to just do nothing. The best time to cast Violent Outburst varies heavily depending on the matchup—I’ve cast it in basically every phase of the game. Here’s a rough guide of when to do the most common timings:

• Your turn: your opponent is tapped out and may have interaction if they untap and you’re not worried about Force of Negation. This is the rarest option, comes up most in the mirror.
• Opponent’s upkeep: your opponent may have counterspells and you have a Force of Negation. Playing in their upkeep denies them an additional draw step and an additional land drop and lets you push through one counterspell with your Force.
• Opponent’s draw step: you have Grief in your graveyard and are hoping to snipe the card they draw for turn and you’re not particularly worried about them drawing a counterspell or Endurance etc. This is the rudest option and will make you unpopular at FNM.
• Opponent’s end step: your opponent is a creature deck and you’re trying to eat as many creatures as possible or you’re trying to dodge a sweeper like Supreme Verdict or you don’t have a good reason to use any of the other timings and want to just conceal the Living End for as long as possible. Against decks without counterspells, this is probably the most common timing.

Matchups and Sideboard Guide

As a rough guide to sideboarding, I usually look to Colossal Skyturtle (if appropriate) and Waker of Waves as my first cuts. It might be tempting to cut a Living End, but that path leads to the dark side—take it from someone who has drawn all 3 several times and had to concede in shame. Likewise, it’s tempting to cut an Architects of Will because the card is kind of lame, but you do need to be careful you don’t run too short on Grief enablers.

UR Murktide

Ragavan is a bit of a pain in the neck for Living End. On the one hand, the stupid monkey rarely steals anything worthwhile, but it usually gets in a few good hits before you can sweep it, netting your opponent a whole chestful of Treasure and a massive mana advantage. It’s well worthwhile to bounce it with Skyturtle if you can. Aside from Ragavan, the only cards that really matter here are the counterspells: 4 Counterspell and 3-4 Archmage’s Charm in the maindeck, and some number of others in the sideboard. Your main game plan is to Violent Outburst in their upkeep when they have limited mana and Force of Negation their one counterspell. I’ve generally found that is a good plan, and that this matchup is reasonably favourable. Sideboarding:

• Out: 4 Waker of Waves
• In: 3 Force of Vigor, 1 Mystical Dispute

The Force of Vigor can sometimes have no targets, but I really don’t like to get caught with my pants down by Blood Moon. It can also snipe the odd Relic of Progenitus.

4c Omnath

This matchup is pretty tough. Teferi, Time Raveler is a major pain in our backside since you can’t cast Living End off cascade while it’s in play. Worse still, we have almost no way of getting it off the board if it resolves, so we’re really relying on Grief or Force of Negation to deal with it. The trouble is, the 4c deck has plenty of other problems we need to deal with, including a full set of Counterspells, creatures that need dealing with, and evoking the MH2 Elementals which can ruin our Living Ends. Their main form of sideboard graveyard hate is Endurance, which is another blow to us, since we’re much better at dealing with artifacts and enchantments than a flash creature. For that we turn to Subtlety, but that often means we need a lot of things to align just right for our Living End turn. Sideboarding:

• Out: 2 Colossal Skyturtle, 4 Waker of Waves
• In: 3 Endurance, 2 Subtlety, 1 Mystical Dispute

Hammer Time

This matchup, however, is a dream. Unless they manage to kill you before you Living End, they have basically no hope of stopping the Living End nor recovering afterwards. Things get even worse for them postboard when we get 3 copies of Force of Vigor to just completely ruin their day. One thing to remember in this matchup and any other with Urza’s Saga is that Saga can fetch Relic of Progenitus on its last chapter, so you need to make sure you Living End before that resolves. Sideboarding:

• Out: 4 Waker of Waves, 1 Force of Negation
• In: 2 Foundation Breaker, 3 Force of Vigor

Living End

The mirror might be the most stressful Magic matchup I’ve ever played. In fact, I’m only including it here because this gives me a way to say that the years of my life that I lost playing this matchup actually had a silver lining. In fact, it’s so stressful that I don’t want to talk about it any more and I’m just going to leave you with this screenshot from one of my games to show what it’s like.

Conclusion

That’s it for my favourite deck in Modern right now. Living End is the perfect mix of great fun to play, fast, explosive, and actually good. If I had a Modern tournament coming up this is probably what I’d play. If you pick up the deck, or are thinking about putting it together, feel free to shoot me any questions on Twitter, I’d be more than happy to talk about playing the deck. You can reach me on Twitter @Calm_Mirror and I also co-host a drafting channel on Youtube called Draft Punks, so if you’re into draft, we would love to have your company there as well. Til next week!