Since the format was first conceived, Living End has been a fringe player in Modern. Traditionally, this deck has relied on creatures with evoke and cycling to stock the graveyard and then follows up with a cascade spell like Violent Outburst, which can only find the namesake. The ability to sweep your opponent’s board and put a couple creatures into play all at once is generally a pretty good way to win games against creature decks. However, in recent years, cascade spells have become less popular, but we’ve gotten a few more ways to play with cards without mana costs. Let’s take a look at this innovative take featuring As Foretold:

Mono-Blue As Foretold - Modern | 1310Hazzzard, 5-0 Modern League

• Creatures (15)
• 3 Architects of Will
• 4 Curator of Mysteries
• 4 Street Wraith
• 4 Striped Riverwinder

• Instants (12)
• 2 Disallow
• 3 Cryptic Command
• 3 Mana Leak
• 4 Remand

• Sorceries (8)
• 4 Ancestral Vision
• 4 Living End

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 As Foretold

• Lands (21)
• 12 Island
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 4 Field of Ruin
• 4 Tolaria West

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Dismember
• 2 Dispel
• 2 Hurkyl's Recall
• 4 Leyline of Sanctity
• 4 Leyline of the Void

Buy This Deck

This deck has a lot of the advantages of a Blue-based Ancestral Vision deck. You can consistently suspend Ancestral Vision on turn one, have Tolaria West to find extra copies if you think you have time, and eventually As Foretold to cheat on casting a second or third copy. The extra cards you draw also help you transition from casting Mana Leaks into casting Cryptic Command.

You also have a lot of the advantages of the Living End deck. A high density of cyclers means that you get a lot of chances to find the specific cards you need. Having a high density of threats that you can actually cast gives you some resiliency to counterspells, since you can cast your threats and follow up with Living End. On top of all that, most of your threats are resilient to the likes of Lightning Bolt and Fatal Push, which puts unique pressure on opponents to have sweepers and Path to Exiles.

All in all, this is a really interesting take on control that combines disparate elements of very different decks and stitches them together with As Foretold. If you’re looking for a wonky control deck that combines card advantage and counterspells with combotastic turns and sweepers, then maybe this is something you’ll want to try out.