This is a Modern control twist on the classic combo deck living end. Looking to cycle Street Wraith, Architects of Will, Curator of Mysteries, and Striped Riverwinder to the yard and then bring them back to the battlefield by playing Living End with As Foretold, instead of cascading as with the original deck design with cards like, Demonic Dread or Violent Outburst.
The advantage of As Foretold is that you can play cards 3 CMC cards and below such as Remand and Mana Leak, which give the combo the added benefit of making sure it resolves, also ensuring that opponents plans are foiled by stalling the game out. The other amazing advantage is that As Foretold allows us to play Ancestral Vision for free! Ancestral Recall is one of the most busted cards in all of magic and it cost one blue! Nothing better than saying "Draw Three Cards" my favorite three words in magic (other than "Counter Target Spell", which we also get to say in this deck) for free! This means that we'll always be drawing more counters and more cylcers for a bigger and more difficult to deal with living end combo. Also our creatures not only allow us to order our deck and our opponents decks on etb but also have the added benefit of being hexproof, or give us scry when we cycle or discard. Take that Desert Cerodon!
Still things happen and we could find ourselves faced with graveyard hate, cheaper counters, discard, and enchantment hate so the back up plan is just to hard cast our cyclers and switch into Blood Moon if our opponent is playing lots of non-basic lands. If we run up against dedicated graveyard hate we can stall the game long enough to get upwards of four counters on As Foretold to play our cyclers for free allowing us to keep up counter magic and progress the board. This strategy is also good against reanimator as living end tends to bring back the creatures our opponents have discarded (unless we have Leyline of the Void in play then we can just Living End as usual.)
Leyline of Anticipation is another amazing addition to this deck because it allows us to cast As Foretold, Ancestral Vision, and Living End at instant speed so we can hold up counter magic and if our opponent doesn't cast anything we can flash things in at EOT. It also gives us the option of flashing in our cyclers if we don't hit an As Foretold or Living End. The Flexibility of being able to hold up counter magic and move at instant speed is absolutely invaluable in this deck.
The deck also runs four copies of Cryptic Command one of the best counterspells in magic as far as utility goes, and four copies of Mana Leak another good early game counter spell. Cryptic Command gives us another hard counter, more card draw to find As Foretold, Living End, and Ancestral Vision, permanent bounce to either set our opponent back a land drop or to bounce a blocker, planeswalker, or other pesky artifacts and enchantments like Rest in Peace or Pyxis of Pandemonium, and finally as a way to tap down the creatures that may have been reanimated by our living end to clear the way to victory. Remand is one of my favorite cards in Magic as it basically reads "One Generic, One Blue, Time Walk draw a card".
We are also playing two copies of Blood Moon in the Side Board which effectively shuts down our opponents mana base while we play our spells for free thanks to As Foretold. We also have Dismember to get rid of problem creatures, Engineered Explosives to take out pesky artifacts, enchantments and creatures usually 2 cmc and lower, and four Leyline of the Void to hose reanimator and other graveyard shenanigans.
This deck is capable of an absolutely explosive Living End combo and with how many counterspells we run we are usually able to dispupt our opponents strategy enough to ensure get to fire it. Street Wraith and our other cyclers help to smooth out the early game and make sure we see our combo early enough. I'm still play testing this deck and the Side Board to see how consistent it can be against other strategies but so far it seems incredibly powerful.
