Magic: The Gathering’s recent banlist changes on May 18 included a fair few unbannings, and the most impactful one by far was Violent Outburst, which has catapulted an age-old archetype back into the spotlight.
That deck is Living End, a graveyard-focused build with a fairly simple gameplan. You fill your deck with big creatures using Evoke abilities or cycling, then use a three-mana card with Cascade to tutor up the spell Living End and cast it for free. This leaves your opponent’s board empty and your own battlefield full of beefy monsters you can hopefully leverage to win the game.
The trick to this deck has long been to have no spells that cost less than three mana, ensuring that your Cascade cards always find a copy Living End. While there are a few options players could pick, from Shardless Agent to Demonic Dread, Violent Outburst is the only one that can be played at Instant speed, allowing players to pull off the combo on their opponents’ turns. Crucially, that means you can attack immediately after you untap.
As their article reveals, Wizards of the Coast unbanned Violent Outburst specifically to give Living End a boost, and it certainly seems to have worked. While we haven’t seen any truly standout performances in Modern Challenges on MTGO just yet, the deck has performed excellently in Modern Leagues, with many players piloting Living End to a 5-0. It seems real strong, but only time will tell if the deck is a flash in the pan, or if it has the staying power to succeed alongside current top-tier strategies like Affinity and Eldrazi Tron.
What is clear, however, is how the secondary market has responded to the unbanning. Predictably, the unbanned card shot up in value. Violent Outburst has seen an immense 1,500% price spike, rising from $0.50 all the way to $8. As so often happens after a mahoosive spike like this, it currently looks to be sinking back down a little, so do not go out and buy 50 copies now in the hopes of turning a profit!
But other Living End cards are increasing in price too. Living End itself has doubled in value due to renewed interest in the archetype – jumping from $2.40 to $4.80. The new Lorwyn card Wistfulness has also had a 100% spike, going from $7.40 to $15.20 since the May 18 ban announcement.
Lorwyn Eclipsed was actually a really good MTG set for the Living End deck (and they share the same initials… Hmm, coincidence?) The cycle of Evoke elementals are super neat options for the deck, giving you miniature modal spells you can cast on turn two without mucking up the Cascade gameplan.
In fact, it might be the uptick of interest in Living End caused by Lorwyn Eclipsed that caused WotC to consider this unban. The B&R article states:
“Lorwyn Eclipsed giving Living End a shot in the arm has largely also seemed to be positively received by the community, which has us interested in showing the archetype a bit of love.”
It was quite surprising to see Violent Outburst become legal again, so soon after it was placed on the MTG banlist in March 2024. But as Wizards points out, the format is in a very different place to where it was even a couple of years ago.
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Source: Wargamer
