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Crashing Footfalls is one of the top decks of theMagic: The GatheringModern metagame, thanks to the interaction between cascade and the deck’s namesake. When you cast a cascade spell, you exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a spell with a lower mana cost.
Since Crashing Footfalls is a suspend spell with no actual mana cost, this makes it a prime target for cascade as summoning two 4/4 Rhino tokens with trample for three mana is a ridiculously good deal. While this strategy does require that you include no cards in your deck with less than 3 mana cost to ensure you exile Fooftfalls, players have found a way around this restriction. Let’s dive in.
Key Cards
Crashing Footfalls
As mentioned before, this is the namesake of the deck.The entire mainboard is built around cheating this card into play on turn three.From there, it’s as simple as turning your Rhinos sideways as they’re almost certainly going to be larger than any creature your opponent can present.
Theimportance ofthe trample keywordon these creatures is difficult to understate. Without it, the deck wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is. Strangely enough,you hardly ever want to begin a game with a copy of this card in your hand.
A starting hand isn’t unkeepable if it has Crashing Footfalls in it. It’s just that most of the time, it ends up being a dead card.
While you can suspend Crashing Footfalls on turn one, you won’t receive your Rhino tokens until turn five, and you can’t attack with them until turn six. Many games of Modern are over by then.
Violent Outburst / Shardless Agent
The keys to the Crashing Footfalls kingdom.You want to be casting one of these cards on turn three in virtually every game.Even better if you can cast one on turn four as well. Let’s not mince any words,this deck is incredibly linear.The whole goal is to put Rhino tokens on the battlefield and turn them sideways until the opponent runs out of life.
Don’t be surprised that the best thing you can do is exactly that, especially seeing asyou play eight copies of cascade cards to ensure this goal.It’s worth noting that Violent Outburst isn’t just a cascade spell. It gives your creatures +1 power until end of turn. While this might not seem like a big deal,there are many cases where this power increase can win you the gamethanks to trample.
If you’re a player who tires of decks with a simple game plan, Crashing Footfalls is probably not the right deck for you.
Force Of Negation
This counterspell is a key building blockof the deck’s strategy. Without it, it would be far too easy for this deck to fall prey toopposing counterspells.Force of Negation allows you to force your Violent Outburst throughand make certain that your Rhinos hit the battlefield promptly. This may be the most expensive card in the deck, but it’s also one of the most necessary.
Mystical Dispute
Another cheap counterspell that you may manage to play thanks to the discount it receives against opposing blue spells. This is one of many of the key cards in this deck that technically have a mana value of three or greater, butyou can cast on the first two turns of the gameanyway. You’llbe sideboarding this card out a lot. But when it’s good, it’s great.
Fire // Ice
Yet anotherimportant piece of interaction for the first couple turnsof the game. While both sides of this card won’t play against most opponents, usually one will quite nicely. You can also use the Ice side to try and draw into a cascade spell if your opening hand doesn’t contain one.
How To Play Crashing Footfalls
As mentioned above, the game plan here is easy to follow.Open a hand that has a cascade spell in it, and play that card as quickly as you can.Depending on the matchup,it can be worth it to mulligan to six or even five cards simply to ensure that you start the game with a cascade spell in hand.Once you have your Rhinos, do everything in your power to protect them.
It can be okay to let your Rhino tokens go if you have another cascade spell in your hand. Don’t fight too hard for Rhinos that can be replaced with more.
In some matchups,it can be worthwhile to wait to cascade until turn four so that you have mystical dispute backupin the event of an opponent trying to counterspell you. These matchups are usually quite obvious as the opponent will have open blue mana in such cases. It’s for this reason exactly that Mystical Dispute has moved from the sideboard of the deck to the mainboard.
One trick that’s easily overlooked in this deck is the opportunity to channel Otawara, Soaring City targeting a Shardless Agent. This will allow you to cast the Agent again and cascade into more Rhinos.
Sideboarding
Like the deck’s mainboard,your sideboard game plan is also pretty straightforward.Blood MoonandMagus of the Mooncome in against decks that aren’t playing enough basics.Foundation BreakerandForce of Vigorare great against any deck fielding artifacts and enchantments.One great example is the Hammer Time deck.
More copies ofEnduranceprovide you with additional graveyard hate in games where that matters.Murktide Regentis the most common opponent where you’ll want these. Brotherhood’s Endis good against decks that go wide or play a ton of artifacts. Lastly,Ertai’s ScornandSubtletyare most notable for their counterplay against combo decks.
Cards that you’ll sideboard out includeMystical Dispute, Fire // Ice, Dead // Gone, Endurance,andyour cards that have singleton copies.Like with most matters concerning this deck, knowing when to take out what is self-explanatory.
Get rid of removal against opponents who don’t care about creatures, and drop Mystical Disputes against non-blue decks.Endurance comes out against decks that couldn’t care less about the state of the graveyard.
Closing Thoughts
Crashing Footfalls is simultaneouslyone of the best and easiest decks to play in Modern.It’s not incredibly often that the decks at the top of the metagame are this simple to pilot. Consequently,it’s worth taking advantage of how good this deck isas long as it stays at the top of the meta.
That being said, like all Magic decks,there’s certainly a lot of nuance that goes into playing this deckthe absolute best that it can be played.Just not quite as much nuance as many other deck builds.Rhinos go brrr.
