Emrakul, the Promised End "TBD" - Plot Twist #26

Welcome back to Plot Twist, the series where we build a Commander deck that looks like it'll tell one kind of story only to throw out a twist for our opponents mid-game. If you're joining us for the first time, welcome! I'd encourage you to check out the previous articles in the series to get a sense of the types of stories we're looking to tell.

On the last edition of Plot Twist, we built a deck that turned our lands into game-winning superheroes with Black Panther, Wakandan King at the helm. This week, we're enjoying a brief lull in new releases and taking the time to look at a commander from the upcoming all-reprints set, Innistrad Remastered, in Emrakul, the Promised End.

Like seemingly every Eldrazi titan, this version of Emrakul is very powerful and rather polarizing. I remember it being a multi-format all-star when I got back into Magic during Shadows Over Innistrad block, and nowadays we see Emrakul pop up occasionally in Commander as a Mindslaver-type effect that allows the caster to turn an opponent's resources against them.

How Does Emrakul Work?

Emrakul, the Promised End is a 13/13 with flying, trample, and protection from instants, which makes Emrakul difficult for our opponents to remove on our turn and helps her get through for commander damage should it ever come to that. She also has an ability that reduces her casting cost by for each card type among cards in our graveyard, meaning we can reduce her casting cost by if we can somehow get all nine Commander-legal card types (artifact, battle, creature, enchantment, instant, kindred, land, planewalker, and sorcery) into our graveyard at once.

Her best ability is probably the final one though, which reads "When you cast this spell, you gain control of target opponent during that player's next turn. After that turn, that player takes an extra turn." This can be absolutely back-breaking late in the game, allowing Emrakul's caster to use an opponent's removal against them, attack unfavorably, sacrifice permanents, and do all sorts of mean stuff.

I once had a friend take control of my turn with Emrakul and then sacrifice my entire board to my own Greater Good so I ended up with zero creatures or cards in hand. It was quite possibly the funniest way I've ever lost a game. If you're playing Emrakul, the Promised End at the right moment, it shouldn't matter that the player you're controlling gets an extra turn afterward because they'll be too far behind to catch back up.

Taking a look at Emrakul's EDHREC page, she is surprisingly only at the helm of about 800 decklists at the time of writing. This pales in comparison to other colorless commanders, like Zhulodok, Void Gorger and Liberator, Urza's Battlethopter, which helm more than 15,000 and 3,000 decks, respectively. She's only the 11th most played colorless commander overall and Marvin, Murderous Mimic is chomping at her heels (tentacles?).

If I had to guess, I think the low number of Emrakul decks is probably a combination of there being more straightforward colorless commanders available, Emrakul having a nasty reputation for demolishing one player's game when she's cast, and her pricetag staying at or above $30 for years. All very valid takes on why not to play Emrakul!

In looking at how players are building decks with Emrakul, the Promised End on her EDHREC page, we see a lot of "colorless goodstuff" cards, like Forsaken Monument, Ugin, the Ineffable, and Wandering Archaic, each appearing in more than 48% of decks. Brewers also seem to be building the sort of Eldrazi kindred decks that were all the rage before Azlask, the Swelling Scourge and Ulalek, Fused Atrocity burst onto the scene in Modern Horizons 3 earlier this year.

Endbringer, Oblivion Sower, and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger all appear in about two-thirds of the nearly 800 Emrakul, the Promised End decks that show up on EDHREC, so when our opponents sit down across from us and our Emrakul deck, they'll probably be expecting us to play some sort of colorless combo deck or perhaps an Eldrazi kindred deck.

But that all feels terribly... expected, and this is Plot Twist, where we live for the unexpected! So we're going to act as if Emrakul wasn't an Eldrazi and see what trouble we can get into by filling out graveyard with all sorts of colorless cards of every permanent type.

Doing the Twist

Since Eldrazi are frequently defined by their 'when you cast' triggers, they've historically been difficult to make work in blink or reanimator shells that rely on creatures that have powerful enters triggers instead, so while Emrakul, the Promised End wants us to fill our graveyard with lots of different card types in order to reduce her casting cost, she doesn't naturally seem like a commander that would want to reanimate a bunch of creatures from our graveyard, so we're going to do exactly that this week!

Led by a slew of powerful new colorless 'reanimator' spells, like Ghost Vacuum, Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine, and Dollhouse of Horrors, our gameplan is to return Emrakul's new friends Phyrexian Triniform, Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut, and The Capitoline Triad from our graveyard to the battlefield, and you know we found some strange cards, like Collector's Vault, Null Brooch, and Grimoire of the Dead, to fill our graveyard while giving us a little something in return as we do. We're in the perfect spot to surprise our opponents given there are a whopping 14 colorless reanimator decks registered on EDHREC.

Filling Our Graveyard

In order for this week's deck to 'do the thing,' we're going to want to be able to quickly and reliably get cards into our graveyard, and since there are no colorless dredge cards, we'll need to be able to either discard cards or mill ourselves reliably. While normally, 'looting' and 'rummaging' effects where we discard a card in order to draw a card (or vice versa) are limited to blue and red, this week's decklist features quite a few of them to help us quickly fill our graveyard.

Collector's Vault, Matzalantli, the Great Door, and Currency Converter, which is an all-star in my Karador Cycling deck, all allow us to draw and discard a card plus a little extra value. Both Collector's Vault and Currency Converter can help us ramp by creating Treasures as we go, and Matzalantli, the Great Door can transform into a land to help us pay for Emrakul provided we get enough card types in our graveyard, something that will be trivial to do given how many artifact creatures, artifact lands, and kindred spells we're running in this week's deck. 

As a colorless deck, we're able to run a manabase made up of almost exclusively 'utility' lands that do something extra in addition to creating mana, many of which can help us get extra cards into our graveyard. Fomori Vault lets us discard a card in order to look through the top of our library for something better, while Geier Reach Sanitarium lets us (and our opponents) draw and discard a card. We have a handful of lands like Promising Vein and Shire Terrace that sacrifice themselves to find a basic Wastes to get a land into our graveyard, and there are a slew of lands that can give us additional utility from our manabase: Inventors' Fair can help find a key artifact, Buried Ruin can recur something from our graveyard if needed, Demolition Field can destroy a pesky Glacial Chasm or opposing Field of the Dead, and Lazotep Quarry even acts as a 'reanimation' spell on a land. That's just scratching the surface of what having an all-colorless manabase allows a deck to do, and all of them add more permanent types to our graveyard in the process.

A quick aside on the easiest card types for us to get into our graveyard and help reduce the cost of Emrakul, the Promised End: in addition to lands as mentioned above, we're running more than 20 artifact creatures in this deck, so both of those card types should be easy enough for us to get. We have less than 10 of each instants, sorceries, and planeswalkers in the deck, so we're not likely to be able to get any of those three specifically, but we should hopefully see at least one go to our graveyard over the course of the game. We also have four total enchantments (two of which happen to also be lands in Urza's Saga and Valgavoth's Lair), a couple of kindred cards, like All Is Dust and Eldritch Immunity, and are running the only valid colorless battle, Invasion of Ravnica, to get all nine legal card types in the deck. It feels safe to say we'll be able to get at least five of the nine possible card types into our graveyard reliably over the course of a game, but we have the potential to get all nine if we're lucky.

Colorless 'Reanimation' Spells

Ghost Vacuum was the card that inspired this week's build, and while it's not what we normally think of as a mass reanimation spell (compared to something like Rise of the Dark Realms) since the creatures enter as 1/1 Spirits, it does allow us to get the enters triggers off of any creatures we reanimate when they return to the battlefield. We won't be able to get the same splashy, memorable moments using Ghost Vacuum, but it will allow us to slowly accrue value in the early game before trying to return a bunch of creatures at once. Grimoire of the Dead functions much more like Rise of the Dark Realms, but our opponents are going to see it coming since we have to activate Grimoire of the Dead three times before we can get all creatures back.

To help speed up both Ghost Vacuum and Grimoire of the Dead, we're running four cards that can untap an artifact in Manifold Key, Sonic Screwdriver, Unwinding Clock, and Voltaic Construct so we can get multiple activations in a single turn cycle. While it takes a whopping mana to cast Grimoire of the Dead and untap it three times in a single turn with Voltaic Construct (and that's assuming we don't also have to cast Voltaic Construct), being able to reanimate ALL creatures from all graveyards in a single turn in our colorless deck will totally be worth the price. That's exactly the sort of memorable moment we live for on Plot Twist.

We're also running four repeatable ways to reanimate a single creature. Scarecrone lets us reanimate a single artifact creature for and an activation every turn, which is yet another reason we're running so many artifact creatures and multiple ways to untap artifacts. Dollhouse of Horrors allows us to create a token copy of a creature in our graveyard that's also a Construct, so it'll get bigger the more artifacts we have in play. The Construct copy gains haste too, so we can either attack with it or use the creature's activated abilities if we create a copy of something like Kuldotha Forgemaster. God-Pharaoh's Gift works very similarly, except the creature is a 4/4 Zombie instead of a Construct. Lastly, we're running Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine from the Assassin's Creed set as a way to quickly begin reanimating creatures one at a time. While it's a little risky since Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine exiles all creatures in our graveyard at once, it does return the original cards to the battlefield with haste so we can reanimate them again later if they die.

Overall, we've got a six ways to reliably reanimate creatures in our deck, which is more than our opponents probably expect! We'll need to be careful we don't exile all of our threats to Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine or Ghost Vacuum only for our opponents to destroy them before we can do our thing, but that's always a risk when running a reanimator deck.

Protection and Interaction

One of the toughest parts about building a colorless deck has always been the limited ways for us to interact with what our opponents are doing. There was a time when Helvault and Boompile were almost auto-includes in every colorless deck because we so desperately needed ways to interact with our opponents. Times have changed, though. Between Modern Horizons 3 and Commander Masters alone, there are lots of new ways for a colorless deck to interact with what our opponents are doing. Eldritch Immunity can stop a Swords to Plowshares, save our board from a Blasphemous Act, or allow our team to slip through unblocked for a lethal attack if we need to. Kozilek's Command can be instant-speed ramp, a removal spell, a cantrip, and/or graveyard interaction, giving us flexibility and a surprising amount of things we can do on an opponent's turn. Warping Wail is an oldie but a goodie since it can counter a Wrath of God, exile a Drannith Magistrate, or create a chump blocker if we desperately need to. People always seem to forget that there are colorless instants, and this week's deck is more than happy to catch our opponents off guard with one.

This week's decklist also has a surprising amount of ways to interact with our opponents and any problematic permanents they have, like Giver of Runes or Void Mirror. Ugin, the Spirit Dragon has been an all-star in colorless decks since it debuted in Fate Reforged (I wonder if we'll get another Ugin in 2025 when Tarkir Dragonstorm comes out?), and we'll be happy to see it just about every time we draw it. Using Ugin's second ability for -6 should take out most of our opponents' permanents while keeping all of our colorless threats AND Ugin around till our next turn. Steel Hellkite is a more limited, and expensive, way to interact with out opponents, but it won't create as many feel-bad moments for the other players as Ugin, the Spirit Dragon does so we might be able to make some allies afterwards.

Null Brooch is a card that almost made it into our Mr. Foxglove Madness & Flashback deck, but feels like it'll be even more memorable in this week's decklist. Any time we have to discard our entire hand to Negate an opponent's spell, it'll be an amazing story, whether we come out on top or not. Sure, Kozilek, the Great Distortion is an infinitely better version of this effect, but there's nothing stopping us from playing both! It's definitely worth having plenty of ways we can get a counterspell effect in return for putting creatures into our graveyard that we'll reanimate later.

Winning the Game

Reanimating all of our creatures (and/or our opponents' creatures) back at once is a great start to winning the game, but we're not going to quickly do lethal damage with a bunch of 1/1 Spirits no matter how great their enters abilities are. The Capitoline Triad is back this week after we saw what it could do in Plot Twist #19. Since all artifacts are historic permanents, it should be easy enough for us to get 30 mana value worth of them into our graveyard to pay for The Capitoline Triad's activated ability, but we'll need to be careful not to exile all of our creatures this way. Turning all of our creatures into 9/9s will certainly speed up how quickly the game ends.

While they're less explosive, Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut, Forsaken Monument, and Kozilek, the Broken Reality also make all of our attackers much more threatening, so they'll be prime targets for our reanimation spells. Glaring Fleshraker is a nifty way to 'burn' our opponents out when we reanimate a bunch of colorless creatures or make a lot of tokens in case we don't have a way to give them haste like Crashing Drawbridge.

There are a few creatures in this week's deck that are threats to win the game all by themselves. Emrakul, the World Anew allows us to steal all of an opponent's creatures when we cast her, so while she's not the best target for our reanimation effects, she can clear an opponent's blockers and turn their creatures to our cause. Note that because Emrakul, the World Anew has madness, we can cast her for six any time we discard her, including on an opponent's turn if we discard her to Null Brooch or another effect. Discarding her to Null Brooch is probably the best case scenario because any creatures we steal will be affected by summoning sickness, since they have to be under our control continuously since the beginning of our most recent turn in order to be able to attack.

We're also running Myr Battlesphere, Phyrexian Triniform, and Threefold Thunderhulk since they supply us with a bunch of artifact creatures, creating an army of artifact attackers for us out of a single card. These effects pair pretty well with cards like Dollhouse of Horrors, Urza's Saga, and Glaring Fleshraker that care about us having a bunch of artifacts / colorless permanents.

Don't forget that, sometimes, Emrakul, the Promised End will function as a way for us to win the game all by herself. Being able to take an opponent's turn, turn their own resources against them (or the two other players), attack our mutual opponents, and overall set them as far back as possible is a great way to close out games, even if it is a bit rude.

A Few Additional Twists for Good Measure

As always, I want to take a moment to highlight some interesting cards I stumbled across on Scryfall that made the cut in this week's decklist. We ran Ugin's Mastery all the way back in Plot Twist #1's face down creatures deck using Vannifar, Evolved Enigma, and we've finally found another home for it in this week's deck. Ugin's Mastery is a source of card advantage that also adds some suspense to your games, and I'd highly recommend running it. You've already heard me rave about Null Brooch giving a colorless deck access to a Negate-style card, but I just wanted to take a second to reiterate how interesting of a design it is. I think all-in effects, like Null Brooch and Last Chance, always make for incredibly fun, last gambit plays whenever you cast them in Commander, win or lose.

Codex Shredder is famously part of the Lantern Control deck from Modern's past, but here it's a way for us to mill ourselves and can recur any card from our graveyard, two effects that are hard to come by in colorless. Matzalantli, the Great Door is a little expensive for the effects on its front side, but in the right deck it could be really interesting to run. Last but not least, a shoutout to Trading Post, a card that looks bad at first glance but always over-performs for me. I run it in my artifact tokens matter deck, and it's a sneaky value engine if I'm ever able to activate it multiple times.

Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:

Roll the Credits

I hope you enjoyed reading the latest edition of Plot Twist featuring Emrakul, the Promised End. Next time you sit down for a game of Commander, see what sort of plot twists you can add to take the game's narrative in a new direction. I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's deck and what cards could find a home in it in the comments below or on Archidekt. The Maybeboards of my decklists are always filled with cards I thought could work but didn't make the final decklist.

You can check out my other articles here or see what decks I'm currently playing here. I've been tinkering around with my Signature Ikra/Bruse Secret Commander Wild Pair Deck lately, and really enjoying looking back at the deck now that I've gotten quite a few games under my belt with it. I'm constantly toying with new ideas like this Mono-Green 'Reanimator' Deck and Colorless Combo deck and would love to hear your thoughts on them there.

I'll be at MagicCon Chicago in February, so please come say 'hi' if you happen to see me there!

Stay tuned to see what other twists and turns are headed your way in the next edition of Plot Twist.