EDH Series: Emrakul, the Promised End

'Only one vault was great enough to hold Emrakul.'

Emrakul, the Promised End Artwork by Jaime Jones

Emrakul, the Promised End EDH Deck on tapped out.net

What inspired you to build this deck?

While playing in the 2HG Prerelease with my friend, Brandon, I was lucky enough to open this beautiful monster as my Prerelease promo card and new immediately I had to build a deck with it. Colorless EDH decks are very uncommon and most of them play Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or Kozilek, the Great Distortion as ways to refuel cards in the late game. Naturally, if I'm going to play sleeve up the Eldrazi Titans, I'm going to play the biggest titan possible as my commander. For this deck, I chose to run the new Titans (Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and Kozilek, the Great Distortion) because the Annihilator ability on the older Titans makes what they do very linear and I didn't want the deck to be overshadowed by that.

A few things I want to note about this deck is a 39 land count. I typically start my decks off at 38 lands because I can consistently hit land 6-8, which I feel are the most important ones for the average deck. For Emrakul and her arsenal, the deck is very mana hungry and we often want to see lands 10+, so in addition to the artifact mana ramp like Thran Dynamo, Worn Powerstone, and Burnished Hart, we do often see opening hands with 3-5 lands and are happy to keep them. As I play the deck more, I can even see going to a 40th land at some point.

The next sweet thing about this deck is the Salvaging Station package that allows us to recur some interaction and advantage in the late game. We have access to Scrabbling Claws (fantastic card), Expedition Map (amazing card), Universal Solvent, and Codex Shredder as great targets to re-use over and over as the game drags on.

The last thing I wanted to touch on was Krark-Clan Ironworks and mention that it is the best card in the deck. Although my deck isn't built to do anything degenerate, the Krark-Clan Ironworks allows us to invest our cheap artifacts into a huge boost of mana and pump out a very early Emrakul, the Promised End that most opponent's are not able to defend against so early in the game. The artifact also has incredible synergy with the Salvaging Station package and loops using Scrap Trawler, Myr Retriever, and Junk Diver as ways to rebuy cards and generate a lot of advantage, while also producing mana.

Eldritch Moon Prerelease

What is your favorite part about playing this deck?

This deck has a lot of staying power and has the ability to survive some pretty hairy situations since so many of our spells are so powerful: Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, Perilous Vault, and Planar Portal to name a few. Even most of our lands have abilities, so we always have something to do with our mana at almost every point in the game. Consequentially, you often have a ton of different options every turn, which can make identifying the best line really difficult. Personally, I really enjoy the challenge of finding the best lines (or seemingly best) out of a sea of options. Naturally, you'll mistakes as you play, but having so many different abilities allows you to recover from mistakes which makes for great gameplay.

Emrakul, the Promised... quite frankly she's a HUGE beater in the air and terrifying to fight against. Watching opponent's try to play around her triggered ability is pretty amusing. For the table, it's so difficult for our opponents to create a reasonable board state, but not look too threatening that I would want to Mindslaver them. The deck creates some fantastic politics and it's very enjoyable to play.

Did Amonkhet bring any new cards for you to use?

Well, not quite. However, the Kaladesh block before it brought some sweet artifact support that I was eager to try out. Inventors' Fair being the best card printed, it's a land that gives you a small amount of life with each turn and allows you to tutor out an artifact from your library, which can help you find your Krark-Clan Ironworks in the midgame or find Mindslaver, Platinum Angel, or Oblivion Stone in the late game.

We also received Planar Bridge as an interesting addition. I don't believe it's as powerful as Planar Portal since you can find spells with Planar Portal and the activation of 6 mana is significantly easier to reach than 8, but the bridge puts any permanent from the deck in play, allowing it to be a very slow toolbox for your high-impact permanents.

Thanks for joining me for another Deck Tech of some of my EDH projects I've been working on it. Let me know if you've also made an Emrakul, the Promised deck and what cool deck designs you've done with her!

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-David J.