Hollow Praise: Standard Devoid Emrakul

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Introduction

In Magic’s stories, the appearance of an Eldrazi Titan often signals an ending, and the finale of Reality Fracture is no exception.
As the pinnacle of the Eldrazi, Emrakul gets her fourth version in this set, Emrakul, the Exigent Doom, and the friend of the Eldrazi, Ugin, Eye of the Storms, is also in the card pool. When these two ancient beasts come together, can they spark something in Standard?

Deck Analysis

Decklist

As the list shows, the game plan of this deck is to ramp out Ugin, Eye of the Storms, control the board, and then knock out your opponent with powerful threats like Emrakul. Although the basic land configuration includes Wastes, there is no particular reason for this deck to use Wastes, so readers can configure basic lands however they like.

• Deck core: Emrakul, the Exigent Doom, Ugin, Eye of the Storms, and The Echoverse Fulcrum

Emrakul, the Exigent Doom: Emrakul version 4.0, fasting for a long time. The card itself is not as strong as earlier versions, but it still has the body of a finisher that closes the game in two hits, and it can also be used as early ramp, adding quite a bit of flexibility to the deck.

Ugin, Eye of the Storms: The core card of the colorless theme. It comes with one exile of a colored permanent when cast, and gives the other colorless spells you cast afterward the ability to exile an additional colored permanent, which is a strong suppressor against permanent-based decks. Its ultimate can search your library for “any number of colorless nonland cards and cast them for free this turn.” This loyalty ability, almost useless in colored decks, becomes a game-winning super finisher in a colorless deck.

The Echoverse Fulcrum: An indispensable artifact sweeper for slow colorless decks, an improved version of Oblivion Stone, so to speak. It enters for two mana to loot once, and sweeps for five mana, the same total cost as Oblivion Stone, but its two-mana body is better for tempo. The drawback is that it’s legendary and its enter-the-battlefield ability doesn’t gain resources, so you shouldn’t run too many.

• Ramp strategy: The Irencrag, Long-Bodied Grey Dog, and Weather Maker

The Irencrag: A two-mana mana rock that, in the late game when Emrakul enters, can become Equipment to boost a lone creature’s combat power. Incidentally, after becoming Equipment its name also changes to “Everflame, Heroes’ Legacy,” so it can coexist with an Irencrag that hasn’t become Equipment.

Long-Bodied Grey Dog: A ramp creature with built-in reach that can flash in to ambush your opponent’s small attacking flyers, and with Ugin on the battlefield it can instantly exile your opponent’s colored permanent.

Weather Maker: Another three-mana ramp engine, which gets you one extra mana after two land drops. In the late game with plenty of mana, it can also convert counters directly into Lightning Bolt to clear the board or go face.

• Removal and support: Boom Box, Extinguisher Battleship, Soul-Guide Lantern, and Mazemind Tome

Boom Box: A one-for-three removal artifact. Although the activation cost is clunky, doing it once effectively suppresses your opponent’s board development, so I run four.

Extinguisher Battleship: A spaceship that both sweeps and removes a single target, which can be stationed with Emrakul to activate as a 10/10 flying finisher.

Soul-Guide Lantern: A filler artifact that cycles, can be sacrificed directly to exile your opponent’s graveyard, and as a main-deck card suppresses annoying graveyard-interaction decks.

Mazemind Tome: A resource engine that scries early to adjust your draws, draws cards in the midgame, and after four uses also gains life, improving the deck’s staying power.

Gameplay Demo

Although Emrakul 4.0 looks flashy, she is actually not that hard to deal with, especially since her ward doesn’t restrict nonland permanents, so your opponent can just sacrifice three lands and be done with it, which is not a particularly harsh price in the late game. Ugin is the real soul of the deck. Especially after activating the ultimate, you can directly pull a new Ugin onto the battlefield to fill in, then leisurely cast the colorless cards one by one for free, filling your own board while wiping your opponent’s nonland cards off the table, and even use the Boom Box and Extinguisher Battleship you pulled out to blow up lands. This is a thrilling development that other decks with Ugin can’t do.

Conclusion

As mentioned above, there is no reason for this deck to make all its lands colorless, and stuffing in colorless spells also means card efficiency is not great. In addition, colorless cards in the Standard pool lack ways to interact with your opponent’s hand and spells, so you easily fall behind against control decks, and one slip means you can’t hold on. If any readers want to build it to play, I suggest mixing in colors to suit your own needs, such as adding white or red to strengthen board control, green to improve ramp efficiency, or blue or black to counter your opponent’s spell threats, all of which should be more stable and better than this colorless version. I look forward to readers developing their own colored Standard Tron decks!