Emrakul, the World Anew Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on July 8, 2024

Emrakul, the World Anew | Illustration by Mark Tedin

Has Emrakul escaped from being Imprisoned in the Moon in that sweet art by Brent Hollowell on Emrakul, the World Anew? Are the Eldrazi going to take advantage of the Omenpaths and the havoc created by the Phyrexians to once again drive the multiverse mad? Or are we doing a little Modern Horizons 3 flashbacking here to see the original imprisoning?

Either way, the new Emrakul is ready to totally dominate Commander pods with an on-point madness ability that’s new for the Eldrazi. Let’s take a look at how to maximize Emrakul, the World Anew!

The Deck

Endbringer | Illustration by Adam Paquette

The Commander: Emrakul, the World Anew

Emrakul, the World Anew is another super powerful Eldrazi titan colorless commander that’s pretty hard to build a deck around given its color identity, but it’s well worth it when it comes down. Because Emrakul steals creatures and then sacrifices them when it leaves the battlefield, the idea is to return it to hand to cast again to manage the other opponents’ stuff. The madness cost potentially helps you cast it twice in a turn, maybe three times if you have a ton of artifact ramp out. And the protection means you can lose only to a board wipe or like a wacky time counter manipulated suspended removal spell in a Doctor Who deck.

To get the Magical Christmasland outcome, you need to run few creatures to avoid having to sacrifice them, a ton of colorless mana ramp, quite a bit of colorless bounce spells, and likely some colorless discard outlets. Plenty of folks are brewing it this way, but this feels like the glassiest of cannons to me. One Vandalblast or Farewell, even a Counterspell at the opportune time, which you’ll be doing nothing but telegraphing the entire game by the way, and your day is wrecked.

My first thought was that the best version would be like a Dimir () madness deck, which barely exists, although in that space the cheap Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator or Rona, Herald of Invasion / Rona, Tolarian Obliterator would be likely leaders. Dimir gives you access to black ramp, black tutors, blue spells for bouncing, and the classic Dimir control suite of countermagic and removal.

But sometimes you want to sit down at a table at your LGS with your Giant Spaghetti Monster in your command zone and just see what happens.

The other way to build the deck is as classic colorless Eldrazi typal/ramp, which is what you see and maybe have tried to get whatever Ulamog or Kozilek out fast with a good supporting cast of big colorless beaters. The trouble with that strategy is that it doesn’t take advantage of Emrakul’s cool abilities. On the other hand, it has the advantage of not losing the game to a Meltdown.

This deck does a bit of both. I’ve packed enough Eldrazi threats so opponents can’t just save their board wipes for your commander and so that you have something to do when artifacts are wiped. But there’s also enough of the Emrakul shenanigans to be able to do the thing you want to do when the time is right. It’s slower getting to Christmasland because you’re feinting with your other creatures. This kind of bait and switch is skill-testing, but that’s where the fun comes in.

Command Zone Violation Package

The most fun you can have with this deck is to shift Emrakul from the command zone to your hand using the only two colorless cards that do that, Geode Golem and Command Beacon. Then with a discard outlet, you can really get your titan out quickly.

Unfortunately, there’s not a ton of ways to tutor up the Beacon, but you do have Expedition Map and Urza's Saga, plus Inventors' Fair to get the Map. You could slot in Transmutation Font, but I don’t think it has enough support in this deck.

Madness Enablers

Assuming you get that or the bounce plan to work, you want to discard Emrakul to cast with a discount. And we have a few cards that do that, Geier Reach Sanitarium in the lands slot and six artifacts:

• Collector's Vault
• Key to the City
• Matzalantli, the Great Door / The Core
• The Underworld Cookbook
• Toymaker

All of these also have utility. I’m especially looking forward to the janky option of using Toymaker in this context.

The Bounce House

Once you have Emrakul down and have yoinked an opponent’s creatures, you need to get the titan back to hand to make them cry and then maybe madness it out again. Colorless is much less efficient herewith a surfeit of 4-drops:

• Blood Clock
• Erratic Portal
• Medicine Bag
• Umbilicus
• Decoction Module

You could also try Ancestral Statue and Guardians of Koilos, but I’d rather have something repeatable, especially given the mana values we’re talking about.

Creatures

This deck has a decent number of other creatures, but not a huge number, and they serve very specific purposes.

There are cost reducers and colorless mana dorks, of course:

• Conduit of Ruin
• Hedron Crawler
• It That Heralds the End
• Manakin
• Palladium Myr
• Warden of Geometries

Spawnbed Protector is also ramp, but it’s also a nice piece of graveyard recursion.

Everything else is some form of alternative top end threat, and you’ve got about ten of those, including titans like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and value engines like Endbringer.

Spells & Enchantments

This deck has a limited number of spells, nine exactly. There just are a limited number of colorless spells, and because we’re packing two strategies into the deck, I’ve pruned the simple pieces like Titan's Presence that you’d expect in an Eldrazi deck. Instead, there’s instant speed interaction like Null Elemental Blast as both removal, counterspell, or both, and big showy spells like All Is Dust. The lone enchantment is Echoes of Eternity which is so much fun with a titan trigger, so we’re doing it!

Planeswalkers

There are two colorless planeswalkers, Ugin, the Ineffable for value and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon because it’s an awesome piece of destruction for a colorless deck!

Artifacts

There are a lot of artifacts here. In addition to what’s already been noted, there’s a ton of ramp, ranging from Sol Ring to Thran Dynamo. This list has less of the big mana ramp artifacts than other Emrakul lists because of diminishing returns, and I’d rather get out quicker with my other creatures and utility artifacts, hence a lot of two mana rocks like The Irencrag. Of note is Urza's Incubator, which, yes, does in fact reduce the cost of casting Emrakul via madness!

The Mana Base

Aside from the ramp packages, this deck has a hefty number of lands, most of which are colorless lands that provide additional utility, ranging from Bonders' Enclave to Field of the Dead to Witch's Clinic. Note that War Room works extra special well in a colorless deck!

The Strategy

Ramp, ramp, ramp. Next?

Seriously, though, ramp is your priority. Then drop looting effects like Collector's Vault if you can. Those help you to find things, even if the Emrakul madness bit isn’t close yet.

Then you have a decision point, based on what cards you draw and what you’re afraid of most.

You could start leaning into mid-level creature threats like Endbringer or you could start dropping utility pieces to mess around with Emrakul, like Erratic Portal. If you’re afraid they’re holding up creature removal, you want to drop bounce effects, which can help against creature removal and might lead them to using their Swords to Plowshares on someone else’s threat. If you feel imminent board wipes, this is also good to drop, especially so that you can save a creature or two when the hammer is dropped. Always keep up the mana to bounce something if you can afford to during this stage.

However, if it feels like someone is holding mass artifact removal, especially if someone at the table is begging to be hit this way, like a Shorikai, Genesis Engine deck, then maybe drop more creature threats and hold back a discard outlet and a bounce source while you keep dropping mana rocks and working to get your other titans in the deck out.

If everyone just tutored up their Farewell and are waiting, you just lose, kind of. They don’t make enough interaction in colorless to deal with that kind of thing, and depending on the table, slow playing may not be an option as the control player sits back and lets the token player attack you first.

If you get to the place where you can cast Emrakul, note that bouncing it will make you sacrifice your creatures, so make sure you aren’t leaving powerful value on the table. All the more reason to attack and block aggressively if there’s a good window. Your creatures aren’t going to be around for the endgame, no matter what.

As much as possible I’d use a player’s creatures to the best effect before I bounce Emrakul. Because the only realistic way for most players to remove your commander is a board wipe, expect those to be hoarded and ready to go. You don’t need to worry about sacrificing all the creatures quickly. They’re doomed either way.

Have a bounce effect ready to go, but sit on it until you need to.

Once you have Emrakul, the World Anew in your hand, either because of a Command Beacon play or from bounce, note that madness allows you to cast it on an opponent’s turn. Doing that and yoinking their creatures on the last end step before your turn is the big game here.

Finally, note that once you get your commander down, you may become the archenemy. You’re probably good to deal with that at that point, but just so you’re ready. Your deck is scary when it works. But you’re also rarely going to get a lot of early allies against an earlier archenemy if players all have creature based endgames, which is most of them! Your deck obviates their decks! But blue control players will team up with you because they’ll be confident in their ability to counter your commander and will often have a wincon that doesn’t involve creatures, so they aren’t afraid of you. It’s probably good, then, to do the EDH politics thing and help the aggro players defeat control players first, as odd as that might feel.

Combos and Interactions

This deck is pretty straightforward, and what I’ve covered thus far is about it.

Rule 0 Violations Check

During that rule 0 conversation, though, if someone suggests everyone switch out Farewell from their decks because that card ruins all fun, absolutely join in! You can even volunteer to lose one of your board wipes for that, as your commander is your ultimate board wipe!

Budget Options

I have bad news for you, there really aren’t any!

But if we assume that you already have a mix of Eldrazi titans and top end and snagged an Emrakul in Modern Horizons 3 Draft or Sealed and are here to figure out how to finish the deck, you can cut some of the more expensive lands for what you have around or for some Wastes. You can also lose the titans in the creature slots and replace them with other threats or ramp.

Other Builds

The other options flip about a dozen cards. One loses a lot of creatures and adds more ramp and the remaining colorless loot and bounce cards, however inefficient. Another loses most of that package and piles on the classic Eldrazi creatures. I prefer splitting the difference.

Commanding Conclusion

Inventors' Fair | Illustration by Jonas De Ro

I think this is a new and fun take if you’re into Eldrazi commanders and are looking to do something different than ramp to annihilator creatures. But it’s a balance between the utility pieces and the ramp. If you give this a try, be sure to let us know how it fell for your deck in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord.

I also think this Emrakul, perhaps alone of all of her cards, is a nice inclusion in the 99 in other decks, especially madness decks of various kinds that can manage the colorless mana requirements. I’m very pumped to see this card in action. And I’m pretty positive that excitement is my own. There are no wet, whispering, gibbering voices in the shadows just beyond sight driving me to say these things as my sanity slowly slides down a crumbling precipice into infinity. Definitely not.

Happy brewing, and may you never run out of sanity counters!