This was an easy deck to gloss over. It’s natural to assume it’s yet another copy of Bant Eldrazi, which was once a new entry into the format but has since become a staple. That means it’s about time people come up with cool new riffs on the deck, like the one I have for you today.
First off, the white cards are gone. It’s easier on the mana, and while Eldrazi Displacer and Drowner of Hope are fantastic together, there’s a new, more aggressive plan for breaking through stalled battlefields here: emerge creatures.
Elder Deep-Fiend is a great follow-up to Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher, either tapping your opponent’s lands on their upkeep or tapping all their blockers to set up a lethal alpha strike. On the off chance your attack isn’t lethal, Sanctum of Ugin is there to ensure you get to rinse, lather, and most importantly repeat that line of play on the next turn.
And if your opponent has a huge battlefield of creatures, that Sanctum of Ugin can instead go way over the top by tutoring for the singleton copy of Decimator of the Provinces. I don’t know why the piggy only slaughters one out of every ten provinces it comes across, but you don’t argue with animals that are large and ravenous. That’s just common sense.
If we want to utilize emerge creatures, we need fodder, so in addition to Eldrazi Skyspawner, this deck plays Kitchen Finks in the slot where Eldrazi Displacer used to be. It’s certainly tough on the mana and I’m sure Cavern of Souls names Ouphe more often than you’d like in this deck, but there’s no other option that’s even close to the level of Kitchen Finks, so the risky play makes sense. If you want an extra colored mana source, a single Flooded Grove could potentially slot in over a colorless land to preserve the count of the latter.
The last significant loss in cutting white is Path to Exile, and while Vapor Snag is a downgrade, it may not be as large of one as you would think. This deck is playing a faster game than Bant Eldrazi, so bounce increases in value relative to removal, and the extra point of damage is free value that will change some small but nonzero percentage of games.
As long as Eldrazi Temple is around, these Eldrazi decks aren’t going anywhere, so we might as well play around with them and see what else is the shell is capable of.
Creatures (27)
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 3 Kitchen Finks
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 3 Eldrazi Skyspawner
- 4 Reality Smasher
- 4 Thought-Knot Seer
- 4 Matter Reshaper
- 3 Elder Deep-Fiend
- 1 Decimator of the Provinces
Lands (23)
Spells (10)
