Even the Bad Eldrazi are still Good: Fun & Jank Episode 52

Welcome back to Fun & Jank! . This week we’re stepping off the usual untiered path and poking a very real Tiered deck: Eldrazi. Sometimes Historic doesn’t reward innovation, and I wanted to explore the mentality of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

We’re still going to put a little bit of a spin on it, cause this is Fun & Jank after all, but I wanted to mainly see how far we can stress and bend the framework that makes these decks so powerful.

If you’ve played Historic at all since the release of EOE, you’d know that Eldrazi is force to be reckoned with after gaining Eldrazi Temple. Ugin’s Labyrinth and Temple function as eight sol-lands; Cavern of Souls cleans up the counterspell problem; Kozilek’s Command quietly covers ramp, removal, card quality, and graveyard pressure. Many of the payoffs have cast triggers, so even your countered creatures still get value. That’s why RG/UG shells crowd the ladder: they’re fast, consistent, and hard to punish.

This episode pushes on a simpler claim: when the frame is this strong, can the “lesser” spaghetti monsters still carry matches? Last week, I streamed a variety of different takes. A Simic list focusing on the underplayed Emerge ability, and a Mono-Red list trying to stay a bit lower to the ground than traditional builds.

Let’s take a look.

UG Emerge

The Deck

Record: 5–1 on stream.

Emerge already cheats on mana. When you pair that with eight sol-lands (Ugin’s Labyrinth + Eldrazi Temple), the deck reliably lands seven- and eight-drops on turn 3–4. The payoffs, Elder Deep-Fiend and Twisted Riddlekeeper, also attack your opponent’s mana. You tap their lands on upkeep, tax their untaps, and then chain into another one with with Sanctum of Ugin while swinging for 5+ damage each turn.

Matter Reshaper and the pair that over-performed for me, Eldrazi Repurposer and Snapping Voidclaw, fuel our higher end emerge creatures quite cleanly. You develop a board of cheap, replaceable bodies (besides Voidclaw); when you cash one in to emerge, you effectively get three to five mana off the sticker price and you’re not down a card. Reshaper dies and hands you another resource; Repurposer/Voidclaw each give you material on the way through the exchange, so the “sacrifice” feels more like a refund than a cost.

This is why the deck hits those turn-3/4 Elder Deep-Fiend and Twisted Riddlekeeper windows without green dorks. I originally tried to fit both Utopia Sprawl and Hierarch in this list, but the mana was just too inconsistent trying to run all those forests. The Sol lands alongside the mana created with Command, Repurposer, or Voidclaw was plenty enough emerge our bigger bodies without a problem.

Beyond the emerge core, the glue cards matter. Nulldrifter is the cleanest demonstration of what the deck wants in terms of supporting cards. Pitchable to Labyrinth, easy to evoke on turn 2 for gas, and a decently sized late-game threat. I also kept a single Wretched Gryff as the redundant copy that keeps emerge density high without flooding the deck with more 7s than we can reasonably cast through interaction.

Thought-Knot Seer is the only four drop we’ll never cut. It punishes slow hands, scouts for sweepers before we commit a chain, and because the hand-rip is on cast, it still trades up through counterspells. Ugin’s Binding pulls similar weight on the stack: not a hard counter, but a tempo clamp that mirrors our game plan. I can’t even begin to tell you good it feels when an earlier Binding lines up with an upkeep Elder Deep-Fiend, you get the feel of a full Time Walk without ever tapping more than a couple of lands.

I don’t think I need to explain why K-Command is so good. It’s perfect. No notes.

I do want to draw your attention to Sanctum of Ugin though. This card is what allows us to basically “lock” our opponent out of the game once we get a chain going. Let’s say you cast your first Riddlekeeper on turn 3, of off a sol land and a Repurposer. Sanctum triggers, finds you another Riddlekeeper or Deep-Fiend. You get to tap down your opponent’s lands, get a 5/5 on the board, and another Eldrazi in hand. Then on your following turn, you can emerge your tutored creature off of the original one you played the previous turn. If you happen to have more in hand or another Sanctum to play, it’s very common to chain these together for 2 or 3 turns in a row, setting your opponent waaayyy behind while you crash in for 5 damage each turn. Absolute gas!

Side slots are pragmatic rather than cute.
Stubborn Denial and Consign to Memory protect the turn-three window against sweepers and mirrors without dragging the curve up.

Rapid Hybridization cleans up problem bodies at one mana once you’ve committed to a chain of emerge creatures.

Pithing Needle is for bricking walkers and activated engines when Ugin’s Binding isn’t enough.

Torpor Orb comes in when against value based list. Life gain, Boros, Val Combo, etc.

Wastescape Battlemage is the flexible role-player. Great at removing problematic permanents in the early game, and can be used to emerge something later on.

Gameplay

Redrazi

The Deck

Record: 7-0 on stream

The core pressure for this list comes from Eldrazi Linebreaker turning every stray token into immediate haste damage, and Voidpouncer playing the part of “Reality Smasher at home.” Honestly I brewed this strictly so I had an excuse to play Voidpouncer. You can cast Pouncer as a serviceable two-drop when you must, but most of the time you kick it off Ugin’s Labyrinth/Eldrazi Temple as a 5/3 with haste and trample.

Linebreaker is the “multiplier” so to speak and the best card in the deck. It scales off the token noise you’re already making from Glaring Fleshraker and Kozilek’s Command, turning “go wide” into “go tall” which is how the deck steals games on turn four and forces sweepers on-curve. We’ve had multiple games where we got to play a Linebreaker on turn two into another one on turn three, and it’s absolutely back breaking

I wanted this list to stay intentionally low to the ground, so no green splashes for Mycospawn or World Breaker. It’s literally just aggressive creatures, Thought-Knot Seer to rip the stabilizer, and some burn as extra removal and reach.

Obviously we have to play some 7+ mana value creatures to fuel our Labyrinths, so I went with literally I felt like haha. I figured Sire was the best beater we could cast ahead of curve, and Devourer would help smooth out our opening hands.

The spice is Herigast, Erupting Nullkite. When it lands, your whole team gains emerge, so random bodies upgrade into real threats on discount: Bonecrusher into Sire of Seven Deaths, Voidouncer into Devourer of Destiny, etc. It’s a 6/6 flyer that also converts stalled boards into immediate pressure, and the red sources plus Caverns made the double red in its cost easy to cast. The fact that it also refills our hand made it more and more impressive every time I got to cast it.

A few other stream notes to anchor expectations: the deck curved Pouncer like a true finisher multiple times. It really did the Smasher impression when kicked, and closed several games without heavy sideboarding.

Ramunap Ruins mattered as reach in stalled states, giving us a way to finish when we were just two or three points short. Overall record on the session was clean and, frankly, a reminder that with Labyrinth + Temple + Cavern and K-Command, almost any Eldrazi variant enjoys a power floor that embarrasses a lot of “fair” midrange.

This deck wins by compressing the game to three or four turns. The sideboard exists to keep the clock intact while deleting the one axis a matchup actually fights on.

Chalice of the Void Your best hate piece. On the play vs spell/combo (Lotus, Phoenix, Wizards), X=1 turns off cantrips, bolts, opt-effects, Surveil engines, and half their protection. On the draw, still bring it, but don’t mulligan to it because your fastest hands race cleanly without help.

Magebane Lizard is our “resolve me or die” threat into spell piles. It taxes multi-spelling and makes counter wars miserable. Post-Chalice, it pushes them into clunky turns where Voidpouncer and Linebreaker punish.

Pyroclasm is to respect go-wides (boros, lifegain, random token shells). It clears the first wave so your five-power hits actually connect. With Linebreaker, you often wipe, then immediately present haste damage from leftover bodies/K-Command.

Abrade is just flexible removal that also answers artifacts for us.

Dismember Fixes the “can’t kill that” problem (Greasefang bodies, Sheoldred, etc). The life loss does hurt though. I’ll usually try to sequence it after Thought-Knot Seer has already stripped their stabilizer.

Unlicensed Hearse Stops recursion and shrinks delve/escape math while doubling as a must-answer threat. Board it in whenever graveyards are a plan, not just incidental value.

Gameplay

Closing Thoughts

Eldrazi’s success in Historic isn’t a mystery; it’s the infrastructure that makes it so powerful. Labyrinth + Temple push tempo, Cavern lowers risk, K-Command hides variance, and cast triggers blunt interaction. That frame is so powerful that it lifts non-headliners to become game-winning on their own.

Our two proofs pulled in opposite directions but both were able to clear the bar. UG Emerge powered out beaters that denied mana. We flashed inDeep-Fiend on upkeep or stunned lands with Riddlekeeper to take our opponent out of the game. Voidpouncer and Linebreaker are some of the cheaper Eldrazi we have access too and showed that you don’t have to just go tall in this archetype, you can go fast too.

So yeah, this was more of an exercise rather than a true out-of-the-box brew. I feel like the core or “frame” of Eldrazi is basically solved, but how you build around that skeleton is the real sandbox. You can basically pick whatever flavors of this deck you want, and the core is good enough to do all the heavy lifting and win you games on its own.

Thanks for reading.

As always feel free to comment and leave any questions you have below! Make sure to come back next week for even more Fun & Jank!

If you want to see these decks in action, come hang out with me on stream (also streaming on youtube now!) where we test, refine, and have a ton of fun together!

Happy Brewin!