Due to the prevalence of Spell Queller and Reflector Mage in Standard, Emerge is one of the most interesting mechanics in Eldritch Moon. This mechanic allows you to cast giant monsters that are out of Spell Queller range, and which have powerful triggers when you cast them that help fight against removal spells and Reflector Mage. The real question is what the best way to enable the Emerge strategy is. We’ve seen some takes with Green creatures and Cryptolith Rites, but Chris VanMeter has a different idea:

[Cardlist title= Black-Blue Emerge ? Eldritch Moon Standard | Chris VanMeter]

• Creatures (29)
• 2 Voldaren Pariah
• 3 Wharf Infiltrator
• 4 Cryptbreaker
• 4 Distended Mindbender
• 4 Elder Deep-Fiend
• 4 Haunted Dead
• 4 Prized Amalgam
• 4 Stitchwing Skaab

• Spells (7)
• 3 Collective Brutality
• 4 Kozilek's Return

• Lands (24)
• 4 Island
• 6 Swamp
• 2 Smoldering Marsh
• 4 Choked Estuary
• 4 Sanctum of Ugin
• 4 Sunken Hollow

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
• 2 Languish
• 2 Sinister Concoction
• 2 Voldaren Pariah
• 3 Negate
• 4 Liliana, the Last Hope

Buy This Deck

This is a really interesting deck that pushes some of the wacky graveyard interactions in Standard right now. Notice the Haunted Dead, Prized Amalgam, and Stitchwing Skaab as creatures that can be cheated into play and used for Emerge fodder, as well as the full four Kozilek's Return with zero Red sources anywhere in the 75. If nothing else, this is definitely a deck that knows exactly what it wants to be doing and doesn’t mess around with anything else.

The key is cheap discard outlets. Collective Brutality and Wharf Infiltrator function as quick ways to start dumping creatures in your graveyard. Cryptbreaker is a powerful discard engine that also gives you a way to grind out card advantage in longer games. The real goal is for you to start sifting through your deck for giant monsters and getting creatures into your graveyard. The strength of this plan is that all of these discard outlets can come down before Spell Queller is active, and you don’t really need to cast any other "Quellable" spells.

Phase two of the plan is to rebuy creatures from your graveyard. Haunted Dead is a reasonably sized body that comes with a chump blocker attached, and Stitchwing Skaab is a huge roadblock early on in the game. Sure, you have to invest a ton of resources to buy these cards back, but the ability to rebuy Prized Amalgams mitigates this somewhat. Even bigger, these abilities can be activated at instant-speed, which minimizes your vulnerability to Reflector Mage.

The reason this matters is because you can untap and start casting giant Emerge monsters like Elder Deep-Fiend and Distended Mindbender, which allow you to generate huge swings of card advantage and tempo. You even have Sanctum of Ugin to help tutor up additional monsters, allowing you to chain together Elder Deep-Fiends to win the game, or just bury your opponent in cards. These giant creatures even trigger any Kozilek's Returns that you’ve managed to discard early on in the game, sweeping up any of your opponent’s pressure and allowing you to take over an empty board.

There may be a lot of moving pieces in this deck, but there’s also a lot of redundancy. Ten initial discard outlets, eight creatures to cheat back in, eight giant monsters, and both Prized Amalgam and Voldaren Pariah to help fill in the gaps. This is a deck that does something enormously powerful, but can just misfire or line up poorly against the format. I don’t know whether or not this graveyard strategy is good enough to keep up with the likes of Collected Company, but I’m excited to find out!