CounterTop Emrakul [Premium Article]

[Smmenen]

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/19857_So_Many_Insane_Plays_CounterTop_Emrakul_in_Legacy.html

Editor's Blurb:


Monday, August 16th - At GenCon, Stephen Menendian rocked an exciting CounterTop Emrakul list in the Legacy Championship. Today, he takes us through his tournament performance in time for the StarCityGames.com Legacy Open in Denver.

Enjoy!

[majikal]

Hmmm, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the level of ubiquity that SnT is achieving.

[Silent Requiem]

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Show and Tell depends on not being matched up against people with equally broken permanents. The more Show and Tell decks there are, the worse they get.

-Silent Requiem

[emidln]

Show and Tell decks are also especially sketchy when the opponent can drop permanents that instant win the game such as Dream Halls, Aluren, and Hive Mind. Just because you're getting a 15/15, flying spaghetti monster doesn't mean your opponent has to care. Now I'm not necessarily saying the permanent-based combo decks are flying around, but leading up to Columbus Aluren and Hive Mind saw quite a bit of action.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Show and Tell decks are also especially sketchy when the opponent can drop permanents that instant win the game such as Dream Halls, Aluren, and Hive Mind. Just because you're getting a 15/15, flying spaghetti monster doesn't mean your opponent has to care. Now I'm not necessarily saying the permanent-based combo decks are flying around, but leading up to Columbus Aluren and Hive Mind saw quite a bit of action.

I can't read the article, but Emrakul, Karakas, and Jace 2.0 all trump S&T Emrakul, and all are sure to increase play, especially Jace.

[Eddy Wally]

Last time an opponent cast Show and Tell against me, he dropped an Emrakul, and I dropped a Knight of the Reliquary, with two fetches in the graveyard. Next turn I used it to go fetch my Karakas (maindeck, for some reason almost nobody maindecks that card here). Te game ended soon afterwards.

[kinda]

I can't actually read the article but from what I've gathered the deck is urg so it's not running thoughtseize and sb duress...which due to the problems mentioned seems pretty crucial.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Last time an opponent cast Show and Tell against me, he dropped an Emrakul, and I dropped a Knight of the Reliquary, with two fetches in the graveyard. Next turn I used it to go fetch my Karakas (maindeck, for some reason almost nobody maindecks that card here). Te game ended soon afterwards.

I've seen a good amount of MD Karakas. It's quickly becoming one of the best non-basics you can pack. If any deck that runs Legends you would actually want to return played any way of neutralizing Karakas they would be watering down their deck quite a bit in some way so it's a pretty solid choice if you have a good way of finding it.

[Aggro_zombies]

I can't read the article, but Emrakul, Karakas, and Jace 2.0 all trump S&T Emrakul, and all are sure to increase play, especially Jace.
There aren't a lot of decks that use more than one of those, though. You can generally figure out if they have Karakas in game one (since it's often main) and just bring in Needle. Also, REB and Pyroblast answer Jace and SnT and should be in the sideboard of every red deck going forward.

[dontbiteitholmes]

There aren't a lot of decks that use more than one of those, though. You can generally figure out if they have Karakas in game one (since it's often main) and just bring in Needle. Also, REB and Pyroblast answer Jace and SnT and should be in the sideboard of every red deck going forward.

True, but the problem is if your deck relies on S&T Emrakul, and you get trumped by any of the following scenarios in an impossible to counter manner, you can only get so far. The theory I guess I'm getting at is something many other people have already pointed out. The more popular Emrakul gets the worse S&T is.

[Aggro_zombies]

True, but the problem is if your deck relies on S&T Emrakul, and you get trumped by any of the following scenarios in an impossible to counter manner, you can only get so far. The theory I guess I'm getting at is something many other people have already pointed out. The more popular Emrakul gets the worse S&T is.
Well, the other thing about this is that most of the answers specifically for Emrakul are (a) terrible by themselves and (b) easy to predict and counter-answer. Jace is basically the only one that's good on its own, but at four mana it's a mite too slow versus SnT decks with Daze/Spell Pierce. The other cards that answer Emrakul tend to have lots of faults: Wasteland, Needle, and your own Karakas answer Karakas, which doesn't really do anything on its own other than get randomly Stone Rain'd by the opponent in Bant mirrors; Oblivion Ring is slow, terrible at answering things that aren't Emrakul, and Grippable; Humility is too expensive for the vast majority of decks and of questionable utility against tribal swarm decks; a deck like Aeon Bridge can circumvent an opponent's Emrakul by using discard before casting SnT.

As odd as it sounds, discard may be the second best answer to Emrakul in the format right now. Because Emrakul is basically always half of a two-card combo, black-based decks packing a solid suite of Thoughtseize, Duress, and a discard-two (Hymn or Verdict) should be able to pick apart the opponent's hand before he can assemble the mana to get Emrakul into play somehow. Furthermore, a black aggro-control deck like The Gate can answer an Emrakul off of a resolved SnT through Edict effects. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your viewpoint), decks like this are fairly uncommon and have a number of weak matchups that make them relatively unattractive right now: tribal swarm decks are rough and Vengevine Survival decks look set to spike in popularity. However, something more along the lines of Brad Nelson's Junk deck from Columbus may be the correct answer to those issues, so we'll see.

It's also worth noting that, in many cases - if not most of them - getting an Emrakul into play against someone without an answer already waiting is GG. There aren't many decks that can find an answer in the one turn they'll still have the lands to cast it.

[Amon Amarth]

I really like the deck Steve! Did you ever find yourself SB'ing out BW in favor of more consistency like the extra Show and Tell and Firespout?

[Cabal_chan]

I guess there's no chance of a list being posted for discussion?

[Eddy Wally]

I wouldn't recommend Karakas as an answer if you're not also running at least two KotR's. Without it, Karakas is the most useless of all possible answers to Emrakul. If you don't use the Knight, play with either ORing or Jace 2.