I was unsurprised when this week’s episode was voted on. UG has emerged as one of the leading archetypes of the format, with a lot of people advocating it as the most powerful deck to draft.
One reservation for the deck I’ve heard (and my own main concern) was that a lot of the good emerge cards are uncommon. Cards like Lashweed Lurker or Vexing Scuttler are great, but you can’t reliably pick them up, especially with how popular the archetype seems to be.
After my attempt to force UG, I continue to think that this is the big issue. It feels like other drafters are likely to be in the archetype and you won’t see a lot of the great emerge cards, which makes the supporting cards worse to take on speculation. Cards like Enlightened Maniac or Foul Emissary are great in emerge, but just average (or worse) outside of it so I wouldn’t recommend snagging them early thinking you can grab emerge later. It seems far more important to get a couple of good Emerge cards and then worry about picking up the payoff enabler creatures.
Because of the scarcity of emerge cards my top 5 commons are mostly just good UG cards, as that should be how you go into the deck. Even if you are short on emerge cards, I feel that Eldritch Moon is a less synergistic format than Shadows and you can get a good UG deck that just plays good removal and creatures. Then good emerge cards are a pleasant surprise instead of a necessity. Here are my choices for the top 5 commons:
1. Prey Upon
2. Ulvenwald Captive
3. Wretched Gryff
4. Ingenious Skaab
5. Drag Under
Ulvenwald Captive and Gryff were the hardest to place for me. I like Gryff and it’s a great start to building your deck around Emerge, but the flexibility of Captive (good early as ramp, good late as a beater) is huge and ramping up to your large emerge creatures is a great bonus. I can certainly see this changing in the revisit later and the ordering even now is largely dependant on what your deck already looks like.
To vote on the next episode of Full Force follow me on Twitter @IlyonMTG, or submit your vote in a comment below.
