Emrakul, the Promised End – Innistrad Remastered
Date Reviewed: October 31, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed: 4.67
Casual: 5.00
Limited: 4.92
Multiplayer: 4.50
Commander [EDH]: 4.67
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
There’s a lot of Eldrazi that fit well as a Halloween review in terms of look or concept, but the one who fits best in terms of the total package – including gameplay – is Emrakul. And it’s not really that close. Any version of her would work, but we’ve gone with the Eldritch Moon variant, a representation of her at the time when Nahiri drew her to Innistrad and the plane was very nearly destroyed. She’s not the version of choice for truly degenerate decks like Vintage’s Oath of Druids, but she brings certain types of fear and dread that the other ones can’t match. For example, she’s more plausible for comparatively normal decks to cast in the conventional way, and in the right circumstances she can disrupt opponents’ ability to resist even more than the Aeons Torn does with an extra turn. “Promised End” is a great title for this iteration of the sky goddess of madness: she’s as testing as mortality and as inevitable as autumn, and casts a long shadow of dread any time someone starts counting card types in their graveyard.
Constructed: 5
Casual: 5
Limited: 5
Multiplayer: 4.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
What better a choice for Halloween than everyone’s favorite, insanity-inducing flying mass of tentacles? It’s been nearly 10 years since Emrakul, showed up to wreck the plane of Innistrad, and I would joke that she’s sorely missed; she’s technically around, waiting to escape the moon and bring back the terror of Eldritch Moon anew.
Emrakul, the Promised End is certainly horrifying when you take it in sum. The main horror comes in her Mindslaver effect; while you do still give an opponent a free turn afterwards, they do lose that first turn to her, and that can often be back-breaking in terms of you playing all their resources out in the least-effectual way possible. And that’s not to get into the cost-reduction ability she has baked in; she’ll almost never cost 13 mana, and while you’re unlikely to get her down to her current minimum cost of 4 mana, spending six or seven amna to ruin an opponent’s day and be left with a flying tentacle monster that’s more than capable of ending games on her own is a good investment. Protection from instants also does a fair bit of work in keeping her from just getting sniped immediately, and the result is a sticky, horrifying boss monster that you can just burn all the answers to.
Emrakul, the Promised End was a horrifying force in her Standard, and she’s held a small foothold in Modern as the top-end threat of a deck centered around turboing her out in a timely fashion. She’s never quite established the pedigree of her fifteen-mana forebear, though; she wants to be properly cast owing to a lack of annihilator to absolutely obliterate a board, and while 13 power is certainly nothing to sneeze at, if you are going to Through the Breach an Eldrazi, she won’t be your first choice. Still, as far as inducing terror at a table, you could do far worse than this Emrakul.
Constructed: 4 (a bit particular, but a deck centered around her can do a lot of damage)
Casual: 5
Limited: 4.75 (exceptionally hard to answer, and ends games quickly if you can cast her)
Multiplayer: 4 (you can only control one player, but two turns are better than one)
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
Thijs
A true horror, that is what Emrakul is. She costs a bunch, but she also does a bunch. A terrifying force that makes you gain control of an opponent for a full turn. Yes, that opponent is promised an extra turn afterward, but they’re not gonna need it, are they? Because they will undoubtedly die anyway.
As James mentioned, Emrakul made some waves in Standard when she was first printed in Eldritch Moon, and she still scares players when played today. In the category ‘I have to respond this now‘, she will always come out on top.
No hesitations, a 5 all around. Great card.
Constructed: 5
Casual: 5
Limited: 5
Multiplayer: 5
Commander [EDH]: 5
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