The biggest winner coming out of Pro Tour Eldritch Moon has to be Emrakul, the Promised End. The flagship card of the set had an enormous impact on the Standard format, and was the lynchpin of a number of the most successful Standard strategies. One of these was the Temur Emerge strategy that put two players into the Top 8 and took Owen Turtenwald all the way to the finals. Let’s take a look at this exciting new strategy:

Temur Emerge ? Eldritch Moon Standard | Owen Turtenwald, 2nd Pro Tour Eldritch Moon

• Creatures (16)
• 4 Gnarlwood Dryad
• 3 Emrakul, the Promised End
• 3 Elder Deep-Fiend
• 3 Pilgrim's Eye
• 2 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
• 1 Wretched Gryff

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Chandra, Flamecaller

• Spells (22)
• 4 Gather the Pack
• 4 Nissa's Pilgrimage
• 4 Kozilek's Return
• 4 Grapple with the Past
• 4 Vessel of Nascency
• 2 Corrupted Grafstone

• Lands (21)
• 3 Island
• 7 Forest
• 1 Mountain
• 4 Yavimaya Coast
• 3 Game Trail
• 3 Shivan Reef

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Dispel
• 2 Fiery Impulse
• 2 Invasive Surgery
• 2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
• 2 Shaman of Forgotten Ways
• 1 Coax from the Blind Eternities
• 1 Den Protector
• 1 Summary Dismissal
• 1 Clip Wings
• 1 Negate

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Owen’s build of this archetype is all about Emrakul, the Promised End. The gameplan is to stock your graveyard quickly, cast Emrakul, the Promised End to wreck your opponent, and then keep casting Elder Deep-Fiends and Emrakul, the Promised Ends until your opponent dies. The way you do this is by utilizing Vessel of Nascency and Gather the Pack to stock your graveyard early. This hopefully enables both delirium and spell mastery for cards like Gnarlwood Dryad, Ishkanah, and Nissa's Pilgrimage to help stall out the board and further develop your mana.

From there, you can start utilizing Grapple the Past to buy back powerful haymakers and start jamming giant monsters until your opponent dies. If you’ve hit any Kozilek's Returns along the way, then your monsters get to come down on an empty board. You can also just cast Pilgrim's Eye on turn three and then emerge an Elder Deep-Fiend into play.

Other builds have utilized cards like Nissa, Vastwood Seer to further develop their mana or Jace, Vryn's Prodigy to buyback Grapple with the Past or Gather the Pack to help keep up a constant stream of threats. You could also go as far as to play copies of Sanctum of Ugin to find additional copies of Elder Deep-Fiend or Emrakul, the Promised End. Some went as far as to utilize Traverse the Ulvenwald as a way to smooth mana early, turn on Corrupted Grafstone, and tutor for Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Nissa, Vastwood Seer, or Eldrazi as appropriate.

One of the most interesting choices in Owen’s deck is the inclusion of Coax from the Blind Eternities. This is a nod to the existence of Infinite Obliteration in the format, as Coax from the Blind Eternities will allow you to grab an Emrakul, the Promised End from your sideboard to smash your opponent with, even if they’ve already removed all of the copies from your deck.

This was certainly one of the most exciting decks to see over the last weekend, and it’s something that I hope we see more of in the future. Any time we see this kind of non-traditional, graveyard-based ramp deck, it’s definitely something I’m going to be watching very closely.