Today I have a bit of an interesting deck to go through, and one that is not well known but is very powerful in my opinion. For reference, my latest decklist:

That decklist look familiar?

That’s because it is mostly just the old pre-ban Splinter Twin deck with a new combo. The new combo is mostly worse, of course, since there are a lot of games where a single Emrakul attack won’t win you the game, where Twin won no matter how far behind it was. It does however have the distinct advantages of being immune to creature removal such as Terminate and Path to Exile, and you know, being legal in the format.

A key part of the deck then becomes trying to make sure that a breached Emrakul does actually close out the game, so this sometimes means using removal to kill off random creatures that you don’t particularly care about, just to keep them below 6 permanents.

Also one more thing I should point out since it got me multiple times, is Emrakul will shuffle in your graveyard after you have Through the Breached it – so if you have a Snapcaster waiting to cast a Lightning Bolt in your graveyard, you should do that before Emrakul.

Onto the matchups:

Grixis Shadow

This matchup is quite bad and one of the main reasons not to play this deck. They have so much interaction you can rarely get a combo off and your removal lines up poorly vs their very large threats. Blood Moon is my attempt at trying to steal games from Grixis Shadow since sometimes they want to fetch out nonbasics to lower their life total fast enough.

Out

2 Izzet Charm
2 Spell Snare
1 Lightning Bolt

In

2 Threads of Disloyalty
1 Blood Moon
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Roast

Affinity

The UR deck has a pretty good Affinity matchup since you play so much removal it’s hard for them to get their synergies going. Arcbound Ravager can be annoying however since it grows out of range of your removal spells. Etched Champion is surprisingly fine for you since it doesn’t hit very hard. After sideboard it of course gets better, as with most decks against Affinity.

Out

4 Remand
1 Roast
2 Blood Moon
1 Izzet Charm

In

3 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Engineered Explosives

TitanShift

Titanshift is an amazing matchup since Remand and Cryptic Command mean it’s hard for them to resolve finishers, and they can’t interact with the Through the Breach plan. On top of that, you randomly have Blood Moon to shut off their Valakuts. I have lost this matchup exactly once, notably due to my opponent having a lot of Obstinate Baloth/Thragtusk type creatures which lined up nicely against my own post board plan. As a Titan Shift player, I think you need to change your plan post board if you want to win this matchup.

Out

2 Lightning Bolt

In

1 Blood Moon
1 Negate

UW Control

UW is a very interesting matchup, and I’m not really sure who is favoured. The games against a good UW opponent go very long and you are looking to sculpt a hand that is able to go end of turn Through the Breach with a counter back up, then untap and do the same. This will virtually ensure that a Breach resolves which is usually game. Of course, if your opponent ever decides that they need to pressure you you can punish them badly with a Breach so the games do go on for a very long time.

Out

1 Roast
3 Lightning Bolt

In

2 Dispel
1 Negate
1 Blood Moon

Blood Moon plays really well with my preboard plan since you force them to have so many counterspells in one turn cycle, if you can switch off a portion of their blue sources it may mean they can only cast one or two.

Moving forwards, I want to try out Delver of Secrets in the sideboard since I can’t imagine my opponents will have a lot of removal left in their deck post board and a 3/2 flyer kills them quickly whilst they are staring at a hand of Negates and Dispels. Even against combo decks like Ad Nauseam it means you never have to tap out for Breach only to have it countered, then they untap and win.

Other options you could try include Faithless Looting which would up your consistency at assembling Breach Emrakul on turn 5, but would make you worse at the control game since Faithless Looting is card disadvantage. Spreading Seas is another option if you wanted to go more down the mana denial route, and this would also involve playing a third Blood Moon in the main deck.

If you decide to add Faithless Looting, you may even want Goryo’s Vengeance so that you can occasionally nut draw people with a turn 3 Emrakul. But this is a very different deck to the one we currently have.

Give the deck a try, and let me know in the comments how you get on!