It’s easy to feel like Wizards was a little loose when they printed Emry, Lurker of the Loch. She has all the hallmarks of a huge mistake. She lets you cast cards from the graveyard and starts that engine herself. For the love of all things cardboard, she has affinity! On the surface, Emry appears to be a one-card game-breaker, and Modern players have been including her in playsets on that assumption.
In my eyes, though, Emry is overplayed and under-analyzed. She isn’t a snap include in every blue artifact deck, contrary to general opinion. Rather, she’s the most complex and subtly designed card in Throne of Eldraine. We’re still in the shallows when it comes to truly understanding Emry, so let’s dive deep and clarify.
Beneath the Surface
It’s obvious that Emry is brittle. She dies to Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, and Fatal Push (if you have a fetch land handy). This is not a “dies to Doom Blade” argument, though. It’s more complex than that. To cast Emry, presumably, you dropped a cheap artifact or two to bring her in early. Often, there’s a very real cost to doing so.
Whether it’s running out an Engineered Explosives for zero when that isn’t relevant, or running out artifacts in advance of Sai, Master Thopterist, Emry demands investment in return for her power. Unless you have other graveyard synergies, you get nothing further from Emry until you untap with her. Therefore, you’re incentivised to wager more with your sequencing to get her on the battlefield as fast as you can. That, combined with her lack of front-loaded value, makes removal especially punishing.
Emry’s potential pitfalls don’t end there. Before you draw your opening hand, you invest in the Loch Lurking Lady, and cross your fingers that she won’t be Bolted. Emry’s abilities are amplified by inclusions like Mox Amber for early acceleration or Jeskai Ascendancy for an abrupt combo win. But if Emry doesn’t stick, your Ambers are slow and you’re playing a clunky three-color enchantment that, honestly, isn’t great. It’s easy to make your deck worse in your efforts to make Emry better.
And yet, the upside. Oh, the upside of Emry, Lurker of the Loch. An active Emry is more than half-way to Jace the Mind Sculptor in her flexibility and generation of card advantage. No one is arguing that, if everything goes according to plan, there’s anything weak about Emry. Furthermore, the more you wager on her with your sequencing and deckbuilding, the more benefit you stand to reap.
That is why I find this card design so incredibly beautiful. Emry is full of challenging tensions. Finding the best place for Emry in Modern is complex, so let’s go through what’s been tried so far.
Combo Shells
Due to her high ceiling, Emry has already seen play in a diverse array of Modern decks. The most notable has been her inclusion in combo decks, specifically Urza Outcome and its Outcome Ascendancy cousin. While Emry is a value-generation card in a vacuum, she also provides an insta-win combo with Jeskai Ascendancy if she becomes active.
Outcome Ascendancy is a prime example of wagering on Emry in deckbuilding. Jeskai Ascendancy is extremely demanding to cast, forcing an entire manabase to be structured around it and denying you access to strong tools like Mystic Sanctuary. Furthermore, Ascendancy isn’t very good on its own. Casting spells to loot puts you down cards and will empty your hand if you don’t find a way to refill it. The upside of active Emry is an immediate win, but the downside is being stuck with a clunky deck. Outcome Ascendancy is the most all-in on Emry of any deck that has seen widespread Modern play since her release.
Pure Urza Outcome wagers more on Emry in its sequencing. It’s not the fastest combo deck in Modern; and while Emry can provide ramp, Outcome needs stalling tactics. The deck often leans on the first few tokens generated with Sai or Saheeli for that. Those initial tokens also function as mana sources following a resolved Urza, which powers the deck forward faster. If artifacts are rushed out ahead of token makers to set up Emry, these benefits die with her. Against aggro, the pilot can too.
Nonbo Nonshells
I don’t think combo shells are where Emry functions best. After her entry into the format, Outcome players abruptly started running four copies with four Mox Amber to invest in her explosive starts. The Outcome deck was very popular before the release of Throne of Eldraine. That popularity spiked with the addition of Emry, and in the last two weeks, it’s plummeted. MTGO Modern Challenge and SCG Open results illustrate the timeline clearly, and I believe the use and misuse of Emry is part of that.
I’ve been interested in Outcome sans Emry, incorporating more hand sculpting to keep your hand stocked with threats. The four-color build I proposed two weeks ago has been playing well for me, and the deck has felt smoother overall without Emry. I’ve also liked having painless access to symmetrical graveyard hate.
Here’s a tuned-up list, though the sideboard options are vast and I’d heavily consider the metagame you’re targeting when choosing what to include.
Paradoxical Urza
| Creatures (6) 4 Urza, Lord High Artificer 2 Sai, Master Thopterist Planeswalkers (2) 2 Saheeli, Sublime Artificer Spells (34) 1 Mirrodin Besieged 3 Serum Visions 1 Grinding Station 4 Paradoxical Outcome 4 Arcum’s Astrolabe 4 Engineered Explosives 1 Aether Spellbomb 4 Mishra’s Bauble 1 Mox Amber 4 Mox Opal 3 Witching Well 1 Pithing Needle 3 Everflowing Chalice | Lands (18) 4 Flooded Strand 4 Polluted Delta 1 Breeding Pool 1 Hallowed Fountain 1 Watery Grave 1 Mystic Sanctuary 6 Snow-Covered Island Sideboard (15) 2 Oko, Thief of Crowns 2 Path to Exile 2 Fatal Push 1 Rest in Peace 1 Grafdigger’s Cage 2 Collective Brutality 2 Mystical Dispute 2 Thoughtseize 1 Pithing Needle |
Midrange
Combo is far from the only place we’ve seen Emry surface in Modern. The Modern open in SCG Atlanta this past weekend was dominated by a midrange deck that combined Urza and, perhaps, all of the strongest cards in Throne of Eldraine. Team Lotus Box stocked the Top 8 with four copies of their Simic Whirza deck, a brew created by Zan Syed with Abe Corrigan and influences from Sam Black.
Though this deck incorporates a lean Thopter-Sword combo package (just one of each piece), it should not be mistaken for a combo deck. Emry certainly isn’t a combo piece here. She can enable Mox Amber for an early Oko or Urza, she can loop Baubles to draw extra cards, and overall generates a ton of value to help grind out the opponent.
This is a much better role for Emry. If she dies, you don’t get her potential value, but you don’t lose anything either. Sequencing of small artifacts doesn’t matter in this deck, and the inclusion of them supports Urza just as much as Emry.
I tried out a previous version of this list, largely the same but without the Thopter-Sword angle, and I fell for Emry’s siren call. I wanted a more aggressive build, so I added Arcbound Ravager to the mix. After all, who doesn’t want to loop Arcum’s Astrolabe through a Ravager? Or better yet, Hangarback Walker? So many interactions seemed possible.
Midrange Urza Emry Time
| Creatures (21) 4 Arcbound Ravager 1 Walking Ballista 1 Hangarback Walker 4 Gilded Goose 4 Emry, Lurker of the Loch 4 Urza, Lord High Artificer 1 Sai, Master Thopterist 1 Tireless Tracker 1 Stonecoil Serpent Planeswalkers (3) 3 Oko, Thief of Crowns Spells (19) 4 Mox Opal 2 Mox Amber 4 Mishra’s Bauble 4 Arcum’s Astrolabe 2 Welding Jar 3 Once Upon a Time | Lands (17) 4 Misty Rainforest 4 Prismatic Vista 1 Breeding Pool 1 Steam Vents 1 Darksteel Citadel 4 Snow-Covered Island 2 Snow-Covered Forest Sideboard (15) 2 Ceremonious Rejection 1 Disdainful Stroke 1 Tormod’s Crypt 1 Mystical Dispute 3 Galvanic Blast 2 Veil of Summer 2 Damping Sphere 1 Walking Ballista 2 Engineered Explosives |
This build was alright, but Arcbound Ravager didn’t fit the mana curve. While it still synergized well with Walking Ballista and friends, it wasn’t powerful enough without an active Emry. I’d made a deck worse by investing in her.
It’s worth an aside here to explain why I’m not going over Emry in pure aggro shells. She’s simply not a fast card. Affinity is all-in on going under, and Hardened Scales struggles enough with green mana already. A brittle, grindy value engine that requires significant investment is something I couldn’t recommend less for an aggressive deck.
Control Shells
Here, I think we’ve found our oyster. The best place I’ve found so far for Emry is in Lantern Control. Lantern is a strategy specifically designed to deny your opponents answers to your prison pieces while slowly, excruciatingly milling them out of the game.
Lantern Control is arguably the slowest deck in Modern. It sets up quickly with a combination of hand hate and a library lock, then settles in for the long haul. As we’ve discussed, Emry is a slow and grindy card, so can excel in this shell.
Emry Lantern Control
There’s less incentive to get Emry on the board turn one. Lantern has a lot to set up in its early turns, and you can prioritize disruption that will protect Emry before casting her. Thoughtseize and the Lantern of Insight plus Codex Shredder combination can preemptively protect your Lurker. This helps with her fragility a lot.
In this build, you’ll see a couple of pieces that are less familiar to the Lantern archetype. Aether Spellbomb is a much more effective way to delay threats or bounce problem creatures (see also: Meddling Mage) when you can re-use it. Grinding Station serves a dual role in this build. You can mill yourself to dig for critical lock pieces and then cast them with Emry, or you can mill your opponent out much more quickly than with Shredders alone. Lantern is notorious for having a clock problem, so this is a real consideration, as well as giving your opponent fewer draw steps to get lucky and slip free of your clutches.
I think the investment in Emry is less risky here, as Lantern’s disruption does a lot to protect her, and because its glacial pace gives you opportunities to replace her. I’m excited to develop this list. Lantern has been unplayable in Modern since the printing of Karn, the Great Creator, but Emry might just be the Loch piece needed to make the deck competitive again. I suspect there are other cards that weren’t previously playable in Lantern, but can become so with the inclusion of Emry.
Just be cautious—don’t bet anything on Emry that you can’t afford to lose.