As the Gatherer page for Emrakul notes, the
maximum discount you can get on casting her is
8. Since not everyone has has tribal-type cards
from older sets, and planeswalkers are sometimes
hard to get a hold of, you'll usually be looking
at casting her for around 8 mana. That's not
unachievable at all in the right deck, even
without access to out-of-print mana cards like
Birds of Paradise or Ravnica's Signets, and
probably a fair price for what you get. Most
commonly-played removal spells are instants
(flexibility having once been everything for
designers of such spells), and although it'll
feel strange when she gets taken out by
something like Sever the Bloodline, it'll be
more than balanced out by the time your opponent
basically folds on the spot. Just be careful
what you make your opponent do during the turn
you control if you want to play with them again!
In the end, as in the
beginning, there were tentacles.
Emrakul might seem less
exciting and soul-crushing than her previous
iteration, but this one is still extremely
absurd. A 13/13 that's impervious to most
instant-speed removal, that hits your opponent
with Mindslaver,
and that also never costs its full
sticker price is the recipe for a very
dangerous, format-bending card. Especially with
some of the fun toys that have come since, like
Aetherworks Marvel.
The dearth of good
graveyard hate is what's made Emrakul especially
egregious, though one could argue she would be
potent even with specialized hate. She's almost
never full price, and she's always worth the
price of admission.
