Eldrazi

"The Eldrazi hunger without limit and consume without pause."

– Oblivion Sower flavor text

Eldrazi are (mindless?) lovecraftian abominations with an appetite that makes Tyranids look anorexic. When Tyranids are through with a world there is at least a barren piece of rock. They also make tyranids seem like natives to wherever they are attacking. These cosmic horrors are so alien they don't even truly enter the plane they feed on. They have their (physical) shadows go in. Then they create swarms of brood that devour the plane of mana and life energy while the actual Eldrazi Titans (e.i. the actual Eldrazi) just chill in their home, the Blind Eternities[1]. These shadows are represented in game as creatures, and Rise of the Eldrazi drones aside, colorless creatures. At the time of their release in Rise of the Eldrazi, the only other colorless creatures are artifacts and face down cards. The cards Scion of Ugin and Karn have since joined that list.

The Titans

Each of the Titans has its own traits. They don't really seem to have a gender or sex, but because pronouns are convenient, they were assigned genders based on the Zendikar gods they were represented by.

Ulamog

Ulamog is the hungriest eldrazi. He and his brood will consume every living thing they come across, from the biggest tree to the tiniest bacteria simply by contact, leaving nothing but a devastated landscape where literally nothing can grow back, and chalky white rock where arable soil once was. They all have a bony mask/helmet like structure with no visible eyes, but they are so voracious that they will mindlessly go on hunting for living stuff seemingly forever (or until the entire plane they are on is devoid of life).

Emrakul

Emrakul is regarded as the most powerful eldrazi. Her brood has "fleshlike lattice structures, uneasy bilateral symmetry, and tentacles that end in knobby, vestigial digits". They also have a tendency of defying gravity and floating across the land.

Instead of ravaging the land, she and her brood mutate all living things into unrecognizable abominations. If you're lucky, you will only be driven insane. The undead seem to be resistant or immune to this corruption.

Kozilek

Kozilek's schtick is that he is the one that drives you insane. His brood have a bunch of eyes, and floating plates of blackness above their head.

They will not stop at bending your mind until it breaks: they will do so with your body, your neighbor's body and the freaking landscape as well, turning everything it can into a distorted parody of its former self.

Worshipers

The pantheons of the Zendikari religions are fairly small. That's probably for the best.

"Gods don't die. They merely slumber."

– Ayli, Kamsa cleric, taking way too obviously a page from HPL's book

The Eldrazi Titans, before they were freed grew to be considered gods, which Nahiri probably inadvertently had a part in. After becoming free and completely fucking up the plane by eating almost everything (mainly through brood) and even just being there, some idiots (like Ayli) still worshiped them and act accordingly.

Kozilek

Kozilek was worshiped under the following names:

• Cosi (merfolk). Cosi is a trickster god that the more pious merfolk refused to worship and preferred to be forgotten.
• Talib (kor)

Ulamog

Ulamog was worshiped under the following names:

• Ula (merfolk) Ula created the oceans, and as such was unsurprisingly the most revered merfolk god
• Mangeni (Kor)

Emrakul

Emrakul was worshiped under the following names:

• Emeria/Em (merfolk) Emeria liked to watch Cosi and Ula fight.
• Kamsa (kor)

Other Lore Info

It's heavily implied across three stories where mortals somehow learn the perspectives of the titans or their broods ("Memories of Blood" from Battle for Zendikar, "The Blight We Were Born For" from Oath of the Gatewatch, and "The Promised End" from Eldritch Moon), that the Eldrazi are less Tyranid-style space locusts and more a sort of planar garbage collection system, with Ulamog breaking old planar matter down, Kozilek warping the remains into something usable, and Emrakul creating new life/matter from the warped remains. The problem comes when this happens to an otherwise healthy (or at least inhabited) plane, or when one or more is present without the rest--in which case the result is chalk, bismuth crystals, and/or tentacles everywhere.

And then the Jacetice League Channel-Fireballed two of the Titans to death, against the advice of one of the three Planeswalkers to have sealed the Titans away in the first place. Seeing as the planar equivalent of cancer has just metastasized into a multiversal invasion by the Phyrexians as of the ending of All Will Be One, this may have been a bad decision in the long run.

In Game

First off, players, and WotC, generally only call straight up Eldrazi (as in no other creature subtypes) "Eldrazi", so that is what we are gonna do here. The Eldrazi are fatties, the weakest one is a 7/7 (and by the way, that's a common). Thematically you are supposed to get Eldrazi Spawn out before you get out your Eldrazi, to help (or flat out entirely) pay for Eldrazi. In ROE limited, this is entirely viable. Eldrazi spawn are 0/1 creature tokens that you can sac to gain 1 colorless mana. Cards that make these tokens generally do something else, so the token is basically a rider for mana/the chumpest of chumps for later use.

Rise of the Eldrazi

Annihilator

Every Eldrazi released in Rise of the Eldrazi has the Annihilator keyword ability. When a creature with a Annihilator attacks, the defending player sacs a specific number of permanents, because the Zendikari gods are hungry. Annihilator is a very scary keyword ability, so in a multiplayer game its probably wise to stay away from having it unless you're okay with getting ganged up on by EVERYBODY! Between annihilator and Eldrazi Spawn, its probably a good idea to have things that benefit when something gets sacrificed, like Mortician Beetle (which, you may have noticed came out at the same time as the Eldrazi tribal cards). After the release of Rise of the Eldrazi, Wizard's R&D then looked at the market research and decided it was: NOT FUN (specifically, getting Annihilated is more miserable than Annihilating is fun). So we probably won't see new cards with it for a long time (if you exclude reprints), if ever.

Eldrazi Titans

If one of the 3 Eldrazi Titans ends up in your graveyard, you shuffle your entire graveyard into your library. So Eldrazi Titans can be used as mythic rare anti-library-to-graveyard mill tech when the format allows. If a deck is designed to cheat a creature into play, that creature is generally chosen to be Emrakul. Even though its first 2 abilities are only helpful if you CAST it, its so powerful that decks that cheat creatures into play without casting them still usually choose Emrakul (who cost 15 is a 15/15, immune to coloured magic, crazy fucking monster) (if feasible, you can't sorcery speed reanimate any of the Eldrazi Titans).

Battle for Zendikar

The Duel Decks: Zendikar vs. Eldrazi announcement revealed that an Eldrazi was being printed without Annihilator. The Eldrazi have a exiling your opponents library theme. For the most part, it isn't efficient enough to warrant a milling strategy. Instead it acts as an enabler for another Eldrazi theme: Removing cards an opponents cards from exile and putting them in the graveyard for some sort of benefit. Lastly the Eldrazi Spawn theme is back except they are 1/1s and called Eldrazi Scions now.

Devoid

Devoid is a static ability that makes a card colorless in all zones despite what it's mana cost would tell you. Devoid creatures sometimes have activated abilities that use the same color as their colors in their mana cost. Devoid does not impact a card's color identity in commander. This is R&D's way of giving the Eldrazi abilities that are assigned to certain factions of the color pie (e.g. direct damage and red), in a fashion that denies access to those abilities to other colors, without giving (or at the very least down playing) the Eldrazi that color's flavor. Why not just use a color indicator instead of an ability word? Well MaRo initially wanted it to be based on the card frame. The rules team said they couldn't do that. So they had someone do a colorless color indicator. She couldn't make it so players picked up on it. Communication is important, so they resorted to having an ability word.

Ingest, Process & Colorless Mana

Because WotC decreed Annihilator: NOT FUN, a mechanic was needed to take on the role of representing the Eldrazi's hunger. Ingest and Processing represents the Eldrazi Titan Ulamog, the hungriest Titan. The flavor seems to be ingest is like eating, and process is digesting. Colorless mana represents the Titan Kozilek, and uses cost that can't be paid for with colored mana.

Ingest

Ingest is a mechanic on eldrazi creatures that exiles the top card of an opponent library whenever the creature damages them. This represent both the Eldrazis hunger but also how their mere presence gradually drives other beings insane since your deck of cards represents your mind.

Process

A non-keyworded mechanic that moves cards from an opponents exile zone (non-existence) into their graveyard as a cost to get effect cheaper than it would normally be costed. This ability is supposed to represents how beyond mortal comprehension and weird the Eldrazi are, as normally things put in the exile zone can only be returned only by whatever put them there.

Colorless Mana

Kozilek's brood use colorless mana as a cost, which can not be paid for by colored mana. And since you'll to add colourless mana sources to pay for them this functions as a 'sixth colour' with its own (utility wise) new basic land (Waste). This represents that the Eldrazi are older than the concept of colored mana and represents Kozilek ability to bend reality.

Eldritch Moon

Eldrazi also showed up in the second Innistrad block. Nahiri called Emrakul across the Blind Eternities because she was super pissed that Sorin not only decided to sacrifice her plane (Zendikar) to the Eldrazi, but that he'd also sealed her inside the Helvault when she went to Innistrad to call him out on it. When Liliana destroyed the Helvault to get out Griselbrand for the purpose of killing him, she also released Nahiri. Emrakul arrived, started doing her thing of warping all living matter to her will, but then realized her brothers weren't also there, so she appeared in Jace's mind as a waifu, then mind-controlled Tamiyo into sealing her into the moon until later. Just as Planned (maybe).

Transform

All but one of the cards in Eldritch Moon that transform become Eldrazi. Most of them are werewolves (the Dronepack), which change simply when given enough mana. However, there are also two humans, the continued descent into The Fly-style horror that was once Delver of Secrets, a vampire, and even a mana rock that do so.

Emerge

Eldrazi can also pop out of other things. The Emerge mechanic lets you cast an Eldrazi for cheaper by sacrificing another creature and paying less based on its mana cost. The main one that made a tournament impact in Shadows over Innistrad Standard was Elder Deep-Fiend, which was big in control decks because it had flash and could thus sacrifice a creature that was going to die anyway, and it also tapped down the opponent's mana or creatures.

Meld

Finally, Magic has Yu-Gi-Oh style fusion. These cards come in pairs (but not in the sense that when you open a pack, if you get one half, you get the other), and when the meld trigger is satisfied, you exile them both, flip them over, and put them back down as one giant card , generally a mess of tentacles, extra arms and other oddities of the sort.

Gallery

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  You'd go crazy for her