Walking Textbook



Eldrazi Burger





As we all know, Planeswalkers are extremely powerful mages. They can control people’s minds, summon tremendous sea creatures, and even restart the game– whatever that means. With all of the mana they throw around, I began to wonder: what is the energy content of mana, in units familiar to those of us on Earth? That question brought these adorable little guys to mind:







“I WILL ANNIHILATE YOU!”

Ulamog Lineage Eldrazi Spawn Token art by Aleksi Briclot

Sorry, did I say “adorable”? I think I meant “horrifying”. Yeah, that’s probably what I meant. Anyway, what if we could determine the caloric content of an Eldrazi Spawn? They do sac for one delicious, nutritious, probably-tastes-like-air colorless mana, which would make for a pretty straightforward conversion. Well, by Heliod , I’m a scientist, and I will not– nay, cannot let this subject lie! Let’s break out the math, the science, the pseudo-science, the Magic, and the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants guesses!





Q: What is the energy content of {1}, one colorless mana?





Our destination might be energy, but we’re going to start our quest with some very different units. Bear with me here: we’re first going to establish Emrakul’s volume.

Thankfully, everyone’s favorite world-scourge is pictured on a great many cards, and I think that on Gravitational Shift, one of those drakes could be close enough to use as a scale reference.







You can’t hear it, but Emrakul is shouting, “Weeeeee!”

Gravitational Shift art by Svetlin Velinov

There are only four drakes in all of Zendikar block, and after some visual comparison, I’m inclined to say that Champion’s Drake looks most like the drakes depicted in Gravitational Shift. While Champion’s Drake’s art doesn’t have any object to compare to something Earth-scale, it does reference horses, and I’m willing to assume that the back / neck of a drake must be roughly the same height as a horse’s, if a human is to ride it.

According to this Wikipedia article, “larger riding horses” clock in between 157 cm (62 in) and 173 cm (68 in) tall. Let’s split the difference and say that this drake could be 1.65 meters (5.41 ft) tall. Given that its wings are bent at roughly a 90° angle, we’ll claim that the outer portion of its wings are as long as the drake is tall. If we make one more assumption that the rest of its wings plus the width of the body equals twice its height, then its wingspan is four times its height, or 6.60 m (21.65 ft).







“I WILL ALSO ANNIHILATE YOU!”

Kozilek Lineage Eldrazi Spawn Token art by Veronique Meignaud

Let’s look back at Gravitational Shift. Specifically, let’s look at that tiny drake on the upper-left part of Emrakul’s outer rim. That drake is going to help us calculate Emrakul’s radius. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to ignore that Emrakul is tilting away from us.

With the power of Photoshop, it looks like Emrakul’s diameter is 26.74 times that of a single drake wing: 88.42 meters (290.09 ft), nearly the size of an American football field (minus the endzones). The volume of a sphere is 4/3 * π * r^3; if we model Emrakul’s upper region as a hemisphere (which will be an overestimate), its volume comes to 179,872.65 cubic meters. Um, wow. A quick consultation with my ruler and my EDH deck tells me that this part of Mr. Aeons Torn could fit nearly 440 million sleeved EDH decks.







“Yeah, I really got into EDH deckbuilding recently. It’s becoming a problem.”

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn art by Mark Tedin

But we’re not out of the probably-being-annihilated woods yet: we’ve got to figure out the size of the lower, fleshy, tentacle-y bit. We’ll model this portion as a cone (volume = 1/3 * area of the base * height), and with some more Photoshop and scratch-work, we learn that this region 13,302.64 cubic meters, bringing Emrakul’s total volume to 193,175.29 cubic meters.

And now, we convert Emrakul into ground beef.

What? What’s that look for? We need some metric to relate the Eldrazi Titan’s volume to units of energy– like calories– and when you spend your days and nights devouring the mana of entire worlds, I’m guessing that you end up pretty energy-dense. Y'know, like a burger.

Anyway, this PDF places the density of (frozen) ground beef at 561 kilograms per cubic meter. If Emrakul were made entirely of burger– and I can’t believe I just wrote that– it would weigh 108,371,337.69 kg (~238,918,000 lbs). This website states that one ounce of ground beef contains 60 calories, meaning that one kg of the same material contains 2116.40 calories, which tells us that Emrakul’s bodily energy equals 229,357,099,087.12 calories: enough to feed a family of four for over 78,000 years.







“There’s our lunch, lads!”

Time of Heroes art by Kekai Kotaki

Emrakul can be summoned for 15 colorless mana, and one Eldrazi Spawn sacs for 1 colorless mana. If we assume that an Eldrazi Spawn contains 1/15th the energy needed to summon the Titan, then we have our answer:





A: {1} = 15,290,473,272.48 calories





There you have it, folks. I’m very curious to hear your reaction to this article: it’s a pretty nutty one, and yet, I wouldn’t mind running some more Magic-based calculations if you’ve enjoyed this. I can be reached here on Tumblr, or on Reddit at /u/Walking_Atlas.

Until next time, happy planeswalking, everyone.







“I don’t want to annihilate you. Can we be friends?”

Emrakul Lineage Eldrazi Spawn Token art by Mark Tedin





