The preview of Duskmourn: House of Horror has already begun and this will be a quick one, as the entire set will be revealed by September 12th. It will be playable on MTG Arena starting on the 24th of this month, while the official release is scheduled for the 27th.
With so little time available and so much to see, let's immediately dive into this new world but above all into this new horror setting inspired by the movies and games of the 80s, starting to get familiar with what awaits us!
The Plot and the Characters
Duskmourn is a dimensional plane never visited before, characterized by a huge house, an almost immense structure, so much so that it encloses the whole plane. The reason for such gigantic size is that a demon, Valgavoth, was sealed here, and with his power he began to enlarge it and to instill his presence in each of these environments.
- Valgavoth is therefore the villain of this set and the enemy to defeat and they could not help but dedicate a very powerful card to him, but compensated by a very high mana cost. It's a true colossus and most likely the creature with the best Ward ever printed, even beating the Eldrazi titan Ulamog, the Defiler, but 9 mana are prohibitive and mean that it can only be considered if cheated into play or reanimated, also because in Standard it doesn't win the competition of Atraxa, Grand Unifier which, despite the 7 mana, has very little to envy it. I don't foresee a great future for this card, but it's still an interesting option to reanimate in Timeless, proposing an almost unbeatable threat on turn 2... maybe the day they add Entomb to the format!
The story begins with Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion looking for Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student // Tamiyo, Seasoned Scholar's scroll, but they are lost in the depths of the house and send out a message for help. Five people rush from other planes to save him and thus an exploratory group is formed, like a classic in horror movies. They are: Kaito Shizuki, Niko Aris, Tyvar Kell, The Wanderer and Zimone, Quandrix Prodigy!
- Kaito, Bane of Nightmares is the only planeswalker of the set and is the only one in general that can enter the game directly as an attacker, thanks to his Ninjutsu ability. In the right deck, in fact, he will only cost 3 mana and, immediately after attacking, it will be possible to activate one of his planeswalker abilities, perhaps drawing a card or getting an emblem every turn that pumps all the Ninjas. Unfortunately Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty has just rotated out of Standard and the only other relevant Ninja left is Satoru, the Infiltrator who, even if he lets you draw with Ninjutsu, is not enough to enhance the tribe, leaving the +1 ability mainly for the Historic, in case you decide to give it a chance (losing Lurrus of the Dream-Den).
- The Wandering Rescuer has Convoke and hits hard, but she doesn't beat the Knight-Errant of Eos competition and plays more alone than with the rest of the team. With flash and doublestrike, she can definitely eliminate surprise attackers although it won't be hard for the opponent to read her. It's nice you can save a creature targeted by an enemy removal simply by convoking this Samurai in response, but I don't know how often that can happen.
- Tyvar, the Pummeler is an Elf and resembles Ezuri, Renegade Leader! He protects himself and not the team as Ezuri does, and the Overrun is big, but it doesn't provide trample. Despite being indestructible, in Standard he still dies to Virtue of Persistence // Locthwain Scorn or any exile effect.
- Another member of the adventurer team is Niko Aris who also returns here with his characteristic Shard tokens! This card is great! For 4 mana it has a fair body and if it gets eliminated it leaves you with 2 draws for the late game, while if it survives it allows you to blink a creature and attack with a double copy of it for a turn. Played together with other blink effects, such as Parting Gust or Getaway Glamer, you can blink him himself, thus getting 4 Shard tokens and making a disaster. It's possible to activate the ability at the end of the opponent's turn and still be able to attack with the tokens in yours, or simply use the ability to save your pieces from removal or chumpblock.
- Zimone, All-Questioning is an ok card, but nothing special for today's power level! Normally it will be a 3 mana that puts a 3/3 just like Blade Splicer or Sandstorm Salvager, but its triggered ability works at each of your end steps and, on turn 5, you'll probably upgrade the token to 5/5. Yes, because unfortunately Primo, the Fractal token, is legendary and therefore it's not possible to fill the board simply with Zimone and a bunch of lands.
- The last of the group is a new character, Winter, Misanthropic Guide, an expert about Duskmourn who will guide the others through the horrors of the house. It wants the colors Jund and Delirium which for the Standard format seems a bit ambitious, even if doable. It makes both players draw on your upkeep and this makes you use the extra cards first, but it's still risky because the opponent could draw better than you or simply be more aggro, making better use of the three cards each turn.
The New Mechanics
In addition to a new horror setting, Duskmourn also features 5 new mechanics, mostly centered around enchantments. Let's go and see them right away!
Room
Room is a new subtype of enchantment and fully reflects in the design the choice of which door to open and which room of the house to enter.
You can choose to play one of the two halves and, once the enchantment is in play, the half paid will be considered an “unlocked door”. You can then pay the mana cost of the other half to unlock the other door as well, and in that case the Room will become “fully unlocked”.
Once again we'll see the split cards in Standard after a long time, since the last ones were with the Amonketh block (ex. Commit // Memory)) and I'm curious to see them in action. Their mana value is the sum of both halves and, considering that this often exceeds 10 (ex. Funeral Room // Awakening Hall), who knows if Caustic Bronco can't kill the opponent with just a couple of attacks.
Eerie
Eerie is the name of the next mechanic, to represent the feeling of fear and unease in front of the horrors that are encountered as one proceeds through the rooms.
Rooms that, not surprisingly, are perfectly synergistic with Eerie, since they trigger it whenever they become fully unlocked, in addition to the fact that they are enchantments themselves. The latter are also quite numerous in the set, and will also be the protagonists of the next mechanic, so it will not be too hard to get the benefits of this ability.
Impending
Impending wants to recall the suspense you experience watching a horror movie and it does so through time counters, just like the Suspend mechanic did. Unlike the latter, however, it was necessary for the enchantment to hit the battlefield immediately in order to trigger Eerie, and therefore they arrived at this new mechanic where the time counters has the sole purpose of transforming it into a creature. This ability concerns only 5 cards, 5 mythics, for a cycle of 5 Overlords of different colors, as it was for the Seasons of Bloomburrow to which they dedicated the pawprints mechanic exclusively (ex. Season of Loss). Their design, however, recalls more than anything an older cycle of creatures: the Titans of Magic 2011 (ex. Primeval Titan), since in both cases the ability triggers when it enters and when it attacks.
Manifest Dread
Manifest Dread is another horror-inspired design: you can put a card into play as a 2/2 face down creature and if necessary turn it over, with the idea of terrorizing your opponent!
It's a revisited version of the old Manifest mechanic, introduced with Fate Reforged (ex. Whisperwood Elemental), but recently replayed with Modern Horizons 3, thanks to Guardian of the Forgotten.
The difference is that here you can choose one card to Manifest from the top two of your library, while the other goes to the graveyard. This obviously increases the possibility of choosing a creature that you can then turn face up and surprise your opponent, but what is discarded also favors Delirium, which is a returning ability and, as we could already guess with Winter, Misanthropic Guide, plays an important role in this set.
Survival
Finally, at the end of a dark tunnel of horrors and monstrosities, we find a light of hope because the last mechanic characterizes those who manage to survive, which generally in a horror movie can be predicted already from the first minutes since they are nothing more than a couple of main protagonists.
At the moment this ability only concerns white creatures, but we don't know if it will actually be like this or if it will also extend to other colors.
The basic idea of this mechanic is a triggered ability in the second main phase if the creature in question is tapped. This generally translates into the fact that the latter has attacked and has not died in combat, but in the Magic world the possibilities are endless and in fact there are many other ways to achieve this result.
The just seen The Wandering Rescuer and Convoke in general is certainly one of these, as well as the activated ability of Warden of the Inner Sky. Crewing Subterranean Schooner can also be a good fit for you, as can the Saddle (ex. Ornery Tumblewagg) and Enlist (ex. Guardian of New Benalia) abilities, but that's just scratching the surface and as mentioned there are a lot of options out there.
It will all depend on how competitive they'll make this mechanic, because at the moment it seems pretty weak and designed only for the non-constructed formats.
That's all for today! We're just getting started and this early preview was mostly to break the ice and get used to the new set! Meanwhile, spoilers are coming fast and it won't be long before we'll be back here talking about what Limited has in store for us!
