Duskmourn: An early look at Magic’s upcoming set.

Get excited for the latest upcoming set for Magic the Gathering

Duskmourn: An early look at Magic’s upcoming set. 

Duskmourn is Magic the Gathering’s latest expansion set in a haunted house overlooked by the omnipresent demon Valgavoth. Magic’s latest set is set to be a horrific spectacle featuring fiends, horrors and demons alike. This set sports some of the coolest flavour I have seen in some quite some time from Magic the Gathering. In fact one of my personal favourite cards I have seen from this set so far is a common.
 

Boilerbilges Ripper really emphasizes the innate horror of Duskmourn. The artwork and flavour are almost perfect for the setting. Of course, it isn’t just the artwork and flavour text that make a set. The mechanics also really push the “Horror” vibe. With Duskmourn we’re set to receive a wide range of new cards. One of these are rooms, a variant of enchantment where one can pay mana to “Open” the other half of a room that they have yet to open. Players can choose to open the more expensive half of a card or open the cheaper half. Then, later they may open the side that has yet to be opened. This is a rather interesting mechanic, and I am personally a big fan of “Modular” cards like this. 

Some of the other new Mechanics are Manifest Dread, Impending and Survival Manifest Dread is much like the well known Manifest mechanic, although this time players look at two cards and make a decision. One card goes to the grave and another straight into play. This synergizes pretty well with other cards in the set as naturally being a Horror plane, your Graveyard matters. 

Survival cares about your creatures “Surviving” your combat step. If your creature makes it past the combat step if the creature is tapped (Whether it attacked or not) you get to activate the card’s effect.

Finally Impending. Similar to the popular suspend mechanic creatures with impending come into play as an enchantment if you pay the impending cost. (Whereas they go into exile with suspend.) Afterwards each upkeep a time counter ticks down and once the time counters are gone your enchantment becomes a creature with a potent effect. I am definitely a fan of this mechanic as it really cuts down on the casting cost of otherwise expensive cards. 

Alongside new card types we are also seeing old mechanics return. My personal favourite of these is Delerium. (Originally seen in the Shadows over Innistrad block in 2016.) My personal favourite of the new cards pushing the Delerium mechanic is the card “Fear of Missing Out” This card is powerful, for two mana someone could potentially get an extra combat step very early. In Standard I could see this card being very effective alongside the red staple Urabrask’s Forge. Personally I am looking forward to potentially brewing these cards together. 

Of course, it’s not just constructed players who get plenty of treats in this set. The new commander precon face cards all seem to be rather interesting to build around. Personally I am a fan of the big bad Valgavoth’s preconstructed face card.  The ability to “Punish” players on their turns to draw cards seems like a fun way to play. Plus it is similar to Aftermath’s Ob Nixilis. While it may be a weaker card, it is much less likely to get you targeted off of the table. Commander players are really being treated with this set. All kinds of commander players get toys both within the commander decks and within Duskmourn’s main set.

Last but certainly not least are some of the more interesting alternative treatments that can be found within this set. While some are collector booster exclusive (Or even nightmare bundle exclusive cards.) They certainly all look fantastic.  

Firstly are the “Japanese” showcase cards with artwork done by Japanese artists. Overlord of the Hauntwoods for example looks fantastic in this frame, I can certainly see this being a chase card as the card itself is rather powerful in land decks (Which are popular in commander.) With this frame being collector booster exclusive it is certainly a card to look out for. 
 

The ”Nightmare” exclusive frames from the nightmare bundles include cards done by the artist of the Goosebumps series alongside horror movie themed printings of cards. These are definitely awesome looking and I’ll be ordering a nightmare bundle to find a copy of Crypt Ghast for my mono black Braids deck. 

There are plenty of other alternative frames to be found in this set. But personally the double exposure cards are my favourite of these. They even come with a collector booster exclusive “Textured foil” which are bound to be chase cards and highly sought-after. Just look how awesome the Valgavoth on the right looks! This is collector booster exclusive, but I can say I’d love to own one. 

There are plenty of other frame treatments in this set, but I’ll keep those a secret for you to find yourself in the horror world of Duskmourn. Although of course, a personal favourite card of mine is being reprinted as a special guest card. That card being noxious revival, one of the most flexible graveyard recursion cards in the game. 

As you can see there are plenty of interesting cards to collect in Duskmourn and prerelease is right around the corner. Additionally, If you’d like to play prerelease your local Hobby Lords store is running prerelease for Duskmourn from September, the 20th through to September the 22nd. 

We will be running these events at our Dunedin store, our Lower Hutt store and our Palmerston North store, you can also prebook your prelease tickets under our events page if you wish at https://hobbylords.co.nz/events

Thank you so much for reading my article. I am looking forward to this set and hope that you are also hyped to explore the haunted world of Duskmourn.

 

Mitchell Green

Duskmourn Enthusiast