Duskmourn, a House of Clowns, Toys, Nightmares, and What the Hell is that?

The Wanderer, Kaito, and Nashi find themselves walking into the House of Horrors, where for some reason Mothman runs the joint and they can't escape. But, Kaito's still unplayable so at least we have that to find solace in.

The following is a quick review of the set for those going into pre-release this weekend! Cards are always hard to evaluate going into a brand new format, but I hope this helps you get a visual on what to expect! Most importantly, good luck and have fun this weekend!

From WOTC we have a few new mechanics:

• Eerie - this ability is linked to enchantments, usually a triggered ability when an enchant enters or a enchantment room is unlocked.

• Survivor - an X ability that triggers at the start of your second main phase (because post combat main phase was too confusing I guess) with an "if the creature with the ability is tapped" on the text.

• Impending - a keyword that has the card enter as just enchantments for a cheaper cost that eventually turn into a creatures. A time counter is removed at the start of the end step (why can't they keep this consistent..) Once the last counter is removed its a creature.

• Delirium - (not new, but returning) Why did WOTC say this was a new mechanic? Anyways.. cards gain value by having four or more types in your graveyard.

• Manifest Dread - (not... really new) A variation of Manifest, Cloak, whatever you want to call it but operates "differently" by looking at the top 2 cards of your library, then you put one into the graveyard and one onto the battlefield as a 2/2 face down card (so colorless, no types, no abilities and no mana cost) that can get turned face up at anytime. Split second anyone?

• Rooms - a new enchantment type with 2 sides. (they look like a split card) Each card side has its own casting cost, and both "sides" are put onto the battlefield. You can pay the mana cost on the other side to "unlock" the room and "activate" the other half that's cast. You cannot cheat these into play and if they are put into play without being cast both rooms will be locked.

Duskmourn Features 10 Dual-Color Mechanics/Archetypes

• These are not as set-in-stone as Bloomburrow
• This allows for much more flexibility between archetypes and splashing

Each archetype has a "signpost" uncommon that links the "obvious" mechanics in each two color pair

• Eerie Tempo (UW) revolves around enchantments. Uses Eerie triggers and Rooms. The whole set revolves around enchantments, including the new "Rooms". Although this strategy is based around enchantments, it focuses on overwhelming the board with a classic white creature strat between glimmers and enchantment creatures. If you were to splash a third color, it will benefit most from red, since that strat (red/blue) revolves around rooms.

• Eerie Control (UB) - trying to use Rooms as long term "eventually this will end the game" and Eerie triggers that take over the game. They aim to control with counterspells and bounce effects to trigger Eerie in many ways. Same as UW, the UB decks can benefit from a red splash for more eerie triggers and damage based removal.

• Sacrifice (RB) -  A midrange value strat that cares about sacrificing creatures and enchantments. A lot of the synergistic pieces in these colors either reward you for sacrificing or do something when sacrificed. You'll even find a few cards that reward you with a gain and drain effect. Red allows for a lot of the small creatures to sacrifice while if splashing a color, white offers reanimation effects to benefit even more of sacrifices.

• Delirium Stompy (RG) - with the power of RG and dreams the fast stompy delirium deck will run over your opponent faster than any other archetype in the format. Make sure to include things in your deck like terramorphic expanse, artifacts, ect to enable delirium as fast as possible. Black is your best splash color to help with enabling delirium.

• Survival (GW) - Another aggressive strat that uses combat trucks and pumps to get through combat and tap creatures down. This archetype will be difficult to implement as it cares about your creatures living (and being tapped) in your second main phase. The baseball bat should often be used to tap your own creatures for the survival mechanic to be enabled without them dying in combat. Red is likely the best splash for this mechanic to help in regards to combat tricks.

• Reanimator (WB) - middle ground between both Eerie strats, and reanimates things... It's super important to have an enabler (like possessed goat) to be able to discard your big creatures, otherwise its likely in this format that you'll lose before you can hard cast the big monsters. I am not sure what splash is best for this archetype, but assume that blue may help buy time before you can set up with its counters and bounce effects. Similarly red could do the same with all its damage based removal.

• Rooms (UR) - completely all in on Rooms and leans towards a more controlling strat. Landing many rooms to benefit in the end game is the goal. I am not overly impressed with blue as a stand alone color and believe that red will really carry this archetype to victory. Since UR cares so much about rooms, a white splash for impactful rooms will likely help this archetype the most.

• Delirium Grind (GB) - slow grindy midrange that cares about delirium. GB has a lot of strong synergy that cares about card types in the graveyard. Just like GR, trying to get delirium as fast as possible will make for the best strat to end the game. The best color splash is for red, Jund which are the colors that all care about delirium in the set.

• Aggro (WR) - An aggro color pairing centered around small creatures and "toys". White and red have the strongest removal in the set, making this archetype one of the scariest in my opinion in the set. A lot of cards create tokens or benefit off tapping a lot of creatures to gain value. Red has the best game finishers in the set that are castable, and making this archetype work will be easy. Black is the strongest splash for this combination, as it easily makes tokens to benefit off the sacrifice found in RB.

• Manifest Dread (UG) - midrange manifest dread. Seems to be the least supported as UG usually is. There are many cards that either just manifest dread themselves or benefit from you doing so. Green seems to have the most of this, where are blue is full of counters and bouncing. I would not play this archetype unless your pool forces you to. Black or red would likely be the most beneficial splash as the removal in UG is light, or pretty much non-existent.

Top 9 for each Color - Duskmourn "Bombs" and Staples

• White - Has the best unconditional removal in the set. Strong mechanics for both UW and RW, and I believe it will prove to be the third best color overall.

• Blue - my vote for worst color in the set. It was difficult to select a full 9 impactful cards but can shine great in dual archetypes. My opinion being that UW is likely the best pair for playing blue but I would chose other colors first.

• Black - full of removal, reanimation, and a small amount of impactful threats. I do not think as a stand alone color that black is one of the best, probably the second worst altogether. Strong synergy cards with its other color will be important and I do believe this color will still have a high impact because of the removal.

• Green - Probably the second strongest color in the set. Solid threats and curve out cards with ramp. I do think green will prove to be among the strongest colors paired with red and black specifically.

• Red - my choice for strongest color in the set. Full of impactful threats on curve with solid game ending threats. Fast and full of damage based removal to overwhelm your opponents quickly.

• Multicolor - these are a few multi-color cards that have strong synergies in their respective color.

Combat Tricks

Always important to know for the limited format what is available in each color

Note: Exile Based Removal

The new rare cycle come back as enchantments if they die, so there's a few ways to get rid of them permanently. Also stops you contributing to your opponents delirium!

As my last bit, a visual on removal in the set!

Special Guests.. the Playable

Thank you for checking out our first foray into limited content! Hopefully this helps, and please feel free to provide us feedback, we would love to hear from you! We usually focus on constructed content, but we feel we need to emphasize limited a bit more, seeing as the only format through-line for each RCQ season is, in fact, limited. Thank you for reading!

Leave a comment about how you would built this!

-Lexi Christensson