As cute as Bloomburrow is, I’m much more excited about the upcoming horror-themed Duskmourn: House of Horror! As a kid, the first genre of fiction I fell in love with was fantasy, which led me to become a lifelong fan of Dungeons & Dragons, which led me to becoming a fan of Magic: The Gathering for 30 years now.
But going back to one scorching-hot afternoon during summer break when I was a middle-schooler, I found myself without a new fantasy book to read. So, with excitement, I climbed into the air-conditioned cool sanctuary of the Bookmobile parked in my neighborhood in search of my next novel to devour.
There was a huge hardcover book with cover art that instantly grabbed my eyes, featuring two people in medieval-style hand-to-hand fighting in what looked to be a desert. The obvious hero looked human, wielding a long sword and wearing clothes that honestly gave me young Luke Skywalker vibes (and with the desert setting, it evoked Tatooine). He was locked in mortal combat with a hooded crow-man wielding a vicious weapon that looked like a scythe.
The title? The Stand, by Stephen King, and with a title like that and that cool fight scene on the cover, I knew I’d found my next new epic fantasy!
Reader Expectations
I checked out the 800-page tome and ran home without even bothering to read the jacket to see what it was about. At the time, I had never even heard of Stephen King, so I wasn’t aware of the genre I was actually preparing to read. I wasn’t even clued in when the opening scene was modern-day America; I’d already read a few books by Stephen R. Donaldson, starting with Lord Foul’s Bane, which started in our world and then shifted into a fantasy world, so I kept waiting for something similar to happen here.
It never did, but by the time I realized this wasn’t actually a high fantasy novel, I was deeply hooked by the riveting story. By the time I finished I was ravenous for more, and started reading all the Stephen King books I could get my hands on, and branched out into other horror writers: Peter Straub, Anne Rice, Clive Barker, Robert McCammon, John Saul, Dean Koontz, and classics by Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, Mary Shelley, and H.P. Lovecraft. As I got older, I started watching every horror movie I could, and even dabbled in writing horror fiction myself. I uploaded two of my stories to a short-lived blog if you’re curious: Bleed Out, and The Electric Man.
A New Vein of Magic Horror
As a long-time horror fan, I definitely enjoyed the Magic setting of Innistrad, which brought Gothic horror to the game, and eventually dabbled in eldritch horror with the invasion of the Eldrazi. Duskmourn: House of Horror evokes a more modern horror flavor drawn from the 1980s and beyond, which is exactly when I got my start in horror fandom. Perfection!
The official preview season for Duskmourn: House of Horror debuts this Saturday, August 31 at PAX West, with previews rolling out starting next week. So today, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the cards from the set that we’ve already seen, starting of course with the three legendary creature cards we might want to build Commander decks around!
Overlord of the Hauntwoods
Tiffany Turrill’s super-creepy art on Overlord of the Hauntwoods hits a flavor home run. I love how it creates land tokens called “Everywhere”. Everywhere suggests you can’t ever get away from it, you know?
Mechanically, the card is super-cool! I immediately thought of the Domain deck that has survived the Standard rotation: for just three mana, cast for its impending cost, it both ramps a land and immediately unlocks your full Domain for cards like Leyline Binding and Herd Migration. If you have five mana, you can just cast Overlord for its full mana cost and have a 6/5 creature that will create Everywhere lands each time it attacks.
For Commander, Overlord of the Hauntwoods makes a neat mono-green commander, most obviously as a landfall deck, but more interestingly, you can add domain cards into the deck that would otherwise be severely underpowered in a mono-color deck. Consider Scion of Draco, The Weatherseed Treaty, Briar Hydra, Jodah’s Codex, Territorial Maro, and Nishoba Brawler. I almost never see those cards in Commander decks, and I’m here for seeing them now with this nifty new cool commander.
The Wandering Rescuer
The de-sparked Emperor is still a flash-speed threat. In Standard, however, I see it appearing in less controlling builds, since it gets better and better the more creatures you have on the battlefield.
For Commander, having The Wandering Rescuer in the command zone is a great rattlesnake card, effectively making opponents second-guess using pinpoint removal spells on your creatures so long as you’ve got a combination of five mana or five untapped creatures available. You’ll want a fair number of creatures with vigilance to deploy early, and might even want to run Brave the Sands for the creatures that don’t have vigilance built in. Creatures that tap for special effects, such as Mother of Runes, can be synergistic too, since The Wandering Rescuer makes your tapped creatures have hexproof.
Toby, Beastie Befriender
Toby, Beastie Befriender reminds me a bit of Lovestruck Beast, but you get five power instead of six power, and for one less mana overall. It’s nice that the larger body is the token, so you can do populate shenanigans to keep making copies of the 4/4 Beast, or you can blink or bounce Toby to make more Beasts. Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has recently made a fair number of cards that care about tokens, such as Caretaker’s Talent and Ocelot Pride, and they’ll go great in your Toby, Beastie Befriender Commander deck!
Screaming Nemesis
In the beginning, there was Mogg Maniac, and over time we’ve received a lot of cards with this sort of effect, such as Spitemare and Boros Reckoner. My personal favorite is Brash Taunter, since it has indestructible and can tap to fight the largest creature on the battlefield. Lifegain decks have gained a ton of strong tools lately, so Screaming Nemesis’s ability to turn off lifegain is welcome. The way the card is worded, turning off lifegain lasts for the rest of the game, regardless of whether Screaming Nemesis leaves the battlefield, along the same lines as Stigma Lasher.
Chainsaw
While it feels weird having a Chainsaw in Magic: The Gathering, this is definitely a flavor home run for a modern horror set. Mechanically, it’s decent in the right sort of deck. I would play it in a deck that sacrifices its own creatures a lot so that I can add rev counters, and I’d want some way to get around the relatively high equip cost.
Cursed Recording
This strikes me as a callback to the horror movie The Ring, which I watched alone in a movie theater one afternoon, leaving me completely terrified.
Seems great in a spellslinger deck even if you don’t have ways to remove the time counters on it, so long as you keep your life total above twenty. Copying an instant or sorcery spell you cast this turn by simply tapping and not needing to invest extra mana is very powerful, and if you get to do it six times, you’re likely well on your way to winning the game, even if you don’t have more than twenty life.
Fear of Missing Out
FOMO has a Magic card! Extra attack steps are very powerful in many Commander decks, especially attached to a two-mana creature. The trick, of course, is to figure out a way to reliably unlock delirium, and it’s nice that Fear of Missing Out has a built-in way to discard a card to help with that. I have a Disa the Restless Lhurgoyf deck that I’ll probably give this card a try in, since I’ve got a bunch of different card types in the deck to help maximize the power of the Lhurgoyfs. Plus, if it dies, it’s an enchantment creature, so it contributes two card types itself!
Come Back Wrong
Call back to Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, perhaps? I expect this card will be underestimated by many Commander players, since it’s a sorcery-speed three-mana removal spell, but the ability to temporarily reanimate the destroyed creature will play well in games where everyone isn’t hyper-optimized. Even if you are playing higher-power optimized decks, you know you’ll want to kill a Dockside Extortionist with this! But in most games of Commander, it’ll be awesome to kill a Solemn Simulacrum, Reclamation Sage, or a Sun Titan with Come Back Wrong. And if you’re playing a deck that runs effects like Sundial of the Infinite, you can put the sacrifice trigger on the stack and then end your turn.
Doomsday Excruciator
Wow, that’s a lot of black mana pips on a card! I imagine milling fans will bend over backwards to try to fit the mana requirements for this card into their decks, with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth being the first step. If you just want the devotion, a large flying body with potential Demon synergies, and the extra card draw, you could (again) run something like Sundial of the Infinite or Torpor Orb to stop that enters trigger.
Enduring Tenacity
It’s nice that we’re getting enchantment creatures in this set, so decks that care about card types are getting some nice tools to help with their synergies – Baba Lysaga, Night Witch springs to mind! If your deck wants Sanguine Bond for lifegain and life drain shenanigans, this is even better as a strict upgrade or added redundancy.
Nowhere to Run
The Magic community’s outcry from the overuse of the ward ability is finally bearing fruit in Magic design with Nowhere to Run. Hopefully we’ll see more of these effects spread across the colors, or perhaps even an efficient artifact that can appear in a wide number of decks, like Shadowspear.
Leyline of Hope
A new Leyline! Typically, these things come in cycles, so I’ll be curious to see what the other colors will get. If you’re tired of all the lifegain synergies that have come out recently, this will certainly get on your nerves, but I do appreciate that this provides a way to close out the game with the creature boost of +2/+2 once you have seven life more than your starting life total.
Twitching Doll
There is no doubt Twitching Doll is one of the creepiest Duskmourn cards we’ve seen so far; I mean, who wants to deal with a Spider Toy? It’s cool that you can cast this early to provide you extra mana over the early-game, and then in the late-game, you can cash it in – at sorcery speed – to unleash a bunch of Spider tokens. If you’re running a Shelob, Child of Ungoliant or Ishkanah, Grafwidow Commander deck, you’ll be happy to slot this right in!
Which cards that we’ve seen from Duskmourn: House of Horror are you most creeped out by or excited about?
Talk to Me
Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter! I run polls and start conversations about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun! You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.
I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl, and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can. If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel. You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.
And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.
Visit my Decklist Database to see my decklists and the articles where they appeared!
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