Wizards of the Coast have given a rundown of the mechanics that will be featured in their upcoming Magic: The Gathering set Duskmourn: House of Horror.
Presided over by the elder demon Valgavoth and its five overlords, the haunted house is set to be MTG’s spookiest setting yet, with twists and turns even in its gameplay.
Impending creatures can be cast as enchantments for an alternate cost, suspending them with time counters to bring them in more cheaply in later turns and to trigger alternate effects.
The new Room mechanic is a type of dual enchantment card, with player’s choosing one half to cast upon reveal and being able to ‘unlock’ and cast the second half later on for its mana cost.
Next, a new creature type known as Glimmers, which revive as enchantments upon their first death.
Returning is Manifest with the Manifest Dread mechanic, whereby a player chooses one of the top two cards of their library to put on the battlefield face down as a 2/2 creature, and sends the other to the graveyard. If the face down card is a creature, it can be flipped up at any time by paying its mana cost.
Delirium is making a fitting return, alongside a new mechanic called Survival, whereby a creature that is tapped at the beginning of a player’s second main phase will get to trigger its effect. The intended design here is that the creature attacks and ‘survives’ the combat phase, but especially in non-standard formats there’s bound to be ways to abuse it by tapping creatures out of combat.
Finally, you may have noticed the earlier emphasis on enchantments in Duskmourn’s mechanics. This culminates in Eerie, a mechanic which triggers whenever an enchantment enters the battlefield under your control. For rooms, this means a single card can count for two Eerie triggers.
What do you think of the new mechanics, and which are you excited to try out? Let us know below.