Wizards have set themselves a pretty difficult task with Magic: The Gathering‘s next big experimentation with horror after the many tours through Innistrad’s gothic horror. Duskmourn: House of Horror evokes that era of retro cassette horror made popular in recent years by Stranger Things. The tricky twist is that Duskmourn is a brand new setting conceptually contained within an amorphous funhouse of sorts. There is no outdoors, there are only more and more rooms playing host to nightmares vaguely evocative of the heavily scanlined monsters that flashed through advertisement reels of horror films 40 years ago. With the emerging heroes of this set being children armed with various forms of electronic ghost-busting technology, MTG’s horror sensibilities tease at the nostalgic nerves of classics like Poltergeist, Ghostbusters and Nightmare on Elm Street.
Each room within Duskmourn hosts a unique nightmare scenario, complete with all manner of spectral creatures and enchanted everything else to fight or sway to your control on the battlefield. Wizards have positioned the plane of Duskmourn as very much a character and the functional antagonist in this set. The sentient nasties that roam its hallways induce fear in any trespassers unlucky enough to stumble into this realm, with the house feeding upon the resulting stressed vibes. Rooms are a new enchantment card type in this set and are a neat thematic touch. Similar to split cards having two possible spells with their respective costs, the player chooses which of the two rooms on the card face to reveal on the battlefield. Pay the cost of the chosen half, and activate the ability, just like a split card. The unplayed half is now considered locked off, with Duskmourn Commander sets including tokens to represent this state. The room remains on the battlefield and the locked door on the unplayed half can be unlocked and activated during the player’s main phase as a sorcery now or in a later round for its associated cost.
Bluffing remains a staple of 2024’s Magic releases, with manifest dread marking a popular new mechanic for this set. When invoked by a spell, the manifesting player will create a nasty little obfuscation for their opponents. By turning the mysterious elements of the house to your whims, you play one of the top two cards of your library onto the battlefield face down. Until its hidden cost is paid, it will remain facedown as a 2/2 creature, with the other card going into the graveyard. One could argue that cards on the battlefield are more useful than queued up in your library. Plus, I got a chuckle at manifesting dread with unwanted lands and wasting my opponent’s time. This could be a tricky mechanic for players wanting to manifest a legion of facedown 2/2 creatures, constantly having to do a sneaky check of your cards’ undersides to recall which card is what.
Duskmourn: House of Horror is the year’s final major tentpole release before Foundations comes onto the scene. Wizards have gone a little extra here compared to the last couple of sets. Alongside the now standard four Commander pre-cons boxes, pre-release and gift bundles, you can also track down the cool Nightmare Bundle. Releasing on October 18, this bundle comes boxed in a delightfully early-90s box television just begging for a recalibrating slap up the side. It comes with six Duskmourn Play Boosters and two Collectors Boosters, as well as a fancy Nightmare Booster featuring a promo exclusive to this bundle. There’s also the standard array of bundle extras, like set-specific lands, a storage box, an exclusive glow-in-the-dark life counter, and three posters. Outside of the Commander Precons, this is perhaps the most responsible single-spend item of the Duskmourn cycle. You can pre-order the Nightmare Bundle or chase some boosters at EB Games or Gameology.
What nostalgic era of genre fiction would make for a great MTG set? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
