Sets [DMH] Duskmourn: House of Horror

[Velrun]

We have a few spoilers for the set coming out after Bloomburrow.

Duskmourn: House of Horror is the second expansion in the Dragonstorm Arc (Link: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Dragonstorm_Arc) and Magic’s 102nd expansion. It will be a horror set taking place inside a giant mansion.

Unfortunately I cannot upload the spoiled cards. Maybe someone else can help? Here they are:

https://scryfall.com/sets/dsk

We have a new creature type in Glimmer which are creatures that become enchantments when they die. We have a new keyword in Impending that we can only speculate what is doing.

Enjoy

 

[Onderzeeboot]

We have a new keyword in Impending that we can only speculate what is doing.

The speculation is that impending is something along the lines of: Impending N (If you cast this spell for its impending cost, it enters the battlefield as an enchantment with N time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter from it. It becomes a creature again when the last counter is removed.)

 

[Nemo]

The speculation is that impending is something along the lines of: Impending N (If you cast this spell for its impending cost, it enters the battlefield as an enchantment with N time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter from it. It becomes a creature again when the last counter is removed.)

Makes sense! This could yield some useful modal stuff.

 

[MilesOfficial]

Neat cards so far! Don't really like this aesthetic being in Magic, but it is what it is.


Love the Shelter style of effect, but it's rarely Cube-worthy for a list at my power-level. This works though! Great combat trick, reasonable body even as a baseline, and I love giving conditional hexproof (as opposed to always-on hexproof). Very neat.


I can dig a 3 mana artifact Volcanic Hammer, and the upside of being a scaling equipment? Sweet. I'd rather have Doctor Who aesthetic than this in my Cube, but I'm not mad.


Cards like this are why I'm happy to keep Griselbrand in my list.


I know I'm quite the contrarian when it comes to the 2MV mana dorks, but this being 1) an artifact, 2) tapping for any mana, and 3) can cash out for a wide board all make this a tier 1.5 dork for the 2MV slot. Very nice.


I'm happy to see such different styles on basic lands, though! Again, not really my style but I think it looks great and I'm happy it exists.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

The speculation is that impending is something along the lines of: Impending N (If you cast this spell for its impending cost, it enters the battlefield as an enchantment with N time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter from it. It becomes a creature again when the last counter is removed.)

Makes sense! This could yield some useful modal stuff.

We were so close!

 

[Nemo]

Chainsaw is a nice glue card, which makes the jarring flavor with respect to most other settings more annoying! It could easily have been something like "Soulfire Axe" using charge counters in a fantasy setting. Maybe I'll run it anyway. The wordiness isn't egregious for how much it does. It seems like a good design that could do a variety of useful things in a mid-powered cube. (Also note that it's TWO mana.)

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Chainsaw is a nice glue card, which makes the jarring flavor with respect to most other settings more annoying! It could easily have been something like "Soulfire Axe" using charge counters in a fantasy setting. Maybe I'll run it anyway. The wordiness isn't egregious for how much it does. It seems like a good design that could do a variety of useful things in a mid-powered cube. (Also note that it's TWO mana.)

Have you seen the card with the headphones? This set feels like Univers Beyond bleeding into real Magic IP



Or the one with the modern spectacles?



Or Niko running around with their geigerteller (or whatever it is...)



They revealed many sweet designs though. I had such high hopes for Bloomburrow (because I love Redwall), and such low hopes for Duskmourne (because I hate horror), but so far it's Duskmourne that delivers!

 

[Chris Taylor]

I think my personal favorite is fanny pack Tyvar

Have you seen the card with the headphones? This set feels like Univers Beyond bleeding into real Magic IP

This card is GAS tho, I am interested. I probably should be playing Chainsaw on mechanical interactions, but if I don't like it I could leave it. This I feel is a lot less replaceable for me.

 

[Nemo]

Have you seen the card with the headphones? This set feels like Universe Beyond bleeding into real Magic IP The designs are sweet though

It definitely does! It's only the latest in a whole series of sets that create flavor clash in our cubes. I might start thinking of a flavor clash budget in addition to a complexity budget. A card needs to be good enough to be worth the weirdness, and I don't want an entire cube of Tough Cookie and Network Disruptor and Getaway Car and Bristly Bill, Spine Sower. Pirates and dinosaurs and detectives and are already kinda weird, but some things seem more out of place than others when you're starting from dragons and wizards and elves.

This card is GAS tho, I am interested. I probably should be playing Chainsaw on mechanical interactions, but if I don't like it I could leave it. This I feel is a lot less replaceable for me.

You're the custom cards guy... you'll think of something.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Have you seen the card with the headphones? This set feels like Univers Beyond bleeding into real Magic IP

To be honest, I think it's good that they're expanding the range of acceptable levels of technology and societal development in Magic. Keeping every plane somewhat close to a medieval fantasy level of technology has the side effect of making the worlds feel stagnant and unchanging.

Ironically, the other horror plane, Innistrad, is one of the best examples of this issue. Despite being set roughly during the Industrial Revolution, Innistrad hasn't started to change. As such, the world has started to feel stagnant. It's no coincidence that the best Innistrad set other than ISD proper is Eldritch Moon: the one set where the plane changed in a meaningful way. Without some advancement, the only way to get new things into the world is to retcon them to exist. This has happened with both Innistrad (the introduction of the friendly Hedge-Witches and their implied old gods) and on Zendikar with the Skyclaves. Both of these elements were just tacked on to the Planes to avoid requiring them to move forward and advance in a meaningful way. Likewise, avoiding advancement leads to very dumb situations where we get pseudomagic versions of more recent items. Examples include the Ripsaws of Innistrad and the "Firecannons" of Ixalan. Having a real Chainsaw or normal cannon would have made these cards feel less like parodies and more like functional items that could exist.

To be fair, I think Toby, Beastie Befriender specifically falls into the "this is too goofy" trap that many Magic sets have been falling into recently. However, that has almost everything to do with the weird design of the purple monster thing and very little to do with his outfit. These magic screen and radio things actually seem like a very cool way of handling techno-magic in a proper fantasy fashion.

 

[Morphling]

Neat cards so far! Don't really like this aesthetic being in Magic, but it is what it is.

Lol, I swapped out Lucille for the In-Universe version but seeing this art, maybe I'll put it back in.

Maybe toss in some Brass Knuckles and I am suddenly reminded of..

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

Yeah I personally am way more of a hater for the actual Universes Beyond stuff than I am for anything like this. Maybe it's just because I honestly don't really care for high fantasy that much in general, I always liked the more sci-fi leaning stuff that the game has had for years with the designs of a lot of artifact creatures.

Y'know the game is called "Magic" not "Swords and Sorceries" or whatever, I think the idea of showing different settings with different interpretations of what "magic" can be in different contexts is actually a cool development. I get why it would bother other people but for me this is actually one of the better choices they've made in the past few years.

Art on Toby is still corny as fuck though.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Honestly, read this: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/planeswalkers-guide-to-duskmourn

I am so in for the worldbuilding of this set, hopefully enough I can stop noticing all the headphones and computer screens on these cards.
Beastie is a real thing on this plane and it's a neat concept, they just picked a really dumb name (not to mention I misread it as Bestie the first time)

 

[Seeker]

I gotta admit, normally flavor doesn't bother me, but

...I was not expecting The Ring in a normal Standard-legal new-WotC-IP Magic set and it kind of feels jarring. Even though I'm totally fine with Chainsaw so I don't know where my line is.

(now, that said, this card's sweet.)

 

[Mown]

To be honest, I think it's good that they're expanding the range of acceptable levels of technology and societal development in Magic. Keeping every plane somewhat close to a medieval fantasy level of technology has the side effect of making the worlds feel stagnant and unchanging.

If the idea here is to introduce phones and televisions into established settings, that's a timeskip of several hundred years, which is probably not conducive to the storytelling for most planes (barring exceptions like Kamigawa being set very far in the past), and you already have quite a range of societal development to work with as you approach the steampunk aesthetic which is still accepted within the scope of fantasy.

I also don't really agree with the premise. I'm not particularly tired of visiting Dominaria, as long as the perspective of the visit changes while still being engaging I don't think it matters much, if you give me a fantasy setting I can probably play double digit RPG campaigns in it and grow to appreciate it more than get bored. If anything I think Zendikar suffers from a lack of continuity, I would much rather see how the world developed in the wake of being trampled under by Eldrazi than our next visit almost pretending it never happened, even if there are some people upset it ceased to be their idealized adventure plane I don't think the whole sudden appearance of ruins from a bygone kor empire was very satisfying.

 

[LadyMapi]

Ironically, the other horror plane, Innistrad, is one of the best examples of this issue. Despite being set roughly during the Industrial Revolution, Innistrad hasn't started to change

This is... incorrect. While it has a lot of aesthetics that line up to the rough period in our history where the industrial revolution happened, Innistrad very much doesn't have the needed precursors to kick off the industrial revolution (no coal mines, for one thing!). Heck, almost all of the things that look like advanced technology on Innistrad are unique craft-pieces by mad scientists or actually just weird applications of necromancy - if you only look at the replicable stuff, it's solidly early modern (and the social "technology" of the plane is very medieval).

Something to keep in mind is that we only see a single thin sliver of the history of most planes we visit. Most of the planes we've visited more than once have had major cultural, technological, or metaphysical shifts between visits. The one major exception is Ravnica, and that's because it literally has one of the most powerful hieromantic workings ever to exist keeping things stagnant. Magic's actually surprisingly good at making settings that avoid the Oops It's Always What The Victorians Thought The Middle Ages Looked Like problem.

Or Niko running around with his geigerteller (or whatever it is...)

*their geigerteller

---

Everyone's ignoring the most infuriating spoiler:

 

[Chris Taylor]

Everyone's ignoring the most infuriating spoiler:

They dun said the quiet part loud!

 

[Brad]

We were so close!

View attachment 9777

I feel like this is good for my cube.

Hating the aesthetic on some of these cards. Feels far from fantasy.

Serialized FOMO X/"???"

 

[Onderzeeboot]

*their geigerteller

Thanks, I didn’t know they were non-binary. Corrected in the OP!

 

[Schafkurai]

Everyone's ignoring the most infuriating spoiler:

I haven't done a universes within version of a card for the name alone, but this is going to be a first! Taking suggestions for actual/real card names .

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I think it’s a good name for this horror set. FOMO is an actual existential dread people experience, and this plane literally makes nightmares come alive.

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

I think there's just a weird disconnect because "fear of missing out" feels like such an extremely contemporary phrase (I'm not sure that it's actually particularly new, but it's definitely caught on more recently), so it just feels dissonant with the general aesthetic. Feels weird to see a card named after a phrase that I first saw on twitter.

 

[Schafkurai]

To me it sounds more like an instant/sorcery from Baldurs Gate:

Fear of Missing Out 1R
Sorcery
Choose one
Buy into it - Sacrifice three permanents, if you do, create two treasure tokens and draw a card.
Stay strong - Discard a card, draw to cards.

 

[Velrun]

Y'know the game is called "Magic" not "Swords and Sorceries" or whatever

It’s called Magic: the Gathering. But they still made Magic Online and Magic Arena. So I don’t think they take their own name so strict.

If anything I think Zendikar suffers from a lack of continuity, I would much rather see how the world developed in the wake of being trampled under by Eldrazi than our next visit almost pretending it never happened, even if there are some people upset it ceased to be their idealized adventure plane I don't think the whole sudden appearance of ruins from a bygone kor empire was very satisfying.

This this this

 

[Velrun]

I think there's just a weird disconnect because "fear of missing out" feels like such an extremely contemporary phrase (I'm not sure that it's actually particularly new, but it's definitely caught on more recently), so it just feels dissonant with the general aesthetic. Feels weird to see a card named after a phrase that I first saw on twitter.

Like TV, radio, chain saws and other modern inventions?