(Unnerving Grasp | Art by Jeremy Wilson)

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A Blue Mage's Haunted House Survival Guide

Friendly greetings and welcome to the blue set review for Duskmourn! I'm John Sherwood, author of Digital Deckbuilding on EDHREC and Tricks of the Trade on Cardsphere.

I'll be your guide to the latest mono-blue entries into the Commander format. Continuing the trend of trope-tastic visual design, Duskmourn brings tacky 1980's fashion and horror genre clichés to everyone's favorite collectible card game.

Setting aside the corny costumes and fear flick references, this set has some truly winning offerings for blue mages to shuffle up and play EDH.

Mythics

Abhorrent Oculus

Three mana is an excellent rate for a 5/5 flyer, but the additional cost of exiling SIX cards from your own graveyard makes this card difficult to cast on early turns. The payoff of a free manifest on every opponent's upkeep might be worth a look in morph/manifest/disguise decks.

With a little topdeck manipulation, Abhorrent Oculus could make some interesting play patterns for Etrata, Deadly Fugitive. Meanwhile, Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer players will be gazing this way for extra card draw triggers. Also, I'm sure the eye typal fans are happy to see a new recruit.

There's only eight Commander-legal eyes right now, but we've seen more eyes in the last four years of Magic than the previous twenty-six.

Mirror Room // Fractured Realm

I firmly believe this is a win-more card, no deck actually needs it, and plenty of players will have fun with it. Mirror Room's cost of three mana to copy a creature you control is fair.

Behind the other door, Fractured Room is yet another entry into the divisive design space of doubling effects. At the moment, Fractured Room costs more mana than any other version of this effect.

However, it's printed side-by-side with a mana-efficient copy spell. Meaning, the cost of inclusion is minimal. Unless your board is completely empty of creatures, this is never a dead card in hand.

Overlord of the Floodpits

A creature with five power, flying and card advantage is straightforward blue Magic, and this card gets even more tempting with the intriguing new mechanic: Impending.

I love impending's similarities to evoke, and casting this card for its impending cost is Mulldrifter-adjacent with graveyard synergy. Also note, you may manipulate the time counters on an impending permanent with the Timey-Wimey time travel mechanic from Universes Beyond: Doctor Who.

In the case of Overlord of the Floodpits, you'll most likely want to remove those counters early and start turning this beater sideways.

Rares

The Mindskinner

This is the one and only new mono-blue legendary creature in the set, and I'm betting it quickly climbs charts as a commander and in the 99.

Taking it from the top, we see a casting cost of . I love cards with three or more pips of the same color. Especially with effects that are firmly in that color's piece of the pie.

An unblockable mill engine in the command zone is about as blue as it gets. The Mindskinner's "prevent that damage" clause also creates some interesting rules interactions. As an edge case, you could go full swing against a player hiding behind a Teferi's Protection and still mill them.

The player isn't targeted, and their life total isn't changing. Particularly relevant to our format, preventing The Mindskinner's damage also means this creature cannot deal commander damage.

Now, The Mindskinner might lead a dedicated mill deck, or it could sit in the command zone as a possible win condition for a creature-focused deck. You can get it out early and chip away your opponents' libraries, or build your board and cast it late game for a big finish. I'm sure Bruvac the Grandiloquent would love to help that effort.

Inversely, Bruvac players might view The Mindskinner as a pleasant dream rather than a nightmare. Although three blue pips might be tough to cast in a three-color deck, the risk is probably worth the reward in The Master, Transcendent or The Wise Mothman.

Central Elevator // Promising Stairs

This card comes complete with its own setup and payoff. The setup side of this card is a tutor for another Room. The payoff is a Room-focused win condition, and many players love building around alternate win cons. Win conditions centered around oddball card types and parasitic mechanics are a pillar of EDH. (I'm looking at you Maze's End players.)

Now, we all know it's unwise to swim in any body of water in a horror story, but it can't hurt to just dip our toes into this new enchantment sub-type and test the waters for winning the game with Promising Stairs.

Then again, it's not much of a test. Wizards of the Coast basically built this deck for us. Marina Vendrell is a 5-color commander that both digs for Rooms and unlocks them.

Plus the Rooms themselves offer a broad range of useful effects. Thanks to blatantly prescriptive Commander deck design, a win from Promising Stairs is plausible with minimal support from other card types.

Enduring Curiosity

I know the "strictly better" approach to card evaluation isn't universally accepted. Yet, from a mechanical point of view, Enduring Curiosity is a strictly better Coastal Piracy. It offers the same effect on a 4/3 body that comes with built-in recursion, and it has flash.

Despite the obvious upgrade, devoted pirate players aren't likely to swap Coastal Piracy for an off-theme glimmer, and good for them. We need more of that attitude in the format.

As for me and my decks, Enduring Curiosity will find a slot in inTetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive along side Coastal Piracy, Bident of Thassa and Reconnaissance Mission.

Entity Tracker

Staying inside The House, Entity Tracker is clearly made to support the prescribed Marina Vendrell Room deck. Outside The House, Bant Enchantress already draws more cards than it knows what to do with.

Does Tuvasa the Sunlit need another Eidolon of Blossoms? Of course not. On the other hand, this card opens doors to Enchantress decks in color combinations without green or white.

Track down a Shoal Kraken, and we're on track to take the Enchantress theme in new directions. Dimir Enchantress? What about Izzet?

At the very least, Entity Tracker will find its way into the 99 of Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor. Looking down yet another corridor, Entity Tracker could draw some cards for those entities we know as the Theros gods. This card is going places and I think the audience already knows what it will find.

Fear of Sleep Paralysis

As someone who suffered from frequent sleep paralysis, I can confirm that being tapped and unable to untap is an accurate Magic interpretation of a genuinely terrifying malady. However, this card does not capture the panic that accompanies actual sleep paralysis.

Not many decks need or want to pay six mana to make stun counters better. Maybe the twenty-two players with a Monstrosity of the Lake deck can pick one up on Cardsphere?

If I were upgrading the Miracle Worker preconstructed deck, then this card would be one of my first cuts. Just like my actual sleep paralysis, I'm putting Fear of Sleep Paralysis behind me and not looking back.

Glitch Interpreter

Decks that play with face-down cards might like it, but even that use case would be glitchy at best. None of my praise for Enduring Curiosity applies to Glitch Interpreter.

The card draw ability is similar, but a typical deck would have to cast Glitch Interpreter twice to get it to stick to the battlefield. This one is heading for the bulk bin.

Leyline of Transformation

Conspiracy is now a mono-blue leyline. There are over 27000 decks playing Arcane Adaptation and now those decks have a new tool. Morophon, the Boundless can put it to good use, or players can build their own Morophon with the new Leyline of Mutation.

Marina Vendrell's Grimoire

Six mana to draw five cards is a fair rate, and then this card will keep drawing in lifegain decks. Oloro, Ageless Ascetic will simply draw two extra cards per turn, or Will, Scion of Peace could use it to get an engine going.

Lurking beneath the surface, I suspect this card is looking for twisted play patterns. The life loss trigger can turn cards like Night's Whisper into a loot effect, which could be a good thing in self-mill or reanimator decks. Over all, I like the balance of a design with risking everything for powerful abilities.

It's very flavorful for the set, and it makes for intriguing gameplay.

Silent Hallcreeper

I love this card. It isn't great, but it's flexible. There's an abundance of blue+ decks that love cheap unblockable creatures, and this one has more utility than many of the existing options.

This includes my Tetsuko deck, which I mentioned earlier. However, the big winner here is obviously Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow, which can either turn Silent Hallcreeper into a ninja for more triggers or bounce it for value.

The Tale of Tamiyo

The first three verses of this saga are a sort of self-inflicted Grindstone. There's potential there to make a self-mill combo, but it requires narrow and convoluted deckbuilding.

An honest telling of Tamiyo's tale promises some card advantage and a solid payoff to spell slinger decks that are already working out of their graveyard, such as Kess, Dissident Mage.

They Came from the Pipes

With nothing else in play, this card makes two bodies and draws two cards for five mana. That's fine, but this is commander, and we want explosive. This creature will burst the pipes for any blue+ face-down creature commander.

Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer, Etrata, Deadly Fugitive, Ixidor, Reality Sculptor, Animar, Soul of Elements and Vannifar, Evolved Enigma all lead decks that will routinely get more than five mana worth of value from this enchantment.

Zimone's Hypothesis

Manipulating the math to get a desired outcome is on-theme for Zimone. I have my own hypothesis that this card will be a great defensive tool for decks that don't have access to Fog effects.

The swarms of creature tokens that flood EDH battlefields often have predictable stat lines, so casting this in response to your opponent's big swing is fair play. At the same time, you can drop a +1/+1 counter to curate the results, solving a problem or getting something of value back into your hand.

Notably, this spell doesn't target anything, so it gets around hexproof, shroud and protection. It's not Cyclonic Rift, but it will often be good enough, and the customization makes for a much more engaging play pattern with political potential.

Uncommons & Commons

Bottomless Pool // Locker Room

While I'm reluctant to touch anything drawn from a locker room, I would be remiss to skip over another draw for combat damage effect. Five mana to cast or unlock the Locker Room is a slightly worse rate than Enduring Curiosity, and slightly better than Glitch Interpreter.

As with all split cards, the value comes from flexibility. The Bottomless Pool side of this card is a slow Unsummon, but it is removal attached to card draw.

This card might not win many games, but you're not going to lose because you played it either. All told, I think it's a fine value piece for budget decks.

Floodpits Drowner

Another flexible creature, Floodpits Drowner is useful both as a sudden blocker or a removal spell in a pinch. You could cast this on an opponent's turn to tap down a potential combat threat, then use the activated ability on your turn to drown both creatures into libraries.

Alternatively, you could blink Floodpits Drowner to stun your oppenents' boards. There's also potential to use this card as a control piece in a proliferate deck.

Sometimes it'll be useful just to shuffle your deck if needed. That's a lot of utility, and that's all before mentioning its typal synergy with merfolk.

Creeping Peeper

I'm not giving this little guy the stink eye. Despite the unnerving implications of its name, Creeping Peeper is a welcome addition to that blue Enchantress support I mentioned with Entity Tracker.

For the third time in this article, we have a card that is prescribed for the Marina Vendrell Room deck, and it also supports the morph theme that keeps peeping at us.

I'm a fan of blue's limited-use mana dorks. This one was clearly made for the Duskmourn Limited format, but it won't be homeless in Commander.

Don't Make a Sound

This card's name is excellent advice in a haunted house. Out loud, this card is Quench with an upside, but it's whispering strategic questions.

Do you hold this up until your opponent commits all their mana to a play? Maybe manipulate your opponents into questioning whether or not you would rather surveil?

I think this is a great spell for Commander, because the counterplay possibilities are much more interesting than a hard Counterspell.

Vanish from Sight

Yes, it costs four mana, but I say it's worth it. This card is nonland permanent removal in blue. Then we jump down that gaping, jagged hole to find situations in which the ideal target is your own permanent. You could save a valuable piece of your game plan from other types of removal.

Graveyard decks do crazy things for love sometimes; try shifting something from your board to your graveyard using the surveil at the end of the spell. This card isn't exactly doing anything new for blue, but in my opinion, it's one of the most versatile and interesting cards in the set.

The core of blue's survival strategy in Duskmourn appears to be drawing cards and I am here for it. I didn't mention them all, but thirteen of Duskmourn's forty-five new blue cards have the word draw in the text box. There are also a lot of flexible utility cards with answers to some of blue's biggest problems.

I'm not excited for the set itself, because horror is not my thing, but Magic is. Horror notwithstanding, the are enough good cards in this set that I'm looking forward to adding some singles to my wants on Cardsphere.

What are your top blue picks from the new set? Do you have Commander plans for The Mindskinner? Would you rather build the Marina Room deck without Promising Stairs? Or build the Promising Stairs deck without Marina? Let us know in the comments below, and stay tuned the rest of this week for more Duskmourn set reviews on EDHREC and Commander's Herald.

John Sherwood

John Sherwood loves interaction, turning creatures sideways and interacting with sideways creatures. His deck building mantra is, "Run more lands." He has been a devoted Commander player since Zendikar Rising.