(Overlord of the Hauntwoods | Art by Tiffany Turrill)

We've left the cute and cuddly plane of Bloomburrow and have headed to the truly ghoulish and terrifying plane of Duskmourn and I've got to say, I'm hooked! Out of the Valley and into the House as they probably always say. While it might seem like we should be seeing much less interesting mechanics than before, Duskmourn is full of great options. We're actually in for quite a Rollercrusher of a ride!

First and foremost, we need to look into the most important card type in the set; enchantments. Enchantments are present all through the set. Creatures, a land, even the enchantment creatures become enchantments when they die! If you thought that we would could only do enchantments on Theros you'd be wrong, Dead Wrong! So lets look at the Impending, Rooms, and Eerie mechanics that make Duskmourn such a unique set!

Impending

Counting down to your doom!

The Impending mechanic is the reverse-curse technique of Suspend and Devotion, where the enchantment creature card, say Overlord of the Hauntwoods goes between being a full on creature or only an enchantment. Similar to the Theros gods, these Overlords are creatures everywhere until they hit the field with something determining what they are; meaning in the deck, on the stack, the graveyard, etc they are interacted with as creatures. However, if we cast these cards for their impending costs (which are always less) than the regular cost, they will enter the battlefield with four time counters on them, and will NOT be a creature until the last one is removed.

This is why these all have both an enter-the-battlefield ability as well as an on attack ability, so you can spend less mana up front and get something, but have to wait until 4 turns later in order to get it again. This is very similar to the titans of old, with the added spice of paying less to get half of the creature's value earlier. These honestly go pretty well in control decks as you can cast these early, then spend the next 4 turns wiping the board before these avatars start chunking your opponents for entire quarters of your life. Be sure to keep an eye out for what these cards will do for both standard and commander, as some of these abilities can be horrifically strong in the right decks.

Rooms

The last room on the left

The Room mechanic is easily the most impressive and iconic of the bunch, which makes sense because it's an exploration of the very plane itself! It makes sense right? Since the whole plane itself is a giant house, the Rooms themselves are important enough to get their own iconic names and come with some incredibly powerful abilities.

Rooms are split permanents that are all enchantments that follow many of the same rules as their instant and sorcery counterparts. In the deck, the graveyard, exile, and hand, these cards are one long name with one giant mana value. Similarly, when we get to the stack, we are choosing to cast either side (never both) and entirely ignoring the opposite half of the card.

Now we get to the very special part, where once it's on the field, we quite literally have to do something very unique, where we have this pseudo other permanent that is "locked" away from every consideration until unlocked. This means that even though Roaring Furnace // Steaming Sauna is on the field, with the Steaming Sauna half being locked, there is only a two mana value permanent on the field that is giving only in devotion. which means the "whole" card would get eaten up by a Temporary Lockdown while dodging a Despark. The opposite would be true, however, if the Roaring Furnace half was Locked and the Steaming Sauna half was Unlocked.

Now exactly how DO we unlock a room? Do we need some sort of key? Not quite, in fact all you need is enough mana to basically cast the other half of the card and an empty stack. So, at sorcery speed, meaning only on one of your main phases, you can activate this special action and unlock a room by paying the mana value of the locked half. This being a special action means that it does not use the stack and it cannot be responded to, just like the multiple turn-face-up mechanics from Khans of Tarkir or Murders at Karlov Manor. If you want to give your permanents hexproof and it’s your main phase with nothing else on the stack, you can spend to unlock the Lecture Hall half of Restricted Office // Lecture Hall and bam, you're all proofed up on a Sunday and your opponent is too late to do anything about it.

Rooms are super cool and we even have a awesome newCommander that allows you to use every single one of them in the same incredibly spice-tastic deck. But now lets go on to the next mechanic that encapsulates the focus on enchantments as well as unlocking rooms!

Eerie

 Soo mysterious, soo strange

Now abilities triggering from enchantments entering is nothing new, because back in Theros (callback) we had the Constellation mechanic that, well, triggered when enchantments entered the battlefield. Fans loved that mechanic and it made perfect sense for the setting, much as it does here, as enchantments on Theros are embodiments of belief and faith, and on Duskmourn they are manifestations of fear and dread made flesh. However, with the Room mechanic, we're doing just a little bit more than just having enchantments enter. We are in fact also unlocking doors and that's what makes the Eerie mechanic different from Constellation. That's about it really, its just strictly an upgrade, but at the same time not every single Constellation ability has been replicated as an Eerie ability, so there is still a lot of specific uses for both within the overall game. But that's all, Constellation II, now with Rooms!

Manifest Dread

Who up, Manifesting they Dread?

Speaking of special actions, Tarkir and Murders at Karlov Manor, we have another mechanic in Duskmourn that uses special actions that cannot be responded to. Manifest dread is, much like eerie along side it, an old mechanic II electric boogaloo that makes a set-specific change to dress it into something new. Manifest, as you might recall, is when you take the top card of your deck and place it face down as a 2/2 colorless morph'd creature with no abilities. Manifest dread is when you look at the top two cards of your deck and manifest one then put the next one in to the graveyard. There ya go! Manifest but also some surveil 2, kind of.

Survival

Keep on survivin'

Now on to the last and final mechanic in this terrifying world of Duskmourn and the one glimmer of hope that is to be had; Survival. Survival is an interesting mechanic and honestly very straight forward. It simply reads: At the beginning of your second main phase, if *cardname* is tapped, its ability triggers. The idea of getting a bonus if this creature survives the combat step is honestly really cool and the most thematic of the set. Sometimes the best thing to do it just hope to survive the swings, but of course in many formats, especially in Commander there are quite a few ways to tap creatures down outside of combat like tapping for mana or paying for convoke.

This is the first time we've specifically seen reference to the second main phase and it makes sense too, as these abilities would be that much more powerful if we ended up with a ton of extra main phases. So it does make sense as to why they've stated the change earlier this year.

Don't Split up!

That's our look at Duskmourn and its spooky mechanics! It was honestly a blast to see how each mechanic brings the world, which is just one gigantic house by the by, to life. From the survivors gaining experience every time they manage to survive combat to Valgabothstealing your worst fears directly from your mind (library) and hiding them in plain sight, waiting to jump scareyou. This set well be fondly remembered as we swap out a ton of our enchantments with rooms that do the same thing and more or as we figure out prime numbers with Zimone, All-Questioning. Tell us below which mechanic excites you to the most and especially if you have any questions on how they work too!

Read more:

Room Service - Marina Vendrell Deck

Start Me Up! - 3 Duskmourn Commanders

Kurohitsuki

Commander Content Creator with over 50 decks looking for any excuse to play them! EDH has been my gateway to expression for the past decade and that's not looking to change any time soon! Catch me on Twitch.tv/Kurohitsuki where I'm always jamming games every week!