Magic: The Gathering, fresh off a set of fuzzy animals, is now going full horror.
How do you create a haunted house in Magic: The Gathering when a typical expansion represents a whole plane of existence? Duskmourn House of Horror solves this problem by having a haunted home spread beyond its grounds and take over an entire planet. The story goes that a fear demon trapped in a mansion found a way to expand the grounds, trapping everyone on Duksmourn.
Duskmourn, where Magic has done gothic horror with Innistrad and body horror with Phyrexia, has a more 1980s horror vibe. With VHS static, chainsaws, and a new kind terror in every room, its infinite house. Think of Stranger Things and Hellraiser or videogames such as Anatomy and MyHouse.wad. There's also a little Silent Hill, and Team Silent legend Masahiro ito contributed card artwork.
A new card type is called rooms. Each of these enchantments has two effects that you can choose when you play it. The other effect is locked until you pay an additional cost. This is shown by Rooms played horizontally with an illustrated wall between the two halves. You can create a sense dread when your opponent plays a Room.
Duskmourn revolves around this. A new mechanic, impending, allows certain cards that represent the house's monstrous residents to be played with counters. One counter is removed each turn and the card comes alive only when the last counter leaves. You know what is coming and must figure out how to stop the monster in time. There are no jump scares in this film.
Other cards are designed for Room cards. For example, those with eerie capabilities that trigger when an Enchantment is played or Rooms are unlocked. Ghostly Keybearer, our preview card (art by Marco Gorlei), unlocks a Room after you deal combat damage to another player. The player will then fly out of the nightmare mirrors of the house on a cloud a glitching TV screen fuzz.
Duskmourn House of Horror is available for prerelease on September 20. It will be released in Arena on September 24, and in paper Magic in September 27.
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