Alternative Duskmourn: a custom Magic set
I’m always inspired by Mark Rosewater and Gavin Verhey’s set teasers that feature rules text and hints at cards in upcoming Magic sets. As a horror fan, I’ve been excited for the debut of Duskmourn: House of Horrors ever since it was announced in January of this year (if I recall correctly). And once the Planeswalker’s Guide to Duskmourn was released in June, I was inspired to create my own custom Magic set based around the same ideas as I expected to see in the proper release. The window is closing for me to show off the custom set I’ve been working on and maintain some relevance before preview season kicks into full gear, so let me share with you my design thoughts alongside the cards in my set.
I’ve opted for at least 13 commons, 10 uncommons, 4 rares, and 1 mythic rare in each color, alongside a double cycle of multi-color signpost uncommons (20 cards), a cycle of multi-color rares (10 cards), an uncommon land cycle (10 cards), and a smattering of colorless artifacts and miscellaneous rares (including some characters we know will be relevant to the story). In all, this is close to 200 cards and I only pulled in 12 reprints, including cards that will actually appear in Duskmourn proper. Yes, I used a few of the cards that were previewed in June as inspiration for cycles, namely the Overlord of the Hauntwoods, Leyline of Hope, and Enduring Tenacity alongside the fact that 3 other members of the ‘Enduring’ cycle were named Enduring Innocence, Enduring Curiosity, and Enduring Courage.
I don’t often create an entire set out of MaRo and Gavin’s teasers, typically they will just inspire a few designs and provide an opportunity to work on my creative muscles. Duskmourn hit different for me, so I’ll tell you about my design thoughts and process.
Note that several cards have preliminary art, all of which is AI-generated by Dall-E3. I may get around to filling out the rest of the set with art, but I’ll admit that my priority is the mechanical side of the cards. If there’s enough interest then I’ll make it a priority to generate some interesting art, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.
Initial Thoughts and Ideas
Let’s start with some of the basics of Duskmourn in case you didn’t pore over the planeswalker’s guide as I did. The House is full of horrors and nightmares, created by Valgavoth. The House itself has basically encompassed the plane, and the House itself is ever-shifting. There are 6 major regions: the Mistmoors (white-aligned), the Floodpits (blue-aligned), the Balemurk (black-aligned), the Boilerbilges (red-aligned), the Hauntwoods (green-aligned), and the Below (where Valgavoth resides). There are several major subsets of creatures/factions within the House aside from Valgavoth’s manifestations: the Cult of Valgavoth, Glitch Ghasts, Razorkin, Wickerfolk, Quickened Toys, Demons, Beasties, Gremlins, and Survivors. The survivors are subdivided into the House Institute who research and analyze supernatural events, the Benefactors who aid and support other survivors, and the Doorblades who attempt to destroy or capture monsters within the House. Initially I thought the set could be a three-color set using the shard colors from Alara, since some of the factions lined up: quickened toys and Esper (white-blue-black), glitch ghasts and Bant (white-blue-green), razorkin and Grixis (blue-black-red), cult of Valgavoth and Naya (white-red-green), and wickerfolk and Jund (black-red-green). Some were more of a stretch than others, and I eventually opted to go for a standard set that focuses on two-color pairs for draft and synergy purposes.
Now that I’m looking at it laid out in this manner, after removing demons which were noted in the guide as being mostly eradicated by Valgavoth, this leaves 10 factions. My set kind of follows that breakdown, the main difference is that I didn’t use the House Institute as the blue-green signpost and the quickened toys are distributed throughout Esper colors, with a bit of spill-over into red.
Here is where I focused certain factions in my version of the set: glitch ghasts in white-blue, razorkin in black-red, beasties in red-green, cult of Valgavoth in green-white, gremlins in blue-red, wickerfolk in black-green, Doorblades in red-white. The remaining three color pairs could’ve been quickened toys in blue-black, Benefactors in white-black, and House Institute in green-blue, and while cards associated with those factions did end up in those colors, it wasn’t as strict as the other seven color pairs.
Signpost Uncommons
After moving away from the three-color idea I laid out color pairs instead and worked on the draft archetype signpost uncommons. In recent sets I noticed that we’ve been getting a lot more ‘double cycles’ of 10 cards, so two cards for each color pair, and I really like that. A lot of the time one multi-color (or “gold”) uncommon will set up the archetype while the other will be a payoff card for building around the archetype. I mostly followed this paradigm, but some cards do both and I don’t see an issue with that.
White-blue: glitch ghasts and blink/flicker synergy
When I think of things glitching in and out of reality I immediately think of flicker and blink. I also have an Aminatou blink deck in Commander, so it’s always on my mind. As such, I had to take this opportunity. There is some spirit typal synergy within these colors, but I added a fair amount of blinking spells and creatures that can blink themselves. To have a good blink-matters deck you need the enabling blink effects and the payoffs. Payoffs are often enters the battlefield abilities that provide minor value, such as card draw or adding +1/+1 counters to creatures.
UM01 Shiny Trinket is an Icy Manipulator variant that also provides repeatable blink at quite a good rate. Unlike some repeatable blink, the fact that it taps itself means you can’t abuse it too much. Having to choose which mode you want to use each turn cycle is the biggest tension within this card. That and whether you want repeatable blink, but who wouldn’t?
UM02 Soulshepard is pretty obviously directly inspired by Soulherder. I don’t think there’s a better way to word the trigger that benefits from you blinking your own creatures that incidentally benefits from your opponents blinking their creatures and your exile-based removal spells. The difference is that this doesn’t just sit there and blink your creatures at end of turn. It can be used to fade a blocker but requires you to put itself in danger. Flying mitigates that risk slightly. This is the big payoff card in the blink strategy.
Blue-black: nightmare typal, mill, and surveil
Surveil was introduced as a keyword in Guilds of Ravnica, but the effect of putting a card back on top or into your graveyard has been in Magic for a long time, longer than Scry which many consider to be the spiritual predecessor of Surveil. There were only a few cards that cared about the actual act of Surveilling or enhanced it in some way. It has since become a deciduous mechanic, appearing here and there across sets. Because I wanted the blue-black draft archetype to center more around nightmares, Surveil became a secondary mechanic. One that just happened to be the mechanical theme of several nightmare cards.
UM03 Shrieking Cellarspawn is a Nightmare typal card, and it does count itself. Mill is on the menu, technically.
UM04 Nightmare Prism provides a repeatable way to dump cards into your graveyard, rewarding you with Cellarspawn tokens.
Black-red: razorkin, delirium, and sacrifice (a classic black-red theme)
Sacrificing permanents helps to support delirium, and it also felt appropriate for a horror setting. Discarding is another way to get different card types into your graveyard, and the flavor of madness often associated with discard in Magic was also appropriate. Initially I was going to have more of a Morbid theme in black-red, a mechanic that cares about creatures dying. While there is a bit of this within the set, the signpost uncommons are explicitly sacrifice, discard, and delirium.
UM05 Chuckling Tormentor pings opponents when your creatures die or are milled, similar to the infamous Syr Conrad, the Grim. It is a vague Chucky reference, but it’s a little thin. I took inspiration from Slaughter-Priest of Mogis for these two cards.
The set has to have at least a few creepy clowns. UM06 Killer Klown is a dangerous threat that can shrink your opponent’s creatures, but I limited its self-pumping discard ability to once per turn. You don’t need to worry about being smacked for 10 on turn three by your absolute mad lad of an opponent. The discard does help to reach the delirium threshold.
Red-green: beasties and power 4+ matters
The ability word ‘Ferocious’ originated on Tarkir, and while red-green often cares about ramping and big creatures, it’s not always so explicit. The relatively recent Outlaws of Thunder Junction and Wilds of Eldraine used power 4+ matters as their red-green draft theme, but in the past few years it was only used a handful of times. I wanted to give Beasties more of a mechanical identity, and making them all big, protective, loyal creatures felt right. Many of the larger creatures in red and green have the Beast type within the set, though I don’t have much explicit Beast synergy like for the Nightmare, Treefolk, and Survivor creature types.
UM07 Beastie Bestie gets even bigger if you attack with friends. I didn’t use the known 4/4 white Beast creature token often enough on my cards. But I have one here, only if your Beastie Bestie is buffed can you sacrifice it for a token 4/4. Its attack trigger does allow it to pump itself up to that 5 power threshold. I thought it was good to be able to self-activate that effect in this case.
UM08 Needlespine Beast pokes things if you have other beefy creatures, and they don’t even need to be attacking to get the ping effect.
Green-white: tokens-matter and go-wide
Another classic strategy in green-white, and the abundance of token creatures helps. One issue I had as exemplified in UM09 Beast Beacon is that my main “good/heroic” basic token was a 1/1 red Survivor, while a lot of token generators needed to be green or white. In a full set, I could easily have many more types of tokens than my set ended up with, but for this first pass I kept it concise. This means a fair number of non-red cards create red Survivors (and a fair number of non-black cards create Cellarspawns for that matter).
Green-white also has an enchantment sub-theme, and the enchantment type on UM10 Shimmering Oak is a nod to that. I like the interplay of Shimmering Oak’s abilities. Once you have 3+ other creatures, you can buff them with +1/+1 counters.
White-black: lifegain and reanimation
Another theme that is tried-and-true within its color pair. Lifegain synergies help to provide a sense of respite from the horrors of the House, while reanimation is very appropriate for a horror setting. I opted to make a number of different reanimation effects, but many have the restriction of forcing you to put a finality counter on the creature. Finality counters were introduced in Lost Caverns of Ixalan and provide an elegant solution to the issues reanimation can cause. For example, you can’t abuse blink effects on creatures with finality counters on them and you can’t repeatedly sacrifice and reanimate such creatures either.
UM11 Elder Strictor supports counters, despite not being in green or blue. It felt like a good reward for sacrificing an entire creature or artifact.
UM12 Friendly Soul is a beneficent creature with Impending. It has a way to repeatedly gain life (to a degree) and then a payoff when your life total is high.
Blue-red: gremlins and coin flips
This is a fun, chaotic synergy that isn’t often found on black-border Magic cards. Coin flipping has never been a major theme but I think it encapsulates the chaos that blue-red often embraces. There’s also a lot of untapped potential in the design space, and I hope I’ve provided some fun examples of that. Gremlins are described in the Duskmourn planeswalker’s guide as “delight[ing] in mischief and practical pranks” which can either harm or benefit monsters and survivors alike. Multiple blue and red cards have ‘incidental’ coin flips, a coin flip that will trigger and give you a minor upside, or one where winning and losing give you close to the same effect.
UM13 Shimmering Mirror is a fun design that will ultimately let you copy that spell if you really want it. You’ll just have to get lucky!
UM14 Gliding Grembo allows you to flip a coin for 1 mana if you want. There is a good potential benefit if you do, so it’s probably worth it for the chance at an extra +1/+1 and flying, or even more if you’re on a hot streak.
Black-green: wickerfolk, delirium, and regrowth
Wickerfolk are treefolk that are a lot more sinister than the ones you’d find on Lorwyn. For black-green I wanted mechanics that cared about cards in the graveyard. Delirium appeared on one early preview card, though it was in red technically. That would fit into my initial black-red-green version of wickerfolk, but delirium historically appears in mainly black-green anyway so it seemed fine to have the delirium payoffs in those colors. Delirium bled into other colors, I’ll admit it was an alluring payoff mechanic to tack onto many different cards. Another mechanic that often bonds black and green is regrowth, returning cards from your graveyard to your hand.
UM15 Regrowth Wickerfolk trades a card from your deck for a permanent card in your graveyard, which is not bad. Minor Treefolk synergy to help reinforce the archetype.
UM16 Rotwood mills and then buffs itself into a 5 mana 6/6 with trample when delirium is on.
Red-white: survivor typal and aggressive tokens
After deciding to relegate survivor to a token-only creature type, I still wanted red-white to have both survivor and token synergies. The signpost uncommons are straightforward, and I think giving tokens haste with UM17 Coordinated Attack is a nice addition over many other 2-cost token creators.
UM18 Doorblade Knocker leaves behind a survivor if it dies. but while it’s alive, it buffs your survivor tokens quite substantially.
Green-blue: oozes and counters-matter (keyword counters and +1/+1 counters)
This is one of my favorite, relatively unique synergies within the set. Caring about reaching a threshold of counters among permanents you control or getting buffs from counters like UM20 Adapting Threat are both interesting. There’s a fair amount of design space here, as cards can benefit in many different ways. Compare CU11 Face the Unknown to CU13 Looming Doubt, two blue commons: the former costs less to cast while the latter gains flying. Keyword counters give you more unique counters to work with and allow the set to have a larger number of counters overall without relying on +1/+1 counters. That said, I may have put a lot of incidental +1/+1 counters into the set in support of this synergy.
UM19 Silencing Slime also brings back slime counters and the same ability as Sludge Monster from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. You can even put slime counters on UM20 Adapting Threat and it’ll just treat them as +1/+1.
UM20 Adapting Threat is effectively a 3 mana 2/3 with two different abilities. +1/+1 counters are twice as effective on it, which is a fun synergy in my opinion. I contemplated making this a base 0/0 but I think 0/1 is just fine.
Other Mechanics and Themes
One thing we knew from the early preview in June was there were some beneficial entities known as Glimmers within the House, and that the Enduring cycle were all enchantment creatures. I added more Glimmers and enchantment creatures to the set. We also have Quickened Toys which could be artifacts or artifact creatures, which reminded me of the artifact versus enchantment theme of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. I didn’t lean into that tension as heavily as Neon Dynasty did, which gave the set a past versus future conflict while also having a harmony theme where you got a benefit for controlling both permanent types. This could be something the actual Duskmourn set explores.
Cellarspawn were noted in the planeswalker’s guide, and initially I had some cards that created a Cellarspawn token. These tokens were somewhat inspired by the nightmares created by Ashiok, Nightmare Muse which exiled cards from your opponent’s deck upon attacking or blocking. I made my Cellarspawn tokens mill your opponents when they attacked. Defining this rules text every time became a bit burdensome when I began adding cards that created Cellarspawn tokens. So I took inspiration from Modern Horizons 3, which had a few cards (Disa the Restless and Tarmogoyf Nest) that create a Tarmogoyf token, without having to define all the features of such a token. That’s how Cellarspawn became a physical card, adding an extra black common slot.
Survivors are obviously a big part of the story, and Survivor is an actual creature type in Magic that has previously only been found on creature tokens (mainly associated with Varchild and her war-riders). Because of this, I decided to lean into a token-heavy theme, though I considered adding Survivor to actual creature cards in the set. It looks like (as of the August 31st previews) Wizards of the Coast opted for the latter solution. Because I went for the former and following the above Cellarspawn discussion, I found myself with a ‘dueling tokens’ theme. The Survivor tokens were vanilla creatures with no ability, but cards could care about how many Survivors you control or buff just the Survivor creature type. Capturing the Survivor versus Cellarspawn conflict felt like good flavor in the set, and supported the go-wide and tokens-matter themes of green-white and red-white, while providing sacrifice fodder for white-black and black-red.
Surveil and Delirium are found throughout the set, as the former helps to support the latter. Blue-black leans into surveil the most, while delirium payoffs are more common in blue-black-green. These were both mentioned in the signpost uncommon discussion above, but I wanted to point out how mechanics within the set can lend support to each other.
Reanimation is a classic horror trope, including when things to come back wrong or villains appear nigh unkillable. I probably went overboard with reanimation, but I tempered a lot of them by adding finality counters to the effect.
Rooms were teased as a potentially new card type, but it was later confirmed that they are not. The way I used them was similar to enchantments, so I made them an enchantment subtype. A new card type would support delirium, but would necessitate additional ways to interact with Rooms (i.e. remove them). Alternatively they could be a Battle subtype, but I’d venture to guess that it’ll be a little while until we see Battles again. I only created two Room cards because I was focused on supporting all the other archetypes within the set so I didn’t carve out enough space for them.
Top-Down Horrors
One big aspect of the set that I’m sure Wizards of the Coast used as well is tapping into top-down horror tropes and characters. Top-down designs are great for flavorful sets, as they allow you to use an existing concept and convert it into a Magic card as best as you can. I made references to actors and characters in my multi-color rare cycle of XXYY cards, though I’ll admit I started to add in some bottom-up mechanical designs and struggled to find a good character to fit it. Expand the sections for the individual discussions and have a guess at the inspiration for each creature!
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RM01 Incorporating Entity is sort of a reference to The Thing, and takes a bit of inspiration from Mimic Vat, Bioplasm, and Phyrexian Ingestor. I think this is interesting as a white-blue threat that can also be a repeatable blink effect. It’ll most likely be used to remove blockers, however.
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RM02 Pinwise, Nightmare Master is a reference to Pinhead (Hellraiser) and Pennywise (IT), and the creature itself is a nightmare lord that can return itself from the grave. A lot of horror villains come back or are very difficult to kill, and I think a lot of creatures in this cycle capture that. I like that this returns from the battlefield but leaves a Cellarspawn as a herald of the actual legendary creature.
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RM03 Voormyer, Carnage King is a reference to Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, and the combination does indeed revel in bloodshed. I’m unsure if the rules text “if that destroys a creature…” fits within the Magic comprehensive rules, but I had to spice that ability up a bit.
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RM04 Olbek, Raging Fury is a reference to the Belko Experiment, but admittedly it was a bottom-up design. I wanted a creature that revels in combat and fighting. This creature wants you to brawl and gives you an extra punch based on its bonus power from +1/+1 counters.
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RM05 Rine, Welcoming Seneschal is a reference to Ralph Ineson, who is featured in such horror flicks as The Witch and Lord of Misrule. The card takes further inspiration from other folk horror movies like the Village and Midsommar. It isn’t overtly sinister, but neither are folk horror movies until about halfway through.
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RM06 Freug, the Indomitable is a reference to Freddy Kreuger (Nightmare on Elm Street). It is a difficult-to-kill threat that comes back for one last finale if your opponent manages to destroy it.
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RM07 Gawjis, Puzzle Master is a reference to Jigsaw (Saw), but mechanically cares about flipping coins. I wanted to have a coin flip ability that allows you to always fall back to the “if you lose” option. It also felt like it would be a good opportunity to use the Toy subtype.
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RM08 Jecomb, Reanimist is a reference to Jeffrey Combs, who plays Dr. Herbert West in the Re-Animator series. Such a card would have to reanimate creatures, and I opted for a counters-matter synergy. The one issue is that this is pure payoff, since a lot of the power is wrapped up in the ‘enters’ ability. I considered adding an Adventure spell or a Forecast ability, something that you could activate before casting the creature that puts counters on your creatures. Adventures didn’t seem like a good flavor fit and felt odd to have on only one card. Forecast was the Azorius mechanic from Dissension and also felt odd as a one-off. I think if I tweak this I would add Forecast, even if it doesn’t fit well flavorfully.
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RM09 Adam, Blight of the Meek is a reference to Adam Meiks (Frailty). The killer in the movie alleges to only smite evil-doers, which felt like a great fit for a red-white member of a villainous cycle. The ability to choose how creatures block mirrors the way the killer justifies his murderous acts.
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RM10 Suthdo, Snatching Slime is a reference to Donald Sutherland and the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. On top of supporting the counters-matter theme within the set, this creates copies of creatures infected by slime tokens. I wanted to bring back slime tokens specifically as seen on the green-blue signpost uncommons, and I added Sludge Monster to the set since it felt like such a good fit.
Cycles and Pseudo-cycles
In retrospect, I should’ve designed cards in obvious cycles a bit more, which could’ve helped speed up the process of filling out the common and uncommon slots. Regardless, here are a smattering of cycles found in my version of Duskmourn:
I have a cycle of seals, though they are not named “Seal of ___” as in Nemesis or “Omen of the ___” as in Theros Beyond Death. I was actually inspired by the “Vessel of ___” cycle from Shadows Over Innistrad, as having enchantments that sacrifice themselves is a great way to reach the threshold of four cards types in your graveyard for delirium. My cycle has some form of “Seal” in the name, so it’s a little subtle until you see that the enchantments themselves all work in the same manner.
CW05 Sealed Vault creates a token and adds counters to things, pretty straightforward.
CU05 Seal of Sight is basically Curate, a perfectly serviceable cantrip.
CB14 Necromantic Seal brings something back, once. This might be a bit much for a common, but it’s 5 mana so that should prevent it from being too strong.
CR05 Desperate Seal is a delayed rummage effect, with the added bonus of pinging an opponent.
CG04 Resolute Seal is a combat trick that comes with a permanent keyword counter.
Following the discussion regarding delirium support above, I wanted to have a cycle of lands that sacrifice themselves. I didn’t want the set to have too easy a time to play 3+ colors, so I opted to finish a cycle started all the way back in Mirage block (1996!). It’s not an exciting one, and there’s a reason it hasn’t been finished before: no one wants these cards. It’s the “slow fetchlands” which are marginally better than Evolving Wilds, which I also decided would be a good reprint for the set.
Traps were hinted at within the Razorkin section of the planeswalker’s guide, and my initial thought was that you could have artifacts with the Trap subtype in the Grixis colors. Then I remembered that Trap is an existing subtype on instants, originating in the original Zendikar block. I created a pair of cards in blue, black, and red with the Trap subtype, but I found the design space was smaller than I expected. I don’t think I executed on some of them all that well, because Trap cards in Magic key off your opponent taking a specific action or meeting some criteria that allows you to cast the Trap spell for cheaper. Additionally, the cost reduction trigger and the effect of the spell need to be related.
CU12 Freezing Trap accomplishes this, punishing your opponent for attacking you with 3+ creatures. You can stun other tapped creatures, but you definitely have targets if you’re casting this for its reduced cost.
UU08 Rewind Trap also has a trigger related to the effect. It’ll punish haste creatures and other Sneak Attack style effects.
CB11 Spawn Trap is questionable, it’ll basically let you match your opponent if they’ve played a lot of creatures in one turn. This kind of trap could be a White card, balancing the battlefield by evening the odds. In Black this provides extra sacrifice fodder, which is always welcome.
UB10 Mindleak Trap has a properly associated trigger and effect. It’s an instant-speed Mind Rot if your opponent has drawn a lot. They need only draw two extra cards on top of their draw for turn. However, this is particularly punishing in multiplayer, since the cost reduction trigger is from any opponent.
CR11 Flare Trap is the least connected between trigger and effect. The idea is that if your opponent has a lot of creatures, there are more targets you can hit with the spell. On your opponent’s turn the “those creatures can’t block this turn” effect is useless, however it means that this has utility on your own turn for full cost. At baseline, I think 4 mana for 4 divided damage that removes potential blockers is decent, so the card might still work.
UR10 Scaled Trap is properly connected. It punishes opponents for buffing their creatures with counters and the spell deals more damage to creatures with counters on them. The baseline is not bad against creatures with counters on them, 5 mana for 8 damage removes most things in limited.
Early on we knew at least some of the protagonists of the set: Tyvar Kell, Zimone, Kaito Shizuki, the Wanderer, Niko Aris, and Nashi. The Wanderer’s new card was in the initial teasers/spoilers, but I chose to ignore it in my design as I didn’t want to be too influenced by WotC’s designs. I came up with cards for Tyvar, Zimone, Kaito, and Nashi. Kaito is the only planeswalker card in my set, since we know Tyvar and the Wanderer have lost their sparks. Niko’s spark status is unknown and I didn’t have an interesting design for them. Though I also tried to avoid MaRo’s card teasers, I couldn’t stay away and I saw there would be a card with “exile any number of target instant, sorcery, and/or Tamiyo planeswalker cards from your graveyard” and that had to be a Nashi card. I saw the opportunity to create a Sultai spellslinger commander (a card I am eagerly awaiting that will inevitably exist) and I took it. I’d consider this another pseudo-cycle, and it leans exclusively Sultai. I thought about this and realized that red-aligned characters don’t typically fare well in horror scenarios owing to their recklessness and impulsivity. So it makes sense that the band of heroes is a little light on red. My theory is that Rootha will be in the story, but I fear she may be killed off.
RM17 Tyvar, Renegade King supports mana abilities, allowing you to reuse one per turn but not in an abuseable way. Even if you blink him, your first mana ability would have already occurred for that turn.
RM16 Zimone, Haunt Researcher has a noncombat tap trigger that can buff your opponents. The 8+ land threshold for a boosted version of that trigger comes from other Zimone cards that care if you’ve ramped hard. Her activated ability ended up very similar to Thrasios’s ability, but I fixed it because she taps to do so.
MM01 Kaito, Horror Survivor’s first ability is surveil that is secretly a delirium payoff. I didn’t want to add a new artifact creature token for him to represent one of his drones, but that would probably be more flavorful. Mechanically, this set cares about Survivors, so he creates red Survivors. His minus ability animates artifacts or tokens, which admittedly kind of feels like a Tezzeret ability.
MM02 Nashi, Mooncaster shows Nashi has grown into an adept mage. As noted above, this one was inspired by MaRo’s teaser, but I couldn’t resist the draw of a Sultai spellslinger card. I use scroll counters to mark the cards exiled by Nashi, and I believe that because the activated ability is worded such that you remove the scroll counter and copy the exiled card, the card would remain in exile. I shouldn’t need to add clauses like other effects that allow you to recast spells from your graveyard such as Kess, Dissident Mage. Setting these cards aside with scroll counters means you can recast them with a different Nashi than the one that initially exiled them. I think removing the counter and leaving the card in exile is an elegant way to accomplish this kind of effect.
Overlord of the Hauntwoods was part of the initial spoiler, and it was obvious that there would be a cycle of Overlords with Impending. I based my designs off the given card, which means they all have an “enters or attacks” trigger. I left them all at 5mv and decided not to give them keywords. Their effects are pretty straightforward, despite Overlord of the Hauntwoods being pretty wild, creating a token land. My Overlord of the Mistmoors creates two Cellarspawn tokens, since these entities are part of the House it made sense to use the villainous token creature here. Overlord of the Floodpits simply draws two cards. Overlord of the Balemurk drains opponents. And finally, Overlord of the Boilerbilges bolts things.
In some ways, my designs are glorified titans, at least Overlord of the Boilerbilges is ominously similar to Inferno Titan. The benefit here is that with Impending you can get these effects much earlier in the game. Overlord of the Floodpits is Divination on a stick, until it awakens and becomes a menace for your opponent.
One weakness of Impending compared to the very similar Suspend mechanic is that your opponents can interact with the permanent even if it isn’t a creature. I think this relationship is quite interesting, this pair of mechanics reminds me of the relationship between Foretell and Plot. Notably that Impending and Plot telegraph your play and allow your opponents to better play around the effect compared to Suspend and Foretell. Suspend cards are also known to your opponent, but since they’re in exile they can’t often be interacted with.
Enduring Tenacity was another early tease, and we got three other names: Enduring Innocence (assumed White), Enduring Curiosity (assumed Blue), and Enduring Courage (assumed Red). To complete the Enduring cycle I added Enduring Resilience in Green. They are a cycle of Enchantment Creatures with the Glimmer subtype that have a static effect (presumably) and return to the battlefield as enchantments upon death.
I definitely wanted Enduring Innocence to be an anthem effect, and I added an additional token synergy that makes this quite a strong buff.
Enduring Curiosity screamed card draw, so I made it more along the lines of Teferi’s Ageless Insight except it bolsters all card draw effects outside of your draw step.
Enduring Courage ended up as a damage buff, similar to Torbran. Always a nice way to buff your small damage sources in red.
Enduring Resilience provides +1/+1 counter synergy, which supports the set and plays well with the Green Leyline. Speaking of which…
Leyline of Hope was the final early spoiler that strongly implied a cycle, so a new batch of Leylines was on the menu. As much as Leyline of the Void would be strong in a graveyard-matters set, WotC has used Leyline of the Void as the black member of the cycle all three times they’ve printed Leylines. That’s right, Black is the only color that still has just one Leyline (it is strong, though). So rather than do the easy thing, I actually created a new Leyline for every color (outside of White, which is our control). I wanted my cycle to have three lines of rules text, in contrast to some previous Leylines that have only two (including the “If CARDNAME is in your opening hand, you may begin the game with it on the battlefield”).
Leyline of Hope cares about lifegain, providing both support and payoff, which helped to shape the set in some ways (a template for some lifegain-matters cards, which became the white-black draft archetype).
RU02 Leyline of Madness has card draw, mill, and delirium. Your opponents are punished for drawing lots of cards, and the delirium ability is like Howling Mine. Except your opponents also mill that many cards.
RB02 Leyline of Misery restricts your opponents’ hand sizes (a callback to Gnat Miser and Locust Miser). Once delirium is online, you can reanimate creatures in your graveyard similar to Lurrus of the Dream-Den.
RR02 Leyline of Velocity gives you a rummaging effect to accelerate your draw that also provides an aggressive anthem once delirium is active.
RG02 Leyline of Plenty pumps out +1/+1 counters and gives your creatures flash with a nod to the Coven mechanic from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt.
As remnant of my initial design were a few 3-color legendaries, and I ultimately finished the 5-card cycle in the shard colors.
RM11 Pocket Nexus is Esper colors, cares about Toy cards, supports lifegain strategies, and reanimates artifacts.
RM12 Possessor Xul is Bant colors and is a spirit typal payoff. This would be stronger if the set had spirit tokens on top of the existing survivor and Cellarspawn token synergies. Xul is a reference to Zuul, the Gatekeeper from Ghostbusters.
RM13 Vilpen, Cult Elder is Naya colors and started as the Ralph Ineson reference card for the Cult of Valgavoth. It became a more straightforward go-wide token payoff card. The name is a reference to the Village and the fact that M. Night Shyamalan sets most of his movies in Pennsylvania.
RM14 Prank King is Grixis colors and is also a Jigsaw/Saw reference when my initial thought was that traps would be artifacts. It still ended up with trap synergy and I added generic instant synergy on top of that, since traps are a very small subset of cards.
RM15 Parkhill, the Bloodtree is Jund colors and started as a Wickerfolk legendary with delirium synergy. It warped into a reference to cannibal movies such as We Are What We Are (the Parker family) and The Hills Have Eyes.
Remaining Cards, by Color
I didn’t include the cards I’ve discussed above, but I’m unsure of the best way to display an entire set. Would it be more useful to compile all commons/uncommons/rares together by color, even if I showed them previously? If you’ve made it this far and care for custom Magic design, let me know your opinion!
White
Starting with the commons, there’s one reprint in Steadfast Paladin. The set has a variety of humanoid creatures, and I wanted to feature dwarves. I needed a low-cost lifelink creature and figured Steadfast Paladin would fit just fine.
On the more complex side I have CW02 Unchained Stalwart, which I see as a modal spell with a “deal 3 damage to target attacking creature” mode and a Disenchant mode. Cards support tokens/go-wide, lifegain, blink, +1/+1 counters, Toys, and enchantment creatures.
CW04 Stellar Bulwark is potentially a little overtuned, that’s one I’d want to watch. Walls can hit hard if you don’t keep them in check.
CW09 Flickering Phantasm acts as a repeatable combat trick in some sense, but requires you to lean into spirit typal.
CW13 Wild Smite is a strong removal spell that becomes very reasonably costed when delirium is active.
Onto the uncommons. Although it may be a bit of a flavor fail, I made a few cards that are not malevolent but still use Impending. Inevitably, most horror movies end with some heroic act, so I don’t see why that can’t also use Impending.
UW01 Inevitable Salvation encompasses just that, and I wanted to play with the time counters in a way that grows the creature, giving you a benefit for casting it for its Impending cost. In this way, the Impending cost is more than its natural mana value, and that can be a good thing.
UW03 Defender’s Sigil is another benevolent Toy that also gets a benefit if it is milled or discarded. Otherwise, it is a keyword counter and +1/+1 counter on layaway.
UW08 Selfless Binding is a strong removal spell that you can break in case of emergency to protect a creature.
UW10 Dawnfeather Beagle is a nod to Dawnfeather Eagle and all the other classic White cards that give your team +1/+1 and vigilance until end of turn, the poor man’s Overrun.
I needed more cheap White creatures, and RW01 Benefactor Protector is a moderately aggressive creature that gets better when it has more friends.
RW04 Eye for an Eye is a mass removal spell that I’ve been toying with for a while. This is my favorite iteration of it, but it’s possible the cleaner way to word it is to sacrifice different permanent types as you cast the spell, then destroy permanents matching those types. It’s a Wrath effect that can become Cleansing Nova, Akroma’s Vengeance, or Planar Cleansing. It is by definition symmetrical, however, so you can’t play around the modes like Farewell or Austere Command.
Blue
Blue commons feature surveil, coin flips, delirium, counters, blink, stun counters, and a bit of card draw. Stun counters felt like a great way to capture the classic “frozen in terror” moments, but the downside is that you might actually activate your opponent’s counters-matter synergy! It’s a minor tension, but it’s there.
We have our “Cancel with set’s mechanic” in CU09 Different Game, which has a coin flip that mills a player for 1 or 3 cards. Not spectacular, but it hits a few synergies.
CU06 Looping Portal might need to make the returned permanents enter tapped, but it’s a repeatable flicker effect that also gives you a bonus surveil. The rate is similar to that of Mistmeadow Witch, but you can only use the Looping Portal once per turn so I don’t see much of an issue there.
I think CU02 Jumpscare is particularly flavorful as a combat trick: a nightmarish creature jumps out of the shadows and causes you to let down your guard.
UU02 Glitch Out becomes an Unsummon variant that draws you a card once delirium is active, a nice tempo play in the mid to late game.
UU03 Fateful Flicker is a Ghostly Flicker variant that can also draw you a card like Illusionist’s Stratagem if you’re flickering small things. You can’t abuse it as much as Ghostly Flicker since it doesn’t hit lands, but I’m sure the potential card draw would be enough for blink enthusiasts like myself to consider it for commander decks.
UU04 Thirst for Answers is another card in the “Thirst for __” cycle, which draws you 3 cards and makes you discard 2 cards or 1 card of a certain quality. In this case I used Historic cards since Toys are historic, though this set doesn’t have too many legendaries. That’s something that could be adjusted later, however.
UU07 Glitching Ghast is a creature that can flicker itself and return with a buff. However, it is self-limiting since its counters would reset if you chose to flicker it again.
Here you see the Sludge Monster I’ve selected as a fitting reprint. I wanted to do more with slime counters, and the Sludge Monster spells it out.
RU01 Shimmerghast has the downside of the “illusion clause” that forces you to sacrifice it when it’s targeted. In this case I restricted it to only being targeted by spells, not abilities. I also wanted to play around with choices of what kind of counters to place on creatures, similar to Ikoria when keyword counters were introduced. Why shouldn’t you be able to choose between a keyword or a +1/+1 counter? And why not also allow you a way to get both? The upside of being a 2 mana 2/3 flying creature is why I felt it needed the illusion clause.
RU04 Shifting Spectre ended up as a spirit illusion as well, but this one was inspired by MaRo’s teaser of a 10/1 creature that costs UUU. I needed to fill an extra blue rare slot and was intrigued by what the catch could be. I made it scale to your hand size, but gain abilities as its power shrank (or more accurately as its toughness grew). So while it’s a 10/1 or 9/2 it can’t attack or block, then at 6/5 it can attack, and if it’s 3/8 it also has vigilance. The way to play around this is auras and +1/+1 counters, which is why I based the thresholds on toughness rather than power. 11 total stats for UUU still seems like too much, so I’m curious what restrictions the WotC designers have on this thing.
Black
Let’s start with CB02, it’s a Dead Weight that becomes a benefit on your horrors and nightmares, making it closer to Gift of Fangs or Clutch of Undeath but at a 1-mana rate. Great persistent shrink effect that as I’ve mentioned before can help you meet the delirium threshold since it’s an enchantment-based removal spell.
CB03 From the Other Side is the card that really pushed me to make Cellarspawn its own separate card. I wanted that card to fill the classic Supernatural Stamina slot but also do something extra.
I haven’t mentioned it yet so I will here, but I am a big fan of “only twice each turn” restrictions (this is way before Nadu, I’m not a monster). I’ve used them in my designs for years and you see that CB04 Voidspawn and CB06 Cocoonier represent activated and triggered abilities with that restriction, respectively.
CB10 Bloodthirsty Fixture represents what I think a good Impending enchantment creature should be: providing a passive effect that is more difficult to interact with while it isn’t a creature. Impending is also a mechanic that can help smooth out your turns, since it allows you to cast earlier and utilize your mana fully.
CB12 Vindictive Doll taps into the classic evil doll trope, causing your opponents to go slowly insane (sorcery-speed discard and mill) while leaving behind a little nightmare (Cellarspawn token).
You may notice that Black has 14 commons, and that is because the trap pseudo-cycle wasn’t originally even, I left out a black common trap. So I rectified that by adding CB11 Spawn Trap. Just an FYI.
I really wanted to expand upon surveil synergies, so I added support cards in blue and black. UB01 Surveillance Scorpion is a little on-the-nose, but it gives +1 to all your surveil effects. It can itself do some surveillance once you reach the delirium threshold, but small deathtouch creatures tend to be blockers.
UB02 Dreamwielder has a lot going on, mainly the fact that it is repeatable removal though the price is hefty if you really want to remove things. It synergizes with discard and surveil effects, which the activated ability can provide. This is also as reasonable a time as any to point out that I toyed around with the Glimmer subtype, unsure of when it should or could be added to an enchantment creature. I never nailed down a set of rules for myself, so here we have the seemingly contradictory Nightmare Glimmer.
UB03 Needling Nightmare is yet another Nightmare Glimmer with Impending to boot. You can get the combat trick/removal effect for cheap if you use the Impending cost. This highlights another mechanic that tickles me: granting negative power but gaining deathtouch. It’s not something WotC does, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to see.
UB04 Tolling Belle is another cursed doll, but this time she is both a Fleshbag Marauder and enchantment removal. In truly evil fashion, you can get a two-for-one out of her if she is your only creature, but both removal effects allow your opponent to select what they sacrifice. Not the best, but black gets middling enchantment removal.
Let’s talk about UB07 Phyrexian Remnant. First, I wanted to play around with the full art frame since the AI generated something pretty cool that didn’t fit in the small box. Second and more important is that I wanted to have at least one Phyrexian lurking in Duskmourn, discarded after the events of March of the Machine. It wouldn’t be out-of-place in the horror setting, so I thought it would be interesting to see a Phyrexian hanging around, causing some havoc. The horror aesthetic of Phyrexians definitely fits with the modern horror theme of Duskmourn.
I wouldn’t call it a cycle, but UB09 Inevitable Demise and UR05 Soul-Searing Strike represent how black and red could have removal spells that get around hexproof. The key is that the spell itself can’t target, since the spell itself strips hexproof. Choosing a creature during the resolution of the spell should get around the fact that you couldn’t target the hexproof permanent upon casting the spell.
While demons are nearly eradicated on Duskmourn, I thought the idea that some demons are trapped inside vessels (enchantments) would be good to explore. Impending provides a perfect mechanic to represent this. RB01 Consuming Force is your classic powerful demon for a relatively cheap cost that requires tribute/sacrifice else it won’t serve you. I think the way I’ve gone about it here is a little wonky, hence why I made it only Impending 2. Even if you hard cast this, it requires a sacrifice that turn. However, if you can’t sacrifice, you still remove a time counter because it has Impending. I think because this creature naturally has Impending I didn’t need to add “it has Impending” at the end of the last ability. You see that rules text on a lot of effects that give something Suspend. That’s because the card needs a way to remove the time counters, and granting Suspend creates a trigger that will remove them. Impending works in a similar manner, but RB01 already has it. Matt Tabak may disagree, but I feel like this would be correct. Still a bit wonky with how many creatures you need to sac to get and keep it online, but correct.
RB04 Herald of Valgavoth is inspired by a cycle of artifacts for my mining/underground plane (WIP) I created that have 3 interconnected activated abilities. Herald of Valgavoth can dump cards into your graveyard, generate tokens, and sac those tokens to get the cards you dumped into your graveyard back. It’s just card draw with extra steps but having a repeatable token generator is pretty good stuff, even at sorcery speed.
Red
Rife with coin flips and creature tokens, red is pretty aggressive and chaotic, just as it should be.
CR03 Scrappy Doorbuster is your common artifact removal, which will see a fair number of targets with all the Toys lying around.
CR06 Surging Flame is an interesting coin flip removal spell that I believe works as I’ve intended. Based on the wording I don’t believe you need to select a target as you cast the spell. Because the clauses are “When you win/lose the flip…” that is when the target selection should trigger. This is based on how Breeches, the Blastmaster’s ability is worded, which deals damage to a target when you lose the flip. That said, I don’t know if Breeches forces you to select a target before the coin flip in Arena, I haven’t actually tested the interaction. But from my understanding, you wouldn’t choose a target unless you lose the coin flip.
CR08 Digging Gremlin has a marginal coin flip, you’re probably not too upset if you don’t get the rummage. But it provides a decent payoff for coin flip decks. Hitting three coin flips in a turn is supported by all these cards where coin flips are tacked on for small upsides. Coin flips don’t need to be huge swings, and I think if coin flipping were to be brought into a standard set it would have to rely on smaller effects such as this to reach a good as-fan amount of coin flips. CR12 Crashing Beastie is another example: winning gets you +1/+1 when you attack, losing gets you +1/+0.
UR01 Fresh Meat seemed too aggressive if it were a baseline 2/2 for 1 mana, even if half of that couldn’t attack or block alone. But being a one-time-use 2/1 attacker seemed alright.
UR02 Spirit Board is one that I like because the first ability doesn’t have an “if you win the flip” condition, that is set by its static triggered ability, which also buffs all your other coin flip cards. Just wanted to highlight that this is probably the kind of uncommon the blue-red coin flip deck would want to stock up on.
UR04 Needling Doubt is another Impending creature that has an ability active even while it’s an enchantment. You have the option to cast it as an enchantment for its impending cost if you feel like you need that punishing effect, but also want to protect it from creature removal.
UR05 Soul-Searing Strike was mentioned above with UB09 Inevitable Demise as a pair of anti-hexproof removal spells.
UR06 Boiler Room is the first Room card we’ve hit. It was later confirmed that Room would not be a new card type, but I’d already started to design them that way. It’s effectively an enchantment subtype here, so I’ve simply changed it. But anyway, the idea was that Rooms would split the battlefield into two sides, and each side would get certain benefits. In that way Rooms would act like world enchantments that affected all players. Rooms also have a way to move creatures from one side to the other. The rules text is a little wonky, but I think it works as intended: when the Room enters, split the creatures currently in play, and when a new creature enters, put it on one side or the other.
RR01 Burning Voidmaw is a persistent effect that exiles creatures dealt damage by your spells, abilities, and creatures similar to Etchings of Kumano. The “exile it instead” trigger will occur on every turn since this is a permanent card, unlike similarly worded effects on instant/sorcery spells. This dragon also grows bigger if there are a lot of things in exile. Kind of antithetical to a graveyard/delirium set, but it’s an outlet to combat graveyard shenanigans.
RR04 Threatening Entity is a direct reference to Threaten effects. Stealing creatures and sacrificing them is pretty fitting for a horror setting, and extra sacrifice fodder is always desirably in black-red. On top of the initial enters effect, this creature has a repeatable Threaten and all you need to do is sacrifice a few creatures. I figure if you have ways of generating infinite tokens and mana, stealing and sacrificing all your opponents’ creatures is not nearly the most powerful thing you’d be capable of doing so this ability is fine as-is (famous last words).
Green
Combat tricks, +1/+1 counters, power 4+ matters, tokens, and a bit of ramp is the name of the game for green.
CG02 Benefactor Naturalist self-synergizes as a mana dork, which gives it a way to trigger its second ability. My Zimone card has a similar clause, giving your other creatures a buff when it is tapped outside of combat.
CG05 Slumbering Oak is a functional reprint of Bristlepack Sentry and Drowsing Tyrannodon. It had Reach for a bit, but that did honestly feel like too much, I don’t want to stifle flying creatures too hard. But this is a Treefolk, so that’s cool. It’s a great early defensive card with power 4+ synergy.
Momentum is a reprint. I wanted something like this or Hydra’s Growth in the slot. You’ll see that there’s an uncommon that also uses growth counters in a similar way. I went with Momentum and left the slot as-is. It’s not so desirable that it needs a reprint, but no reprints since its original printing in Urza’s Destiny is wild.
CG10 Toxic Sludge is another example of “pick two of three” counters, including a +1/+1 counter. There’s a minor bonus if you have another Ooze.
UG01 Gravetilling uses some of my favorite exclusionary wording inspired by Mythos of Nethroi: “target permanent card…if it’s a creature card.” The restriction is lifted if you have delirium active.
UG03 Unchecked Growth is the “upgraded” version of Momentum. this one acts as an anthem effect that distributes a different kind of counter to your permanents. It’s kinda slow, but in a board stall it’ll definitely overwhelm your opponents (bring your own trample). I’d be really curious how this performs in a draft environment, because it reads like it could either fall flat or be super busted.
UG04 Benefactors’ Beacon comes with its own internal tension: the first ability wants you to have 4+ creatures, while the token-generating ability can’t be activated once you have 4+ creatures. It’s a card that simultaneously wants a smaller battlefield but supports going wide. It would probably make players less reluctant to trade in combat, though, which is good.
UG06 Perilous Room is the second Room card. Rooms give everyone a way to move creatures from one side to the other, but it should probably be restricted to not being able to be activated during the declare blockers and combat damage steps. That’ll be for my second pass.
UG08 Empathetic Ooze grows with your other creatures, to a reasonable limit per turn. Deathtouch counter means that this is pretty threatening even while small. Effects like this that double-up on your counters make those thresholds easier to hit for the green-blue archetype.
RG01 Hauntwoods Hydra can be a big threat, but it doesn’t grow on its own like many Hydra creatures do. Instead, you get bonus vigilance or reach if you cast it for 6+ or 10+ mana. A different version of this card could unlock vigilance and reach at certain thresholds, but such a card would also want a way to add more counters to itself to reach those thresholds. Instead we get a Hydra that can sacrifice its counters to pump your other creatures (or itself, technically). Along with this we see another line in the rules text that I hope will make its way onto real Magic cards: “or subsequent time.” I think it works just fine to cover activated and triggered abilities. If you can track the number of times an ability resolves/triggers for purposes of noting the second, third, etc. then you can say “or subsequent.” Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
RG04 Haunting Oak also uses “or subsequent” (ok, I’ll admit I designed these later in the design cycle, one after the other) and also converts temporary +1/+1 buffs into tangible counters. I could be more creative with the abilities, but the set wants counters, and counters are a great mechanic. Plus I needed more explicit Treefolk synergy and was inspired by some older cards that cared about Forests and Treefolk. I expanded this ability to any land, which also plays well with the fetchlands in the set.
Colorless
I’m sure artifacts will be a much larger part of the real Duskmourn given the reliance of horror heroes and villains on mechanical implements. There are a smattering of colored artifacts in my set, but I had to add at least a few Scarecrows, colorless Toys, Vehicles, and Equipment.
CA02 Evil Amalgam is a common Toy payoff card that also plays into the anti-hexproof space. Though now that we’ve gone through most of the set, there is very little hexproof in the set. I was hesitant to print creatures that you can’t interact with, but with the plethora of hexproof removal I’ve added it is probably safer in this set than any other to overshoot on hexproof permanents.
CA03 Unassuming Scarecrow filters mana like many Scarecrows seem to. It is also colorless ramp, which isn’t bad.
CA05 Madman’s Axe uses an alternative Equip cost that helps to fuel its own delirium. It unintentionally ended up very similar to Murderer’s Axe.
CA06 Old Reliable plays into the trope of the car failing at the most inopportune time in a horror movie. At least you get 2 life out of it. And for a bit it acts as a pretty decent blocker/attacker (3/3, 4/4, then 5/5) unless you have a way to remove +1/+1 counters from it.
UA01 Soul Train is a design I’ve been tweaking for a while. The card I want to create requires too many lines of rules text: a vehicle that is crewed with an alternative resource that is gained by sacrificing creatures or defeating them in combat. I think I can fit one of those in a reasonable text box, but not both. It could start with a couple oil counters so you can get it rolling and gain a few from combat. But what if it doesn’t defeat anything in combat (you opponent doesn’t block or more likely from Fog effects) and you run out of oil with no way to replenish it? That’s why you want to also be able to fuel it yourself. In the end, I’m fine with the sacrifice ability as it stands right now. This ended up pretty similar to Aradara Express in terms of size and menace, but instead of Crew 4 this costs you half a creature to animate.
UA02 Watcher in the Fields turned out better than I expected. I experimented with adding Impending to an artifact rather than an enchantment, which is all we’ve seen of the mechanic thus far. For 2 mana, this is a mana rock for 3 turns until it awakens. I added a punishing clause, pinging all players as you remove time counters from it. I think that properly captures the feeling I get in any movie featuring a murderous scarecrow.
UA03 Morphing Bauble is another Toy payoff card that also distributes +1/+1 counters or can animate itself to be an imposing threat if you’ve played with enough Toys.
UA04 Siphoning Blade is another Equipment with an alternative Equip cost. This one draws from your lifeforce, but you can slowly regain it with the attack trigger.
If you’ve made it this far, I thank you for your patience and I admire your persistence! I hope my designs have inspired and/or delighted you in some way. I’m open to feedback and all types of card design discussion.
