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A handful of cards from the next Magic: The Gathering expansion set, Midnight Hunt, make it clear that it’s always Halloween on Innistrad.
Magic: The Gathering is having a busy 2021. Earlier this year, Wizards of the Coast released the hard-hitting Modern Horizons 2 draft-only set, as well as the multicolored, faction-based Strixhaven: School of Mages, which featured the return of Liliana Vess. Now, it’s time to return to Liliana’s favorite plane in the Multiverse, Innistrad, the setting of the Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow expansion sets.
Midnight Hunt will release first, on September 24, and the set’s promotional art and expansion symbol make it clear that the red-green Werewolf tribe will be dominant. Other preview cards have added Human and Zombie tribal to the mix, along with some removal cards and graveyard-centric effects. Halloween is coming early this year.
New Cards in Midnight Hunt: Join the Dance, Consider & Triskaidekaphile
Join the Dance is one of few green-white multicolored cards to appear in any set taking place on Innistrad. This sorcery is a creature token generator that works well with the graveyard, as befitting the Innistrad plane. For just GW, it makes two 1/1 white Human creature tokens, and its flashback cost allows players to go even wider with those tokens. This is the first known multicolored card with flashback, and the existence of Human tokens makes it clear that Midnight Hunt will have a GW Humans tribe, and it will likely be a draft archetype. This card might also fuel aristocrat decks that feed on Humans, based on the Human sacrifice theme of the Dark Ascension set.
Consider is similar to the cheap but effective card Opt, though with the graveyard in mind. The player will effectively surveil 1, the Dimir mechanic from Guilds of Ravnica, and all five colors care greatly about the graveyard in Innistrad sets. Either way, the player will draw one card, cheaply allowing them to dig deeper into their library. That pseudo-surveil effect should be effective for flashback, reanimation and other effects in the set.
Triskaidekaphile is a 1/3 Human Wizard that eliminates the seven-card hand size, and it can provide some card advantage with its activated ability. However, its real appeal is the ability to win the game on the upkeep if the player has 13 cards in hand, making it a spiritual successor to the card Laboratory Maniac, which grants instant victory if the player has no cards in their library when they try to draw a card. This card also plays into the 13 theme of many Innistrad sets, from Triskaidekaphobia to Blasphemous Act, among others, proving that Innistrad’s flavor is still deep and strong in the horror genre.
Midnight Hunt’s Monsters & Removal: Wrenn and Seven, Champion of the Perished & Play with Fire
A new green planeswalker has arrived, and it has four abilities: Wrenn and Seven. It’s a monocolored take on the notorious Wrenn and Six planeswalker from the first Modern Horizons, and it cares greatly about lands. Its +1 loyalty ability is Mulch, and its 0 ability returns lands from the graveyard to the battlefield tapped, creating a graveyard-based mana ramp strategy that should work well with self-mill cards like Consider.
Wrenn and Seven can also make Treefolk tokens that scale up according to how many lands the player controls, and the ult will return all permanent cards from the graveyard to hand, nullifying the maximum hand size. This is green’s version of reanimation, and reaching Wrenn and Seven’s ult might be rather easy, what with this card’s five starting loyalty and a +1 ability that needs no special conditions. Wrenn and Seven will need some defenders in the meantime, though, if it doesn’t use its -3 loyalty ability to make a Treefolk.
Champion of the Perished makes it clear that Zombie tribal will be big in Midnight Hunt, a one-drop rare Zombie that is the undead version of the classic white card Champion of the Parish. This little Zombie gets big fast with its ability, gaining +1/+1 counters as fellow Zombies (token or otherwise) enter the battlefield. This also makes it evident that Midnight Hunt will have a +1/+1 counter theme rather than a -1/-1 counter theme, to represent monsters growing ever stronger and scarier.
Play with Fire is a cheap but effective burn spell, a Shock with a minor upside. If Play with Fire hits a player, the caster will scry 1, rewarding them for aggressively burning their opponent rather than targeting enemy creatures. That’s an appealing upside, but players shouldn’t focus too heavily on it; taking out an enemy creature with one or two toughness is often the right call, such as burning Champion of the Perished before it gets too many +1/+1 counters.
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