Magic: The Gathering's Duskmourn: House of Horror set will take the long-running tabletop TCG somewhere it's never been before. Duskmourn is a new plane that is one gigantic, derelict, terrifying haunted house, ruled over by a demon called Valgavoth. With a Stranger Things vibe and some genuinely unsettling art, Duskmourn is looking to tap into a niche that the MTG universe has rarely investigated directly, choosing to include hints of horror (like Eldrazi transformations) or more traditional fantasy scares (think Innistrad - before the Eldrazi, anyways).

It isn't just that Duskmourn: House of Horror is a cool new aesthetic for MTG that has players excited, however. With spoiler season in full swing, it's also becoming abundantly clear that Duskmourn's best cards will be immediate impact players in the Standard format, with a slew of potential hits in older formats, too. While that shouldn't necessarily come as a surprise given the number of recent sets that have featured upward power-scaling, Duskmourn's most powerful cards also have the benefit of looking like they'll be pretty fun to play with rather than oppressive right out of the gate.

Time will tell if Duskmourn: House of Horror is the success many are predicting it will be. Given how much of a departure it is for the game, it's a risk - but as we've seen with Bloomburrow's excellent design, those risks can pay off when the homages to other archetypal fantasies are done well. In the meantime, here's our selection of the 10 best Duskmourn cards spoiled so far.

As we're in the middle of spoiler season, some of these cards may eventually be eclipsed by others - though we're confident each of these has the potential to be impactful in Standard (and some of them beyond!)

10 Nowhere to Run

Removal That Sticks Around To Annoy

Nowhere to Run has a few things going for it. As an enchantment, it plays well into some of the sub-themes we've already seen from Duskmourn and will presumably have some synergies baked into the format for it. It's a strong removal spell on turn two and a combat trick later in the game, and it also directly helps counter difficult-to-target creatures by removing hexproof and ward from their keywords while in play. It wouldn't be a surprise to see control decks emerge packing 4 of these, but it's likely at its strongest in midrange strategies where the combat math getting messed up helps too.

9 Enduring Innocence

Mentor Of The Meek Has Seen Some Upgrades

Enduring Innocence is a re-imagined Mentor of the Meek with a slew of upgrades at two major drawbacks - it can only trigger once per turn, and it only has one toughness. That's a small price to pay for a Lifelink creature with a built-in advantage engine in smaller creature decks, which White strategies tend to be. It demands a removal spell, and then it sticks around anyway as an enchantment that still provides value! This is a build-around card in Standard and could be a major threat.

8 Split Up

A New Spin On The Sweepers Of Old

Four mana is where sweepers tend to be costed - anything less would be obscene and anything more tends to be a little slow (though in the latter case, with the right additional effects, it can still work). Split Up is a three-mana mass removal spell that will no doubt create headaches in Standard - it's excellent at removing blockers after an alpha-strike from an army of tokens, for instance, but it's also a great early answer to a deck curving out into threats on turns one through three. It's restrictive enough it can be played around, and it might make Vigilance in aggressive decks more desirable, but in any scenario it's the kind of sweeper that makes the format more interesting.

7 Hauntwoods Shrieker

A Must-Kill Threat With Delirium Synergy

Duskmourn has plenty of kill-on-sight targets, and Hauntwoods Shrieker is among the best so far. It's a Delirium enabler, which already provides some assistance to decks using that strategy, but it also creates additional threats for every turn it's allowed to attack thanks to manifest dread. Even letting Hauntwoods Shrieker attack once can be an issue when it comes to getting out-valued in a midrange mirror, so it's well worth finding a home for this card and experimenting ahead of Duskmourn's release on September 27.

6 Screaming Nemesis

A Tricky But Powerful Ability That May Change Removal Suites

Screaming Nemesis has the potential to take over a game when employed in aggressive Red strategies, with one caveat - it really needs to be dealt damage to be worth including at all. Finding ways to enable this card will be key to Red strategies, but preventing life gain for the rest of an entire game is an absurdly powerful ability. If nothing else, the existence of this card may see removal spells like the aforementioned Nowhere to Run take precedent since it answers the Nemesis without actually dealing it any damage.

5 Twitching Doll

Mana Ramp With Serious Upside

Mana ramp is a powerful strategy and has almost always found a place in Magic: The Gathering Standard formats. While a two-mana ramp creature is obviously less desirable than something like Elvish Mystic, Twitching Doll has the kind of upside a one-mana dork could only dream of. Using it for mana for a few turns and then turning it into two 2/2 spiders on the next is a pretty decent proposition, and even though it has sorcery speed stapled onto that effect, it's something for ramp decks to do when their draw is too many acceleration cards and no payoffs.

4 Overlord of the Hauntwoods

Unique Mana Ramp On A Strong Body

Again, mana ramp is one of the better things a player can do in MTG. Duskmourn's best cards include plenty of acceleration, and Overlord of the Hauntwoods is one of the most promising. The impending mechanic means it can provide land acceleration and mana fixing as early as turn three, and it can continue to provide value when it attacks after becoming a creature four turns later. It's also unique in the sense that the mana it provides is incredibly difficult to disrupt; mana creatures can be victims of removal spells, and artifacts that ramp can be answered by many different spells, but land destruction is a rare option.

3 Kaito, Bane of Nightmares

Three Mana Planeswalkers Are Always Worth Considering

Kaito, Bane of Nightmares arrives in a Standard with very few Ninja cards, but he might not need much help - simply putting him into play turn three with ninjutsu might be more than enough to steal a game. Kaito has hexproof and is a 3/4, which means Nowhere to Run can't answer him on its own during his controller's turn even while stripping him of his protection mechanic. Every turn he uses his +1 makes him a bigger threat, scaling nicely into 4/5 and 5/6 quickly to help force opponents into finding blockers fast. His ability to use stun counters on the most important blocker also means he's going to demand a lot of respect on his own, so Blue/Black mid-range strategies may find a lot of use for Kaito.

2 The Wandering Rescuer

Aggressive Decks Will Love This Card

Convoke is an absurdly powerful mechanic in the right shell, and White decks are among the best for it. The Wandering Rescuer will inevitably be the payoff card for many White token strategies, and is constructed in a way that it can help blank removal spells, too. White creatures with vigilance can attack and, in response to a potential removal spell at instant speed, can then be tapped to cast The Wandering Rescuer with flash, which then enables her to give them hexproof. A 3/4 with double strike that becomes hexproof whenever it attacks can also close games quickly - expect to see plenty of The Wandering Rescuer if there are enough small White creatures to build around.

1 Demonic Counsel

One Of The Best Tutors In Years

Magic: The Gathering's best tutor cards will never see a reprint in Standard, but that won't stop some decent substitutes from cropping up every now and then. Demonic Counsel feels like the best Duskmourn card spoiled so far because its fail case is finding a Demon creature - so building a deck to make that desirable means it will never be "bad," but with Delirium it is a 2 mana spell that finds any answer or threat a player needs. Delirium has proven to be something people can enable relatively consistently when they want to in the past (Shadows Over Innistrad), so with the right suite, this card can just be Demonic Tutor a decent amount of the time.

Duskmourn releases on September 27, 2024.

Source: Mythic Spoiler