10 Decks for Alchemy: Duskmourn

Hey all. Strickles here, spotlighting 10 decks that I’ve brewed up for Alchemy featuring cards from the new Alchemy: Duskmourn drop. This Alchemy drop gave us 30 new toys for the format, and you can see all of my thoughts on each individual card in my Complete Set Review here:

As this set of cards has already been released on MTG Arena as of just a few days ago, I’ve had a chance to do a test run with each deck to make sure that they at least function. My observations so far have been that this Alchemy drop is both a lot of fun, and decently powerful. So let’s dive right in and go over each deck.

Note: All of these decks are first drafts and likely need to be tuned or refined.

Esper Helping Hand Reanimator

The goal of this deck is to get Abhorrent Oculus or Razor Demon into our graveyard and then bring it back with Helping Hand or Return Triumphant.

Razor Demon is our new card from Alchemy: Duskmourn. While already cheap at three mana, casting it gives our opponent a powerful spell for free. The best way to get this 7/7 flying demon with ward into play is via the graveyard.

Using Chart a Course, Splitskin Doll, Picklock Prankster, Bitter Triumph, or even a surveil from on of our lands, we can put Razor Demon or Abhorrent Oculus into the graveyard, where they can be brought back into play with Helping Hand or Return Triumphant.

This deck is quite powerful, and it has felt so far like most opponent’s don’t have the necessary graveyard hate in their sideboards to fight against it, making it a fun deck to play.

Dimir Enchantments Midrange

The goal of this deck is to play enchantment creatures early, land a Fear of Ridicule and then steal our opponent’s threats from their deck.

Fear of Isolation can come down on turn two if we lead with a turn one Hopeless Nightmare, or later in the game by returning a Nowhere to Run or Overlord of the Balemurk to get more value. Silent Hallcreeper is our best two drop though, because it is unblockable, making it curve nicely into Fear of Ridicule.

Fear of Imposters is an enchantment creature that can be used to counter a spell, helping to protect our threats or delay our opponent’s game plan, and Enduring Curiosity works well when our enchantment creatures have menace, making it easier to connect and draw cards.

All in all, this plays very similar to Dimir Midrange in Standard, as we have both good defensive tools and an aggressive game plan centered around card advantage, making this deck a blast to pilot and a headache for the opponent.

Selesnya Survival Aggro

This deck is all about getting value with Effie. All of our cards either make use of the Survival keyword, or help us enable our survival creatures.

Warden of the Inner Sky, Coordinated Clobbering, Mobile Homestead, Unidentified Hovership, and The Wandering Rescuer all give us a way to tap our creatures without attacking into unfavorable board states, triggering their survival abilities which are all quite strong.

Veteran Survivor exiles cards from graveyards, Improvising Aerialist gives itself and the top creature in our deck flying, Reluctant Role Model grows, Defiant Survivor manifest dread, Rip, Spawn Hunter draws us creatures from the top of cards of our deck, and Effie buffs all of our tapped creatures and seeks a survivor.

All in all, this deck grows its board quickly and can easily overwhelm the opponent after a couple turns of doing its thing, making it a very scary aggro deck to face.

Orzhov Token Midrange

If you have played Standard recently, you are familiar with Token Control decks built around Caretaker’s Talent. Well this deck is combining that deck with the long time Alchemy combo of Dedicated Dollmaker and Three Blind Mice

Our black splash is fairly light, but adds good power to the deck. Teysa of the Ghost Council gives us a token every turn and makes them quite large. Kaya, Spirits’ Justice can make tokens or use our tokens to exile problematic creatures. Nowhere to Run gives us removal that can be reused with Dedicated Dollmaker in a pinch. And the star of the show is new from Alchemy: Duskmourn, Welcome the Darkness, a powerful draw spell that makes a token at instant speed and dangerously drops our life total to whatever X is.

The goal of this deck is to stall the game out long enough to cast Welcome the Darkness for a high X value, both refueling our hand and giving us a large flying threat to end the game with. We have a lot of good removal and good token makers to stall with, so if you are fan of grindy decks, give this one a try!

Azorius Enchantments

Azorius Enchantments got some great new tools in this Alchemy drop, including Mothlight Processionist, which gives our enchantments convoke and adds copies of itself to our hand, and Solitary Study // Endless Corridor, which grows our teams and makes copies of itself, making sure we never run out of enchantments to trigger all of our eerie effects.

This deck really gets going when we have Inquisitive Glimmer in play to reduce the cost of our enchantments and make our unlock cost cheaper, Entity Tracker to draw cards, and Gremlin Tamer to make tokens.

Shardmage’s Rescue and Fae Flight are to protect our threats, but the best part is if we have a Mothlight Processionist in play, they have convoke, meaning that even if we are tapped out we can use our creatures to cast them and protect our engine pieces.

When this deck starts to cook it is hard to stop. Most turns you will be drawing several extra cards, making several tokens, and buffing up your team to huge numbers. If you like this deck in Standard, give this version a try!

Orzhov Bats

Orzhov Bats got a great new tool in Golden Sidekick, which turns all of your life gain into power and toughness for creatures in your hand.

This deck is looking to curve out, using our creatures to disrupt our opponent with Deep-Cavern Bat and Darkstar Banisher, grow from our life gain with Essence Channeler and Amalia Benavides Aguirre, or gain card advantage with Darkstar Augur and Zoraline, Cosmos Caller.

Three Tree Battalion gives a way to deploy to threats at instant speed, and Case of the Uneaten Feast gains us life and then can be used to replay our graveyard once it is solved.

All in all this deck is good at curving out, frustrating the opponent, and quickly growing a large board of fliers to end the game with, making it scary for anyone to fight against.

Rakdos Sacrifice

This deck is looking to sacrifice its creatures for value, especially using the new Gilded Ambusher to do big chunks of damage and manage our opponent’s board.

Let’s start with our payoffs. Funeral Room // Awakening Hall drains our opponent whenever one of our creatures die, and Popular Egoist drains our opponent whenever we sacrifice a permanent. Soul Shredder, new from Alchemy: Duskmourn, grows whenever a creature dies and can come back by sacrificing two creatures, giving us both a sacrifice enabler and payoff.

Next, the things we are sacrificing. Disturbing Mirth gives us a sacrifice outlet to draw two cards, and can be sacrificed itself later to manifest dread. Greedy Freebooter gives us a treasure and a scry when it dies, and Clockwork Percussionist exiles the top card of our deck for value.

The suspected skeleton from Case of the Stashed Skeleton is another good creature to sacrifice, letting us solve the case and use it as a tutor. Lastly, Undead Sprinter is a great sacrifice target, because we can recast it from our graveyard later on.

Tying the deck together is Gilded Ambusher, giving us a way to sacrifice something when it attacks, and then forcing the opponent to sacrifice a nontoken, nonland permanent as well, hopefully clearing the board of their blocker or a problematic permanent. It then exiles a card from their deck and deals an extra chunk of damage, making it a must answer threat.

If you like frustrating your opponent and grinding them out, give this sacrifice deck a try!

Azorius Battalion

Built around Three Tree Battalion this Azorius creature deck is looking to disrupt our opponent and overwhelm them as they struggle to deploy their own game plan.

We have Floodpits Drowner to tap an opposing creature, Plumecreed Escort to save one of our creatures, Stalwart Realmwarden to make a noncreature spell more expensive, Wingbright Thief to gain us life and draw us a card when they cast the spell of our choosing, and Werefox Bodyguard to manage their board.

Our other threats include Novice Inspector for an early play that gives us card advantage later, Prairie Survivalist to grow our creatures, and Mockingbird to copy whatever we need.

All of those creatures are fine on their own, but even better when doubled up by Cottontail Caretaker or Three Tree Battalion which give us great ways to turn our creatures into card advantage and keep the value and disruption coming.

This deck plays like a mix of an aggro deck and a tempo deck, thanks to all of our flash threats, making it frustrating for opponent’s as they never know what you will deploy next.

Golgari Lands

The goal of this deck is to get lands into our graveyard and then return them to play, both ramping us and giving us a lot of pings with Iridescent Vinelasher.

We have good self-mill early with Aftermath Analyst and Overlord of the Balemurk to fill up our graveyard, making a turn three Wary Zone Guard very likely to trigger and return a land immediately.

Hedge Shredder will put any lands we mill directly into play, and give us a way to tap Cynical Loner or Wary Zone Guard to trigger survival without having to attack. Bitter Triumph is a great removal spell because we want to discard lands so we can return them later on.

Blossoming Tortoise is more self- mill and returns lands when it enters or attacks, and Lumra, Bellow of the Woods is a way to mill and return all of our lands, hopefully giving us a big turn with Iridescent Vinelasher.

There are a lot of ways to build this deck, and this version is really just a test run at it. But if you like this style of deck give it a try and then try versions that play cards like Pitiless Carnage for real big combo turns.

Simic Manifest

There were so many new great manifest dread cards in Alchemy: Duskmourn that I had to just jam them all together and see if it worked.

Verdant Dread gives us a manifest early and is a great late game engine when we have mana and nothing else to do with it. Unnatural Summons gives us two manifests, and Harrowing Swarm is at a base Manifest Dread, and later in the game can give us some serious discounts on flipping up our creatures.

Our other ways to manifest include Growing Dread and Valgavoth’s Onslaught from Duskmourn proper. Our threats that we want to manifest into play are Hauntwoods Shrieker, which can help us flip things up for cheap and manifests more, Abhorrent Oculus to also continue our manifesting, and Vannifar, Evolved Enigma to grow all of our face down creatures.

We are light on removal so we have Paths of Tuinvale to not only slow down our opponent, but bounce any spells that we have manifested so that we can cast them normally.

This is the deck I was least confident when building. I think it likely needs a lot of work to figure out the best configuration, as there is a distinct lack of big threats to try to get into play in this version. Regardless, if this kind of deck interests you, give it a try and let me know where you went with it to make it more competitive.

Wrapping Up

This set has proved to add a lot of fun and powerful effects to Alchemy, making it a great time to try the format. While Heist is still frustrating to play against, it is not a huge part of the metagame, just making it a normal player in the format. Boros Mice is another common deck and one you have to be prepared for, but other than that it feels like the format is wide open and ready for innovation.

I hope these 10 new decks provide something that you want to try. As always, let me know what you think and best of luck in all of your matches!