Hey all, Strickles here with a complete Alchemy: Duskmourn set review. I will be evaluating the cards purely from an Alchemy perspective, so let’s go over the questions I ask myself when evaluating new cards and then dive in.

Card Evaluation Philosophy

When evaluating new cards there are three questions to keep in mind when trying to decide if they are going to see play or not: 

1) Will this card be added to an existing deck? 

2) Does this card create a new deck or revive an abandoned deck?

3) Is this an impactful sideboard option?

And as these cards will also be legal in Historic, Timeless, Brawl, and even limited, I’ll add a fourth question of:

4) Is this card for a different format?

With all that in mind let’s dive right in, starting with the White cards!

White

Ethrimik, Imagined Fiend

Ethrimik, Imagined Fiend is a neat card, but I’m really not sure what to do with it. Usually, anthem effects want to be put into creature decks, so triggering its enters clause to manifest dread will be tough. The upside is that it is a good follow up to a sweeper.

Regardless if you have creatures or not, it won’t be able to attack or block. So we really have to evaluate it as a four mana anthem or a 3/3 and an anthem. In either case I’m not sure there is a deck that really wants this. On top of all that it is legendary, so you can’t even stack them on the battlefield to buff up your team.

Maybe there is a sweet brawl deck with this fiend, but I struggle to see it being a player in Alchemy.

Improvising Aerialist

Improvising Aerialist is a nice aggressive card, but can it break out of limited? It has a direct comparison in Duskmourn, Acrobatic Cheerleader Improvising Aerialist is a huge upgrade over the cheerleader. Not only does it have an extra power, but it grants the top creature of your library flying as well, and can trigger over and over again, turning every creature you draw into a flying threat.

This set provided a lot of upgrades to a potential Survival based aggro deck, so Improvising Aerialist could find a home there, but regardless it should be powerful in limited.

Mothlight Processionist

Mothlight Processionist sort of calls back to Sigardian Evangel, one the most powerful original Alchemy cards, in that it creates copies of itself that get discarded at the end of turn. The cool thing about Mothlight Processionist is that you can keep making more copies every turn as long as you have the enchantments to keep it going.

The powerful part of this card is that it gives all of your enchantments convoke, letting you use your creatures to cast your enchantments.

The goal here is to get several of these into play, and use them to convoke out your enchantments, thus making more copies, and letting you spend all of your real mana on casting copies of this and then using those copies to convoke out more enchantments.

Maybe this can be combined with an Entity Tracker to go through our whole deck quickly, putting a bunch of copies of Mothlight Processionsist and various enchantments into play, but maybe it is too slow and clunky.

Regardless I think it’s worth a shot, because this card is just too cool to not try out.

Solitary Study // Endless Corridor

Probably the coolest room card, and a great combo with Mothlight Processionist, Solitary Study // Endless Corridor is great for going wide. A two mana buff to power is good, if unexciting, but is great with tokens or other go wide aggro decks. 

The other side is great when you have extra mana later in the game, spend two mana to give a creature first strike, and get a copy into hand to deploy to buff your creatures even more.

Not every aggro deck will want this card, but a go wide deck like Selesnya Rabbits could be interested in trying it out, and a new deck based around Mothlight Processionist could absolutely make use of it, giving me hope that the format will make room (pun intended) for this new enchantment.

Blue

Housemeld

Housemeld is a classic awesome Alchemy design. Exile your opponent’s creature, get an enchantment copy of it, which will trigger any enters effects or keep any triggered abilities, for a huge tempo swing.

The problem is that it is four mana and a sorcery, making it pretty clunky. I could see giving it a try in a blue midrange deck, but I’m skeptical that this will see much play outside of Brawl and Draft.

Lurker in the Deep

We get a new threat with impending in Lurker in the Deep. Six mana is a lot, so we are usually going to be casting this for its impending cost for four mana. So, for four mana we are seeking a nonland card, and then conjuring a duplicate of it onto the battlefield as a 2/2. Unless we are a creature-heavy blue deck, the face down creature is usually going to be a spell so we won’t be able to flip it up. 

Four mana to draw a nonland card and get a 2/2 is really not that impressive. Obviously once it is a creature we are getting that every turn which is quite good, but I think if you want this creature to be worthwhile you have to make use of the fact that anytime you seek during your turn you get the conjured copy as a 2/2 in play.

There are a few decent cards that seek, but the best ones in blue are all instant speed, like Pool Resources, and Lurker in the Deep only works on your turn, so I’m concerned that a blue deck won’t want to put its shields down just to get a 2/2 into play.

All of that said, I think that Lurker in the Deep is unlikely to find a home in the current Alchemy environment, but it is a sweet threat to reanimate though, so perhaps it finds a home there.

Black

Fear of Ridicule

Fear of Ridicule is something most of us can relate to, and this enchantment creature is something to fear. Granting menace to all of your enchantment creatures makes this a great follow up to a two drop enchantment creature, almost guaranteeing that it is going to hit and trigger the ability of Fear of Ridicule.

When you damage your opponent with one or more enchantment creatures you exile a random creature from an opponent’s library and get a 1/1 copy of it. There are so many impactful creatures you can hit with this. Grenzo, Crooked Jailer, Trumpeting Carnosaur, Emmara, Voice of the Conclave, or even Impetuous Lootmonger and Prairie Survivalist, are all powerful hits.

I’m really excited to try Fear of Ridicule, and if you aren’t, then you better have a plan to deal with it because it is ready to ridicule your deck building if you don’t.

Glimmer Hoarder

Something about Black 2-drops that can get card advantage just feels like home. Glimmer Hoarder is the latest in the Dark Confidant appreciation club, giving the opportunity to gain an extra card each turn at the cost of finding a way to tap it and losing one life.

The spellbook from Glimmer Hoarder is mostly four and five drop creatures, with a couple of two drops sprinkled in there, but it is card advantage. They also become enchantments in addition to their other types so maybe we can use Mothlight Processionist to convoke them out ahead of schedule. Even if you aren’t able to do that, just having extra creatures to keep the pressure on as the game progresses will be valuable.

The real question is how do we trigger Survival each turn. Pretty quickly attacking with a 2/2 is not going to be a viable option, so we need to combine this with vehicles, mount creatures, or other ways to tap it.

All in all, I think that Glimmer Hoarder could find a home but there is no current deck that is going to be looking to take advantage of it, and I’m unsure how reliably you’ll be able to trigger it, making me think it is going to end up where most Dark Confidant clones do, which is on the sidelines.

Spellbook:

Angel of Suffering, Aphemia, the Cacaphony, Balemurk Leech Chitinous Crawler, Defiler of Flesh, Gravebreaker Lamia, Mindwrack Harpy, Puppet Raiser, Starving Revenant

Razor Demon

Razor Demon is a weird card. Of course, a three mana 7/7 flying with ward: discard a card is insanely powerful. On the other hand, giving your opponent their choice of Demonic Bargain, Ever After, or Demonic Pact for free is a huge downside depending on the board state. The problem of course is that even if they do have to 2-for-1 themselves to remove the demon they did get some good value out of it all.

I think if Razor Demon is going to find it home it is going to be in a deck making use of Helping Hand to get it into play for cheap and ignoring that ability that only triggers when you cast it. I’m looking forward to trying a deck built around this plan.

Replicating Terror

Replicating Terror is a pretty simple edict effect, and usually the fact that it says non-token is going to be a big boon, preventing your opponent from throwing a small token under the bus to save their threat.

The conjuring a duplicate into your graveyard isn’t always going to be impactful, but there are a lot of things that care about just having cards in your graveyard like Delirium, Threshold, Descend, etc. so even if you aren’t looking to reanimate, it is still nice extra value tacked onto this card.

I expect this card to see some amount of play, as a one-of or two-of in some midrange and control decks. This also gets around ward costs, as you aren’t targeting the creature, so you won’t need to discard a card to get rid of an opponent’s Razor Demon, for example.

Welcome the Darkness

Sweetest card of the set award goes to Welcome the Darkness, and so does the most complicated to use award. I think the best use of this card is when X is four or more. 

So on turn five you can pass, hold up removal or counterspells, and then in combat, for the surprise blocker, or at the end of turn, you draw four cards, get a 4/4, and set your life total to four. This obviously gets even better later on with more mana. The scary part of this card, of course, is putting your life total low, not finding the answers you need, and dying in a turn or two to your opponent’s board.

So, are you willing to take the risk? Are you a bad enough dude to Welcome the Darkness? I think it is a really powerful tool that midrange and control decks should consider, as you cannot find a cheaper way to draw cards at instant speed, but make sure you have the tools to defend yourself afterwards, because you cannot gain life for the rest of the game. 

(I asked a judge friend of mine, and he said that even if you cast another copy later for a bigger X, your life total won’t change because that counts as gaining life, so you really are stuck at that first life total for the rest of the game.)

Red

Anguished Recollection

Speaking of seeking cards, Anguished Recollection is a Tormenting Voice variant that allows for a bit of customization. The baseline will be to discard a land card to seek two nonland cards, but if you are looking for lands you can discard a nonland and hope to get lucky.

Overall, it is a good tool if you are trying to get cards into the graveyard for reanimating purposes or just filling the graveyard for delirium, otherwise I would stay away from it.

Crude Abattoir // Unsavory Kitchen

Our other room card is Crude Abattoir // Unsavory Kitchen. The base use of this, one mana sorcery speed two damage to a creature, is fine? It does kill a variety of creatures in the format early on, so even though you can only use it at sorcery speed it is as cheap as it gets.

The other side, giving a creature in your hand a plus 2 to power and haste works well if you have a lot of burn to point at your opponent’s creatures, like the first side of this card.

Overall, I think this card is kind of sus. The haste and buffing side is kind of expensive for an aggressive deck to want, and most creatures that an aggressive red deck would want to play like already have haste or are already in play.

Maybe there is a midrange build that can make use of this to give some of their more expensive creatures the buff, but I’m just not sure that is worth a card. Overall, I don’t expect Crude Abattoir // Unsavory Kitchen to see much play, but maybe I’m just not thinking big enough to see where it fits.

Eager Flameguide

Eager Flameguide is cool but difficult to use. When it enters you get three colorless mana that can only be spent on creature spells, sort of refunding the flameguides cost and giving you a free 3/3. The trick is what do you use this mana on? On turn three you can use it to cast an artifact creature, but the better use will be to wait for turn four, and then cast a four drop with the three colorless mana and whatever colored mana you have from your fourth land.

This can lead to a nice snowball, where you deploy a 3 drop and a 4 drop on the same turn, making it difficult for your opponent to keep pace.

The other part of this card is when it dies you exile the top two cards and can cast any creatures exiled this way, hopefully giving at least a card to replace the slain raccoon.

So, in a creature heavy deck Eager Flameguide seems totally playable, helping you get on the board and snowball your advantage. We’ll have to see if that kind of deck develops, as there isn’t currently a deck for it in Alchemy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a “free” 3/3 doesn’t find a home somewhere.

Green

Chittering Illuminator

Chittering Illuminator is a nice value card for creature decks. I love that you can cast it from the top of your library, a mechanic that only works on an Alchemy card like this, and then lets you cast other creature cards off the top of your deck later on.

This card works best in a dedicated creature deck, so maybe it can team up with Eager Flameguide in a Gruul deck, but I am worried that all of these cards might be a bit too slow and clunky to compete in the current Alchemy metagame, but only time will tell.

Harrowing Swarm

Harrowing Swarm at a base is Manifest Dread with upside. On turn two it’s fine, giving you a 2/2 that if its a creature can flip up for a bit cheaper and get a counter. The real power of this card comes later in the game when you have several manifests in play and you give all of them the power to flip up for 2 mana less and with an additional counter.

Dedicated manifest decks will definitely want to try this out, and instead of doing something silly with your manifests, just build a deck that is trying to manifest a lot of four and five drops into play so you can flip them up for two or three mana.

My concern is that the deck building might be a bit difficult, trying to include threats and plenty of ways to manifest them, but I think it is worth a shot.

Verdant Dread

Speaking of manifesting, Verdant Dread is the new Pack Rat. Again, two mana to manifest dread is totally fine, but this card is insane in multiples. When you play your second one, they both trigger and you get to manifest dread twice, and once you are five or more mana, you can just activate it over and over again, making more and more manifests.

This is a pretty crazy late game plan, and unlike Pack Rat, you don’t have to discard cards so you can still make your land drops and eventually do other things with your mana. But I suspect that you are just going to want to activate this every turn as soon as you can, unless the opponent presents a must answer threat.

This Alchemy set gave us a lot of good tools for a manifest dread deck, so I’m excited to combine them with the tools from Duskmourn to put a powerful deck together.

Wary Zone Guard

In the right deck, Wary Zone Guard is a 4/4 for three that ramps you. Assuming you have a land in your graveyard, like a Fabled Passage that you cracked on turn one or two, Wary Zone Guard will enter tapped, trigger its survival ability right away, and return that land to play and get its perpetual +1/+1.

And you can keep doing that on future turns, as long as you are able to tap it, and since it grows to a 4/4, it is likely going to be able to attack the following turn.

The real question is what deck wants this? Maybe a delirium deck can make use of it since it wants to be milling itself the first few turns. I doubt a dedicated survival deck will want it since they aren’t likely to have lands in their graveyard. This might end up being a powerful card without a home, but if you are putting lands into your graveyard, consider Wary Zone Guard as both a ramping tool and big threat.

Multicolor

Effie, Fast Learner

Speaking of a dedicated survival deck, Effie, Fast Learner is here to take you to school. A three mana 3/3 is fine on curve, and enlist lets you tap another of your creatures (without summoning sickness) when Effie attacks to add their power to her’s, and then she will put a counter on all of your tapped creatures and seek a survivor to your hand.

This is an incredibly snowbally card, as once it gets going all of the creatures are going to be growing, making it easier to attack with them and trigger their own survival abilities, and she makes sure that the card advantage keeps coming and that you have more threats to deploy every turn.

Effie, Fast Learner is a must answer threat, and the cornerstone of a dedicated survival aggro deck, which I can’t wait to put together and try. I definitely want some other ways to tap her early on to start the snowball but once you grow her once or twice she should have no problem attacking.

Enduring Friendship

Enduring Friendship is both adorable and potent. A 2/1 for two might not seem powerful, but it has the enduring text that says if it dies it returns as an enchantment. This makes it very easy to attack in and trigger double team, which will conjure a duplicate of it into your hand and then remove double team from both copies, and have access to two copies.

Whether it is a creature or an enchantment, it has the powerful ability of pumping up all of your otters (or enchantment creatures but we are really here for the otters), every time you cast an instant or sorcery. With two of these in play your whole team is getting +2/+2 with every spell, making it very easy to end the game in one or two big swings.

Otters hasn’t really landed as a deck in Standard or Alchemy, but Enduring Friendship is the kind of resilient ability that could really help push up its power and make it a potential player in the format.

Fear of Change

Fear of Change is just weird. It forces you to sacrifice another creature when it enters or dies to get a random creature, any creature in the format, that costs two more into play. Now I haven’t done the math to know what the best hits are at what mana cost, but the baseline is casting this on turn two after starting with a one drop to change that one drop into a three drop.

Usually that is a good upgrade, but I think there are going to be so many scenarios where it is just a side-grade and the forced sacrifice is awkward. I think outside of the curve out scenario I described above, this card is going to be a bit tough to make good use of, because you have no real control of what you are getting.

Regardless, it is a really cool card and players love Momir, so if that is you give Fear of Change a try.

Gilded Ambusher

Gilded Ambusher is the sacrifice enabler and pay off that sacrifice decks have been waiting for. When it attacks you get to sacrifice something for free, hopefully triggering a variety of effects, and that forces the opponent to exile a nonland, nontoken permanent, and take a chunk of extra damage.

So you get to sacrifice something, force the opponent to lose something, and do extra damage? This card is exactly the tool a sacrifice deck needs to keep the pressure on and force the opponent into difficult positions. The only downside of this card is that at two toughness it is relatively easy for opponents to remove or trade with in combat, but if they only have one creature then you might be able to snipe it with this ability.

I think that all the tools are there for a Rakdos Sacrifice deck, so I am looking forward to putting it together and giving it a try.

Golden Sidekick

Golden Sidekick is a powerful new card for bat decks. A 2/2 flying, lifelink for two mana is great on curve, and just by itself can attack in and buff a creature in your hand with +2/+2. With other sources of life gain, such as Case of the Uneaten Feast, or Zoraline, Cosmos Caller, these buffs can stack up really quickly and pretty soon your previously small bats are real big flying threats.

I think that Golden Sidekick is a shoo in to work its way into Orzhov Bats, or Orzhov Lifegain decks to bring some extra oomph to the roster, mostly because those decks just have so many ways to incidentally trigger it.

Mangled Soulrager

I’m not sure what is going on with Mangled Soulrager. At a base, it is a 3 mana 4/1 with flying, as it will switch all power and toughnesses including its own when it enters, which is pretty scary. However, one toughness means that it dies to all of the removal in the format, making it pretty fragile.

Then, the next 12 creatures that enter the battlefield under your control have their power and toughness switched. A quick glance of the creatures legal in Alchemy, I’m really not sure what the best case scenario is here. Essence of Antiquity becoming a 10/1? Ghostly Dancers becoming a 5/2 with flying?

So I think my brain is too small to see the best way to use this card, but I’m sure that it will randomly kill me once or twice.

Mischievous Lookout

Mischievous Lookout is a great value tool for Orzhov value decks. In decks built around permanents with spell effects, like Hopeless Nightmare or Nowhere to Run, the lookout is going to let you recast those from your graveyard, making use of their enters effect and making them into a 2/1 rat (which means that if they die you can’t cast them again).

Of course we need to get those cards into the graveyard, but perhaps Overlord of the Balemurk is a good tool to self mill and get some value. 

Regardless, I think that Mischievous Lookout can team up with Zoraline, Cosmos Caller as cards that generate a lot of extra value and make it hard for your opponent to keep up with all of your resources, making me think it has a chance to make it in Alchemy.

Polterheist

More heist cards?? Polterheist brings back the most hated mechanic in the history of Alchemy. A 3/1 for three with ward pay 2 life is fine, but not great on curve. The only nice thing is that Polterheist just needs to attack to heist, versus a card like Thieving Aven needs to deal combat damage to heist.

All that said, I don’t expect Polterheist to make the cut in existing heist decks. It is so fragile and easy to kill, compared to Thieving Aven which is difficult to kill and easy to connect with, that I don’t think heist players are going to make room in their deck for it.

Unnatural Summons

Wrapping up our new suite of manifest cards, Unnatural Summons is a good tool for manifest decks and even better when on the draw. For those who don’t know, rebound is a mechanic where after you cast this spell you exile it and then cast it again for free during your next upkeep. So for three mana, or two mana on the draw, we get to manifest dread twice.

That is pretty powerful in a manifest deck, as getting two manifests out of one card helps us balance our deck in terms of cards that manifest and cards that we want to manifest. So I’m looking forward to trying it in the dedicated manifest deck.

Valiant Emberkin

Mouse players get another sweet tool in Valiant Emberkin. Whenever it enters or attacks it gets to buff one of your creatures. Importantly, this ability will trigger valiant effects, and then, the second paragraph of Valiant Emberkin will cause that valiant ability to trigger a second time.

Even without other threats Valiant Emberkin can target itself with the enters and attack ability to attack in as a 3/1 haste. No matter how you slice it, Valiant Emberkin is worth trying out in the mice deck, maybe as a replacement for Mabel, Heir to Cragflame or alongside her.

Wingbright Thief

There is a lot to like about Wingbright Thief, although its stats a 2/3 flying for three are a bit below the curve, getting to see your opponent’s hand and pick a spell to gain you three life and draw you a card when they cast it is great, because you have information and the thief will eventually be replaced.

I like this card in a deck that is making use of Cottontail Caretaker or Three Tree Battalion to double up on this effect, but while drawing cards and gaining life is nice, it doesn’t disrupt your opponent, like by making their spells cost more, so there may be better cards for that slot. This card is also a miss if they have no cards in hand or only lands in hand so it isn’t a great top-deck in the late game.

Regardless, I want to give Wingbright Thief a try as a way to keep the cards flowing in an aggressive Azorius deck.

Artifact

Soul Shredder

Our sole (pun intended) artifact in this Alchemy drop is Soul Shredder, which is another powerful tool for sacrifice decks. A 2/2 haste vehicle with crew 1 is pretty easy to make use of, but the real power is that it grows anytime a creature dies, even if it is in the graveyard.

There are going to be great sequences when you sacrifice the Soul Shredder itself, and then use its ability to sacrifice two creatures to bring it back as a hasty 4/4 or maybe even bigger at that point.

Sacrifice decks need cards like this that are both a payoff and an enabler. Soul Shredder is a payoff, growing big for all of the creatures that die, and an enabler, letting you sacrifice creatures to trigger all of your effects.

Between Soul Shredder and Gilded Ambusher, I think that Rakdos Sacrifice is going to be a real player moving forward.

Top Cards from the Set

Here are the cards I think are going to have the biggest impact on the format:

1) Valiant Emberkin

2) Fear of Ridicule

3) Verdant Dread

Be sure to check back here on Friday, where I’ll have ten new decks for you to try featuring cards from Alchemy: Duskmourn!

Wrapping Up

We made it through all 30 spooky and spectacular cards from the set, and I hope that it was helpful to you as you make your own evaluations of which cards you want to try out and build around! Almost all of these cards are sweet in the right deck, even if that is a Brawl deck, and I can’t wait to try them out as the set released yesterday, Tuesday, October 15th.

Let me know if you think I missed anything and as always I wish you happy brewing and best of luck on the ladder.