Nothing like the smell of a new set! You smell them, right? I think Duskmourn: House of Horror has some fun, new mechanics, and I’m going to provide some ratings and tips to help you win the early drafts & prereleases!
I’m going to keep the same format j2sjosh had established, now that he’s safely in my basement.
5.0: Disgustingly powerful and basically unbeatable. Either answer it the turn it comes down or just pack up your cards. (Gruff Triplets, Virtue of Persistence, The Eternal Wanderer)
4.5: Incredible bomb that still gives your opponent a slim chance. (Virtue of Loyalty, Imodane's Recruiter, Realm-Scorcher Hellkite)
4.0: Great rare or the absolute best uncommons and removal. (Faunsbane Troll, Gumdrop Poisoner, Talion’s Messenger)
3.5: Great role filler or removal that you never cut. (Candy Grapple, Hearth Elemental, Torch the Tower)
3.0: Good playable that I’m basically never cutting. (Shrouded Shepherd, Spellscorn Coven, Sharae of Numbing Depths)
2.5: Decent playable and the bar I hope nearly every card in my deck to reach. (Evolving Wilds, Archon's Glory, Flick a Coin)
2.0: Mediocre filler that normally is your 20-23rd card(s). (Mintstrosity, Ice Out, Grabby Giant)
1.5: Replaceable, overall bad filler. Could also be decent sideboard cards. (Titanic Growth, Scarecrow Guide, Territorial Witchstalker)
1.0: Bad filler. Gets cut most of the time. (Dark Tutelage, Kindled Heroism, Impact Tremors)
0.5: Very unhappy to main deck this, but maybe it has fringe sideboard applications. Cards that “could” be situationally decent, but bad in most situations. (Smothering Tithe, Rhystic Study, Mana Flare)
0.0: Unplayable in every possible situation. They rarely print cards this bad these days. (Hew the Entwood, One with Nothing)
Altanak, the Thrice-Called
Rating: 2.0 // 5.0
This works kind of like a Rampant Growth, except it can only fetch from your graveyard. The better use of this card is to reanimate it after discarding it. While it won’t come up often, I’m obligated to address the synergy with Say Its Name.
Anthropede
Rating: 1.5 // 5.0
I think you should play this as a sideboard card, rather than maindeck and hope you can destroy a room. It’s pretty bad if this doesn’t destroy a room when it enters.
Balustrade Wurm
Rating: 3.5 // 5.0
This things big, fast, and you might have to kill it twice.
Bashful Beastie
Rating: 2.5 // 5.0
Five mana for 7/6 worth of stats that also helps you stabilize is a pretty sick common. This will likely be greens best common creature.
Break Down the Door
Rating: 2.0 // 5.0
This is maindeckable because of the mainfest dread failsafe. I’d prefer it out of the sideboard, though.
Cathartic Parting
Rating: SB // 5.0
This is a pretty neat version of Naturalize. While sorcery speed, the ability to shuffle meaningful cards from your graveyard back in can be huge in longer matches.
Cautious Survivor
Rating: 2.0 // 5.0
Essentially a vanilla 4/4 for 4. It’s totally fine, and I don’t mind putting them in most decks.
Coordinated Clobbering
Rating: 2.0 // 5.0
This works well with survival creatures, but tapping your creatures on your turn feels kind of bad.
Cryptid Inspector
Rating: 1.5 // 5.0
This thing seems pretty slow and unreliable. If you have lots of manifest dread, it’s definitely worth trying, but it does seem like a rough investment.
Defiant Survivor
Rating: 2.5 // 5.0
This is one of the more powerful survival triggers I’ve seen on nonrare creatures. If you have ways to protect this during combat, or ways to tap it during your turn, this thing can pop off.
Enduring Vitality
Rating: 3.0 // 5.0
The creature itself is nothing special, but the ability it provides can make some special things happen!
Fear of Exposure
Rating: 2.5 // 5.0
This is another way to enable survival creatures to trigger, and has solid stats as long as your getting him on the cheap.
Flesh Burrower
Rating: 2.0 // 5.0
This is both a good defensive, and offensive creature. Deathtouch works very well with trample, which green always has plenty of.
Frantic Strength
Rating: 1.5 // 5.0
Versions of this card have been around for some time, and typically they underperform. You open yourself up for getting two for one’d, as well as awkward situations when you don’t have an appropriate time or creature to cast this. Having said all that, when this hit, it hits, as well as triggering eerie, it might be alright this go around, but I’m still skeptical.
Grasping Longneck
Rating: 1.5 // 5.0
This will trade down with two drops/manifest tokens most often, and is easy to cut.
Greenhouse // Rickety Gazebo
Rating: 1.0 // 5.0
The first room is a pretty steep cost for mana fixing. The second room should almost always get you two cards in you’re average deck, but that doesn’t mean they are meaningful/not lands!
Hauntwoods Shrieker
Rating: 3.5 // 5.0
This is a little small to attack with impunity, but if you can – it’s incredibly strong. The activated ability can be gamebreaking as well. Keep in mind that you can look at opponents face down cards, and choose not to turn them face up.
Hedge Shredder
Rating: 3.5 // 5.0
This is a pretty sick vehicle, with a very cheap crew cost. The passive ability will put lands onto the battlefield from manifest dread as well, which is pretty sick. Also worth noting, vehicles are a great way to activate survival triggers as well.
Horrid Vigor
Rating: 2.0 // 5.0
This is a decent enough trick. It will let you win against any attacker/blocker, as well as help you trigger survival creatures.
House Cartographer
Rating: 2.5 // 5.0
This is solid if it gets one activation, which may be a tall order, but I’m trying to be optimistic.
Insidious Fungus
Rating: 2.0 // 5.0
If you don’t have a traget to Naturalize, the third option reminds me a bit of Growth Spiral, which was a fine limited card in its time.
Kona, Rescue Beastie
Rating: 3.0 // 5.0
This is pretty awesome if it survives. You likely won’t have too many cards left in hand if this triggers on turn five, but if you manage to play a couple creatures during that turn, it can certainly end things quickly.
Leyline of Mutation
Rating: 0.0 // 5.0
Please don’t.
Manifest Dread
Rating: 2.0 // 5.0
The power level of this will be archetype dependent. It’s amazing in delirium and reanimator decks, and somewhat medium in others.
Moldering Gym // Weight Room
Rating: 2.0 // 5.0
This is decent, albeit very slow. The first half can help with mana fixing/ramp, and the second half is a decent sized creature when you’ve run out of other plays. I wouldn’t play it unless you need the fixing/ramp though.
Monstrous Emergence
Rating: 2.5 // 5.0
This is a very solid version of Rabid Bite, allowing you to cast it without having a creature on the battlefield!
Omnivorous Flytrap
Rating: 3.0 // 5.0
For clarity, the 3.0 rating I’m giving this is for decks that can achieve delirium easily. If it can’t with any regularity, I would advise against putting this in your deck.
Overgrown Zealot
Rating: 2.5 // 5.0
This is a solid mana dork for slower green decks. 0/4 walls are very annoying to play against, and often difficult to kill as well.
Overlord of the Hauntwoods
Rating: 3.5 // 5.0
This is likely the weakest of the Overlords, but still a limited bomb, nonetheless. Not too much to say about this, its a giant stack of stats for the mana cost.
Patchwork Beastie
Rating: 2.5 // 5.0
Milling a card every turn is incredibly powerful for delirium decks. I really like the design of this card, by the time you hit delirium, 3/3 isn’t all that scary.
Rootwise Survivor
Rating: 1.5 // 5.0
It shouldn’t be too hard to have this thing survive since it has haste. I just really don’t like the mana cost of it, and it’s unlikely that it will survive multple turns to make an army.
Say Its Name
Rating: 2.0 // 5.0
This is a very efficient way of enabling delirium. It’s far less likely to “whiff” than most people assume in your average deck, so don’t get turned off too quickly.
Slavering Branchsnapper
Rating: 1.5 // 5.0
As with the other land cycling creatures, I typically wouldn’t advise playing them in streamlined two-colored decks. Having said that, there is a good amount of green ramp/mana, and this is a suitable attacker for 6 mana.
Spineseeker Centipede
Rating: 2.5 // 5.0
This thing seems strong. While it’s not quite “draw a card”, you are getting a free land of any type, helping you fix any problems. This also turns into a 3/3 later, it seems all around solid to me.
Threats Around Every Corner
Rating: 2.0 // 5.0
This is really slow, but it does do a great job at thinning your deck, which in turn makes manifest dread more likely to find creatures to turn face up. It’s a bit of a liability to run in most decks, but I could see it being alright in decks built for the long game.
Twitching Doll
Rating: 3.5 // 5.0
This spider toy seems incredibly menacing. It helps ramp/fix, then replaces itself with a few 2/2 spiders when its job is done.
Tyvar, the Pummeler
Rating: 4.0 // 5.0
This guy is indestructable, so long as you have another creature, and it has an insane activated ability, giving all of your creatures a minimum of +3/+3 until end of turn.
Under the Skin
Rating: 2.5 // 5.0
This thing has tons of value built in. While it’s best to cast this later in the game, you can still cast this on turn three and should find a permanent to return to your hand.
Valgavoth’s Onslaught
Rating: 4.0 // 5.0
The flexibility is part of what makes this card so strong. For 5 mana, you get two 4/4 manifest dread tokens, for 7 mana, you get three 5/5’s, and in a pinch, you can even cast this for 3, to get a 3/3 creature on the battlefield.
Walk-In Closet // Forgotten Cellar
Rating: 0.5 // 5.0
This is veryyy slowww. It takes quite some time to get enough mana for the second room to pop off.
Wary Watchdog
Rating: 2.0 // 5.0
This is a good dog, and excellent filler for most all green decks.
Wickerfolk Thresher
Rating: 2.5 // 5.0
Solid stats for a four drop, with a serious delirium attack trigger that draws you a card each time.
Top 3 Green Commons:
Spineseeker Centipede
Green has some amazing enabling cards for delirium decks, and I assume will be a cornerstone of a lot of three+ color decks as well. It’s on the slower side, but has good defensive creatures to help stabilize to get your bigger threats out.
Lose and Learn, Learn and Win!
