It feels like only yesterday we were looking through spoilers from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, the most recent Standard set released for Magic: The Gathering. Today, however, Wizards of the Coast has given us a few early previews for the upcoming September set, Innistrad: Midnight Hunt.

The return to fan favorite setting Innistrad, a gothic horror-themed plane, will be broken into two full-sized sets: Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, which will be focused on the werewolves of the plane, and Innistrad: Crimson Vow, which will focus on the vampires. Midnight Hunt will be released on Arena on September 16, with Crimson Vow following later on November 19.

Wizards of the Coast often shows off new cards from the upcoming set about a month in advance, and today, they published seven new cards that will be a part of Midnight Hunt through their Weekly MTG stream and this article on the official website.

The release of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt will correspond with the Standard rotation taking place in the fall, meaning that many of the cards in this set could have a significant impact on the new Standard format. Without further ado, let’s check out the previews!

Wrenn and Seven

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• Card Name: Wrenn and Seven
• Mana Cost: {3}{G}{G}
• Card Type: Legendary Planeswalker – Wrenn
• Rarity: Mythic
• Card Text:
  {+1}: Reveal the top four cards of your library. Put all land cards revealed this way into your hand and the rest into your graveyard.
  {0}: Put any number of land cards from your hand onto the battlefield tapped.
  {-3}: Create a green Treefolk creature token with reach and “This creature’s power and toughness are each equal to the number of lands you control.
  {-8}: Return all permanent cards from your graveyard to your hand. You get an emblem with “You have no maximum hand size.”
• Starting Loyalty: 5

Wrenn and Seven is the first Standard legal iteration of the planeswalker Wrenn, who originally debuted in Modern Horizons with the two-mana powerhouse Wrenn and Six. Wrenn and Six is an extremely powerful card that became one of the premier fetch cards from Modern Horizons. The card sees heavy play in Modern, Vintage, and Commander decks.

Now, we finally get a chance to play with a Wrenn card in Standard and Historic on MTG: Arena. Wrenn and Seven is a five-mana planeswalker, which means it will have to have a fairly big impact on the game to justify its cost. However, we have seen very recently with decks based around Lolth, Spider Queen in Standard 2022 that five-mana walkers may be well positioned in the new format if the payoff is good enough.

Wrenn and Seven seems like a grindy planeswalker, which draws land cards with its +1 ability and can create a reaching Treefolk blocker to defend itself with its -3. While 2021 Standard was a pretty hostile format for high-costed planeswalkers with fairly low board impact, control decks in Standard 2022 featuring Mordenkainen and Professor Onyx have showcased the potential of grindy, high mana cost planeswalkers.

Champion of the Perished

• Card Name: Champion of the Perished
• Mana Cost: {B}
• Card Type: Creature – Zombie
• Rarity: Rare
• Card Text:
  Whenever another Zombie enters the battlefield under your control, put a +1/+1 counter on Champion of the Perished.
• Power/Toughness: 1/1

Champion of the Perished is a clear callback to the card Champion of the Parish from the original Innistrad set. Champion of the Parish has proven itself to be an extremely strong card for Human decks across multiple formats, and there’s little doubt that if there is enough support for a Zombie tribal deck in Standard, or even Historic, this card will be at the core of the archetype.

Triskaidekaphile

• Card Name: Triskaidekaphile
• Mana Cost: {1}{U}
• Card Type: Creature – Human Wizard
• Rarity: Rare
• Card Text:
  You have no maximum hand size.
  At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have exactly thirteen cards in your hand, you win the game.
  {3}{U}: Draw a card.
• Power/Toughness: 1/3

Yet another callback to previous Innistrad sets, Triskaidekaphile is a bit of a bizarre creature that provides an alternate wincon if its controller can begin their upkeep with exactly 13 cards in hand. It will undoubtedly be a challenge to set up, but Triskaidekaphile helps the player achieve this goal by giving its controller no maximum hand size and having a mana sink draw ability right on the card.

Even if you can achieve the perfect 13 card hand size, there’s also the issue of keeping the creature on the battlefield, but I have no doubt that people will try to make this card work in the new Standard. One thing that Triskaidekaphile has going for it is that it already plays reasonably well with the strategy of existing Dimir Control decks that already want to control the board and draw cards anyways. Either way, it seems like we’re going to have to see this card in action to get a real grasp on how viable of a strategy it will actually be.

Triskaidekaphile is another in a list of cards from the Innistrad plane that somehow involve the number 13, sometimes turning it into an alternate win condition. The original Innistrad set had the card Triskaidekaphobia, which causes a player with exactly 13 life to lose the game, and the set Eldritch Moon, also based on Innistrad, had Tree of Perdition, which sets a player’s life total to its toughness (13).

In some ways, Triskaidekaphile also calls back to Laboratory Maniac. Affectionately known as Lab Man, Laboratory maniac is one of the classic alternate wincon cards: a blue creature which causes its controller to win the game if they would draw a card with no cards left in their library- something which normally causes a game loss.

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Play with Fire

• Card Name: Play with Fire
• Mana Cost: {R}
• Card Type: Instant
• Rarity: Uncommon
• Card Text: Play with Fire deals 2 damage to any target. If a player is dealt damage this way, scry 1.

Shock, a one mana instant that simply deals 2 damage to any target, already sees play in Standard pretty often as a hyper-efficient burn spell. Play with Fire is a new, strictly better version of Shock that allows its controller to scry 1 if it targets the opponent’s face. Scry 1 is a fairly small effect, but any card that is effectively Shock with upside is going to be played in Standard, probably heavily. Burn mages rejoice!

Infernal Grasp

• Card Name: Infernal Grasp
• Mana Cost: {1}{B}
• Card Type: Instant
• Rarity: Uncommon
• Card Text: Destroy target creature. You lose 2 life.

Red gets a better version of Shock, and black gets a new two-mana removal spell- and wow, this card will be an instant Standard staple. Control decks are already competitive in the Standard 2022 format, but the options for two-mana removal spell options are both limited and relatively narrow as of now.

Power Word Kill has proven itself to be a powerful removal spell in its own right, but it undeniably misses on some key targets. Not being able to kill threats like Faceless Haven and Goldspan Dragon is a considerable downside in the Standard 2022 format.

The two life cost on Infernal Grasp is definitely not insignificant, and should not be overlooked. This card will look pretty bad in your hand if you find yourself starting at a board full of 1/1 goblins, for example. It’s possible that this card may not even be a four-of in many decks, but it absolutely will see play in black control archetypes as an instant speed, flexible removal option for large, midrange-y threats.

Join the Dance

• Card Name: Join the Dance
• Mana Cost: {G}{W}
• Card Type: Sorcery
• Rarity: Uncommon
• Card Text: Create two 1/1 white Human creature tokens.
  Flashback {3}{G}{W}

Join the Dance heralds the return of Flashback, a legendary mechanic from the original Innistrad that likely constituted a large part of the set’s success and popularity. On the Weekly MTG Twitch stream, the Wizard’s team talked about how creating Flashback cards that require multiple colors to cast allows them to raise the power level of Flashback cards while keeping them fair.

Two 1/1 bodies for two mana is a pretty good rate. Omen of the Sun is a card that ended up seeing quite a bit of play at three mana, although the lifegain and abusable enters-the-battlefield trigger was a large part of that card’s success.

Even so, Lingering Souls, a card from Innistrad’s expansion set Dark Ascension, has been an absolute powerhouse in formats of the past because of the insane value printed on one card. Flashback is similar in a way to a more recent example, the adventure creatures from Throne of Eldraine- like adventures, cards with Flashback allow their controller to effectively get two spells on one card.

Join the Dance makes for an interesting comparison with Lingering Souls. Join the Dance only costs 2 mana to cast as opposed to Lingering Souls’ three, but the flying ability on the tokens from Lingering Souls is a huge upside. Also, the Flashback cost for Lingering Souls is even cheaper than its original casting cost at 2 mana, while Join the Dance increases significantly to 5 mana.

It seems unlikely to me that Join the Dance will be as much of an all-star as Lingering Souls turned out to be since the Flashback cost is so much higher, but I still think it will see play in some archetypes. The value is there, and I’d wager that any decks that can somehow make use of small dorks will be happy to play this card.

Consider

• Card Name: Consider
• Mana Cost: {U}
• Card Type: Instant
• Rarity: Common
• Card Text: Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card into your graveyard.
  Draw a card.

Last but not least, we have Consider, a one-mana instant cantrip effect that plays in a very similar way to Opt. Opt has seen play on-and-off throughout its time in Standard, and Consider will probably be in a similar position. In decks that access the graveyard in some way (Flashback, anybody?), the ability to put the card into the graveyard instead of the bottom of the library is a significant upgrade.

Even still, it’s a fairly low-impact spell which means that most decks running Consider will probably have a specific reason for doing so rather than just playing it as a generic draw spell. With that being said, I think there will be enough decks that look to abuse the graveyard in the format that Consider will see plenty of play, perhaps even at the competitive level.

And there we have it!

All seven of the cards that Wizards has previewed today seem like they have the potential to be players in the Standard format when the set releases and rotation takes place. It seems like the design team at Wizards has made some really interesting cards that call back to the previous Innistrad sets while still coming up with some ideas that are new and unique. We can’t wait to see what else Innistrad: Midnight Hunt will have in store for us, but previews won’t begin in earnest for another several weeks.

I’m personally very excited for Infernal Grasp as a lover of control strategies. What is your favorite new card that we’ve seen so far? Let us know in the comments!

To close it out, Wizards also unveiled ten new basic land arts- a new showcase series they’ve called Eternal Night.