Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Hey, it’s time for a report on Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. We just got Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms and by the time this report is published, we’ll all be up to our necks in Innistrad: Crimson Vow. Soon, we’ll be getting a new Magic set with a colon in its name every week. Or something. Can I keep up with all this? Not really. But let’s try anyway.
I have no idea what’s in this new set, despite having already bought a box of it. Hey, quit judging me. I’ve been busy and I haven’t opened the box yet. So, I write this report seeing most of these cards, almost all of them really, for the first time. And seriously, that’s worth noting. Last time around, I wrote a report after playing with some of the new cards. And I usually tried to at least do a prerelease or even just open some packs before compiling a Tribal Update Report. Seeing everything so freshly, I might be apt to miss details that I wouldn’t have with previous sets. But come on! There’s another one of these things scheduled to hit shelves in less than two months. So we’d better get started.
The “midnight hunt” in the name here is a reference to werewolves, so I expect this to be a very werewolf-heavy set. And the setting of Innistrad is also strongly associated with humans, spirits, zombies, and vampires. Secondarily, we’ve also seen this setting do quite a bit for angels, demons, devils, and horrors. Anything that fits the “Gothic horror” tropes is a likely candidate, but we already know we’re getting two sets, with the first one being built around werewolves and the second one being built around vampires.
According to my extensive research, the flagship mechanic for this set is a new werewolf mechanic using “Daybound” and “Nightbound.” There’s also a strange new mechanic called “Coven.” It gets turned on when you have three or more creatures with different power values. The “Disturb” mechanic uses double-faced cards (spirits) that enter with one face normally and enter with the other face if cast from your graveyard. The zombies in this set feature a new “Decayed” mechanic, which seems pretty aggressive. Creatures with the “Decayed” ability cannot block and must be sacrificed at the end of the turn if they attack. The vampires in this set get bonuses if an opponent loses life. We also get the return of the “Flashback” and “Investigate” mechanics. All of that looks pretty good in my initial reading. We’ll see how it plays out on the actual cards.
New tribes
None. Well, that was easy. I’ve had to note something here for every set since Commander Legends, so I was a bit taken aback. But overall, I guess it’s commonplace not to get any new tribes.
New additions to existing tribes
Angel: Five new cards. They’re mostly quite good. Nothing groundbreaking. A few new toys to play with that might actually be worth consideration.
Archer: Two new cards. One is a werewolf and one is a vampire. Neither one is impressive.
Assassin: One new card. It has potential for an “aristocrats” archetype, but Assassin Tribal as a whole is a poor choice for this sort of deck.
Bear: One new card. At first glance, it’s nothing special. Thinking about it some more, I can’t help but notice that it has some functional overlap with Call of the Claw (but it can’t go wide). So maybe? The biggest issue is that you’d need to splash black.
Bird: One new card. It looks kind of weak.
Cleric: Six new cards. One of them is a double-faced card that’s a cleric on both faces, and it seems strong enough to try out. The other cards, not so much.
Construct: Two new cards. Neither one is a construct on its front face, but both are decent utility and can transform into decent creatures.
Demon: Five new cards. These look to be the best new demons in a while.
Devil: Two new cards. Worth testing.
Dog: One new card. Um, it’s a big one, but it’s better in Demon Tribal.
Dragon: Three new cards. Some potential applications in other archetypes, but nothing promising for Dragon Tribal.
Drake: One new card. It’s definitely a “spellslinger” card, and not really interesting for Drake Tribal.
Druid: One new card. It’s a bit weird, but I suspect that it could be a powerhouse.
Egg: One new card. It’s good, but not appropriate for Egg Tribal.
Elemental: One new card. It’s weird and I don’t like it.
Fungus: One new card. It might have some tangential synergy with other fungi and it is potentially a one-drop 3/3, which is decent value.
Giant: One new card. It’s decent, but probably doesn’t make the cut.
Hippogriff: Three new cards. Two of them are nonbos with Hushwing Gryff. Ouch.
Homunculus: Two new cards. Worth testing.
Horror: Eleven new cards. Some of these are based on Zombie Tribal synergies or are otherwise useless to Horror Tribal, but a few of these show real promise.
Human: Eighty-seven new cards. Typical humans.
Knight: Ten new cards. Mostly chaff or irrelevant, but the legendary knights here look like they really pack a punch.
Leech: One new card. This just might be the best card in Leech Tribal, which is really just kind of sad.
Noble: Six new cards. This tribe continues to be plagued by the issue that it is entirely thematic, with no mechanical consistency. Tribal synergies show up for other tribes, so they’re no help here. There are some respectable cards here, though.
Ooze: Two new cards. Well, these are exciting. One is more of a fix for my Life from the Loam obsession and not really something I think would see play in Ooze Tribal. I’m sure I’ll be saying more about Slogurk in some other thread. But the other ooze in this set is bonkers.
Peasant: Six new cards. This set introduces almost half of the peasant cards in existence, and that does not bode well for the tribe. If WotC wanted to support Peasant Tribal, they’d update older creatures that fit to make them members. I guess the good news is that you could now easily build a two-color Peasant Tribal deck instead of needing to go polychromatic.
Phoenix: One new card. Phoenix Tribal already does recursion pretty well and didn’t really need another four-drop.
Plant: One new card. It’s great, although it’s probably even better in Horror Tribal.
Ranger: One new card. It looks potent. But do you really want to keep track of your 3/3 beast tokens and your 4/4 beast tokens, both of which are green beasts? Do you want to also keep track of 2/2 wolf tokens? It’s no Frankenstein’s Monster, but this thing could get annoying.
Rogue: Eight new cards. Some strong options.
Shaman: Two new cards. No impact.
Scarecrow: One new card. Kind of weird, and I don’t think it matters.
Scout: Two new cards. Probably not useful to the tribe.
Shapeshifter: One new card. It’s not bad, but it’s in a tribe that tends to have better options to do pretty much this exact thing, so I think it doesn’t make the cut.
Soldier: Fourteen new cards. This might be one of those tribes with so many strong options that the cards in a new set, even fourteen of them, just don’t matter much.
Spider: One new card. It’s weaker than Penumbra Spider.
Spirit: Nineteen new cards. Some of these are really good. Ultimately, the gains over previous iterations of Spirit Tribal would probably be marginal, but I do think some of these new cards should distinctly improve this tribe.
Treefolk: Two new cards. Finally! In my original “preliminary report” assessed Treefolk Tribal largely based on Turgy22’s impressive performance with the tribe in CPA Tribal Game #13. Since then, I’d been waiting for any significant new treefolk to show up and give me any reason to contend that the tribe has gotten stronger than it was back in 2010. Treefolk are a reasonably strong tribe, but they kept getting no new tools in so many of these heavily power-crept new sets, so they may have fallen behind. Both of these new cards have at least some potential.
Turtle: One new card. It’s mediocre, but Turtle Tribal needs all the help it can get.
Vampire: Fourteen new cards. Despite how overpowered Vampire Tribal already is, I suspect that some of these might be new staples for the tribe. Scary.
Wall: One new card. Wall of Omens is a fine card. In a multiplayer game, the ceiling on this is, eventually, higher than the amount of card advantage Wall of Omens provides on its own, but the floor is lower. Take synergies into consideration and Wall of Omens is almost always better overall. I don’t think this new wall sees play in Constructed formats, and I imagine it will get trimmed in the upgrade process by new players from whichever precon it is in. Total missed opportunity here.
Warlock: Seven new cards. Wait, only one of these has black as a color? And they’re mostly either bad or occupy some niche that the tribe itself can’t take advantage of at all. What is going on? WotC wanted to make the new warlock creature type a real thing, and have it as part of a set of five magic-wielding “class” types alongside the much older clerics, wizards, shamans, and druids. But they keep managing to mostly give the new tribe duds like these ones. Why?
Warrior: Seven new cards. A few have strong synergies for other tribes or things Warrior Tribal would probably never care about. No impact.
Werewolf: Nineteen new cards. Well, here we are. This is the werewolf set. Do the new werewolves improve the potential for Werewolf Tribal? Ultimately, the answer is yes. But yikes, the options for this tribe have become convoluted in an annoying way. The new werewolves all use the daybound/nightbound mechanic, which is similar to the old werewolves from sets on the plane of Innistrad. But the old werewolves are not compatible with the new mechanic, so you don’t get any direct benefit from mixing and matching the best werewolves from Innistrad Block, Shadows Block, and this set. What a mess. Oh well. It turns out that some of these are just solid midrange beaters anyway, so the tribe isn’t bad and does see some potential upgrades.
Wizard: Fifteen new cards. Some of these are really worth testing.
Wolf: Five new cards. I continue to lament that WotC made wolves, werewolves, and dogs/hounds all different creature types, while every vaguely cat-like creature gets lumped into a single strong tribe. These cards aren’t bad and Wolf Tribal is already not bad, but they’d all be a lot better if they weren’t segregated from their brethren.
Zombie: Nineteen new cards. Some good stuff here. Zombie Tribal is looking good.
New tribal synergies to look out for
Empty the Laboratory: Zombie Tribal synergy with some intriguing potential in the right deck.
Flare of Faith: Potent Human Tribal synergy on an otherwise unremarkable combat trick.
Pack’s Betrayal: Marginally worthwhile synergy for either Werewolf Tribal or Wolf Tribal.
Sigarda, Champion of Light: Human Tribal synergy, but Sigarda is probably just too slow to warrant consideration there.
Tovolar, Dire Overlord: Wolf Tribal synergy on a werewolf. Ah, a classic, I guess.
Overall set analysis
Maybe WotC have gotten that “Philosophy of FIRE” under control? This really just strikes me as a fun set with cards that are mostly pretty good. There’s innovation and there are some improvements on old concepts too, and nothing really stands out as broken or game-ruining. The set mechanics for spirits and zombies here are flavorful and they look like they’d play nicely. Other elements of this set, both for Tribal interests and in general, seem solid.
Honestly, I’m kind of burned out on new Magic sets and I went into this report thinking that might just not care, but this just seems like it might be a great set. Good job, WotC?
Winners and losers for this set? Tier adjustments?
In alphabetical order, our biggest winners seem to be…
Ban list update recommendation
Although it’s generally a weak card, Tribal formats might have issues with Curse of Conformity. In a multiplayer setting, the result of this will be that one player gets completely stripped of access to all tribal synergies. I can’t think of a reason I’d even want to run this card and it actually seems kind of crappy compared to the other curses in this set, but it sure does run counter to the spirit of Tribal gameplay. Or something.
Conclusion
Set release is today, so I guess we’ll see how this plays out. Sadly, I had to miss the prerelease for personal reasons. But I’m hoping to get a chance to try out some of the excellent cards in this set soon. In less than two months, we’ll get yet another Innistrad set, so we can probably expect more boosts to the tribes traditionally associated with Innistrad, and to vampires in particular.
I have no idea what’s in this new set, despite having already bought a box of it. Hey, quit judging me. I’ve been busy and I haven’t opened the box yet. So, I write this report seeing most of these cards, almost all of them really, for the first time. And seriously, that’s worth noting. Last time around, I wrote a report after playing with some of the new cards. And I usually tried to at least do a prerelease or even just open some packs before compiling a Tribal Update Report. Seeing everything so freshly, I might be apt to miss details that I wouldn’t have with previous sets. But come on! There’s another one of these things scheduled to hit shelves in less than two months. So we’d better get started.
The “midnight hunt” in the name here is a reference to werewolves, so I expect this to be a very werewolf-heavy set. And the setting of Innistrad is also strongly associated with humans, spirits, zombies, and vampires. Secondarily, we’ve also seen this setting do quite a bit for angels, demons, devils, and horrors. Anything that fits the “Gothic horror” tropes is a likely candidate, but we already know we’re getting two sets, with the first one being built around werewolves and the second one being built around vampires.
According to my extensive research, the flagship mechanic for this set is a new werewolf mechanic using “Daybound” and “Nightbound.” There’s also a strange new mechanic called “Coven.” It gets turned on when you have three or more creatures with different power values. The “Disturb” mechanic uses double-faced cards (spirits) that enter with one face normally and enter with the other face if cast from your graveyard. The zombies in this set feature a new “Decayed” mechanic, which seems pretty aggressive. Creatures with the “Decayed” ability cannot block and must be sacrificed at the end of the turn if they attack. The vampires in this set get bonuses if an opponent loses life. We also get the return of the “Flashback” and “Investigate” mechanics. All of that looks pretty good in my initial reading. We’ll see how it plays out on the actual cards.
New tribes
None. Well, that was easy. I’ve had to note something here for every set since Commander Legends, so I was a bit taken aback. But overall, I guess it’s commonplace not to get any new tribes.
New additions to existing tribes
Angel: Five new cards. They’re mostly quite good. Nothing groundbreaking. A few new toys to play with that might actually be worth consideration.
Archer: Two new cards. One is a werewolf and one is a vampire. Neither one is impressive.
Assassin: One new card. It has potential for an “aristocrats” archetype, but Assassin Tribal as a whole is a poor choice for this sort of deck.
Bear: One new card. At first glance, it’s nothing special. Thinking about it some more, I can’t help but notice that it has some functional overlap with Call of the Claw (but it can’t go wide). So maybe? The biggest issue is that you’d need to splash black.
Bird: One new card. It looks kind of weak.
Cleric: Six new cards. One of them is a double-faced card that’s a cleric on both faces, and it seems strong enough to try out. The other cards, not so much.
Construct: Two new cards. Neither one is a construct on its front face, but both are decent utility and can transform into decent creatures.
Demon: Five new cards. These look to be the best new demons in a while.
Devil: Two new cards. Worth testing.
Dog: One new card. Um, it’s a big one, but it’s better in Demon Tribal.
Dragon: Three new cards. Some potential applications in other archetypes, but nothing promising for Dragon Tribal.
Drake: One new card. It’s definitely a “spellslinger” card, and not really interesting for Drake Tribal.
Druid: One new card. It’s a bit weird, but I suspect that it could be a powerhouse.
Egg: One new card. It’s good, but not appropriate for Egg Tribal.
Elemental: One new card. It’s weird and I don’t like it.
Fungus: One new card. It might have some tangential synergy with other fungi and it is potentially a one-drop 3/3, which is decent value.
Giant: One new card. It’s decent, but probably doesn’t make the cut.
Hippogriff: Three new cards. Two of them are nonbos with Hushwing Gryff. Ouch.
Homunculus: Two new cards. Worth testing.
Horror: Eleven new cards. Some of these are based on Zombie Tribal synergies or are otherwise useless to Horror Tribal, but a few of these show real promise.
Human: Eighty-seven new cards. Typical humans.
Knight: Ten new cards. Mostly chaff or irrelevant, but the legendary knights here look like they really pack a punch.
Leech: One new card. This just might be the best card in Leech Tribal, which is really just kind of sad.
Noble: Six new cards. This tribe continues to be plagued by the issue that it is entirely thematic, with no mechanical consistency. Tribal synergies show up for other tribes, so they’re no help here. There are some respectable cards here, though.
Ooze: Two new cards. Well, these are exciting. One is more of a fix for my Life from the Loam obsession and not really something I think would see play in Ooze Tribal. I’m sure I’ll be saying more about Slogurk in some other thread. But the other ooze in this set is bonkers.
Peasant: Six new cards. This set introduces almost half of the peasant cards in existence, and that does not bode well for the tribe. If WotC wanted to support Peasant Tribal, they’d update older creatures that fit to make them members. I guess the good news is that you could now easily build a two-color Peasant Tribal deck instead of needing to go polychromatic.
Phoenix: One new card. Phoenix Tribal already does recursion pretty well and didn’t really need another four-drop.
Plant: One new card. It’s great, although it’s probably even better in Horror Tribal.
Ranger: One new card. It looks potent. But do you really want to keep track of your 3/3 beast tokens and your 4/4 beast tokens, both of which are green beasts? Do you want to also keep track of 2/2 wolf tokens? It’s no Frankenstein’s Monster, but this thing could get annoying.
Rogue: Eight new cards. Some strong options.
Shaman: Two new cards. No impact.
Scarecrow: One new card. Kind of weird, and I don’t think it matters.
Scout: Two new cards. Probably not useful to the tribe.
Shapeshifter: One new card. It’s not bad, but it’s in a tribe that tends to have better options to do pretty much this exact thing, so I think it doesn’t make the cut.
Soldier: Fourteen new cards. This might be one of those tribes with so many strong options that the cards in a new set, even fourteen of them, just don’t matter much.
Spider: One new card. It’s weaker than Penumbra Spider.
Spirit: Nineteen new cards. Some of these are really good. Ultimately, the gains over previous iterations of Spirit Tribal would probably be marginal, but I do think some of these new cards should distinctly improve this tribe.
Treefolk: Two new cards. Finally! In my original “preliminary report” assessed Treefolk Tribal largely based on Turgy22’s impressive performance with the tribe in CPA Tribal Game #13. Since then, I’d been waiting for any significant new treefolk to show up and give me any reason to contend that the tribe has gotten stronger than it was back in 2010. Treefolk are a reasonably strong tribe, but they kept getting no new tools in so many of these heavily power-crept new sets, so they may have fallen behind. Both of these new cards have at least some potential.
Turtle: One new card. It’s mediocre, but Turtle Tribal needs all the help it can get.
Vampire: Fourteen new cards. Despite how overpowered Vampire Tribal already is, I suspect that some of these might be new staples for the tribe. Scary.
Wall: One new card. Wall of Omens is a fine card. In a multiplayer game, the ceiling on this is, eventually, higher than the amount of card advantage Wall of Omens provides on its own, but the floor is lower. Take synergies into consideration and Wall of Omens is almost always better overall. I don’t think this new wall sees play in Constructed formats, and I imagine it will get trimmed in the upgrade process by new players from whichever precon it is in. Total missed opportunity here.
Warlock: Seven new cards. Wait, only one of these has black as a color? And they’re mostly either bad or occupy some niche that the tribe itself can’t take advantage of at all. What is going on? WotC wanted to make the new warlock creature type a real thing, and have it as part of a set of five magic-wielding “class” types alongside the much older clerics, wizards, shamans, and druids. But they keep managing to mostly give the new tribe duds like these ones. Why?
Warrior: Seven new cards. A few have strong synergies for other tribes or things Warrior Tribal would probably never care about. No impact.
Werewolf: Nineteen new cards. Well, here we are. This is the werewolf set. Do the new werewolves improve the potential for Werewolf Tribal? Ultimately, the answer is yes. But yikes, the options for this tribe have become convoluted in an annoying way. The new werewolves all use the daybound/nightbound mechanic, which is similar to the old werewolves from sets on the plane of Innistrad. But the old werewolves are not compatible with the new mechanic, so you don’t get any direct benefit from mixing and matching the best werewolves from Innistrad Block, Shadows Block, and this set. What a mess. Oh well. It turns out that some of these are just solid midrange beaters anyway, so the tribe isn’t bad and does see some potential upgrades.
Wizard: Fifteen new cards. Some of these are really worth testing.
Wolf: Five new cards. I continue to lament that WotC made wolves, werewolves, and dogs/hounds all different creature types, while every vaguely cat-like creature gets lumped into a single strong tribe. These cards aren’t bad and Wolf Tribal is already not bad, but they’d all be a lot better if they weren’t segregated from their brethren.
Zombie: Nineteen new cards. Some good stuff here. Zombie Tribal is looking good.
New tribal synergies to look out for
Empty the Laboratory: Zombie Tribal synergy with some intriguing potential in the right deck.
Flare of Faith: Potent Human Tribal synergy on an otherwise unremarkable combat trick.
Pack’s Betrayal: Marginally worthwhile synergy for either Werewolf Tribal or Wolf Tribal.
Sigarda, Champion of Light: Human Tribal synergy, but Sigarda is probably just too slow to warrant consideration there.
Tovolar, Dire Overlord: Wolf Tribal synergy on a werewolf. Ah, a classic, I guess.
Overall set analysis
Maybe WotC have gotten that “Philosophy of FIRE” under control? This really just strikes me as a fun set with cards that are mostly pretty good. There’s innovation and there are some improvements on old concepts too, and nothing really stands out as broken or game-ruining. The set mechanics for spirits and zombies here are flavorful and they look like they’d play nicely. Other elements of this set, both for Tribal interests and in general, seem solid.
Honestly, I’m kind of burned out on new Magic sets and I went into this report thinking that might just not care, but this just seems like it might be a great set. Good job, WotC?
Winners and losers for this set? Tier adjustments?
In alphabetical order, our biggest winners seem to be…
- Demons
- Horrors
- Humans
- Knights
- Oozes
- Spirits
- Treefolk
- Vampires
- Werewolves
- Wizards
- Zombies
Ban list update recommendation
Although it’s generally a weak card, Tribal formats might have issues with Curse of Conformity. In a multiplayer setting, the result of this will be that one player gets completely stripped of access to all tribal synergies. I can’t think of a reason I’d even want to run this card and it actually seems kind of crappy compared to the other curses in this set, but it sure does run counter to the spirit of Tribal gameplay. Or something.
Conclusion
Set release is today, so I guess we’ll see how this plays out. Sadly, I had to miss the prerelease for personal reasons. But I’m hoping to get a chance to try out some of the excellent cards in this set soon. In less than two months, we’ll get yet another Innistrad set, so we can probably expect more boosts to the tribes traditionally associated with Innistrad, and to vampires in particular.