Posted in: Card Games, Games, Magic: The Gathering, Tabletop, Wizards of the Coast | Tagged: gothic, Harvesttide Festival, horror, Innistrad, magic, Midnight Hunt, MTG, MTGMID, WotC

Magic: The Gathering's Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Stream Recap

At 9:00 AM Pacific Time, or 12:00 PM Eastern Time, Wizards of the Coast conducted a stream on YouTube and Twitch pertaining to their upcoming Magic: The Gathering set, called Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. This stream revolved around the theme of the "Harvesttide Festival", a ritual enacted by humans on Innistrad to ward off evil. In the stream, Wizards showed us all a number of interesting cards with super-spooky mechanics. As a quick note, the many Magic cards showcased in this article are shown in no particular order compared to the streaming video on YouTube and thereabouts, but all are cards from the set that we are sure will elicit some interesting responses from the lot of our reader base. So, without further ado, let's dig in!

The first mechanic we would like to address is the Daybound/Nightbound mechanic that is prominent on all of the Werewolf creatures in the set. This is a tuned-up and modernized version of the original mechanics that made Werewolves in earlier sets from Innistrad what they were. Daybound creatures are a bit less powerful than their nightbound counterparts, but even then they can be fairly powerful. Just look at Tovolar, Dire Overlord!

That's right, Werewolf fans; we are finally getting a better tribal Werewolf commander than Ulrich of the Krallenhorde (with no offense meant towards Ulrich or his rapidly decreasing fanbase, of course)! However, this is only the front face of Tovolar. With a front face like this, who needs a nightbound face?

Well, one may suppose this face is icing on a bloody, gore-drenched cake.

And Werewolf creatures are not the only cards getting a transformative daybound/nightbound twist. Arlinn Kord, the Werewolf Planeswalker native to Innistrad, is also getting this mechanic.

A few more mechanics from this set include the Decayed mechanic, primarily used as a means to make it easier to generate tokens (in this case, Zombies), and Disturb, which acts similar to Flashback does for spells, but for double-faced cards instead.

Decayed is all downside, but will facilitate the creation of many tokens at once through the source of these tokens, for a more efficient cost. Whether these tokens will be used in a metagame post-rotation in Standard certainly remains  to be seen, but we know we're dying to find out!

With regards to Disturb, you can cast a card with the keyword from the graveyard for an alternate cost, and it enters play transformed as a result. The ability is likely to mainly be seen on Spirit creatures, or at least cards that turn into Spirits as a result of the disturbance, such as Beloved Beggar and Generous Soul, two sides of a very poignant, and perhaps emotionally stirring, card.

But where are the vampires, we hear you ask? Well, as the vampires of Innistrad will feature more prominently in Innistrad: Crimson Vow, the answers aren't entirely clear. However, we do know that the vampires aren't extinct or anything like that, so fret not, bloodsucker-fans!

Some final points to cover in this article include the following: We have an allied-color cycle of nonbasic lands that look a bit like this:

Aaaaaand this:

And, as we (likely) all had hoped, we are also seeing a new iteration of Sigarda, the legendary Angel creature who survived Emrakul's onslaught unto Innistrad during Eldritch Moon where her sisters did not.

As expected, Sigarda is a leader of the religious and superstitious Humans who devote themselves to her and her flight of angels. She shares the Human keyword, Coven, which is a keyword that triggers if you control three or more creatures with different power values. The ability is a bit ambiguous in what "powers" means, but we have it on good intel that "powers" refers to the individual power of each of three creatures you control. It does not mean whether or not creatures have abilities or even keyworded abilities, simply for clarification's sake.

Speaking of good intel, we are also aware that, unlike in past sets featuring double-faced cards, where you only open one per Draft Booster, Draft Boosters of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt will feature two double-faced cards and these DFCs (as they've been come to commonly be known as online) will take up the rarity slots of their rarity, meaning that unless you open up a foil rare/mythic rare, you'll only open one rare regardless of if it's a DFC or not, in a given Draft Booster.

That about wraps up what we know about the stream's contents! So, are you excited about Innistrad: Midnight Hunt? We think it will be a killer time! Are you going to draft this Magic: The Gathering set when it arrives on Magic Arena on September 16th, or attend prerelease events on the weekend immediately following? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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