House of Horror Limited with Marshall Sutcliffe

I have an uncanny feeling that we have one of the best Draft formats ever lined up for World Championship 30.

Leading up to the event, the players have two monumental tasks to complete. They need to build a powerful and optimized standard deck, and they need to know how to draw Duskmourn: House of Horror.

If you haven’t had a chance to dive in yet Duskmourn: House of Horror Limited, I recommend you do this as soon as possible as the format is great. To give you some insight into setting up the set yourself and/or watching the World Championship, let’s talk about what’s happening in the format from here on out.

Duskmourn: House of Horror has a quality that pretty much all the Limited formats I really loved had: archetypes within archetypes.

Normally, for a two-color baseline, such as Duskmourn: House of Horrorthere are ten possible archetypes, one for each color pair. But sometimes really great sets manage to squeeze out a few extras by having a mix of cards that fit into multiple decks, mixed with cards that usually only fit into one archetype.

When a card’s playability changes dramatically from one archetype to another, the design itself becomes more dynamic. In some sets, a good card is a good card, and you just take it if you’re in that suit. But sets like Duskmourn: House of Horror add another layer.

An example of a card from Duskmourn: House of Horror that’s great with some archetypes and less effective with others is the red room, Glass Factory // Shattered Garden.

Glass Factory // Shattered Garden

In red-green delirium and red-white aggro it is a solid removal spell with some upside, and it is chosen and played accordingly. Sturdy card; nothing to be super excited about.

But in red-black sacrifices and blue-red rooms it is a common phenomenon. The sacrificial deck has a number of ways to sacrifice space for value afterwards Glass factory killed a creature, with Shattered Yard rarely unlocking anyway. For three mana you get a good removal spell and something to sacrifice. Of course, you can always unlock Shattered Yard to take out your opponents.

Its role in the blue-red Rooms archetype is clear. Any deck that cares about rooms, how many you have, how many doors are unlocked, and how many rooms you control will happily play any room that serves as a baseline removal spell.

This dynamic is played over and over again in this set Final revenge be another example.

Final revenge

In the Rakdos Sacrifice deck, this is a must-have card. You have so much fodder to sacrifice to it that it’s a powerful one-man removal spell that banishes even its target. But with all other black archetypes, it’s a mediocre removal spell that you only want one of at most.

Knowing what makes the format work, including which cards go from unplayable to playable to downright good based on the archetype, is a big key to understanding Duskmourn: House of Horror Booster draw. The World Championship players will need to understand this level of nuance to perform well on day one and day two.

Blue and white terrifying has been the best performing archetype for me. It’s one of those decks that, when they come together, just works and makes your job easy. The power level and synergies are effortless. I sometimes talk about a concept called setup costs. It’s the idea that some cards and archetypes require a certain amount of work to make something happen. Threshold comes with a high setup cost, because it obviously takes a long time to get seven cards into your graveyard. Delirium has an average setup cost because it still takes some work. But if you build your deck correctly, this will happen naturally over the course of the game.

Eerie has low installation costs. Basically, you just put these cards in your deck, throw them and boom! Triggers go left and right on the stack. Two of the best uncommons in the set are not only available in these colors, but were also made for this deck.

Gremlin Tamer Optimistic scavenger

A Optimistic scavenger on the play is probably the scariest thing you can do in the format. If you leave this unchecked, four or more +1/+1 counters will be routinely placed on your creatures before they can deal with them. Gremlin Tamer is also a creature you must kill for similar reasons. This time it leaves you with a 1/1s board state instead of a bunch of +1/+1 counters.

There are other payouts besides these, such as Ethereal Armorand if you want to go crazy, Ghostly dancers And Entity tracker.

Ethereal Armor 673418 673319

As good as the payouts are, it’s how easy it is to trigger them that makes this deck buzz.

Trapped in the screen Glimmerburst Glimmerlight Meat locker // Drowned restaurant Can’t scream Fear of surveillance Grand entrance // Elegant roundabout

Trapped in the screen is the all-star here, showing just how easy it is to activate creepy while not giving up anything in terms of power level or the type of card you would play anyway. Fear of surveillancewhich is a solid two-drop that happens to be a spell is good for the same reasons.

But then the surprises begin.

Shiny burst is the type of card that is almost always too expensive and that you don’t have time for in modern limited environments. But the addition of the 1/1 body and a creepy trigger takes this thing from marginally playable to downright good.

Meat locker // Drowned dinner is similar to Shiny burst because it just looks a little too slow. But in practice it costs you a lot of time, draws cards and gives you two creepy triggers.

Glittering light is a card that was overlooked by most (myself included) early on in the format, but was recognized as one of the better commons. Again, the creepy trigger works here.

Can’t scream it is called blue Swords into ploughshares by a certain podcast co-host I’m familiar with, but this time it’s almost true! This is a shapeshifting effect that’s often a bit underpowered, but the addition of a creepy trigger and the fact that the creature is reduced to a 0/2 and its abilities are taken away pretty much covers all the bases in a single way. mana.

Grand entrance // Elegant roundabout is another example of a card that performs well in this one deck, as it offers a total of three spooky triggers.

Spooky decks tend to play out as a tempo deck that throws out a few threats and touches the opponent’s creatures long enough to attack for the win, or as a slower deck that shuts down the opponent by stopping play and then take over with a creepy specific win condition or simply unlock some rooms as a late-game plan.

Anyway, this is the best archetype in the room, if you will.

The white and black reanimator archetype didn’t surprise me during testing. It’s difficult to achieve this in Limited, but you can see the designers’ efforts here. They put some ridiculous demons and other expensive creatures in the set to reanimate, including two regular ones that of course go to the graveyard from your hand…

Doomsday Excruciator Valgavoth, Terror Eater Vile Mutilator Spectral Snatcher Shepherd Spirits

And a lot of ways to revive them.

Live or Die 673526 Emerge from the Cocoon Rite of the Moth

The problem goes back to the installation costs. Except for the land cyclists above, these creatures have trouble reaching the graveyard. Even if you find a way to make that happen, you need the reanimation spell in hand and the mana to cast it. It’s not impossible. I’ve been on the bad side Live or die resuscitate Valgavoth, Terror Eater in the middle of battle. It didn’t end well for me.

But the truth is, it doesn’t happen often enough to warrant it unless it comes together perfectly. Remember how I said the spooky deck made it easy because it rewarded you for doing things you wanted to do anyway, like casting and removing creatures? This is the opposite.

If you end up with Valgavoth or Come out of the cocoon Being stuck in your hand puts you at a disadvantage, and in this case the advantages don’t seem to outweigh the disadvantages. However, I support anyone who goes for a big reanimator deck at the World Championship.

These are just two of the ten archetypes and, as I mentioned earlier, if you understand the archetype you’re building, you can make almost anything work.

The real test comes on day one, when the players sit down for the draft. The nerves during the World Cup will show, but it is the hours of practice that will count once the packages are opened.

This is a complex format. The players can’t get away with a crash course from a teammate or podcast before the tournament. This format requires preparation at a deeper level.

Whoever our next World Champion will be, they will almost certainly be well prepared for Booster Draft, and they will need to bring their A-game in both Limited and Constructed to get the job done!

I can’t wait to see you there!

@Marshall_LR