Ladie and Gentlemen, boys and girls, you are about to embark on the first voyage into the Duskmourn: House of Horror meta. I am your house guide, Anthony. This is a dangerous trek that will feature new cards, scary arts, and campy references. Please remember to keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times, the Razorkin are quick to act on stray appendages. 

I do want to apologize for this one being a day late, I’ve been trying to stick to the Friday schedule. But ultimately, I decided to wait an additional day to see what new Duskmourn cards made their way into the formats. Did the decision to wait a day add any decks to this list? It did! It was one, but it still did.

I also want to take a second to explain my approach to Neat-Decking when a new set comes out. I will not have any decks from before the set was released online on Tuesday, soi there won’t be anything from the previous weekend. While there were a few cool decks I was going to include, ultimately I decided that highlighting the new cards was more important. So with all that in mind, here we go! 

Standard

I still don’t have anything for Standard, as the first Challenges have yet to fire and the League results yielded very little. I think I might start scouring Untapped.gg’s records of people playing decks in Diamond and Mythic, just to see if I can find anything interesting. I’ll hopefully have more for next week, but I’ll give the brewers another week in the tank before I scour results. 

Pioneer

I have a lot of things to show off for Pioneer, but most of the decks I have aren’t new decks. Instead, I”m opting to show off some new cards that have slotted into existing decks early on.

First up here is the post-Sorin ban RB Combo-Midrange, the Tree of Perdition Combo. Diefi00 opted to try out the full set of Fear of Missing Out, as well as two Marvin, Murderous Mimic. Marvin is an easy inclusion because it can innately copy other abilities, but Fear of Missing Out is an interesting one. It is a nice card for filtering, and the ability to untap something if you have delirium could be relevant. I think it’s also a generically pretty solid midrange card and I expect to see it in a lot of red decks. 

One cool thing about a new set releasing is that a lot of the content creators get in on trying stuff out, and here we see Mason Clark doing just that. The new Overlords, both of Hauntwoods and Boilerbilges are easy inclusions for the Enigmatic archetype, giving you removal that can cheat on mana with Enigmatic Incarnation. Playing a one-of Zur the Enchanter in an Enigmatic list is also really cool. It is also wild to me to see Bounty Agent included in any real format. I started playing during Guilds of Ravnica, so I remember that card, but I just assumed anyone who didn’t start playing like that forgot it existed entirely. 

Jselzo has brought Greasfang back with the help of several new Duskmourn cards. The most interesting one to me is Overlord of the Balemurk, which I hadn’t initially considered as an option but makes a ton of sense on paper. The card does the Greasefang thing of milling cards and returning one to your hand but also adds a pretty cool late game threat on a delay.

But Overlord of the Balemurk isn’t the only new mill engine, as Jselzo is opting for the whole Say Its Name package, with the one copy of Altanak, the Thrice-Called. I really like that Say Its Name can return any permanent in your graveyard, not just one that was milled, as is the case with Cache Grab, and the ability to just get a free 9/9 from anywhere for the cost of including one card in your deck is really cool. I think we’ll see a lot of brews with the Say Its Name/Altanak package across formats and I’m just excited to see how people try it out.

Jselzo is also playing a copy of Omnivorous Flytrap. While I think this card is cool, I don’t really think it fits in well with this strategy. It does make for an interesting backup beater and including one to try out is defensible. I think it’s cool, I just am questioning the long term staying power. 

Next we have MrRaeb’s Grixis Creativity list, which features a couple new cards. Valgavoth, Terror Eater seems like a really cool new top end for a deck like this, as it is insanely difficult to remove and also generates mass card advantage. But I’m most curious to see Glimmerburst step into the role that Big Score was playing, in drawing cards and making a token. Ultimately, even though it’s less card advantage, I think Big Score ends up being a little bit better overall, but I respect trying out Glimmberburst. 

My last Pioneer entry is actually a pretty unique deck from Doomwake, who trophied with a RW Legends list. Doomwake tried out four Norin, Swift Survivalist and three Arabella, Abandoned Doll. While I don’t know about the long term impact of Norin, I think Arabella is incredibly powerful in this archetype, especially when combined with Delney, Streetwise Lookout. 

Having consistent access to Plaza of Heroes to smooth out a manabase and getting to utilize the Channel lands to the best of their ability are two perks here, and I’ll be honest, he just has a few cards I’m a sucker for. Showdown of the Skalds is an incredibly fun card to cast and Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice once again just brings me back to my first days playing Standard. I’m excited to see how this archetype develops. 

Modern

I only have one Modern deck so far and of course it is this list by Hiro_Hsiang because I am such a sucker for this archetype as it is and then Hiro went and added my favorite card in the set, Abhorrent Oculus, to my favorite deck in the format. I also like that they elected to cut Orcish Bowmasters from the deck only because of the price of the card, but it does make you significantly more in on the graveyard strategy. 

I do think playing Unearth is a little too cute, but the ability to just cycle it away makes it a relatively fine inclusion. Psychic Frog, Murktide Regent, and Abhorrent Oculus represent three of my absolute favorite creatures printed in recent memory, maybe even all time, and while this was a pretty established archetype, Abhorrent Oculus being in the deck still makes it neat to me, if no one else.

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And that’ll do it for another rendition of Neat-Decking. Even though I feel like we didn’t get a very long time to explore Bloomburrow, and we won’t get a very long time to explore Duskmourn either before Foundations comes out in November, I’m always excited to see how new cards play out.

As always, if you think I missed anything or want to share your neat decks or techs, feel free to tag me in thegathering.gg’s discord @adolce95, or on Reddit at /u/adolce95.