Magic: The Gathering will cycle through day and night in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt

New details have been revealed about Magic: The Gathering’s upcoming card set, Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, including its rare dual lands and unique mechanics, as well as the return of a recognizable ability for its werewolves, now formalized with new keywords. and a changing day. night mechanic.

Midnight Hunt revisits Magic’s gothic horror-themed Innistrad blueprint during a time when nights are getting abnormally long and the local Harvest Tide Festival is being threatened by werewolves. Werewolves have been an iconic part of Innistrad since its introduction in 2011, and the idea behind the transformative two-faced cards that define them has been modified in a small but significant way here.

Browse the gallery below for the new Innistrad: Midnight Hunt cards:

Magic: The Gathering – Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Cards

Werewolves traditionally have a human “day” side that can be played normally and a werewolf “night” side that they need to transform into, but the triggers for doing so have now been turned into suitable keywords: Daybound and Nightbound. These still behave the way previous werewolf cards generally do: Daybound triggers when a player doesn’t cast spells during their turn, flipping them to the night side, while Nightbound triggers when he casts two or more, flipping them. backward.

But now, instead of simply transforming any relevant werewolf cards on the battlefield, this trigger switches a general day / night tracker to the appropriate side for all players. That means whether it is day or night is always known and tracked globally, and can clearly be switched back and forth during the course of a game. The werewolves will transform into their appropriate side to coincide with the time of day, which means that if you play one while it’s already dark, you’ll get your werewolf right away instead of having to activate it first like Innistrad’s previous werewolves. .

That’s a significant difference, adding a rotating day and night cycle to any match where a werewolf is played, and Wizards of the Coast says a double-sided day / night card can be found in the packs to help out. paper players to keep track of the current time. . Werewolves of the past won’t go wrong using these new keywords, but certain Midnight Hunt cards can interact with werewolves and the time-shift mechanic in unconventional ways. For example, Tovolar, Dire Overlord (visible in gallery above) will make it night if you control three or more wolves / werewolves at the beginning of your turn, and even has an additional ability specifically meant to allow past werewolves they don’t. automatically switch with Daybound or Nightbound to transform along with him.

But while werewolves may be the main dish, they aren’t the only dish in this dark feast. Wizards of the Coast also detailed the cycle of dual rare earth Midnight Hunts, which are very similar to the “Battlelands” from the 2015 Battle for Zendikar set. The key difference is that they lack basic land types (a relevant change for any format with quest lands), and that enter the battlefield tapped unless you control two or more of any other lands, not just basic lands, but are also only available in allied color pairs.

Midnight Hunt will also feature three other mechanics: Bother, Decayed, and Meeting of witches. Cards with annoy can also be turned on their back face, but only if you cast them from the graveyard for their specified annoy cost. Decayed, on the other hand, is a keyword that will show up primarily on certain zombie creatures, preventing them from being able to block and causing them to be sacrificed after combat if they attack, essentially turning them into a single-use attacker.

Meanwhile, on the less monstrous side of things, Innistrad’s more human-centric forces might have the Coven skill keyword, which can cause a unique ability if you control three or more creatures with different powers when activated. An example given is the legendary angel Sigarda, Champion of Light, who not only enhances humans but also has a Coven ability that allows you to look at the top five cards of your deck and put a human from among them into your hand. when it attacks. .

Outside of the new mechanics, Midnight Hunt’s draft boosters are guaranteed to contain two double-sided cards each – one common and one of higher rarity, with a chance to get a third if you get a foil. That provides plenty of opportunities to draw your werewolf cards and disturb during drafts, and each pack will contain a two-sided help card to make playing with them easier, too. It’s also possible to get special Equinox display versions of all the Werewolf and Warlock cards, featuring unique art and ornate card frames in the Harvest Tide Festival theme.

Innistrad: Midnight Hunt spoilers and card reveals are officially entering full swing as the September 24 release nears. Of course, it’s not the last we’ll see from Innistrad this year either, with the vampire-themed Crimson Vow. heels only two months later. Midnight Hunt comes just a month after Historic Horizons too, which introduced digital only cards to MTG Arena – and things will get even wilder next year when Magic gets their first cyberpunk theme set, like crosses with Fortnite and Street Fighter.