Duskmourn: House of Horrors is changing the game up a bit when it comes to Magic: The Gathering’s Bundles. This new edition, frighteningly called the Nightmare Bundle, comes with 2 Collector Boosters, 2 promo cards of different types, movie posters, and more.
Related
Magic: The Gathering – Every Universes Beyond Crossover, Ranked
Magic: The Gathering expands in extremely fun new ways with Universes Beyond.
Of the promo cards that are included in the Nightmare Bundle, there are three Borderless promo cards you can get, and three cards with exclusive art inspired by classic horror film movie posters. These cool bundles are a great way to get a good start on your Duskmourn card collection, and these exclusive cards can really bring together your collection.
6
Damn
Borderless Promo
All three of the Borderless Promo Nightmare Booster promo cards are illustrated by Tim Jacobus, and share the 90’s Goosebumps vibe of scary things that aren’t too scary. Damn isn’t just a bad four-letter word, it’s a four-mana board wipe attached to a two-mana removal spell. If you spend two black mana you get a single target removal spell at sorcery speed, which isn’t great, but it isn’t bad either.
If you commit the four mana, two generic and two white mana, a change-up in the color commitment of the card, you can overload it. Overloading a spell replaces the word ‘target’ with the spell and changes it to ‘each,’ converting it to a board wipe. There’s definitely an eerie vibe with the card, especially when you take a closer look at the background and see at least three other people dissolving into nothing in the background.
5
Exhume
Borderless Promo
If one person gets to reanimate a creature, why not all players? Exhume is a two-mana sorcery that comes in the Nightmare Bundle which lets each player take a single creature from their graveyard and put it into play. The card becomes much better if you’re able to cast it where one or most of your opponents don’t actually have a creature to bring back, just you.
Related
Magic: The Gathering – The 10 Best Decks In Standard
Here are the top decks to play right now in Magic: The Gathering’s premier format, Standard.
You can cast a turn one Entomb, which lets you search your library for a creature and put it directly into the graveyard, and then just bring it back the next turn. The artwork has a very creepy zombie or ghoul popping out of a freshly dug grave, evoking some strong classic zombie film motifs.
4
Crypt Ghast
Borderless Promo
Easily one of the best creatures you can run in a mono-black deck, Crypt Ghast is an exceptionally powerful creature that ramps you up in mana as soon as it comes into play. Anytime you tap a Swamp for mana, you add an extra black mana to your mana pool. This only works with Swamps, but if you have a card like Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, which turns all your lands (and your opponent’s lands) into Swamps, you have a ton of mana at your fingertips.
Of course, Crypt Ghast makes for a huge target for your opponents’ removal spells, so don’t be too surprised if it doesn’t stick around for long.
An often overlooked aspect of the Ghast is that it also has extort, an ability that lets you pay an extra white or black mana when you cast a spell to drain each opponent of one life, and you gain one life.
Even though the reminder text of extort has a hybrid white and black symbol, you can still use it in a mono-black deck since it has no bearing on its color identity.
3
Goryo’s Vengeance
Movie Poster
Casting a Goryo’s Vengeance feels amazing. You get an incredible reanimation spell that can easily swing a game in your favor in the right deck. For two-mana, you get to bring back a legendary creature from your graveyard to the battlefield, giving it haste for the turn.
Related
Magic: The Gathering – The Best Preconstructed Commander Decks
We take a look at the very best MTG Precon decks for the Commander format.
The downside is that you have to exile it at the beginning of your next end step, so it’s a one-time deal.
Goryo’s Vengeance has been a pretty stable deck for quite some time, with targets like:
- Atraxa, Grand Unifier
- Griselbrand
- Archon of Cruelty
The card is illustrated by Martin Ansin, and is a delightfully creepy rendition of a ghost manifesting from a mirror, ready to haunt an unwitting explorer who has a malfunctioning radio in their hand.
2
Living Death
Movie Poster
Part board wipe, part mass reanimation spell, Living Death is a brutal spell that can easily spin the game in your favor. For five mana, all players exile all their creatures from their graveyards. Then, all players sacrifice all their creatures on the battlefield, putting the exiled creatures back on the battlefield.
This card is particularly good in decks with lots of either self-mill or ones that play large creatures with cycling effects. There are quite a few of them in Magic now, making it pretty easy to swing the game in your favor. The artwork for Living Death gives off some heavy Evil Dead vibes, with the main character holding some sort of spectral recording device while being chased by several zombies, perhaps some old friends back from the dead.
1
Archon Of Cruelty
Movie Poster
The devastating Archon of Cruelty, a Modern and Legacy powerhouse, comes in as the best promo card from the Nightmare Bundle. A fantastic reanimation target, the Archon has a powerful enter the battlefield and attack trigger, forcing an opponent to sacrifice a creature or planeswalker. They also discard a card and lose three life. In turn, you gain three life and draw a card, which is an incredible swing in power in a game. The Archon is good in any situation, especially early on in a game where your opponents likely don’t have many creatures in play yet.
The absolutely amazing artwork James Bousema, give you an up-close look at the Archon, with its fuzzy fur and antlers while flying up a spiral staircase. There’s a great little bit of detail in the piece, with the stairs in the foreground seemingly turning into grasping hands, reaching out at the Archon, or perhaps the little victim it’s claimed on its spear.
Magic: The Gathering
- Franchise
-
Magic: The Gathering
- Original Release Date
-
August 5, 1993
- Player Count
-
2+
- Age Recommendation
-
13+
- Length per Game
-
Variable