With prerelease weekend for Murders at Karlov Manor just a week away, and all its new cards revealed, it’s time to make some cards with the new mechanics! This set’s name is always being mistaken for Murders at Markov Manor, leading to some funny misconceptions, so today’s inspiration is re-imagining MKM mechanics on Innistrad. Gothic horror, gristly death, violation of the sacred, and a grim future set the stage for a murder where the question isn’t who the culprit is… but what it is.
Here, disguise and cloak represent those evils which pretend to be human. You might find yourself a dancer at the Vampire Masquerade, or realize suddenly that Nothing is as it Seems…
Vampire Masquerade is intended to help vampire decks, with their high density of typal anthem effects, work with disguised and cloaked creatures. Vampires also commonly play well with aristocrat strategies, so if you have cloaked something that isn’t really part of the tribe, you can at least benefit off its death. Meanwhile, Nothing is as it Seems promises political shenanigans in commander, while allowing limited players to cloak up to four things at once if their deck with a high density of synergy. (It’s a little slow, but I don’t want it to end up in every cEDH Yuriko deck for the rest of time. It might still be too good in Yuriko, I’m no cEDH expert, but I think it’s at least not “screaming about bans on reddit”-worthy.)
You might be suspected when a Moonrise Outburst outs you as a werewolf, or when a Cathar Inquisitor forces out a confession.
Moonrise Outburst works with the new daybound werewolf mechanic–it’s nothing special, but it’s a take on the bite spell in every limited format that plays with suspect as well as day/night. They usually have mv 2, but the day/night change is worth 1 mv, as is the opportunity to suspect what is usually going to be a high-power creature, and it being a sorcery (as day/night changes are) knocks that down by 1 mv, so 3 is our sweet spot. Cathar Inquisitor is a just a hatebear that provides a propaganda-like effect on opponents’ suspects. It feels like a signpost uncommon, or one of the 10 new cards in a commander deck–a synergy workhorse that generally shouldn’t make the cut in tier-1 decks.
And lastly, when you’re going to collect some evidence on Innistrad, make sure it doesn’t get up and shamble away while you Stake Out the situation.
A take on a Sheltered Aerie-like effect. The ramp effect is a little less reliable than usual, so I took the unusual step of letting it be any combination rather than any one color. The real headliner here is the ward-like effect on graveyards. If you can’t collect the evidence without collecting whatever you’re reanimating, it’s been staked through the heart and stays dead, and even if you can, you’ve got to get rid of other potentially important cards to do it. I grabbed the cost of 4 from Axebane Ferox; it’s too early to know if that number is too high or too low but now you know who to blame.