What is the MTG Duskmourn release date? This horror-inspired set, which takes place entirely within one supernatural haunted mansion, was the final premier set release of 2024. Below you’ll find a timeline of the key dates for Duskmourn: House of Horror, as well as up to date news on the set and spooky spoilers.
Duskmourn’s nightmares unleashed just one month after the whiskers and whimsy of Bloomburrow. To see where this MTG set fits in among the rest of the year’s products, check out our MTG release schedule guide. Preview season is here, so check out the new cards below.
MTG Duskmourn release dates
The global MTG Duskmourn release date was September 27. The information was first revealed in an article on the game’s Japanese website. It was available to preorder from June 28.
While it makes sense to have the horror set out well before Halloween, this was a surprisingly early date for 2024’s fourth premier set – we’ve grown used to the final ‘main’ set of the year arriving in November.
As you can see from the chart above, Duskmourn previews began cropping up as early as the first week of September, with the debut taking place on August 31.
Prerelease events ran from September 20, and the MTG Arena release took place a couple of days later, on September 24.
MTG Duskmourn mechanics
Here are the MTG keywords and mechanics that defined the Duskmourn set:
Rooms
MTG Rooms are a new enchantment type introduced in Duskmourn. These split cards have two sides for you to unlock, one when you play the card and the other when it’s on the battlefield. An unlocked room can offer a variety of instant or ongoing benefits. Plus, thanks to the new Eerie keyword, many Duskmourn cards have abilities that trigger when a Room enters play or becomes fully unlocked.
Survival, Delirium, and Manifest Dread
The Survival ability word makes its debut in Duskmourn, and it triggers if a creature with said ability becomes tapped during your second main phase.
As well as new ability and keywords, Duskmourn revives some long-gone mechanics (in true horror movie fashion). Delirium is back, meaning that having four or more card types in your graveyard is a serious benefit for many Duskmourn cards. Additionally, Manifest has transformed into Manifest Dread, a keyword which lets you look at the top two cards of your library, manifesting one and sending the other to the graveyard.
Explosive, expensive cards
Duskmourn is filled with monsters with devastating abilities or terrifying power levels, but they cost a serious amount of mana to play. For example, here’s Valgavoth, the moth-themed demon that rules the house of Duskmourn.
With a punishing Ward cost, a 9/9 flying lifelink body, and a power that steals cards from your opponents, Valgavoth, Terror Eater is mighty indeed. However, it seems unlikely you’ll ever be able to pay its mana cost of 6BBB in a normal game. Instead, this looks like a good reanimation target, or a card for any deck that’s able to cheat out creatures.
Another example is Meathook Massacre 2, a sequel to a previously banned card. This one is a little tougher to cheat, as you’ll have to spend mana if you want to trigger its ‘enters the battlefield’ board wipe. However you get it into play, though, you’ve got some game-warping abilities to work with.
Nightmares
In Duskmourn, Nightmares are creatures that manifest from the bad dreams of survivors in the house. There are quite a lot of cards for these nightmares, each one an enchantment creature, and each one linked to a specific fear.
Overlord Cycle
Each ‘biome’ of Duskmourn has an Overlord, an Avatar Horror with Impending, which enters as an enchantment, and doesn’t become a creature until its last time counter is removed.
Overlord of the Hauntwoods has a strange ability. It creates a colorless land token that is every basic land type whenever it enters the battlefield or attacks.
Overlord of the Mistmoors, meanwhile, can create a dangerous horde of insects, making two flying 2/1s when it ETBs or attacks.
Enduring Cycle
This is another cycle, of animal ‘glimmer’ creatures that come back as enchantments after they die. The first we saw, Enduring Tenacity, is pretty exciting – it’s cheaper Sanguine Bond!
We thought that maybe each card in this cycle would relate to an existing, iconic enchantment. That seems to work for Enduring Curiosity, which is basically Coastal Piracy. However, Enduring Innocence breaks the pattern – its ability is more in the vein of creature cards like Welcoming Vampire and Mentor of the Meek.
Leyline Cycle
Duskmourn also has a new cycle of leyline enchantments, which you can place onto the battlefield for free if they’re in your opening hand. This one combines two classic life-gain abilities, both from MTG Angels. The extra life gain affect comes from Angel of Vitality, the creature buff comes from Righteous Valkyrie.
MTG Duskmourn Commander decks
We now have a much stronger idea about what’s inside the Duskmourn Commander decks. They are:
Commander deck | Colors | Commander | Teaser | Theme |
Miracle Worker | Blue/Black/White | Aminatou | See the Future, Cast Miracles | Cast big enchantments with Miracle |
Jump Scare! | Blue/Green | Zimone | Tricky Instants, Mysterious Face-down Cards | Landfall/Face-down cards |
Death Toll | Black/Green | Winter | Fill your Graveyard, Reanimate Monsters | Delirium/Graveyard |
Endless Punishment | Black/Red | Valvagoth | Punish your Opponents, Make them Pay | Group Slug |
We’ve now seen Duskmourn’s four face commanders: Winter, Cynical Opportunist; Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls; Aminatou, Veil Piercer; and Zimone, Mystery Unraveler.
Winter looks like a classic Golgari reanimation deck, with an interesting twist – you need to be playing as many card types as possible. Valgavoth is all about dealing little bits of damage to opponents on their own turn.
Aminatou wants you to manipulate the top card of your library to cheat out expensive enchantments with the Miracle mechanic, and Zimone uses landfall to flip up facedown permanents.
Duskmourn is also bringing back the Archenemy game mode, allowing one player to become the Big Bad of your Commander table. Each deck will come with 10 devious Scheme cards, which can power up a player to a disgusting degree, and make a dogpile into a fair fight.
MTG Duskmourn story
Duskmourn is an MTG Plane that has been entirely consumed by a gigantic, ever-shifting mansion. The architect behind this is an insectile, oddly moth-themed demon named Valgavoth, who eats fear.
The house of Duskmourn is so vast it forms biomes, each one seemingly tied to a color of mana. We’ll explore echoing white-stone rooms of the Mistmoors and waterlogged, static-filled, blue-aligned rooms of The Floodpits.
We’ll see rotting basements in the Balemurk, and explore the oddly tree-filled Hauntwoods, and the swelteringly hot and destructive Boilerbilges.
Back in April, we found out which MTG planeswalker would appear in the set – Kaito – seen in the artwork above helping out a new character named Winter. This piece also gave us a better look at what clearly seems to be a P.K.E meter from Ghostbusters, or Magic’s take on one at any rate.
But plenty of other well-known characters appear in the set too, and each one represents a well-known archetype of the horror genre.
- Niko – Inspiring Leader
- Tyvar – Jock
- Zimone – Nerd
- Kaito – Grizzled Warrior
- Winter – Goth
- The Wanderer – Final Girl
The Wanderer, Tyvo, Niko, and Zimone are all here. We’ve seen the creature card for the last already, and Zimone was never a planeswalker – but we don’t yet know who has been desparked.
If you want more Magic: The Gathering content, check out our guides to the best MTG commanders, and the best MTG Arena decks.