During the holiday weekend at PAX West, the Wizards of the Coast team officially revealed Twilight Mourningthe next set of cards for Magic: The Gathering. Inspired by ’80s slasher films and classic horror tropes, the action takes place in an all-new setting: a massive, mysterious haunted mansion. To sell the idea of a haunted mansion, designers came up with a new type of card called a “room.” Here’s how room cards work, and how they take the set’s spooky theme to the next level.
According to senior art director Ovidio Cartagena, Duskmourn’s plane itself has a tragic history.
“This used to be a normal plane, with happiness and people in it,” Cartagena said during the livestream presentation. “But a demon that was locked inside the house took over. And his way of taking over was to make the house grow until there was nothing left but him and the house. And you feel his presence everywhere—the name of this demon is Valgavoth.”
The main building blocks of Valgovoth’s empire are the aforementioned chambers. These chambers take the form of horizontal cards with two panels.
“Rooms were our biggest opportunity; our most striking mechanic on the set, I guess you could say,” said senior game designer Annie Sardelis. “They’re enchantments, and they ask you to unlock things.”
For example, if you want to play Dollmaker’s Shop/Porcelain Gallery (pictured above), you first choose which side of the card you want to play. If it’s Dollmaker’s Shop, you tap one white card and one extra mana to put the card into play as an enchantment. The other side of the card hasn’t been played yet and is therefore inactive. But suffice it to say that the door to the Porcelain Gallery comes into play with Dollmaker’s Shop and can be opened later.
“Wherever you want, you can pay the mana value of the other side to make (it) happen,” Sardellis said. “So it really gives you that flexibility, that sense of moving from place to place. We really wanted to have two effects on a room, because we want to feel like we’re expressing the real massiveness (of Duskmourn), and what’s behind each door in the setting.”
Duskmourn began on August 19 with the first part of a series of narrative pieces, cheekily called episodespublished on the official Magic website. Card previews are currently underway via multiple outlets, including here at Polygon, where we’ll be sharing some later this week. In the meantime, Twilight Mourning arrives in Magic: The Gathering – Arena on September 24 and at retailers as a physical product on September 27.