Innistrad: Midnight Hunt/Trivia

Innistrad: Midnight Hunt/Trivia

 

Commander decks

 

Welcome booster

 

Card comparisons

 

Trivia

 

Art series

 

Maro's Midnight Hunt teaser

Mark Rosewater gave his traditional teaser with the following hints.

First up, here are some things you can expect:

• three popular mechanics previously seen on Innistrad return — Flashback, Transform, and Investigate.
• a new drawback for creature tokens that lets us create them cheaper — Decayed
• a white card that could potentially draw you a card each turn — Sigarda's Splendor
• a popular Innistrad card gets reprinted — Delver of Secrets
• a curse that transforms into a creature — Curse of Leeches (Leeching Lurker)
• two permanents that can double something every turn — Unnatural Growth (Power/Toughness), Angelic Enforcer(Life total)
• a mythic cycle with “you may pay [COST] any number of times” — Bloodthirsty Adversary, Intrepid Adversary, Primal Adversary Spectral Adversary, Tainted Adversary
• a four mana blue aura with “You control enchanted creature.” — Grafted Identity
• A popular tournament card in multiple formats gets reprinted with its fifth piece of art. — Pithing Needle
• a character from Innistrad once mentioned in a short story finally gets a card in an Innistrad set — Liesa, Forgotten Archangel

Here are snippets of rules text, you’ll see:

• “If your life total would be reduced to 0 or less,” — Enduring Angel
• “This spell costs 1 less to cast for each creature you attacked with this turn.” — Search Party Captain
• “As [CARDNAME] enters the battlefield, note your life total.” — Sigarda's Splendor
• “put a slime counter on up to one other target creature.” — Sludge Monster
• “Creature tokens you control lose all abilities and have base power and toughness 3/3.” — Poppet Factory
• “Each instant and sorcery card in your graveyard has” — Lier, Disciple of the Drowned
• “Instants and sorcery spells you cast cost X less to cast, where X is [CARDNAME]’s power.” — Vadrik, Astral Archmage
• “put that many +1/+1 counters on [CARDNAME], then create twice that many 2/2 black Zombie creature tokens” — Tainted Adversary
• “At the beginning of your end step, if you have exactly 13 life,” — Jerren, Corrupted Bishop
• “You may cast any number of the copies without paying their mana costs.” — Bloodthirsty Adversary

And finally, here are some creature type lines you’ll see:

• Creature – Hippogriff Spirit — Soul-Guide Gryff and Waildrifter
• Creature – Human Soldier Werewolf — Brutal Cathar
• Creature – Dragon Egg — Smoldering Egg
• Creature – Leech Horror — Leeching Lurker
• Creature – Fungus Horror — Deathbonnet Hulk
• Creature – Plant Horror — Rootcoil Creeper
• Creature – Drake Horror — Storm Skreelix
• Creature – Demon Dog — Dreadhound
• Legendary Creature - Ooze — Slogurk, the Overslime
• Legendary Creature – Vampire Noble — Florian, Voldaren Scion

Other

Card references

• Croaking Counterpart is a play on Cackling Counterpart (Innistrad). It seems to be copying Rem Karolus, Stalwart Slayer.
• Faithful Mending is a mirror to Faithless Looting, both being draw-two-discard-twos.
• Briarbridge Tracker refers to Tireless Tracker, but with the gameplay reversed; while both will likely attack as 3-mana 4/3s, Briarbridge Tracker will prefer to trade off before using the Clue, being more aggressive, the Tireless Tracker will accrue value with other lands and wants the Clues to be activated before getting into combat.
• Smouldering Egg resembles Thing In The Ice, as two-mana 0/4 Defenders that encourage spellslinging. The style of spellslinging are opposites, however.
• Mask of Griselbrand naturally refers to Griselbrand, granting flying, lifelink, and a toned-down version of the card-drawing ability.
• Champion of the Perished is a dark mirror to Champion of the Parish, whose stand at the Parish ended in a massacre. Both are rare one-mana 1/1s that gain +1/+1 counters when a creature of their tribe enters the battlefield.
• Waildrifter is a Hippogriff with a confurcated maw similar to Wretched Gryff, showing Emrakul's passive influence from the moon.
• Triskaidekaphile gives an alternate win condition a la Triskaidekaphobia.

Cultural references

• The art and card name of Can't Stay Away seems to be inspired by The Cat Came Back, a comic song written by Harry S. Miller.
• The art of Rotten Reunion takes reference from American Gothic, a painting by Grant Wood.
• Shadowbeast Sighting has artwork similar to some Bigfoot photographs, like even the one on the main Wikipedia article.
• While Innistrad used 19th century Gothic horror and Shadows over Innistrad used early-20th century Eldritch horror literature, Midnight Hunt used more mid-to-late 20th century horror films.
  • Fleshtaker is inspired by the Slasher movie genre.
  • Heirloom Mirror could refer to the Candyman series of films, though the folklore goes back to the Bloody Mary legend.
  • Phantom Carriage refers to the 1928 film of the same name.
  • The Meathook Massacre refers to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.
    • While on the surface the face-wearing of Grafted Identity is like Leatherface and his real-life inspiration Ed Gein, it may be a closer reference to the memetic film Face/Off, [1]with the two leads actors swapping characters, justified by their characters undergoing facial transplants.
  • Consuming Blob refers to the 1958 film The Blob.
  • Rise of the Ants refers to the 1954 film Them!.

Banned and Restricted cards

• After the Dominaria United rotating in, black was known to be the strongest color in aggregate, especially with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Liliana of the Veil and Evolved Sleeper coming in. The Meathook Massacre served as a low-investment sweeper in all black decks that had utility against control through its passive enchantment ability. While not a critical banning, it was determined that a small push against Black was warranted, and so it was banned on 10th October 2022.