Murders at Karlov Manor/Trivia

Murders at Karlov Manor

 

Commander decks

 

Card comparisons

 

Trivia

 

Art Series

 

Puzzles

 

The Case of the Three Blade Knife

 

Story Decks

 

Maro's Murders at Karlov Manor Teaser

Mark Rosewater gave his traditional teaser for Murders at Karlov Manor with the following hints.

First up, here are some things you can expect:

• White gets a card that lets you play a subset off the top of the deck — Assemble the Players (creature cards with power 2 or less)
• A new enchantment subtype — Case
• A card with four different hybrid symbols in its mana cost — Leyline of the Guildpact ()
• A popular mechanic returns tweaked with a new name — Morph as Disguise (The face-down creature now has ward )
• A green sorcery that you can have any number of in your deck — Slime Against Humanity
• A keyword mechanic not printed in a premier set since 2008 returns on a single card — Wither on Massacre Girl, Known Killer
• A creature that allows you an alternate nonmana cost for all your spells — Conspiracy Unraveler (Collect evidence 10)
• Some creature tokens in the set: (note that some have abilities) 0/0 green Ooze, 0/0 colorless Thopter (also artifact), 0/1 green Plant, 1/1 black Bat, 1/1 white Dog, 1/1 red Goblin, 1/1 white Human, 1/1 blue Merfolk, 1/1 white and black Spirit, 1/1 colorless Thopter (also artifact), 2/1 black Skeleton, 2/1 black and green Spider, 2/2 white and blue Detective, 2/2 red Imp, and 5/5 green and white Wolf — refer to Murders at Karlov Manor Tokens.
• And yes, Murder is in the set.

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

• “Whenever a creature an opponent controls dies, if its toughness was less than 1, draw a card.” — Massacre Girl, Known Killer
• “Choose any number of target players.” — Officious Interrogation
• “Creature cards in your graveyard gain ‘You may cast this card from your graveyard’ until end of turn.” — Case of the Uneaten Feast
• “Then sacrifice it if it has five or more bloodstain counters on it.” — Blood Spatter Analysis
• “You may search your graveyard, hand, and/or library for a card named Magnifying Glass and/or a card named Thinking Cap and put them onto the battlefield.” — Agency Outfitter
• “Target opponent gains control of any number of target permanents you control.” — Coveted Falcon
• “If an ability of a creature you control with power 2 or less triggers, that ability triggers an additional time.” — Delney, Streetwise Lookout
• “As long as there are no cards in your library,” — Living Conundrum
• “If one or more tokens would be created under your control, those tokens plus a Clue token are created instead.” — Case of the Pilfered Proof
• “Whenever you sacrifice a Clue, target opponent gets two poison counters.” — Persuasive Interrogators

Here are some creature type lines from the set:

• Creature – Vedalken Artificer Detective — Forensic Gadgeteer
• Creature – Ogre Cleric — Agency Coroner
• Artifact Creature – Insect Thopter — Krenko's Buzzcrusher
• Creature – Lammasu — Absolving Lammasu
• Creature – Weird Detective — Steamcore Scholar
• Creature – Goblin Bard — Crime Novelist
• Creature – Viashino Assassin — Pyrotechnic Performer
• Artifact Creature – Clue Fish — Red Herring
• Creature – Elf Crocodile Detective — Undercover Crocodelf
• Legendary Creature – Mole God — Anzrag, the Quake-Mole

Finally, here are some names in the set:

• Airtight Alibi — Enchantment — Aura
• Caught Red-Handed — Instant
• Deadly Cover-Up — Sorcery
• Eliminate the Impossible — Instant
• Homicide Investigator — Creature — Human Detective
• Innocent Bystander — Creature — Goblin Citizen
• It Doesn’t Add Up — Instant
• Person of Interest — Creature — Human Rogue
• Private Eye — Creature — Homunculus Detective
• Scene of the Crime — Artifact Land — Clue

Gavin's Murders at Karlov Manor Commander teaser

Gavin Verhey gave a teaser with the following hints about the new cards in the four Commander decks. Unlike his standard Commander teasers, he gave fourteen hints rather than twelve. Two of these hints are completely false. Gavin invited anyone who could figure out the phony to receive an additional teaser clue.

1. There is a new card with the clash mechanic — Marvo, Deep Operative
2. There is a legend that cares about cards with base power and toughness 2/2 — Duskana, the Rage Mother
3. There is a new Azra in the set — FALSE
4. There is one new card that appears in all four decks — Ransom Note
5. There is an enchantment that begins "Creatures you control get +X/+X, where X is..." — Knowledge is Power
6. There is a black card in a many-year supercycle — Charnel Serenade
7. There is a card that gives all your Clues a keyword ability — Merchant of Truth
8. There is a new card with the radiance mechanic — FALSE
9. There is a colorshifted version of a well-known morph card — Boltbender (Willbender)
10. There is a card that makes all your face-down creatures enter the battlefield with a specific keyword counter — Veiled Ascension
11. There is a card that begins, "If an opponent would begin an extra turn..." — Trouble in Pairs
12. There is a new card with the gravestorm mechanic — Follow the Bodies
13. There is a card that checks a condition, "if two or more players have lost the game" — Hot Pursuit
14. There is a creature with an unusual power/toughness combination, where the two numbers are the two LIES on this list. The lower number of the two is its power. — Eye of Duskmantle

Cultural references

As a murder-mystery set, Murders at Karlov Manor references many crime fiction tropes. The following is a list of cards within the set that reference specific works within the genre.

Literature

Card(s)	Novel/Short story	Author	Notes
Gearbane Orangutan	The Murders in the Rue Morgue	Edgar Allan Poe	An impossible double homicide is found to have been committed by an orange-haired Bornean.
Krovod Haunch	Lamb to the Slaughter	Roald Dahl	A woman gets away with murdering her husband by using a frozen shank of meat as the murder weapon and cooking it before the police investigate.
Case of the Gateway Express	Murder on the Orient Express	Agatha Christie	A murder on a train with many possible suspects is revealed to have been committed by all of them simultaneously.
Coveted Falcon	The Maltese Falcon	Dashiell Hammett	A detective investigating his partner's murder is entangled in a hunt for a falcon statue of priceless value.
Case of the Shattered Pact	The Ravnica Cycle novels.	Cory J. Herndon	A detective is brought back from dead for the sole purpose of stopping an ancient vampire in his attempt to bring the last strike against the already fractured Guildpact of Ravnica.
Cryptex	The Da Vinci Code	Dan Brown	The name and appearance of the card shares the same appearance as an item from the story. The cryptex is an item which is described as "five doughnut-sized disks of marble [that] had been stacked and affixed to one another within a delicate brass framework".

Miscellaneous

• Murders at Karlov Manor is the second time a plane has received a fourth return set, after Dominaria.
• It is the first Ravnican set that was neither preceded nor followed up by another premier Ravnican set, though it was preceded by Ravnica Remastered and followed by Ravnica: Clue Edition.
• The portraits in the background of the art for Teysa, Opulent Oligarch are Liliana, Death's Majesty (top left) and Scion of Opulence (bottom right). All three cards were illustrated by Chris Rallis.
• The name, art and flavor text of Meddling Youths are a nod to the recurring unmasking scene in the Scooby-Doo series.
  • The Dossier showcase version, further plays this up by alluding to a "strangely intelligent hound".
  • The card couldn't be named Meddling Kids because that card already existed.
• Alquist Proft, Master Sleuth's third ability is a reference to Sphinx's Revelation and "cracking a Clue" to gain a revelation.
• Buried in the Garden was originally a Great Designer Search 3 card from Jay Treat called "Bought the Farm".
• Coerced to Kill was initially a Great Designer Search card designed by Jeremy Geist but it was heavily modified during the design process.
• Cryptic Coat is the first equipment in a premier set without an equip or reconfigure ability.
• Final-Word Phantom references the famous catchphrase of TV-detective Columbo.
• Hedge Whisperer is the first creature since Rust Tick in 2010 and the first non-artifact since Hisoka's Guard in 2004 to use the "choose not to untap" design in a premier set.
• A Killer Among Us is the first card to use "secretly" in a premier set since Menacing Ogre.
• Hunted Bonebrute refers to the Hunted cycle from the original Ravnica: City of Guilds set.
• Massacre Girl, Known Killer's wither ability makes Murders at Karlov Manor the first premier set ever to feature both +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters.
• Red Herring is only the second time, outside of an Un-set, that a card has shared the same English-language name with another card — Red Herring, the Mystery Booster test card.
  • The first one was Unquenchable Fury (Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Commander decks) / Unquenchable Fury (Battle the Horde Challenge Deck).
  • Pick Your Poison does the same thing with Mystery Booster test card Pick Your Poison, bringing the total to three.