Are ready to return to the plane of horror, Zombies, Werewolves, Demons, Spirits, Vampires, and a lot of other things that want to eat, turn, and/or kill you?

If you are like I am, you are madly hitting the reload button each day on the browser of your choice (Firefox for me) until the page refreshes with all of the joy of the new cards. But let’s not become so caught up in the plane’s cards that we forget the stuff from our first visit! As you are dialing it in with the new Shadows over Innistrad hotness, don’t forget these hot numbers for Casual Land from the first visit to the plane.

10 — Restoration Angel

I know it’s the obvious choice, yadda yadda yadda. But you know what? It still deserves to be here. It’s clearly among the Top 10 cards from the block for Casual Magic Land. You still see it being played in everything from sixty-card builds to Commander and more. Its pedigree is time-tested and battle-proven. You can harp about how it’s obvious, but it’s probably the card here that’s the least likely to be questioned (except for number six below). Flash it out!

9 — Blood Artist

We’ve had a lot of great death triggers on cards before. Did something die? Then get a fun trigger! Many of these effects are either on expensive cards or aren’t really that powerful. The Blood Artist is the exception that sort of belies that rule. It’s both cheap and extremely useful. First of all, its death trigger is not limited to just your own creatures, or just opposing creatures, but everything. If it dies, you get the goods. And the trigger is all sorts of sexy. You drain someone of a life and dial yourself up. The card is efficient enough to make a lot of different shells.

8 — Black Cat

I love a cheap creature that I can drop in multiplayer and that keeps folks away for a bit. One of the best ways of doing this in the early years of Magic was Mogg Maniac. Jump in front of a big creature, and someone is eating some serious damage. Then, we had a cheap regenerator like Will-O'-The-Wisp that flies, blocks, and lives if you have the mana. Why bother swinging into it at all? Beloved Chaplain was a great early mega-blocker, as was Fog Bank. But the beauty of cards like Mogg Maniac and later deathtouch entries like Typhoid Rats is that they actually punish people for attacking. I’m happy to swing at you with my pair of 2/2 creatures if you control Fog Bank since you are still taking 2 damage and nothing happens to my blocked dork. If you have Typhoid Rats instead, I’ll actively lose a creature. That’s not worth it. Mogg Maniac used to be great, but with a lot of casual play in the 40-life zone, the extra damage just isn’t up to snuff, and it’s ceased to be as painful of a hindrance. That’s where the awesome Black Cat steps it, and it’s one of my go-to early drops. No one wants to attack into it and kill it since I’ll invariably send the random discard to his or her face. It’s a perfect aggressive wall that keeps you safe.

7 — Unburial Rites

One of the great things about recursion is that it uses your graveyard for additional effects even after stuff dies, is countered, is discarded, or would otherwise be gone. That’s sad. So play a spell like Unburial Rites, and return your best dead creature right back onto play! What makes the Unburial Rites one of the ideal versions of this effect is that you can do it again for free—just pay some mana, flash it back, no muss and no fuss—two recursions for the price of one card. Unburial Rites is strong right there. Plus, the decks that often really like recursion often have ways to put the Rites into your ’yard for free, such as a deck that mills cards from your graveyard to your library or runs spells like Forbidden Alchemy or Satyr Wayfinder. It’s a great element to your graveyard-inspired projects!

6 — Avacyn, Angel of Hope

Duh. Because giving your whole team indestructible is just too good to deal with for a lot of decks. From making your lands invulnerable to removal to artifacts, enchantments, and even Planeswalkers (go away, Hero's Downfall), everything can suddenly fend off any problematic removal of the targeted or mass removal. Avacyn orders your foes to deal with you the player instead of your stuff. And she plays well with a variety of mass removal junk, like Nevinyrral's Disk or Jokulhaups. Avacyn warps games when she arrives.

5 — Army of the Damned

There are only a handful of spells in the game of Magic that can singlehandedly make an army. You usually have to invest a lot of time, cards, mana, and turns to produce a decent army, and you’ll never know what may happen or if it’ll be enough. But if you play a spell like Crush of Wurms, Decree of Justice, or Army of the Damned, you can make an instant force, ready for the smashing. Black doesn’t have a lot of these effects—mass-token-making is usually reserved for green and white. So get it while it’s hot, and then don’t forget to flash it back for another dose of Zombie loving.

4 — Evil Twin

Ever since the first set had not one (Clone), not two (Vesuvan Doppelganger), but three copy effects (Copy Artifact), we’ve had copy cards with the game. Did you know that Wizards of the Coast was unsure how the rules really interacted with these effects, so they were rotated out for years? Then, after rejiggering the template for the card, Clone smashed back into Magic in Onslaught, and we’ve had them with us ever since. One of the most common ways to make Clones in the modern age of the game has been to create Clone-plus cards that possess various extra enhanced elements. Of them, Evil Twin is among my favorite since it can kill the creature you copy, which makes it more than a pure Cloning effect, but creature removal as well. It’s dandy as candy.

3 — Creeping Renaissance

I can still remember when this card was spoiled and I was seeing it for the first time. It was incredible. Awesome. Loaded with potential. You can bring all of your dead lands back to your hand for another go—or all of your dead enchantments, artifacts, or (usually) creatures. A lot of builds are heavy on one of these types. Have an Enchantress-themed green enchantment deck? Toss this in! Have a great artifact-focused build? Meet your new best friend! Do you have a land-acceleration deck? Yup! And if not, you usually have enough creatures to count. Playing this to bring back four, six, or nine creatures is pretty common. And you know what else is common? Flashing it back and doing it again! It’s been a major powerhouse for me ever since it was printed.

2 — Mikaeus, the Unhallowed

Ah yes, the Dark Mike. What happens when a good Lunarch is subverted in Innistrad can be downright iconic. It’s a great power that abuses the masses. It’s a 5/5 with some ability to slip through defenses, and that gives it a useful enough ability. Then it gives you a No Mercy effect that slays any Human that dares to impugn your evilness by damaging you. It also gives your non-Human hordes +1/+1 and undying, so they come back nastier after a death, and are bigger on each iteration. Dark Mike is truly a powerhouse of causal Magic and a dark horse of survival, smashery, and sustainability.

1 — Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

Drawing cards with the useful Theft of Dreams second ability has always been handy. Theft of Dreams has been a solid card that’s usually been excluded from decklists solely due to the unknown nature of whether you’ll have the right number of untapped creatures when you have it in hand. Its value is based purely on the board state. But having it as one of multiple abilities on a Planeswalker is the key to unlicking its hidden value. Tamiyo is here when you have the right board state to break open. Plus, unlike the actual Theft of Dreams, Tamiyo will let you target yourself to draw cards. I’ve often swung with my team and then used her ability to draw three or five cards from my own tapped creature count and keep the pressure going madly. Tamiyo is a powerful addition to a lot of decks, and you can find a lot of value with her.

And there you are! Those are my Top 10 Cards from the First Innistrad Block. If you haven’t had a chance to dial them in to your decks, give them a try; you’ll be surprised at how they play. Some of them seem to have been forgotten despite their massive values (cough—Unburial Rites—cough), and others have often been underused (Tamiyo, Creeping Renaissance, Black Cat, and Tamiyo).

Shoot, grab Innistrad stuff from the core sets, too, such as Soul of Innistrad or Stitcher Geralf from Commander (2014 Edition). You could have a plane-splosion!

And don’t forget that a lot of stuff from the first block synergizes nicely with later stuff. If you are looking at playing cards from the latest set that are Werewolves, you can run Moonmist. There’s a lot of love like that for your Shadows over Innistrad decks.

I see a bad moon rising . . .