The eerie halls of Duskmourn bring fright this Halloween season, along with some haunting twists on old mechanics! Manifest returns from the grave as Manifest Dread, a mechanic that lets you look at the top two cards of your library, put one onto the battlefield face down as a 2/2 creature, just like normal Manifest, and the other into your graveyard. You can still only turn the face down card over by paying its mana cost and only if it is a creature card. I've covered a couple ways to work around the Manifest restrictions in my article "The Mechanics of Karlov Manor: Disguise & Cloak."

So, with Manifest Dread we now get additional card advantage, still get a creature, and fuel Delirium in our graveyard. As a reminder, Delirium is an effect that is active when you have four or more card types among cards in your graveyard. Highlights from Duskmourn's Manifest Dread mechanic are cards like Growing Dread and Hauntwoods Shrieker. Growing Dread has an enter effect to manifest dread at flash speed and gives permanents a +1/+1 counter whenever they are turned face up. Hauntwoods Shrieker can work in tandem with Growing Dread by constantly giving you manifest dread triggers when it attacks. Additionally, Hauntwoods Shrieker has a two-mana turn face up ability to get the creatures face up cheaper than most mana costs you would be paying. These both made appearances at my local prerelease as strong contenders for the dread sealed deck and always provided value when played.

Manifest isn't the only mechanic Duskmourn made a call to as manifest dread on artifacts is essentially Living Weapon! Cursed Windbreaker, Dissection Tools, and Killer's Mask are just a few examples of this mechanic netting you a permanent and equipping it with a fairly useful artifact. Cursed Windbreaker in particular allowing you to bounce it back to hand for multiple uses of its enter effect can prove useful in Limited formats or decks suffering from a lack of card advantage.

Building With Dread

So, what type of deck can benefit from a few Manifest Dread cards? Like I mentioned before, card advantage is an easy spot to slot these in if you are creature heavy or playing someone like Etrata, Deadly Fugitive to cast any of those spells that go face down. Cards like Paranormal Analyst give you the extra card from Manifest Dread rather than it being thrown into your graveyard. In Standard right now, while it isn't the most impressive deck in the meta, Disguise and Manifest Dread decks make a show by getting Disguised creatures out early and flipping them with Hauntwoods Shrieker or other abilities found in Duskmourn. This wouldn't be a Manifest Dread article without mentioning Standard all-star Abhorrent Oculus who gives you a Manifest Dread trigger on your opponent's upkeep. This always nets you a blocker for whatever they may have and in some cases leaves you with the ability to manipulate your deck to get a threat out on your opponent's turn. There was also an interesting move I found in my Standard deck post Duskmourn where I could use Manifest Dread and Splash Portal to sneak out a Bird, Frog, Otter, or Rat and net a card to draw off the bounce effect.

Combat Tricks are abound in the format as Manifest Dread is an easy way to sneak out giant creatures or blockers with thorns like Barbed Servitor. This is especially good with creatures that want to deal combat damage for additional effects. Focusing in combat isn't always the best in Standard or other 1v1 constructed formats, but Manifest Dread provides combat and other strategies a solid boost in Commander.

Be the Dread at the Commander Table

How is Dread manifesting in the Commander format? I think, in Standard or Modern, Manifest Dread shines when you use it to sneak out big creatures for cheap like The Mindskinner or Fear of the Dark. In Commander however, Manifest Dread has secretly been working on a different strategy: Landfall.

With the Duskmourn Commander Decks we were given Zimone, Mystery Unraveler. Zimone's studies took her from Strixhaven to the Dread House as a Simic Landfall commander who Manifest Dread triggers the first time a land enters and then allows you to turn permanents face up on every land that enters after. Unsurprisingly, there is an easy combo for infinite landfall triggers and mana with Zimone, Yedora, Grave Gardener, and a sacrifice outlet like Ashnod's Altar or Phyrexian Altar. As long as you have a creature to sacrifice, it will become a Forest land with Yedora and you'll be able to tap it for a Green before flipping it face up with Zimone's landfall trigger and sacrificing it to the Altar again for either two colorless or a mana of any color. Is this combo easier said than done? Yes. But is 2/3s of this combo already in the Jump Scare! Commander Precon? Also yes! With the precon you can take the deck in different directions from searching out all your lands, manifesting all your best creatures, or even just playing a game of magical hats with your opponents with all your face down creatures.

So, how are you using Manifest Dread in your decks? Do you like this mechanic over the original Manifest or even Disguise from Murders at Karlov Manor? Let me know on socials and until next time, stay dreadful!

Brandon Ashcraft

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