Innistrad is one of the most beloved planes in Magic.

The first go around was an all-timer, giving us a creepy world of mystery, monsters, humans, and a bunch of unforgettable mechanics and cards. For round two we watched as a world full of monsters was wrecked by the biggest baddies of them all, the Eldrazi, for a wild and unexpected ride. Now in this third trip we're back to the more standard monster world, with humans struggling for survival amongst Werewolves, Vampires, and all sorts of other monsters.

Today I want to go over the three main mechanics of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, which were officially announced yesterday. We're just about to start the preview season and the fall set is almost always the most important release of the year as it corresponds with the big rotation and sets the tone for what Standard will look like for the foreseeable future.

Being able to properly evaluate all the new cards coming out is going to require us to have a good handle on how these mechanics work and what effect they will have on games, so let's jump right in!

Do Not Disturb

Flashback is one of the most popular mechanics in Magic's history, as well as being one of the most powerful.

Flashback first debuted in Odyssey block, giving us powerful cards like Call of the Herd, Lava Dart, Cabal Therapy, and Deep Analysis, some of which still see play in Modern and Legacy today. The original Innistrad gave us big hitters like Faithless Looting, Lingering Souls, and Forbidden Alchemy, as well as one of the best creatures in all time in Snapcaster Mage.

Flashback is returning in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, which is awesome, but we're also getting a new kind of flashback called "disturb."

Essentially Disturb is just flashback for creatures, except it has one key difference - instead of getting the front side of the creature again, when you use the disturb ability you transform the creature into something else entirely.

We've only seen two very simple Disturb cards so far, both just Limited cards with simple fronts and backs like Beloved Beggar. Neither card is powerful enough to see play in Constructed, but that's just because the front doesn't get there on rate; nobody is paying two mana for an 0/4 or a 2/1 in Constructed. However, don't underestimate this ability once we see some disturb cards that are more aggressively costed.

Call of the Herd was a card that absolutely dominated Standard and was a major player in Extended for a long time, and it is literally just a Nessian Courser stapled to a Hill Giant. A card doesn't need to be that powerful to make it in Constructed if it provides both card advantage as well as fills in all the spots in your curve. And if the card is super powerful? Well, that's exactly how Bonecrusher Giant and Lovestruck Beast work and I don't need to explain how good those cards are. Being able to get multiple points on a mana curve as well as multiple things out of a single card is very potent.

When they finally reveal the busted rare/mythic Disturb card, I promise you it is going to be a major player for the life of Standard, and don't underestimate even the seemingly innocent ones with good rate and cost. And don't expect them all to be cheap on the front but expensive to return! There's likely to be a good amount of graveyard shenanigans happening as well, which means if the backside is cheap we may be looking at new tools for graveyard decks in formats as far back as Modern or Historic.

This one is going to be a huge player!

Assemble The Coven

The second new mechanic is called "Coven," and it's a fairly simple one based on creature sizing:

Coven is the kind of keyword where you don't need any additional information, everything it does is written on the card, but the keyword reminds you that the condition is always the same. If this condition is met, then good things happen. It's important to notice that Coven is an "intervening if" ability, meaning it will only trigger if you meet the condition, but you must still be meeting the condition when it resolves to get the effect.

It seems pretty clear that Coven is a Limited mechanic, as the absolute minimum for it to function requires you to have three creatures in play - not always the easiest thing in Constructed, especially against control or removal heavy decks. With this being pushed even further into needing three specific types of creatures, I doubt many cards with Coven will be making an impact on Constructed unless they're already very good even without the ability. This feels a lot like the Party mechanic from Zendikar Rising, it's just too difficult to make work in Constructed.

However, this looks like an awesome Limited mechanic.

Might of the Old Ways is a brilliantly clever common Limited trick, fulfilling the usual role of "common Green pump spell" in a way that provides a great deal of tension. Drawing a card off of your two-mana trick is very powerful, but do you wait until you can Coven for the extra card or just play the trick before you can set it up? Furthermore, it's awesome that Might of the Old Ways effects power and toughness, meaning you can take a board that doesn't currently meet the Coven requirement and get you there by altering the power of a creature, or even more interesting it could take you away from reaching the requirement, especially if your opponent sees it coming and attacks or blocks a certain way.

This one may be Limited only, but it looks like it is going to play awesome and is definitely something to watch for and keep in mind when you are drafting.

Day Turns Night

We saved the biggest for last, as werewolves return in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt but they're a bit cleaned up from their old versions.

The previous werewolf mechanic was very similar to this newer templating, flipping over to the werewolf side when no spells were cast and back to the human side when multiple spells were cast, but it was always a bit hard to track (unless you've got a handy dandy light switch ready to go).

Well now we've got some keywords to not only clear things up, but open the mechanic up to non-werewolf cards as well:

Rather than having each card individually trigger when no spells or multiple spells are played in a turn by anyone, there is now a global

Whenever a card with Daybound enters the battlefield, it goes from being "nothing" to being "Day" and for the rest of the game the entire game will be under either day or night. Rather than requiring each werewolf to flip individually, now if you've flipped one and it's still flipped then your future ones come in on their flip side too. This is also important as you can end up flipping your opponents' werewolves as well, whether intentionally or not.

The result of this is that it's far easier to access the backside of these transform cards than it was with the old templated werewolf cards, and as such you can put more weight on getting to use the backside more often. Cards like Huntmaster of the Fells and Lambolt Pacificist were played largely on the merits of their front side, but now that you can more reliably flip these new werewolves you can accept a weaker front for a better payoff on the back.

Not only is it easier to flip werewolves normally by making it night once, but because it is now a keyworded global effect there can be cards that manually put it to day or night without needing to play zero or multiple spells in a turn. Tovolar, Dire Overlord is one such card and is frankly quite impressive on rate on both sides. Tovolar is sort of a turbocharged Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar, providing a good body and huge card draw potential with a very well sized backside that also has a great mana sink. This one's a player even without that many werewolf synergies.

Like the old werewolves before them, these new werewolves are going to like many of the same things.

While we likely won't be seeing Aether Vial or Collected Company in Standard again any time soon, the idea of these cards is what works well with werewolves if your goal is to flip the script to night early and often. By being able to play at instant speed, you can pass the turn to make it night and gain the advantages of the full moon without wasting your mana. Of course, playing on your opponent's turn has its own advantages as well. Be on the look out for any flash creatures or ways to make proactive plays on your opponent's turn as werewolf enablers.

Fall Is Upon Us

The air has started to chill down from the heat of summer and there's no doubt that fall, and with it the big fall set and rotation that come with it, is right around the corner. As such, the horror themes feel right at home with Innistrad: Midnight Hunt's release as we enter fall and close in on Halloween.

The three mechanics we've gone over today will largely dictate how we evaluate cards from the set for both Limited and Constructed, and the sooner you wrap your head around them and start to think about them in the context of your games the faster and more accurate your card evaluations will be.

Looking forward to this one!