I'm a huge fan of horror as a medium. I grew up reading Goosebumps, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and the works of Bruce Coville before eventually graduating into horror films, Stephen King, and Clive Barker in my teens. There's just something fun in the fantastical spookiness of the genre that enthralls me, and it's great to see more of it explored in the all new setting of Duskmourn: House of Horror.

As you can imagine with a spooky, scary set like this, you need plenty of terrifying locations to set up the world. Thankfully, I've been tasked with the opportunity to share with you ten all new common dual lands for you to check out now. Welcome to the ten new unlucky lands - a set of duals that can come into play untapped if any player has 13 or less life!

These are some really sweet lands! They're far from your usual fare when it comes to common ones because these ones can come into play untapped with no drawbacks. The only catch is that for it to do so, one player needs to hit that 13 life of less bit. This makes these kinds of cards difficult to use well in the early game but are excellent as the game progresses and life totals go down.

For formats like Standard and Pioneer where life loss is frequent, this can be a reasonable addition for certain decks. Granted, the wider card pools make it so that there's enough options that may render these unusable, but they're far better than the usual fare of common duals. This is especially true for Standard, having just lost access to the Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow slow lands which has put multicolored mana bases in a slight pinch as a result. It remains to be seen, however, if the mid-to-late game untap clause will make them more desirable than the Murders at Karlov Manor surveil lands, but they still represent

Then there's Pauper, the format made up solely of commons. This is the first time the format is getting actual, honest to goodness dual lands that can come into play untapped. This is something many players have been wanting for some time now, as the majority of duals the format gets are just variations on the classic Guildgate style of land. Those ones are gates, the Kaldheim ones are snow lands, the Dominaria United ones have basic land types, the Modern Horizons 2 ones are artifact lands, and so on. In the end, they usually still fill the same basic functions albeit in different ways.

So how does this affect things right now in regards to Pauper? The simple answer is probably not too much. Most decks already have some synergy with the lands they're using which offsets the negative aspects of the lands coming into play tapped. Artifact duals (bridges) fuel Affinity, are sacrificed to Deadly Dispute variants, and have a unique play pattern when combined with Cleansing Wildfire. The duals from Dominaria United don't come up much, but the Green ones have fringe uses when paired with Utopia Sprawl. The whole cycle as well as the snow ones from Kaldheim show up in other decks, largely thanks to the ability to find them off landcyclers like Lorien Revealed, Troll of Khazad-Dum, Oliphant, and Generous Ent. Most players there have historically preferred the Kaldheim ones, though both are fairly reasonable unless you're playing Skred.

These new unlucky lands, however, lack any such synergy. Instead, they can sometimes come in untapped, but only in later portions of the game. As such, you might see some numbers in more midrange and control decks that prefer taking the slow approach, but many of those existing lists play the lands mentioned above. If they're not playing those, they're playing the gain lands from Khans of Tarkir or the ping lands from Outlaws of Thunder Junction due to the life swings. These provide a different option for the format, but even without the ability to enter untapped, there's still no shortage of lands that can make the cut.

More interesting than the uses for Constructed are the uses in Commander, or in this case the lack thereof. While many decks can reasonably make use of even the worst lands (case in point: Guildgates and the like continuing to show up in precons due to fringe uses) it's difficult to make these work at all in a game of Commander. The reason is that everyone starts at 40 life, making it almost a guarantee that these will always enter tapped without any additional possible utility.

It's going to be very interesting to see how and where these lands get played in the coming weeks, but I have a feeling they're going to show up a bit more than expected. As always, they'll be awesome picks in Limited as well at most points in your drafts. Try them out and see if they work well for you!

Big thanks as always to Wizards of the Coast for the free previews for this set. Duskmourn: House of Horror releases on September 27, 2024 everywhere. Check your local game store for more information or else check out the Duskmourn: House of Horror store page right here on CoolStuffInc.com.

Paige Smith

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