Ready your pitchforks, Planeswalkers, as the mists of Innistrad beckon once more. This Halloween, we were treated to Magic: The Gathering’s latest expansion – Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. 

While we’re mostly familiar with the Gothic horror themes of Innistrad, Midnight Hunt specifically targets the events of the Harvesttide Festival and the curse of Eternal Night. In this storyline, the werewolves of Innistrad went insane as part of an imbalance in the day/night cycle, and have gone rampant across the plane. Folks then have placed all their hopes on the Harvesttide Festival and a ritual with warlocks to restore balance to the cycle.

Innistrad: Midnight Hunt features a slew of supernatural themes, such as werewolves, the undead, necromancy and dark pacts, and the new cards and their mechanics all portray the expansion’s theme perfectly. 

It goes without saying that Werewolves are the stars of the show in Midnight Hunt. Their transformation abilities (a.k.a double-faced cards) are now a keyword mechanic in Daybound and Nightbound. Depending on whether the game takes place in the day or night (there are certain cards that trigger this in game), players will have access to either their Human abilities or Werewolf ones.

Other mechanics unique to Midnight Hunt include:

• • Covens, a new ability word for Human cards that let players control three or more creatures with different powers.
  • Disturb – a keyword ability unique to Spirit cards that lets players cast spells from the graveyard transformed.
  • Decayed – a zombie-esque feature that renders creatures unable to block and are sacrificed at the end of their turn when they attack.
  • Vampires gain additional abilities if the opponent has lost life during the turn.

The set we received also came with a nice thematic wooden casket, the contents of which featured a newspaper clipping of strange happenings around Innistrad, a curious parchment containing a cryptic letter, and a set of 6-sided dice, just to name a few.

Of course, the stars of the Midnight Hunt show were the Set Booster box and the Commander Decks. Both sets portrayed some incredible artwork in the new Land, Creature and Sorcery cards, and will be sure to inspire both fear and awe whenever you bust them out at the table. 

We had fun unboxing the Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Set Boosters and Commander Decks, and are now ready to conquer all of Innistrad along with Crimson Vow.

Magic: The Gathering’s Innistrad: Midnight Hunt is available now at your nearest card game store.