Spoiler Highlight: Overlord of the Mistmoors on Standard & Pioneer

After a week of bans and controversies surrounding Nadu, Winged Wisdom, Magic: The Gathering has officially entered the preview season for its new expansion, Duskmourn, where we visited a plane where the demon Valgavoth manifested itself everywhere after forging a pact with the young Marina in her mansion.

Duskmourn is a set heavily inspired by classic horror films from the 80s and 90s, and while it abuses a bit too much of the references and tropes from that material, the set design has some new mechanics, in addition to the return of Enchantment Creatures, this time with alternative costs in the Impending ability.

One of these is Overlord of the Mistmoors, our highlight today. A creature that refers to the famous Titans released in M11 and that, due to its color and interaction with enchantments, may already have homes in Standard and Pioneer!

Overlord of the Mistmoors is part of a cycle of Duskmourn mythics in which enchantment creatures have an ETB and attack trigger and the Impending ability. This keyword is a new variant of Suspend where the permanent enters the battlefield for its alternative cost with four time counters, performs its ETB, but is not a creature until its last counter is removed.

For practical purposes, this ability is a Suspend with benefits when we talk about permanents and especially creatures. Although Suspend gives Haste to creatures when they remove the last counter, Impending allows you to “reset” these cards turns earlier with blink effects, such as Yorion, Sky Nomad.

Overlord of the Mistmoors is the second among the Overlords that has been revealed so far. It is the Grave Titan of the cycle and its tokens, unlike its predecessor, have evasion at the expense of one point of toughness - which is usually a more than fair trade for any Magic card, and like Grave Titan, it only needs one ETB and one combat phase to turn the board into a nightmare for the opponent.

Its enchantment subtype and alternative cost also have some interactions. On the one hand, it becomes easier to be answered with cards like Pick Your Poison, which can be a good safety valve and, on the other, it has interactions with any card that cares about enchantments and, mainly, mana values ​​- Enigmatic Incarnation, for example, can use it to search for large creatures very early.

Standard continues to evolve as the weeks go by following Bloomburrow's release and rotation. Among the format's main staples today is a card that cares a lot about tokens: Caretaker's Talent.

Caretaker's Talent.

This enchantment has become a cornerstone of most white Standard decks today: Boros Control, Mono White Tokens, and even Azorius Control use it with Archangel Elspeth and Beza, the Bounding Spring to extract value from triggers, and Overlord of the Mistmoors fits the same mold while being a strong win condition on its own.

I believe Overlord is comparable to Urabrask's Forge in this regard. It's there, it comes into play relatively early for these strategies, and it becomes a problem with each turn that passes and each combat phase that it remains in play. And since it's not a creature until it loses its last time counter, it's possible to set up with Sunfall or another sweeper on an earlier turn and then threaten the opponent with ten power on the board.

I have no doubt that it will be a potential staple in Standard, and perhaps even find a home as a Big Mana payoff or in effects to cheat the Overlords costs somehow - and like the Titan cycle, if all of them are as strong as the ones revealed so far, it's possible that they will dictate the Metagame after Duskmourn.

Pioneer has a very specific home for the Overlord cycle.

Because of how Enigmatic Incarnation is written and because Impending puts the permanent into play as an Enchantment, we can “cheat” on mana costs with Enigmatic Incarnation and any card from the new cycle.

Interestingly, for Overlord of the Mistmoors, this “combo” isn’t as powerful when used as an enabler because we don’t have enough impactful 8-mana creatures in Pioneer today, and we can’t fetch lower-cost cards.

Ashen Rider is probably the best option we have today, with Cityscape Leveler being a close second. They don’t compare with Atraxa, Grand Unifier, but they are enough when compared to Agent of Treachery, especially when they come into play on the fourth or fifth turn.

On the other hand, Overlord of the Mistmoors is still a Grave Titan and we can pick it up with Leyline Binding to put tokens into play, attack on the next turn and then sacrifice it to get one of the cards above, generating a lot of value for a single “combo”.

Just like in Standard, Caretaker’s Talent also brought a new archetype to Pioneer with Mono White Yorion, a meta call mix with the possibility of taking advantage of the Talent’s interaction with Wedding Announcement. In these lists, which show up occasionally, the new Overlord can also find space due to its interaction with the deck's game plan and because we can reuse and "reset" its counters with Yorion, Sky Nomad, creating a far too strong board against certain matchups/

Overlord of the Mistmoors is one of those cards that is too powerful in a vacuum to ignore. Grave Titan was a major staple in Standard for a few years and even found space in other formats for a while, and the similarities between the two are great.

Both Standard and Pioneer have homes for it enabled by a Bloomburrow card, and the cycle's combo with Enigmatic Incarnation could even create problematic patterns for Pioneer in the future if one of them comes at the right cost and with the abilities the deck needs.

Thanks for reading!