Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Commander
After a long hiatus articles should be finding their way back more regularly on our website.
A lot has happened in the MTG universe since last we sat down to actually write to all of you and we can’t write about everything all the time. There’s other content planned in the future which we can’t tell you more about just yet - stay tuned.
Today we’re covering the Midnight Hunt Commander precons in a new series called Flash of Insight.
These articles will be shorter than average and its aim is to explain how we approach precons and where we set their boundaries for upgrades while still aiming to keep these decks in battlecruiser (BC).
Seeing as this is the first article in the series, I'll provide a little more backstory as to what happens behind the scenes when new commander decks are revealed.
New precons always mean brainstorm sessions with a few mentors and mods specialised in BC. What cards stand out, what’s potentially too much, what are the easy to assemble combos and which cards should we monitor when people upgrade these decks.
Precon reveals also cause increased chat activity in the BC lounge and seeing people get excited about new cards coming out - “that commander is so ME!”,”‘x got reprinted so now I can get one at a sensible price!” is heaps of fun. You pick up the cards people dislike seeing from reading player feedback here too and quite often they’ll unknowingly assist in helping us find cards and synergies to look at more closely.
To me personally the week or two between a full precon reveal and the actual release of the physical product are quite fun. You get forced to think about common strategies and synergies and cards people like to include, while keeping previous precons in the back of your head, and processing new cards coming out in the regular set that people will want to include. Cards nobody played with before, and a+b makes for c outcomes may have not yet been found. It’s a weird mix between stress, anticipation and excitement that few hobbies can provide me all at the same time.
A Knowledge Pool lane (specialised chat channels where our players sit down with a member of our team to discuss potential new deck ideas and whether or not they’re within the boundaries of their desired power level) is going to open up at one point, so it’s important people on our team know ahead of time what can and cannot be accepted when upgrading these precons.
Let’s move on to the actual decks - I did promise this article would be shorter than usual :^)
Undead Unleashed
Cards, synergy, combos:
This precon was one of the first where its name, color identity and theme ahead of time already had us think about certain cards well before any of them were actually revealed. “Please don’t put easy to assemble combo lines just missing a piece into a precon” got mentioned by several people before we actually knew which cards were in there. (I’m looking at you Prismari Performance, with both Naru Meha and Dualcaster Mage)
(as always, cards are tap/click to zoom)
The face commander; Wilham Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver would likely have to be limited in sacrifice potential. Granted he can sacrifice one creature in your end step which draws you one card, it’s the token part we were more worried about. A commander being able to make sacrifice based tokens likely shouldn’t have free sacrifice outlets - yet these would be the types of cards people would slot almost automatically because they’d get a new zombie token with decayed to replace what they sacrificed.
Should Wilhelt be allowed sac outlets in BC, yes definitely, but they should likely not be free and they should likely not be abundant. The precon already came with a few sac outlets and payoffs, all limited by either not being free or having to tap down, limiting their use per turn. Think less Viscera seer, Carrion Feeder or Ashnod’s Altar and more Gnawing Zombie or Voracious Null when aiming to stay within BC.
Rooftop storm - a card that allows you to cast zombie spells for free - and “free casting/cheating out spells should be monitored for battlecruiser” - was an obvious one to us. Add to that Acererak which got printed in AFR and there’s your infinite combo (venture into a dungeon that isn’t Tomb of Annihilation and return Acererak to hand, repeat for infinite venture, gain infinite life, tokens, damage, mana and draw your deck). Free sac outlets would yet again have to be monitored here, as Rooftop storm + sac outlet + payoff also provides you with a loop (Gravecrawler to name the most obvious one).
Rooftop storm is likely one of those cards we’d ask people to cut in upgraded precons, as people optimise the manabase, ramp, zombies, payoffs, draw and interaction, a card enabling you to do a bunch of things for free on top of that is likely not healthy to keep for BC once a deck is upgraded.
It didn’t take long for people to link Eloise, Nephalia Sleuth to March of the Machines (which without a payoff causes a draw - your clues become 0/0 creatures, which die and create new clue tokens which are 0/0 creatures which die, loop). All it needs is an aristocrat payoff and you’re set.
Tribe-matters precons are always interesting because it gives us more data to work with as to where we can draw the line for “how many anthems does WOTC deem OK for an out of the box precon” - and while they vary from precon to precon, it does give us a rough idea of what we can deem acceptable for our own power level balance (Wilhelt has 7, Lathril has 5).
The presence of several “generate x creature tokens” spells also means being on the lookout for token doublers / free additional value which are sparse in the blue black color identity but still worth mentioning, and being aware of payoffs people may wish to slot to try and win the game.
The Undead Unleashed precon having upwards of 20 zombies on the field is not uncommon when a game drags on so loading up your deck with several aristocrat type lifedrain effects (like say: Bastion of Remembrance) was something we became aware of more after seeing the deck get played and reading player feedback. Having a singular aristocrat payoff isn’t the issue, but a boardwipe happening with Wilhelt out means all non-decayed zombies will produce another zombie token so you’re not really solving a potentially already large boardstate by wiping it.
Finally, the high landcount also caught our attention. 40 Lands - which is 3 more than Obuun’s “Land’s Wrath” precon, and only 2 less than Aesi’s “Reap the Tide” dedicated landfall deck, keeping the “‘just cut some lands” meme alive on our server once again. The only explanation we could find is being able to target yourself with Curse of the Restless Dead.
Exxaxl’s Upgrade Observations:
People who just start out with EDH and come from other formats, or people who are brand new to MTG as a whole often get introduced to the format by starting out in BC. When looking for sensible upgrades, the last few sets and other precons always come to mind - “How will people upgrade this with cards they probably already have, or cards that are currently in Standard?”. This article isn’t about “we would cut these 15 cards and make upgrades here, here and here” so let’s keep this short.
Cards I expected to see more:
Ghoulish Procession, Nadier’s Nightblade and Curiosity Crafter
These cards are noticeably absent in most upgraded decks. Ghoulish Procession suits the “limited sac outlet once per turn” playstyle; Nadier’s Nightblade is a more limited aristocrat payoff and Curiosity Crafter will make your decayed zombies more useful when they connect.
Cards I expected to see less:
Additional anthems, Champion of the Perished
The precon already has 7 zombie anthems, adding more felt a bit redundant to me, yet people seem to drag this average up to ~10.
Champion of the Perished gives you a sizable beater but provides very little synergy with the actual deck, yet he keeps showing up in upgraded versions. The fact he’s the buy-a-box promo likely has to do something with this.
Undead Unleashed in a flash:
Cut lands, add removal, monitor sacrifice outlets, be wary of easy auto-includes that lead to combos. Excels in the mid to late game where it will have had time to assemble a large zombie army (that still did not impress Gisa).
Coven Counters
Cards, synergy, combos:
When both decks were revealed, this deck had little cards that caught our eye as needing to be monitored or playtested in regards to BCs ceiling. The shell it provides out of the box allows for less potential explosive plays and/or value than Undead Unleashed would.
The face commander Leinore, Autum Sovereign came with the new Coven mechanic which seems pretty limited and self-balanced as it only triggers once at the beginning of combat, so unless people slot additional combat steps or trigger copying cards, this felt inherently less “potentially broken” than Wilhelt. It’s worth mentioning both commanders have the potential to draw you one card per turn, which is not something that happens often with new decks coming out at the same time.
Champion of Lambholt was the immediate card to watch for us, as effects that say “your opponents can’t” and dictating how combat goes in a mostly combat reliant power level is something we should be aware of. Counter doublers should be monitored, and ways of storing counters (The Ozolith), doubling counters (Doubling Season) or ‘free value’ counters (Cathar’s Crusade) should likely be monitored.
Sigarda, Heron’s Grace making your board harder to deal with and the sparsity of boardwipes present in the BC environment is going to make most of the creatures and effects stay on board for a while - additional board protection and creature tutors would likely have to be limited to keep the deck fair for the BC environment.
Angel of Glory’s Rise is known on the team for its sac outlet combos already (this card was highlighted on the BC brainstorm sessions regarding Trynn and Silvar combos combined with Fiend Hunter, and the precon is in the right colors to run Saffi Eriksdotter combo lines) but the Coven Counters deck wouldn’t want to automatically build towards sacrifice based gameplay like Wilhelt would.
The rest of the deck seemed fairly balanced regarding upgrades and is split between “counters matter” and “I’m making tokens” with a dash of “hello humans” effects. It didn’t raise that many eyebrows on the team and if you’re wanting to make a lot of upgrades or homebrew one of the commanders from scratch, Coven Counters definitely seems like the safest pick of the two.
Exxaxl’s Upgrade Observations:
There was too little data to do a “Cards we expected to see more versus less” comparison. Instead have some highlights: Celebrate the Harvest, Celestial Judgment and Curse of Conformity are cards I expect to show up often in peoples homebrew BC decks in the future.
Coven Counters in a flash:
A wide net of strategies ranging from counters, tokens and humans matter which allows people to upgrade the deck in a way less linear way than other precons, providing a mix of staples and new cards usable across multiple decks.
Data is beatiful
A search syntax on our Discord server of ‘in: deck_checks in: first_deck_check’ ‘Wilhelt’ gives 36 results versus 6 for ‘Leinore’. If we delete the channel filter and just search for ‘Wilhelt’ we get 291 results and ‘Leinore’ gets 39 results. Only 1 Eloise deck got checked versus 4 Kyler decks, but regular ‘Eloise’ chatter comes up with ‘49’ results versus 43 for ‘Kyler’.
Zombies are a popular tribe and the amount of wanted reprints present in the Undead Unleashed precon could have something to do with its popularity. The face commander also allows for several sacrifice based combos and loops people are already running in EDH to begin with, so another piece to help enable those combos is likely also responsible in part for its popularity. The Coven mechanic was also the odd one out, and there have been several “counters matter” commanders printed in the past few years. New keyword/mechanic decks usually tend to show up less frequently on the server (we also saw this with Ikoria where Otrimi/Mutate had less fans than the other decks).
We hope you enjoyed our behind the scenes snippet of what goes on when new precons come out. Flash of Insight will return for the Crimson Vow Commander.
“This article is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.”
