Summary
Alchemy is one of the most fascinating formats onMagic: The Gathering Arena. It lets you play with unique cards that most of the time just aren’t possible in paper Magic thanks to mechanics like seek, conjure, and perpetual effects.
Every set gets its own mini-expansion of cards, with cards of all colors and rarities here to help you brew some truly unique decks. The Alchemy cards from Duskmourn: House of Horrors plays with mechanics from the main set, like survival and eerie, and turn them up to 11. Here are the best cards Alchemy: Duskmourn has to offer.
10Solitary Study//Endless Corridor
Too Many Doors
Room enchantments are brand newin Duskmourn, and the Alchemy iteration takes the mechanic even further than before. The Solitary Study side is a somewhat plain but very cheap half-anthem, giving your creatures +1/+0.
Once you unlock Endless Corridor though, you get to do some spicy stuff. When you unlock it, you get to conjure a duplicate of the card into your hand, and give a creature first strike for the turn. You get to dump all your extra mana each turn into conjuring more and more copies of it, giving your creatures a huge buff.
9Golden Sidekick
A Very Shiny Bat
One of the better creatures to come out of Alchemy: Duskmourn, Golden Sidekick is a Bat Glimmer with both lifelink and flying. And as a 2/2 for two mana, it’s already pretty aggressively stated.
The Bat has a very strong abilitythat catapults it over many of the other cards in the expansion. Anytime you gain life, you get to give a random creature in your hand a perpetual +X/+X boost equal to the amount of life you gained. Even if you’re giving a creature +2/+2 off of the lifelink from Golden Sidekick, you can give a huge power-up to your creatures.
8Housemeld
A New Meaning To Homestuck
Housemeld is a kinda of expensive removal spell at four mana, and being a sorcery speed means it is a bit limited timing-wise, but it’s so unique you’re going to want to craft a few of them anyways.
For four mana you get to exile a creature, which having a hard removal spell in blue is not bad. But that card isn’t gone forever, instead, you transform it into an enchantment perpetually and then add it to your side of the battlefield. This unique effect not only permanently removes a problematic creature from the game, but then gives you a version of it with all the functionality.
7Anguished Recollection
Look At This Photograph
Duskmourn already has a pretty good looting effect, but Anguished Recollection takes this ability to the next level. For two mana you have to discard a card to seek two cards that don’t share a card type with the discarded card.
Seeking a card has you taking a random card from your library and adding it directly to your hand, kind of like a tutor spell but you don’t get to pick. Anguished Recollection gives you some control over those random cards. If you discard a land, you can get any two spells from your deck, guaranteeing you won’t be drawing a land off of it.
6Enduring Friendship
Together Forever
Look at these two little cuties. Enduring Friendship is an Otter Glimmer with some weaker stats, but a cheap mana cost and a ton of effects to make up for it. For two mana you get a 2/1 creature with double team. This effect is triggered when it attacks, conjuring a copy of the card in your hand. Then both cards lose the double team ability.
Both Otters will also have the abilityto give your Otters and enchantment creatures +1/+1 for the turn anytime you cast an instant or sorcery. Much like other Glimmers, the main Enduring Friendship would die, you get to bring it back as an enchantment, so it still sticks around.
5Fear Of Ridicule
They’re All Laughing At You
One of the sillier fears you can encounter in Duskmourn, Fear of Ridicule gives your enchantment creatures a 1-2 punch. Not only does it give your other enchantment creatures menace, making them harder to block, but also adds another very strong ability into the mix.
Anytime one or more enchantment creatures would deal combat damage to a player, you get to exile a random creature from their deck. You then make a token copy of it, except it is now an enchantment creature with 1/1 stats. If you keep attacking, you’re able to steal some of your opponent’s most powerful creatures for your own.
4Welcome The Darkness
We’ve Got Death And Despair
A fascinating new instant, Welcome the Darkness does a ton of work with a relatively small downside. For just one black mana and X generic, you get three effects out of it, though you’ll almost always want X to be a pretty big value.
Once Welcome the Darkness resolves you draw X cards, make an X/X Demon token with flying, and then your life total becomes X. The downside is that you can’t gain life for the rest of the game, but that probably won’t be a problem if you get your life high enough.
3Soul Shredder
It Just Won’t Die
A two-mana 2/2 vehicle with haste and two whole paragraphs for abilities, Soul Shredder is a very cool card for Alchemy. Anytime one or more creatures would die, Soul Shredder perpetually gets +1/+1. This ability triggers even if it’s in the graveyard, so it’s always getting stronger.
You can then sacrifice two creatures and pay one mana to bring it back to the battlefield, though it’s just at sorcery speed. Even so, since it has haste and a growing stat block, you can bet that Soul Shredder is a solid pick.
2Lurker In The Deep
What Lies In The Water
Either coming in at four mana or six, Lurker in the Deep is a super cool card for your seek effects. When it enters or attacks, you get to seek a nonland card from your deck.
Anytime you seek any card, either the one you get when it comes into play or from another effect, you conjure a duplicate of that card, and then you manifest the conjured card. So while you won’t get it if it’s a noncreature card, you still get a bonus creature out of the effect. If you have a way to bounce them back to your hand, you can get some good use out of Lurker in the Deep.
1Polterheist
A Fantastic Phantasm
Heist is a newer Alchemy exclusive mechanic that debuted in Outlaws of Thunder Junction, and it has quickly proven to be a pretty darn powerful ability. Heist has you look at three random nonland cards from your opponent’s library.
You pick one of them to exile face down, and you can then cast that spell as long as it’s exiled, spending mana as any type when you go to cast it. Polterheist lets you do this with every attack. And while it’s only a 3/1, it does have a ward cost of paying two life, it can be a solid determent. Give it some type of evasion and you’ll have all your opponent’s cards at your disposal.
