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Enchantment decks can be scarily powerful inMagic: The Gathering. Between back-breaking enchantments and powerful enchantment creatures, the synergy can be so strong that it’s remained a consistent player in various formats’ metagames over the years.
Duskmourn: House Of Horror introduced a new tool for the enchantment decks: eerie. By profiting off enchantments, and the set’s Room cards, eerie can help take your enchantment deck to a frightening new level.
What Is Eerie?
Eerie is an ability word, which means itdoesn’t have a strict rules definition,but instead ties together lots of similar cards. In eerie’s case, these aretriggered abilitieswhen one of two things happen:
Eerie is very similar toconstellation, an ability word that also triggers whenever an enchantment enters under your control. The big difference between the two is that second point – eerie triggers when you unlock the final door of a Room card,constellation will not.
What an eerie effect actually does ontriggering will depend on the card. For instance, Fear of Infinity can return from your graveyard to your hand, Cult Healer gains lifelink until end of turn, and Scrabbling Skullcrab mills a player for two.
How To Use Eerie
Eerie is a mechanic that works best inhighly synergistic decks. If you want to properly profit from it, you need to go all-in on enchantments.
In draft and sealed, this meansgetting as many Rooms and enchantment creatures as possible.In constructed formats, you’re going to need to slot it into existing ‘Enchantress decks’ that want to play lots of enchantments already.
A tricky aspect of eerie is that it is most prominently found in blue and black. Enchantment decks usually focus on green and white, meaning you’ll need to splash or rely on cards like Cult Healer instead.
Blink decks will fit nicely with eerie. Not only do theytrigger eerie by entering the battlefield again, Rooms in particular will give you a second chance to fully unlock the for extra triggers.
Keep in mind that enchantments that have eeriewill see themselves enter. If you have a way to turn permanents into enchantments, like Enchanted Evening or Myrkul, Lord of Bones, you’ll get the eerie trigger the second they enter play.
Finally, as eerie is an enter-the-battlefield triggered ability, trigger doublers willallow eerie to trigger twice.This is particularly helpful for Yarok, The Desecrated Commander decks, which have access to eerie’s primary colours of blue and black.
The Best Eerie Cards
Eerie cards themselves aren’t going to be single-handedly build your deck. Their power comes from the extra value you get on top of playing enchantment cards, and building up a critical mass of triggers to outpace your opponent. That being said, there are still some cards to keep an eye out for.
Skullsnap Nuisance helps bridge the gap between two of Duskmourn’s archetypes, serving as both aneerie triggerand a way toenable deliriumby surveiling cards. A 1/4 for two mana is also nothing to balk at.
Victor, Valgavoth’s Senescahl is the go-to eerie commander. Its eerie trigger has three parts to it, depending on how many times eerie’s triggered that turn. The first time you surveil two, and the second time each opponent discards a card. The third time is the bomb, though, as it gets a creature fromany graveyardonto the battlefield under your control.
With eerie triggering both on an enchantment entering and a Room becoming fully unlocked, Victor is easy to trigger three times in a turn with a bit of planning.
Infernal Phantom is an interesting use of eerie, giving a temporary +2/+0 buff. This doesn’t sound very useful, but with Wilds of Eldraine introducing role tokens andcards like Monstrous Rage and Charming Scoundrelseeing play in Standard, it’s another tool in the ever-expanding mono-red aggro toolbox.
