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InMagic: The Gathering’splane of Duskmourn, everything is hand-placed to feed the demon Valgavoth with the fear of the survivors who run through the halls of his House. From the Razorkin to the Nightmares, there’s always something out to get you.
The mechanic that best represents this overwhelming terror is impending. While it can slow your gameplan down, making proper use of impending spells can keep your opponents died up in fear for much longer.
What Is Impending?
Impending isan alternate casting costfound on creature cards. Paying the impending cost on a card allows you to play it for cheaper, but with a big catch: it won’t be a creature just yet.
Instead, when you pay a creature’s impending cost, it enters with a number of time counters on it equal to the number listed next to the impending keyword. For instance, Overlord of the Boilerbilges has “Impending 4”, and so enters with four time counters.
As impending is an alternate cost, it doesn’t change the mana value of the permanent that enters. An Overlord of the Floodpits still has a mana value of five, even if you only paid three mana for it.
A creature that was cast with impending and has time counters on it will bean enchantment, and only an enchantment. It loses the creature type, and doesn’t gain any enchantment subtypes, and so it simply sits on the battlefield until the final counter is removed and it becomes a creature again.
Impending is very similar tothe older suspend mechanic, but differs in one key way: cards with suepend are held in exile until the final time counter is removed, whileimpending permanents are on the battlefieldthe whole time.
If a creature with impending gains any time counters another way – such as having them moved onto them from another permanent – it willcease being a creatureand return to just being an enchantment.
How To Use Impending
At first glance, impending seems like a mechanic with only downsides for the user. You’re casting a creature and having to wait turns before it can do anything, in which time it can be removed, or the game could end before it gets to swing.
However, impending can letyou build up an imposing board statewithout spending a lot of mana. Each card with impending has an effect whenthey enter the battlefield, such as Overlord of the Hauntwoods making a tapped land token – this will trigger when it enters regardless of whether it’s a creature or not, so you get some value from the cast.
If you blink an impending enchantment, it’ll come back without any time counters and be a creature.
It’s also worth remembering that enchantments area lot harder to remove than creatures, especially for black and red. They can avoid a lot of the standard board wipes, forcing your opponent to use up their targeted removal on it to avoid it turning back into a creature.
As impending creatures are enchantments, theytrigger eerie,or other enchantment synergies like constellation.
In the Vintage, Legacy, and Commander formats, theUniverses Beyond: Doctor Whoset introduced thetime travelmechanic. This can add or remove time counters from cards and permanents that already have one, so by using something like The Wedding Of River Song or The Tenth Doctor could be a great way to speed up the time it takes for your creatures to come online.
The Best Cards With Impending
Impending has, so far, only been used on five cards. These are a cycle of cards from Duskmourn: House Of Horror representing the overlords of the House, but some are most definitely better than others.
Overlord of the Floodpits is perhapsthe weakest of the bunch,as all it does is draw and discard cards. Three mana to do that once is alright, but not something you’d want to build around.
Three of the other Overlords, on the other hand, have a lot of potential. Overlord of the Boilerbilges and Overlord of the Mistmoors bothfit nicely into the aggro strategiesfor red and white respectively. They’re attack triggers, so running one or both of them in an Isshin, Two Heavens As One deck could be very tasty.
Overlord of the Hauntwoods is the real star, though, as it can create land tokens with all five basic land types. For three mana you’ve immediately got a full domain count and are up a land. In Standard, you’ve even gotGhired, Mirror of the Wilds as a way to copy the tokensand get you even further ahead.
