Duskmourn: House of Horror brings the 80s silver screen toMagic: The Gathering’s cardboard faces, referencing classic horror movies while introducing new keywords, such as survival, and card types like Room enchantments. In this draft set, almost all deck types are supported and allow for plenty of deck-building freedom.
However, there are nuances to House of Horror that aren’t obvious at first glance, such as cards with very little to no synergy, an excess of enchantments, and color combos that involve niche effects. Changing your draft strategy in just a few ways can prepare you for infinite horrors within the many, many Rooms ahead.
8Build Around Archetypes
There aremany different archetypeswithin House of Horror that make use of the new and returning mechanics, such as the delirium and eerie keywords. By building around these specific keywords or card types like Rooms, you will find it much easier to create synergies you weren’t expecting.
All the House of Horrors archetypes are built around two-color pairs and include all the potential combinations, making every draft pick a potential for you to pivot mid-draft. If you want to focus on using the new Room cards, ensure to draft in red and blue.
7Splash A Third Color
Although only two cards in this set are more than two colors, you can splash a third color into your two color draft decks to access archetypal synergies you normally wouldn’t have access to, such as splashing black to red and green to add Winter, Misanthropic Guide, to boost your delirium effects and shrink your opponent’s hand size.
Another example is adding white to red and blue Room decks, which gives you access to the only other dual-color Room, Restricted Office and Lecture Hall, which synergies greatly with the archetype. There are always off-color cards that can be game-winners for your deck, so don’t be afraid to mix and match.
Splashing black into the white and green survival archetype allows you to include Cynical Loner.
6Avoid The Worst Cards
Like in every draft set, there are a handful of cards, usually commons, that are never worth picking if you want to try and optimize your deck. That’s not to say there will never be a scenario they can be used, but more often than not, you are throwing away a draft pick.
Two of these are Living Phone and Scrabbling Skullcrab. Living Phone is a three mana 2/1 with an ability that triggers on death that is not always likely to work, leaving you with a chump blocker at most. Scrabbling Skullcrab is half decent for mill decks, but House of Horror doesn’t support a mill archetype and will more likely feed your opponent’s graveyard effects.
5Draft Enchantment Removal
One of the more popular and supported archetypes in this set are Rooms, which are enchantments that synergize with other cards in House of Horror to double and triple up on devastating effects. By making sure you have enchantment removal handy, you will likely always be able to cast it at least once per game.
This also includes non-room enchantments such as Meathook Massacre 2, which could allow the other player to overwhelm you with creatures. Enchantment removal also works well in this set due to the addition of many enchantment creatures, such as all the Enduring cards.
The best enchantment removal cards in this set are Insidious Fungus, Exorcise, and Withering Torment.
4Avoid Colorless Artifacts
Aptly numbered, there are 13 colorless artifacts in House of Horror, with most being equipment or artifact creatures. Unless your draft picks contain no other cards, there is never a reason to pick one over a card in your chosen archetype or even if you want to splash a third color.
The only exceptions could be Keys to the House if you are building with Rooms or Haunted Screen if you are attempting afive-color combination for Marina Vendrell. Otherwise, all the other artifacts contain niche effects with high costs that likely won’t add value to your deck.
3Build For The Mid-game
Out of all the archetypes in House of Horror, very few are meant to be aggressive enough to win as early as possible other than the Toys and Clowns red and white creature deck. This means you will be able to draft more cards with higher mana costs than you might be used to.
However, you don’t want to rely on being able to play your most expensive cards unless you are building in red and green or white and black, which consistently ramp up until the late game with a powerful board. Otherwise, your mid-game strategy is the one that is most likely to win.
2Draft At Least One Room
Despite being used for a specific archetype, specifically in blue and red,there are Room cardsin House of Horror for all five colors with abilities that synergize with any of the available archetypes. Also, counting as two cards, you’re essentially drafting an additional card without having to draw additional cards to stay ahead.
Most rooms usually come with a high and low cost, allowing you to play the first effect early on while saving the more powerful one for later. Some room cards are even essential for specific archetypes, such as Walk-In Closet and Forgotten Cellar, giving your black and green graveyard deck additional mana and the ability to cast from your graveyard.
1Draft Two Decks Simultaneously
The main problem with draft, especially including just two-color combos, is that someone else is likely building the same deck as you. To combat this, pick three colors to draft for, choosing cards that fit one of two archetypes with similar keywords, such as survival or delirium.
This way, you will always find a card to draft while making sure you have enough of one color to fill any missing gaps. If you also do this with the intention of splashing a specific third color, you can potentially create an optimized deck utilizing the best cards in House of Horror.
