Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Set Review - Multicolor (Allied Pairs)

Arlinn, the Pack's Hope by Anna Steinbauer

Multicolor Musings under the Moonlight

When different strains of mana combine, the outcomes can be anything from mundane to transcendent. This is doubly true on the plane of Innistrad where its various monstrous denizens twist and braid mana together to suit their eldritch ambitions.

Innistrad: Midnight Hunt is loaded to the brim with fantastic multicolor cards, containing more than twice as many gold cards as all three sets of the original Innistrad block combined! That's much too much powerful magic to contain in a single article, and so today we'll be covering all the allied color pair with my review of the enemy color pairs coming on Monday.

White/Blue Cards

This color pair is focused on spirits and their disturb mechanic, so its multicolored cards include ways to fill your graveyard and use your cards from there, with all of the gold cards other than Teferi able to be cast from there. Faithful Mending is my favorite of these, as reusable discard and draw hasn't been prevalent in either of these colors before. It's not quite Faithless Looting, but it's pretty close. As for Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset, he can provide a nice boost to mana production and even end up making himself free to cast. I don't know if he's worth playing if you're not pushing for the emblem, though. I'm not super impressed with this color pair's legendary creature, Dennick, Pious Apprentice, as it's hard for me to picture a deck built around him being anything more than mediocre and a bit dull. I look forward to being proven wrong, however.

Blue/Black Cards

For the colors of zombies in the set, the multicolored cards here are actually pretty diverse with a good range of effects. I love the weirdness that is Ludevic, Necrogenius and the odd creature-heavy self-mill deck it wants you to build. No, it's not exactly new territory with comparisons able to be made to The Mimeoplasm and both versions of Lazav, but it's still a neat design. The other card I'm drawn to here is Siphon Insight, which may not look that interesting on the surface until you notice that it's an instant. This really ups the utility of the card, especially for higher-powered decks, as is it can totally undo any top-of-library tutoring with cards like Enlightened Tutor or Imperial Seal. Additionally, being a two mana value instant, it can be imprinted onto an Isochron Scepter, allowing you to cause long-term headaches for your opponents.

Black/Red Cards

With the next set focusing more on vampires, the multicolored cards in their colors still give an OK showing, but we all know the really good stuff is coming in Crimson Vow. Florian, Voldaren Scion offers a lot of intriguing options both for inclusion in other decks like Rakdos, Lord of Riots and Prosper, Tome-Bound as well as heading his own decks. Is Florian the best possible commander yet for a Dragon's Approach deck? Could be. In any case, his ability is amplified in Commander when you're playing cards that hit all of your opponents, such as Palace Siege or Loyal Subordinate. The only other card in these colors that catches my eye is Wake to Slaughter, which is a nice bit of reusable recursion for decks running big creatures, though you really need to be running bounce effects or blink effects to really take advantage of it.

Red/Green Cards

The red and green multicolored cards in Midnight Hunt are all bangers, as one would expect in set with werewolves at the fore. Of course the biggest talking point is Tovolar, Dire Overlord who is the werewolf commander that folks have been wanting ever since the original Innistrad set. The card draw trigger on combat damage is amazing, and the fact that it's on both of his faces is even better. Also, the fact that he can force nighttime and bring the older werewolves along with him is great too. The real treat for me with Tovolar is the fact that he has tap-free uses of Kessig Wolf Run built into his nightbound side, letting you punch through for even more cards with your werewolf team. (Remember, you can make X be zero to just give trample without a power boost.)

As if Tovolar wasn't enough werewolf goodness, we also get possibly the best version of Arlinn yet. Arlinn, the Pack's Hope's daybound side gives you one of Magic's best tools: Playing at instant speed. Not only can you just hold your creatures until whenever you want to cast them, casting on an opponent's turn won't affect the day/night transition, making this ability somehow even better. Arlinn's other abilities are solid, with her only costing two mana to cast if it's already night, and making tokens or being able to have an indestructible attacker is always solid. Just remember that when Arlinn is a creature, she stops being a planeswalker.

Green/White Cards

The green and white multicolored cards here give us not one but two new excellent human tribal commanders. Katilda, Dawnhart Prime lets you play a human deck more similar to a typical elf deck, with each creature giving you lots of mana, allowing you to ramp up quickly. This provides an interesting tension between running cheap humans and also bigger spells to put all the mana into. Sigarda, Champion of Light is a more traditional tribal commander, giving your humans a buff and finding more humans for you to cast later. I'm sure either one of these decks want the other in their list, as they work quite well together. Rite of Harmony is an interesting twist on Glimpse of Nature that lets enchantment and token decks get in on the card drawing fun.

Now that all of Innistrad's tribes have come out to play and show what they can do, we'll leave them to their Midnight Hunt and prepare ourselves to examine the rest of the set's multicolored madness on Monday. I'll see you then, so sleep well, if you can.