Today is the first day of Preview Season for Magic: the Gathering‘s newest set, Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. We were given some plot points and shown some cards in the upcoming set. A few days ago, the lead designer of the set, Mark Rosewater, provided some teaser hints at cards that are coming in the set, and it got me thinking; We could see
Blood Moon
Blood Moon
Nonbasic lands are Mountains.
be printed into Standard. With the information that came out today, it feels like that could be more likely.
MaRo Hints
When Rosewater dropped his little teaser post, one of the things he said that got me thinking about this was the following:
A popular tournament card in multiple formats gets reprinted with its fifth piece of art.
Mark Rosewater
That line gives us enough information to narrow down what cards could be eligible for this card. There’s a total of ~190 cards that have 4 distinct arts, as a quick Scryfall Search shows. These are the cards that we’ll be looking to narrow down. Now there are some cards in here from Modern Horizons 2 that have sketch arts, such as
Abundant Harvest
Abundant Harvest
Choose land or nonland. Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a card of the chosen kind. Put that card into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
which counts in scryfall as a different art, but I’m not going to count those. I’m also not counting cards that have a “digital only art” like Approach of the Second Sun. Looking through the list of cards, here are the ones that seem to make sense as “Popular Tournament Cards”
-
Aether Vial
Aether Vial
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may put a charge counter on this artifact.
{T}: You may put a creature card with mana value equal to the number of charge counters on this artifact from your hand onto the battlefield. - Ancient Grudge
- Bitterblossom
-
Blood Moon
Blood Moon
Nonbasic lands are Mountains.
-
City of Brass
City of Brass
Whenever this land becomes tapped, it deals 1 damage to you.
{T}: Add one mana of any color. - Cryptic Command
- Damnation
-
Disdainful Stroke
Disdainful Stroke
Counter target spell with mana value 4 or greater.
- Doomsday
- Doubling Season
- Ensnaring Bridge
- Faithless Looting
-
Fatal Push
Fatal Push
Destroy target creature if it has mana value 2 or less.
Revolt — Destroy that creature if it has mana value 4 or less instead if a permanent left the battlefield under your control this turn. - Goblin Guide
-
Grapeshot
Grapeshot
Grapeshot deals 1 damage to any target.
Storm (When you cast this spell, copy it for each spell cast before it this turn. You may choose new targets for the copies.) - Horizon Canopy
- Inquisition of Kozliek
- Pithing Needle
-
Ponder
Ponder
Look at the top three cards of your library, then put them back in any order. You may shuffle.
Draw a card. -
Rest in Peace
Rest in Peace
When this enchantment enters, exile all graveyards.
If a card or token would be put into a graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead. - Scavenging Ooze
- Sword of Feast and Famine
-
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of Fire and Ice
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has protection from red and from blue.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, this Equipment deals 2 damage to any target and you draw a card.
Equip {2} - Sword of Light and Shadow
- Thoughtseize
That’s quite the list, but we can very quickly narrow down a lot of these because they wouldn’t make sense thematically with the set or canon of Magic. Just to name a few, Aether Vial wouldn’t make a ton of sense thematically. Mechanically it’d be pretty awesome since we have a bunch of tribes in this set and Vial has been a staple in various competitive tribal decks in multiple formats. Disdainful Stroke wouldn’t make sense to tease here because it is already legal in Standard, and isn’t really a noteworthy card.
What we’re left with is a handful of cards: Damnation, Blood Moon, Ancient Grudge, Thoughtseize, Doubling Season, Pithing Needle and Rest in Peace.
The Plot Thickens
During the livestream today, plot elements of the set were revealed. Innistrad finds itself in a troubling situation. When the Gatewatch imprisoned Emrakul on the Moon, it screwed up a lot of things on the plane. The nights were becoming longer, and Werewolf activity was on the rise. There’s a real concern that there may not ever be another sun rise if something isn’t done to correct the issue.
From these two bits of information, you can’t deny that Blood Moon would be chef’s kiss on flavor for the set. Between Werewolves and Vampires, it makes so much sense. Now you may be thinking, man Blood Moon is way too strong for standard. Is it though?
READ MORE: MTG Showcases New Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Mechanics Coven, Decayed and More
Competitiveness in Standard
Looking at the current landscape of Standard 2022, Blood Moon wouldn’t be that bad. There aren’t very many 3 color decks in the meta right now, because there aren’t very many playable dual lands in the format.
These dual lands are the only ones that are really playable. I anticipate that 2 color decks are still going to be the preferred way to go, considering that there’s a much smaller card pool. Most decks will be playing plenty of basics, so it won’t be as big of a concern.
READ MORE: MTG Stream Reveals New Innistrad Midnight Hunt Cards
Obviously this is pretty tin foil hat about Blood Moon coming into Standard, and there’s definitely a few other very likely candidates for this reprint, but I’d love to see this iconic card coming back to the game. What are your thoughts on this? What card do you guys think that fits MaRo’s description will be reprinted? Let us know in the comments!