Upcoming Magic: The Gathering release Duskmourn has done an impressive job tapping into new areas of horror, pretty much dodging any overlap with the gothic horror of Innistrad. Mainly, it’s a campy 80s-90s style of horror we see, but there’s also a strong psychological horror element shown, for instance, in the ‘Fear of’ cards. And with this new creation, Duskmourn seems to be dipping its toes in another subgenre: extraterrestrial horror.
We didn’t have this on our bingo card for the next MTG set: Duskmourn has a UFO card. The artifact card Unidentified Hovership is a 2/2 flying vehicle with a crew cost of just one – so any little green man can fly it. But more important than its application in combat, is what it does when it enters or leaves the battlefield.
Basically, it’s an Oblivion Ring variant – exiling a creature until Unidentified Hovership itself is removed – but what a flavorful one.
First off, it can only exile creatures with toughness five or less, presumably because the tractor beam can’t handle any more weight. Secondly, when Unidentified Hovership leaves the battlefield, it doesn’t actually return your creature (so it’s really more of a Skyclave Apparition variant). Instead, you get to Manifest Dread.
I really like this because – in flavor terms – its like your creature is abducted by the UFO and then when you rescue it it comes back wrong. What kind of horrifying experiments were performed on your poor Llanowar Elves?
Unidentified Hovership seems like a perfect pair with Fear of Abduction, a card representing survivor’s fear that looks a lot like the typical ‘grey’ alien popularized in the 1980s. Perhaps Valgavoth created this spaceship to prey on an existing fear, or maybe some real bona fide aliens got caught up in the House’s mad expansion – it did canonically swallow the sun, after all.
One problem with trying to encapsulate the concept of a UFO in a Magic card is you have to, to some extent, define what it actually is. Unlike the UFOs in a recent horror film, we know that, despite having a hint of a face, this ship is definitely a vehicle piloted by something else, not an organic creature. Nor is it a robot, a natural phenomenon, or a big ball of energy.
But conceptual nit-picking aside, it seems like a great card for Duskmourn limited – especially in green-white decks, where you can use it to tap down anything with Survivor that can’t safely attack.
For more Magic: The Gathering content, check out our MTG release schedule guide or our list of the best MTG commanders.
Source: Wargamer
