Rumours have been spreading through the streets of Ravnica. A string of murders in the Karlov Manor. The already chaotic plane of Ravnica is once more tossed into turmoil as a hidden conflict unfolds amongst the heads of the factions. The Murders of Karlov Manor set puts less of a focus on the greater conflicts within Ravnica and takes us on a more personal trip with the detectives and heads of the plane. We’re really excited for this set because it takes the political drama that’s core to Ravnica and turns that on its head, giving us a murder mystery to explore. We wanted to showcase some of the new cards, discuss some of the new mechanics, and talk about new and interesting synergies that we’ve found that you guys might enjoy.
Here are a few of our favourites.
Voja is a crazy value piece, a 5/5 trampler with vigilance and ward 3. Voja’s ability however is where the real juicy part of this card is. Making massive armies of elves and wolves in Magic is no difficult task, so you can either pump up a wide board of creatures or draw a huge amount of cards every combat. If you really want to break this card, add a maskwood nexus or a mirror entity into your deck, those cards will quickly make this creature get out of control!
Krenko is back! This Baron synergizes extremely well with treasures as you can float red mana whenever a treasure is sacrificed, and you can use that mana to activate Krenko’s ability. Looks like Dockside Extortionist is getting another price jump.
As the face commander of the “Deep Clue Sea '' deck Morska is coming to the table as a free value piece that cares about card draw. As you continue to draw (hopefully on everyone’s turns) Morska will quickly become a behemoth that your opponents can’t ignore. Luckily you’ll have no shortage of counterspells, creature protection, and board protection in the green white and blue colours.
The new Surveil lands are also a great new addition to the set. While surveil is not as widely useful as Scry, these new lands offer an advantage that more experienced magic players will quickly pick up on; land types. To those unfamiliar with land types, they are the little text that tells you if your land is a swamp, forest, island, plains, or mountain. There are certain spells and abilities that specifically grab lands of a certain type. Dual lands rarely have this typing, so to see a new set of typed dual lands should be setting off some radars.
New Mechanics!
We wanted to show a few mechanics that we were excited about in this new set as well. A few new and interesting ones, and some that are enormous flavour wins.
Disguise is one of the new flagship mechanics. It works kind of like morph but rather than the creature just being a face down 2/2, it comes with the additional perk of having ward 2. These cards can be flipped face up at any time you can cast an instant, potentially catching opponents by surprise with a scary flip. Wizards has given us another reason to worry about untapped mana on someone’s board.
Cases are a new take on enchantments. Like Sagas and Classes, they come with multiple stages and each stage gives you a new little perk to play around with. Interestingly, these cases all get solved at the beginning of your end step, which we believe means that no matter what, you’ll be able to gain the effect if you make it to the end of your turn. This has the potential to be incredibly scary in the 60 card formats because of cards like the one shown above.
Suspect is such a heavy flavour win. This mechanic gives a creature menace and makes the creature unable to block. Like in a murder mystery the suspect becomes a figure to be feared, and with the evidence stacked against them is unable to defend themselves. Additionally, many of the cards that are suspect also come with an extra consequence. Wonderful mechanic, definitely one we’ll be trying out in our shop games.
Karlov manor takes a new approach to the plane of Ravnica. Removing us from the wonders of the different factions and putting us right into the streets. This set comes with a variety of cards as well as multiple new mechanics. This set delivers on the stories and themes it shows us through its cards. We’re really excited to dive deeper into The Murders of Karlov Manor so that we can investigate, suspect, and solve the case!
