A Limited Guide to Innistrad: Crimson Vow

Tzu-Mainn Chen
November 12, 2021
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Eternal night has fallen over Innistrad, and Olivia Voldaren is to blame. Not satisfied with just one victory, Olivia aims for domination over the entire plane by joining forces with the progenitor of all vampires on Innistrad: Edgar Markov. Their coming nuptials herald a coming age of vampiric rule, and act as a beacon to their allies who wish to celebrate the event - and their enemies who will do everything in their power to disrupt it.

Innistrad: Crimson Vow continues the story started in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. However, while the setting and tribes and many of the mechanics are similar, there’s enough new in VOW to make the draft experience feel very different. Let’s look at how!

 

Mechanics and Themes

The broad themes of VOW are the same as in MID; however there are some subtle changes in emphasis.

 

The Tribes of Innistrad


The five allied-colored tribes remain an important part of Innistrad, with many cards that benefit - or target - members of a particular tribe. Here’s a quick refresher:

  • White/Blue: Spirits
  • Blue/Black: Zombies
  • Black/Red: Vampires
  • Red/Green: Werewolves
  • Green/White: Humans

 

Graveyard


The graveyard remains a resource in VOW, with a mechanic and multiple cards encouraging you to take advantage of cards in there. However VOW no longer uses the Flashback mechanic, and as a whole the graveyard is far less important in VOW than in MID.

Here are VOW’s feature mechanics. Some of them are new compared to MID, and others are the same - but with a twist.

 

Cleave


Cleave is a mechanic that appears on instants and sorceries. It allows you to cast the spell in two different ways: pay the base cost, and you’ll get a simple, restricted effect; pay the more expensive Cleave cost, and you’ll remove the restriction and gain a more powerful result. Such modal mechanics may be common throughout Magic - but they’re common because they’re fun and effective, and Cleave is a particularly flavorful iteration for the plane of Innistrad.

Cleave spells can be found across all five colors.

 

Blood


Wizards has found success with utility artifact tokens such as Clues and Treasure and Food, and VOW initiates another such token into their ranks. A Blood token allows you to spend one mana to sacrifice the token, discard a card, and draw a new one. This effect is powerful in Limited, especially in the later game when you often want to turn dead land draws into something more useful.

However Blood has far more esoteric uses. Many vampires in the set use Blood as a resource for extremely varied effects. You can gain life, draw a card, transform a creature into a powerful form, and more. This gives Blood players the enjoyable challenge of ensuring that they balance Blood generation with Blood payoffs.

Blood mechanics are found in the vampiric colors of Black and Red.

 

Training


Creatures with the Training keyword grow stronger with a +1/+1 counter whenever they attack alongside a more powerful creature. This allows early Training creatures to remain relevant in the later turns of the game. VOW complicates matters with additional “+1/+1 counters matter” cards that work in a variety ways: when a creature has a +1/+1 counter, when a +1/+1 counter is put on a creature, and even activated abilities that require you to remove your own +1/+1 counters in return for an effect.

The Training keyword is found in Green and White.

 

Exploit


Exploit is a returning mechanic from Dragons of Tarkir. When a creature with Exploit enters the battlefield, you can sacrifice a creature. If you do so, you are rewarded with some kind of effect. Beyond that, VOW has many cards that trigger when a creature dies, and Exploit is a perfect way to ensure that happens. Note that a creature with Exploit can sacrifice itself to pay for the Exploit cost.

Exploit creatures are found in Blue and Black.

 

Disturb

 

Disturb returns from MID. A card with Disturb has two faces, with the front face castable from your hand and the back face castable from your graveyard. However Disturb cards in MID always featured a human on the front side and a spirit on the back. VOW changes this formula by having the front side always be a spirit and the back side an Enchantment Aura. This change alters the playstyle of Disturb decks, as they’ll no longer be able to rely on what feels like an endless stream of creatures.

Disturb creatures are found in White and Blue.

 

Day/Night

 

The Day/Night mechanic remains unchanged from MID. Werewolves have a Daybound side and a more powerful Nightbound side, and the transformation is triggered depending on the number of spells a player casts during their turn. One thing to note is that MID had additional non-transforming cards that triggered when Day changed to Night or vice versa; VOW does not.

Day/Night creatures are found in Red and Green.

 

Archetypes

As usual VOW has ten two-color archetypes, each represented by a single signpost uncommon.

 

White/Blue: Spirits ( Disturb / Auras )

   

White/Blue decks in MID were very powerful, as all their Disturb cards were actually two castable creatures on one card. This meant that a White/Blue deck could throw a lot of bodies onto the battlefield to clog up the board and simply turn them into game-winning flying threats. This strategy changes in VOW, as this archetype loses its inherent creature advantage. Instead a player must be careful to ensure that they have creatures to place their Disturb Auras upon. Brine Comber // Brinebound Gift is an ideal card for this, as it can generate a stream of evasive creatures. And creatures such as Dawnhart Geist and Stormchaser Drake also provide great benefits for an archetype with many enchantments and auras.

 

White/Black: Life Gain


It’s long been a truism in Magic that gaining life does not win you games. Modern Limited sets have made an effort to change this, crafting strategies that tie life gain to various forms of card advantage. Markov Purifier continues this trend by acting as a draw engine, albeit one that slows you down by costing mana. Fortunately a card like Traveling Minister grants you a cheap and reusable method of gaining life every turn. If you want to take full advantage of the Black/White archetype, grab cards such as Courier Bat that give you even more benefits for having your life total go up.

 

Blue/Black: Zombies ( Exploit )

 

At first blush Exploit might seem like inherent card disadvantage by asking you to sacrifice one of your own creatures. But the effects are often worth a card by themselves, and Skull Cleaver gives an added bonus that turns Exploit into a net gain. If you draft carefully you’ll find added benefits for sacrificing your own creatures - everything from Wretched Throng’s ability to tutor up another copy of itself, to Desperate Farmer’s transformation into a more powerful form. Eke out enough incremental advantage and you’ll gradually arrive at an unassailable board state.

 

Blue/Red: Non-Creature Spells

 

Non-creature spells have considerable power. However, you only want so many of them in a Limited deck, as creatures are by far the most reliable method of reducing your opponent’s health to zero. Cards like Wandering Mind help by providing board presence while also searching for your non-creature spells. It also has flying, giving some insight into the way a Blue/Red deck should play: delicate, evasive, and aggressive. Cruel Witness will let you find the cards you need for a given situation, while Lambholt Raconteur // Lambholt Ravager simply burns your opponent out.

Note that VOW’s Blue/Red archetype is about non-creatures, and not just instants and sorceries. This makes it synergize well with Disturb creatures and their flip-side Auras.

 

Black/Red: Vampires ( Blood )


It’s a big mystery how Blood tokens will play out. Will they be primarily used to rummage through your deck, or as a resource for other cards? Ideally they’ll be both as with Bloodtithe Harvester, leading to a play pattern where you build up Blood tokens in the early game, use them in the mid-game to power out abilities such as Bloodtithe Harvester’s powerful removal effect, and then rummage through your deck for the cards you need to finish your opponent off. Bloodcrazed Socialite is more specialized in using Blood as a temporary buff effect, while Blood Hypnotist changes things up by triggering its ability whenever a Blood is sacrificed for any reason whatsoever.

 

Black/Green: Toughness Matters

 

Defensive creatures with low power and high toughness are generally not great in Limited, as they can’t always kill your opponent’s attackers, allowing your opponent to simply go wide. But a card such as Ancient Lumberknot changes the equation by turning those defensive creatures into killing machines. Catapult Fodder // Catapult Captain is a reasonable alternative win condition - and if you need to buy time to place your defenses, then Flourishing Hunter will gain you an absurd amount of life.

 

Red/White: Attack!


Red/White has long been the aggro archetype, and that remains the case in VOW. Markov Waltzer has both evasion and haste… and exceptionally low power for a four-drop. That last drawback is balanced out by its powerful ability, which helps ensure that your early attackers either bash in for additional damage, or at the very least trade with your opponent’s more expensive blockers. Blood Petal Celebrant is especially good when its power grows, whereas Estwald Shieldbasher doesn’t need too much help to be extremely troublesome for a defending opponent.

 

Red/Green: Werewolves ( Day/Night )

   

The Red/Green Werewolf deck was considered weak in MID, as its linear board development was easily countered by efficient removal, tempo spells, or your opponent simply saving up two cheap spells to flip Night back into Day. Child of the Pack // Savage Packmate solves that issue by being extremely threatening on both sides, allowing you to either go wide or bash in. And creatures such as Hungry Ridgewolf and Packsong Pup get their bonus irrespective of whether it’s Day or Night.

 

Green/White: Humans ( Training / +1/+1 Counters )


+1/+1 counters are a good payoff for the Training mechanic, but the Green/White archetype gives you even more benefit with cards such as Sigardian Paladin that not only rewards you for putting counters on a creature, but gives you the opportunity to buff them as well. In fact, the Green/White archetype is more properly described as +1/+1 counters, with multiple ways to gain value. Cloaked Cadet and its card drawing engine is one way. A more indirect way is Ollenbock Escort, who gives protection to a creature loaded up with counters.

 

Green/Blue: Self-Mill


Vilespawn Spider perfectly encapsulates what Green/Blue expects to do: self-mill, and then profit. The question becomes whether there’s enough other cards to make self-milling a viable strategy, and the answer lies in cards such as Moldgraf Millipede and Fear of Death. If you can mill enough cards to make Moldgraf Millipede a gigantic monster or to cause Fear of Death to completely neuter any of your opponent’s creatures, then the sheer efficiency of these spells may be enough to win you the game.

 

Mana Fixing

There’s no cycle of common dual lands in VOW, but the colorless options are all reasonable.

   

On top of this, Green has even better choices, with the creatures being particularly appealing.

 

This level of mana fixing is far from great. However it’s better than what could be found in MID, and over the course of playing that format I learned that splashing cards in MID Limited was both rewarding and far more viable than I initially believed - if one only spent the picks to do so.

 

Key Commons and Uncommons

  • White

        • Angelic Quartermaster: This creature is a plethora of value: a flying threat, a permanent buff to other creatures, and a trigger for any of your cards that care about +1/+1 counters.

        • Resistance Squad: A creature that replaces itself is always valuable.

        • Valorous Stance: This reprint remains a Limited all-star. If you have this in your hand then you’ll almost definitely have a hundred useful things to do with it.
  • Blue

        • Gutter Skulker // Gutter Shortcut: A board stall plus an unblockable threat has long been the formula for a winning board state, and if your opponent removes with Gutter Skulker then they still have to deal with whatever creature you put Gutter Skulker upon.

        • Scattered Thoughts: There have been many four mana draw-two spells in recent Limited sets. This one is particularly strong for two reasons. First, it synergizes well with both graveyard and non-creature spell strategies. Second, there are an abundance of three-mana counterspells in the set, so opponents may be afraid to cast into your open mana, giving you a free window to play this card.

        • Whispering Wizard: This creature is a weaker version of Murmuring Mystic from Guilds of Ravnica, and that card had to be killed on sight. Whispering Wizard isn’t quite as strong, but it’s still a very good value engine.
  • Black

        • Bleed Dry: This is a premium common removal spell that gets around indestructible and prevents any graveyard shenanigans.

        • Doomed Dissenter: This poor creature exists simply to die. Every Exploit deck will be delighted to have multiples of this card.

        • Fell Stinger: A three mana 3/2 creature with Deathtouch is a reasonable card. Tack on some card advantage and you’ve got something amazing.
  • Red

        • Reckless Impulse: This isn’t quite a two-mana draw two, but it’s not too far off. I expect to get burned out many times by a Blue/Red deck playing multiple copies of this card.

        • Rending Flame: This is simply a very efficient removal spell with additional upside against Spirits.

        • Vampires’ Vengeance: An instant-speed board wipe for your opponent’s early plays is a great way to sustain the momentum of an aggressive Vampires deck. And in the worst case when your opponent starts playing creatures with more than two toughness, you can still attack into those creatures and cast this post-block.
  • Green

        • Bramble Wurm: Some Limited games are a delicate dance of creatures and cmobat tricks. Others involve slamming down a huge 7/6 trampling Wurm and enjoying the look on your opponent's face when they realize that they have no way of beating it.

        • Reclusive Taxidermist: This creature’s quick acceleration can put you ahead early, and its stat-boosting text means that it’ll still be useful late.

        • Wolf Strike: A punch spell is good removal, and an instant-speed punch spell is an amazing combat trick that can lead to massive blowouts that your opponents will find it hard to recover from.

     

    Summation

    Although Innistrad: Crimson Vow shares a setting and several mechanics with Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, I expect the set to play out much differently in Limited.

    • Card advantage is key in Limited, and in MID there were a high number of innate 2-for-1 mechanics: Flashback spells, Decayed zombies, and Disturb cards with creatures on both sides. These mechanics were centered in White and Blue and Black, and it’s no coincidence that many considered them to be the strongest colors. Well, in VOW the first two mechanics are gone and Disturb cards are now creatures on the front side and Auras on the back. As a result I expect the colors to be more balanced.
    • This lack of easy card advantage means that you’ll have to expend more effort to find it. When drafting and building a deck, look for synergies beyond what you might expect within your color pair; a “toughness matters” sub-theme in a Blue/Black deck, or a few “lifegain matters” cards in a Green/White deck.
    • The slighter graveyard theme means that graveyard hate is less valuable (although still more valuable than an average Limited environment).
    • You can pack enchantment hate for Disturb Auras, but a good removal spell is far more generically useful.
    • Along that vein, the mana fixing in VOW is marginally better than MID. If you’re playing a slower VOW Limited deck, then you may want to reach into a third color to grab powerful spells that synergize with your deck and put you over the top in the late game.

    Good luck!