Innistrad Midnight Hunt: Mechanics Review Part 2

Today I’ll review the back half of the mechanics from Midnight Hunt!

Investigate

Investigate is something of a workhorse mechanic. Creating a clue token:

• Provides a mana sink
• Delayed card draw for power level balance
• Triggers effects that care about artifacts entering the battlefield
• Can be sacrificed to itself or to other effects
• Leaves an artifact behind

The majority of these upsides are only relevant in formats with larger card pools, which is why new Investigate cards are likely more exciting for veteran players than for newer ones.

In Limited, only five cards in Midnight Hunt Investigate, but they each take advantage of the Clue in different ways. Let’s take a look at one of my favorites to see how WotC puts the mechanic to work:

Investigate is what keeps this card so carefully balanced. If it drew a card, it’d be too good; creating a Clue gives the controller a card eventually, but in a way that feels different. Given both the mana cost of Foul Play along with the size of the creatures it hits, it’s likely to be cast in the early- to midgame. This means that the caster will likely be more focused on building out a board than sinking mana into a Clue to draw a card. The result is that Foul Play utilizes the Clue token as an extremely delayed card draw, like a really slow Mishra’s Bauble that you have to pay for.

Alternatively, in the late game, Foul Play changes into a different card, a four mana removal spell that does cantrip immediately. While this would be too good on Turn 3, it’s totally reasonable on Turn 8. Given the strength of Disturbing flyers in Limited, Foul Play is often a way to trade evenly on cards.

Let’s look at another card that leverages Clues: Briarbridge Tracker

I know, as a rare, this card isn’t likely to show up that often, but it’s a nice example of the flexibility that Clues give you in balancing a card. Briarbridge has a similar play pattern to Foul Play; if you cast it on Turn 3, chances are really good that you’re not going to be cracking that Clue anytime soon. Not just because you don’t have the mana to spare, but because you value a 4/3 more highly. In the late game, however, when the body is of less value, you’re more likely to use it as a 5 mana 2/3 that cycles.

This is why Investigate is so much more compelling than stapling “Draw a card” onto stuff. Creating a Clue forces players to make decisions, whereas drawing a card is a freebie. Even better, the Clue allows for different balancing decisions that would be impossible if the only option available to designers was “Draw a card.”

Coven

What do Battalion, Devotion, Party, and Coven have in common? Besides being largely popular, they all force the player to care about something that they don’t normally care about that doesn’t deviate too far from typical play patterns. Battalion wants players to attack, which they do anyways – it just wants them to attack in a certain way and incentivizes certain play patterns. Devotion, Party, and Coven want you to play creatures, which players do anyways, but they want you to pay a bit more attention to which creatures you’re playing.

These mechanics also find a happy medium. Wizards previously discussed scrapping an “odd matters” theme for Battle for Zendikar/Oath of the Gatewatch because it incentivized what ended up being bad gameplay. Ferocious, on the other hand, was rather boring and didn’t require much work to achieve.

Coven might not seem like an interesting mechanic at first glance, but actually impacts gameplay at every stage. Particularly in White, Midnight Hunt has lots of creatures with 2 and 3 power. If you want to be able to consistently turn on cards like Candlegrove Witch, you’re incentivized to draft and play cards with other powers more highly.

Coven may also inform how you engage in combat; perhaps you’re less likely to attack with that four-power creature because you want to preserve your Witch’s flying, or your Contortionist Troupe’s ability.

From R&D’s side of things, Coven caring about power gives them another knob to play with to balance cards. Strangely, lowering the power of a creature from 2 to 1 could actually make the card better in this set. One of the ways that Wizards creates Limited play environments that feel fresh is by making players care about different things, which naturally allows the prioritization of different “power-balancing knobs” in each set.

While Coven might not be your favorite mechanic because it’s not flashy, don’t underestimate its role in subtly creating interesting play patterns and helping to give Midnight Hunt Limited its identity.

Decayed

I admit; when I first read that Decayed was one of the design innovations that Mark Rosewater was most excited about in Midnight Hunt, I was skeptical. Tokens that died after one attack? That can’t even block? How are those not just bad tokens?

What I didn’t anticipate was the degree to which the mechanic would change the way players have to think about Decayed tokens. They’re not creature tokens that die, they’re “resource” tokens like Clues or Treasure that can occasionally sac to deal 2 damage. If Wizards hadn’t done such an excellent job with the Midnight Hunt environment, Decayed tokens may in fact have felt like garbage creature tokens.

Instead, we get to sacrifice them, fling them every turn, staple them on as riders to other effects, and generally generate them at a rate you would generate Clues instead of the rate you’d generate creature tokens. The fact that they’re so dang useless as creatures communicates very clearly to players that they should be sacrificing them. Especially for newer players, who are often reluctant to sacrifice their own creatures, it’s clear that Decayed tokens exist to die. For more experienced players, they get to learn about the existence of the End of Combat Step. And Arena players get to become frustrated as they try to turn on “Full Control” mode at just the right time.

Decayed dramatically shifts the degree to which cards can be balanced, serving as another example of the creation of a new “knob” that R&D can use to control power level and make this play environment feel different. These tokens are a beautiful way to add a small, “less than one card’s worth” advantage to a card. I’m excited to see WotC play more in this design space.

The Vampire Mechanic

As is flavorful for vampires, their unnamed mechanic cares about an opponent losing life this turn. The more powerful cards, like Florian, Voldaren Scion, scale with the amount of life lost, but the rest just care that an opponent got bit.

I often cite Raid, from Tarkir, as a fantastic mechanic. I like Raid because it encourages players to take game actions. The game of Magic is built around combat, and justifiably so, given that it has a fantastic combat system. As Rosewater has said before, “Make the fun part the correct strategy to win.” Combat is fun, and mechanics that incentivize it also tend to be fun. Yet interestingly, new players are often nervous about attacking. Explicitly telling them to attack via a mechanic is a great way to help them to learn that face is the place.

The “lose life” mechanic, like Spectacle before it, encourages players to attack. Because the mechanic only cares that any amount of life was lost, cards that are hard to block improve. Voldaren Stinger, for example, fits nicely with this strategy, as it’s easy to chip in for a single point of damage with only the threat of activation. Small flyers are similarly useful. Yet again, this informs how R&D balances the cards surrounding the mechanic, keeping in mind that cards that are tricky to block, even if they’re tiny, are going to be more valuable than in other sets.

Based on the cross-set synergy that Wizards likes to go for, I fully expect the vampire mechanic in Crimson Vow to be something akin to Spectacle or Bloodthirst. They hint at it in this set, and such a mechanic will play well with Midnight Hunt in the “Double Feature” draft early next year.

Thanks for reading!

Ryan Normandin is a grinder from Boston who has lost at the Pro Tour, in GP & SCG Top 8's, and to 7-year-olds at FNM. Despite being described as "not funny" by his best friend and "the worst Magic player ever" by Twitch chat, he cheerfully decided to blend his lack of talents together to write funny articles about Magic.