As with most recent MTG sets, Duskmourn: House of Horror is absolutely dripping with flavor. This is partly due to the use of great top-down designs, and partly due to the use of classic Horror movie tropes. Enfranchised players typically prefer the former, while the latter is great for bringing in new blood.
As fun as all the tropes are, they do make Duskmourn look and feel rather visually distinct. Due to this, the set’s cards often don’t play well with more grounded sets from Magic’s past. Thankfully, often doesn’t mean always, as Duskmourn: House of Horror creates an incredibly fun combo with a 16-year-old card. If you like Gremlins (the tokens) and Gremlins (the franchise) this MTG combo is for you.
The MTG Gremlins Combo
As pointed out by flavorjudgedraw on Twitter, Duskmourn’s Gremlin Tamer has the potential to go infinite in an incredibly flavorful way. This is thanks to Enchanted Evening, an obscure enchantment from back in Shadowmoor. Enchanted Evening turns all permanents in play into enchantments too, which is a rules nightmare for various reasons. Rules nightmare aside, it also helps us power our combo.
With Evening out, the Gremlins created by Gremlin Tamer’s Eerie effect will also become enchantments. This means that when they enter, they’ll trigger Eerie again, thus creating another Gremlin. This is a true infinite combo, and will continue until something stops it. If no one can, this will actually end the game in a draw. Thankfully there are plenty of ways to do this, mostly by adding black and sacrificing the Tamer at instant speed.
In Commander, this combo is more than viable as a win condition. You can play the two pieces in either order, and both have value in an Azorius enchantments list beyond their combo potential. You’ll need some kind of outlet to actually end the game, though. If you’re adding black you can easily use a Grim Guardian or a Blood Artist-type card to burn the table out. Alternatively, Altar of Dementia works without adding any colors.
This is a solid Commander combo, but it’s also incredibly flavorful. In the Gremlins movies, on which Duskmourn’s Gremlins are clearly based, touching water causes the Gremlins to multiply. Enchanted Evening shows a glowing pool of water, and by bringing Gremlin Tamer in contact with it your Gremlins multiply infinitely. Whether or not this reference was intentional is sadly unknown, but we wouldn’t put it past Wizards. Being able to call back to a 16-year-old card on a whim is part of what makes Magic great, after all.
Flavor To Savor
The MTG Gremlins combo is a win on all fronts, but it’s far from the only excellent Horror movie reference in Duskmourn. A ton of individual cards, and groups of cards, tell similarly sinister stories here. Just look at Trial of Agony. Both the art and effect turn this card into a self-contained Saw trap, capturing the ‘only one can survive’ nature of a lot of the traps in that series well. This card is also part of the wider Lord of Pain theme, which includes cards like Let’s Play a Game and Grab the Prize.
Unstoppable Slasher is another great piece of flavor. It’s a bit on-the-nose, but the card references the antagonists of multiple slasher films, from Friday the 13th to Nightmare on Elm Street. The latter in particular, with the claws on its left hand in the art. These films are notorious for having unkillable villains, largely in order to keep the series going for multiple sequels. Unstoppable Slasher captures that perfectly, both in its revival ability and the fact it can cut half of your opponent’s life away in one swing.
It’s not just American Horror that gets references in Duskmourn, however. Cursed Recording and Screaming Nemesis combine to represent Japanese Horror too. Recording is a pretty blatant reference to The Ring, in which a cursed video tape kills all who watch it in seven days. Nemesis is a bit more open-ended, however. With her stretching limbs and excessively long hair, she could be The Ring’s Sadako or The Grudge’s Kayako. The idea of the vengeful female ghost is integral in Japanese Horror, and it’s conveyed brilliantly here. While some were skeptical at first, the stories Duskmourn tells have turned out to be compelling indeed.
Read More: Crazy New Duskmourn Enchantment Could Need An Emergency Ban
