Duskmourn (DSK) Limited Review — Green

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Duskmourn: House of Horror (DSK) has its prerelease events on September 20, 2024, and officially releases a week later on September 27, 2024. Want to know more about how each card rates in Limited, with recommendations? Then check out this series of DSK Limited reviews!

• For the mechanics, see this article: Duskmourn Mechanics Explained
• For a first look at the Limited archetypes, see this article: Duskmourn Limited Preliminary Look

Rating Scale

5.0: Always take it
4.5: Always take it if you’re in the right colors
4.0: First-pick quality
3.5: Strong enough, but not necessarily a first pick
3.0: Above average (you’ll really want it in your final deck)
2.5: Average, maybe around the 6th or 7th pick of a draft
2.0 to 1.0: Below average (you’d rather not play it than play it)
0.5 to 0.0: Unplayable (basically never play it, it will only help you lose)

Card Ratings

Rating: 4.0
Comment: For an uncommon there’s not much to complain about: a 9/9 trampler for 7 mana, and when targeted it even draws you a card. If there’s no stronger rare in the same pack, it’s a very worthwhile pick.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: A draft-environment hate card, and the body itself is decent too.

Rating: 4.0
Comment: A 5-mana 5/5 with haste and trample that you may get to use again. A solid, strong card.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: A slightly mediocre 5-drop, but when it dies it gives you a chance to loot plus a 2/2.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: Quite a few creatures in this set are also enchantments, so cards like this are worth maindecking. Even with no target you can still manifest dread to make a value trade or a chump block that buys you time.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Slightly worse than Break Down the Door. Its only upside is that it shuffles the card back, which prevents the opponent from assembling delirium early.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Life gain is a good ability in Limited, but a 4-mana 4/4 is already hard to cast at the right time, and tapping it down for the ability wastes such a good body, which is a bit awkward.

Rating: 2.0
Comment: After removing a creature you lose tempo. It’s clearly designed for green-white, but I think green-white would rather attack with combat tricks, and it can also be responded to.

Rating: 2.0
Comment: If it grows even once it’s great value, and it fits the blue-green theme well. If your deck can’t manifest dread much, I’d suggest not playing it.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: If it can make more than two, it’s very strong. When drafting, remember to pair it with more combat tricks, Vehicles, or other cards that can tap it.

Rating: 4.0
Comment: A 3-mana 3/3 with vigilance is already good, it comes back onto the battlefield when it dies, and turning all your creatures into mana creatures also makes it easy for the green-white theme to keep tapping things. Super strong.

If you open it in your first pack, you can start your journey toward a five-color bomb deck.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: It fits every green-based archetype: in green-white it helps two creatures survive (survival), having two types lets you build delirium in red-green and black-green, and only in blue-green is it purely a 5-mana 5/4 trampler. If you have two creatures on the battlefield by turns 1 to 3, you can bring this creature out quickly to put pressure on the opponent.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: It can attack or defend as needed. Very high quality for a 2-drop creature.

Rating: 2.0
Comment: Flash and trample give the opponent a chance to miscalculate their life total, so it’s not a bad combat trick. But combat tricks easily get 2-for-1’d in Limited, so think twice when picking it.

Rating: 2.0
Comment: The toughness is a bit too low. Designing a reach creature like this is a bit too unfavorable for defense; play it when you need an air defense.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: Besides making it easier to go into a multicolor plan, it also gives you a way to recover cards. Pretty good.

Rating: 4.0
Comment: Manifest dread whenever you attack is extremely powerful, and you even have a chance to use its ability to cheat mana!

Rating: 4.0
Comment: The crew ability helps the survival theme of the green-white archetype, casting it also helps fill the graveyard for delirium, and it even has a chance to help ramp. A very strong 4-drop for your curve.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Green-based decks will especially want one or two of these, to protect your big beast, and it also helps green-white trade a small creature for a big one and trigger survival effects.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Other than keeping you from getting stuck on lands, it has no extra benefit.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: A jack-of-all-trades small creature that, when it can’t be unlocked, can still draw you a ramp card. But it’s still not as good as Break Down the Door, and if you play it first the opponent finds it easier to play around.

Rating: 4.0
Comment: The earlier you slam it down, the more pressure it puts on the opponent, and the longer the opponent waits to remove it, the more likely you are to suddenly slam down something big, not to mention using Vehicles or other methods to tap it and extend your advantage.

Rating: 0.0
Comment: Not designed for Limited; don’t play it if you can avoid it.

Of course, it’s not out of the question that you could use this card to slam down strong cards like Valgavoth, Terror Eateror Shroudstomper.

Rating: 2.0
Comment: Green’s other 2-drop tempo plays are all too strong, so you won’t want to use this one. You’d probably only want it in blue-green or delirium decks that lack a 2-drop curve.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: For green multicolor or green-based ramp-into-expensive-creatures decks. After ramping with the left half, in the mid to late game you can open the right half to bring along another 5/5.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Green’s classic one-sided fight. Circumstances permitting, it can also dodge an opponent’s trick (when the opponent has mana and you also have a creature in hand).

Rating: 3.5
Comment: As long as you can trigger delirium, it keeps growing into a threat the opponent has to remove, provided you can trigger delirium.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: A 2-mana 0/4 holds the ground for quite a while; it’s a good mana creature.

cephille: It can hold off red’s mythic Screaming Nemesiswithout taking damage. When the opponent has that big bomb, this mana creature will put you much more at ease.

Rating: 4.0
Comment: Unless you’re short on lands, casting it straight as a 6/5 is better. Besides helping green multicolor plans, it also lets you slam down other big creatures faster.

Rating: 1.5
Comment: It exists purely to trigger delirium. By the time a 1-mana 3/3 body really triggers delirium, it probably doesn’t have much impact on the board.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: A 5-mana 3/4 body is a failing grade, but green creatures with haste still make it easy for the opponent to miscalculate. If you have Vehicles this card is pretty strong: turning lands into 3/3s, 6/6s, 9/9s and beyond in a row threatens the opponent with a lot of damage on board.

Rating: 2.0
Comment: Fills your curve and helps delirium. It’s not that you can’t play it, but there are better 2-mana options, and it’s not impossible to really use this card to bring out Altanak, the Thrice-Called; it depends on the stars aligning!

Rating: 3
Comment: One of the stronger cards in the five-color cycling cycle. Early on you can cycle it away to find lands when short on them, and late game a 7/6 trampler is a very powerful body! In green-white or black-green, after you cycle it you also have a chance to reanimate it for a little combo!

Rating: 2.5
Comment: A good helper for green multicolor. After triggering delirium it has a passable body, making it a pretty decent creature.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: A payoff card for green multicolor or blue-green. Think of it as a 4-mana 2/2 that ramps you once; but in green multicolor you may not have that many basic lands, so watch your number of basics when you include this.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: If you play it on curve on turn 2, it puts a lot of pressure on the opponent, accelerates you, and late in the game can build a wave of reach creatures.

Rating: 4.0
Comment: It makes the green-white survival theme easier to trigger, and it’s a card you can take as long as you’re in green. As long as it isn’t left alone on the battlefield it’s a very annoying card, and late in the game it can even Overrun, which is extremely powerful!

Rating: 3.0
Comment: The old-environment 3-mana “return a permanent card” effect, plus a 2/2 on top. For you if you like resource trades.

Rating: 5.0
Comment: One of the few 5.0 super bombs in this set. Its color requirement is light, so splash it whenever you see it. When using it, pay a little attention to your library so you don’t get milled out.

As an example of how to splash this card: if you’re blue-black and open it, see whether you can pick some dual lands along the way that include blue-black plus green (blue-green, black-green). If your card filtering is good enough, you can also consider running a green basic land.

Rating: 2.0
Comment: Not really suited for Limited. Using the graveyard on the turn you unlock it for 5 mana, and an X+5 cost, are real usage restrictions; and normally you don’t have that much time to play lands from the graveyard using the Room on the left.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: A 2-mana 3/1 body is great for trading up with the opponent, and the surveil 1 on entering and dying helps you adjust your library. Good dog.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: A 4-mana 5/4 is already a passing body, and once delirium is triggered it can also earn you cards when you cast it. Excellent for an uncommon.

Conclusion

As a Standard set, this really opened my eyes. How is every card designed so inflated, especially green? The draft experience in Duskmourn should be explosive, and I hope everyone drafts more uwu