Farewell, Midnight Hunt

Hooray! Rotation month!

In previous years, I dedicated September to looking at the sets rotating out of Standard that year (I explain the concept here). But last year, I was caught off-guard . . . Wizards delayed rotation by almost a year, for reasons I explained then. Did their experiment work?

Last year, I was uncertain. Having gone through it, I'm not a fan. An astonishing 13 sets (see the list here) are currently in Standard. Yet, the 'same old cards' saw play in deck after deck. I grew tired of that; the new sets may have adjusted the meta but didn't displace those staple cards. As a result, I felt things got stale, so I'm looking forward to this change. At the end of this month, four sets will rotate out of Standard. Today, I look at the oldest: Innidstrad: Midnight Hunt.

Released in September 2021, Midnight Hunt was a return to the Innistrad plane—a world of gothic horror, featuring tribes like vampires, zombies, werewolves, spirits, clerics, and more. Like previous offerings on this plane, the set's mechanics focused on things related to tribes like these. Summarizing from MTGWiki:

- Werewolves return: those double-faced cards that transform between their day and night versions

- Humans get more abilities if they work in a coven, meaning you have creatures with three different power levels on the battlefield

- Spirits can haunt the living by returning to the battlefield with the disturb mechanic

- Zombies are everywhere but are decayed, meaning they are sacrificed once they attack

- Vampires benefit if an opponent lost life that turn

I enjoyed the set overall (though not as much as the original Innistrad block), and several cards became staples in my decks for the last three years.

Favorites

Adeline was great in white aggro decks. Brutal Cathar showed up everywhere. Lunarch Veteran was key in life gain/'weenie' decks. Consider and Fading Hope were staple blue cards; Delver of Secrets was fun in one specific deck. For black, Jadar was a lot of fun, and Morbid Opportunist was excellent for card draw. Play with Fire was a frequent choice; Augur of Autumn was always good for green stompy, and Wrenn was fun with the same.

Good Riddance

Looking back, nothing jumps out as being overly obnoxious. A handful were a minor annoyance: Sunset Revelry generally signaled a long game was coming. The Meathook Massacre was overpowered (and thus banned). Burn Down the House isn't a bad card but it burned me a few times. And the land cycle (Haunted Ridge and others) wasn't bad but could open up mana options (and opportunities to go nuts) by turn three.

In sum, the set was okay. I will miss a few cards, and some of my decks will need re-tooling, but this is a set we can dismiss with thanks but no sadness (or relief).