Dracula Comes to Magic: The Gathering In New Innistrad: Crimson Vow Set

Dracula is coming the Magic: The Gathering multiverse in the upcoming set Innistrad: Crimson Vow. Crimson Vow is the follow-up to September's Innistrad: Midnight Hunt set. Where Midnight Hunt was all about Werewolves, Crimson Vow is all about vampires. What better time to bring the most iconic vampire in all fiction in the game? Like the Godzilla monsters that appeared in the Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths set, each card in the Dracula series is a variant of another card found in Crimson Vow. Count Dracula, seen below, is a variant of the vampire Planeswalker Sorin Markov, for example. The Dracula series cards are box topper cards included with set booster displays and appear in collector booster packs. The other cards in the Dracula series will feature passages from Bram Stoker's original Dracula novel as flavor text.

Crimson Vow's story picks up immediately after Midnight Hunt and has a similar structure. As Midnight Hunt centered on the Harvestide Festival event, Crimson Vow's action revolves around the wedding of Olivia Voldaren, one of Innistrad's most powerful vampires. Due to the Harvestide ritual failing, Innistrad is plunged into eternal night, the perfect opportunity for the plane's vampires to make a power play. Olivia seeks to wed Edgar Markov, the progenitor of all vampires on Innistrad, thus consolidating the power of two of Innistrad's most powerful bloodlines.

The Gatewatch members on Innistrad -- Teferi, Chandra, and Kaya -- once again join with Innistrad's werewolf Planeswalker Arlinn to stop Olivia's plot, this time also seeking an alliance with Egar Markov's grandson, the vampire Planewalker Sorin Markov. Teferi and Arlinn both got new Planeswalker cards in Midnight Hunt. Crimson Vow will see Kaya, Chandra, and Sorin represented.

A new Magic: The Gathering set means new and returning Magic: The Gathering mechanics. The daybound/nightbound and disturb mechanics from Midnight Hunt are back in Crimson Vow. The exploit keyword, first seen in the Dragons of Tarkir set, returns in Crimson Vow. When an exploit creature enters the battlefield, the controlling player may sacrifice a creature, potentially triggering an effect on that card or others.

Three new mechanics join the game in Crimson Vow. Blood tokens are artifact tokens that can be tapped and sacrificed while paying 1 mana and discarding a card to draw a card. But like food and treasure tokens, there are plenty of other ways for cards, especially vampire cards, to interact with the tokens.

Training is a new keyword that works like a reverse mentor mechanic. Whenever a creature with training attacks alongside a creature with greater power, the training creature gains a +1/+1 token.

Cleave is the final mechanic. Found exclusively on instants and sorceries, paying a card's cleave cost allows players to "cleave" certain bracketed text from the card. Typically the removed text consists of conditional phrases, thus increasing the card's power through its removal.

Commander returns in Crimson Vow as well. Two new decks will be released. One is a blue-white spirits deck with Millicent, Restless Revenant. The other is a black-red vampires deck using Strefan, Maurer Progenitor.

And, of course, Innistrad has its unique showcase frames. To get double down on the vampire theme, every vampire card in the set has a fang frame variant. Additionally, every legendary card in the set sans vampires has an eternal night variant, bringing Innistrad's gothic flavor to the fore.

As for lands, there's another set of eternal night lands, continuing the theme begun in Midnight Hunt. Lastly, the new enemy dual lands debut along with borderless variants.

What do you think of this first look at Magic: The Gathering's upcoming Innistrad: Crimson Vow set? Let us know what you think about it in the comments section. 

Innistrad: Crimson Vow will debut on Magic: The Gathering Arena on November 11th. Prerelease events begin on November 12th. The set's tabletop debut is on November 19th.