Magic: The Gathering meets crime fiction in Murders at Karlov Manor

Since the end of the Phyrexian Invasion, which was basically the Avengers: Endgame of Magic: The Gathering, the card game's expansions have hopped between some different genres of fiction. We had one set themed around fairytales and legends, and another based on pulp adventure in a jungle full of dinosaurs and pirates. Next we're going back indoors for a set themed around crime fiction called Murders at Karlov Manor, a kind of Agatha Christie take on Magic where Hercule Poirot isn't a mercurial Belgian, but is instead a wizard and maybe an elf.

Mystery's a great choice for a post-war story. Film noir came about during the post-war 1940s, and all those sleepless hard-drinking detectives with no real skills beyond their ability to shoot a gun and survive being knocked unconscious on the regular make more sense when you realize every one of them just got home from World War II. For those of us sickos who care about Magic's story, Murders at Karlov Manor makes great use of its own post-war setting—the planeswalker Kaya has has just returned to her home of Ravnica after fighting the Phyrexians to find that instead of a hero's welcome she's blamed for the city's suffering during her absence, and Ravnica's guilds are at each other's throats again now their wartime truce has ended.

For the non-sickos who care more about the mechanics, the structure of a murder mystery is represented in new mechanics like Disguise and Cloak, which let you cast cards face-down as simply «A Mysterious Creature» with 2/2 and two points of ward to protect them. Cloaked cards can be flipped for their casting cost, while Disguised cards have a different cost (perhaps cheaper) you pay to dramatically reveal  their identity.

Another new mechanic is Suspect, which lets you designate a creature as a potential murderer, in which case they can no longer block, but gain Menace—meaning when they attack it takes two creatures minimum to block them. There are times when you'll want to Suspect your own