Creepy MTG Annabelle-like doll fuels Aggro in Duskmourn Draft and Commander

Horrifying creatures are coming to Magic: The Gathering through the Duskmourn House of Horror set, featuring Artifact Toys like Arabella, Abandoned Doll, which could be an absolute powerhouse of a card in Aggro decks.

The Toy creature type is new to MTG, designed specifically for the Duskmourn House of Horrors set. Some Toys that have been previewed so far include a Piggy Bank that creates Treasure tokens and a Twitching Doll that’s a mana dork and creates spiders. As we hit the tail end of Duskmourn spoilers, many were wondering if we’d get a Legendary Toy for Commander—and we did through Arabella, Abandoned Doll. But she’s not just a possible commander for Toys as the two-drop is a powerful signpost card for the Red and White Duskmourn Draft archetype.

Previewed by Golden Goblin Games on Sept. 9, the two-drop Uncommon is similar to Valley Rotcaller from Bloomburrow, fueling strategies that use creatures with power of two or less instead of specific creature types.

• Mana cost: RW
• Type: Legendary Artifact Creature—Toy
• Rarity: Uncommon
• Stats: 1/3
• Ability: Whenever Arabella, Abandoned Doll attacks, it deals X damage to each opponent and you gain X life, where X is the number of creatures you control with power two or less.

On a go-wide Aggro board with tokens and low-cost/low-powered creatures, Arabella, Abandoned Doll is a bomb Uncommon in the Duskmourn Limited meta. The Toy’s three toughness helps it survive attacks, other creatures don’t have to attack for the ability to trigger, and cards like Shardmage’s Rescue can protect the Legendary Toy when targeted with removal.

What makes Arabella, Abandoned Doll so strong is the Lifegain reaped in addition to the Ping damage. Drain and Gain Aristocrat strategies are often found in RB and WB. The new Legendary Toy has added Ping and Gain as an official strategy for RW builds.

Most of the Toys revealed through Duskmourn spoilers so far have power of two or less, but there’s hardly enough to build a Commander deck around Arabella, Abandoned Doll. The Legendary has a good chance to see play in Standard, though.

You can test out Arabella, Abandoned Doll when Duskmourn House of Horrors drops into local game stores through Prerelease events on Sept. 20. The digital launch for the new Standard-legal MTG set is scheduled on Sept. 24. And don’t sleep on subscribing to MTG Madness for a full graded breakdown of every Duskmourn card for Limited and Standard, dropping into emails next week.