Magic The Gathering: What Is Coven?

Let your creatures come together with our guide to one of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt’s new mechanics, Coven.

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With their Angel protectors gone and the night’s monsters closing in, the Humans of Innistrad have leaned on each other for support. Cults based on community and tradition have sprouted up, with the Dawnhart Coven leading the way. It’s in these humans joining together where one of the new mechanics of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt can be found: Coven.

Coven can be really helpful for a wide range of decks. But how does it work, and how can you make the most of it? Here’s your guide to everything you need to know about Magic The Gathering’s Coven mechanic.

What Is Coven?

Coven is an odd mechanic, in that the only shared feature among all cards with Coven is its requirement: no matter what that card’s Coven ability is, it can only happen if you have at least three creatures with differing power (the first number in a creature’s bottom right corner).

Some cards may trigger as you go into combat, such as Candlelit Cavalry and Stalwar Pathlighter, while others might trigger at your end step, like Contortionist Troupe. Others can be activated at any time, like Dawnhart Mentor and Sungold Sentinel. However, no matter what, all Coven effects can only activate if you control three creatures that each have different amounts of power from each other.

Note that the creature with Coven doesn’t have to be part of those three creatures for its ability to trigger, it simply needs to be on the battlefield alongside those three. In fact, there are cards that have Coven that aren’t creatures: Candletrap is an enchantment, while Duel For Dominance, Might of The Old Ways, and Ritual of Hope are all instants.

How To Use Coven

Unlike something like Decayed, Coven is such a varied ability that there is no one way you can use it. It can transform creatures (Ambitious Farmhand), give your creatures combat buffs (Duelcraft Trainer), or let you draw cards (Leinore, Autumn Sovereign).

However, one of the difficulties with using Coven, especially in a deck built around it, is that many of the creatures with its abilities sit within a limited range of power: the highest is the 5/5 Candlelit Cavalry, but most sit between zero and three, with the odd one at four. If you want to maximise on those triggers, you need ways to manually adjust the power of creatures.

By far the best tool for this would be a card like Cathar’s Crusade, which puts a +1/+1 counter on each creature whenever another one enters the battlefield under your control, or Katilda, Dawnhart Prime, who lets you put +1/+1 counters on each creature. These are particularly helpful in token-focused decks, where you may otherwise simply have a lot of 1/1 Human creature tokens sat doing nothing.

What Colour Is Coven?

All abilities have their own colours in which they appear more frequently. As Coven is the Human-centric mechanic of Innistrad, it’s exclusively found in the Selesnya colours of white and green.

It is most commonly found in white, where it is found on nine cards. In green, it features on six. In green and white, it shows up on three, with two of them being the Coven-centric Legendary creatures Leinore, Autumn Sovereign (who is the Commander of the Coven Counters Innistrad: Midnight Hunt preconstructed deck), and Sigarda, Champion of Light.

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