Innistrad Remastered (INR): Set Guide & Card List
Some planes in Magic's multiverse feel like a second home. Innistrad - with its gothic horror atmosphere, werewolves prowling moonlit forests, and vampires scheming in candlelit manors - is one of them. Innistrad Remastered (INR) brings together the best of that plane's history into a single, fully draftable paper set, released on January 24, 2025.
What is Innistrad Remastered?
Innistrad Remastered is part of the Masters series and the fourth remastered Magic: The Gathering set to appear in paper. It draws cards from across the full span of Innistrad's publishing history - the original Innistrad block (2011-2012), the Shadows over Innistrad block (2016), and the two standalone sets Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and Innistrad: Crimson Vow (both 2021).
The set also pulls in Commander product cards set on Innistrad, as well as reprints from entirely unrelated sets - Stronghold, Mirrodin, Alara Reborn, and others - reimagined with new Innistrad-flavoured art. Think of it less as a straight reprint set and more as a love letter to the plane, curated and redesigned from the ground up.
INR contains 297 regular cards, including 10 basic lands (with retro frame variants), and all cards are legal in whatever formats they were already legal in before this printing.
The set's tagline is "Return to Your Old Haunts" - which is, honestly, exactly right.
Themes and mechanics
Innistrad Remastered doesn't introduce new mechanics; it's a celebration of what the plane already does well. That means a deep roster of horror-adjacent themes and double-faced card designs that the Innistrad sets pioneered.
The plane's signature mechanics
The four source sets between them contribute an unusually rich mechanical toolkit:
- Transform / double-faced cards (DFCs) - first introduced in the original Innistrad (2011), DFCs are woven throughout the remaster. Werewolves that transform under the right conditions, Humans who become monsters, and Vampires ascending to new power all appear.
- Flashback - a recurring Innistrad staple. Cast a spell from your graveyard for its flashback cost, then exile it.
- Investigate / Clue tokens - from the Shadows over Innistrad block, giving players artifact tokens they can sacrifice to draw cards.
- Delirium - rewards having four or more card types in your graveyard, fitting perfectly with the set's graveyard-heavy themes.
- Day/Night and Daybound/Nightbound - from Midnight Hunt, tracking whether it's day or night based on spell-casting patterns, which controls when certain werewolves transform.
- Exploit, Emerge, and Meld - from the Eldritch Moon portion of the Shadows block, adding sacrifice and Eldrazi-influenced weirdness to the mix.
The graveyard is a resource on Innistrad, and INR leans into that fully. Expect a draft environment that rewards patience, careful sequencing, and knowing when to fill your yard versus when to cash it in.
Reimagined reprints
One of INR's more unusual choices is the inclusion of cards from completely unrelated sets - Stronghold (1998), Mirrodin (2003), Alara Reborn (2009), and a handful of others - reprinted with new art and flavour text that places them firmly on Innistrad. These aren't just cosmetic changes; they're an invitation to see familiar cards through a new lens.
Format check: These reimagined cards are legal wherever the original printing is legal. The new Innistrad art doesn't change the card's format status.
Card frames and special treatments
INR is generous with its alternate treatments, and it helps to know the numbering before you crack a pack.
| Treatment | Card numbers | |---|---| | Regular cards (incl. 10 basic lands) | #1-297 | | Borderless cards with new art | #298-322 | | Werewolves - Midnight Hunt "Equinox" showcase | #323-325 | | Vampires - Crimson Vow "Fang" showcase | #326-328 | | Retro frame (one-sided) | #329-447 | | Retro frame DFCs | #448-474 | | Retro frame exclusives | #475-480 | | Showcase Movie Poster cards | #481-491 | | Release card | #492 |
The Movie Poster showcase treatment is a particular highlight - a stylised take that leans hard into the horror-film aesthetic the plane has always evoked. The Equinox werewolf frames from Midnight Hunt and the Fang vampire frames from Crimson Vow both return for a small selection of creatures, giving those iconic monster types a showcase slot each.
Retro frame fans are especially well served here, with cards numbered all the way through to #480 - including a dedicated block of retro frame exclusives that don't appear in the regular frame at all.
Limited and Draft
INR is a fully draftable set, which is the real promise of a remastered release. Rather than just bundling reprints into booster packs, the set was designed so its cards interact with each other and support distinct draft archetypes.
The source sets span several distinct mechanical eras of Innistrad, so the designers had to weave them together into a coherent draft format. Graveyard strategies are the connective tissue - flashback, delirium, and exploit all reward filling and using your graveyard, and that shared language runs through most of the colour pairs.
Given the inclusion of werewolves (day/night), vampires (Fang treatment), and the full horror creature type lineup, tribal strategies are likely to be meaningful in draft as well. Innistrad has always been a plane where Humans banding together, or Spirits haunting opponents, or Zombies grinding opponents out, felt like coherent plans - not just random synergies.
The draft format's full shape will emerge from play, and as always with remastered sets, the mix of cards from different eras can produce surprising synergies that the original formats never saw.
Set origins and development history
The story of how INR came to exist is a bit unusual, and I think it's worth knowing.
Wizards of the Coast began initial development in 2020, with a scope limited to the first two Innistrad blocks - the original Innistrad block and the Shadows over Innistrad block. Melissa DeTora was heavily involved in the early design work. At that point, Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow hadn't been released yet and weren't eligible for inclusion.
Then the set was shelved. At some point during development, Wizards paused the project and redirected resources to other products. The exact timeline isn't public, but the gap was long enough that by the time work resumed, Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow had both been released and could now be folded in. JC Tao took over as set lead for the resumed development.
That pause arguably made the set better - INR ended up covering the full span of Innistrad's history rather than just half of it. What started as a two-block remaster became a comprehensive anthology of the plane.
Lore and setting
Innistrad is Magic's gothic horror plane - a world perpetually on the edge of catastrophe, where humans cling to survival against vampires, werewolves, zombies, and worse. The original Innistrad set (2011) is widely considered one of the most atmospherically cohesive sets ever made, and the plane has been revisited multiple times because players keep wanting to go back.
The four main source sets each represent a different chapter of Innistrad's story:
- Innistrad and Dark Ascension (2011-2012): The original visit - Avacyn the archangel has gone missing, and without her protection, the plane's monsters are ascendant. Dark Ascension follows as hope dims further.
- Avacyn Restored (2012): Avacyn returns - but something is wrong with her.
- Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon (2016): Avacyn has gone mad, and the reason is worse than anyone expected: Emrakul, the Promised End, an Eldrazi titan, has been awakening beneath the plane.
- Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow (2021): A third visit, this time following new characters as Innistrad contends with the aftermath of Emrakul's influence and the eternal tensions between its monster factions.
INR's tagline - "Return to Your Old Haunts" - works on multiple levels. It's an invitation for players who loved these sets first time around, and it's a promise that the plane's atmosphere is intact.
Set legacy
Innistrad Remastered sits in an interesting position. It's not filling a reprints gap the way some Masters sets do - many of these cards are already relatively accessible. What INR is doing is something slightly different: it's creating a unified, draftable Innistrad experience that no individual set could offer.
The reimagined art treatments, the retro frame exclusives, and the Movie Poster showcases give collectors and fans something genuinely new even among familiar cards. And the decision to include Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow - sets that almost didn't make it in - means INR covers the full arc of one of Magic's most beloved planes.
As with all Masters-adjacent sets, the value proposition depends on what you're after. For draft, it's a rare chance to play with cards across Innistrad's entire history at the same table. For collectors, the frame treatments are some of the most thematically appropriate in recent memory. For newer players who missed Shadows or the original Innistrad block the first time around, it's a well-curated entry point into a plane that still sets the standard for atmospheric set design.
