Overview
A 16-card custom proxy pack built around K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth and the mono-black commander archetype. Original artwork throughout. Designed as a complete collector's object — cards, packaging, and identity system treated as a single piece of work.
Concept
Mono-black MTG has always had a distinct visual language — corruption, devotion, life as currency. The Horrorcore Set leans into that fully. Every card was approached as an individual illustration brief: horror-inflected, anime-adjacent, heavy on contrast and intent. Nothing stock, nothing generic.
Process
Started with the card list — built around K'rrik as the commander, then selected the 15 cards that define how the deck actually plays. Every inclusion had to earn its place mechanically and aesthetically.
Art direction was established before a single card was laid out. The reference pool pulled from horror illustration, anime, and black metal visual culture — high contrast, expressive line work, figures that feel like they belong in the same world without being stylistically identical.
Card layouts were treated as design problems as much as illustration frames. The MTG card template is immediately recognisable but has enough flexibility to push. Typography, border treatment, and flavour text placement were all considered per card rather than templated across the set.
Packaging came last — the bag, the barbed wire, the CNS1 branding. The physical object needed to feel like it belonged to the same universe as the cards inside it.
Scope
Card illustration and layout across 17 cards — K'rrik, Necropotence, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Doomsday, Reanimate, Toxic Deluge, Dark Ritual, Thoughtseize, Grave Pact, Crypt Ghast, Mutilate, Defile, Corrupt, Sol Ring, Eaten Alive, Swamp. Packaging design. Brand identity. Limited run physical product.
Released independently under Cans.One / CNS1 Heavy Industries.
