We were midway through a game of Magic: The Gathering, and I’d just played my first Planeswalker, a horrifying red skeleton made of writhing insects called Grist. I activated its ability and flipped over the top card of my deck, dropping it into my graveyard in exchange for a small insect creature to add to my growing army. There was an added bonus: If the card I just flipped was also an insect, I could repeat the process. The chances seemed low. I flipped an insect. Twice.
Duskmourn isn’t available for a few more days, but I was lucky enough to get my hands on Magic: The Gathering’s new horror-themed set a little early and test it out over the weekend with some friends. Wizards of the Coast sent me two of its ready-to-play preconstructed Commander decks: the much-hyped Endless Punishment and the slept-on Death Toll.
Death Toll, a precon built around the new legendary creature, “Winter, Cynical Opportunist,” is a green-black deck full of massive creatures and removal spells to slow down your opponent. It’s built around the ability to mill your own library, moving cards from your deck into your graveyard to then either bring them back to life, activate other abilities, or both. It’s also extremely underrated.
Early rankings published by Gamesradar+ and The Gamer both listed Death Toll dead last among the four Duskmourn precons. Popular MtG YouTube channel Tolarian Community College also ranked Death Toll as last. It’s currently the cheapest to buy online (although with the exception of the overpriced Endless Punishment, all of Duskmourn’s precons are hovering at around $40 on Amazon at the moment).
Regardless, I’m here to say that all those rankings are wrong. Death Toll might not be as flashy as some of these other decks, but it’s shockingly powerful thanks to its reliance on a Magic: The Gathering mechanic we haven’t seen for a few years: Delirium.
Delirium was first introduced in the 2016 set Shadows over Innistrad. It works by filling your graveyard with cards and then giving creatures special abilities if you have four or more different types of cards in your graveyard. At the time, this relied mostly on discarding cards or sacrificing creatures, but with Duskmourn, the focus has shifted to milling your deck, which makes it easy to rapidly achieve Delirium status.
Some of my favorite cards from Death Toll
The best part of Death Toll (besides the massive insect creatures) is that, unlike a lot of Commander decks, you’re not totally reliant on your Commander. Sure, Winter makes it easy to quickly fill up your graveyard and then bring the scariest cards back to life, but the entire deck is packed with other cards that take advantage of the situation. “Formless Genesis” gets you a creature whose size is determined by the number of lands in your graveyard, while “Old Stickfingers” gets bigger depending on how many dead creatures you have. Meanwhile, “Gnarlwood Dryad” takes advantage of Delirium to become a 3/3 with Deathtouch who only costs one mana to play, and “Demolisher Spawn” buffs your entire attacking army as long as you have Delirium. The synergy here is pretty amazing to see — and devastating to your opponents.
Overall, while Death Toll isn’t the flashiest Commander precon in Duskmourn, it may be the most powerful. So if you’re looking to catch your friends by surprise with a giant 7/7 insect that duplicates every time it attacks, this is the deck for you.
