Over the past few months, we’ve seen Duskmourn have an immense impact on a variety of Constructed formats. Screaming Nemesis is an elite beater for Standard and Pioneer, while Abhorrent Oculus has become the main focal point behind one of Modern’s strongest archetypes.
Interestingly, though, it isn’t just the Duskmourn main set that is making noise in Constructed. Just recently, an unexpected Duskmourn Commander broke out in Legacy in a big way. Making top four of a Magic Online Legacy Challenge, this deck utilizes Ancient Cellarspawn as the win condition of choice.
There are tons of ways to abuse Ancient Cellarspawn and ensure that you have enough fuel to reliably kill your opponents. To start, we need to look at the crucial role this card plays alongside some unusual inclusions in the format.
Maximizing Ancient Cellarspawn
- Mana Value: 1BB
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 3/3
- Card Type: Enchantment Creature- Horror
- MTG Sets: Duskmourn Commander
- Card Text: Each spell you cast that’s a Demon, Horror, or Nightmare costs 1 less to cast. Whenever you cast a spell, if the amount of mana spent to cast it was less than its mana value, target opponent loses life equal to the difference.
The main goal behind this archetype is to cast spells with high mana values without actually paying any mana. By playing spells with alternate casting costs, you can force your opponent to lose a boatload of life without ever having to connect in combat.
The strongest cards to pair with Ancient Cellarspawn are definitely Nourishing Shoal and Iname as One. Nourishing Shoal is a weird card that lets you exile a green card from your hand to gain life equal to that card’s mana value.
In doing so, even though you’re spending zero mana to cast Nourshing Shoal, Nourishing Shoal’s mana cost on the stack is equal to two plus the mana value of the card you exile. By exiling Iname as One, Ancient Cellarspawn will force the opponent to lose 14 life at once! All the while you’re gaining 12 life to buy you even more time.
Technically, there are green cards with higher mana values than Iname as One (Autochton Wurm comes to mind). However, the fact that Iname as One is also a black card makes it pair nicely with Soul Spike and Sickening Shoal all the same.
Sickening Shoal accomplishes a similar task as Nourishing Shoal when you have Ancient Cellarspawn in play. Part of the reason you don’t see a full playset in the maindeck is that you need a creature to target to cast Sickening Shoal. So, if your opponent is playing a combo deck like Storm, Sickening Shoal isn’t ideal. Soul Spike is more reliable since it can hit creatures or players.
Support Cards
- Mana Value: BBB
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Card Type: Legendary Enchantment
- MTG Sets: Modern Horizons 3
- Card Text: Skip your draw step. At the beginning of your end step, you may pay any amount of life. If you do, draw that many cards. Your maximum hand size is five. If a card or token would be put into your graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead.
As intriguing as the Ancient Cellarspawn gameplan is, it wouldn’t be anywhere near competitive without two incredible card draw engines. The first is Necrodominance. Necrodominance is a powerful card, but the reduced maximum hand size makes it a bit tough for most archetypes to utilize.
If there was ever a deck to make full use of Necromdominance, though, it’s this one. Once you have Ancient Cellarspawn in play, all you want is to find your Shoals and Soul Spikes and have enough cards in hand to pitch to them. Necrodominance helps on both accounts.
You’re free to pay a bunch of life on your end step, then before going to discard, cast your share of Shoals and Soul Spikes. Chances are, this will be enough to end the game.
Even in the cases where you haven’t found Ancient Cellarspawn yet, paying a bunch of life can still be hugely beneficial. You’ll get to dig for your win condition, and any Nourshing Shoals you find along the way let you gain a chunk of the life back.
From there, The One Ring serves as another card advantage machine. The One Ring is a bit slower but adds extra redundancy to the deck.
To speed up the card draw process, Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual let you play your expensive cards ahead of schedule. These cards are needed to race the various combo strategies in Legacy. Thoughtseize and Unmask further help the cause, while simultaneously letting you strip blue decks of Force of Will so you can resolve your bombs.
Better Than it Looks
- Mana Value: 2GG
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Type: Instant
- MTG Sets: Modern Horizons, Breaking News
- Card Text: If it’s not your turn, you may exile a green card from your hand rather than pay this spell’s mana cost. Destroy up to two target artifacts and/or enchantments.
On the surface, this deck may look a bit inconsistent. After all, you’re all in on Ancient Cellarspawn to win you games. With only four copies available, isn’t it difficult to reliably set up a win?
Well, thanks to Necrodominance and The One Ring, finding your win condition is much easier than it looks. Then, once you resolve Ancient Cellarspawn, you should be able to close the game right away.
Your Shoals and Soul Spikes can all be cast at instant speed, so opposing removal spells like Lightning Bolt won’t do the trick. In this sense, this deck’s main objective is also more resilient than you might expect.
Having access to so many free spells goes a long way towards keeping your head above water, too. Sickening Shoal can take out problematic threats, such as Nomads en-Kor out of Nadu combo. Meanwhile, Force of Vigor out of the sideboard does a nice job keeping Mystic Forge strategies in check.
This shell can be a bit vulnerable to decks like Storm that can muster a turn one kill, though the combination of discard spells and sideboard copies of Mindbreak Trap can allow you to steal games.
It’s super cool to see such a spicy strategy put up a great performance in one of Magic’s most powerful formats. According to the pilot, this deck is the real deal, so put some respect on Ancient Cellarspawn’s name!
