Death Toll MTG Precon Provides Incredible Card Advantage Engine

The final Commander Precon for MTG Duskmourn has just been revealed. Coined ‘Death Toll,’ this Commander deck showcases just how powerful the new character Winter can really be. Spoiled by the Command Zone, Death Toll offers a reanimation-themed Golgari deck that really wants to get Delirious. This is an interesting combination of objectives that should bring forth some flavorful new cards.

The Face Commander

Winter, Cynical Opportunist was revealed to the MTG world some time ago, and our first impression of this card was mid. When built around, Winter can be a real threat, but you need to enable its Delirium effect to maximum mileage. The cards you reanimate need to be huge, and the cost you pay to do so needs to be as minimalized as possible. This means that we need a lot of multi-type cards in the deck that can pay for more than one card type for Winter’s Delirium ability. Winter has potential, but it needs support to be worthwhile. Let’s see what Wizards of the Coast has provided to make Winter pop.

Rendmaw Creaking Nest

Rendmaw is the secondary Commander provided to players in the MTG Dusmourn Death Toll Precon. Like the Face Commander, these cards get the full-art treatment in the Precon, which is quite a nice touch. As far as Rendmaw goes for playability, it certainly seems a lot more unique than Winter. Rendmaw only cares if cards have two separate card types, which also happens to enable Delirium spectacularly. The birds can get out of hand rather quickly, especially considering they all enter tapped. This prevents opponents from just running their birds into one another and solving the problem that way.

Honestly, as far as game design goes, I like Rendmaw WAY more than Winter. This card can easily scale into a crazy, game-ending threat with some tricks to trigger its abilities repetitively, and rewards players for a new type of Commander deck – multi-type matters. Winter, in comparison, isn’t really doing anything new, or anything particularly powerful. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Rendmaw is the better Commander for the Death Toll deck, however.

Deluge of Doom

Another card enabled by a payoff that aligns with Delirium, this is quite powerful for a three-mana board wipe – in the right deck. Deluge of Doom is no Toxic Deluge, but the card does genuinely look impressive for decks that want to fill their grave. This seems like an interesting roleplayer for the Commander format that could even see some slight Legacy play.

Demonic Covenant

Considering how much support the Demon Typal theme has received in MTG Duskmourn, Demonic Covenant seems like it will be an in-demand card. Six mana is a pretty steep cost, but turning your Demon’s attacks into card draw, while producing extra Demons every one of your turns, is certainly worth the cost.

The final ability of Demonic Covenant is a weird one. If this card is able to stick around in the Death Toll deck for a good amount of turns, it suggests that Winter is properly supported, which is a good sign. It also creates a secondary minigame that players have to consider if they’re going to try this in a Demon Typal deck. Considering this bizarre deckbuilding restriction, Demonic Covenenant should perhaps be five mana instead of six. The costliness of this card demands that you get immediate value out of it, or can reliably have it stick around for some time. This card has potential, but the decks that will be able to use it properly are far and few between. Overall, this may be the card we’re the least impressed by in this article.

Into the Pit

If you ask us, Into the Pit is broken.

Once again, Into the Pit is not an MTG card that’s going to show up in any black deck, but any deck that can abuse or waive the cost of using this powerful card advantage engine is going to go absolutely nuts. Sacrificing a creature as an additional cost to cast spells, in the proper context, can be an upside. These are the decks that are going to absolutely abuse the crap out of Into the Pit. Get a Gravecrawler or a token generator involved, and you will never run out of cards. For three mana, that’s a pretty powerful effect.

Polluted Cistern/Dim Oubliette

This Room seems tailored for Winter, Cynical Opportunist. The Cistern grants more purpose to milling over as many card types as possible, and Dim Oubliette can resurrect a big baddie while enabling your mill and Delirium synergies further. The effect of the card is certainly a little too specific to see wide amounts of play outside of this deck, but Winter and this Room are best friends. If five-mana reanimation effects are of interest to your Commander deck, and you can reliably make some use of Polluted Cistern, this may not be a bad card to consider.

Demolisher Spawn

Here’s a new big, bad reanimation target that will end the game with gusto. Demolisher Spawn is the payoff for running a deck with Delirium and reanimation strategies. Honestly, this card can go in any deck that can reliably trigger its Delirium effect, as long as it has a creature plan. Demolisher Spawn boasts budget Craterhoof Behemoth vibes. We expect it to perform as such.

Formless Genesis

Here’s a Magic card that’s going to see play in a lot of decks outside of just Death Toll. Formless Genesis is an ally to any land-based deck. The tokens you’ll create can consistently grow as you further your game plan, and Retrace makes sure that your floods can be turned into some value. In a deck that wants to drop a ton of lands, sometimes your plan goes a little too well. Formless Genesis makes sure that you have a decent plan B for these situations.

Even if the tokens you create aren’t that big initially, the addition of Deathtouch can buy your life total a lot of time. No one wants to trade into small 1/1 Deathtouch creatures, especially in Commander. This means that players may leave you alone for a bit while your deck catches up to the rest of the table.

The biggest bit going for Formless Genesis, however, is the fact that it creates Changeling Tokens. This allows Formless Genesis to create meaningful board presence in any Typal deck, granting the card a lot of different potential homes.

Ursine Monstrosity

This card looks like a ton of fun and could be a card to include in any deck that wants to get cards into their grave. Because Ursine Monstrosity embraces chaos when attacking a player, no bad will should be received by your unlucky opponent. Considering that this creature can get quite big, and is basically impossible to deal with in combat, it will likely get removed at some point.

If you enjoy embracing chaos and have use for milled cards, Ursine Monstrosity seems like a no-brainer. If you enjoy a bit more orderly thinking when making your decisions, Ursine Monstrosity’s milling really needs to be worth it for you.

Convert to Slime

Convert to Slime is the last new MTG card exclusive to the Duskmourn Death Toll preconstructed deck. This card, for five mana, seems pretty strong. Removing three threats from the table for five mana is a perfectly fair trade. The card types being removed are a bit specific, but this should hardly matter in an average Commander game.

Enabling Delirium turns Convert to Slime from a good deal into a premium card. In most cases, the Slime token being created by this effect should be pretty substantial. Hopefully, it is substantial enough to warrant some concern from the table. Even if it eats a Path to Exile in the end, Convert to Slime essentially killed three things and took another piece of removal out of an opponent’s hand. That’s a five-mana trade that everyone should be happy to make.

What About Reprints?

According to the Command Zone, the reprint value of Death Toll should be about $130. That’s a pretty strong reprint value, on par with the last few Standard set Commander Precon decks. As a reminder, this value is going to decrease since we now know the cards are being reprinted.

The best reprints among the Death Toll Commander deck are undeniably Professor Onyx and Whip of Erebos. These both come in at about $13, which both boast effects that warrant their price tag.

Other powerful reprints include Titania, Nature’s Force, Reanimate, Wrenn and Seven, Dryad Arbor, and Arachnogenesis. Reanimate and Arachnogenesis, in particular, have lost a lot of value over time, but they’re still worth a decent amount of cash.

What do We Think?

As long as Delirium is truly enabled enough, Death Toll seems like an interesting Commander deck. The new cards shown off in this deck do appear to suggest that Winter, Cynical Opportunist’s themes are well-supported enough to make the deck tick. Of course, the only way to ensure this is to play the Precon itself.