Of the four new Duskmourn Commander precons, Endless Punishment is by far the most popular. Players clearly appreciate its rich blend of table-wide damage and card draw. As a result of this popularity, multiple potent upgrades for the deck have spiked in price, as well as the precon itself. If you’re looking to try Endless Punishment out for yourself, then, some budget upgrades certainly wouldn’t go amiss.
To that end, we’ve assembled five prime candidates here for your convenience. What exactly constitutes ‘budget’ varies from player to player, of course, but these cards almost certainly fit the bill. You can grab all five for just over $2, which is hopefully affordable by anyone’s standards. These cards may not propel your precon into power bracket four, but they do offer synergy aplenty. Let the price-conscious punishment begin.
1 | Burning Anger – $0.20
- Mana Value: 4R
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Card Text: Enchant creature. Enchanted creature has “T: This creature deals damage equal to its power to any target.”
Burning Anger is the card for you if you want to take Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls in a Voltron direction. The face Commander of Endless Punishment naturally grows over time, so such a plan is more than viable. If you pursue it, Burning Anger will allow you to put Valgavoth’s massively inflated power to good use.
Five mana is a lot, but in exchange, you get a repeatable Fling effect that doesn’t cost your creature’s life. With how big Valgavoth can get, this can remove any creature on the table, or put serious pressure on a player’s life. The creature itself also deals the damage with Burning Anger, which means slapping Lifelink on Valgavoth via an Aura or Equipment will allow for some wild swings.
Voltron is an unconventional direction to take Endless Punishment in, but that’s why this upgrade is currently in the budget range. Turning your core Commander into a deadly repeatable burn spell is fantastic, and can be paired with Vigilance for two huge hits a turn. For only $0.20, this is an absolute steal that will catch your opponents off-guard.
2 | Price Of Knowledge – $0.90
- Mana Value: 6B
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Text: Players have no maximum hand size. At the beginning of each opponent’s upkeep, Price of Knowledge deals damage to that player equal to the number of cards in that player’s hand.
Moving to a more conventional Valgavoth card now, Price of Knowledge fulfills two crucial roles that Endless Punishment desperately needs. Firstly, it removes the limit on hand size. When you’re drawing up to three extra cards a turn, that becomes important more quickly than you might think.
Secondly, it (almost) guarantees some damage to each opponent on their turn. As long as an opponent isn’t totally Hellbent this will deal them some damage, which will get you your counter and draw off of Valgavoth. Other cards that fill a similar role, such as Copper Tablet and Roiling Vortex, have been spiking because of this deck. Getting a very similar effect for just $0.90 is a fantastic deal.
Granted, Price of Knowledge does cost seven mana, which prevents it from coming online as early as other options. It’s not too difficult to ramp up to seven in Commander, however, and once you do the ceiling on this is far higher than on the cards mentioned above. Not only does it let you keep all your hard-earned cards, but it also has the chance to deal a serious chunk of damage to other greedy players at the table.
3 | Psychosis Crawler – $0.20
- Mana Value: 5
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: */*
- Card Text: Psychosis Crawler’s power and toughness are each equal to the number of cards in your hand. Whenever you draw a card, each opponent loses 1 life.
Speaking of hand size, here’s a card that cares deeply about yours. Psychosis Crawler is a pile of vanilla stats that scales up with your grip. Normally this would make it a 7/7 at best, but throw in a Price of Knowledge or Reliquary Tower and its potential becomes limitless. Doubly so when you consider how many cards Valgavoth can draw in short order.
This alone would make Psychosis Crawler interesting in a Valgavoth deck, but its other effect is arguably even more relevant. Each time you draw a card, it pings all of your opponents for one. This has two uses. First, it adds extra damage to every Valgavoth trigger, since those let you draw cards. Second, it allows you to trigger Valgavoth when you have no other way to do so. Drawing cards on your opponent’s turns isn’t too hard to do, after all.
Psychosis Crawler gives you a beefy threat, an enabler, and a grindy damage source all rolled into one. On top of that, a copy from the recent Bloomburrow or Murders at Karlov Manor Commander decks will only run you around $0.20. Put it all together, and you have one of the best budget upgrades available for Endless Punishment.
4 | Immolation Shaman – $0.50
- Mana Value: 1R
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 1/3
- Card Text: Whenever an opponent activates an ability of an artifact, creature, or land that isn’t a mana ability, Immolation Shaman deals 1 damage to that player. 3RR: Immolation Shaman gets +3/+3 and gains menace until end of turn.
I mentioned above that cheap ways of triggering Valgavoth are climbing in price right now. Razorkin Needlehead, Zo-Zu the Punisher, Kederekt Parasite; the list goes on. One card in this category that hasn’t seen a spike yet is Immolation Shaman. For just two mana, this vivacious Viashino can get you regular Valgavoth triggers for a fraction of the cost of its contemporaries.
Its ability sounds niche at first, but in practice, it really isn’t. Utility creatures, lands, and artifacts are incredibly common in Commander, which means your opponents will end up triggering this more often than you’d think. Either that or they’ll tiptoe around in order to not trigger it, which will probably gain you just as much advantage.
To top it all off, Immolation Shaman also packs a mana sink ability, which can serve as a win condition if you have an infinite mana engine in your deck. This is a pretty niche use case, but it’s better to have the option than not. Of all the cards on this list, this is the one with the highest chance of spiking out of the budget category soon if Endless Punishment’s popularity continues. For that reason, I’d recommend grabbing a $0.50 copy now while you can.
5 | Pestilence – $0.30
- Mana Value: 2BB
- Rarity: Common
- Card Text: At the beginning of the end step, if no creatures are on the battlefield, sacrifice Pestilence. B: Pestilence deals 1 damage to each creature and each player.
To round out the list, here’s an absolute classic. Pestilence is a card that sees play in countless Commander decks, and even some more controlling Pauper lists. It’s also shockingly cheap given how widely-used it is. I was taken aback to see copies of the card, both in its Urza’s Saga and The List printings, going for just $0.30.
Why is this card a great fit for Endless Punishment? Because it offers player damage on demand. With Pestilence out, you can pay one black to ping every player for one. Do this on an opponent’s turn, and you can snag the Valgavoth trigger for that turn. This lets you hold up mana to draw cards on turns where opponents play around your Immolation Shaman or remove your other ping sources.
On top of that, Pestilence is also a great board wipe against more aggressive decks. Its ping effect hits creatures too, and can be stacked multiple times in a turn to complicate combat or just straight-up remove small threats. Sure it’s vulnerable to board wipes since those will trigger the ‘no creatures, sacrifice’ condition, but it’s such a good fit for the deck that the reward far outweighs that risk.
Read More: Survey Data Reveals Commander’s Most Popular Card Is Extremely Controversial