Endless Punishment Commander Deck Delivers Devastating Group Slug Effects

The spoiler season for Duskmourn: House of Horror is finally drawing to a close. After today, September 12th, all of Duskmourn will have been revealed and the hype for prereleases can begin. Before the day ends, however, there are a whole lot of cards still to be spoiled. In fact, two whole Commander decks are being revealed today. The Endless Punishment precon is the first MTG deck to be debuted today.

What We’ve Seen Before

While the Endless Punishment deck reveal, from Pleasant Kenobi, did debut many new cards, not everything was brand new. Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls was spoiled long ago at the start of spoiler season, for instance. More recently, a number of Duskmourn MTG cards have been leaked, including a few from Endless Punishment.

One of the most exciting cards to be leaked was The Lord of Pain, which is Endless Punishment’s alternative Commander. Offering a potent group slug ability that forces opponents to cast their spells wisely, this card looks fantastic. It even stops your opponents from gaining life while it’s in play!

Barbflare Gremlin was the other card to be leaked slightly ahead of schedule. Able to increase the mana any land generates, this card has huge potential, especially since you control when their ability is active. Like The Lord of Pain, since this card was revealed early, we’ve already covered it in the leak round-up below.

Persistent Constrictor

To kick off the new cards, Persistent Constrictor is a great addition to the deck’s overarching group slug game plan. By dishing out the hurt upon every upkeep, Persistent Constrictor puts in work even if they’re just dawdling around. Thanks to having Persist, they’ll be able to keep doing this even if they get hit by some removal.

The real star of Persistent Constrictor’s show is the -1/-1 counter that it dishes out on each opponent’s upkeep. This can be used to either whittle down a major threat or quickly kill off 1/1 creatures or tokens. Considering all Offspring from Bloomburrow running around, this could prove incredibly useful in a lot of matchups.

While Persistent Constrictor does offer a lot of utility, they’re not a cheap card by any means. Their ability also only activates during each opponent’s upkeep and it’s not symmetrical, so it’s rather slow to dish out counters. This massively dampens its effectiveness, although it still works wonders in other decks. Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons, for example, will absolutely love Persistent Constrictor.

Sadistic Shell Game

Sadistic Shell Game is bound to cause chaos on the Commander table. Either this card removes four important threats, or it’ll cause no end of politics to unfold. Thankfully, the former should happen a lot more than the latter, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

If your opponents play their cards right everyone can work together to minimize the amount of value you get. Should each opponent strategize and pick the same weak card, you’ll only get one juicy target removed. For five mana this is a pretty bad deal, but you likely won’t have to worry about that.

Since everyone is playing their own game, most players will relish the chance to get rid of an opposing threat. As an added bonus, Sadistic Shell Game can even get around Hexproof thanks to players choosing, rather than targeting. This amps up the importance of everyone choosing their targets wisely, reducing the potential for abuse.

Gleeful Arsonist

Aptly for Endless Punishment’s theme of group slug, Gleeful Arsonist can dish out the hurt if your opponents aren’t careful. While their power may start at one, that damage will stack up if you ignore them for too long. Should you not ignore them, Gleeful Arsonist has a trick up their sleeves as they get even better.

After returning to the battlefield with Undying, Gleeful Arsonist is twice as dangerous as now they’re burning opponents for two. This obviously turns them into a greater target for removal, but Gleeful Arsonist will trigger off whoever does that. This ensures they’ll always get a few points of damage in, even if they’re removed quickly.

While Gleeful Arsonist can put in some work on their own, they really come alive when you buff them. By increasing their power, through aura, lords, or counters, you can make each spell incredibly costly. This tactic will take a lot more setup, but it can be well worth the effort expended.

Importantly, as Kyleometers points out on Reddit, Gleeful Arsonist has “got the Joker face.”

Suspended Sentence

Suspended Sentence is one of the rare MTG cards that can Suspend itself over and over again. Each time the Time Counters tick down, you destroy one of your opponent’s creatures. If you play this early and keep getting this, you’ll get a huge amount of value.

At worst, Suspended Sentence is an over-costed removal spell by at least one mana. This is far from perfect, but in a pinch, it can get rid of an important threat. Thankfully, it won’t take long for Suspended Sentence to start paying for itself. If it completes the Suspend cycle once, you’ve arguably paid a fair cost. Any more time than that, and you’re getting an insanely good deal.

When casting Suspended Sentence, you will have to watch out, or rather hope, that it has suitable targets. Should it finish being Suspended and there’s nothing to target, the spell will fizzle and be lost. Thanks to the amount of creatures that get played in Commander this shouldn’t be a problem, but it’s nonetheless worth keeping in mind.

Spiked Corridor/Torture Pit

Like many Rooms, Spiked Corridor/Torture Pit offers a pair of established abilities in one neat package. For better or worse, the effects aren’t even overcosted to justify the utility of them being paired together. Instead, each half of this room is an at-rate spell that gets even better when combined with its other half.

Since both halves of Spiked Corridor/Torture Pit are reasonable, picking which side to play first is entirely dependent on what you need. Unlocking Torture Pit first buffs your damage output substantially while Spiked Corridor offers blockers that bite back. The logical progression seems to be Torture Pit into Spiked Corridor, but that’s hardly set in stone.

Regardless of which option you choose, Spiked Corridor/Torture Pit is a great Room to have in your deck. Given the amount of player-focused damage in the deck, it’s bound to put in work.

Star Athlete

Compared to most of the other MTG cards in Endless Punishment, Star Athlete seems pretty meh. In an ideal world, they can either be a potent removal engine or a huge damage dealer. Most of the time, however, they’re probably just going to be blocked or removed themselves.

Thankfully, Menace does give Star Athlete a little bit of evasion that will allow them to put in work early game. Targeting cards like Sol Ring will practically guarantee major damage for every attack. Notably, you don’t have to target something the defending player controls, so Star Athlete can spread the hurt.

At worst, Star Athlete can always be cast for their Blitz cost to get some value before replacing itself.

Séance Board

Last but not least, Séance Board is a fantastic new ramp engine that can put in insane work. Should creatures keep dying turn after turn, it won’t be long before Séance Board generates obscene amounts of mana. While this seems amazing in a great many decks, unfortunately, there is a catch.

The mana that Séance Board creates can only be spent on instant, sorcery, Demon, or Spirit spells. While this does dampen its useability somewhat, a great many decks revolve around these card types. Obviously, Séance Board will be amazing in Endless Punishment, but it won’t be found in every new Commander deck going forward.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the Endless Punishment MTG deck seems like a great time. The theme of group-slug player damage is prevalent throughout and it seems fairly homogeneous as a deck. Hopefully, this should make it plenty of fun to play once the deck is officially available on September 27th.

As a final note, Endless Punishment has a pretty good suite of reprints that should delight finance-loving MTG players. Braids, Arisen Nightmare, Kederekt Parasite, Vail Smasher the Fierce, Graven Cairns, Witch’s Clinic, and Rampaging Ferocidon are all worth between $7 and $12.