Death Toll Upgrade Guide: 21 Easy Changes You Can Make

Last updated on August 29, 2025

Winter, Cynical Opportunist | Illustration by Andrey Kuzinskiy

Things are getting terrifying at Duskmourn: House of Horror, and by the looks of it the “Death Toll” is only getting higher. Good thing for Valgavoth, Terror Eater, I guess!

Today we’re taking a look at Death Toll, a Golgari Commander precon () from Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander, and it already looks like one of the better ones. This deck is playable right out of the box and has two Golgari commanders: Winter, Cynical Opportunist and Rendmaw, Creaking Nest.

While I think Rendmaw is the more interesting commander of the two and I love the goad mechanic, it would deserve a full overhaul of the deck, so Winter, Cynical Opportunist fits this decklist more naturally as our Duskmourn commander. We’re suggesting 21 easy card swaps you can make, so that the deck gets more focused, consistent, and powerful while keeping your bank account healthy.

Deck Overview

Six | Illustration by Andrew Mar

Death Toll is a Commander precon deck focused around the graveyard, as most green and black decks are. The delirium mechanic asks you to have four or more card types among cards in your graveyard (artifact, creature, planeswalker, enchantment, land, and more), so we have plenty of different multi-type cards in our deck as well as ways to self-mill (MTG slang for putting cards from the top of our library directly into our graveyard).

Our commander is Winter, Cynical Opportunist, a survivor who's one of the main characters of Duskmourn‘s story, who asks you to have delirium active so that you can put a permanent card from your graveyard onto the battlefield – that’s what we call reanimation.

Winter also helps fill the graveyard by milling three cards, and they attack fairly well as a 2/5 deathtoucher, which should be hard to block at least in the early to mid stages of the game.

The backup commander is Rendmaw, Creaking Nest. Rendmaw doesn’t care that much about the graveyard, it cares about you playing cards with two or more types – which naturally helps reach delirium, and that’s why it’s a good creature in Winter, Cynical Opportunist’s 99. But to have Rendmaw effectively as a commander for this deck you’d have to invest heavily into triggering it, and this decklist only has a dozen or so ways to do it where I’d like at least 30+.

This precon also comes with Archenemy scheme cards, but these are usually not connected at all with the deck’s strategy. Also, they are only useful if you’re playing with Archenemy rules, so we’re not focusing on the schemes here.

Magic: The Gathering Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander Deck - Death Toll

• DO WHAT IT TAKES TO SURVIVE—Send your cold dead cards into the graveyard, the return your heavy hitters from the great beyond and rise victorious.
• 2 FOIL BORDERLESS COMMANDERS—Every Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander Deck includes 2 Traditional Foil Legendary Creature cards featuring spine-tingling Borderless art
• 10 ARCHENEMY SCHEMES—Archenemy pits a team of three against one player who draws from an extra deck of powerful and nefarious schemes. Each Duskmourn Commander deck introduces 10 terrifying schemes to make the table tremble.
• INTRODUCES 10 COMMANDER CARDS— Each deck introduces fresh horrors to Magic: The Gathering with 10 never-before-seen Commander cards
• CONTENTS—1 ready-to-play Death Toll Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander Deck (100 cards), 10 Archenemy cards, a 2-card Collector Booster Sample Pack, 10 double-sided tokens, and 1 deck box

$61.97

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Upgrade Plan

I’m gonna focus on a few avenues to upgrade this deck. We can add more self-mill, more ways to use our graveyard without relying so much on our commander’s ability, as well as more impactful cards to put on the table if we reanimate them. It’s also interesting to add more permanents that have two types (artifact creatures, artifact lands, enchantment creatures) and make it so that delirium cards are active at all times. Finally, we’re improving the card quality and adding a little bit more direct reanimation. This deck has some weak ways to mill and reap the rewards from having delirium, akin to something we see in Limited or lower-power formats like Standard.

I’m trying to keep these upgrades between $50-100 total, but most of these cards cost less than $1. There are a few outliers in the $5-10 range, but even these can go down in price due to them being fresh card releases.

Destined / Lead

Suggested cut: Skola Grovedancer

Destined / Lead is two card types, sorcery and instant, in the same card. It’s not the most powerful card, but once milled, you can even cast Lead to make all your creatures but one unblockable. Skola Grovedancer was one of the first cards I wanted to cut, and it also has two types to maintain a certain balance.

Rise of the Witch-king

Suggested cut: Moldgraf Millipede

Rise of the Witch-king is a way to turn your worst creature into the best permanent in your graveyard. It also has an edict effect tacked on, which will make opponents lose cards. Moldgraf Millipede is a weaker card and easy to cut.

Ripples of Undeath

Suggested cut: Cemetery Tampering

Ripples of Undeath can make you mill three cards and get one of them into your hand if you like, serving as mill and card selection. We’re taking out Cemetery Tampering, which requires the graveyard to have 20 cards for us to maybe get something good, and it doesn’t give us card advantage.

Millikin

Suggested cut: Mind Stone

Millikin is an artifact creature – two types – that mills and generates mana. It’s replacing Mind Stone, artifact for artifact, and both can go into the graveyard with ease.

Six

Suggested cut: Scavenging Ooze

Six allows us to cast permanents from our graveyard by discarding a land via the retrace ability, while milling some cards when it attacks. Plus, it has good stats on its own. Scavenging Ooze is good graveyard hate, but it looks out of place in our deck.

Coiling Rebirth

Suggested cut: Deadbridge Chant

Being able to reanimate our best creature to the battlefield, plus create another 1/1 copy of it is a steal for 5 mana. It won’t work for every creature, but getting two Hornet Queens or two The Swarmweavers is very interesting.

Deadbridge Chant is not directly comparable, but we are already upping mill and the enchantment count, and this card is not something we’re desperate to get into play.

Insidious Roots

Suggest Cut: Whispersilk Cloak

Insidious Roots will do a lot of work in this deck if our commander is constantly exiling creatures from our graveyard, not to mention reanimate spells. The result is that we’ll get some plants that also tap for mana. Whispersilk Cloak is not the card we want in this deck, and thus we trade an enchantment for an artifact.

Invasion of Zendikar

Suggested cut: Suspicious Bookcase

Invasion of Zendikar is a ramp spell, and it’s a battle that counts as a different type for delirium. Suspicious Bookcase is not something we’re craving, as this deck doesn’t need to give evasion that consistently.

Invasion of Ixalan

Suggested cut: Crawling Sensation

Invasion of Ixalan is another battle for our deck. It’s just a good card, offering us card selection, and it gets us closer to delirium if we mill it. Crawling Sensation was one of the cards I wanted to take out, as we’re adding superior mill enablers and delirium cards, and I’m not interested in random 1/1’s.

Hoarding Broodlord

Suggested cut: Vile Mutilator

Hoarding Broodlord is an interesting black creature to reanimate and it’s not that hard to cast with convoke. When it enters, you get to tutor a card, and it’s not bad with Coiling Rebirth, offering us two cards we can cast later. Vile Mutilator is a good card, but worse than Broodlord and in the same mana ballpark.

Osseous Sticktwister

Suggested cut: Deathcap Cultivator

In Osseous Sticktwister we have an artifact creature that will make our opponents discard, sacrifice, or take damage every turn. If we can turbo delirium, this 2-drop will annoy people pretty hard. Let’s take out Deathcap Cultivator which peaks at having deathtouch with delirium.

The Swarmweaver

Suggested cut: Carrion Grub

One of the best cards in Duskmourn, The Swarmweaver is an artifact creature that makes many bodies, and it’s a nice value and reanimate target, besides being two card types for delirium. Carrion Grub is a much worse 4-drop, and we’re already upping the mill with these upgrades.

Cynical Loner

Suggested cut: Obsessive Skinner

A creature that can Entomb every turn? Cynical Loner is a nice piece of synergy for our deck. Obsessive Skinner will take its leave, as putting +1/+1 counters on creatures isn’t why we’re getting delirium active.

Hedge Shredder

Suggested cut: Binding the Old Gods

Every time you mill while you have Hedge Shredder in play, you get to put lands onto the battlefield, and that’s insane value and ramp. Also, it’s a 5/5 vehicle with crew 1 that mills on attack. Binding the Old Gods leaves because we have quite a few enchantments already and plenty of interaction.

Drag to the Roots

Suggested Cut: Grisly Salvage

Adding more interaction here with Drag to the Roots as a nice delirium payoff that’s playable even if you don’t have delirium. Grisly Salvage only mills, so it’s a fine card to take out.

Garruk, Cursed Huntsman

Suggested cut: Ob Nixilis Reignited

Here I’m upgrading a planeswalker. For 1 more mana, Garruk, Cursed Huntsman offers us so much more than Ob Nixilis Reignited, and that’s why I’m going with Garruk here.

Overlord of the Balemurk

Suggested cut: Mulch

This is one of the shiny mythic rares with the new impending mechanic from Duskmourn: House of Horror, so it can be a little bit on the expensive side. Still, Overlord of the Balemurk is an enchantment creature that mills and offers us a free “Get your creature or planeswalker from your graveyard to your hand”. Let’s take out Mulch, a card that is “equivalent” to the Overlord’s enter effect.

Finale of Eternity

Suggested cut: Inscription of Abundance

When you’re milling so many cards, it’s nice to have a mass-reanimation effect in Finale of Eternity, which also has an early-game quality to it as a removal spell.

Inscription of Abundance leaves our deck, because it’s a similar flexible early- and late-game card but worse in our deck.

Nesting Grounds

Suggested cut: Swamp

The reason to include Nesting Grounds is to take finality counters from your permanents and move those counters onto other permanents… preferably your opponents'!

This way, you can circumvent your commander’s main downside when reanimating cards.

Shifting Woodland

Suggested cut: Forest

Shifting Woodland is a land that can be a copy of a card in your graveyard in a delirium deck. It generates green mana without downside, so you can cut a basic Forest for it.

Revitalizing Repast

Suggested Cut: Jungle Hollow

Here I’m adding an MDFC land in Revitalizing Repast for delirium purposes that can go to the ‘yard in a pinch and can save one of our good threats or our commander. It also doubles as a dual land, so I’m taking out Jungle Hollow.

The Final Deck and New Cards

Coiling Rebirth | Illustration by Rovina Cai

We’ve made it so that you can simply get the new cards by one-clicking on the shopping cart button. Neat, huh?

Commanding Conclusion

Hedge Shredder | Illustration by Cristi Balanescu

Death Toll is a very cool Commander precon that focuses on milling yourself and getting delirium online as quickly as possible, so that you can reanimate permanents (not only creatures, mind you!) with your Golgari commander.

If you want to really improve and go the reanimator route with broken stuff, you can add more expensive cards like The Great Henge, Portal to Phyrexia, Blightsteel Colossus, and the like. This Commander precon already has nice ways for you to constantly mill yourself and juicy targets to bring back.

You could also try and build this as a Rendmaw, Creaking Nest deck, and for that, you’ll have to focus heavily on cards with more than one type, and ways to capitalize on all the token making. Note that, if you’re playing cards with more than one type, you’ll reach delirium quicker, and this is something that I emphasized with this update: diversifying the card types and adding many cards with two types.

Let me know in the comments below if you prefer Winter or Rendmaw as your commander, and if you’d rather stick to the factory version instead of this upgraded precon. Thanks for reading, and if you liked this article, leave us a message at Draftsim X/Twitter.

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