Hey friends! Welcome back to another precon guide here on EDHREC. Duskmourn week is here, and we’re digging into all the great new precons from the set. It’s time to see if we can improve the Death Toll deck, led by Winter, Cynical Opportunist.

In case you missed it, go check out my review of the deck here. I gave it a really good review, only hindered by a few new cards that felt dead on arrival. Other than that, the deck plays beautifully. But I’m sure we can make it even better.

Let’s tune up.

What’s in the Original Deck?

Death Toll is green and black (Golgari) and led by Winter, Cynical Opportunist, a 2/5 Human Warlock with deathtouch that mills three when he attacks. He also has a delirium effect at the end step that lets us exile cards from our graveyard with a total of at least four card types to bring one of those cards back from the battlefield with a finality counter.

Our backup commander for this deck is Rendmaw, Creaking Nest, a 5/5 Scarecrow with menace and reach. When it enters and whenever we play a card with two or more card types, each player makes a tapped 2/2 Bird token with flying that’s goaded for the rest of the game. The card types are land, creature, enchantment, artifact, battle, planeswalker, kindred, instant, and sorcery.

Here’s the original deck list:

(DSC) - Death Toll

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Commander (1) 1 Winter, Cynical Opportunist Sorceries (9) 1 Convert to Slime 1 Culling Ritual 1 Deluge of Doom 1 Formless Genesis 1 Harmonize 1 Mulch 1 Night's Whisper 1 Rampant Growth 1 Reanimate Enchantments (8) 1 Binding the Old Gods 1 Cemetery Tampering 1 Crawling Sensation 1 Deadbridge Chant 1 Deathreap Ritual 1 Demonic Covenant 1 Into the Pit 1 Polluted Cistern // Dim Oubliette Artifacts (8) 1 Arcane Signet 1 Commander's Sphere 1 Golgari Signet 1 Mind Stone 1 Sol Ring 1 Talisman of Resilience 1 Whip of Erebos 1 Whispersilk Cloak Creatures (27) 1 Burnished Hart 1 Carrion Grub 1 Deathcap Cultivator 1 Demolisher Spawn 1 Dryad Arbor 1 Giant Adephage 1 Gnarlwood Dryad 1 Grim Flayer 1 Haywire Mite 1 Hornet Queen 1 Ishkanah, Grafwidow 1 Moldgraf Millipede 1 Moldgraf Monstrosity 1 Noxious Gearhulk 1 Nyx Weaver 1 Obsessive Skinner 1 Old Stickfingers 1 Rendmaw, Creaking Nest 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder 1 Scavenging Ooze 1 Skola Grovedancer 1 Solemn Simulacrum 1 Stitcher's Supplier 1 Suspicious Bookcase 1 Titania, Nature's Force 1 Ursine Monstrosity 1 Vile Mutilator Instants (6) 1 Arachnogenesis 1 Grapple with the Past 1 Grisly Salvage 1 Harrow 1 Inscription of Abundance 1 Putrefy Planeswalkers (4) 1 Grist, the Hunger Tide 1 Ob Nixilis Reignited 1 Professor Onyx 1 Wrenn and Seven Lands (37) 1 Ash Barrens 1 Barren Moor 1 Bojuka Bog 1 Command Tower 1 Darkmoss Bridge 1 Evolving Wilds 1 Exotic Orchard 7 Forest 1 Golgari Rot Farm 1 Grim Backwoods 1 Jungle Hollow 1 Llanowar Wastes 1 Necroblossom Snarl 1 Reliquary Tower 7 Swamp 1 Tainted Wood 1 Temple of Malady 1 Temple of the False God 1 Terramorphic Expanse 1 Tranquil Thicket 1 Tree of Tales 1 Twilight Mire 1 Vault of Whispers 1 Viridescent Bog 1 Woodland Cemetery

What Budget Cards Can We Add to Death Toll?

We’ll break this upgrade up into two parts, one for budget cards (less than $5 each) and one for non-budget ($5 and up).

This deck is all about getting a massive number of cards into our graveyard. So let’s make that happen some more. First up is Underrealm Lich, a creature that changes up all of our card draws.

Instead of drawing, we’ll look at our top three cards and put one of those into our hand, the rest into the grave. Skull Prophet gives us some ramp, but if we don’t need it we can tap them to mill two, while Millikin does both at the same time.

Shigeki, Jukai Visionary can be bounced to hand to look at our top four cards, put a land from among them onto the battlefield and the rest into the yard.

It also has a channel ability which lets us discard it to bring stuff back from the yard. This is even more of a winner since it’s two card types.

And let’s not forget the big daddy of mill decks, Syr Konrad, the Grim. One of the best uncommon legends ever printed, this guy can mill everyone for two for just two mana, but where he really shines is dealing out damage to opponents when creature cards get milled.

Or when creatures die. Or when a creature card leaves our graveyard. With Winter’s abilities, we’re likely to have a lot of creatures entering and leaving our graveyard, so old Konnie is a no-brainer.

We’ve got two utility lands coming in. First is Treasure Vault, which has two card types and can be sacrificed for Treasures.

Then there’s Nesting Grounds, which can move those pesky Finality counters from the permanents Winter brings back and put them onto another permanent, even something an opponent controls.

That’s one way to deal with a Stinkweed Imp!

A large portion of the cards we’ll be dropping in the yard will be lands. And we really don’t need them all in the yard, so let’s get some of them back.

For that we’ll enlist Aftermath Analyst, who mills us on entry and can be sacrificed to get all of our lands to the battlefield. There’s also Perennial Behemoth, which is both an artifact and creature and allows us to play lands from our yard. 

For more tokens we’ll add the enchantment creature Arasta of the Endless Web, Polygoyf which will get big with all the stuff in our yard and make copies of itself with myriad, and Tarmogoyf Nest, a kindred enchantment that enchants a land which can be tapped to make a Lhurgoyf.

For our last few additions, we’ve got Lignify, a piece of removal with two card types, Matzalantli, the Great Door, which helps to fill our yard and can flip to a land that provides a ton of mana, and Wickerfolk Thresher, which will give us ramp or card draw when it attacks if we have delirium.

These cards from the precon are getting buried alive:

• Carrion Grub
• Culling Ritual
• Gnarlwood Dryad
• Golgari Signet
• Grim Backwoods
• Grim Flayer
• Inscription of Abundance
• Into the Pit
• Ishkanah, Grafwidow
• Mind Stone
• Moldgraf Monstrosity
• Obsessive Skinner
• Reliquary Tower
• Scavenging Ooze
• Suspicious Bookcase

Here’s our budget upgraded list:

Death Toll Budget Upgrade

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Commander (1) 1 Winter, Cynical Opportunist Instants (5) 1 Arachnogenesis 1 Grapple with the Past 1 Grisly Salvage 1 Harrow 1 Putrefy Creatures (29) 1 Aftermath Analyst 1 Arasta of the Endless Web 1 Burnished Hart 1 Deathcap Cultivator 1 Demolisher Spawn 1 Dryad Arbor 1 Giant Adephage 1 Haywire Mite 1 Hornet Queen 1 Millikin 1 Moldgraf Millipede 1 Noxious Gearhulk 1 Nyx Weaver 1 Old Stickfingers 1 Perennial Behemoth 1 Polygoyf 1 Rendmaw, Creaking Nest 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder 1 Shigeki, Jukai Visionary 1 Skola Grovedancer 1 Skull Prophet 1 Solemn Simulacrum 1 Stitcher's Supplier 1 Syr Konrad, the Grim 1 Titania, Nature's Force 1 Underrealm Lich 1 Ursine Monstrosity 1 Vile Mutilator 1 Wickerfolk Thresher Planeswalkers (4) 1 Grist, the Hunger Tide 1 Ob Nixilis Reignited 1 Professor Onyx 1 Wrenn and Seven Artifacts (7) 1 Arcane Signet 1 Commander's Sphere 1 Matzalantli, the Great Door // The Core 1 Sol Ring 1 Talisman of Resilience 1 Whip of Erebos 1 Whispersilk Cloak Sorceries (8) 1 Convert to Slime 1 Deluge of Doom 1 Formless Genesis 1 Harmonize 1 Mulch 1 Night's Whisper 1 Rampant Growth 1 Reanimate Enchantments (9) 1 Binding the Old Gods 1 Cemetery Tampering 1 Crawling Sensation 1 Deadbridge Chant 1 Deathreap Ritual 1 Demonic Covenant 1 Lignify 1 Polluted Cistern // Dim Oubliette 1 Tarmogoyf Nest Lands (37) 1 Ash Barrens 1 Barren Moor 1 Bojuka Bog 1 Command Tower 1 Darkmoss Bridge 1 Evolving Wilds 1 Exotic Orchard 7 Forest 1 Golgari Rot Farm 1 Jungle Hollow 1 Llanowar Wastes 1 Necroblossom Snarl 1 Nesting Grounds 7 Swamp 1 Tainted Wood 1 Temple of Malady 1 Temple of the False God 1 Terramorphic Expanse 1 Tranquil Thicket 1 Treasure Vault 1 Tree of Tales 1 Twilight Mire 1 Vault of Whispers 1 Viridescent Bog 1 Woodland Cemetery

And a few more cards to consider:

• Beledros Witherbloom
• Broodspinner
• Cloakwood Hermit
• Consuming Blob
• Criminal Past
• Dreadhound
• Eldritch Immunity
• Golgari Grave-Troll
• Kagha, Shadow Archdruid
• Mirkwood Bats
• Omnivorous Flytrap
• Ripples of Undeath
• Scion of Halaster
• Season of Loss
• Six
• Soul Swallower
• Splendid Reclamation
• The Peregrine Dynamo
• The Swarmweaver
• Peer into the Abyss

What Non-Budget Cards Can We Add to Death Toll?

Let’s take our budget upgraded list and sub in a few pricier cards. For tokens we’ll add in Amzu, Swarm’s Hunger, which can give us a huge Insect whenever we resurrect something with Winter.

There’s also the classic Bitterblossom, which has two card types and gives us a 1/1 flyer every turn.

If we want more recursion effects, we can throw in Portal to Phyrexia. This nine-mana artifact isn’t easy to cast, but we can certainly cheat it out with our commander and start stealing things from our opponents’ yards as well.

We’ve also got Barrowgoyf, which has the typical Lhurgoyf power/toughness boost for every card type in graveyards, but also gets us a creature back if we hit an opponent with it in combat, in addition to milling a bunch of cards. 

To get some lands back we’ll run Life from the Loam, which has that beautiful dredge ability, as well as Lumra, Bellow of the Woods, which mills four when it enters and then brings all the lands in our yard back to the field.

And last we’ve got a bit of card advantage. Breach the Multiverse mills each player ten cards, then we can snatch a creature or planeswalker out of each graveyard and put it on the field.

And then there’s Urza’s Saga, an enchantment land Saga that will initially tap for a colorless mana, and eventually go fetch up our Sol Ring.

After the third step, it’ll go to our yard where it’ll have those crucial double card types.

These cards are getting the cut:

• Commander’s Sphere
• Convert to Slime
• Deathreap Ritual
• Hornet Queen
• Millikin
• Moldgraf Millipede
• Old Stickfingers
• Polygoyf

Here’s our non-budget upgraded list:

Death Toll Non-Budget Upgrade

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Commander (1) 1 Winter, Cynical Opportunist Creatures (27) 1 Aftermath Analyst 1 Amzu, Swarm's Hunger 1 Arasta of the Endless Web 1 Barrowgoyf 1 Burnished Hart 1 Deathcap Cultivator 1 Demolisher Spawn 1 Dryad Arbor 1 Giant Adephage 1 Haywire Mite 1 Lumra, Bellow of the Woods 1 Noxious Gearhulk 1 Nyx Weaver 1 Perennial Behemoth 1 Rendmaw, Creaking Nest 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder 1 Shigeki, Jukai Visionary 1 Skola Grovedancer 1 Skull Prophet 1 Solemn Simulacrum 1 Stitcher's Supplier 1 Syr Konrad, the Grim 1 Titania, Nature's Force 1 Underrealm Lich 1 Ursine Monstrosity 1 Vile Mutilator 1 Wickerfolk Thresher Instants (5) 1 Arachnogenesis 1 Grapple with the Past 1 Grisly Salvage 1 Harrow 1 Putrefy Artifacts (7) 1 Arcane Signet 1 Matzalantli, the Great Door // The Core 1 Portal to Phyrexia 1 Sol Ring 1 Talisman of Resilience 1 Whip of Erebos 1 Whispersilk Cloak Sorceries (9) 1 Breach the Multiverse 1 Deluge of Doom 1 Formless Genesis 1 Harmonize 1 Life from the Loam 1 Mulch 1 Night's Whisper 1 Rampant Growth 1 Reanimate Planeswalkers (4) 1 Grist, the Hunger Tide 1 Ob Nixilis Reignited 1 Professor Onyx 1 Wrenn and Seven Enchantments (9) 1 Binding the Old Gods 1 Bitterblossom 1 Cemetery Tampering 1 Crawling Sensation 1 Deadbridge Chant 1 Demonic Covenant 1 Lignify 1 Polluted Cistern // Dim Oubliette 1 Tarmogoyf Nest Lands (38) 1 Ash Barrens 1 Barren Moor 1 Bojuka Bog 1 Command Tower 1 Darkmoss Bridge 1 Evolving Wilds 1 Exotic Orchard 7 Forest 1 Golgari Rot Farm 1 Jungle Hollow 1 Llanowar Wastes 1 Necroblossom Snarl 1 Nesting Grounds 7 Swamp 1 Tainted Wood 1 Temple of Malady 1 Temple of the False God 1 Terramorphic Expanse 1 Tranquil Thicket 1 Treasure Vault 1 Tree of Tales 1 Twilight Mire 1 Urza's Saga 1 Vault of Whispers 1 Viridescent Bog 1 Woodland Cemetery

And a few more pricey cards to consider:

• Demonic Counsel
• Hedge Shredder
• Overlord of the Balemurk
• Palantir of Orthanc
• Primal Vigor
• Sheoldred, Whispering One
• Doubling Season

Death, Be Not Proud

That’s it for our upgrade of the Death Toll precon! This deck was already great to begin with, we just added a few more solid mill cards and token-makers.

What do you think? Did I make this deck better? Any cards I missed? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter. And stay tuned for our final set of Duskmourn precon guides, coming at you in just a couple days, right here on EDHREC.

More Precon Fun:

Miracle Worker Upgrade Guide

Jump Scare! Upgrade Guide

Squirreled Away Upgrade Guide

Andy Zupke

Andy's been playing Magic on and off since Fallen Empires. He loves to travel, drink, eat, and spend time with family and friends.