(Victor, Valgavoth's Seneschal | Art by Jeremy Wilson)

The readings are off the charts!

Scary season’s greetings everyone, and welcome to the list of most played Commander cards from Duskmourn: House of Horror (DSK)! I've got to mention that this set's flavor has polarized Magic lore lovers with its modern, close-to-the-real-world references like televisions and video tapes. I, for one, enjoy the campy horror-Stranger Things-Goosebumps vibes, but I completely understand how it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. What I think we can all agree on, however, is that there are a bunch of sweet cards in the set! Let's dive right in.

Honorable Mention - Two-color lands from the set

Dual lands from booster sets will often see a lot of play, so I've put them here instead of letting them clog up the main list. Blazemire Verge and company are especially powerful iterations of the modern rare two-color land because they always come into play untapped. They won't guarantee producing two colors of mana like the Steam Vents line of "shocklands" do, but in this format it's going to be easy enough to get a land with a basic land type into play that I would consider running these in many multi-color decks.

Of course, some decks won't want this, but the great thing is you'll know which type of deck you're building just by counting how many lands you plan to run that turn the Verges on.

10. Entity Tracker

This flashy 2/3 feels especially powerful in 2024, given how Wizards of the Coast has often printed recent cards like this with the clause "This triggers only once each turn." Entity Tracker operates under no such constraint, meaning it's just another Mesa Enchantress-type card but in a color that hasn't gotten a lot of love before.

It slots right into Zur, Eternal Schemer or Tuvasa the Sunlit decks as a card advantage engine. Non-white enchantment-themed decks get a huge boost, too, with Tatsunari, Toad Rider and Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor might love having Tracker around even more. It also plays well with the new Room subtype, although you're probably not going to have a ton of options for that theme apart from Marina Vendrell in the same set.

9. Dazzling Theater // Prop Room

This funky sort-of do-nothing card needs a lot of help to work well. But, as we all know, EDH is the format where you can realize your wildest dreams and build around the unlikeliest of themes or combos. In this case, giving your creatures Convoke works very well with a few commanders, and Prop Room offers fun synergy as well. There does happen to be a "Convoke Commander" as it were, with Kasla, the Broken Halo and Dazzling Theater combining to let you chain cheap creatures and card draw together. Baylen, the Haymaker and Prop Room are a match made in heaven, giving you a card draw engine and a giant commander.

Rin and Seri, Inseparable, meanwhile, does some cool stuff with both sides of the Room. You can generate a lot of extra mana and tokens by casting Cats and Dogs, and then convert that into Rin and Seri activations for each opponent you have. I'm sure there are endless possibilities with this card, and only time will tell how to best use its modes. So get to building!

8. Enduring Tenacity

Buckle up for an extremely enduring list, folks! The black one is first up, and its combo potential immediately stands out. Enduring Tenacity is Sanguine Bond as a creature, meaning it goes infinite with the same set of cards. You can check out Commander Spellbook for an exhaustive list, with this card plus Exquisite Blood and an instance of lifegain or damage to kick the combo off currently the most popular option.

The members of this cycle are all similar in that they need two removal spells to really get rid of, or one exile spell, so their static effects are always going to be more difficult to get rid of. Definitely keep that in mind when evaluating the other Endurings...Endurers...Endurians?

7. Enduring Curiosity

Bident of Thassa (or Coastal Piracy, depending on your age) on a 4/3 with Flash is pretty powerful, especially in blue "smallball" decks like Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive — as mentioned by John Sherwood in his DSK set review article — or even Raffine, Scheming Seer and Derevi, Empyrial Tactician.

Likewise, and this is likely true for the non-red Enduriators, an Enchantment and Creature like this slots right into an Enchantress-style deck running cards like Jukai Naturalist, Ondu Spiritdancer, and Sanctum Weaver, among others.

6. Enduring Innocence

This 2/1 Lifelinker is going to look pretty guilty when your white deck uses this to draw 20 cards. Unlike Tracker and the blue Endurino, though, you are limited to one fresh card per turn. There are ways to get around this, of course, including family and recurring effects that let you put creatures into play on your opponents' turns, like Halo Fountain.

On the other hand, you don't need to work too hard to make this good, as it'll do just fine incorporated into a "2 power or less theme," which boasts great cards like Arabella, Abandoned Doll, Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon, and Zinnia, Valley's Voice.

5. Valgavoth's Lair

This card and Urza's Saga are the only enchantment lands in the game as of this writing. Of course, Urza's Saga is incredible in other ways, but scarcity of a certain effect can a good EDH card make. Lair is perfect in all sorts of Enchantress theme decks and it also does double duty in Delirium decks that have gotten a boost from DSK using it as a primary set mechanic. DougY, another List-Maker of Some Repute, covers cards with two types and also covers some commanders that care about having a lot of card types in your deck.

4. Untimely Malfunction

Flexibility is basically a cheat code for appearing in these most played Commander cards lists. Just like Dawn's Truce in my piece on Bloomburrow, Untimely Malfunction isn't the most powerful version of any of the effects listed on the card, but it does do a ton of things for the low price of 1% of your decklist. I'd say the headliner here is Deflecting a removal spell meant for a key permanent. But, in the right deck, the Falter can win a game and, against the right opponent, the Shatter can make you glad you had it in your deck.

3. Enduring Vitality

Sorry, Enduring Courage, but the last Endurone on this list — and currently the most played one — is the 3/3 that makes all you creatures into Birds of Paradise! Vitality is pretty busted in a go-wide strategy that also runs some big finishers or X spells, say, in Baylen again or in Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy?

Remember, you get to double-dip on the static ability unless an opponent uses an exile effect or instant-speed graveyard hate, so having this in your opening hand can almost assure you of a nice mana bump. Speaking of mana, Endury-V is also an excellent enable for Raggadragga, Goreguts Boss.

2. Razorkin Needlehead

I do love the rare occasions when an aggresively-costed red creature makes the list of most played Commander cards. Realistically though, I doubt the 2/2, First-striking body is the foot in the door for this card. Dealing damage to opponents when they draw is an immensely powerful and punishing ability in EDH, so much so that there are entire strategies built around it! In terms of Commanders, Nekusar, the Mindrazer is a classic buildaround boss for this theme and currently the 15th most played Commander overall. Players who love the whole Nekusar + Dark Deal engine will appreciate having yet another creature on top of Orcish Bowmasters, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, and Psychosis Crawler.

There are also a lot of ways to make that one damage dealt count, whether in Nekusar or in other decks with different themes. Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin will also covet this creature for his 99, while Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might and Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph cut out the middleman and win the game faster.

Real ones will know that Needlehead is also an excellent addition to mono-red aggro piles led by Torbran, Thane of Red Fell or Solphim, Mayhem Dominus.

1. Withering Torment

What did I say about both flexibility and scarcity earlier? Targeted enchantment removal in a color begging for it already makes Withering Torment an interesting option, but also targeting creatures means it's a card that black mages should always keep in mind when designing a removal suite. I can definitely see decks running both this and Feed the Swarm to ensure that other players don't do the whole Exquisite Blood thing to you before you can do it to them.

Don't be a wimp. We'll cover more ground this way.

That's a wrap for DSK. Before I go, I'd like to ask for two things. First, what cards from Duskmourn have made your lists so far? Second, what do we actually call the Endurephins collectively?

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Nick Price