Upgrading the Death Toll Precon from Duskmourn, on a small budget
By @BrewitCody
Hey everybody! I’m BrewitCody and today we’re taking a look at upgrading the Death Toll Precon from Duskmourn. This is the first article of a series covering all the new Duskmourn Precons.
Death Toll focuses on the Delirium mechanic that gives us advantages for having four or more different card types in our graveyard. The Face commander Winter, Cynical Opportunist, lets us mill cards to fill our graveyard and then exile 4 card types to bring a permanent back to the battlefield with a finality counter on it. The deck features some awesome reprints in Whip of Erebos and Reanimate.
Rebuilding around Rendmaw
I’m focusing this upgrade guide on the backup commander, Rendmaw, Creaking Nest. Rendmaw rewards us for playing cards with multiple card types by giving every player a 2/2 flying bird.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Cody, why would I want to give my opponents creatures to swing at me?” Good news reader! The birds our opponents receive are goaded for the rest of the game. Meanwhile, we sit back, cast powerful spells, and let our opponents swing at each other.
I recommend focusing on Rendmaw if you’re looking for a unique direction to take the deck. We’re looking to play as many multi-type cards as possible before ultimately pumping our army of birds. Now, let’s get to the cards that will help you peck your opponents’ eyes out!
What to add and remove
If you’re interested in trying my list, they cost less than $12 total, and you can grab the cards from Mana Pool.
Or, whether you’re looking to upgrade the precon your own way, or try my build, you can find the base Death Toll Precon on Mana Pool too.
By replacing several higher-cost cards with lower-curve options, I’ve aimed to reduce the mana curve while preserving the Delirium package. This ensures a more consistent early game and a backup plan if Rendmaw is removed. The best part is that these upgrades allow us to retain a significant portion of the base precon, including Winter himself. With Delirium’s focus on multiple card types, we’ve made it easier for the deck to function effectively.
Bird food
Gingerbrute and Gnarled Scarhide are great examples of cheap cards that you can swap into your deck to net some birds with Rendmaw out.
I recommend looking into more creatures like this that are cheap so you can continue growing your board. Gnarled Scarhide has the added bonus of being able to buff a creature later on with its bestow cost.
Tending the crops
Like any good scarecrow, we need to watch over our crops. The crops here being ways for us to ramp. I’ve got Leaden Myr and Copper Myr, which will net us a bird each on top of giving us some extra mana generation.
Next up we’ve got two artifact lands: while Darksteel Citadel can only produce colorless mana, it does net us a bird. Scene of the Crime has the added benefit of tapping for colorless or letting us use the bird token as a way to produce any color of mana. The best part is when we are in a bind we can pay two to sac it and draw a card.
Lastly, Rendmaw can’t be the only scarecrow in the field. Oasis Gardener lets us tap for any color, effectively being a mana rock on a 2/2 body. Scaretiller lets us put a land from our hand onto the battlefield or return one from the graveyard when it becomes tapped. With the rest of the deck having a small mill package, this will be very beneficial if you hit a pocket of lands in your deck.
Get away from my field!
While we amass an army of tokens, we are also going to want to protect ourselves from the hate we will garner for giving out tokens and goading them. Fang of Shigeki and Barbed Servitor are going to be excellent blockers who also net us a bird each.
Last up, a couple of enchantment creatures that will net us tokens. Arasta of the Endless Web and Pharika, God of Affliction each let us produce tokens and net us a bird each. Arasta will be handy against any spellslinger decks (decks focused on casting many spells), whereas Pharika synergizes well with the mill package in our deck and nets us a snake with deathtouch to block with.
Harvest season
We will need a few ways to keep our hand full to keep growing our bird army (barmy, birmy… you know what, scratch this bit). Dockside Chef lets us sacrifice an artifact or creature to draw a card, turning our birds into card advantage in a pinch.
Gloomshrieker lets us return a permanent from our graveyard to hand, which will help us recur any of the multiple creature type spells in the list.
Lastly is the secret tech of the deck…. Baba Lysaga, Night Witch. With Baba, we can sacrifice up to three permanents and if three or more card types are among them, our opponents lose three life, we gain three life, and then we draw three cards. Since most of our deck will consist of multiple card types, this makes the sacrifice portion a lot easier to achieve.
Those are some swole birds!
Lastly, we are going to need a few ways to pump our bird army so we can take out our enemies after they’ve picked each other apart. Adaptive Automaton and Renata, Called to the Hunt both pump our board just from being out. Adaptive Automaton provides a static +1/+1 to our birds as long as we name bird as the creature type, whereas Renata will put a +1/+1 counter on each creature that enters. Bloodline Pretender is a strange-looking bird but will continue to grow larger the more birds we can get to come in under our control.
Bow of Nylea helps make it so our opponents won’t want to block our creatures by giving them deathtouch. It also has the added bonus of netting us a bird when it comes out. Lastly, let’s take advantage of Rendmaw and use Overwhelming Stampede to buff our bird army by +5/+5 and give them trample.
Check out Brew Review
Thanks for reading! If you’re looking for more of my work you can find me hosting the Brew Review Podcast, with my cohost Lazz on any podcast app of your choice or using this link: Brew Review on Apple Podcasts.
