Mind Flayarrrs precon upgrade guide

Six cards in Mind Flayarrrs can mill an opponent without a Horror connecting, and Captain N'ghathrod's end step trigger only pays out when one of them finds a creature or artifact on your own turn.

Captain N'ghathrod has three abilities. Horrors you control have menace, a Horror that deals combat damage to a player mills that player by that much, and at the beginning of your end step you put onto the battlefield an artifact or creature card from an opponent's graveyard, but only one that went there from their library this turn. The first two come free here. All 32 of the box's creatures are Horrors, so every one of them gets the menace and the mill. The third is the card advantage, and it needs a creature or artifact to be milled before your end step.

The six that do it on your own turn without combat damage are Zellix, Nephalia Drownyard, Fractured Sanity, Extract from Darkness, Consuming Aberration and Nemesis of Reason, with Mindcrank turning life loss into more. Sewer Nemesis isn't counted, because it only mills when its chosen player casts a spell, which seldom happens on your turn. Everything else leans on a Horror getting through combat, and the mana to cast the Horrors is shakier than their number suggests. Fifteen spells want two black pips and ten want two blue. On 28 black sources and 26 blue ones, you've drawn at least two sources of that colour by turn three 78.5% of the time for black and 74.2% for blue, on the play.

Of the twelve cards that come in, three are Horrors that are hard to block, three feed the mill, four are lands, and the last two are a piece of removal and a reanimation spell. Eight spells and four lands go out.

What are the best Mind Flayarrrs upgrades?

In buying order. Twelve cards, $34.73 at the cheapest released printing of each, while the box's own singles total at least $137.20 (three copies have no price, so that figure is a floor).

1. Underground River ($0.47), Drowned Catacomb ($0.47), Darkslick Shores ($1.64) and Shipwreck Marsh ($1.32). Four blue-black lands for $3.90, in place of four lands that don't reliably make blue or black. They take black from 28 sources to 29 and blue from 26 to 28.
2. Silent Hallcreeper ($1.11). A 1/1 Horror for {1}{U} that can't be blocked. Each time it connects you choose a mode it hasn't used yet: two +1/+1 counters, draw a card, or become a copy of another creature you control. Take the copy last or not at all, because a copy loses its own abilities, including this one.
3. Ancient Cellarspawn ($6.35). A 3/3 for {1}{B}{B}. Horror spells cost {1} less, and whenever you cast a spell for less than its mana value, an opponent loses the difference. Mindcrank, already in the box, mills that many cards.
4. Vashta Nerada ($3.31). Indestructible with shadow, so only a creature with shadow can block it, and the box has one in Dauthi Horror. It gets a +1/+1 counter at any end step where a creature died that turn.
5. Ruin Crab ($1.14) and Altar of the Brood ($9.86). Ruin Crab makes every opponent mill three whenever a land enters under your control. Altar of the Brood makes every opponent mill one whenever another permanent enters under your control. Altar is the priciest card in the list, since its cheapest printing is a Secret Lair Countdown card and the Khans of Tarkir one is $10.00.
6. Reanimate ($6.61). A creature card from any graveyard, for {B} and life equal to its mana value.
7. Overlord of the Floodpits ($2.19). For {1}{U}{U} it enters with four time counters and isn't a creature yet, but it still draws two and discards one when it enters. Once the counters run out it's a 5/3 flyer that does the same on every attack.
8. Infernal Grasp ($0.26). Destroy target creature for {1}{B} at instant speed, and you lose 2 life.

Bruvac the Grandiloquent is the best card I left out. If an opponent would mill one or more cards they mill twice that many, which doubles Fractured Sanity's fourteen, Ruin Crab's three and every hit from the commander. It costs $42.31, more than the twelve swaps together, so it's the next purchase rather than the first. Hedron Crab ($3.45) is Ruin Crab's older sibling, but it makes one target player mill where Ruin Crab hits every opponent. Go for the Throat ($0.28) costs about the same as Infernal Grasp and can't target artifact creatures, where Infernal Grasp can and costs you 2 life, which is the trade I took. Nothing here is a Game Changer. The cards that leave are argued further down, under the cuts.

The 3/3 you hand an opponent for two mana

Menace asks the defender for two blockers, and Hunted Horror hands them out. When it enters, a target opponent creates two 3/3 green Centaurs with protection from black. Two bodies satisfy menace on their own, and protection from black prevents the damage a black creature would deal to them, so any black Horror blocked by the pair, and a blue-black one like Nemesis of Reason, deals none. Blue Horrors still hurt them. The tokens can't be targeted by the deck's black removal either. Crippling Fear would kill them, since -3/-3 doesn't target. I'd only give an opponent two 3/3 bodies if it bought me something, and it buys nothing here.

The box already has some ways around blockers: Dauthi Horror has shadow, Dark Hatchling, Overcharged Amalgam and Brainstealer Dragon fly, Creeping Tar Pit and Dimir Keyrune turn into unblockable attackers, and Rogue's Passage makes a creature unblockable for {4}. What it lacks is a cheap Horror that connects without paying for it each turn. Silent Hallcreeper is that at two mana, and Vashta Nerada is the same at three, and a destroy effect can't kill it. Overlord of the Floodpits draws two and discards one the turn it lands, then flies once its four counters are gone.

Lightning Greaves stays. Haste means a Horror cast this turn can still connect and mill this turn, which is what the end step trigger wants.

Where the mill comes from, and what Zellix does with it

With Zellix on the battlefield you get a 1/1 black Horror token whenever a player mills one or more creature cards, and while the commander is out that token has menace like any other Horror. Ruin Crab is where that adds up. At a four-player table a land drop mills nine cards across three opponents, and each opponent whose three cards include a creature hands you a token.

Altar of the Brood is slower but wider. It counts every permanent, so a land, a Goat from Woe Strider and each 1/1 copy from Endless Evil all mill each opponent once. Ancient Cellarspawn is the third piece. Herald's Horn, also in the box, makes Horror creature spells cost {1} less, and with Cellarspawn out the two stack. Ravenous Chupacabra, {2}{B}{B}, then costs {B}{B}, which is two less than its mana value, so the opponent you chose loses 2 life and Mindcrank mills 2. The reduction only takes away generic mana, so a spell with none in its cost saves nothing.

Drown in the Loch gets better with all of this. It destroys a creature with mana value no higher than the number of cards in its controller's graveyard, so each mill outlet loads it.

Reanimate replaces Extract from Darkness. Both put a creature card from any graveyard onto the battlefield, and the difference is five mana against one. Reanimate costs life equal to the creature's mana value, which is cheap for a four-drop and painful for a seven, and I'd rather pay that than five mana for a spell whose mill is two cards from each player.

Four lands in, four out

The box's 38 lands include several that don't reliably make blue or black, and the swaps replace the four that help the two-pip spells least. Myriad Landscape always enters tapped and fetches two basics that share a land type, so it brings two Islands or two Swamps and never one of each. Temple of the False God makes colourless mana and only taps for mana once you control five lands. Drownyard Temple makes colourless mana too, and Exotic Orchard makes whatever colours your opponents' lands could, which may be neither of yours.

The replacements split the work by how far into the game you are. Darkslick Shores enters untapped if you control two or fewer other lands, Shipwreck Marsh if you control two or more, Drowned Catacomb if you control an Island or a Swamp, and Underground River always enters untapped for 1 damage when you tap it for colour. Lands that always enter tapped fall from six to five, and lands that sometimes do rise from two to five.

Black goes from 28 sources to 29 and blue from 26 to 28. Those counts include the Signets, Talisman and Keyrune, the filter land Darkwater Catacombs, and Tainted Isle, which only makes colour with a Swamp, so they flatter the box a little. The two-pip odds by turn three move to 80.4% for black and 78.5% for blue, which is still under the 90% target. It would take 36 sources of a colour to reach it, and the better fix is the one the swaps also make: fewer double-pip spells. Black's go from 15 to 11 and blue's from 10 to 9.

Path of Ancestry stays despite entering tapped. It makes either of the deck's colours, and when that mana pays for a creature spell that shares a type with the commander, you scry 1. Nearly every creature spell here is a Horror.

The curve drops from an average mana value of 3.7 to 3.33. Seven-drops go from three to one, six-drops from five to three, and one-drops from one to four.

Eight spells out, and the expensive ones that stay

Dross Harvester makes you lose 4 life at the start of every one of your end steps and gives you 2 back whenever a creature dies. You break even at two deaths a turn, and the plan wants Horrors to survive and keep connecting. Protection from white is the only other thing it offers. Hunted Horror is covered above.

Hullbreaker Horror is the cut I'd argue about longest. It has flash, can't be countered and bounces a spell or a nonland permanent every time you cast a spell. It also costs seven. Dusk Mangler costs seven too, plus a sacrifice, a discard or 4 life, and in return each opponent sacrifices a creature, discards a card and loses 4 life. That life loss feeds Mindcrank, which is why it was the closest of the sevens. Brainstealer Dragon stays as the one seven because it flies and exiles the top card of each opponent's library every end step for you to play.

Hex destroys six target creatures and can't be cast with fewer than six targets. Unless your opponents have six creatures between them, that means pointing it at your own Horrors. Psionic Ritual costs six, needs an instant or sorcery in a graveyard, and taps Horrors to replicate when those Horrors could be attacking. Black Market costs five and adds {B} at the start of your first main phase for each charge counter, one counter per creature death, so it adds nothing the turn it lands. Extract from Darkness is covered above.

Some cards look worse than they play. Curtains' Call has mana value six, but Undaunted takes {1} off per opponent, so in a four-player pod it's {2}{B} for two dead creatures. Reflections of Littjara costs five and copies nothing until the next Horror you cast, but a copy of a permanent spell becomes a token, so naming Horror copies the enters trigger of Ravenous Chupacabra or Mind Flayer. Endless Evil makes a 1/1 copy of the enchanted creature every upkeep and returns to your hand if a Horror dies with it, so on a Chupacabra it's a removal spell a turn. In Garruk's Wake costs nine, and it destroys every creature and planeswalker you don't control however big they are, which Crippling Fear can't do.

Naming Horror three times

Crippling Fear, Herald's Horn and Reflections of Littjara each make you choose a creature type, and the answer is Horror all three times. Thirty-two of the 33 creatures in the upgraded list are Horrors, and so is the commander. The next biggest type is Phyrexian with five creatures, all of which are Horrors as well.

Crippling Fear is then a sweeper that mostly hits the other side, because everything that isn't a Horror gets -3/-3 until end of turn. Two permanents of mine die to it: Ruin Crab, a 0/3, and the 0/1 Goat Woe Strider makes. Wait to cast the Crab until you're sure you won't need the sweeper that turn, or cast the sweeper first.

The upgraded decklist

Hover any card name on this page to see the card and what it currently costs. Prices here are the cheapest released printing of each card, so a few are promo or Secret Lair copies.

Load into the deck builder Copy decklist

“Load into the deck builder” opens this list in your account, pinned to the printings the box shipped, ready to edit or save. “Copy decklist” gives you plain text for Moxfield, Archidekt or Arena — no account needed.

FAQ

Does Captain N'ghathrod's end step trigger work on cards I mill myself?

No. It targets an artifact or creature card in an opponent's graveyard that was put there from their library this turn. Cards you mill, cards that die on the battlefield and anything that reached a graveyard on an earlier turn don't qualify. That is why the mill in this list is aimed at opponents: Ruin Crab and Altar of the Brood hit every opponent, and Captain N'ghathrod's own combat trigger hits the player who was dealt the damage.

How much does the Mind Flayarrrs upgrade cost, and what would I buy next?

The twelve cards that come in cost $34.73 at the cheapest released printing of each, and a couple of those printings are promo or Secret Lair copies. The next card I'd buy is Bruvac the Grandiloquent at $42.31, which doubles every mill the deck already does. I left it out because it costs more than the twelve swaps together.

Which creature type should I name for Crippling Fear and Herald's Horn?

Horror, every time. 32 of the 33 creatures in the upgraded list are Horrors, and so is the commander. Crippling Fear then gives -3/-3 to everything that isn't a Horror, which on my side of the table means Ruin Crab and the Goat token from Woe Strider. Herald's Horn makes Horror creature spells cost {1} less, and Reflections of Littjara copies them.

Why is Reanimate in the list when Extract from Darkness leaves?

Both put a creature card from any graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. Reanimate does it for one black mana and costs life equal to the card's mana value, where Extract from Darkness costs five and mills each player two cards on the way. Two cards is the smallest of the box's mill outlets, so the milling half wasn't earning the slot.

Can Zellix and Haunted One lead this deck instead of Captain N'ghathrod?

They can be a legal pair, because Zellix has Choose a Background and Haunted One is a Background, and the two together are blue and black like the rest of the deck. Both are in the 99 of this box. Taking them as commanders means giving up the menace, the combat mill and the end step trigger, which is the plan this guide is built around, so I've written nothing for that version.

Does upgrading Mind Flayarrrs change its bracket?

No. Neither the box nor the upgraded list has a Game Changer, so the floor stays at Bracket 1 both ways. That only says nothing in the list forces a higher bracket. It doesn't say how the deck plays, and the bracket page covers what the number does and doesn't mean.