Death Toll Endless Punishment Jump Scare! Miracle Worker

Precon comparison · Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander

Which Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander precon should you buy?

Death Toll is the Duskmourn deck I'd open and play, and Miracle Worker is the one whose guide costs least to finish. Endless Punishment is for a player who wants the whole table losing life, and Jump Scare! for one who'd rather the lands did the work. Every commander here costs four mana, and what sets them apart is how often each one gets to work in a round.

Art, left to right: Andrey Kuzinskiy, Chris Cold, Mila Pesic and David Palumbo

Wizards released these four decks on 27 September 2024, beside the Duskmourn: House of Horror set, and put no suggested retail price on any of them. It published none for any Commander deck between February 2019 and November 2024, so nothing on this page weighs a box against what it cost new. The picks come from what each box does and what its guide had to change. My pick for each kind of buyer:

• Death Toll (black and green), for a game tonight with no changes. Winter mills three cards every time he attacks, nineteen other cards in the box fill the graveyard behind him, and no spell under four mana asks for two black or two green. The card its guide most wants gone, Culling Ritual, is a sorcery you can simply leave in your hand.
• Endless Punishment (black and red), for a player who wants the whole table losing life. Valgavoth is a 4/4 flier with ward that draws a card whenever an opponent first loses life during a turn of their own, and four of the box's own cards do that unprompted. Its guide's bill is the biggest in the set, $51.91 in October 2026, and Terror of the Peaks is almost half of it.
• Jump Scare! (green and blue), if you'd rather the lands did the work. Zimone saves the stronger half of the trigger for the second land to enter in a turn, yet the six-mana Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait is the box's lone card that lets you play more than one land a turn. It's the heaviest of the four as well. Its guide's eight swaps, $36.93 in October 2026, start with three cards that grant extra land drops.
• Miracle Worker (white, blue and black), for the cheapest fix. The nine swaps in its guide cost $20.55 in October 2026, the smallest bill of the four, and they cut the box's always-tapped lands from twelve to seven. Its colours stay the weakest in the set, though: even after the swaps, two of any one colour by turn three turns up less than three times in four.

Singles value and swap count, deck by deck

Singles value is the TCGplayer market price of the printings each box shipped, summed, as of 23 October 2026. It moves every day, and each deck’s own page carries the current figure. Wizards of the Coast published no suggested retail price for any of the four. It stopped listing them in February 2019 and did not resume until November 2024, so there is no release price to set these totals against. None of the four sets a bracket floor: no box has a Game Changer or mass land denial.

Four commanders at four mana, on four different clocks

Every commander in the set costs four, and each one has a limit written into its rules text that decides how often it pays out. Over one round of a four-player game they compare like this:

• Winter, Cynical Opportunist works once a round, at the start of your own end step. You may exile any pile of graveyard cards showing at least four card types, and one permanent card from that pile comes back into play carrying a finality counter. Each attack mills three cards toward it first.
• Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls can work three times a round and never on your turn. It needs each opponent to lose life during their own turn, and the first loss of that turn gives Valgavoth a +1/+1 counter and you a card.
• Zimone, Mystery Unraveler works on any turn a land of yours enters. The first such trigger in a turn manifests dread, and every later one that turn may flip one of your face-down cards, so a single land a turn only ever gets the first half.
• Aminatou, Veil Piercer could in principle work on every player's turn. Enchantment cards in your hand have miracle at four generic mana under their printed cost, but a miracle only happens on the first card you draw in a turn, so away from your own draw step it needs a draw at instant speed.

Winter and Zimone mostly run on your turn, at a pace their own boxes set. Death Toll's box keeps pace with a deep supply of graveyard fillers. Jump Scare!'s doesn't, with eleven nonland cards that bring a land into play but just the one extra land drop. Valgavoth and Aminatou run on other players' turns, and there both boxes have to work harder. Endless Punishment has four cards that make an opponent lose life on their own turn without any input from you, plus Leechridden Swamp, Shivan Gorge and Theater of Horrors to force it at instant speed, turn after turn. Miracle Worker has seven cards that can draw on someone else's turn whenever you choose, and each works once: Brainstorm and Thirst for Meaning are instants, Cast Out and Shark Typhoon cycle, and Mind Stone, Commander's Sphere and Brainstone draw when sacrificed. Portent and Arcane Denial add a draw at the next turn's upkeep.

Three lands in every box, each doing a different job

Leave out the basics and six cards ship in all four decks. Three are the usual Sol Ring, Arcane Signet and Command Tower. The other three are lands that cash themselves in for a basic, Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse by sacrifice and Ash Barrens by basic landcycling. None of the four guides cuts any of them, and each box has its own use for them.

• Death Toll wants the land card in the graveyard afterwards. Land is one of the types Winter's end step counts, and once the guide adds The Gitrog Monster, land cards reaching your graveyard draw you a card.
• Jump Scare! gets two landfall triggers from Wilds and Expanse, one as the land enters and one for the basic it finds, which is the pair Zimone wants in a single turn. Ash Barrens puts its basic into your hand instead, where it waits for a land drop like any other.
• Endless Punishment and Miracle Worker get only the fixing, and the basic that Wilds or Expanse finds comes in tapped. That costs Miracle Worker more, since it already carries twelve lands that always enter tapped.

Past those six there isn't much overlap. Death Toll shares ten or eleven cards with each of the others, every one of them a land or a card that makes or fetches mana, and Jump Scare! and Miracle Worker share nothing beyond the six.

A shockland in every guide, and Star Trek reprints all five

All four guides put part of their budget into the mana base, and each one buys at least one shockland, a dual that can enter untapped for 2 life:

• Overgrown Tomb in Death Toll's guide, at $8.77.
• Blood Crypt in Endless Punishment's, at $8.68.
• Breeding Pool in Jump Scare!'s, at $9.15.
• Godless Shrine and Hallowed Fountain in Miracle Worker's, at $8.47 and $6.97.

Those are the guides' own prices, each taken in October 2026 from whichever released printing cost least. All five come back in Star Trek, out 13 November 2026, so they're the numbers in these guides most likely to have shifted by the time you read this.

The rest of the land work is about speed. Between them the four boxes ship 32 lands that always enter tapped, and the guides bring that down to 21: Death Toll from seven to six, Endless Punishment from six to three, Jump Scare! from seven to five, and Miracle Worker from twelve to seven. Miracle Worker starts with twelve of the 32 and accounts for five of the eleven that go.

How I'd rank them for playing the box unchanged

Death Toll comes first here and Miracle Worker last. Miracle Worker is also the box with the cheapest fix, so a buyer happy to spend about twenty dollars before the first game should read its section with that in mind.

Death Toll: steady mana, and too few ways back

Winter, Cynical Opportunist is a 2/5 with deathtouch, which makes him an unattractive creature to block, and each attack mills three. Behind him the box puts nineteen more graveyard fillers, from Stitcher's Supplier at one mana to Deadbridge Chant at six. Its mana is the calmest of the four as well. A first pip of either colour comes easily, and no spell asks for a second until four mana.

The trouble is getting things back out. Its guide counts five cards in the box that can return a creature from the graveyard to the battlefield, and Winter's end step is the only one that can bring back an enchantment or a planeswalker. The nine swaps came to about $26 in October 2026, with Animate Dead and Overgrown Tomb most of the money, and they add a second cheap reanimation spell, The Gitrog Monster and Syr Konrad, the Grim. They also take out Culling Ritual, a sweeper for everything nonland at two mana or less, which on this deck's side of the table means sixteen of its own permanents. The average mana value rises a little, from 3.49 to 3.56, since both of the creatures coming in cost five.

Endless Punishment: a flier that draws on everyone else's turn

Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls is the only flier among the four commanders and hits the hardest, a 4/4 whose ward makes an opponent pay 2 life to target it. The box holds four cards that drain an opponent on that opponent's own turn with nothing from you: Persistent Constrictor in each opponent's upkeep, and Spiteful Visions, Kederekt Parasite and Fate Unraveler when they draw. Mogis, God of Slaughter comes close, but an opponent can sacrifice a creature to skip its 2 damage. The guide counts seven more drain cards that fire on your own turn, and none of those can feed Valgavoth.

Its guide spends the most of any in the set, $51.91 in October 2026 for nine swaps, and $25.38 of that is Terror of the Peaks, which also charges an opponent 3 life to aim a spell at it. Its first pick cost 88 cents: Sulfuric Vortex burns each player for 2 on their own upkeep, you included, and turns all life gain at the table into nothing, so think about your table before you add it. Three of its six always-tapped lands go, and the curve climbs a touch, from 3.49 to 3.59. After the swaps both colours still fall short of 90% for two pips by turn three, black at 83.9% and red at 82.2%.

Jump Scare!: a land deck that can't play many lands

Zimone, Mystery Unraveler manifests dread off the first land to enter each turn, which puts a face-down 2/2 onto the battlefield, and every land after that in the same turn can flip one of your face-down cards without paying its cost. A creature card turned over simply becomes itself, and the box has cards waiting for that moment: Growing Dread gives a +1/+1 counter to anything you turn face up. It's the only box in the set with manifest dread at all, on six cards counting Zimone.

The catch is how few lands a turn it can play. Eleven nonland cards bring a land into play, but Aesi, at six mana, is the only card that lets you play a second one from your hand. The curve doesn't help either, with its spells averaging 4.21 mana, the heaviest box here, and nineteen of its spells want two green, which its 29 green sources supply by turn three 80.4% of the time. Its guide's eight swaps, $36.93 in October 2026, add three cards that grant extra land drops (Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, Azusa, Lost but Seeking and Oracle of Mul Daya) and two payoffs for lands entering, and bring the average down to 4.07. The green figure stays where it was.

Miracle Worker: cheap enchantments on the slowest lands

Aminatou, Veil Piercer surveils 2 in each of your upkeeps, then lets an enchantment that arrives as your first draw of the turn be cast for its miracle cost, the printed cost with four generic mana taken off. The box has 25 enchantment cards and plenty of them are big, so Athreos, Shroud-Veiled, a six-mana God, can come down for one white and one black. Only generic mana comes off, though, and what's left is mostly coloured pips. That runs into the set's worst mana: twelve lands that always enter tapped, and two of a colour by turn three only about 67% to 72% of the time as it ships.

Its guide is the cheapest finish in the set, nine swaps for $20.55 in October 2026, and $15.44 of that is the two shocklands. Five tapped lands go, leaving seven, and four of the new spells are removal at three mana or less, Anguished Unmaking and Banishing Light among them. The average mana value drops from 4.10 to 3.95. The colours barely move. White gains two sources and blue and black none, and the guide says outright that its swaps buy speed and not colour.

One thing in this box is invisible to a bracket floor. Secret Arcade makes every nonland permanent you control an enchantment, and Ondu Spiritdancer can copy any enchantment of yours as it enters, itself included, once each turn. Cast the Spiritdancer with that door unlocked and it copies itself, and each token's own once-a-turn trigger copies it again, with no end. The guide keeps both cards and calls the pair a reported two-card infinite. Brackets 1 and 2 are meant to be free of intended ones, so if you plan to assemble it, tell the table first.

Picking a second Duskmourn deck

Black runs through three of the boxes: Death Toll, Endless Punishment and Miracle Worker. Endless Punishment and Jump Scare! have no colour in common, so only colourless cards can move between them. Only 16 of Valgavoth's 83 non-basic cards would be legal under Zimone, and 12 of Zimone's 81 under Valgavoth.

Death Toll and Jump Scare! make the most useful pair. They share green, 44 of Jump Scare!'s 81 non-basic cards fit Winter's colours, and 41 of Death Toll's 85 fit Zimone's. Upgrading both, or any two, never means paying twice for a card, because no add appears on more than one guide's list.

One add may already be on your shelf. Death Toll's guide adds Syr Konrad, the Grim, who ships in Endless Punishment and isn't one of its cuts, so lending him leaves that deck a card short. Bojuka Bog comes in both Death Toll and Miracle Worker, and both guides cut it.

FAQ

Which Duskmourn Commander deck is easiest to play as it ships?

Death Toll. Its average mana value is 3.49, level with Endless Punishment for the lowest in the set, no spell in it needs a second black or green source before four mana, and Winter starts milling on his first attack. The weak spots its guide finds are too few ways to bring creatures back and a sweeper that wrecks your own board, Culling Ritual, which you can simply never cast.

Which Duskmourn upgrade guide spends the least?

Miracle Worker's, at $20.55 for nine swaps. Death Toll's comes next at about $26 for nine, then Jump Scare!'s at $36.93 for eight and Endless Punishment's at $51.91 for nine. All four guides priced their adds in October 2026, each at its cheapest released printing, and each one buys a shockland that Star Trek reprints on 13 November 2026.

Is there an infinite combo in any of the Duskmourn precons?

One, in Miracle Worker. Once the door of Secret Arcade is open, casting Ondu Spiritdancer starts a chain of token copies that never ends, and the guide keeps both cards but asks you to say so before a game if you mean to use it. Otherwise all four boxes sit at a bracket floor of 1, since no Game Changer and no mass land denial appears in any of the four, and the guides add 35 cards without a single Game Changer among them.

What did the Duskmourn Commander decks cost at release?

There's no official figure. Wizards of the Coast stopped publishing suggested retail prices for Commander decks in February 2019 and didn't start again until November 2024, and these four came out in September 2024. That's why each deck's own page gives its singles value but no judgement on what it cost.

Which Duskmourn Commander deck uses manifest dread?

Only Jump Scare! does. Six of its cards manifest dread, Zimone, Mystery Unraveler included, and none of the other three boxes has the mechanic. Zimone manifests off the first land to enter each turn and can flip a permanent face up off every later one, which is why its guide spends first on cards that let you play more lands.

Can Endless Punishment and Jump Scare! share any cards?

Only colourless ones, because black and red and green and blue have no colour in common. Seven cards come in both boxes: Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, Ash Barrens, Temple of the False God, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet and Command Tower. Counting those, 16 of Endless Punishment's non-basic cards could go in a Zimone deck and 12 of Jump Scare!'s in a Valgavoth deck.