Death Toll precon upgrade guide

Nineteen cards in this box move cards from your library into the graveyard, and five can put a creature back onto the battlefield. Winter returns one permanent a turn, so most of what the deck fills never comes out. Nine swaps, about $26, add the missing cheap reanimation and a land engine, cut a sweeper that destroys sixteen of your own cheap permanents, and take one tapped land out of the mana.

The figures below come from resolving the shipped Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander decklist card by card, then running the same checks again on the hundred cards you'd own after the swaps. Each add is priced at the lowest-cost paper printing found in October 2026, so some of those cards are old frames or promos.

What are the best Death Toll upgrades?

In order of how much each one changes what Winter's graveyard does. The cuts that make room come right after.

1. The Gitrog Monster ($0.42): a 6/6 deathtouch for five that gives you a second land drop and draws whenever land cards hit your graveyard. The box already holds six ways to put a land there on purpose (Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, Harrow, Barren Moor, Tranquil Thicket and Ash Barrens), and Titania, Nature's Force replays Forests from the yard for a 5/3 each time one enters. The upkeep sacrifice draws you a card instead of costing you one.
2. Animate Dead ($7.34): a two-mana way to take a creature from any graveyard, an opponent's included. It costs no life where Reanimate costs the creature's mana value, at the price of -1/-0 and a sacrifice if the Aura is removed.
3. Syr Konrad, the Grim ($1.11): this deck mills constantly, and Konrad deals 1 damage to each opponent for every creature card that reaches a graveyard from anywhere but the battlefield, for every creature that dies, and for every creature card that leaves your graveyard. In a four-player pod each trigger is 3 damage across the table. His {1}{B} mills a card from every library to keep it going.
4. Assassin's Trophy ($1.01) and Maelstrom Pulse ($0.21): Putrefy, Binding the Old Gods, Convert to Slime, Noxious Gearhulk, Ob Nixilis Reignited and Grist are the six answers in the box. These make eight. Trophy is an instant that hits any permanent an opponent controls and hands them a basic land. Pulse is a sorcery that kills a nonland permanent and every other permanent with the same name, which covers the token swarms Culling Ritual was in the deck for.
5. Buried Alive ($2.44): up to three creature cards from the library into the graveyard for three mana. Aim it at Hornet Queen, Giant Adephage and Vile Mutilator, then let Reanimate, Animate Dead or Winter's end step do the returning. With Konrad on the table it's 3 damage to each opponent before anything returns.

The last three slots are lands: Blooming Marsh ($2.22), Deathcap Glade ($2.48) and Overgrown Tomb ($8.77). Marsh comes in untapped as any of your first three lands and Glade from your third onward, so between them no drop has to enter tapped. Tomb costs 2 life to enter untapped, and since it's a Forest it makes a Titania Elemental and can be fetched by Binding the Old Gods. Star Trek reprints Overgrown Tomb on 13 November 2026, so expect that $8.77 to soften.

Culling Ritual destroys sixteen of your own permanents

Culling Ritual destroys every nonland permanent with mana value 2 or less. Sixteen of the deck's own sit there: Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Mind Stone, Golgari Signet and Talisman of Resilience, nine creatures (Deathcap Cultivator, Scavenging Ooze, Grim Flayer, Old Stickfingers, Stitcher's Supplier, Gnarlwood Dryad, Obsessive Skinner, Sakura-Tribe Elder and Skola Grovedancer), and the Suspicious Bookcase and Haywire Mite that are also going. Every token from Hornet Queen or Ishkanah dies with them. It adds one mana per permanent destroyed, which softens the blow, but but sixteen of the deck's 61 nonland cards is a lot to sweep away on your own turn. Maelstrom Pulse takes its slot.

Whispersilk Cloak and Suspicious Bookcase both make one creature unblockable, which is a problem Winter doesn't have: his mill trigger fires when he attacks, whether or not he connects. Grim Flayer is the one attacker whose trigger needs damage to a player, and trample covers part of that. Haywire Mite is a 1/1 whose {G} exile is narrow, only a noncreature artifact or enchantment, and Pulse and Trophy do that job and hit creatures and planeswalkers as well. Arachnogenesis is a fog that stops your own creatures dealing damage too, and Trophy takes the instant slot.

Commander's Sphere is the sixth rock, three mana for black or green only. Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Mind Stone, Golgari Signet, Talisman of Resilience, Burnished Hart, Solemn Simulacrum and Gitrog's extra land drop already carry the ramp. Reliquary Tower and Temple of the False God make only colorless mana in a deck that wants double black and double green. Bojuka Bog enters tapped for black alone, and this deck lives in its own graveyard, with Scavenging Ooze already there for an opponent's.

The graveyard fills faster than it empties

Nineteen cards besides Winter put cards from the library into the graveyard: Stitcher's Supplier, Carrion Grub, Crawling Sensation, Cemetery Tampering, Deadbridge Chant, Nyx Weaver, Mulch, Grapple with the Past, Grisly Salvage, Moldgraf Millipede, Old Stickfingers, Wrenn and Seven, Grist, Professor Onyx, Ursine Monstrosity, Skola Grovedancer, Grim Flayer, Dim Oubliette and Demonic Covenant. Five can put a creature onto the battlefield from it: Reanimate, Whip of Erebos (for one turn), Dim Oubliette, Deadbridge Chant (at random) and Moldgraf Monstrosity (two creature cards, at random, when it dies).

That lopsidedness would be fine if the deck's best cards were cheap, but ten cards cost six or more, and seven of those are creatures: Demolisher Spawn, Moldgraf Monstrosity, Noxious Gearhulk, Giant Adephage, Hornet Queen, Titania and Vile Mutilator. A reanimation spell skips the mana cost (and Vile Mutilator's sacrificed creature), so these seven are what the pile is for. The box has one cheap way to return them. Animate Dead is a second, Buried Alive loads the three best targets, and Gitrog and Konrad give the filler a payoff outside the type count.

Four types in, one permanent out

Winter's end step trigger is a bill with a refund. You exile any number of cards from your graveyard that hold four or more card types between them, then put a permanent card from among them onto the battlefield with a finality counter. It can be any permanent type, a land or a planeswalker included, and an enchantment or planeswalker can't come back any other way in this deck: Reanimate, Animate Dead, Whip of Erebos and Dim Oubliette all name creature cards. So Professor Onyx, Demonic Covenant and Deadbridge Chant, all six-drops, reach the battlefield from the yard only through Winter.

The bill matters because nine other cards read the graveyard's card types: Deathcap Cultivator, Gnarlwood Dryad, Grim Flayer, Demolisher Spawn, Ishkanah, Convert to Slime, Obsessive Skinner, Ursine Monstrosity and Deluge of Doom. The trigger fires at the start of your end step. That is after your attacks and sorceries and before every opponent's turn, so if the exile leaves fewer than four types behind, Gnarlwood Dryad shrinks to a 1/1 and Deathcap Cultivator loses deathtouch while the table is deciding whether to attack you. Exile one card per type, and the bonuses survive only if the cards left behind still show four types. A thin graveyard should pass on the trigger on a turn where defense matters.

The seven-drop that is really a two-drop

Polluted Cistern // Dim Oubliette reads as mana value 7 because a Room outside the battlefield has the combined cost of both doors, so the curve shows six seven-drops and one of them is this card. You only ever cast one door. Polluted Cistern costs two and drains each opponent for each card type among the cards you mill, so Winter's attack alone can take up to 3 from each opponent. Dim Oubliette costs five, mills three and returns a creature, which makes it the deck's second reanimation spell. Both stay.

The other expensive cards that look cuttable are doing the plan's work. Deadbridge Chant mills ten the turn it lands and returns a random card from the yard every upkeep, onto the battlefield if it's a creature and into your hand if not. Professor Onyx's +1 digs three cards deep and sends the rest to the graveyard. Titania turns Gitrog's sacrificed Forests into 5/3s. Convert to Slime destroys up to one artifact, one creature and one enchantment in one sorcery and, with delirium, leaves an Ooze as large as their combined mana value. Moldgraf Millipede grows by the creature cards already in the graveyard, which this deck is built to stock.

What the mana gets

The box runs 38 lands, 14 of them basic. Seven always enter tapped and two more can, and the swaps leave six and five. Counting Culling Ritual's one-shot mana as a source would make the box 30 and 30, but it isn't one, so the box really has 29 black and 29 green sources and the upgrade reaches 30 black and 31 green. Single-pip odds aren't the problem, at 95.1% for black and 95.7% for green by turn two after the swaps. Double black comes up at 86.9% and double green at 88.3% by turn four, against this site's 90% standard, and only cards costing four or more ask for them. The three duals add one black source and two green, which narrows that gap without closing it. The average mana value rises from 3.49 to 3.56, because Gitrog and Konrad cost five and the cards that leave cost one to four.

What I left out

Entomb ($16.30) is the best card I skipped on price. It puts any one card into the graveyard for a single black mana at instant speed, but Buried Alive does most of the work for $2.44 by loading three creature cards, so Entomb goes last in the buying order. Sheoldred, Whispering One ($18.85) is a seven-drop in a deck that already holds ten cards at six or more. Eternal Witness ($1.47) and Victimize ($0.57) overlap what Nyx Weaver, Deadbridge Chant and Reanimate already do. None of the four is a Game Changer. The nine adds aren't either, which leaves the floor at Bracket 1 on both lists.

The upgraded decklist

Hover or tap any name to see the card. The list below is the full hundred after the nine swaps.

Load into the deck builder Copy decklist Playtest the upgraded deck

“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, with no account needed.

FAQ

Can Winter's end step return a planeswalker or an enchantment?

Yes. Winter, Cynical Opportunist puts a permanent card from among the cards you exile onto the battlefield, so any permanent type qualifies, lands included. It is also the only effect in Death Toll that puts a noncreature permanent from the graveyard onto the battlefield: Reanimate, Animate Dead, Whip of Erebos and Dim Oubliette all name creature cards, and Deadbridge Chant sends a noncreature card to your hand. That makes Professor Onyx and Demonic Covenant, both six-drops, the best non-creature returns. The catch is that the exile must hold four card types, and the returned permanent carries a finality counter, so it is exiled if it would go to the graveyard.

How much do the nine Death Toll adds cost?

$26.00 at October 2026 prices, counting the cheapest released printing of each card. Animate Dead ($7.34) and Overgrown Tomb ($8.77) are $16.11 of that. The other seven are $2.48 or less each. Star Trek reprints Overgrown Tomb on 13 November 2026, which makes it the one add worth waiting a few weeks on.

Can Reanimate and Animate Dead take a creature from an opponent's graveyard?

Both can. Reanimate targets a creature card in any graveyard and costs you life equal to that card's mana value, so Hornet Queen costs 7 life wherever it comes from. Animate Dead enchants a creature card in any graveyard, costs no life, gives the creature -1/-0, and makes you sacrifice it if the Aura leaves the battlefield. Either one skips the additional cost on Vile Mutilator, which would otherwise need a sacrificed creature or enchantment.

Should Death Toll keep Culling Ritual against token decks?

It's the best argument for keeping it, and I'd still cut it. Culling Ritual destroys every nonland permanent with mana value 2 or less, and sixteen of Death Toll's own permanents sit there, including five mana rocks and eleven creatures, plus the tokens from Hornet Queen and Ishkanah. It refunds one mana per permanent destroyed, which softens a reset but doesn't make it a good one for a deck built from cheap creatures and rocks. Maelstrom Pulse answers one token type for three mana without touching your board.

Which lands in Death Toll draw a card off The Gitrog Monster?

Six cards put a land into your graveyard on purpose: Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse when sacrificed, Harrow as an additional cost, Barren Moor and Tranquil Thicket when cycled, and Ash Barrens when landcycled. Gitrog's own upkeep sacrifice does it every turn too, and any mill that hits a land triggers it once per event. With Titania, Nature's Force out you can replay a sacrificed Forest from the graveyard on Gitrog's extra land drop and make a 5/3 Elemental.

Is Entomb worth $16.30 in Death Toll?

Not first. Entomb puts any one card from the library into the graveyard for one black mana at instant speed, which suits a deck that already owns Reanimate and Animate Dead. Buried Alive does most of the job for $2.44 by finding three creature cards, and Entomb is not a Game Changer, so it's a pure price call. Buy it after everything else on this page.