Top 10 Best Commanders from Duskmourn - with Decklists!

I've been enjoying these highly themed collections that Magic has been releasing very much. A few years ago, we had access to a a cyberpunk theme in Kamigawa Neon Dynasty.. This year, we got Outlaws of Thunder Junction, which had cowboys and the Wild West as its theme, and more recently, Bloomburrow, which was all about cute little animals.

Now, the spotlight sets on Duskmourn: House of Horror, which is packed with spooky horror themes like ghosts, monsters, and nightmares.

Duskmourn Mechanics

The set's mechanics can be studied in this article by our judge Antônio Faillace, who explains them in detail.

Let's start light with a simple, mono color, low cost commander.

Toby, Beastie Befriender is a commander for aggressive go wide token strategies. The gameplan is to basically fill the board with tokens with flying.

It's simple but effective. Besides that, Toby creates his own 4/4 token when it enters the battlefield, contributing to his base static ability. By using cards like Nesting Dovehawk, Anointed Procession, and Mondrak Glory Dominus, you'll surely have a smoother, more simple game plan without too much trouble.

It's far from being the most innovative commander in Magic, but it does its job well.

What if you could use the pump ability on Craterhoof Behemoth multiple times in one turn?

Even without the trample part of Behemoth’s ability, the number of elves, tokens, and small creatures that green usually generates is enough to take advantage of this ability, which can be activated at instant speed.

It’s simple and aggressive just like the previous one. You might think you'll see Tyvar coming from miles away, but this commander can surprise you with a well-played turn that can hit you hard. This simplicity and predictability in building decks and playing a straightforward game of Commander is something that's been lacking in the format, so having two new commanders like this in the format can be quite interesting.

Winter, Misanthropic Guide is an interesting commander, especially if you enjoy a playstyle that combines universal card advantage with hand control mechanisms. The use of Delirium is a great way to limit your opponents hand size, and the colors in Jund offer many ways to explore this possibility. This deck requires careful planning to balance the shared card draw advantage with punishment or control strategies.

Cards like Grim Flayer or Traverse the Ulvenwald are great additions, as they benefit from the same mechanic.

The ability that makes all players draw two cards at the beginning of your upkeep is risky and certainly places this commander a bit lower on the list. Its ability can speed up the game by ensuring that everyone has more resources. However, this advantage needs to be directed to benefit you more than your opponents, and making sure Winter, Misanthropic Guide reduces your opponents' maximum hand size becomes crucial to this kind of strategy.

Overall, this commander falls into the category of "super interesting deck, with lots of room for improvement and different builds," but it requires a lot of refinement and careful planning in order to avoid helping your opponents too much.

Here we have a very basic commander, with an accessible mana cost and still, somehow, It can bring down a very high converted mana cost permanent straight to the battlefield. It's good thing that it's monogreen, because without that one color limitation, it would be a much more dangerous commander. With blue, for example, it could put Omniscience into play very quickly.

Even so, Kona, Rescue Beastie will have very restricted and obvious builds, mainly focused on Eldrazi creatures like Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger or other massive creatures like Blightsteel Colossus, as well as cards like Archetype of Endurance and Earthquake Dragon.

Keep in mind that Kona, Rescue Beastie's effect extends to permanents as a whole, including enchantments like Eldrazi Conscription, artifacts like Wondrous Crucible, and planeswalkers like Karn Liberated and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon.

What I find most interesting about Rip, Spawn Hunter is that, in addition to searching for creature cards from the top of your deck (something common in green and white), there's also an interesting way to search for artifact cards of the vehicle type. This helps to always activate its survival ability, without having to engage in combat — since you can tap it to crew a vehicle or saddle up a creature with the mechanic “saddle”, allowing you to continuously search for more cards. Its flexibility in crewing vehicles and the growing value of its ability as its power increases make it an intriguing choice for midrange decks.

Just keep in mind that Rip, Spawn Hunter allows you to add creatures and vehicles with different power levels to your hand. This means the deck should include a good variety of creatures with different power values to increase the number of cards you can search for.

Cards like Sensei’s Divining Top and tutors that place specific cards on top of your deck can help you make the most of Rip’s ability.

Nashi, Searcher in the Dark is interesting because it feels like a well-balanced version of Jodah, the Unifier which allows you to search for legendary creatures just like Jodah except with a more limited color range. Menace gives it some evasion, which is good since Nashi depends on connecting combat damage to opponents’ life totals in order to trigger its main ability.

The milling ability and the fact that you can choose legendary cards or enchantments offer a form of "selective card draw" which works well in a deck with a high concentration of those types of cards and you can always just choose to trade these for +1/+1 counters, letting Nashi, the rat ninja wizard mill more cards next time.

The Jolly Balloon Man is the most fun commander in this set. Its ability to create 1/1 flying tokens from creatures that are already on the battlefield under your control makes it really easy to come up with tons of ideas for a clown-themed deck.

As stated, the main ability here allows you to make a copy of another creature you control, which must then be sacrificed at the end of your turn and because of this, we can head towards a strategy based on filling up the deck with creatures that have effects when they enter or leave the battlefield. Haste and flying on the tokens encourage us to use creatures with effects that trigger when they attack or deal damage.

Great examples of cards liek this are Zealous Conscripts, which takes control of opponents’ creatures when it enters the battlefield, and Solemn Simulacrum, which has powerful effects when entering and leaving the battlefield. Cards like Goblin Bombardment and Ashnod's Altar also work well in a sacrifice-based deck, making the most out of creatures that would be leaving the battlefield anyway.

You can also increase the number of tokens you make with cards like Anointed Procession and Mondrak, Glory Dominus.

Niko, Light of Hope is one of my favorite commanders because I enjoy building recursion around cards you usually only have one copy of, like Isochron Scepter and Helm of the Host for example.

Niko, Light of Hope is a commander with a wide range of options to take advantage of this effect, offering great balance between card advantage, creature control, and flicker effects. His ability to manipulate non-legendary creatures and create temporary Shard copies can lead to interesting plays and lots of room for improving the deck. Whether in control, flicker, or combo strategies, Niko has the tools to manage the flow of the game by manipulating permanents.

Sun Titan is a great card for this strategy, as it triggers effects both when entering and attacking. It's a very interesting idea to exile it and then return it to the battlefield to take advantage of its ETB; enters the battlefield effect while the shards reproduce the other part of its ability which is triggered when it attacks. Flickering Niko, Light of Hope himself also works well since this will create more Shards which makes this commander a powerful engine of high-value creatures that trigger effects when entering and attacking.

We rarely see a commander like Marvin. One that not only has a high power level, but is also versatile for deck building strategies. Marvin, Murderous Mimic can be shaped by the creatures you control, making him incredibly adaptable to different strategies.

A deck with Marvin can take a toolbox approach by using creatures with activated abilities that can be copied in many different situations or when most needed. These could include creatures with different abilities like card draw, removal, mana generation, or protection.

Marvin is incredibly flexible and creative. This commander comes with a low cost and high synergy with creatures that have activated abilities. This makes Marvin, Murderous Mimic incredibly flexible and fun for players who enjoy building complex strategies and treating each game as if it were a different puzzle. Whether it's Voltron, combo or control, Marvin is a true arsenal of possibilities.

There are already many infinite combos out there, with familiar creatures like Pili-Pala, which in combination with Palladium Myr can generate infinite colored mana through Marvin’s copying ability.

The only thing missing is more color options, but then again, that would create serious balancing issues, just like what happened with Golos, Tireless Pilgrim.

Marina Vendrell faces the typical challenges of five-colored commanders, especially because she strengthens and gives you access to the best cards in Magic within a specific strategy. In these types of decks, you usually need a very solid mana base, but fortunately nowadays we have access to a variety of mana rocks and lands to help with that.

When Marina enters the battlefield, she reveals the top seven cards of your deck and you put all revealed enchantments into your hand. This offers a more directed kind of card advantage that focuses on enchantments which is one of the most powerful and versatile card types in the game of Magic. This makes enchantment-based strategies, such as Enchantress or Constellation very interesting with cards like Enchantress’s Presence and Calix, Guided by Fate since they generate card advantage and value when enchantments enter the battlefield.

The deck can also benefit from powerful tutors like Enlightened Tutor and Zur the Enchanter to easily fetch enchantments.

Marina's most unique ability lets you unlock Rooms, a new type of enchantment in Duskmourn that can be paid for separately and that unlocks triggered or static abilities. Rooms are a fresh and unique design in enchantments that allow you to generate a lot of value. With Marina, you can unlock expensive enchantments just by tapping her, and you can also re-lock and unlock Rooms for even more value.

Marina Vendrell is the strongest commander in this set and unfortunately she might even be too powerful for some playgroups.

This set is very extreme when it comes to its new commanders. They can offer some simple and obvious ideas, or we can come across enigmatic puzzles of strategies what will keep us racking our brains for hours and hours as we figure it all out in front of our card collection.

What about you? What’s your favorite commander from DSK? Let us know in the comments!