NOTHING STAYS BURIED. every sacrifice is theft.

Opening hands

Seven cards from this build. Commanders start in the command zone. In multiplayer Commander, the first mulligan is free. For later mulligans, draw seven again; once you keep, put one card on the bottom for each mulligan beyond the free one.

KeepShow the seven

• Swamp
• Swamp
• Swamp
• Sol Ring
• Arcane Signet
• Reassembling Skeleton
• Sheoldred's Edict

T1 Swamp into Ring and Signet; T2 second Swamp can deploy Tergrid using three generic plus two black. T3 third Swamp supports an edict and development; hold a protection window if opponents threaten removal.

BorderlineShow the seven

• Swamp
• Swamp
• Night's Whisper
• Arcane Signet
• Reassembling Skeleton
• Grave Pact
• Demonic Tutor

T2 choose Whisper to seek land three or Signet for mana. Two Swamps plus the Signet already cover the three black pips on Grave Pact; what the hand is short is the fourth mana. On the Signet line, tutor on T3 with one mana floating, take Sol Ring, and Grave Pact casts on T4 with no third land.

MulliganShow the seven

• Ancient Tomb
• Cabal Coffers
• Necropotence
• Grave Pact
• Torment of Hailfire
• All Is Dust
• The Haunt of Hightower

No Swamp or Urborg means Coffers cannot generate useful mana here; Tomb cannot cast the black engine. Two land names do not make this keepable.

Tergrid, God of Fright strategy guide

Pace and examples. Turn windows below are author estimates and illustrative sequences, not measured multiplayer results or guarantees. A first opponent eliminated is not a whole-table win. In multiplayer the first mulligan is free; later mulligans follow the London procedure. The commander starts in the command zone, outside the seven-card examples.

The commander, precisely

Tergrid, God of Fright costs {3}{B}{B} for a 4/5 with menaceA creature with menace can't be blocked except by two or more creatures., a modal DFCA modal double-faced card: cast either face from your hand. The back face is a separate spell, not a transformation. with Tergrid’s Lantern on the back, and one trigger the whole deck is built around:

“Whenever an opponent sacrifices a nontoken permanent or discards a permanent card, you may put that card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control.”

Five wording notes drive real decisions.

• Permanent card = artifact, creature, enchantment, land, or planeswalker. Discarded instants and sorceries give you nothing. Discarded lands do not use your land drop, and they enter untapped unless the land itself says it enters tapped.
• Sacrificing as a cost triggers, and your trigger resolves first. An opponent sacrificing a creature to pay for something loses it to you before their spell resolves.
• The card must still be in a graveyard when the trigger resolves. Graveyard hate can deny you, and so can your own Tinybones, Bauble Burglar if you order the triggers backwards.
• Tokens never work. Sacrificed tokens and discarded tokens give you nothing.
• Stolen permanents arrive as new permanents entering without being cast (so no cast triggers; creatures need haste or time under your control to attack or tap). A creature Tergrid puts onto your battlefield has summoning sicknessA creature cannot attack, and cannot activate an ability with the tap or untap symbol in its cost, unless it has been under its controller's control continuously since their most recent turn began (CR 302.6). Haste turns it off, and it never applies to other permanent types.: it cannot attack or use tap abilities until your turn comes around with it under your control the whole time. It can block immediately.

The back face matters too. Tergrid’s Lantern at {3}{B} is a repeatable “lose 3 life, sacrifice a nonland permanent, or discard a card” that dodges creature removal entirely, untaps for {3}{B}, and works from the command zone, so send her back there rather than leaving her in a graveyard or in exile.

The loops

Four lines. The first is the engine, and it is free.

The fodder engines and the outlets

The Raven Man is a fodder engine, not a 2/1. At the beginning of each end step, if a player discarded this turn, he makes a 1/1 black Bird with flying that can’t block. Each end step means four per turn cycle in a four-player pod, and “a player” includes you, so one symmetrical discard enchantment keeps him making four Birds every time around the table. The Birds accumulate, they feed every outlet, and a flier matters for Stensian Sanguinist below. Ophiomancer makes a 1/1 black Snake with deathtouch at the beginning of each upkeep while you control none: sacrifice it on your turn and a replacement arrives at the next upkeep, and any Snake you keep is a blocker the table has to respect. Woe Strider brings a 0/1 Goat when it enters, a free body on arrival.

Four outlets eat the fodder, and they are not interchangeable:

1. Phyrexian Tower. The {B}{B} it makes pays the Skeleton’s {1}{B} rebuy exactly. A mana-neutral rebuy, normally once per Tower untap; it is not available anew on every opponent’s turn. Nothing else in the deck does this.
2. Ashnod’s Altar. No tap cost, but {C}{C} covers the generic {1} and never the {B}, so every iteration is one black mana short.
3. Viscera Seer. Sacrifice a creature, scry 1Scry 1: look at the top card of your library, then put it back or on the bottom., no mana at all. The cheapest outlet, and it can sacrifice itself, which matters when a sweeper is coming and you want one last drain trigger.
4. Woe Strider. Sacrifice another creature, scry 1. It cannot eat itself, but it is the outlet that survives removal: escapeEscape: you may cast this card from your graveyard for its escape cost, which includes exiling other cards from your graveyard. for {3}{B}{B} plus exiling four other cards from your graveyard, and it returns with two +1/+1 counters. Count what you exile: escape can strip the graveyard below the three creature cards Grave Researcher needs.

The drain stack

Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, and Syr Konrad, the Grim punish every death, and the wording differences decide games. Blood Artist triggers on any creature dying anywhere, opponents’ creatures included, so every edict, forced-sacrifice trigger, and sweeper drains; it hits one target player per trigger, so aim it at whoever is closest to dead. Zulaport Cutthroat counts only creatures you control but drains each opponent at once, so it is the one that pays you to sacrifice your own fodder. Syr Konrad triggers on every other creature death, on creature cards put into graveyards from anywhere other than the battlefield, and on creature cards leaving your graveyard, so the Skeleton rebuy pings, 1 damage to each opponent per trigger. The fodder loops now pay in life both directions: every iteration drains the table and hands the point back to you.

Gray Merchant of Asphodel joins the stack from the other end: the drain is on entry, not on a death. When he enters, each opponent loses life equal to your devotion to blackDevotion to black counts the black mana symbols in the mana costs of permanents you control. and you gain that much per opponent. Volrath’s Stronghold and a Reanimate copy rebuy him, and Phyrexian Tower or the Altar can cash him in on the spot. The double dip most pilots miss: Malakir Rebirth or Not Dead After All on him before the sacrifice means he dies, returns tapped under your control, and drains again, two full devotion hits in one turn from one card.

The prepare cards

Three creatures carry a sorcery they never lose. PrepareA prepare card stays on the battlefield; while it is prepared you may cast a copy of its spell half, which unprepares it until the card readies again. means the creature stays on the battlefield, and while it is prepared you may cast a copy of the spell half.

Grave Researcher // Reanimate joins the recursion suite. At the beginning of your upkeep it surveils 1Surveil 1: look at the top card of your library, then put it into your graveyard or back on top., then becomes prepared if your graveyard holds three or more creature cards. The Reanimate copy is {B}: put target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control, and you lose life equal to its mana value. A graveyard, not only yours. The line most pilots miss is taking the best creature an opponent milled, discarded, or lost to your own edicts, a second theft the table never sees coming. Time Bojuka Bog around this line: its trigger exiles a target player’s graveyard, which is also where those Reanimate targets live, and it shrinks the graveyards The Master of Lake-town’s death trigger counts. Aim the Bog at the seat abusing its own graveyard, not on curve.

Stensian Sanguinist // Exsanguinate is the second button. Whenever you attack, target creature gains deathtouch until end of turn, and when that creature deals combat damage to a player this combat, the Sanguinist becomes prepared. Any creature it targets works: a stolen creature, or a flying Bird from The Raven Man. Prepared, it carries a full-price Exsanguinate copy at {X}{B}{B}: each opponent loses X life and you gain that much. The Coffers turn now has two X finishers, and this one refunds the life the deck spends.

Emeritus of Woe // Demonic Tutor is the third, and it is the one that searches. It enters prepared, so the copy is castable the turn it lands if you have the mana, and at the beginning of your end step it becomes prepared again if two or more creatures died that turn. Prepared, you may cast a copy of Demonic Tutor for {1}{B}: search your library for a card and put it into your hand. Read the cost honestly. The copy is created in exile and you cast it, mana cost and all, so this is a repeatable tutor and not a free one. Two creature deaths on your own turn is a low bar for this deck: a single edict is three in a four-player pod, and one Reassembling Skeleton death with Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pact both out is seven. Casting the copy unprepares it, so the practical rate is one search per turn cycle, and the 5/4 body is fodder for Ashnod’s Altar or Phyrexian Tower once the searching is done.

You are a ramp deck that happens to tax. Mulligan accordingly.

Snap keep

• Two or three lands with any one of Sol Ring, Mana Vault GC (Game Changer), Arcane Signet, or Fellwar Stone.
• Ancient Tomb GC (Game Changer) plus a two-mana rock, which is a turn 3 Tergrid.
• Any hand containing Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth together with two other lands.
• Lands plus a cheap symmetrical discard enchantment plus a ramp piece.
• Necropotence GC (Game Changer) with three lands. It is the best card the deck can draw on turn 3.

Ship back

• Two lands with no ramp.
• Five or more lands with no early action.
• Any hand whose cheapest play is four mana.
• Hands that are all payoffs and no engine.

The single best keep is turn 1 Swamp, turn 2 rock, turn 3 Tergrid off Ancient Tomb or Mana Vault. That sequence is why the deck runs six ramp pieces.

Turn by turn

The Coffers math

Urborg lands first, and it is not optional. No utility land in this deck carries the Swamp subtype: Ancient Tomb, Bojuka Bog, Cabal Coffers, Castle Locthwain, Phyrexian Tower, Volrath’s Stronghold, and Urborg itself are all plain Lands. Coffers counts Swamps, so without Urborg it counts your basics and nothing else, and seven of your 37 lands are dead weight for the biggest activation in the deck. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth makes every land a Swamp, itself and Coffers included.

Crypt Ghast is not a doubler on Coffers. It reads “Whenever you tap a Swamp for mana, add an additional {B}.” On a basic Swamp that is a doubling, 1 becomes 2. On Cabal Coffers it is one extra mana total, not a doubling: Coffers taps for {B} per Swamp and the Ghast adds exactly one more. People overcount this line by a lot.

X has to beat their outs, not their life total. Every nonland permanent an opponent can spare, tokens included, and every card in their hand absorbs one iteration for free; only the iterations past that take 3 life each. Against a table at 20 life with three permanents and three cards apiece, lethal is about X=13, which is why the Coffers turn aims at 12 to 20 and not at 7. The realistic clock is turn 7 to 9, with the hard finish available from turn 6.

The same mana now has a second button. A prepared Stensian Sanguinist carries a full-price Exsanguinate copy at {X}{B}{B}: each opponent loses X life and you gain that much, and there is no out to it, no permanent to spare and no card to pitch. Prepare it a turn early with a combat connect, then choose: Torment steals on the way through, Exsanguinate refunds every life point the deck spent getting there.

The Master of Lake-town turns either finisher into a deck-out. He reads “Whenever a player loses life, that player mills that many cards.” A Torment iteration that takes 3 life also mills 3, an Exsanguinate for X mills each opponent X, and a Gray Merchant of Asphodel entry mills each opponent for your full devotion. With him on the battlefield the kill turn is a drain, a mass theft, and a deck-out at once, and every creature card it mills chains into Syr Konrad, the Grim. Disclose it: a pod that hears “Konrad grind” pictures pings, not being decked.

The discard payoff shell

The shell converts the discard half of the deck into resources, and the pieces stack.

Bone Miser pays you for your own discards: a creature card makes a 2/2 Zombie, a land card adds {B}{B}, anything else draws a card. He is paid by your own upkeep discards from Bottomless Pit and Necrogen Mists, by Delirium Skeins, by Awaken the Erstwhile, and biggest of all by a Mindslicer sacrifice, which converts your whole hand at once.

Awaken the Erstwhile is a tool with a bill attached. Every opponent gets a 2/2 Zombie per card they discard, typically five to seven each, and tokens are exactly what blanks this deck: Tergrid takes nothing from them, and for the next several turns every Dictate of Erebos trigger, Braids, Cabal Minion upkeep, Archfiend of Depravity end step, and Torment iteration eats a worthless token instead of a real permanent. They are blockers against the stolen-board plan too. Cast it for the Tinybones, Trinket Thief activation or a Bone Miser payout, not on reflex, and never with Necropotence out, which exiles your own dumped hand.

Waste Not and Geth’s Grimoire stack from the other direction, paying you when opponents discard: Waste Not for Zombies, mana, or cards by card type, the Grimoire for a card every time. With one symmetrical discard enchantment out, the Grimoire alone is three cards per turn cycle.

Ral Zarek, Guest Lecturer rounds out the shell. Plus one surveils 2, setting your draws and feeding Grave Researcher’s creature count. Minus one makes any number of target players each discard a card, which with Tergrid out is a theft trigger on up to three opponents at once and, used on your turn, the fourth Tinybones, Trinket Thief source. Minus two returns a creature card with mana value 3 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield, a rebuy on Reassembling Skeleton or Blood Artist. The ultimate exists too, and it is disclosed at rule zero: minus seven flips five coins and a target opponent skips their next X turns, where X is the heads. He starts at 3 loyalty and the plus is a quiet surveil 2, so four undisturbed activations get there. Turn skipping is not an extra-turn spell, but it is the same conversation, which is why the pod script names it next to the no-extra-turns line.

Tinybones, Trinket Thief wants an opponent to have discarded that turn, while The Raven Man watches any player’s discard including your own and pays in Birds rather than cards; the fodder engines section above is his real job description. Tourach, Dread Cantor grows on every opponent discard, a cheap protection-from-white body and the thinnest slot in the shell: on his own he generates no card, no mana, no body, and no theft. And The Master of Lake-town turns every point of life loss at the table, damage included, into that many cards milled.

All Is Dust as the comeback button

All Is Dust, {7} sorcery: each player sacrifices all colored permanents they control. No targeting, and sacrifice beats indestructible.

Nearly every land is a colorless permanent, so mana bases survive, Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth included: Urborg changes land types, not colors. The exceptions are lands that are also colored permanents as it resolves, a Dryad Arbor or a manland someone animated in response. Most artifacts are colorless too. Your Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Ashnod’s Altar, Arcane Signet, Fellwar Stone, and Geth’s Grimoire all live, and so do theirs.

Cast it only with Tergrid on the battlefield. Every nontoken colored permanent an opponent sacrifices triggers her once. She is a colored permanent herself, so she is sacrificed to the same spell, but the triggers are already independent of her: they all resolve, and you may put each card onto the battlefield under your control. She goes to the command zone and comes back later, and so does every commander the sweep kills: a commander put into a graveyard may be moved to the command zone as a state-based action, and that check happens before her triggers are put on the stack, so an opposing commander triggers her and, once its owner takes that option, leaves her nothing. Colored tokens go down too and give her nothing either, while colorless ones like Treasures survive the sweep entirely.

Blood Artist turns the sweep into a drain, and it is often the actual kill. His dies-trigger is a leaves-the-battlefield ability that looks back in time, so it fires for every creature that dies simultaneously with him, himself included. A four-player All Is Dust or a big Killing Wave with him out is frequently 10 to 20 life drained in one resolution, one trigger at a time, each aimed at whoever is closest to dead.

This is the comeback button. Cast it from behind: your own colored board is the cheap half of the exchange, and you untap with their board plus your untouched rocks and lands. Coffers mana pays the {7} easily.

Win conditions, ranked

Wincon 1 · Torment of Hailfire, X past their outs

The primary plan. Set up Cabal Coffers plus Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, untap, kill. Demonic Tutor GC (Game Changer) and Vampiric Tutor GC (Game Changer) both find it, so treat them as second copies of whichever piece you are missing, not as generic value.

Wincon 2 · Exsanguinate off a prepared Stensian Sanguinist

The same Coffers mana, no outs: each opponent loses X and you gain that much, which at a full table is three X back. It needs Stensian Sanguinist prepared, so line up a combat connect the turn before; the deathtouch it grants means any target works, a stolen creature or a flying Bird included.

Wincon 3 · The Konrad grind, and the Master mill chain

Syr Konrad, the Grim pings each opponent whenever another creature dies, whenever a creature card is put into a graveyard from anywhere other than the battlefield, and whenever a creature card leaves your graveyard, so the Skeleton rebuy pings too. Running the loop with Konrad out is a grind kill that does not care whether the table answered your Torment, and with The Master of Lake-town out the grind becomes the mill chain above, which can end the game without a single attack.

Wincon 4 · Gray Merchant of Asphodel, the devotion spike

An enters-the-battlefield drain: each opponent loses life equal to your devotion to black and you gain that much per opponent. With this deck’s black pips he commonly drains each opponent for 6 to 10 and gains triple back, and recursion makes him a repeatable button: Volrath’s Stronghold and a Reanimate copy rebuy him, and Phyrexian Tower or the Altar can cash him in on the spot.

Wincon 5 · Stolen board beatdown

You have four of their creatures and they have none. Menace and Phyrexian Obliterator do the rest.

Wincon 6 · The Haunt of Hightower

Grows on every card put into any opponent’s graveyard from anywhere, which in this deck is constant, and forces a discard on every attack. A 14/14 flying lifelink is a two-swing kill on a player the drain stack has already worked below 28, and it gains the life back on the way.

Wincon 7 · Tinybones, Trinket Thief, activated

{4}{B}{B}: each opponent with no cards in hand loses 10 life. After Awaken the Erstwhile or a Mindslicer sacrifice, that is a real line, not a curiosity.

Always have two of these live. All three tutors point at two buttons, Torment and the Sanguinist’s Exsanguinate. If the table has graveyard hate for Konrad, lean on the X spells. If someone counters or exiles Torment, the Sanguinist is holding the second copy.

Life management

This deck bills its own life total heavily, and one of the bills is mandatory. Track it from turn 1, not from the turn you notice.

Tinybones, Trinket Thief reads “At the beginning of each end step, if an opponent discarded a card this turn, you draw a card and you lose 1 life.” That is not optional and it is not once a turn: it triggers on each end step. Off a per-upkeep engine like Bottomless Pit that is 3 cards and 3 life per turn cycle, because your own end step only counts if an opponent discarded during your turn. A Ral Zarek, Guest Lecturer minus one aimed at opponents on your turn, or an Oppression hit on your turn, adds the fourth.

Everything else is a choice, and the choices add up fast. Necropotence GC (Game Changer) is 1 life per card with no ceiling. Ancient Tomb GC (Game Changer) is 2 life a tap. Mana Vault GC (Game Changer) is 1 damage at your draw step for every turn you leave it tapped. Castle Locthwain costs life equal to your hand size, which after a Necropotence turn is a lot. Vampiric Tutor GC (Game Changer) is 2, Night’s Whisper is 2, Killing Wave costs X per creature you keep, and the Pox suite takes a third, a half, or X. Grave Researcher’s Reanimate copy bills life equal to the mana value of what it takes, and The Master of Lake-town mills you for every life payment on top. The deck does gain some back now: Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat return 1 per trigger, an Exsanguinate copy gains X per opponent, Gray Merchant of Asphodel gains his whole drain back, and Crypt Ghast’s extort and The Haunt of Hightower’s lifelink still exist. Be honest about the sizes: the Merchant is the exception, his gain is real, X per opponent in one trigger; the other drains are a trickle and Exsanguinate is late, so budget your payments as if the answer were still nothing.

The rules of thumb:

• Above 30, spend freely. Necropotence for 6 or 7 is correct.
• Between 20 and 30, price every payment against the Torment turn. You are the archenemy by now, and a stolen board does not block a Craterhoof.
• Below 15, stop. Cut Necropotence draws to two or three, tap basics instead of Ancient Tomb, and do not cast Pox Plague.
• Tinybones, Trinket Thief is a liability at low life. He is a 1/2. Chump-block with him or let a removal spell take him, because the drain is mandatory and it does not care that you are at 6.

Common misplays

Known weaknesses

Five, honest.

• No artifact removal, no dedicated enchantment removal, and only one targeted answer. Final Vengeance is the single spell that picks its own victim, and it exiles a creature only. The other three are sacrifice effects: Sheoldred’s Edict and Sudden Edict let opponents choose what dies, while Flare of Malice forces the greatest mana value among their creatures and planeswalkers. All Is Dust takes only colored permanents, so colorless artifacts, which are most of the scary ones, never leave. It is also the only card that answers an opposing enchantment on your terms, and only a colored one. Pox Plague takes half their permanents of their choice, so it reaches one only once its controller is out of worse permanents. Torment of Hailfire and Braids, Arisen Nightmare reach one only if an opponent picks it: Torment lets them take 3 life or a discard instead, and Braids lets them take 2 life and hand you a card instead. An artifact combo still goes unanswered, and your only outs are stripping it before it lands and racing.
• Token decks still blank the theft half. Tergrid steals no tokens and edicts hit tokens first. The drain half now pays out anyway: Blood Artist drains off every token death, your edicts and sweepers included, and Zulaport Cutthroat pays you to sweep your own fodder. Race with The Haunt of Hightower and Phyrexian Obliterator and lean on Killing Wave, which forces a life payment per token.
• Fast combo is still the worst matchup. Your plan starts on turn 3, Opposition Agent taxes their tutors, Orcish Bowmasters punishes their draw engines, and Sudden Edict’s split secondSplit second: while this spell is on the stack, players can't cast spells or activate abilities that aren't mana abilities. is the only true “cannot respond” answer in the deck. The caveat: it stops the response, not the choice. The target player sacrifices a creature of their own choosing, so it takes the combo creature only off an otherwise empty board; against a pilot holding a spare body it takes the spare body.
• You are the archenemy from the moment you disclose. Nine Game Changers and mass land denial buy you a focused table. The pod notes page is not optional reading.
• Your own life total is a resource the table can attack. Necropotence, Ancient Tomb, and the mandatory Tinybones drain mean a burn or aggro seat closes on you faster than the maths suggest.

Quick reference

Turn	Do this
1	Land. Sol Ring or Mana Vault if drawn.
2	Ramp: Arcane Signet or Fellwar Stone. Ancient Tomb accelerates this by a turn. Spare mana buys Viscera Seer or Blood Artist.
3	Tergrid if the ramp got there. Otherwise Necropotence, Oppression, Bottomless Pit, or Necrogen Mists.
4-5	Tergrid with a protection spell held up, then Dictate of Erebos, Grave Pact, Archfiend of Depravity, or Braids, Cabal Minion.
5-6	Run the free Phyrexian Tower iteration every turn. Killing Wave and the Pox effects. Land Urborg, then Coffers.
6+	Torment of Hailfire or a prepared Exsanguinate for lethal, or the loop plus Syr Konrad, the Grim.

The full decklist, with the owned printings for all 100 cards, lives on the List tab. The rule-zero script, the nine-Game-Changer readout, the land-denial disclosure, and the politics playbook are the pod notes page.