The primary plan. Set up Cabal Coffers plus Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, untap, kill. Demonic Tutor GC and Vampiric Tutor GC both find it, so treat them as second copies of whichever piece you are missing, not as generic value.
Tergrid, God of Fright · Bracket 4 · Mono-Black
TERGRID GOD OF FRIGHT. every sacrifice is theft.
Mono-black sacrifice-denial theft with a big-mana X-spell finish. Every edict, Pox effect, and discard spell becomes permanent theft under Tergrid, and thirty Swamps fund the Cabal Coffers mana that ends the game.
Bracket 4 high-power
Game Changers 9 listed
Main deck 100
Kill window T7 to T9
Tax the table with cheap symmetrical discard while you ramp harder than the discard suggests.
Full gameplan
Land Tergrid on turn 3 or 4 with protection up. Turn every sacrifice effect in the deck into permanent theft, and use the Phyrexian Tower loop, Tower plus Reassembling Skeleton plus Dictate of Erebos, to make that theft repeatable instead of one-shot. Convert the resulting stolen board and Syr Konrad, the Grim triggers into damage. When Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Cabal Coffers are online, close with a large Torment of Hailfire, which under Tergrid is simultaneously a drain spell and a mass steal. This is a Bracket 4 list on two counts, and both are read out before the first shuffle: it runs mass land denial, and it runs nine Game Changers against a Bracket 3 cap of three. The Bracket 3 build won the resource game and then ran out of turns. This one has a button, and it presses it on turn 7.
Tergrid, God of Fright strategy guide
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.”
Four wording notes drive real decisions.
- Permanent card = artifact, creature, enchantment, land, or planeswalker. Discarded instants and sorceries give you nothing. Discarded lands arrive untapped and do not use your land drop.
- 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.
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.
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, Arcane Signet, or Fellwar Stone.
- Ancient Tomb GC 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 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 seven ramp pieces.
Turn by turn
T1-3 Ramp first, tax second
Rock on turn 2, Tergrid or an enchantment on turn 3. Turn 1: Swamp, Sol Ring or Mana Vault GC if you have it. Ancient Tomb GC is usually your second or third land, not your first, since the deck is pip-hungry. Turn 2: Arcane Signet, Fellwar Stone, or Wayfarer’s Bauble; the Bauble is the worst on rate but it fetches a basic, which matters for Cabal Coffers. Turn 3: Tergrid if the ramp got there, otherwise Necropotence GC or a discard enchantment.
Pick your turn 3 enchantment by pod:
- Spell-heavy pod: Oppression. It taxes every cast for the entire game.
- Creature-heavy pod: Bottomless Pit. Random discard means you hit permanents, which means Tergrid theft.
- Either: Necrogen Mists. The third copy, slightly worse for you because they choose.
T3-5 Tergrid with insurance
Do not jam Tergrid into an open board with no protection. Ideal follow-up with Tergrid down: Dictate of Erebos, Archfiend of Depravity, or Braids, Cabal Minion GC. Any of the three converts her from a 4/5 body into an engine immediately. If Tergrid is going to eat removal no matter what, cast Painful Quandary or Tergrid’s Lantern instead. Both function without her and both stay relevant deep into the game.
Malakir Rebirth and Not Dead After All exist so the table's first removal spell does not cost you the game. Holding one black mana up is usually worth delaying a turn. T4-7 The theft engine
Rank your engine pieces by how much they generate with Tergrid on the battlefield:
- Dictate of Erebos. Every creature you control that dies makes each opponent sacrifice one. Flash it in during someone else’s wrath.
- Braids, Cabal Minion. GC A per-upkeep edict on artifacts, creatures, or lands, on every player, forever. Three stolen permanents per turn cycle with Tergrid out, and the piece that grinds a table off lands without casting a single Pox.
- Archfiend of Depravity. Three forced sacrifices per turn cycle at each opponent’s end step. With Dictate, the table cannot keep creatures.
- Killing Wave. Each creature’s controller sacrifices it unless they pay X life. You pay for yours, they mostly cannot pay for all of theirs, and you take everything they drop. The best mass sacrifice in the deck because you get to opt out.
- Plaguecrafter and Demon’s Disciple. Each player sacrifices a creature or planeswalker, and Plaguecrafter punishes empty boards with a discard. Accursed Marauder takes a nontoken creature only: worse against a resolved planeswalker, better against tokens, because it denies them the free out. All three are rebuyable with Malakir Rebirth, Not Dead After All, and Volrath’s Stronghold.
- Pox, Smallpox, Death Cloud, Pox Plague. Mass sacrifice of lands and creatures, all of which land on your side. Disclosed at rule zero, every game.
- Phyrexian Obliterator. Any damage dealt to it makes that source’s controller sacrifice that many permanents. Attack into open boards; blocking it or burning it is a gift to you.
- Braids, Arisen Nightmare. A no-win choice for the table. Sacrifice something you can rebuy and let them pick their poison.
T6+ The Torment turn
Torment of Hailfire: repeat X times, each opponent loses 3 life unless they sacrifice a nonland permanent of their choice or discard a card. With Tergrid on the battlefield, each iteration is 3 life lost, a nonland permanent that Tergrid takes, or a discard, and a discarded permanent card is theft too. Pitching an instant or a sorcery is the only out that costs them nothing.
Do not cast Torment for a small X to get value. It is your only true finisher and both tutors point at it. If you need value, cast Killing Wave instead.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.
- Turn 7, eight lands out with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth among them // five basics, Urborg, Cabal Coffers, Ancient Tomb, so every land is a Swamp
- Five basic Swamps 5
- + Urborg, itself a Swamp 1
- + Ancient Tomb, 2 life 2
- + Cabal Coffers, pay {2} for eight Swamps +6
- 14 mana, and Torment of Hailfire is {X}{B}{B}, so X=12
- The same eight lands with Crypt Ghast out // five basics doubled 10, Urborg doubled 2, Ancient Tomb plus one {B} 3, Coffers eight plus one for {2} +7
- 22 mana, so X=20, which is not a threat, it is the end of the game
X has to beat their outs, not their life total. Every nonland permanent an opponent can spare 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 discard payoff shell
Three cards convert the discard half of the deck into resources, and they 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 by every Raven’s Crime retraceRetrace: you may cast the card from your graveyard by discarding a land card in addition to paying its other costs.. Retrace costs {B} plus discarding a land card and Bone Miser refunds {B}{B}, so each activation nets a mana and makes a target player discard. Repeat until you run out of lands in 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.
Tinybones, Trinket Thief wants an opponent to have discarded that turn, while The Raven Man takes any player’s discard including your own, so the Raven Man fires on turns Tinybones does not. Tourach, Dread Cantor grows on every opponent discard, and The Master of Lake-town turns every point of life loss at the table, damage included, into that many cards milled.
Win conditions, ranked
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.
You have four of their creatures and they have none. Menace and Phyrexian Obliterator do the rest.
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 that gains the life back on the way.
{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. If the table has graveyard hate for Konrad, lean on Torment. If someone counters or exiles Torment, lean on the loop.
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. Cunning Lethemancer, a Liliana +1, Raven’s Crime, or an Oppression hit on your turn adds the fourth.
Everything else is a choice, and the choices add up fast. Necropotence GC is 1 life per card with no ceiling. Ancient Tomb GC is 2 life a tap. Mana Vault GC 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 is 2, Night’s Whisper and Sign in Blood are 2 each, Feed the Swarm costs the mana value of what it killed, Killing Wave costs X per creature you keep, and the Pox suite takes a third, a half, or X. Nothing in the deck gains life except Crypt Ghast’s extort and The Haunt of Hightower’s lifelink, and neither is reliable.
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
Ordering the Bauble Burglar’s trigger over Tergrid’s. The Burglar exiles the card, Tergrid finds an empty graveyard, and the steal never happens. Burglar under, Tergrid over.
Casting Tergrid with no protection and no follow-up. Land her with Malakir Rebirth or Not Dead After All available, or land her the turn before a Dictate.
Casting an edictEdict = forced sacrifice: each player sacrifices a creature. No targeting, so it beats hexproof and shroud., Killing Wave, or Torment before Tergrid. You threw away the value.
Spending Reassembling Skeleton without Dictate out. With Dictate down the Skeleton is the whole engine and the free cost on Flare of Malice. Without it, holding is almost always right.
Announcing an Altar loop you cannot pay for. {C}{C} does not pay {1}{B}. Count black sources first.
Discarding the Skeleton with Necropotence out. Necropotence exiles your discards from your own graveyard. There is no rebuy.
Tapping Cabal Coffers before Urborg is down. No utility land in the deck is a Swamp, so Coffers is counting basics only.
Overcounting Crypt Ghast on Coffers. One extra mana, not double.
Sacrificing Mindslicer on an empty table. Its value scales with cards in hand. Fire it when hands are full, not when you are out of options.
Overextending into your own Pox or Death Cloud. They hit you too. Cast them from behind on board, not ahead.
Leading on Ancient Tomb. It pays 2 life and produces colorless in a deck with Pox at {B}{B}{B}, Phyrexian Obliterator at {B}{B}{B}{B}, and Pox Plague at {B}{B}{B}{B}{B}. Sequence your black sources first.
Blocking with Phyrexian Obliterator. You want opponents dealing damage to it on their terms.
Holding Opposition Agent for a fetch land. In a pod with real tutors, flashing it in on a Demonic Tutor or a Cultivate is worth far more than a Wooded Foothills.
Spending a tutor on value. Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor are a second Torment of Hailfire, a second Cabal Coffers, or a second Dictate of Erebos. Cast them with a plan.
Known weaknesses
Five, honest.
- No artifact removal. Feed the Swarm handles creatures and enchantments only. An artifact combo goes unanswered, and your only outs are stripping it before it lands and racing.
- Token decks blank you. Tergrid steals no tokens and edicts hit tokens first. Against a go-wide deck, 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.
- 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, Fellwar Stone, or Wayfarer’s Bauble. Ancient Tomb accelerates this by a turn. |
| 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, 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 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.
MTG terms that show up above.
Open glossary
- Game Changer
- A specific card on Wizards' published Game Changer list. Bracket 3 caps at 3. Bracket 4 has no published cap, but running more than a few flags more attention at the table.
- Bracket
- The published power-tier system for Commander: 1 (precon), 2 (casual), 3 (upgraded/standard), 4 (high-power), 5 (cEDH).
- Voltron
- The strategy of stacking equipment, auras, and counters onto a single creature (usually the commander) to one-shot opponents through commander damage.
- Commander damage
- Damage from a commander tracks per-source. 21 commander damage from one source kills the dealt-to player regardless of life total.
- ETB
- Short for 'enters the battlefield'. Any triggered ability that fires when a permanent enters play is an ETB trigger.
- Equip
- An activated ability on an Equipment card. Pay the equip cost, attach to a creature you control. Sorcery speed only.
- Attach
- The keyword action for putting an Equipment or Aura onto a creature. ETB triggers that attach an equipment for free bypass both the equip cost and the sorcery-speed limit.
- Free equip
- Attaching an equipment without paying its printed equip cost. Common enablers include ETB-attach clauses on the equipment itself, Sigarda's Aid (instant-speed attach), Puresteel Paladin under metalcraft, and 'whenever this enters' triggers on equipment-themed commanders.
- Treasure
- Sacrificial colorless artifact token. Tap, sacrifice it, add one mana of any color. Counts as an artifact for triggers and metalcraft.
- Phase Out
- Phased-out permanents are treated as though they don't exist until their controller's next untap step. They aren't destroyed, exiled, returned, or stolen. A common protection effect.
- Cascade
- When you cast a card with cascade, exile from the top of your library until you exile a non-land with a lesser mana value, then cast it for free.
- Affinity
- A cost-reduction keyword. 'Affinity for artifacts' means the spell costs 1 less to cast for each artifact you control.
- Modified
- A creature is modified if it has counters on it, or has an equipment or aura you control attached to it. Some payoffs scale off the modified condition.
- Vigilance
- A creature with vigilance doesn't tap when it attacks. Common in white. Often granted by static effects (Brave the Sands) or equipment (Shadowspear).
- Lifelink
- Damage dealt by a creature with lifelink also causes its controller to gain that much life. Common in white and black. Often granted by Shadowspear, Vampiric Link, and similar.
- Mindslaver
- A 'Mindslaver effect' lets you control an opponent's next turn: their draws, plays, and attacks. Named for the Mindslaver artifact; some commander-specific triggers replicate the effect.
- Metalcraft
- A Mirrodin-block keyword that activates when you control three or more artifacts. Metalcraft cards typically grow stronger or gain abilities while the condition is on.
- Impulse draw
- Exile cards from the top of your library, then you may play them this turn (sometimes longer). At higher power levels, mass impulse effects double as burst card advantage and mana.
- Mulligan
- Shuffle your hand back, draw 7 again. Standard EDH mulligan: each successive mull, put one card on the bottom at the end of the process (the 'London' mulligan).
- Mana Vault
- One-mana artifact that taps for three colorless. Does not untap on your untap step. You may pay {4} during your upkeep to untap it; if you skip the payment, it deals 1 damage to you at the beginning of your draw step. The cost-vs-damage math: take 1 to keep mana, pay 4 to keep the artifact live next turn. A legacy fast-mana classic and a Game Changer.
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Reference
Full deck list
All 100 cards, the sideboard, and bracket swaps.