The Ruinous Powers arrives as a chaotic Grixis deck led by Abaddon the Despoiler, but there is another commander in the box capable of giving its enormous Demon package a much clearer identity. Be’lakor, the Dark Master turns every Demon entering your battlefield into direct damage while rewarding you for already having an army when the Dark Master himself arrives.
Be’lakor costs and enters as a 6/5 with flying. When he enters the battlefield, you draw X cards and lose X life, where X is the number of Demons you control. More importantly, whenever another Demon enters under your control, that creature deals damage equal to its power to any target. A creature that was already going to be a large threat therefore becomes removal, direct damage or both before it ever gets a chance to attack.
The best The Ruinous Powers upgrade therefore focuses on making expensive Demons easier to deploy, increasing the number of Demon enters-the-battlefield events and exploiting clone effects that turn one large creature into multiple Be’lakor damage triggers.
The Stock Deck Already Contains a Serious Demon Core
The Ruinous Powers was originally built around Abaddon the Despoiler and cascade, but Wizards also filled the deck with enough Demons to make Be’lakor, the Dark Master a legitimate alternative commander without rebuilding everything from scratch. Bloodthirster, Great Unclean One, Keeper of Secrets, Lord of Change, Mortarion, Daemon Primarch, Bloodcrusher of Khorne and Herald of Slaanesh already give the deck a substantial tribal foundation.
Several of those cards become much stronger with Be’lakor than they first appear. Bloodthirster has 6 power, so simply entering the battlefield can deal 6 damage through Be’lakor before its extra-combat ability matters. Lord of Change provides another large evasive Demon while replacing itself with a card, and Keeper of Secrets can generate repeated advantage from the opponent with the largest hand.
Herald of Slaanesh may be one of the most important creatures already in the box. Demon spells you cast cost less while it is on the battlefield, exactly the kind of acceleration a commander surrounded by five-, six- and seven-mana creatures requires. The stock Dark Ritual, Sol Ring, Talisman of Creativity, Talisman of Dominance and Talisman of Indulgence provide additional ways to reach Be’lakor and the deck’s larger threats.
The precon even contains Warstorm Surge, effectively giving you another version of Be’lakor’s damage engine. The problem is not that The Ruinous Powers lacks powerful cards. It is that the cascade, spellslinger and Demon plans are competing for the same deck slots. Moving Be’lakor into the command zone lets us commit much more clearly to the part of the deck that already has the highest ceiling.
Best The Ruinous Powers Upgrades
Heartless Summoning is one of the most efficient ways to solve the deck’s mana problem. Creature spells you cast cost less, while creatures you control get -1/-1. Losing a point of power and toughness matters far less when your threats begin as enormous Demons, and reducing several creature spells by two mana over the course of a game can represent an extraordinary amount of acceleration.
Reflections of Littjara attacks the engine from another angle. Choose Demon as it enters, and every Demon spell you cast creates a copy of that spell. The copy becomes another Demon permanent when it resolves, meaning another creature enters the battlefield and can trigger Be’lakor’s Prince of Chaos ability. Instead of simply getting a second creature, you also gain another burst of direct damage.
Molten Echoes performs a similar job while making the temporary nature of the copy almost irrelevant. Choose Demon, and whenever a nontoken Demon enters under your control, Molten Echoes creates a token copy with haste that is sacrificed at the beginning of the next end step. The copy entering triggers Be’lakor, it can attack immediately, and you often receive all of that value before the token disappears.
Rite of Replication provides the most explosive version of the clone plan. At its normal cost it can copy your best Demon or another valuable creature on the table, but the kicked version targeting Be’lakor creates five token copies simultaneously. The legendary rule removes the extra Be’lakors almost immediately, but their triggered abilities have already seen the other Demons enter. The resulting stack of Prince of Chaos triggers can represent lethal amounts of damage before combat ever matters.
Finally, Bloodletter of Aclazotz gives the deck a way to convert an already dangerous Be’lakor turn into a lethal one. During your turn, if an opponent would lose life, Bloodletter causes that opponent to lose twice that much instead. Because damage causes life loss, Be’lakor’s Demon-entry triggers become dramatically more threatening while Bloodletter is on the battlefield.
The strongest additions therefore are not simply bigger Demons. The precon already has plenty of those. What it needs are cards that make every Demon cheaper or make one Demon entering count as several events.
What Should You Cut?
Switching commanders makes several cards in the stock deck much easier to evaluate. Abaddon the Despoiler is powerful when the list is designed around dealing damage before casting spells and then cascading through the deck, but that requirement no longer supports the central plan. In a focused Be’lakor build, a five-mana creature that is neither a Demon nor part of the clone engine becomes expendable.
Magnus the Red has a similarly powerful ability in the wrong deck. Reducing instant and sorcery costs according to the number of creature tokens you control is excellent for a dedicated spellslinger shell, but Be’lakor wants most of his expensive cards to be creatures. Keeping Magnus pushes the list back toward the split identity we are trying to remove.
Lucius the Eternal brings plenty of Warhammer flavor but does little for the Demon plan. He is not a Demon, does not reduce their costs and does not multiply Be’lakor triggers. The recursion ability can generate value over a long game, but the same slot can do much more when it directly advances the tribal engine.
Deny Reality is another casualty of abandoning cascade. Five mana to return a permanent and cascade can be entertaining under Abaddon, but a focused Be’lakor deck would rather spend that mana deploying a Demon or setting up a repeatable engine.
Nurgle’s Rot is the final easy cut. The Aura can repeatedly return itself and create small creature tokens when the enchanted creature dies, but none of those pieces meaningfully advances the Demon plan. Be’lakor gives the deck enough direct damage to control creatures without devoting slots to slow conditional removal.
A clean first round of changes would therefore be:
Out: Abaddon the Despoiler, Magnus the Red, Lucius the Eternal, Deny Reality, Nurgle’s Rot
In: Heartless Summoning, Reflections of Littjara, Molten Echoes, Rite of Replication, Bloodletter of Aclazotz
Those five swaps remove most of the remaining tension between cascade and Demon tribal while giving Be’lakor several ways to turn individual creatures into much larger swings.
Be’lakor Turns Every Demon Into Removal
The most important part of Be’lakor, the Dark Master is not that Demons deal extra damage in combat. They deal damage when they enter the battlefield, which means opponents cannot simply stabilize behind blockers and wait.
Whenever another Demon enters under your control, that Demon itself deals damage equal to its power to any target. A Bloodthirster therefore represents 6 damage before it ever attacks. A Great Unclean One can remove a utility creature or planeswalker immediately, while larger Demons can simply send the damage directly at an opponent.
This gives the deck an unusually flexible form of interaction. Instead of filling twenty slots with removal spells, some of your normal threats can remove creatures while advancing the battlefield at the same time. Chaos Warp, Bile Blight and the stock sweepers remain useful, but Be’lakor reduces the pressure to draw dedicated removal every game.
Power matters more than mana value for this ability. A Demon does not need to cost seven mana to produce an impressive trigger. That makes efficient high-power Demons particularly valuable and gives future upgrades a simple test: how much immediate Be’lakor damage do you receive for the mana invested?
The goal is not merely to assemble the largest collection of Demons possible. It is to make each Demon solve a problem as soon as it arrives.
Clone Effects Are Better Than They Look
Grixis already has excellent access to clone effects, and Be’lakor gives them a much higher ceiling than they have in an ordinary tribal deck. Copying a Demon is not simply creating another version of that creature. The copy entering the battlefield can also trigger Be’lakor and deal damage according to its power.
Molten Echoes demonstrates the idea perfectly. Cast a large Demon, receive the normal creature and its Be’lakor trigger, then create a token copy and receive another trigger from the copy. Because the token has haste, it may also attack before being sacrificed at the next end step.
Reflections of Littjara creates the copy at the spell level instead. The copied Demon spell resolves into another creature, giving you another body and another entry event. The ability is particularly valuable because it keeps working for every future Demon rather than requiring another card for each clone.
This also explains why Panharmonicon remains a strong optional upgrade from the original article. It does not create another Demon, but it causes Be’lakor’s triggered abilities caused by creatures entering the battlefield to trigger an additional time. When Be’lakor himself enters, his card-draw ability can trigger again. When another Demon enters, Prince of Chaos can trigger again.
The more the upgraded deck concentrates on entering-the-battlefield events, the less important traditional tribal lords become. Be’lakor does not need every Demon to get +1/+1.
He needs every Demon to arrive as many times as possible.
Rite of Replication Is Powerful, but It Is Not Free
Rite of Replication deserves special attention because targeting Be’lakor with a kicked copy can produce one of the deck’s most spectacular finishes.
Creating five Be’lakor tokens causes all five legendary copies to enter simultaneously. The legend rule will then force you to keep only one Be’lakor, but triggered abilities that have already triggered do not disappear simply because those permanents leave the battlefield. The original Be’lakor sees five other Demons enter, while each new Be’lakor sees the other new copies.
That can create enough 6-damage triggers to deal roughly 150 damage across available targets, making the sequence capable of ending a normal Commander table by itself.
There is, however, another side to the interaction. Each token Be’lakor also has its own Lord of Torment enters-the-battlefield trigger. Those triggers can force you to draw a huge number of cards and lose the same amount of life depending on how many Demons you control when each resolves.
That means Rite of Replication should not be treated as a button you press without looking at your life total and library. The damage can end the game, but Be’lakor’s own card draw can become dangerous if the battlefield is already crowded.
It is an explosive finisher precisely because almost everything about the interaction is excessive.
Cost Reduction Matters More Than Another Seven-Mana Demon
The biggest weakness of a dedicated Be’lakor list is obvious as soon as you look at the mana curve. Many of the best Demons cost five, six or seven mana, and Be’lakor himself costs six. Simply replacing every mediocre card with another enormous Demon makes the deck more exciting but often makes it worse.
The stock Herald of Slaanesh is therefore one of the cards I would protect aggressively. Reducing Demon spells by means a six-mana Demon becomes a four-mana play, and the difference between casting one Demon and two in the same turn can represent another entire Be’lakor trigger.
Heartless Summoning provides another global reduction at only two mana. The -1/-1 penalty slightly reduces the amount of damage each Demon can deal through Be’lakor, but saving two mana on every creature is usually worth much more than a single point of damage. The deck wins by creating multiple triggers, not by maximizing every individual trigger at any cost.
Urza’s Incubator remains another excellent option if you want to push the tribal plan further, and Herald’s Horn combines a smaller reduction with card selection. You do not need every cost reducer available, but having several ways to cheat the curve makes the entire deck feel different.
The objective is to reach the point where a six-mana commander does not mean your first relevant Demon arrives on turn seven.
Reanimation Solves the Same Problem From the Graveyard
Cost reduction is not the only way to avoid paying full price for Demons. Grixis gives the deck excellent access to reanimation, and a Demon entering from the graveyard triggers Be’lakor just as effectively as one you cast from your hand.
Cards such as Animate Dead, Reanimate and Necromancy can turn a discarded or destroyed Demon back into direct damage while restoring the creature itself. That becomes especially attractive after opponents have already spent removal dealing with one of your largest threats.
Reanimation also gives the deck resilience against board wipes. Demon tribal naturally commits expensive creatures to the battlefield, making a sweeper potentially devastating if every threat has to be recast at full price. Returning one of those creatures for one or two mana changes the recovery dramatically.
I would not transform The Ruinous Powers into a dedicated reanimator deck. There is no need to add a huge self-mill package or abandon the tribal theme. A few efficient recursion effects simply give Be’lakor another way to reuse the creatures opponents were forced to answer.
Every Demon in the graveyard can become another Prince of Chaos trigger waiting to happen.
Be’lakor’s Own ETB Is an Engine Worth Reusing
The first ability on Be’lakor, the Dark Master is easy to overlook because the direct-damage ability is more dramatic. When Be’lakor enters, however, you draw a card for every Demon you control and lose that much life. With even three or four Demons already on the battlefield, that is a substantial refill attached to your commander.
This is why blink and clone effects can become so powerful. Reusing Be’lakor’s own entry trigger can turn a battlefield full of Demons into a fresh hand, while Panharmonicon can multiply the trigger without requiring the commander to leave at all.
The life loss deserves respect. The deck can draw enormous numbers of cards, but Grixis does not naturally replenish life as efficiently as white or green decks. It is possible to create a battlefield where another Be’lakor trigger is technically available but using it would put you dangerously close to zero.
That is another reason the direct-damage plan is preferable to endlessly trying to blink the commander. You only need enough cards to keep casting Demons. Once Be’lakor and the army are established, the creatures entering after him should be doing most of the killing.
The Mana Base Needs Speed More Than Fancy Utility
The Ruinous Powers was released with a functional but slow Grixis mana base. Command Tower, Exotic Orchard, Sunken Hollow and Foreboding Ruins provide useful fixing, while the three Talismans, Sol Ring, Chromatic Lantern and Wayfarer’s Bauble give the deck a reasonable acceleration package.
The problem is how many lands can cost tempo. Dismal Backwater, Swiftwater Cliffs, Crumbling Necropolis, Path of Ancestry, Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse are acceptable budget fixing, but a deck trying to reach six mana while still casting setup pieces feels every land that enters tapped.
Temple of the False God is another land I would place near the front of the second round of cuts. The deck certainly wants large amounts of mana, but a land that does nothing before you control enough other lands can make exactly the kind of opening hand a high-curve deck cannot afford.
I would improve the mana base gradually rather than replacing everything immediately. Start with the lands that always enter tapped or fail to produce mana early, then move toward untapped Grixis fixing according to budget.
Our Mana Base Upgrade Guide is particularly relevant here because Be’lakor does not need a luxury mana base. He needs a mana base that reliably reaches six while still allowing you to deploy cost reducers and interaction along the way.
How the Upgraded The Ruinous Powers Deck Wins
The ideal early game is less spectacular than the Demons waiting at the top of the curve. Develop mana through Sol Ring, the Talismans and Wayfarer’s Bauble, then establish a cost reducer such as Herald of Slaanesh or Heartless Summoning. The sooner expensive Demons become four- and five-mana plays, the sooner the deck stops spending entire turns on one threat.
Once Be’lakor, the Dark Master enters, the nature of every future creature changes. A Demon is no longer simply a body waiting to attack. Bloodthirster, Great Unclean One or another large threat can immediately remove an opposing creature, pressure a planeswalker or send damage directly at a player.
Clone engines make the battlefield snowball much faster. Molten Echoes can turn one Demon into two entry triggers and an extra hasty attacker, while Reflections of Littjara continually converts Demon spells into additional bodies. Panharmonicon provides another way to multiply the triggered damage without requiring another expensive creature in hand.
As opponents‘ life totals fall, Bloodletter of Aclazotz can make one sequence of Demon entries lethal. If the game lasts long enough to reach nine mana, a kicked Rite of Replication targeting Be’lakor offers an even more dramatic finish.
Combat is still relevant because the creatures themselves are enormous, but the upgraded deck does not have to wait for them to survive summoning sickness. By the time a Demon is ready to attack, it should already have contributed to the game.
That is what makes Be’lakor so much more focused than the original cascade shell: the battlefield itself becomes the burn spell.
PreconForge Verdict
The Ruinous Powers already contains most of the expensive pieces a Be’lakor, the Dark Master deck wants. Bloodthirster, Great Unclean One, Keeper of Secrets, Lord of Change, Bloodcrusher of Khorne, Herald of Slaanesh and Warstorm Surge give the stock deck a surprisingly strong Demon foundation.
The biggest mistake would be spending the upgrade budget on nothing but even larger Demons.
The deck already has monsters.
What it needs is infrastructure.
Heartless Summoning makes the entire creature suite easier to cast. Reflections of Littjara and Molten Echoes multiply the number of Demons entering the battlefield, Bloodletter of Aclazotz multiplies the resulting life loss and Rite of Replication gives the deck a spectacular late-game finish.
Once those pieces are in place, every large Demon does more than add another threat to the battlefield. It arrives as removal, direct damage and potentially another copied creature before combat even begins.
That is where The Ruinous Powers stops feeling like two different Warhammer decks shuffled together and starts functioning like an actual army under the command of the Dark Master.
