Prismari is the college of the elemental arts at Strixhaven. The school excels in expressing themselves through raw magical power. They could be seen as an amalgamation of Mozart and David Copperfield except the magic is real. Musicians, actors, dancers, painters and more come together to create amazing magical spectacles.
Prismari Performance Precon
Prismari Performance is probably the least hyped deck out of the Strixhaven commander set. However, after playing the deck, I think it is a lot of fun. What’s more fun that slinging spells and having a bunch of triggers resolve?
Zaffai, Thunder Conductor is the face commander and is built around getting value through playing instant or sorcery spells with mana cost 5 or more. This works quite well. Don’t forget the ability that lets you scry 1 for every instant or sorcery you cast. This ensures that your draws are more applicable to the situation you find yourself in. Even though I really like the face commander; the true star of the deck is the alternate option Veyran, Voice of Duality. The world seems to agree as Veyran shot to over $15 after release. She allows you to trigger triggered abilities that fire an additional time when you cast an instant or sorcery.
Analyzing the Precon
Spell Slinger
Given that this deck is a spell slinger deck it makes sense that it has the most instants and sorceries of all the Strixhaven commander decks. There are 29 in total. It’s important to note, that even though there are 29 instants/sorceries in the deck, there are only 3 in total which can reach a mana value of 10 or higher (Apex of Power, Epic Experiment and Muse Vortex). This means that the trigger of Zaffai where it deals 10 damage to any opponent can only trigger a maximum of 3 times. Out of the box you might want to run Veyran as your commander.
Ramp Spells
There are 8 traditional ramp spells in this deck. In addition to these you have cards like Rousing Refrain, Seething Song, Mana Geyser and Jaya Ballard which give you additional mana to use but only for that specific step. This makes calculating your strategy extremely important to make the most use of that mana.
Card Draw
There is no shortage of card draw in this deck. I counted 13 in total which is more than what is generally recommended. If you happen to run low on cards you can also use cards like Epic Experiment, Muse Vortex, Reinterpret, Creative Technique, Mind’s Desire, Volcanic Vision, Apex of Power, Sunbird’s Invocation to either freecast some cards , or exile cards and cast them. If the above is still not enough there are also multiple creatures that let you free cast some of your opponent’s cards(Dazzling Sphinx, Etali, Primal Storm and Diluvian Primordial). Whichever way you look at it, there will be no shortage of spells to cast with this deck.
Board Clears
There is only one traditional board wipe in this deck Blasphemous Act, however there are many conditional spells that can help to keep the board under control. You can cast Aetherspouts to get out of a devastating attack , Volcanic Vision to get rid of pesky low cmc creatures or even big ones if you happen to return a high mana value spell to your hand , and Aether Gale to temporarily get rid of a few problematic permanents. Overall, I think this deck can use more traditional board wipes.
Single Target Removal
Single target removal spells come in at 4 in the form of straight up damage Fiery Fall, in the form of counter spells (Traumatic Visions, Reinterpret), or in the form of exiling Resculpt.
Mana base
The mana base is quite decent for a precon. All the precon decks are two-colours each so fixing isn’t as important as it would be in a 3-5 colour deck. You get 19 basic lands (10 islands, 9 mountains), 5 duals, 1 fetch and a few other utility and single colour cycling lands. This adds up to 37 lands in total. During play I never had any mana problems with this land base, so I think this is quite adequate.
Budget Upgrade
IMO this deck is quite good out of the box, there are however just a few changes I would make.
Add
Remove
Reason
With this deck I found it quite difficult to maintain 8 instants or sorcery cards in my graveyard, so you are unlikely to cast Octavia for the reduced cost. At full cost, this card is pretty meh imo. Aminatou’s Augury will give you a ton of value from both the spell itself and your commander’s ability.
[Cost R80]
This card works with X spells in order to get the most value. This deck has almost no X spells in it. Goblin Electromancer will give you consistent value.
[Cost R8]
Too expensive and conditional. If you are able to cast Mizzix’s Mastery for its overload cost, it could be game ending.
[Cost R40]
Too expensive for essentially creating a 5/5. Even with retrace. Archmage Emeritus will give you consistent value in a spell slinger deck.
[Cost R60]
Melek, Izzet Paragon is a powerhouse and a threat to be dealt with immediately. You will get value out of this card which has potential to become a lot of value if it isn’t removed for a few turns.
[Cost R11]
Talk about value Dominus of Fealty will get you something for free on every single turn. Another powerhouse card that needs to be dealt with asap. Even if [[Inferno Project]] can be quite large , it can still be chump blocked which makes it a bit less useful.
[Cost R45]
With these small upgrades the deck should run really well and be a great load of fun. Enjoy slinging some spells.
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Source Credit:
https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Default.aspx
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