Dance 'til You're Dead: Prismari Artistry Precon Upgrade Guide

It has to be a challenge for the main design team behind Commander precons to design new cards and come up with new decklists for the same archetype over and over again while still adding in a new bit of spice. Prismari Artistry is a demonstration of the skill and effort that goes into overcoming this issue. Just last year, Tarkir: Dragonstorm brought the Jeskai Striker precon, a second-spell-matters deck with an angle skewed towards targeting permanents and players, and while it may not have been perfect, it at least felt distinct from Quick Draw, which released just a year before that with Outlaws of Thunder Junction. I could spend another several minutes pointing out every Spellslinger-esque prebuilt deck published in the last several years to illustrate my point, but I think you get the idea.

This second revision of the mana-value-matters theme from the original Prismari Performance list is a better-defined perspective on Spellslinger. Today, we're going to explore how to navigate this deck's approach to gameplay, highlight where it succeeds and where it needs some tuning, and add 15 new performers to our dance troupe while ousting 15 more old and tired ones. If you're a broke artist like most Prismari students, fear not; any individual upgrade for this decklist will cost about $5 TCGplayer or less. If you've already found a rich sugar daddy patron of the arts to sponsor you, though, you'll find some new pumps and stylish accessories for your costume towards the end of the article.

The Electric Slide

Here's what to expect when you purchase the Prismari Artistry preconstructed Commander deck:

• 1 Ready-to-play 100-card Commander deck
• 1 Traditional foil face commander with borderless art
• 1 Traditional foil featured commander with borderless art
• 98 Non-foil cards, including 10 new-to-Magic cards
• 10 Double-sided tokens
• 1 Deck box

Feel free to stretch your legs and give this precon a test run over on the Playtester mode or multiplayer platform on EDHLAB; you can add this precon to your collection by marking it as a favorite in the Precon Decks section, and it will be available as an option when you fire up either of the gamemodes.

The face commander for this deck is Rootha, Mastering the Moment:

The featured "backup" commander is Muddle, the Ever-Changing:

As appealing as a shape-shifting lobster-tailed otter made of paint and suspicious white liquid sounds as a commander, Rootha is the lead singer for me. There is a deck out there with Muddle at the helm that does some wild and wacky things that I'd love to play, but this precon just isn't it. The Orc Sorcerer advances our gameplan best by capitalizing on expensive (but hopefully discounted) spells, which makes fat, flying tokens to smash faces. This strategy is straightforward, simple, and honest, but there are still some subtleties to the way a spell's mana value is tracked.

The important thing to note with Rootha is that she notes the mana value of the spell checked for her ability, not the amount of mana spent. This distinction is important, as it means that cost reduction or ways to cheat-cast spells for free will still generate a big token from her trigger. If you cast Blasphemous Act for a single red mana, for example, Rootha will still create a 9/9 flying, hasty Elemental (assuming Rootha is still alive or you cast her after the spell). The mana value of a spell is noted when it's cast, so X-cost spells will retain the value of X for the purposes of determining mana value.

Another thing to remember is that alternate casting costs do not change the total mana value of a spell, nor do modifiers or additional costs. Other unintuitive interactions regarding mana value are out there, though, such as fused spells. The lines drawn around what counts towards the mana value of a spell based on its location can be confusing and unclear, and there are several other niche interactions and mechanics that can easily trip you up, so brush up on how mana values work, either with online resources like MTG Wiki or the direct Comprehensive Rules document published by Wizards if you're ambitious. Now that you know how to utilize the main act of your performance, it's time to look at some dance numbers and hit tracks to make the whole production pop.

Creative Choreography

There's no kill quite like overkill. Surge to Victory might not be able to discount itself naturally, but it does double duty in this deck both by giving your already-gigantic beaters a sizable buff as well as creating additional value when those beefcakes connect with your opponents. While the out-of-the-box decklist isn't too spicy, the ability to copy the same spell three, four, even upwards of six or eight times is almost guaranteed to win you the game even if the copied spell is just a simple value piece.

One of the new sorcery spells in this precon, Furygale Flocking is an exemplary card to demonstrate exactly what this deck is about. Discount a huge spell that generates a 10/10 evasive token with our commander, on top of the 18 total power (assuming none of your opponents have died when you cast this) worth of creatures the spell itself creates, and swing in for a ton of damage.

Treasure Cruise is an old reliable for Spellslinger brews that still works well for mana-value-matters. It may seem boring to list a simple draw spell as one of the most powerful cards in the stock list, but drawing three cards and making an 8/8 hasty flier for as little as a single blue mana is crazy valuable. Ironically, some of the best spells in the stock list are the least flashy ones.

Similar to the aforementioned T-Cruise, Volcanic Salvo is powerful in the deck not strictly by what it does when you cast it, but because of what the spell's mana value can accomplish. On top of triggering abilities that care about the mana value of the spell, this simple creature damage spell also provides itself with a scaling discount based on the total power of creatures on your board. This is one of the simplest conditions to discount a spell available in this deck, and you'll find yourself happy to draw it almost every time, as long as you have creatures on board to fuel your coupon.

On top of the suite of instants and sorceries to cast, Prismari Artistry is also packed with several token synergy pieces. Redoubled Stormsinger might be a bit slow without haste, but it literally doubles the fruits of your labors by cloning all of the tokens you create in a turn. Protect this Orc with your life, and he will bring you to the promised land.

Musical Notation

You've seen how to position your dancers to give the most evocative performance, so now it's time to find some better moves to dazzle the audience.

The most obvious issue that the precon suffers from is that it places too much emphasis on traditional Spellslinger synergies. This is not your dad's old Vivi Ornitier brainrot pile of cheap spells that cantrip for minimal investment. You're not looking to set off multiple triggers for every spell you cast or accumulate a high storm count. You want to set up Rootha, cast a big spell, and start swinging for the fences. Keep the cost reducer permanents that make your big spells more accessible while adding in some more spells with a big mana value that either pack a significant punch, or can discount themselves natively. There is also plenty of value to be had in being able to cast spells entirely for free, or casting a copy of the spell through a second-party ability.

In addition to this, Prismari Artistry is in need of some more efficient setup. While the deck comes packed with plenty of ways to generate tokens and hit for lots of damage, it's not well-prepared to deal with crackback pressure or faster aggro strategies. You'll need to find some ways to shore up your defenses and speed up ramping in order to survive long enough to start printing tokens and beating your opponents into the dirt.

You'll also want to make sure that the fundamental categories of the deck, also known as the vegetables, are plentiful and easily accessible – namely ramp and card draw. Traditionally, the Spellslinger archetype creates ramp and card draw in momentary bursts, letting you go on a brief but exciting spellcasting spree, but the secret sauce to any Commander deck is that consistent access to fundamental ramp and card draw will help you win games more often.

The upgrades for this deck may not all be flashy and splashy (don't worry, we've got flash and splash too), but the selections I made are geared towards ensuring that you can make your upgraded precon strong and impactful on a regular basis.

New Pumps, New Me

First on stage, I'd like to display some options for card draw and selection to help increase the deck's speed and amount of cards seen earlier in the game.

I know, I know, this upgrade looks suspiciously vegetable-shaped and smells like broccoli. Frantic Search is a vital synergy piece in your deck, despite its subtle appearance. Discarding expensive spells to your graveyard is actually quite important for cards like the previously-displayed Surge to Victory, as well as other cards that freecast spells from your graveyard like Renegade Bull or some other upgrades to come.

Unexpected Windfall is another spell that lets you filter through cards in your hand, put spells in the graveyard, and create some additional value with Treasure tokens. It's around the four-mana mark here that it's worth remembering that casting this spell at sorcery speed is perfectly acceptable with Rootha. In faster games, you might not be able to sit and wait around to get more expensive spells to create big tokens with Rootha, so casting this spell during your precombat main phase for four mana (or less with reducers) is a good way to set up some defense while still achieving some velocity.

Coming in from the main Secrets of Strixhaven set proper, Muse Seeker is a great way to increase the number of cards you can see in a given turn. For a mere two mana, you get a benefit similar to the extremely popular Archmage Emeritus while continuing to fill your graveyard up with juicy targets for later recursion and free-casting. Later in the game, you won't need to continue to discard cards whenever you cast bigger spells, keeping your hand loaded and ready to go. Important to note, though, is that you will actually have to pay at least five mana for your heftier spells, so discounting spells won't help to generate positive card advantage.

Multi-format all-star Lórien Revealed rounds out your ability to smooth over your early draws by fetching an Island from your deck for cheap, and sits perfectly at five mana to give you a decently-sized Rootha token and synergize with your various mana-value-matters payoffs.

Next, let's dance our way through some cards that will play well with your tokens, whether big or small.

New from the recent Lorwyn Eclipsed set, Champion of the Path is a cutely synergistic creature to add that plays well with our Elemental tokens. Exiling a smaller token from Rootha or one of your assorted Prismari Pianist tokens is an acceptable cost, and in exchange, you get to effectively deal quadruple damage with a fat Elemental token from your commander by smacking each opponent directly.

Magnus the Red is a coveted double-duty spell from the ever-relevant Magic X Warhammer 40K set. It's very straightforward — tokens discount spells, and Magnus creates more of them whenever he hits a player. More tokens, less mana spent, more joy.

Coming from the beloved Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate set, Elminster's Simulacrum slots perfectly into the intersection of expensive spell synergies and token themes contained in Prismari Artistry. The deck comes packed with a few ways to create additional copies of tokens, and Elminster's masterful spell gives you access to the best creature from each of your opponents' boards, letting you copy high-value creatures and creating mass amounts of them with the likes of Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer (who also gives your tokens haste) to smash in hard.

As you may notice, I love it when my spells wear multiple hats. Ghired's Belligerence is a little on the situational side, but it plays extremely well as both a potentially-expensive spell by dumping mana into the X cost and a way to populate additional copies of big Elemental tokens or naughty token copies of your opponents' best creatures. A super-narrow but totally awesome crackpot combo I pulled off in playtesting with EDHLAB's Playtester was to tag a ton of opposing creatures with this spell, then cast Volcanic Torrent to sweep them off the board, letting me populate nearly a dozen token copies of a Goldspan Dragon token made via Twinflame. While this specific combo is absolutely Magic Christmas-land white-room insanity, it's a combo you can absolutely pull off more frequently with a little bit of tinkering.

It's time to let the pit band take over and play some melodic harmonies as you prepare some ways to cast and recast huge spells for a discounted rate, possibly even free!

While looking to cut traditional Spellslinger synergies from this precon is a sound strategy, it would be foolhardy not to advise you to add Mizzix's Mastery. At the measly cost of four mana, any chonky instant or sorcery spell in your graveyard can be readily discounted down, and if you're ready to end the game, Commander games rarely see a resolved, overloaded Mizzix's Mastery without ending almost immediately afterward.

While we're on the topic of graveyards, Sorceress's Schemes lets you recur any instant or sorcery spell from your graveyard to your hand for a second round of any large spell you'd like, and uniquely lets you reuse spent flashback spells in exile, while providing a small amount of mana as a rebate. While the out-of-box decklist only has a single flashback spell, you may find yourself adding in more in the future, so this card acts as a bit of future-proofing.

Unlike traditional mana dorks, Ashling, Rekindled//Ashling, Rimebound starts out by giving us a loot trigger, aligning with our strategy of putting spells into the graveyard, and automatically generates two additional mana every turn for spells costing at least four. It's a bit odd to split a ramp spell across two turns, but the utility this Elemental provides cannot be overstated.

To round out our package of ramp and cost reduction, Goblin Electromancer is another simple but effective mainstay of the Spellslinger archetype.

So far, we've gone over a lot of spells that smooth out the gameplay loop for Prismari Artistry, and now it's time to show off one of the best ways to close out the game: HIT THEM MORE!

Extra combat spells like Full Throttle are even more powerful with Rootha than normal, as it allows you to generate additional tokens for each combat phase you begin on your turn on top of untapping the creatures you've already attacked with. You'd be hard pressed not to win the game after resolving this spell.

While Full Throttle's two extra combats nearly guarantee a win, Fury of the Horde's main selling point is the ability to cast it entirely for free while still ticking off the box of costing seven mana. You can surprise your opponents in your postcombat main phase after a full swing by doing it again while generating an even larger token, or play defense by untapping your entire board to hold up for blocks while creating a 7/7 as well.

Attacking with Rootha is a gamble, seeing as she doesn't have any special attributes to make it easier for you to connect with combat damage. Overpowering Attack is very worth the risk, however, especially if you can clear the way for Rootha to attack a player easily. Casting a five-mana extra combat spell for a paltry sum of three mana is by far a worthwhile investment.

Backup Dancers

Making more extensive edits to this preconstructed deck required a lot of work, and unfortunately I couldn't fit in every single card I wanted to. In case you'd like to see some alternative options or cut even more cards to make extra room, here are some of the honorable mentions:

Aminatou's Augury is already starting to pick up steam as a hot swap for Prismari Artistry, but I believe that it isn't the best fit for this group of upgrades. While ramping a land and casting an instant and sorcery spell is already plenty of value, the nonland card distribution in this deck isn't quite varied enough to warrant its inclusion for this deck. Still, if you find yourself adding in more artifacts and enchantments, you can certainly slot this spell in for a powerful way to cheat on multiple spells.

The Finale cycle from War of the Spark is a fun group of X-cost spells that usually don't see much play, but Finale of Revelation is a great inclusion as a value piece for the deck. With Rootha out, you can achieve all of the top-end utility effects of this spell, all while creating a gigantic 12/12 flying token immediately ready to beat down your opponents.

Similar to Rousing Refrain already in the deck, Inspiring Refrain comes from the original Strixhaven precons. These spells are an interesting solution to casting more expensive spells at a discounted rate, but they can be a bit slow.

While not a large spell itself, Resonating Lute helps bridge the mana gap by doubling up mana from your lands for the purpose of casting instants and sorceries. That being said, it's still essentially a four-cost mana rock, and that's a difficult pill to swallow.

As a renewable source of corpses to throw at your opponents, the Elemental tokens Rootha creates play very well with Kazuul's Fury. The spell's status as an MDFC also allows you to use it as a land in a pinch.

Lorwyn Eclipsed is a gold mine for Kindred strategies that you can easily take advantage of with multiple Elemental tokens. You'll be generating a few of them with your Pianist, and with Rootha you'll have access to the large-and-in-charge fliers. You should have plenty of Elementals hanging around your board, giving you plenty of creatures with which to convoke Harmonized Crescendo and draw tons of cards at once to refill your hand.

Delve spells are extremely powerful self-discounting cards to use with Rootha, but you should be careful with the likes of Temporal Trespass. Finding a way to copy it or recast it can constitute chaining extra turns, which bumps the deck up to Bracket 4 according to the rules defined by the Commander Format Panel.

Fumbled the Tumble

Every dance troupe has its weak links, and Commander precons are unfortunately no different. In order to make room for your best performers, consider cutting the following cards:

To start with, this precon has a bit of a creature problem. Even though you're not looking to chain spells to the same degree as a traditional Spellslinger list, there are a few too many bad creatures that either have too narrow an ability, are too slow, or simply are not very efficient.

Next, you should look to trim out some of the less effective or efficient spells, even with the possibility of casting them for a discounted rate. These instant and sorcery spells are too expensive, too slow, or simply not impactful enough to warrant a slot.

This final round of cuts rounds out your list at an even 100 cards. Cutting a land is admittedly a little risky, but since you've added in some cost reducers, ramp spells, and card draw to speed up the deck a little, 37 lands is an acceptable total to remain at. If you find that you're having trouble making land drops or casting your spells at a reasonable rate, tinker with your ramp package and land count until you're satisfied.

Patron of the Arts

Now that your beautiful performance has gained some traction, that fat funding check from your wackjob patron is in the mail. If your benefactor juices the check a little, you can even afford to pick up some ever-more extravagant pieces for your creation:

Quite possibly one of the single best spells for this particular commander, Call Forth the Tempest does everything that this deck wants to. It's got a huge price tag of eight mana (and $30, sheesh) to start, cascades into two more of your bombs, and then has an effect that cares about the mana value of the spells you cast, just like Rootha, and wipes away your opponents' defenses so you can beat them out of the pod.

In the process of writing these upgrade guides I've started to notice that a lot of the best upgrades at a higher price point are Universes Beyond cards. Hmm, wonder why that could be. Anyway, for an agreeable $14, Quantum Misalignment carries the powerful rebound ability, which doubles the value of the mana you put into it by allowing you to cast it again for free on your next turn, and it's right at the five-mana sweet spot.

I'm tired, boss. I don't need to explain why you can (and probably should) spend $30 on Vivi Ornitier for this deck. Let's move on.

World at War is only a couple dollars over my soft $5 restriction, so this upgrade is significantly more affordable than those previously mentioned at just $7 (you can even snag it for $5 if you don't mind Kratos and Zeus duking it out in your deck). Rebound is yet again a fantastic way to stretch out the initial mana investment.

If you're looking to bump up your deck's power level and take it into Bracket 3, consider some of these Game Changers:

Take a Bow

Here's the new choreography for your flagship dance number:

If you're itching to show off these upgrades to your friends or test them out first with a playtest, we've got you covered. Use this share link and check out our multiplayer platform and bring some friends, or boot up the Playtester to practice your new dance moves without performance anxiety.

For a community full of eager players ready to join your lobby, head over to our Discord server and give a shout to get a game going. If you found this upgrade guide helpful, ping me @shadedfall with your feedback! Don't forget to come back to our blog every day this week for new upgrade guides for all of the Secrets of Strixhaven Commander precons.

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