Commander Deck Tech: Prosper, Tome-Bound
For this week's article we are going to go back in time almost exactly one year to July 23, 2021. At this time Adventures in the Forgotten Realms was just released, and since then the set has gotten mixed reviews. It made for a fantastic limited environment in my opinion, but when it came to the constructed format it felt lackluster at best. I loved the mechanics in the set, but it seemed like it didn't do enough for the constructed format. All the preconstructed Commander decks are fine, but over time one has definitely outshined the rest.
Prosper, Tome-Bound is an interesting Commander that contains two new italic subtype abilities.
The first, Mystic Arcanum - At the beginning of your end step, exile the top card of your library. Until the end of your next turn, you may play that card.
And
Pact Boon - Whenever you play a card from exile, create a Treasure Token.
When Prosper is in play he is a pretty decent wall as a ¼ deathtouch for 2BR. Then if he makes it to your end step, you can exile a card off the top and play it until the end of your next turn. If he is still in play during your next turn and you play the exiled card, you also get a Treasure Token.
This deck is going to take advantage of playing cards from exile in many different ways. We are hoping to get some extra Treasures or mana along the way to help play more and more exiled spells. Eventually we are hoping to hit some of the more powerful cards in the deck and abuse the heck out of our opponents.
Within the deck we have 36 different cards which either exile cards directly or have an ability to exile cards to play. Keep in mind that Adventure Creatures like Bonecrusher Giant // Stomp and Murderous Rider // Swift End each exile the card after using the non-creature ability. Then you can play the creature part of the card from exile. This triggers Prosper, and also kind of lets you potentially get card advantage from 2 for 1’s.
Also, cards with the ability Cascade like: Rain of Riches, Bituminous Blast, Throes of Chaos, and Wild-Magic Sorcerer also exile the Cascade trigger. Then you can choose to play it for free or not which again triggers Prosper. Lastly we have one lone card with the Foretell Ability: Dream Devourer. Dream Devourer is cool because he gives all the nonland cards in your hand foretell. If you can get this online with Prosper in play you can essentially add 2 to get a Treasure when you play any spell in your hand.
One of the cool things you can do with all these extra Treasures we anticipate on making is Marionette Master. At first look this card looks pretty bad, but then you realize that each time you sacrifice a Treasure Marionette Master’s ability triggers, causing an opponent to lose life equal to its power. Now you could use the Fabricate ability to make him a 4/6 when he comes into play, so each time you sacrifice a Treasure an opponent loses four life. You can also use him to make 4 creatures instead if you need a lot more blockers to survive a turn or two from attackers.
Besides Prosper we also have 14 cards which either produce, or can produce Treasure tokens. We can use that mana to play more spells or more free exiled spells. All the Treasures can trigger the abilities on: Xorn, Reckless Fireweaver, Professional Face-Breaker, Nadier's Nightblade, Mayhem Devil, Marionette Master, Kalain, Reclusive Painter, Juri, Master of the Revue, and Academy Manufactor. Most likely you’ll be having some small to medium sized attackers annoying them, then you’ll eventually ping them out with any of the mentioned cards above.
If that doesn’t interest you we can move onto the top tier power level cards within the deck. These are the cards you’ll want to be drawing or have in play to finish out a game. The top 8 cards are: Revel in Riches, Fevered Suspicion, Commune with Lava, Apex of Power, Wand of Wonder, Valki, God of Lies, Etali, Primal Storm, and Ancient Copper Dragon. All these cards are good for different reasons, but they all fit the overall theme of the deck. Let’s hope you're good at rolling your 20's!
I’d say the biggest obstacle this deck could run into is a deck that is either heavy removal, or heavy counterspell. Both can mess with the deck when you're trying to have a small board state to have the ability to gain card advantage. A couple of key counterspells versus cards that might let you exile 3 or more spells will also be painful. The only area I think this deck really lacks might be within the mana base or mana acceleration. It does run less lands than most of my Commander decks and has a few mana rocks. If you end up playing a build similar to this I’d recommend 32 or 33 lands to start. As you play more you’ll notice if you are getting flooded or hosed and can adjust by adding one to two more lands if needed. This build has 31 land with two land/spell flip cards.
After this in-depth build I’m definitely excited to shuffle up this deck and start playing. Hopefully this gives you a great starting point and some insight of how the mechanics in Prosper Tome-Bound work.
Until Next Time,
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