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Take 'em to Pram - Pramikon Burn/Control

Commander / EDH Burn Control RUW (Jeskai, America)

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Lands (36)

Mana ramp and tempo (11)

Burn (16)

Card draw (11)

Win cons (5)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Pramikon, Sky Rampart

Control and removal (15)

Support and board presence (5)

Okay y'all, it's time to take your casual play group...

(••) ( ••)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■)

to Pram.

I fell in love with Pramikon, Sky Rampart and went about the project of building a commander deck around it as unconventionally as possible. what I landed on: Pramikon burn. it's a strange deck that'll definitely get some kind of reaction from your local play group, but if it goes off it can take the table by surprise and absolutely wreck the board. here's how it works.

typically, Pramikon is run as Planeswalker-oriented control, a pillowfort deck with Approach of the Second Sun or Felidar Sovereign as win-cons, etc. if not that, it's usually run as a flying tribal or vigilance deck, both of which take advantage of its unique one-and-gun approach to aggression, dealing with single opponents and capitalizing on the advantage that comes with not being subject to attack from most of the board.

it's almost never run as a burn deck. but I noticed it has a couple virtues which make burn appealing. first, as a Jeksai commander, it has access to hard removal from white, disruption from both white and blue, and card draw from blue. this all helps with burn, which can thrive in 60 card settings but tends to wither in commander, especially in multiplayer. burn's fast but doesn't normally have the resources to go anywhere. Pramikon allows for them.

second, Pramikon's left-or-right effect allows a burn player to create a distinctly uneven board state. since burn's the best way a player can hope to deal damage across the board while barred from engaging in combat with all but one opponent, a Pramikon burn player can plan on catching the player who's allowed to attack them between their own attacker and a heap of red spells, allowing you to take out one of the better decks on the board early or otherwise apply significant across-the-table pressure. since you're not playing a creature deck and thus (usually) not attacking, the player you're allowed to attack's well-positioned to play aggressively. meanwhile, you're the only person who can do real damage to all players, excepting a couple niche builds like Vito, Thorn of the Dark Rose and other burn decks. that gives you a lot of political power and will help you to quietly dictate the flow of the game.

building that niche for yourself lets you get to an insane late game. see below.

the other day I was playing casually with a couple friends of mine. one, a lower-skilled player, was running a modified Strefan, Maurer Progenitor precon. the other was running a carefully crafted Razaketh, the Foulblooded deck they'd proxied for next to no money, allowing them to run absolutely obscene cards like Demonic Tutor. I was running Pramikon, and chose to have the Strefan player attack the Razaketh player and the Razaketh player attack me.

before I'd even gotten Pramikon on the board, the Strefan player recognized he'd have to deal with the Razaketh player, who had an extremely flashy turn one, Dark Ritual into Burnished Hart. Strefan responded with his one artifact removal spell, Rakdos Signet. the battle lines had been drawn before I'd drawn them.

what struck me was a). how much trouble the Razaketh player had aggressing me--within the first six turns I got Everwatching Threshold, Ghostly Prison and Propaganda on the board, so that was lucky--and b). how dedicated the Strefan player was to beating down the opponent he could attack. he'd set it as the narrative goal of the game, and was almost as attached to that goal as he was to winning. he smashed the Razaketh player only to get one-shotted by a 27-mana Banefire, aided by a late Brass's Bounty, at the end of the game.

Pramikon's been met with confusion by the MTG community. it's an open-ended, oddly flavored commander with a lot of ways to play it and no hard upside offered aside from a defensive posture. its power lies in the influence of narrative. get people invested in attacking the person they're allowed to attack and they'll often flat-out forget that removing Pramikon's an option, and might even defend Pramikon if someone tries to remove it. that's why choosing the right direction when you play Pramikon's the key to winning. you don't want, necessarily, to choose to have the less powerful opponent attacking you. what you want is that every person feel attached to the narrative Pramikon provides. do that and no one will remove it, and you might very well win.

necessary in virtually any commander deck. mostly mana rocks here, though Brass's Bounty and Mana Geyser are important late game cards.
a must-have when running blue, I tried to make the card draw both effective and flavorful. Fevered Visions threads the needle nicely as a card which boosts tempo for the entire table and also plays into the burn theme. Ever-Watching Threshold deserves mention as a deterrent against aggression, as do Browbeat and Explosion of Riches for making things fun and weird and stressful for everyone.
normally run with cards like Torbran, thane of redfell and Toralf, God of Fury  , Pramikon lets us use burn completely differently in a Commander setting. those kinds of decks do awesome things until they run out of burn spells and... don't. they're great in 1 v. 1 Commander and lackluster in multiplayer settings. Pramikon, on the other hand, doesn't directly benefit burn as a strategy, but indirectly rewards it by making it the only way to damage opponents regardless of whether or not it allows you to swing at them. use Fireball to destroy an enemy attacker at a crucial moment or check a player who's gotten a bit too far ahead. Immolating Gyre can boardwipe everyone but you if the timing's right. Leyline of Combustion acts as a control-oriented threat deterrent and a burn spell if people come at you anyway. late in the game, throw down Lier, Disciple of the Drowned or Backdraft Hellkite and cast all the spells you've already cast over again. I tried, where I could, to include spells like Browbeat and Orim's Thunder, spells that combine burn with synergistic effects like card draw and removal. lots of options and variety here.
necessary in most any deck that isn't straight, hard aggro, I aimed for the inclusion of spells that play into Pramikon's strengths. Ghostly Prison and Propaganda are both godsends here, making it vitually impossible for most non-voltron aggro players to rush you down. Malevolent Hermit   takes up space on the board, acts as a counterspell and, eventually, lets you use all your beefiest sorceries without fear of counters. War's Toll can be brutally effective, and Kira, Great Glass-Spinner makes you virtually immune to spot creature removal. Leyline of Punishment tops you off with supremely effective lifelink denial.
it's important to keep some creatures on the board, both to deter threats and to keep the opponent you're allowed to attack on their toes. Serene Master makes it harder for opponents to swing away at you, while Backdraft Hellkite and Lier, Disciple of the Drowned give second life to all your instants and sorceries. Monastery Mentor and Docent of Perfection   are fun, powerful ways to turn your one-off spells into permanents. these cards all give you access to more spells and make your boardstate harder to assault.
every burn deck needs a Chandra, and Chandra, Flame's Catalyst works really well. doing three damage to everyone on the board for +1's great, as is access to your graveyard. when your hand's running out, ultimate to start over and hopefully finish the game.
his +2 effect synergizes really well with Pramikon, allowing you to take out the two most threatening creatures your aggressor controls for free. that'll buy you time to get to his ultimate, which'll throw your burn and removal spells into overdrive. dual casting Crackle with Power, for example, can absolutely devastate the board state. combine with Backdraft Hellkite or Lier to end the game so quickly it'll make your friends' heads spin.
either of these cards, on their own, can win a game for you. both of them together probably will. keep your counterspells in hand for when other players try to respond to this combo. land it, and you'll be hitting between two and five targets for between thirty and ninety damage.
full disclosure: this combo is extremely risky.

Soulfire Eruption is a bit of a Naruto-running oddball, as far as nine mana game finishers go. combined with other cards--Fiery Emancipation works really well here--it can do a lot of damage. but where it's really good is that you can cast the spells you exile until the end of your next turn. the thing is, even at nine mana, if you use this card in an optimally aggressive way you'll both a). annoy everyone at the table since it takes forever to try to maybe nuke almost every person, creature, and planeswalker on the table and b). when you do that... what then? you just exiled way more cards than you can reasonably hope to cast and really pissed everyone else off in the process.

that's where the second part of this combo comes in: Mana Geyser and Brass's Bounty. solid cards on their own, which let you wreck the board with a Comet Storm, for example, they're janky when paired with Soulfire Eruption. if your opponents play their hands as normal, they'll give you a whole heap of mana to work with and you'll be able to do some messed up stuff with it. pretty much impossible to articulate all the options, but you'll have 20+ mana and cards to choose from. that's a lot.

this combo can be interrupted if a single player notices you just dropped a Mana Geyser while casting a Soulfire--it's much easier to pull off if the Geyser is in hand, not revealed and exiled. so a lot of luck, along with a little reliance on your player group's greed, is necessary here. you need them to keep spending mana so as to play Mana Geyser effectively in the following turn. it's a risky endgame move, but it's intoxicatingly fun and should make for some great stories in your playgroup.

so that's it! really excited to play this thing, should, uh, dom my local meta, maybe even cause some dram. suggestions welcome, let me know what you think, give it a +1 if you like it.

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95% Casual

Competitive

Revision 16 See all

(2 years ago)

+1 Ponder main
-1 Swans of Bryn Argoll main
Top Ranked
Date added 2 years
Last updated 2 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

11 - 0 Mythic Rares

45 - 0 Rares

15 - 0 Uncommons

10 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.49
Tokens Bird 2/2 U, Emblem Will Kenrith, Human Wizard 1/1 U, Monk 1/1 W, Treasure
Folders Cool Decks, Jank, decks
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