Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to be taking a look at Prossh, Skyraider of Kher!

Prossh is a six mana 5/5 with flying and when you cast Prossh you put X 0/1 red Kobold creature tokens named Kobolds of Kher Keep onto the battlefield, where X is the amount of mana spent to cast Prossh and you can sacrifice a creature to give Prossh +1/+0 until end of turn.

Game Plan

Prossh is a notorious Commander, one for being a card that was explicitly designed for Commander since it was in the second batch of Commander deck released, and the fact that Prossh is well known for the fact that they have access to a variety of combos.

While I will be mentioning one of the most well known combos found in Prossh, we should also keep in mind that Prossh works well in general as a sacrifice Commander, meaning we should be looking for payoffs that reward us for sacrificing things.

Support

Simply put, the fact that Prossh is a free sacrifice outlet to get themselves stronger, means that any sort of Blood Artist effect works really well.

Bastion of Remembrance is great because it makes a 1/1 Human Soldier creature token as well as making it so that when a creature we control dies each opponents loses 1 life and we gain life. A body and a benefit works perfectly for Prossh.

What also happens to work well for us are The Sackville-Bagginses, which when they enter we can sacrifice another creature or artifact to draw us a card and make a Treasure token, and whenever we sacrifice a token then we have target opponent lose 1 life. In a similar vein there is Mirkwood Bats which has each opponent lose 1 life whenever we create or sacrifice a token.

Ideally we are going to be making a lot of Kobold tokens that we plan to sacrifice, so Mayhem Devil works perfectly with us because whenever any player sacrifices a permanent it deals 1 damage to any target. Not only are we turning our Kobolds into damage, but we are also turning an opponent’s fetch land, utility artifact, or even random creature into damage as well.

A recent addition to a payoff for our creatures dying is Cauldron of Essence, which has each opponent lose 1 life and we gain 1 life whenever a creature we control dies, but also for three mana and sacrifice a creature we can return creature card from our graveyard to the battlefield.

If we want to find a way to use our tokens in an additionally constructive way, there is Culling Ritual, which destroys all nonland permanents with mana value two or less and we add black or green mana for each permanent destroyed this way. It turns all the Kobold bodies we made into mana, while also clearing the board of small things or utility artifacts to give us a ton of mana.

As far as the combo side of things are concerned, there is of course the infamous Food Chain combo with Prossh. Since Prossh cares about how much mana you spend, the more mana you put into casting Prossh, the more Kobolds you get. You cast Prossh, get some Kobolds, sacrifice Prossh to Food Chain to gain seven mana that can be used to cast only creatures, sacrifice some Kobolds to get one mana to fill in the rest of the colors, recast Prossh to get more Kobolds since you had to pay the Commander tax.

You repeat this process ad infinitum to do a whole bunch of things. Since you can only use this mana that can be used for creature spells you can cast some big creatures. You get infinite death triggers from sacrificing Prossh and all those Kobolds, you get infinite tokens which if you have a haste enabler and a way to get extra combats can win with Prosh sacrificing all the Kobolds to win via Commander Damage, you have infinite creatures entering the battlefield for Impact Tremors effects, and so many more ways to pay off the combo line.

Add in a Chatterfang, Squirrel General to get infinite Squirrels, Warren Soultrader for a bunch of Treasures, Parallel Lives for double the number of tokens, Prossh enables a lot of combo potential.

Setbacks

And since Prossh does so, more often than not Prossh is viewed as a kill on sight Commander, even if you don’t have any of the degenerate combos that are available, or even a reasonable combo.

The fact that Prossh can so easily combo is something that players are aware of and will make you the target of, regardlss of how low of a power level you decide to build the deck.

What’s more is that once more eyes are on you, more than likely any card you have in play will likely be targeted and removed before they become and actual problem. You do have plenty of access to ramp and reanimation so recasting Prossh isn’t a problem, but at some point it will become diminishing returns.

While ways to blank your death triggers can be an issue, they aren’t the worst problem that concerns you. More so, exile based board wipes are going to be the problem because you don’t get the benefit of the death triggers unless you sacrifice them in response to get whatever value you can from them.

Also, while Prossh was the big bad Commander many years ago, Commander has sped up as a format and threats are coming out turn two or three that need to be answered. While Prossh is still a strong Commander, being three colors and six mana is still a big deal in comparison.

Bracket Rating: 4

Prossh can be powerful, especially when played in a combo based deck that has a way to go infinite or at the very least create a lot of value with Prossh being on board.

However the speed of the format prevents me from really going higher than bracket 4, and while Prossh cEDH decks do exist, there aren’t as many and they don’t have too many games won from my brief but of research.

Still, Prossh is a force to be reckoned with and is without a doubt a strong Commander that can still win games, still perform combos, and still make shenanigans.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!