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Prison Break

Sorcery

Return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield with an additional +1/+1 counter on it.
Mayhem {3}{B} (You may cast this card from your graveyard for {3}{B} if you discarded it this turn. Timing rules still apply.)

CMC
5
Mana cost
{4}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
uncommon
Set
Marvel's Spider-Man
Price
$0.09
EDHREC rank
#11801
Buy on TCGplayer
Prison Break card art
Prison Break puts a creature directly onto the battlefield — no mana cost paid, no waiting — and the recursive upside with Phyrexian Altar turns it into a repeatable engine rather than a one-shot trick. Norman Osborn decks are the natural home: villains entering from exile feed exactly the kind of snowballing board state this card is built around.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01

Norman Osborn

19.1% of decks · synergy 0.18

Norman Osborn's ability to exile cards and reward villain ETBs makes Prison Break a near-automatic include — cheating a villain onto the battlefield for free while generating additional triggers is exactly the loop the deck wants.

02

Eddie Brock

10.5% of decks · synergy 0.10

Eddie Brock's symbiote synergies benefit from the free ETB that Prison Break provides, letting you bypass mana costs on your most threatening creatures and keep pressure on the board without tapping out.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern legal
pioneer legal
standard legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Prison Break is legal across every major constructed format, but it's Commander where it actually earns a slot. In a 100-card singleton environment with high-power creatures worth cheating into play, the free-cast effect is significantly more impactful than in 60-card formats where your curve is already tight. In Modern and Pioneer it's too slow and conditional — you need a creature already exiled, which requires setup that faster formats punish. Legacy and Vintage have the raw power density to exploit it, but those formats have better free-cast effects and Prison Break doesn't compete at that tier. Commander, especially in decks built around exile and recursion, is where Prison Break does its best work.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.09 bulk tier

At $0.09, Prison Break is pure bulk — the kind of card you pick up in a trade binder without thinking twice. Bulk rares with narrow combo applications tend to stay at this price floor indefinitely, so there's no urgency either way.

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Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.