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Daxos is a bit of a tricky deck to build and play. It requires a lot of mana to be able to both build up experience counters and also generate enough spirit tokens to control the board. It tends to start pretty slowly, which means it generally plays better in multiplayer than 1v1. Since you have a lot of answers, it's worth trading answers for peace in the early game until you've built up your mana base.

In a lot of Daxos builds, the lifegain theme in the precon to support Karlov of the Ghost Council is removed. I ended up doing some tweaks and leaving in the lifegain subtheme in order to have access to more spot removal (even if it is conditional). I like gaining life, and I was willing to sacrifice a bit of raw power to have a little more variety in how the deck plays.

Major themes of the deck:

  • Taxing / Control
  • Life gain
  • Recursion (Graveyard / Flicker)
Our main path to victory is simply getting a ton of value from a small number of cards and grinding down the board. This is generally accomplished through token production and card draw.

Our token producers are Daxos the Returned, Ajani's Chosen, Heliod, God of the Sun, Sigil of the Empty Throne and Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath. Daxos and Heliod's tokens are also enchantments, which can give you Constellation triggers at instant speed. Anointed Procession is also great for increasing your token production and gets really nuts with Daxos + Ajani's Chosen. We can amp up the value of our tokens with Cathars' Crusade and True Conviction. This build cuts Celestial Ancient as it's really not very good unless you're blinking Flickering Ward a lot.

For raw card draw, we have a few options:

We have a few major types of tax/control effects:

In addition to having a lot of ways to spend life, the deck runs two lifegain payoffs: Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim and Karlov of the Ghost Council. While they're both vulnerable being creatures, they can both be recovered with Sun Titan, Treasury Thrull and Debtors' Knell.

There are two main ways to enable them:

There's a couple of different styles of recursion available here:

  • Skybind is one of our signature cards. Tokens generated by Daxos the Returned and Heliod, God of the Sun trigger it, allowing us to blink out enemy attackers at instant speed. You can sometimes disrupt combos by blinking out pieces or even lands. In a pinch, you can blink your own creatures to dodge board wipes or removal. Sun Titan and Wall of Omens are both good targets if you have spare mana.
  • Flickering Ward can be used to dump mana and get a bunch of extra experience counters.
  • Debtors' Knell gives us the best creature from any graveyard each turn.
  • Sun Titan can get a pretty good chunk of our deck back while being a great attacker and blocker.
  • Silent Sentinel and Treasury Thrull are harder to attack with, but can fetch with no CMC restriction.
  • Crystal Chimes gets enchantments back to our hand to recast for more experience counters. This may be better as Open the Vaults.

We do not run Starfield of Nyx. It's actually somewhat bad here since it supercedes the P/T setting ability on Daxos/Heliod's tokens, making them become 0/0's and die instantly. It also opens your entire board to getting blown out by a wrath. Mass enchantment recursion is safer without the huge downside.

If your table has a lot of enchantment destruction, Karmic Justice and Open the Vaults from the original deck are all excellent cards. They are not in my list because so much enchantment removal in my meta is exile-based.

If you want to focus more on tokens, cutting some of the lifegain cards in favor of Intangible Virtue, Marshal's Anthem and Dictate of Heliod is a decent option. Anthem also provides additional graveyard recursion. These allow Daxos to make tokens without any experience counters.

Rule of Law gets much worse if there isn't much combo to deal with. If there's a lot of it in your meta, Eidolon of Rhetoric can give additional protection.

If you have a higher budget, fetchlands + Scroll Rack can get more value from Land Tax. No Mercy and Greater Auramancy are very strong. Also, powerful tutors like Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor would be good bets.

To lower the cost, I would remove the lifegain plan for token buffs, Land Tax => any mana rock, Erebos => Greed, Debtors' Knell => Phyrexian Reclamation, Enlightened Tutor => Diabolic Tutor and/or Attrition => Seal of Doom. Those changes push the deck cost back under $150 (with the upgrade from stock going down to around $80).

Adds as for price check: Daxos Precon Upgrades

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Updates Add

Since I originally built Daxos, it has fallen pretty far behind the rest of my decks, struggling both to survive the early game or close out the late game. I've been attempting tweaks for awhile, but none of it was working.

The main change in the new revision is to add more focus on card draw and ramp. The idea being that the deck doesn't really even bother to try to cast Daxos on Turn 3, instead focusing on building up a mana base and sweeping the board. Daxos then comes down when it's possible to get 1-2 experience the same turn and start trying to get value off of tokens later.

It's still very soft to combo in 1v1 matchups and gets completely wiped out by a single Merciless Eviction (it's such a big problem that the deck may just need a Teferi's Protection to have a chance at surviving). But overall, it's performing a lot better.

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Revision 12 See all

(4 years ago)

-1 Crystal Chimes main
+1 Luminarch Ascension main
-1 Orzhov Cluestone main
+1 Phyrexian Reclamation main
+1 Thaumatic Compass  Flip main
-1 Treasury Thrull main
Date added 7 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

9 - 0 Mythic Rares

35 - 0 Rares

19 - 0 Uncommons

15 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.48
Tokens Angel 4/4 W, Cat 2/2 W, Demon 5/5 B, Emblem Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath, Enchantment Cleric 2/1 W, Enchantment Spirit */* WB, Experience Token, Vampire Knight 1/1 B
Folders EDH
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