As your board grows in numbers, so too do your creatures grow in strength. With each passing turn, your +1/+1 counters (as well as the loyalty counters on your planeswalkers and any other counters you could possibly have) grow. And they grow exponentially too.
With Atraxa, Praetors' Voice at the helm, we have a lot of ways to build this deck. I chose to do a +1/+1 counter strategy because it's what's most fun to me, but there are superfriends lists as well as even infect lists out there as well.
So let's start off with our mana rocks.
First up is Sol Ring. There isn't much to say about this one. A 1 mana artifact that taps for 2 colorless. It's really good. There's a reason it's worth 4 points in Canadian Highlander. We also have Golgari Signet, Orzhov Signet. Simic Signet, Mox Amber, Darksteel Ingot, and Commander's Sphere as the remaining of our basic mana rock package.
In terms of more specialized mana rocks, we start with Astral Cornucopia. For XXX, it enters with X charge counters on it and you can tap it to add a number of mana equal to the amount of charge counters on it. And that number can keep growing as long as we have Atraxa out.
Chromatic Lantern exists to give us flexibility. We run all 10 fetchlands in here to give us the ability to find whatever we need, but if we have Chromatic Lantern out, we don't even have to fetch because all of our lands tap for whatever color we need.
Now let's talk normal artifacts.
The Ozolith is amazing. Over time, your creatures will get a lot of counters on them. But if they die, then those counters just go to waste unless we have The Ozolith out. Because with The Ozolith, we can put our counters on it and then move them to another creature at the beginning of the next combat step.
Contagion Clasp and Contagion Engine both offer similar effects. The Engine is a bit more expensive than the Clasp because it puts -1/-1 counters on all creatures target opponent controls instead of target creature an opponent controls. But both allow you to tap 4 and tap it to proliferate. In the case of the engine, you proliferate twice.
So now let's discuss Planeswalkers, of which we have 8.
Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. Anyone who played in Dominaria standard knows all about the Jeskai Control that plagued that standard environment. And we all have very distinct memories of being utterly destroyed because we couldn't deal with Teferi soon enough and now he's just wiping out our entire board. And now the scourge of Dominaria Standard is fighting for us, not against us. Why? Mainly for the card draw, but if we can ultimate him then that's just gravy. I don't typically use his minus ability but that's just me. This Teferi lets us untap some lands so that we can hold up mana for a counter or at least bluff one to make our opponents play around it.
Teferi, Master of Time also gives us card draw but we do have to discard for it as well. But we can activate his abilities at instant speed, which is obviously amazing. And very useful since his minus phases out a creature. And his ultimate allows us to take two extra turns, which can't be understated just how helpful that really is.
Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset, the newest Teferi, is another really powerful planeswalker for our army. Choose a creature and a land and untap the one(s) you control and tap the one(s) you don't as well as gain 2 life is a solid plus ability. Then at minus we get to look at the top three cards and put one in our hand while shipping the rest to the bottom. And finally his ultimate gives us an emblem that let's us untap during each opponent's untap step as well as letting us draw an extra card during each opponent's draw step as well.
Liliana Vess can make this deck's consistency unparalleled. Her minus ability is essentially Vampiric Tutor but we don't have to pay 2 life for it. And with Atraxa and Doubling Season out, we won't have to worry too much about having to use her plus to be able to take advantage of that minus, but the plus is really really good too since it makes someone discard a card. And the ultimate can be a game changer after a board wipe or even later in the game. All in all, Vess is just a fantastic planeswalker and very undervalued.
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is an absolute beast in his own right as well. Free lightning bolt at +2? Yes please. And a -X to board wipe too? Amazing. But at -7 we get to gain 7, draw 7, and put 7 permanents from our hand onto the battlefield? That's absurd and can wreck a game if we pull it off.
Sorin Markov lets us drain someone for 2. And we can also just demolish anyone with a life gain strategy that just got out of hand by using his -3 to set their life total to 10. And when we use his ultimate, we can really screw someone over since we get to control them for their next turn.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor needs no introduction. He was the scourge of Zendikar standard and was up until very recently banned in Modern. But it lets you filter either your topdeck or your opponent's topdecks with it's +2, a free brainstorm, bounce at -1, AND a potential wincon/player removal at -12.
Lastly, we have Garruk, Apex Predator. He can destroy our opponent's planeswalkers at +1, but he can also create a 3/3 beast at +1 as well. We also have some incidental life gain from his minus ability, since it gains us life equal the destroyed creature's toughness. And his ult can be used to try to defer attacks from you to someone else since the emblem goes to an opponent and takes effect whenever they're attacked.
So now let's talk enchantments.
Doubling Season and Primal Vigor are very similar, but Primal Vigor only doubles +1/+1 counters and is symmetrical so your opponent's get double their tokens and their own +1/+1 counters as well but that's not a huge deal most of the time. Doubling Season is the biggest threat for our opponents and we want to get it out as soon as possible since it doubles the counters we put on all our permanents. So if we have The Ozolith out and a creature died with 5 +1/+1 counters on it, we put 10 counters on The Ozolith. Then when it comes to combat, we put 20 counters on one of our creatures. And when planeswalkers enter, they enter with double loyalty as well, which allows you to ultimate a lot of them as soon as they hit the board. Hardened Scales is last of our +1/+1 counter replacement effects in the enchantments, and it takes the number of them and adds 1 to it.
Citadel Siege and Cathars' Crusade both put counters onto our creatures, Citadel Siege at the beginning of combat and Cathars' Crusade whenever a creature enters the battlefield under our control.
Inexorable Tide lets us proliferate every time we cast a spell.
Simic Ascendancy is an alternate win-con, which interacts really well with Atraxa since it gets growth counters. When we proliferate, we can target Simic Ascendancy as well so it gets counters for each creature that got counters and gets another counter from the proliferate target as well.
Oath of Teferi just lets us blink something and lets us activate loyalty abilities twice per turn instead of only once.
Phyrexian Arena gives us card advantage, which can never be overlooked in terms of importance. We do lose life for it, but we can gain plenty of life with Atraxa anyway so it's not a major issue.
As for the creatures, we have a good number of them.
Let's start by talking about the creatures that are meant to be those "must remove" targets. What I mean is that these creatures don't necessarily interact with what we want to do but they pose a threat by stopping our opponents from doing what they want to do.
For starters, Drannith Magistrate. "Your opponents can't cast spells from anywhere other than their hands." The Command Zone is not their hand, so while the Magistrate is out, our opponents cannot cast their commanders.
Aven Mindcensor says "If an opponent would search their library, they search the top 4 cards of their library instead." Most decks run a good number of fetch lands and tutors. This disrupts that because when they go to search, they have to hope that the card they want is in the top 4. And since this has flash, if our opponent casts Demonic Tutor or attempts to crack a fetch, we can flash this in and it can prevent them from being able to remove it before searching their library.
Mother of Runes can help to keep our guys alive. And if we can get her out turn 1, then it's even harder for our opponents to remove her unless they have turn one removal. Otherwise, if they try, we can give her protection as well.
Shalai, Voice of Plenty is the last of these "must remove" creatures, but she also helps our main strategy too, with an activated ability that puts +1/+1 counters on each creature we control. But beyond that ability, other creatures and planeswalkers we control as well as us ourselves gain hexproof. Paired with Mother of Runes and our opponent's can only get rid of them by board wipes.
Spike Weaver uses our main strategy to help it, but it doesn't help out the strategy too much. You can move counters from him to another creature however. But my main use for him has been as an on-board fog. Pay 1, remove a counter: prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn.
The rest of our creatures directly impact our main goal.
Herald of Secret Streams and Abzan Falconer give our creatures that have +1/+1 counters some form of evasion, whether that's flying or unblockable.
Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider and Corpsejack Menace are essentially extra copies of Doubling Season and Primal Vigor as they both double the number of counters we get to put on our creatures (for those keeping count, that's now 4 ways to double our +1/+1 counters, which with all of these out equates to getting 16 counters for every 1 that we're supposed to get). But Vorinclex also has the added bonus of halving whatever counters our opponents want to use as well, rounded down.
Deepglow Skate and Kalonian Hydra double our counters yet again (6). But the Hydra does it every time it attacks whereas the Skate only does when it ETBs. But the Skate also hits our other permanents too.
Vorel of the Hull Clade doubles our counters as an activated ability (7) and is a decent body in and of himself.
Loyal Guardian, Master Biomancer, and Reyhan, Last of the Abzan all let us put counters on other creatures.
Fathom Mage gets us some extra card draw whenever more counters get put on it.
Evolution Sage lets us proliferate on landfall.
And finally, Spark Double lets us pick a creature or planeswalker and get a second copy of them, regardless of whether or not they’re legendary. And it enters with an additional +1/+1 counter on it if it's a creature as well. I usually copy either Vorinclex or Atraxa.
Now for the spells.
First up we've got a couple of tutors. Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor. We use these for the added consistency of being able to get exactly what we need. Most of the time, I'm going to use these to grab Liliana Vess since her minus is another tutor that we can use over and over again. But we could also grab Doubling Season or Kalonian Hydra depending on how the game is looking at that point in time.
We don't have a lot of counter spells because that's not normally how I like to play so it's a personal choice. But I did make sure to put in Counterspell and Disdainful Stroke just to have some extra options as to how we can keep our opponents honest.
Mortify, Path to Exile, and Putrefy are the main targeted removal options. We also have Ruinous Path as well for that same purpose, but it can also give us an additional creature if we use it's Awaken ability.
Tezzeret's Gambit gives us two extra cards and then a proliferate trigger.
Toxic Deluge gives us a way to deal with problematic creatures while also allowing us the ability to choose which creatures we want to live. So we can eliminate their weaker creatures while maintaining our own board state.
Approach of the Second Sun is an alternate win-con. It doesn't do a whole lot for the strategy of the deck, but it can allow you the ability to win out of nowhere.
Reanimate gives us flexibility to be able to lose a creature or two and then get them back. It can also be worth using to get around the commander tax by letting Atraxa hit the bin and then using Reanimate to get her back out, but that should only be done if you already have Reanimate in your hand.
Lastly, Merciless Eviction and Vanquish the Horde are our board wipes. Our "reset buttons" so to speak. Vanquish the Horde can be a fantastic option since it gets better when there are more creatures on the battlefield. And Merciless Eviction is great against decks that care about things dying. For example, Wilhelt, The Rot Cleaver cares about when zombies without decayed die and he replaces those creatures with 2/2 decayed zombies. Casting Vanquish the Horde against him when that player has a board full of non-decayed zombies would be a bad play because they would get a bunch of decayed zombies while you would just be left with nothing. But that would not happen with Merciless Eviction because now they are exiled. They don't die if they get exiled. So Wilhelt won't trigger.
The last thing we have is the mana base.
We run all 10 fetch lands (They don't tap for mana and as such they don't have a color identity so we can in fact run all 10 despite the lack of red). In addition to the 10 fetch lands, the lands we can grab with them include all 6 of the shocks that we can (Overgrown Tomb, Temple Garden, Godless Shrine, Hallowed Fountain, Breeding Pool, and Watery Grave), both of the Triomes that we can (Indatha Triome and Zagoth Triome), all 6 of the original duals that we can (Bayou, Tundra, Underground Sea, Tropical Island, Scrubland, and Savannah), and Fetid Pools (but that's mainly there for the ability to cycle it).
We've got a couple of the check lands and lands like Command Tower to help with the fixing since it's hard to build consistent 4 color mana bases.
And Reliquary Tower is in there too. Not because it's really necessary, but with the amount of card draw we have, it very well could be.
Lastly, we have Magosi, the Waterveil and Nesting Grounds. This is the only infinite combo in the deck. We can take infinite turns with this combo if done right. It is worth noting that when setting this up and putting the first eon counter on Magosi that you then have to skip your next turn. I have had a few games where I glossed right over that. But when it does get set up, things will swing very quickly.
Side note: hypothetically you can get the same effect as the Magosi, the Waterveil and Nesting Grounds combo with Teferi, Master of Time. If you have Doubling Season and Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider on the battlefield at the same time with Spark Double as a copy of Atraxa, Praetors' Voice, it is possible that you could take infinite turns with Teferi. Having two end step proliferate triggers while also activating his ability to put 4 counters on him (1 being doubled twice from Doubling Season and Vorinclex) with the activation and then 8 more at the end step from the two proliferate triggers, it's possible. But you would need a lot more to be able to make it work than you would to just have Magosi and Nesting Grounds out. But I wanted to point out that it is possible to go infinite in another way.
