UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT | Victoria Angelica!

Commander / EDH* Angels Battlecruiser Casual GWUB Multiplayer

Decisive

Land (39)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Bayou
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forest
• 1x Gavony Township
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Island
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 5x Plains
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Savannah
• 1x Scrubland
• 1x Seraph Sanctuary
• 3x Swamp
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Tundra
• 1x Unclaimed Territory
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Vault of the Archangel
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Windswept Heath

Ramp (6)

• 1x Cultivate
• 1x Everflowing Chalice
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Skyshroud Claim
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Urza's Incubator

Utility (24)

• 1x Angelic Arbiter
• 1x Angelic Field Marshal
• 1x Angelic Skirmisher
• 1x Archangel of Tithes
• 1x As Foretold
• 1x Avacyn, Angel of Hope
• 1x Blade of Selves
• 1x Demonic TutorGC
• 1x Diabolic Tutor
• 1x Door of Destinies
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Herald of War
• 1x Kindred Discovery
• 1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 1x Lyra Dawnbringer
• 1x Mirage Mirror
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Resplendent Angel
• 1x Rhystic StudyGC
• 1x Sigarda, Host of Herons
• 1x Stoic Angel
• 1x Survival of the FittestGC
• 1x Vampiric TutorGC
• 1x Vedalken Orrery

Counters (7)

• 1x Archangel of Thune
• 1x Bow of Nylea
• 1x Cathars' Crusade
• 1x Collective Effort
• 1x Cradle of Vitality
• 1x Gavony Township
• 1x Shalai, Voice of Plenty

"Win Con" (6)

• 1x Bruna, the Fading Light  ^{Flip  Meld}
• 1x Defense of the Heart
• 1x Duelist's Heritage
• 1x Gisela, the Broken Blade  ^Meld
• 1x Moat
• 1x Platinum Angel

Commander (1)

Reanimation (12)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Breath of Life
• 1x Bruna, the Fading Light  ^{Flip  Meld}
• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Emeria Shepherd
• 1x Entomb
• 1x Exhume
• 1x False Defeat
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Necromancy
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Survival of the FittestGC

Removal (11)

• 1x Admonition Angel
• 1x Angel of Despair
• 1x Anguished Unmaking
• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Austere Command
• 1x Collective Effort
• 1x Cyclonic RiftGC
• 1x Merciless Eviction
• 1x Mortify
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Swords to Plowshares

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Maybeboard

Other (6)

• 1x Heartless Summoning
• 1x Hedron Archive
• 1x Rampant Growth
• 1x Sylvan Reclamation
• 1x Sylvan Scrying
• 1x Teferi's Protection

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A Casual-Competitive Tribal Angel deck. You start slow, playing small pieces that set you up for the late game. once there, play big bombs as you go ballistic and wreak havoc!

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Primer

Deck Colors

Now, many people question why you'd run Atraxa for angels, you lack red, which gives you access to burn spells and some pretty strong Angels. Simple, this deck was built with battlecruiser in mind, rather than aggro. Plus Atraxa is pretty cool, and I like challenges. Now all of these colors serve a purpose as well.

Green: Provides ramp and some Angels (Is Splashed)

Blue: Provides Draw and some Angels (Is Splashed)

White: Provides Removal, Reanimation, Angels, and more

Black: Provides Removal, Reanimation, some Angels, and more

Decklist Categories

Land: Self-explanatory

Utility: Cards that do something helpful. Tutors, Draw engines, P/T effects and such.

Ramp: Cards that increase total access to mana, or reduces cost of cards

Removal: Cards that remove threats

Reanimation: Cards that allow you to return things from the graveyard to the battlefield or cards that cause you to discard cards which can be reanimated

"Win Con": Cards that, once played, greatly increase your board presence and one step closer to victory

General Strategy

Basic Information

This deck's objective is to survive until bombs can be dropped. You start playing utility and ramp cards early on, then around turn 5 or 6, you start playing more aggressively. A typical game will have you with Atraxa out turn 4.

Some matchups force you to play either more reactive or more proactive. Control matchups would entail a more proactive approach, having you try and force your opponent to fixate their eyes on someone else rather than you. An aggressive matchup would dictate a very reactive approach, you may even have to forgo any plans and try to deal with the problem as an aggressive player will be the death of you. Combo matchups could go either way.

First few turns are almost always going to be bland, not much will be cast, you probably shouldn't expect to cast something until turn 3.

Mulligans

You need at least 3 lands in your hand, covering at least 3 of the 4 colors needed to cast Atraxa. You could work with 2 and some ramp to get you off the ground.

Don't focus on trying to get a hand that has early plays or ramp, this deck will run well if you just stick with 3 lands and 4 of anything.

You shouldn't mulligan past 7 cards unless it is absolutely necessary or you're matched up against a slow deck.

Early Game

Early game is the slowest and least fun, but most important. This is where you set up pieces. You need to always have played something by turn 3, as turn 4 will almost always have you cast Atraxa, and you’ll usually want to have something in play turn 3, whether it’s utility, ramp, or cast Jenara. There is the occasional Entomb/Reanimate combo, in which case, get something big, but not over-menacing. Fetching Avacyn very early on makes you a target, same goes for Akroma, but that's my most common fetch.

Mid Game

Mid game entails dropping some bombs and playing more utility. Some big threats can pop up at this point, in which case, they should be dealt with ASAP. Nothing good can happen from leaving a threat to manifest itself. Politically speaking, you should get atleast one friend, or at least don’t make the whole table your enemy

Late Game

At this point in the game, you’re ready to go wreak havoc. Wipe the board, play giant bombs (Or vice versa if you have Avacyn) This is where you’re about to turn the whole table against you, where you should expect every sort of retaliation you could imagine your opponents running, if you somehow still have friends, keep an eye on them while you wipe out the others, then once that's over, full-scale attack should finish them off quick

Contingency

Contingency, the moment where everything fails. When everything goes wrong you always have to have some sort of backup. In these cases you need to stall until you get your second wind, Moat , Stoic Angel , Empyrial Archangel , Platinum Angel are all stalling cards, a failsafe so to speak.

Deck Strengths

Strengths include responses. This deck can easily respond to almost situation that may arise. Reanimation and a wide range of removal help this deck play around anything that happens. Once this deck starts up, it can do almost anything, the things it can't do can be remedied using basic politics.

Deck Weaknesses

This deck has its shortcomings. Its tempo is on the slow side, meaning any deck with aggro in mind can easily take advantage and if they don’t outright destroy you, they can easily leave everything you’ve tried to set up diminished to nothing. So if you get matched against aggro, try using politics to keep them off you until you have at least Atraxa out or some other formidable blocker.

Combos and Synergies

Tooth and Nail / Defense of the Heart allow you to fetch and play one of the two strongest synergistic pieces in this deck, Avacyn and Empyrial Archangel, which makes you almost untouchable. Synergistically speaking, this deck doesn’t have any giant synergistic combos, but rather small simples ones, like the interactions between Atraxa & Doors of Destinies.

Card Choices

Lands

I will exclude most of the lands in this list, as they’re more or less self-explanatory

Bojuka Bog : Exiling a person’s graveyard is good graveyard hate.

Gavony Township : Putting a counter on everything is very effective with Atraxa

Geier Reach Sanitarium : Card draw is always nice

Reliquary Tower : Sometimes you draw too much, this helps counteract that whole “discard every turn” thing

Seraph Sanctuary : I have Angels, I like life, boom, Seraph Sanctuary

Creatures

Admonition Angel : Very effective and consistent removal, plus if worst comes to worst it’ll be a target for removal rather than something more important

Akroma, Angel of Wrath : One of the best angels out there

Angel of Despair : Nice removal, ETB works well with reanimation

Angel of Invention : Boosts P/T and Fabricates. Plus lifelink and vigilance

Angelic Arbiter : Great control-esque card. Either, attack me and do nothing or do something and don’t attack

Angelic Field Marshal : Giving everything vigilance is amazing

Angelic Skirmisher : Good offensive and defensive card

Archangel of Thune : Lots and lots of counters

Archangel of Tithes : Pillow Fort!

Avacyn, Angel of Hope : Indestructible Angels, ‘cause why not?

Bruna, the Fading Light : Amazing ETB. Becomes Brisela the Savage

Empyrial Archangel : Synergizes well with Avacyn. Good on its own too

Gisela, the Broken Blade : Lifelink and first strike, still not good enough? Then Brisela!!!

Herald of War : Makes everything cheaper, big bomb eventually

Jenara, Asura of War : Big bomb eventually

Linvala, Keeper of Silence : Stops at least something in anyone’s deck

Platinum Angel : Stalling card.

Radiant, Archangel : Gets really big relatively quickly

Sigarda, Host of Herons : Anti-Stax

Stoic Angel : Slows down most aggro decks

Enchantments & Artifacts

Always Watching : Vigilance enabler, and provides a nice P/T boost

Animate Dead : Great reanimation card

As Foretold : Amazing Atraxa card. Cheat in everything.

Defense of the Heart : Super easy in EDH to have a trigger, especially against Aggro decks. Allows you to fetch for 2 giant bombs

Door of Destinies : Amazing tribal card, works well with Atraxa

Duelist's Heritage : Political and Practical Card

Everflowing Chalice : Amazing ramp card in an Atraxa deck

Kindred Discovery : Tribal draw engine

Mana Crypt : Amazing EDH ramp card.

Moat : Pillow fort at its finest

Necromancy : Another fine reanimation card

Phyrexian Arena : Card draw is important, and this is one of the most iconic engines

Rhystic Study : Most annoying card draw engine. On par with Phyrexian Arena

Sol Ring : Biggest auto-include in every EDH deck.

Survival of the Fittest : Discarding big creatures, fetching more, reanimating those creatures that were discarded

Urza's Incubator : Tribal cost reducer, one of the best

Vedalken Orrery : Allows for some well-timed plays.

Instants & Sorceries

Anguished Unmaking : Removes basically anything.

Austere Command : Wide range of removal for most situations

Beacon of Unrest : Great for stealing peoples dead artifacts/creatures, or reanimating your own

Buried Alive : Put some bombs in your graveyard and bring 'em back

Cultivate : Nice ramp

Cyclonic Rift : Iconic board cleaner, if timed perfectly can completely end a game

Demonic Tutor : Great, cheap tutor

Diabolic Tutor : Great, slightly less cheap tutor

Entomb : Cheaper, "faster" way to put a creature in your graveyard

Exhume : Let your opponents return something small, while you return something big

Merciless Eviction : Amazing removal for those annoying indestructible situations

Mortify : Good removal for creatures or enchantments

Necromantic Summons : Good removal, not that challenging to get Spell Mastery, which adds to the power of this card

Path to Exile : One of the best creature removal in the format

Patriarch's Bidding : Amazing tribal mass reanimation

Putrefy : Good removal for creatures or artifacts

Reanimate : Best and cheapest reanimation spell in the format

Skyshroud Claim : Great ramp since this deck runs duals with basic land types

Swords to Plowshares : Amazing and simplistic removal

Tooth and Nail : Incredibly powerful spell that allows for you to fetch and play giant bombs

Unburial Rites : Good two-time reanimation

Utter End : Like Anguished Unmaking, but no life loss

Vampiric Tutor : Cheap, & "fast" tutor

About the Deck

This deck was created Early April 2017. I had spent most of the new year working on another EDH deck, but once I had finished with that, I decided to start working on an Atraxa deck. She was an incredibly powerful commander, and she was mostly used in superfriend EDH decks, where people took advantage of her proliferate ability. I, on the other hand, wanted to take advantage of her ridiculous keywords, and her creature type. Soon thereafter, I decided that tribal Angels were a unique road to go down, it was a very challenging idea, as most good angels are red, but I decided to keep pursuing this deck and I've been working on it ever since.

Changelog

April 13, 2017

Removed the following:

Crawlspace - Not as useful as first thought to be

Oath of Ajani - One time use, obsolete after playing it

Exquisite Archangel - Just didn't like this one

Added the following:

Vault of the Archangel - Deathtouch and lifelink? Worth

Ajani Steadfast - +1 is nice, -2 is better, -7 is just extra

Sublime Archangel - Exalted to all my creatures. 'Nuff Said

April 15, 2017

Removed:

Doubling Cube - By the time its worth it to use it, you have nothing to use it on.

Mirror Entity - Never enough open mana for him to be useful

Hinterland Harbor - Not really useful as green and blue are hardly used as much as other colors

Caged Sun - Since it only applies to a specific color and only land, it can be replaced with something better

Added:

Mana Reflection - Double's mana from any mana source that taps for mana. So worth

City of Brass - Mana Fixing.

Exotic Orchard - Mana Fixing

Cascading Cataracts - Mana Fixing

April 23, 2017

Removed

City of Brass - Damage when tapped, bad with Chromatic Lantern in play

Angelic Destiny - Only real boost from it was the first strike

Indestructibility - Since Avaycn is the first card you should get into the graveyard, this is useless and redundant

Mirari's Wake - This is a maybe, if the deck works just as well now as it did before, this will be a permanent change until further notice. But until then, this is for testing purposes only.

Added

Mana Confluence - Better than City of Brass

Tamiyo, Field Researcher - All 3 abilities help the deck in some way, whether it be card draw or pseudo-omniscience

Sorin, Solemn Visitor - Boosts Radiant Archangel, Helps with Thune, pseudo-Sheoldred.

Protection of the Hekma - With Ajani's Emblem, will take no damage from anything. Less of a win con, and more of a stall. But a win condition nonetheless.

April 30, 2017

Removed:

Sunpetal Grove

Glacial Fortress

Drowned Catacomb

Angel of Jubilation - Hurts me more than I'd like.

Added:

Scattered Groves

Irrigated Farmland

Fetid Pools

Amulet of Vigor - With so many things that enter tapped, or can, it's very much needed.

July 14, 2017

~Fixed Mana. Deck died against Back to Basics.

~Removed some other cards that didn't help out much

July 17, 2017

Removed:

Iona, Shield of Emeria

Reya Dawnbringer

Sterling Grove

Mana Reflection

Everflowing Chalice

Thran Dynamo

Added:

Angel of Despair

Always Watching

Dawnbreak Reclaimer

Door of Destinies

Astral Cornucopia

Stoic Angel

July 18, 2017

Removed:

Chromatic Lantern

Magus of the Moat

Added:

Rhystic Study

Ob Nixilis Reignited

July 24, 2017

Removed

Vedalken Orrery

Added

As Foretold

August 14, 2017

Sorin, Solemn Visitor

Ob Nixilis Reignited

Tamiyo, Field Researcher

Ajani, Mentor of Heroes

Added:

Compulsion

Survival of the Fittest

Geier Reach Sanitarium

Tooth and Nail

August 17, 2017

Removed:

Arid Mesa

Island

Gilded Lotus

Compulsion

Added:

Mirror of the Forebears

Path of Ancestry

Fractured Identity

Kindred Discovery

August 27, 2017

Removed:

Mirror of the Forebears

Privileged Position

Sublime Archangel

Fractured Identity

Defy Death

Added:

Necromantic Summons

Cathars' Crusade

Duelist's Heritage

Angelic Accord

Defense of the Heart

October 4, 2017

Removed:

Herald's Horn

Alchemist's Refuge

Dawnbreak Reclaimer

Debtors' Knell

Angelic Accord

Cathars' Crusade

Added:

Kindred Discovery

Island

Arid Mesa

Archangel of Tithes

Vedalken Orrery

Everflowing Chalice

If you want to provide a suggestion, check the changelog, provide a reason behind it, and suggest what remove to make room for your suggestion.

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Top Ranked	Achieved #25 position overall 7 years ago
Date added	8 years
Last updated	3 years
Exclude colors	R
Splash colors	UG
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	31 - 0 Mythic Rares 37 - 0 Rares 13 - 0 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.77
Tokens	Angel 4/4 W w/ Vigilance, Copy Clone
Folders	Decks I like, Decks I like, Would like to play, EDH Deck's I love, edh angel, Good Decks, Epic EDH, Commander Decks, sigarda, deck ideas