Introduction
Atraxa is in a strong combination of colors and her built in proliferate make her a phenomenal commander for a super friends deck. Not to mention the fact that she is a 4/4 flying, vigilance, deathtouch, lifelink beater who can stay up to defend your planeswalkers whilst simultaneously putting pressure on your opponents. The deck focuses primarily on ramping into Atraxa then locking down the board with strong stax/hate pieces while dropping planeswalkers which we then proceed to ult into victory.
As with any stax deck, playing the right piece at the right time is crucial not only to establishing a lock, but also to your ability to operate in a locked environment. Being able to assess the boardstate continuously to find opportune times to drop hate/lock pieces and remove potential threats is crucial and will more often than not determine whether you win or lose.
A big focus of the deck is on providing us ways to break parity and operate in the resource constrained environment we intend to create. Atraxa serves a dual purpose here as not only a big beater that restores life lost to cards like Embargo, but also as a creature that can swing and still stay up to defend our position. Having the ability to protect our planeswalkers allows us to very easily play through our stax effects while our opponents are left scrambling looking for ways to break parity or to break the lock.
Decklist: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/atraxa-stax-2/
Card Choices by Type
Creatures
Dark Confidant: This card has been an absolute all-star. It nets you an extra card every turn and gets around Uba Mask. Extra card draw never hurts, especially when our commander all but negates the downside.
Aven Mindcensor: Shuts down tutors and land ramp that are present in virtually every deck in the format. A powerful one-sided effect with flying.
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician: A great creature that serves a dual purpose in this list. It enables locks and breaks parity at the same time.
Eternal Witness: A great piece of recursion that can be used to grab a planeswalker, removal, sweeper, stax piece, etc.
Leovold, Emissary of Trest: Turns opposing removal into card advantage and prevents opponents from reaping benefits from their card draw.
Brago, King Eternal: Phenomenal parity breaker that also resets planeswalkers if needed.
Artifacts
Astral Cornucopia: Part of our value over time strategy. Paying 3 mana for a rock that will eventually tap for 6 or more mana of any color is phenomenal.
Everflowing Chalice: Same as above for colorless mana. It’s main purpose is to pay for Chain Veil activations, also ramps hard after just a few turns.
Mana Crypt: Fast mana that enables us to play stax pieces as early as turn one with minimal other investment.
Mox Diamond: As with the rest of our rocks, it gets around Winter Orb effects and taps for any color.
Mox Opal: The deck runs quite a few artifacts so getting metalcraft is extremely easy to get. It can also be untapped with Brago, same as the rest of our rocks.
Sol Ring: See Mana Crypt.
Cursed Totem: Shuts down a lot of creature based removal which protects Atraxa and our stax pieces and can shut down decks that rely heavily on a commander’s activated ability to function. Also shuts down mana dorks which severely slows down decks that rely heavily on them.
Fellwar Stone: This is a great rock considering we’re in four colors, it will almost always be able to tap for most, if not all of our colors.
Lightning Greaves: Protection for either Atraxa or our hate bears that also provides haste to our commander.
Pentad Prism: Key piece to maintaining a stasis lock. It also builds value over time with Atraxa.
Swiftfoot Boots: More protection that grants haste.
Talisman of Dominance: Taps for two of our four colors or can tap for colorless if needed. The downside is negligible with our 4/4 lifelink commander. The talismans were chosen over signets since they don’t require input from another mana source to be used.
Talisman of Progress: See Talisman of Dominance.
Talisman of Unity: See Talisman of Dominance.
Torpor Orb: Completely shuts down decks that rely on enter the battlefield (ETB) effects like Meren. It also turns off ETB removal like Acidic Slime, Reclamation Sage and most importantly things like Fleshbag Marauder.
Winter Orb: One of the staples of stax decks for good reason. It slows the game down considerably for our opponents, but it’s effect on us is less significant since we have ways to break parity.
Crucible of Worlds: As a stax decks we run some mass land destruction (MLD) to keep opponents off of resources. As a result, this card is great since it allows to continue to operate in that constrained environment. It also provides a way to loop Strip Mine to spot remove lands and potentially keep our opponents off of a particular color.
Orb of Dreams: This enables a hard lock with Stasis. If our opponents have no removal when both are on the board there will be no breaking out of it.
Sword of Feast and Famine: This is a great card since our main strategy is to swing with Atraxa every opportunity we get. It provides her protection while giving us another way to break parity and provide hand disruption.
Tangle Wire: This is probably the single most important stax piece in this deck. The synergy with Atraxa cannot be overstated. Every game that I land a turn 3 Atraxa followed by Tangle Wire ends with a very quick table scoop. With Atraxa Tangle Wire will virtually always be at 5 on our opponents turns. We will only need to tap 4 cards often these end up being stax pieces that don’t require tapping to be used.
Smokestack: Another very synergistic card that can stop our opponents in their tracks. With Elspeth, Sun’s Champion or Crucible of Worlds we can recover fairly easily while simultaneously stifling our opponents.
The Chain Veil: No super friends deck would be complete without The Chain Veil. Using Teferi, Temporal Archmage or Tezzeret the Seeker with a rock that taps for 4+ mana, we can go for infinite planeswalker activations which will almost always win us the game.
Uba Mask: A phenomenal piece of hand disruption. Most of the time this ends up just exiling our opponents draws since we’re able to efficiently stop them from playing spells through resource denial.
Sorceries
Demonic Tutor: Tutor effects are powerful in this format as they essentially turn your deck into a toolbox where you pull the right piece for the job.
Nature’s Spiral: Allows recursion of planeswalkers and stax pieces.
Regrowth: See Eternal Witness.
Cruel Tutor: A slower Vampiric Tutor.
Fabricate: Since most of our stax and ramp pieces are artifacts fabricate fits right in.
Idyllic Tutor: The rest of our stax pieces are enchantments so this is a great fit for the deck.
Toxic Deluge: One of the best board wipes in the format. It allows you to decide exactly what gets removed and what doesn’t.
Armageddon: Currently the only form of MLD in the deck. When played at the right time it usually wins the game almost on the spot. Our opponents will typically have a hard time recovering from this one.
Merciless Eviction: Another great sweeper, a bit on the expensive side, but it gives us flexibility as far as what gets picked off.
Instants
Pact of Negation: Allows us to tap out on our turn and still maintain protection for our boardstate. Counters are crucial to protecting our boardstate and preventing our opponents from recovering.
Enlightened Tutor: Great end of turn (EOT) tutor that can grab any stax or ramp piece we may need.
Nature’s Claim: Efficient removal that can deal with lots of different hate pieces that may be present in the meta. The biggest threats this will be looking for are Stony Silence, Null Rod, and Aura of Silence.
Swan Song: Stops our opponents from tutoring, removing or dropping hate pieces. The downside is negligible.
Swords to Plowshares: A piece of efficient creature removal with a negligible downside.
Vampiric Tutor: The best EOT tutor we can run. This can grab anything we need whether that be removal, stax, ramp, draw or a particular planeswalker.
Worldly Tutor: EOT tutor that can grab one of our hate bears for whatever may be going on in the game at that time.
Abrupt Decay: Uncounterable removal that deals with a variety of things, most importantly the aforementioned Stony Silence and company.
Cyclonic Rift: A one-sided boardwipe that typically puts your opponents so far behind that victory is all but assured.
Anguished Unmaking: Efficient removal that can deal with pretty much anything and has a negligible downside.
Beast Within: Versatile removal with a negligible downside.
Enchantments
Mana Bloom: Part of our value over time plan it also enables a lock with Stasis.
Root Maze: See Orb of Dreams
Bitterblossom: An efficient token producer that works well with Smokestack and Derevi to enable locks or break parity. The downside is negated through Atraxa.
Stasis: One of the most important lock pieces in the deck. Even if it only stays on board for one round it’s usually enough to put us way ahead of our opponents.
Sylvan Library: One of the best draw cards in the format. Uba Mask turns this into a draw three with no downside.
Druids’ Repository: Another piece of the value over time plan. It synergizes well not only with our commander’s built in proliferate, but with the fact that Atraxa will likely be attacking every turn.
Necropotence: The single best draw engine in the format. The loss of life is mitigated considerably by our commander.
Embargo: A very powerful lock piece with a manageable downside. Shuts off dorks and rocks, as well as, putting a damper on aggro strategies.
Planeswalkers
Dovin Baan: Shuts down activated abilities of creatures, draws cards, and, if left alone, nets us a one sided static orb.
Garruk Wildspeaker: Untaps lands, generates tokens and can be used to buff our commander in order to end the game faster and gain more life.
Narset Transcendent: Draws cards, rebounds tutors/removal and can shut off spellslinger and storm decks pretty definitively.
Tamiyo, Field Researcher: One of my favorite planeswalkers, she generates card advantage taps opponents resources, and gives an irremovable omniscience effect. What’s not to like?
Tezzeret the Seeker: Untaps our rocks and tutors for stax pieces. I’ve never used his last ability, however the ability to pull tangle wire directly onto the battlefield the moment he resolves should not be underestimated.
Venser, the Sojourner: Can be used to blink Eternal Witness or walkers and his emblem is great for removing opponents rocks and lands.
Vraska the Unseen: Protects herself, provides another efficient removal option and generates tokens that can outright kill your opponents, which will be fairly easy since they’ll be tapped down.
Elspeth, Sun’s Champion: Generates tokens very quickly, has a built in boardwipe and gives us a permanent buff/flying which is great when used alongside our assassin tokens.
Teferi, Temporal Archmage: Breaks parity like no other, provides card advantage, and allows us to activate loyalty abilities on our opponents’ turns.
Karn Liberated: Gives us some great removal and hand disruption and is fairly difficult to deal with.
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: Gives us a bolt, boardwipe and can generate a ton http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/atraxa-stax-2/of value with his -10. Ugin is absolutely phenomenal.
Deck History
The deck started with a much heavier focus on infect as a win condition and less on the planeswalker and stax plan. After playing this iteration of it and being thoroughly disappointed by the results, I decided to shift the plan to focus on a hard stax lock and dropped nearly all the infect cards in the deck minus Ichor Rats and Inkmoth Nexus. Doing this freed up more slots than I had anticipated so I added some more planeswalkers that would synergize with the strategy. Over the span of a few weeks I trimmed the list down to what it is now. It has put up incredible results, establishing hard locks as early as turn 3-4 depending on opening hand.
Strategy
The idea behind the deck is to lock our opponents out early while getting set up to play through the constrained environment we intend to create. This requires us to be aware of what are opponents intend to do at each stage of the game and then devise a plan to prevent them from ever reaching that stage.
Advantages: The deck is designed with stax in mind so we have plenty of ways to break parity. We also have many options for grabbing specific pieces of removal and hate as needed throughout the game. All of these factors lend themselves to give us great consistency throughout the game and allow us to stifle our opponents while operating relatively unhindered.
Disadvantages: The deck is fairly challenging to pilot, without adequate threat assessment and an ability to think ahead of your opponents you’ll be likely to misplay and end up hurting yourself more than your opponents. Removal and boardwipes can make keeping our value engine going somewhat difficult. We run as much protection as we can and a small counter suite to help offset this particular weakness. The ramp package also helps to mitigate the effect that the commander tax has on our ability to cast Atraxa consistently. The deck relies heavily on colored mana not only for our commander, but for a few of our hate bears and stax pieces. We run lots of rocks that tap for multiple colors as well as lands that can produce multiple colors of mana.
Draw and Mulligan
Opening draws will determine how fast we can set up a lock. You’ll want to mulligan until you have a hand with 1-2 lands and some cheap ramp pieces. Ideally, this hand should include Tangle Wire or some other lock piece or at the very least a way to tutor for a lock piece. The pieces you want to see in your opening hand will depend heavily on what you expect to see in your meta. If there are lots of mana dorks and commanders that rely on activated abilities Cursed Totem should be a big early target. If you deal with a ton of ETB creatures Torpor Orb will go a great way to hindering their strategy.
Early Game
The goal for Turn 1-3ish should be to ramp into Atraxa and ideally drop Tezzeret the Seeker or tutor for Tangle Wire or a lock piece depending on what you have on hand and what plays you expect from your opponents. The key early on is to be able to protect your commander and set up the value engine and prepare to establish the lock.
Mid Game
Turns 4-6 you’ll be looking to land a lock, hopefully with some counter or removal back up. This is usually accomplished by grabbing Tangle Wire and keeping it at 5 the rest of the game. With Tangle Wire down adding in Root Maze, Stasis, or something like Winter Orb will make it virtually impossible for your opponents to recover. If you can’t grab Tangle Wire the next best option is to use Stasis with Root Maze or Orb of Dreams to stop your opponents from getting untapped lands. This route is only really viable if you have Pentad Prism, Mana Bloom, Druids’ Repository, Tezzeret, Teferi or Garruk in order to be able to keep a constant supply of blue mana to maintain stasis.
Late Game
If there are any players who still haven’t scooped by turn 7-8, we switch gears from trying to establish a lock to simply maintaining it while we beat down on our opponents with hate bears and Atraxa. During this stage, we also look to either crank down on the lock or simply blow past our opponents using planeswalker ults such as Dovin Baan, Narset, or Tamiyo. This will make closing out the game relatively easy to do, since a lock should already exist.
If you have any questions or critiques regarding the list or write up please let me know I’ll be more than happy to address them.
Changelog
-Nature's Spiral. +Treasured Find
-Everflowing Chalice +Crystalline Crawler
-Mana Crypt. +Bloom Tender
-Embargo. +Ichor Rats
-Spell Pierce. +Muddle the Mixture
-Druids' Repository +Birds of Paradise.
-Pact of Negation. +Arcane Denial
-Treasured Find +Reap
+Elspeth Knight-Errant +Sun's Champion
+Pernicious Deed. -Merciless Eviction
+Tamiyo, the Moon Sage. -Mana Bloom
+Doubling Season. -Worldly Tutor
+Deathrite Shaman. -Fellwar Stone
+Three Visits. -Brago, King Eternal
+Tithe. -Idyllic Tutor
+Sensei's Divining Top. -Pentad Prism
+Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon. -Vraska, the Unseen
+Counterspell. -Muddle the Mixture
+Chromatic Lantern. -Eternal Witness
+Scavenging Ooze. -Grafdigger's Cage
+Zur, the Enchanter -Narset Transcendent
+Contamination -Skithyrix, the Blight Dragon
There has been a huge overhaul of the list. the list now runs the boonweaver combo as a more reliable win con and has added some back up locks in case the stasis lock fails to materialize. This should lend some consistency to the deck in the early and mid game and allow us to coast into the late game to close out with either boonweaver combo or planeswalker ults.
