The Legend of Atraxa

Commander / EDH* GWUB

TinOmen

Land (39)

• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Fabled Passage
• 2x Forest
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Great Hall of the Citadel
• 1x Guildmages' Forum
• 1x Hadana's Climb  ^Flip
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Hinterland Harbor
• 1x Indatha Triome
• 1x Irrigated Farmland
• 1x Island
• 1x Isolated Chapel
• 1x Journey to Eternity  ^Flip
• 1x Karn's Bastion
• 1x Llanowar Reborn
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Monumental Henge
• 1x Murmuring Bosk
• 1x Opal Palace
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Plains
• 1x Plaza of Heroes
• 1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse
• 1x Spara's Headquarters
• 1x Sunpetal Grove
• 1x Swamp
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Woodland Cemetery
• 1x Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
• 1x Zagoth Triome

STR (9)

• 1x Karlov of the Ghost Council
• 1x Karn's Temporal Sundering
• 1x Kaya the Inexorable
• 1x Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy
• 1x Polukranos, Unchained
• 1x The Wandering Emperor
• 1x Vivien Reid
• 1x Vraska, Betrayal's Sting
• 1x Yawgmoth's Vile Offering

Recur (6)

• 1x Journey to Eternity  ^Flip
• 1x Kaya the Inexorable
• 1x Kethis, the Hidden Hand
• 1x Primevals' Glorious Rebirth
• 1x The Mimeoplasm
• 1x Yawgmoth's Vile Offering

Other (1)

• 1x Blackblade Reforged

OneOne (34)

• 1x Ajani, Sleeper Agent
• 1x Ajani, the Greathearted
• 1x Arwen, Weaver of Hope
• 1x Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres
• 1x Galadriel, Light of Valinor
• 1x Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea
• 1x Hadana's Climb  ^Flip
• 1x Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter
• 1x Karlov of the Ghost Council
• 1x Karn's Bastion
• 1x Katilda, Dawnhart Prime
• 1x Kellan Joins Up
• 1x Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn
• 1x Leinore, Autumn Sovereign
• 1x Llanowar Reborn
• 1x Marwyn, the Nurturer
• 1x Master Chef
• 1x Mikaeus, the Lunarch
• 1x Ozolith, the Shattered Spire
• 1x Pir, Imaginative Rascal
• 1x Polukranos, Unchained
• 1x Reyhan, Last of the Abzan
• 1x Rishkar, Peema Renegade
• 1x Shaile, Dean of Radiance  ^Flip
• 1x Shalai, Voice of Plenty
• 1x Skullbriar, the Walking Grave
• 1x Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus
• 1x The Great Henge
• 1x The Mimeoplasm
• 1x The Ozolith
• 1x The Wandering Emperor
• 1x Vraska, Betrayal's Sting
• 1x Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful
• 1x Zimone, Paradox Sculptor

Ramp (15)

• 1x Doric, Nature's Warden  ^Flip
• 1x Galadriel, Light of Valinor
• 1x Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea
• 1x Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter
• 1x Katilda, Dawnhart Prime
• 1x Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy
• 1x Kethis, the Hidden Hand
• 1x Kolvori, God of Kinship  ^Flip
• 1x Marwyn, the Nurturer
• 1x Mox Amber
• 1x Oath of Nissa
• 1x Rishkar, Peema Renegade
• 1x The Great Henge
• 1x The Irencrag
• 1x Zimone, Quandrix Prodigy

Wipes (3)

• 1x Invasion of Fiora  ^Flip
• 1x The Meathook Massacre
• 1x Urza's Ruinous Blast

Commander (1)

Draw (23)

• 1x Ajani, Sleeper Agent
• 1x Captain Sisay
• 1x Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres
• 1x Galadriel, Light of Valinor
• 1x Heroes' Podium
• 1x Invasion of Fiora  ^Flip
• 1x Kamahl's Druidic Vow
• 1x Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy
• 1x Kolvori, God of Kinship  ^Flip
• 1x Leinore, Autumn Sovereign
• 1x Monumental Henge
• 1x Oath of Nissa
• 1x Reki, the History of Kamigawa
• 1x Shaile, Dean of Radiance  ^Flip
• 1x The Great Henge
• 1x The One Ring
• 1x Toothy, Imaginary Friend
• 1x Toski, Bearer of Secrets
• 1x Vivien Reid
• 1x Vraska, Betrayal's Sting
• 1x Vraska Joins Up
• 1x Weatherlight
• 1x Zimone, Quandrix Prodigy

LegendaryTribal (19)

• 1x Avacyn's Memorial
• 1x Captain Sisay
• 1x Doric, Nature's Warden  ^Flip
• 1x Flowering of the White Tree
• 1x Heroes' Podium
• 1x Kamahl's Druidic Vow
• 1x Kaya the Inexorable
• 1x Kellan Joins Up
• 1x Kethis, the Hidden Hand
• 1x Kolvori, God of Kinship  ^Flip
• 1x Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1x Mox Amber
• 1x Plaza of Heroes
• 1x Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage
• 1x Reki, the History of Kamigawa
• 1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse
• 1x Vraska Joins Up
• 1x Weatherlight
• 1x Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful

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The Legend of Atraxa

This deck is a bog-standard +1/+1 counter-based Atraxa build.... with one major twist: every single non-land card has to be legendary. Normally speaking, we don't want to jam two themes together in an EDH deck. But there's just enough legendary creatures that care about +1/+1 counters that it kind of works here.

Before we get into the deck itself though, I should be clear: "kind of works" does not mean strong power level. Especially when it comes to ramp and removal, limiting yourself to legendary cards is going to hold the power of the deck back a lot. But the deck isn't at the level of "chair tribal" jank either. This can absolutely win games at a casual table, and I'd say its more powerful than many pre-cons.

Card Choices

Mana Base

The mana base for this deck is fairly expensive. We are only running 5 basic lands, so... don't play this deck against people running Price of Progress or, even worse, Ruination. You will lose. We run 2 forests so that Nissa, Vastwood Seer   has more potential to actually grab you a land, but otherwise it is basically shocks and fixing. Our ramp doesn't actually fetch nonbasics, so you could power this up with a few triomes and fetchlands, if you want to make the deck more expensive than it already is.

Ramp

Ramp is tricky when all you've got is legendaries to work with, but the last few years have made this a lot easier. Our good ramp cards are things like Katilda, Dawnhart Prime, Kolvori, God of Kinship   (who we normally want to play for her backside ramp ring), Gluntch, the Bestower, Mox Amber, and Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest. Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter, Rishkar, Peema Renegade, and Marwyn, the Nurturer are then good... if we have creatures on the field.

That's part of why we run things like Gretchen Titchwillow and Zimone, Quandrix Prodigy. They are a bit mana intensive to be early game ramp, but they serve as two drops - which the deck vitally needs - and eventually become powerhouses. Kethis, the Hidden Hand then helps with both theme and recursion, and we have some "fixing" in the form of Oath of Nissa and Thran Temporal Gateway. The Great Henge is then of course on theme for many reasons, and gives us some much needed draw. The fact that the deck has a minor lifegain sub-sub-theme also links in here.

Ultimately, legendary restriction handicaps us a LOT here. But I've played with this deck enough to say we can still usually get Atraxa in play by turn four despite all the self-enforced awkwardness.

Draw

Card draw with legendary-only theme is actually easier than expected. As you can see from the draw category, there are a fair amount of cards like Leinore, Autumn Sovereign that do draw and +1/+1 counters, and there's also legendary-themed draw as well. Reki, the History of Kamigawa is an obvious inclusion, Captain Sisay basically reads: {T}: draw the card you want, and Heroes' Podium, in addition to providing huge buffs to our board, lets us look deep for creatures if we need to. As long as you put more than 2-3 mana into it, it basically can't wiff. Kamahl's Druidic Vow is then often just "play the top X cards of your deck", and Weatherlight is never going to miss you a draw either. Gluntch, the Bestower is cute, I like it, and it does everything.

There are some odd inclusions here, certainly. Toski, Bearer of Secrets is a potential cut, but he's scary with counters on him and it's not like Atraxa herself doesn't connect quite often. Rashmi, Eternities Crafter is probably on the cutting block, but does its job, and Sanctum of Calm Waters is - yes - bad, but helps us power up the other shrines which do nice things (like ramp).

Recursion & Protection

We can't simply let the game end because of a board wipe or two! The legend must go on.

Journey to Eternity   is amazing in any deck, and so it's a slam-include here, but we've also got some fun legendary additions. Kaya the Inexorable is removal & recursion, with an ult that is not impossible to activate in a proliferate-based deck. Kethis, the Hidden Hand and Primevals' Glorious Rebirth are literally legendary themed recursion, and The Mimeoplasm is always a blast to play. Yawgmoth's Vile Offering then is one of our few sources of removal, so it's nice that it works to get us things back as well. Remember - if you steal someone else's creature and it isn't legendary, you've failed the theme so you have to forfeit in shame. It's the rules!

Control

Removal is the worst part of this deck. It's as high on interaction as I could make it, but you can't do much on your opponents' turns. There's no such thing as a legendary sorcery after all! We therefore play threats more than remove them. Still, we gotta make sure we can stop things from happening rather than just play big scary cards, so we do have some ways to stay STOP...... on our turn.

Our single-target package is: Karlov of the Ghost Council, Karn's Temporal Sundering, Kaya the Inexorable, Polukranos, Unchained, Sanctum of Tranquil Light, Vivien Reid, and Yawgmoth's Vile Offering. So we have ways to remove any type of permanent. Karlov, Polukranos, and Sanctum are all instant speed, and Karlov and Sanctum help us justify our respective lifegain and shrine themes. Vivien is another potential cut, but her draw is nice and with enough proliferation we can ult her, which is game winning in most cases, so she's not a bad card by any means. Karn's Temporal Sundering is pretty bad, but taking another turn is never horrible, especially when we want to build up some planeswalker loyalty as mentioned.

Board wipes are.... harder. We can't really wipe the board with legendary only themes very easily. All we've got here is Urza's Ruinous Blast and The Meathook Massacre. Blast is amazing, as it is 100% one-sided, but of course it can miss key cards. Massacre works with the lifegain theme, and its a nice flexible addition, but obviously can require a massive mana investment. Hopefully more wipes will appear in the future so we can expand this part of the deck, as I'd like to have at least 4 board wipes in total. For now though, just hope you don't get TOO far behind that often.

OneOne Counters

So when we aren't ramping or removing things or drawing cards, what do we do? Well, we put +1/+1 counters on things. That's basically the win condition for this deck: make huge creatures, and smash face. No it isn't the strongest way to win, but a 15/15 Atraxa is never NOT a scary presence of the field.

How do we get +1/+1 counters? Well we want to start as early as possible. Cards like Mikaeus, the Lunarch, Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit (certainly a bit tricky to play with our ramp/fixing, but good), Katilda, Dawnhart Prime, and Shaile, Dean of Radiance   come down on turn 2, and ensure that the cards we play after come ready to proliferate. Skullbriar, the Walking Grave and others then themselves are happy to be proliferated. While we want to wait for Atraxa to come out before we use Llanowar Reborn, it can help us in a pinch here if necessary.

Once we get to 3 mana we've got cards like Breena, the Demagogue (who doubles as draw), Drana, Liberator of Malakir, Hadana's Climb  , Marwyn, the Nurturer, Reyhan, Last of the Abzan *f-etch*, Gluntch, the Bestower, and Rishkar, Peema Renegade to start our counters off. Remember to say GET GLUNTCHED whenever you give someone else +1/+1 counters. Combined with our 2drops, this gives us a fairly good package of things to play before Atraxa comes down on turn four. Finally, Master Chef gives Atraxa counters while also turning her into a counter factory... yum!

After turn four, we start getting planeswalker support via Ajani, the Greathearted, whose link between +1/+1 counters and a minus ability is less of a burden with proliferate effects, and Ajani, Mentor of Heroes. Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn then works with the lifegain sub-sub theme, minimally turning a naked Atraxa hit into 4 counters, and Shalai, Voice of Plenty give us some hexproof to round out our team. With Shalai and Ajani we have hexproof, vigilant legendaries, which isn't a bad place to be.

Lifegain

So what about that lifegain subtheme? Well since Atraxa has lifelink, it's not hard to get lifegain triggers, and there's more lifegain+legendary+1/1counters synergy than you might expect. Sanctum of Stone Fangs, The Great Henge, and Ajani, the Greathearted give us life while assisting with other themes, and Arvad the Cursed and Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn have lifelink anyways - with Heliod, Sun-Crowned in play, so does every other card.

Once we gain life, Heliod and Lathiel then turn that into +1/+1 counters (as does Karlov, but only for itself), completing the loop theme. Sure, it's pretty minor, but we aren't making any concessions to include it, so it does good work. Forcing life gain is never good, but happening to gain life and then happening to get benefits for doing so is never bad.

Legendary

But of course, our main subtheme is just legendary tribal. There's a fair amount of legendary tribal cards, and we could go full tribal with no +1/+1 counters and maybe make a stronger deck.... but then what would we proliferate? So the goal is to have just enough to support the theme without making it rare that you have anything to proliferate. I've talked about some legendary-based ramp and removal already, so let's focus on the rest here. Most of our remaining synergy is just flat stat boosts: Arvad the Cursed, Day of Destiny & Heroes' Podium. Sometimes you get blown out and it takes time to get +1/+1 counters on things (the deck might want a The Ozolith), so this helps us stay in the game. Cards like Traxos, Scourge of Kroog or Avacyn's Memorial are then a bit more forced, but they certainly do things. Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage is then like a 10 cent Vedalken Orrey for our deck, so why not?

Finally, we are also running Minamo, School at Water's Edge and Shizo, Death's Storehouse to complete our legendary tribal with some lands that care about legendaries. Given the fixing we need, they are risky, but they both do lots of things we want in this deck.

Ultimately, I have a lot of fun with this deck, but don't expect it to be STRONG strong. It's probably one of the weakest Atraxa decks you can build for the amount of money required to make it, honestly. But it has a lot of fun synergies, and brings an Atraxa deck to the table that I promise you your opponents will have never seen.

The deck could be improved through, as I mentioned above, some fetches and triomes. Triomes easily replace some of the tapped 3-color lands I'm using for now. There are also cards that are begging to be replaced. Most cards that just put +1/+1 counters on themselves rather than other creatures, such as Yahenni, Undying Partisan, can go. In fact, the next The Ozolith I get probably replaces him. Cards like Rashmi, Eternities Crafter which only do one thing (e.g., draw) but don't synergize with +1/+1 counters, legendaries, or lifegain are then probably next to go once better themed draw and ramp gets printed. While I'd hate to say goodbye to the shrines, they also will probably be outclassed one day to the extent they aren't even fun to run. But for now, they strike a balance of silly without being trash.

Compared to my other decks, I'd say this is on the high end of medium power level. Somewhere around a 6-7. The forced theme - which allows no non-legendary nonland cards - holds the deck back too much. But since every card you play is legendary most of them are threats, and there's enough recursion and power across the deck that it can easily run away with the game.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	3 weeks
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	21 - 0 Mythic Rares 65 - 0 Rares 4 - 0 Uncommons 5 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.56
Tokens	Clue, Emblem Ajani, Sleeper Agent, Emblem Kaya the Inexorable, Emblem Vivien Reid, On an Adventure, Plot, Samurai 2/2 W, Spirit 1/1 W, Treasure
Folders	EDH