This is my "Atraxa Combo" Commander deck.
This is not an Infect or Super-friends deck like most Tier 1 competitive Atraxa decks are, but she is pretty good on her own and for a combo player like me, a whole lot of fun to play.
This deck was inspired by the Legacy deck, "Aluren". As the name suggest the card Aluren is the primary combo piece needed to win. It can win in a few other ways, but Aluren is definitely the intended method.
The deck is a sort of toolbox/silver-bullet type deck, chock full of different combos and synergies utilizing Aluren, mostly by abusing "enter the battlefield" effects. For those who don't understand the card's text or otherwise don't know what Aluren does, it basically allows any player to cast creature cards with converted mana costs 3 or less from their hands for free at instant speed.
The most common way to win with this deck is to cast and resolve Aluren then cast either Parasitic Strix to drain an opponent for 2, or Kalastria Healer to drain each opponent for 1, followed by Cavern Harpy. What this combo does, is create an infinite loop designed to drain all of your opponents to death.
When Cavern Harpy enters the battlefield you have to return a blue or black creature you control to your hand, you choose either Parasitic Strix or Kalastria Healer. Since Aluren lets you cast these cards for free you just cast them again and then use Cavern Harpy's second ability to pay 1 life and return it back to your hand, you cast it for free again. If you've chosen Parasitic Strix you net +1 life each cycle of the combo, if you go with Kalastria Healer then you net 0 life each cycle. You win by infinitely draining your opponents.
Alternatively, if you can't find Cavern Harpy or it somehow becomes unavailable, you can still win by utilizing a more complicated method. Once again this method requires Aluren to work, you will also need Cloudstone Curio. With Cloudstone Curio, when a non-artifact permanent enters the battlefield under your control, you can return another permanent that shares a permanent type with it back to your hand. it basically lets you cast a creature and get a creature back. Cloudstone Curio does not work with artifacts however, so you won't be able to win off of Parasitic Strix unless you add an additional creature into the mix like Arctic Merfolk, AEther Adept, or Aviary Mechanic.
Sometimes you can't seem to find a kill condition. Well this deck really likes to draw a bunch of cards, and the best way to make sure you find a kill condition, is by drawing cards until you find one. You can do that with Aluren + Baleful Strix + Cavern Harpy
or Aluren + Cavern Harpy + Vendilion Clique
, make sure you have a whole bunch of life for this one Serra Ascendant, and Atraxa, Praetors' Voice are good at making sure of that. Alternatively Suture Priest completely negates Cavern Harpy's life tax, actually just cast Suture Priest it's great, infinite life is great, it also punishes token and go-wide strategies. Vendilion Clique will let you cycle dead cards from your hand or break opposing combo decks by cycling their combo pieces away to the bottom of their library.
Another way to draw infinite cards if you don't have Baleful Strix or Vendilion Clique is with Aluren + Arctic Merfolk + Cavern Harpy
and Elvish Visionary or AEther Adept + Aluren + Cavern Harpy
and Elvish Visionary. Just piggy-back Elvish Visionary through the loop with the Merfolk or Adept.
Sometimes you manage to find Aluren but no other combo pieces. A dangerous, yet entertaining way to probably win is with Necropotence. Drop your life down to 1 and exile that many cards, move to end step, see if you win during end step before discard.
Sometimes you find yourself up against one of those pillow-fort decks or some kind of prison deck or you just feel like being a massive jerk! In those cases bust out your own prison strategy with Aluren + Cavern Harpy + Rishadan Cutpurse
and a whole bunch of life, again Suture Priest is great here. What this strategy does is wipe your opponent's boards of all permanents including lands. You loop Rishadan Cutpurse until all of your opponent's boards are empty. Make sure to end your turn with Rishadan Cutpurse in your hand. After your next opponent plays their land, you wipe their board again. Rinse and repeat for each opponent, they no longer get to play magic, they're in jail.
You can use this prison strategy without Cavern Harpy too, by utilizing Cloudstone Curio again. Aluren + Cloudstone Curio + Rishadan Cutpurse
plus literally any of your other creatures except two, they're all CMC 3 or less and the two that aren't CMC 3 or less are just draw engines to draw you to a CMC 3 or less creature.
The kill can be done without Cavern Harpy too using Cloudstone Curio. Aluren + Cloudstone Curio + Kalastria Healer
+ any CMC 3 or less creature.
Sometimes you find yourself up against opponents who like really mean creatures (like the actual Praetors) Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite will really ruin your day here. Get rid of her with Anguished Unmaking, Cyclonic Rift, or Darksteel Mutation. Better yet, permanently exile that "b" using Aluren + Cloudstone Curio + Fiend Hunter
and bounce Fiend Hunter before the first ability gets to resolve, using hilarious rules (https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rulestips/2012/04/how-fiend-hunter-can-exile-something-forever/). Even better still, just permanently exile every opponent's creatures forever. This strategy isn't quite as effective as the prison strategy above, but not dying from combat damage is better than dying to combat damage, right?
Aluren + Cloudstone Curio
allows for some other fun strategies too, for instance, maybe your meta is full of artifact and enchantment strategies, lay waste to those decks with infinite Reclamation Sage, or draw infinite cards with Elvish Visionary, or bounce all of your opponent's creatures with AEther Adept, or tutor for every 3 CMC artifact (like Parasitic Strix) with Trophy Mage. How about just returning every card from your graveyard using Eternal Witness. Better yet, just tutor basically every one of your creatures into your hand with Recruiter of the Guard, there are a few creatures that can't be fetched with Recruiter, but all of the main win conditions can be fetched.
This deck is full of different ways to go infinite, some ways win you the game and some get you closer to winning the game. The big linchpin here is Aluren, so you gotta protect that card first and foremost. The simplest way is with counterspells, this deck has seven of them. Most of the counterspells are CMC 2, but you also have Swan Song at CMC 1 and Pact of Negation at CMC 0. Other ways to protect your Aluren include giving it shroud with Sterling Grove or hexproof with Privileged Position. Aluren isn't legendary, so make a second one with Mirage Mirror. Alternatively you could just lock your opponents out of casting spells on the turn you're about to "go off" using Grand Abolisher. But what if Aluren does get destroyed? Get it back with Eternal Witness or Hanna, Ship's Navigator. What if Aluren get's exiled!? Get it back with Riftsweeper--exile is tough to deal with, even with Riftsweeper you'll be slowed down because you'll have to find Aluren again so try and save it with Aviary Mechanic before it gets destroyed or exiled.
The second most important card to keep alive is Cavern Harpy. Without Cavern Harpy you need Cloudstone Curio to win but once Cavern Harpy resolves it is nearly impossible for your opponents to stop you from going off because if they were to try and remove Cavern Harpy in the middle of your combo, you just pay the life to return it to your hand and then continue on as if you were not interrupted. Remember, Aluren lets you do all of this stuff at instant speed, your opponents die while they wait for their spells to resolve. But if Cavern Harpy does die, get him back with Phyrexian Reclamation or Eternal Witness.
How do you get to your combo pieces? The easiest way is by tutoring. This deck runs six tutors, well 7 tutors but one of them is a counterspell (Muddle the Mixture). The deck used to run a lot more tutors, but I felt that it made the deck a bit too consistent and predictable for me, so I nerfed the tutors in favor of draw. the ones that didn't get cut though are these:
Sterling Grove gets you Aluren, Enlightened Tutor gets you Aluren or Cloudstone Curio or some other artifact. Vampiric Tutor gets you whatever you need, Demonic Tutor also gets you whatever you need, Trophy Mage gets you Cloudstone Curio or some other 3 CMC artifact like Mirage Mirror, and Recruiter of the Guard gets you any 2 toughness creature you need.
In fact, if you have Aluren and Recruiter of the Guard in your hand, you just win the game. You do this by: Step 1 play Aluren, Step 2 play Recruiter of the Guard, go and get either Arctic Merfolk or AEther Adept, Step 3 play that creature and bounce your Recruiter of the Guard, Step 4 play your Recruiter of the Guard again and get Cavern Harpy, use Cavern Harpy to bounce your bouncer. From there repeat step 3 but get either Parasitic Strix or Kalastria Healer to win the game.
The other, and in my opinion, better way to get to your combo pieces is by drawing into them. This deck has a lot of draw in it.
Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Lifecrafter's Bestiary, Elvish Visionary, Baleful Strix, Tireless Tracker, Dark Confidant, Consecrated Sphinx, Sphinx of Magosi, Jace Beleren, Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Necropotence. Arcane Denial draws you a card when you counter a spell and Vendilion Clique can cycle a dead card away.
You can also scry to your combo pieces with:
Preordain, Lifecrafter's Bestiary, Thassa, God of the Sea, Nissa, Steward of Elements, Zhalfirin Void and Temple of Plenty. Nissa, Steward of Elements is nice because you can play her for 3, X=1, then use her scry 2 ability. Now she has 3 loyalty and her 0 ability can get you basically any of your creatures onto the battlefield for free from then on.
Sensei's Divining Top will let you stack the top three cards of your deck and Abundance lets you just skip out on drawing land getting you to your combo pieces more quickly. Abundance can also protect you from mill strategies sometimes.
For mana acceleration we have, Farseek, Spoils of Victory, Tempt with Discovery and Sol Ring
For mana fixing we have, Joiner Adept, Chromatic Lantern, all six of our "fetch" lands, all six of our "shock" lands and all six of our classic "dual" lands.
Ramunap Excavator will also get us extra mileage out of our "fetch" lands, Tireless Tracker + fetch land is a pretty nice draw engine too.
The mana base here is easily the most pricey part of the deck, so you might want to cut the duals and fetch lands and go for cheaper slower dual, filter, scry, bounce(etc...) lands and slower fetch(mirage) lands instead.
For single target removal we have, Anguished Unmaking, Krosan Grip, Fiend Hunter and AEther Adept. Darksteel Mutation is here mostly to deal with pesky generals, there is also a possible case for Phyrexian Revoker here (he's pretty brutal against Jhoira of the Ghitu decks), but I'm a fan of Darksteel Mutation.
Board wipes we've got two, Cyclonic Rift of course and Damnation, because sometimes you just need an emergency nuke.
Elspeth, Sun's Champion is here as a possible secondary win condition because she can often times take games away if she isn't dealt with fast enough. Her emblem is nice against Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and her minus 3 ability is usually a one sided board wipe. Yeah she'll kill Atraxa, but Atraxa isn't really integral to winning the game here and besides there's enough mana acceleration and mana ramp and recursion in the deck that Atraxa isn't too hard to recast most of the time.
Another possible alternate win condition is Sphinx of Magosi, Sphinx draws you cards and gets bigger for doing it, pair it up with Atraxa's proliferate ability and Sphinx of Magosi can get really big, pretty quickly.
The ultimates for Jace Beleren and Jace, the Mind Sculptor could also win the game for you, but I tend to stay away from Mill strategies and use them mainly for draw. Mill just isn't my thing, but if it is your thing, then you do you.
In conclusion, this deck is a pretty linear combo strategy, it has a bit of a toolbox thing going on and it has a lot of synergy. It isn't like your usual Tier 1 Infect or Superfriends type commander deck that you usually see Atraxa at the helm of and I have a ton of fun playing it. For others of you out there who enjoy combo strategies, you might have fun with it too.
