How Can I Break Atraxa?
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on Oct. 18, 2018, 4:04 p.m. by QuilavaUchiha
I was playing my Breed *More* Lethality commander deck against my friends and noticed that the deck is a lot slower than I thought it was, especially against commanders like Edgar Markov. I'd love some help in making the deck faster and improving its synergy and don't mind going a little above my budget in order to break Atraxa.
bushido_man96 says... #3
Your problem in trying to go faster is you have a four color commander. I think most of the builds that really "break" her tend to be linked superfriends builds, but I'm not completely sure.
I think what will help you the most is to run serious amounts of card draw and mana ramp, in the forms of both dorks and rocks. Your dorks need to give different colors, so the likes of Birds of Paradise and Utopia Tree are great. Quirion Elves give you the option when you play them to choose what other color you need most at the time. Land tutor spells that work really well with dual lands, like Farseek, Nature's Lore, and Skyshroud Claim give you great fixing ability, along with the fetch lands, if you can afford them. Zendikar Resurgent will give another effect like Mirari's Wake. Rishkar, Peema Renegade also makes any critter with a counter on it into a mana dork. Solid creature in this deck. Also, Cryptolith Rite. Play it.
Pir, Imaginative Rascal gives you another Atraxa-like effect. I'd consider playing with some of the old-school Spike cards to get more critters with counters on them in play.
Solid card draw options include Rhystic Study, Rishkar's Expertise, Shamanic Revelation, and Inspiring Call is a pretty awesome surprise against some board wipes (I see you have this one in your list).
Now, the main way you can speed up Atraxa is by upgrading your mana base, which is the single easiest way to drive up the price of a deck. Old-school duals are the way to go, but not everyone has that option. Barring that, get some cards like City of Brass and Reflecting Pool, and a Gemstone Mine is a card without a drawback if you have Atraxa out. Basically, the fewer lands you have that come into play tapped, then the faster and more efficiently you can utilize your mana. The cheapest way to improve Atraxa, in my opinion, is to build it like an old fashioned "5-Color Green" deck, but in this case it will be 4-Color Green. So green will be your base color, which gives you access to all the mana dorks you'd want, and the sorcery speed cards that let you fetch the lands to fix your mana. Also, you get Zendikar Resurgent, which is card draw and mana ramp in one card, and Cryptolith Rite and Rishkar, Peema Renegade. Green also has good card draw spells, like I mentioned above. So build a green shell for the deck, and sprinkle in what you need from the other colors to focus on your plan.
I hope that helps. I really like taking the precons and molding them into something more my style. They're a great spring board. I hope this helps out some. If not, there are plenty of awesome folks on here that will have some good information to offer.
Happy building!
October 18, 2018 5:39 p.m.
generalrenard says... #4
If you want to go full cEDH for Atraxa, I would recommend you play stax. Cards like Smokestack and Tangle Wire become really dumb with Atraxa. I would recommend you look for the stax primer on MTGSalvation for a guide to building a stax deck. Thought when building stax, you need to keep in mind having a big budget and you will not be liked.
shadow63 says... #2
Well edgar is banned in 1v1 edh for good reason. So if it was a 1v1 game your deck might be just fine
October 18, 2018 5:09 p.m.