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Atraxa’s Avengers [Primer] [2023]

Commander / EDH Enchantment GWUB Proliferate Superfriends

Mitrian

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Land (37)

Planeswalker (21)

Enchantment (12)

Instant (4)

Commander (1)

Commander: Atraxa, Praetors' Voice

Artifact (15)

Sorcery (9)

Creature (1)

Sideboard

Instant (7)

Enchantment (3)

Creature (1)

Artifact (1)

Sorcery (3)

Maybeboard

Planeswalker (15)

Enchantment (4)

Instant (13)

Land (9)

Artifact (11)

Sorcery (10)

While I don't really have anything against DC, I'm definitely more of a Marvel fan, so this is an Avengers deck, rather than Superfriends. But you get the idea.

So I came across Proteus Staff while I was working on my Animar Deck, and while it was a bad fit there, it got me thinking about a deck that only ran one creature, and eventually I "came up" with the idea of a Deepglow Skate planeswalker deck and Atraxa seemed the obvious commander for that. Now, come to find out, that's apparently not unique at all, as it's the core concept around the most popular Superfriends deck on TappedOut (Superfriends with Super Benefits), but that's ok, I still felt pretty clever (for a minute).

You can read their primer -- which is certainly better than mine -- but the gist of it is that since Deepglow Skate is the only creature in our deck, you can use the staff to repeatedly play it out and double loyalty counters. Without a way to untap the staff, you're doubling loyalty once per turn, which is already quite brutal. This makes reaching Ultimate thresholds on all your planeswalkers very attainable, with or without Doubling Season. It has the added benefit of being able to stack your deck in whatever order you like, which could pair beautifully with a card like Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge. (And then hopefully no one follows with a Vandalblast.)

Once you have emblems like Tamiyo, Tamiyo, Elspeth, Teferi, or Teferi, winning get a lot easier. If you trigger the more oppressive emblems such as Dovin Baan, Narset, Venser, or Teferi, players will often just scoop.

If they don't scoop, we have a number of other ways to put them out of their misery.

Even better than once per turn, try going infinite with the Deepglow Staff combo. Dramatic Reversal exiled onto Isochron Scepter is an old school combo that with one or two mana rocks gives us infinite mana. This untaps The Chain Veil as well, which allows for infinite Planeswalker activations. If we don't have any of these pieces yet except the staff, the first time we use it, stack the deck so The Chain Veil, Dramatic Reversal, and Isochron Scepter are the next draws, and then we setup our combos, and we just play into a win.

Alternatively, if the Dramatic Scepter combo was disrupted or exiled, Astral Cornucopia or Everflowing Chalice with four+ counters on either can go infinite with Tezzeret plus The Chain Veil, and at that point all you need is a walker with an ability that does damage, such as Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge or Sorin Markov.

And of course, Atraxa can win with commander damage, although that's definitely slower. That's not really how the deck is built, but it's easy to get +1 counters on her which will then proliferate all over the place so she can get big enough to kill if our emblems have the board locked down.

Rings of Brighthearth are a planeswalker's best friend:

  • Double any planeswalker ability, including their ultimate (emblems are not legendary).
  • Double The Chain Veil activation, giving us three planeswalker abilities per turn.
  • Grab two lands per fetchland.
  • Produce infinite mana with Basalt Monolith .

My favorite planeswalker’s first ability is unquestionably Venser, the Sojourner:

  • Venser and Deepglow Skate are an amazing combo by themselves. Only downside is end of turn, so you have to protect for a round and wait to activate any ultimates that opens up.
  • Venser is also great to reset another planeswalker that’s been attacked or that we’ve used a minus ability on. He’s a good way to get them into ultimate range, too, if Doubling Season was played since the target first came into play.
  • I will often copy Venser’s +2 with Rings because there’s almost always a planeswalker to reset.
  • Last, Venser, (as do most of them, honestly, but especially Venser) really loves Oath of Teferi. All the above… do it twice!

The Oath Cards are technically combo pieces, as they are designed to synergize with what we're doing:

  • Oath of Ajani makes them all cost 1 less to cast. Not huge, but definitely relevant and speeds things up by a turn in a lot of cases.
  • Oath of Gideon creates a blocker (one time, woohoo!) but more importantly adds a free loyalty counter to future planeswalkers entering play. Very good, yes.
  • Oath of Teferi is the weakest of the bunch and barely made the cut because… it's so good it's always removed immediately. I play the card, and within seconds the ghosts from past games fly through the walls and literally eat this card right off the table like it's the last piece of chocolate at an uncomfortable dinner party.

Let's not hide the deck's greatest weakness: This is a slow starting deck. And being four colors, we need a plan for mana fixing, and by not running a lot of basics in the land base, the common ramp spells aren't going to be as great. Instead, we rely heavily on fetches and artifact mana.

The key theme of the deck, and we get a lot of it from Atraxa, but we really lean into it with the following:

  • Inexorable Tide adds proliferate to every spell. Pretty damn good!
  • Contagion Engine is expensive, but can be copied by Rings for an explosive amount of growth.
  • Ichormoon Gauntlet gives all of our planeswalkers the ability to proliferate, so if we don’t need another 1/1 soldier from Elspeth, she can tick up everyone’s loyalty, including herself, and it can also be copied by Rings. As a bonus, it has a single target proliferate for almost every spell we cast.
  • Brokers Ascendancy is not technically proliferate — it won’t add counters to our mana rocks, for example — but it does what we really need it to. Main downside is that it happens at end step. But so does Atraxa, I guess.
  • Karn's Bastion is a land and it can proliferate any time at instant speed for five mana (effectively), and it can be copied by Rings.

Two more that are currently in the sideboard because of cost (mana):

  • Planewide Celebration gives four proliferates, at sorcery speed. This can surprise opponents by putting a walker into ultimate range at a time when you can actually do something about it, so it's really powerful. In games where I think less board wipes are needed, I might move this into the main.
  • Brokers Confluence similarly can give us three proliferates, and at instant speed (as it's an ability counter as well). Great for burst and flexibility, and it may eventually work its way back into the mainboard.

Even in the 75% commander space, card advantage is mandatory to keep pace with opponents and to fuel our overall battle plan. In the early game, we only have a couple options until we get our Planeswalkers out and that engine going.

  • Sylvan Library - lets us dig for the stuff we need when we need it, and if we really need it we can pay life for it. Good card is good.
  • Rhystic Study - is fantastic as it either slows down opponents (making them spend mana), or accelerates us by giving us more fuel. Another good card is good.

Many of our planeswalkers also have some good card advantage ability. (I'm not listing ultimate abilities, since if we got there, the draw is much less critical at that point.)

Not draw, but these next few are huge card advantage:

  • Eerie Ultimatum is expensive at 7 colored mana, but is often a game winner, as it'll brings back your entire graveyard (of permanents) back onto the battlefield. This often include the much hated Doubling Season along with Planeswalkers that got killed or targeted previously, so they enter with doubled counters and are usually ready to ultimate right away. If Deepglow Skate was also in the graveyard, put its trigger on the stack first so it resolves last and doubles everything as well. Save this card for when your graveyard has the good stuff (if often eventually gets there), then cast it, hold priority, and start the end of the game.
  • Primevals' Glorious Rebirth is also expensive but much easier to cast, and similarly, this card brings back all our dead Planeswalkers in one fell swoop! Glorious indeed.
  • Replenish returns all enchantments to the battlefield. Underrated card, especially when considering the impact of many of the enchantments we run.
  • Seasons Past has been moved to the sideboard in favor of the above options, but it's still a very worthy consideration. I hated some of the choices it forced, for example, choosing between Inexorable Tide, Doubling Season, and Privileged Position, rather than getting to take all three.

This makes up the final section, all of which factor into our ability to survive long enough to execute our game winning combos. Starting with protecting our board state:

  • Sphere of Safety is only effective when we have other enchantments in play, but we run a good handful and it can make attacking us costly.
  • Dueling Grounds ensures no more than one creature can be sent at us.
  • Privileged Position give hexproof to everything but itself, so now if you want to remove Doubling Season -- like you do -- you need a board wipe or two targeted removals.
  • Comeuppance could be put in either protection or board wipes, but it's here because there's no guarantee of destroying creatures. Best when used against an alpha strike or burn deck, but even against smaller attacks it can really protect our board state just long enough for us to do some cool things. Winning and losing often comes down to… "Ahhhhhh… if I only had one more turn…" and this can give us that one more turn.
  • Teferi's Protection. Yep.

But ff things do get too crazy, we have a number of board wipes to reset the board while we continue along the path of Planeswalker domination.

  • Cyclonic Rift - This is EDH and we have access to blue. The laws require the presence of this card.
  • Terminus - Puts all creatures on the bottom of their libraries and has the added bonus of Miracle for an instant speed response if you can setup your deck and trigger a draw.
  • Hallowed Burial - Same as Terminus for 1 mana less.
  • Supreme Verdict - Uncounterable destroy all creatures.
  • Merciless Eviction - Exile, choose artifacts, creatures, enchantments, or planeswalkers. We almost always choose creatures, unless someone already cleared out our own artifacts or enchantments.
  • Black Sun's Zenith - X cost for -1 counters to all creatures. This can board wipe on the spot, or get us mostly there while proliferating the rest of it. And is reusable if we're lucky.

Finally, sometimes you need to just get rid of that one troublesome Solemnity, Humility or Vorinclex.

  • Anguished Unmaking and Utter End are perfect for these use cases, and many others. They go in and out of the deck when I'm testing new cards, but long term, they will remain for their sheer value and utility.
  • The Elderspell is usually targeted at our own planeswalkers when we see an opportunity to get an especially valuable emblem, but there's no reason not to get rid of enemy planeswalkers if the opportunity is there. Very flexible spell, and super relevant to our plans, primarily offensive but also defensive if needed.

Thanks for reading my long-winded primer! I write these not for Internet points, but because it's become part of my process for building and fine-tuning a deck. I find when I have to write out justifications for my card choices, it's easier to be honest and objective about which cards are actually effective, and which are just 'pet' cards. However, please feel free to comment and share thoughts. I welcome alternative opinions!

As for who I am… I'm a veteran player, who started playing Magic back in the days of Alpha -- which means, yeah, I'm getting pretty old. I once had my own Black Lotus, more than one I believe, and I of course played them unsleeved. Back then, as a teenager, I didn't like the card, because I didn't even dream about things like Turn 1 wins. So they were traded away. Not that it matters because my early collection of cards, which included the moxen, duals, CoPs, and other craziness (by today's standards anyway) were all heavily played, bent up, and ultimately lost over the course of moves and life transitions.

In my thirties I got back into Magic, spending a lot of time and money playing Standard during the days of Lorwyn, Alara, Zendikar, Mirrodin, and Innistrad. I never won any big tournaments, but I played in quite a few. Along the way, I reacquired some of the Power Nine as well as cards like Gaea's Cradle, Candelabra of Tawnos, and even a Timetwister, and I had full playsets of every card produced during those 5-7 years, so could build any Standard deck I wanted -- man that was a lot of fun. But eventually, I lost the taste for the ultra-competitive scene and switched back to kitchen table Magic where I fell in love with Commander. My first Commander ever built was Maelstrom Wanderer and I still try to keep that deck current and relevant.

I've stopped spending as much money these days, and play mostly with MPC proxies, which means I don't worry about card costs much at all. I feel strongly that people should play with whatever cards they enjoy playing with, not just the ones they can afford to buy. Magic is an expensive hobby, but finances shouldn't be what prevents participation at any power level (where prizes aren't involved). I do, however, still support WotC and I buy almost every Commander pre-con deck they make, which lately has gotten crazy with the number being produced.

There are some elements of Magic that I tend to avoid -- including MLD (generally not fun for people to play against), excessive tutors (makes many decks too linear for me, and searching and shuffling often slows things down), and extra turns (often creates "feels bad" moments and more downtime for opponents). I respect the power of these cards and styles, but I'm more interested in games where everyone is having fun, and not just me.

I build and play to win (without those cards, usually), in every game, but ultimately I really don't mind losing -- I just love to play.

Some ideas and inspirations taken from:

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