An Introduction to Atraxa in cEDH
Atraxa, Grand Unifier by Marta Nael
"Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell." - William Shakespeare
In today's installment of introductory cEDH deck techs, we're breaking down the last hold-out of "sans red" four-color commander decks and the best implementation of Food Chain combos at the moment: Atraxa, Grand Unifier.
With cEDH continuing its meteoric growth, becoming a feature of Magic Online and now the highest cash prize events you can find at some competitive Magic conventions, the folks here at Commander's Herald have begun an initiative to get introductory content in the hands of upcoming cEDH players to make their transition into the format as smooth as possible. You can find an aggregated list of the content falling under this initiative here and again at the bottom of this article.
Why Play Atraxa in cEDH?
Atraxa has, on the surface, a lot of the same appeals shared by Kenrith, the Returned King and Tivit, Seller of Secrets:
- Best Food Chain deck in cEDH
- Combo outlet in the command zone
- Large creature in the command zone
- Creature-focused, and therefore able to play grindy games through a lot of the commonly played interaction
In fact, even the colors represented in this deck represents a "splitting the difference" between Tivit and Kenrith, being more colorful than Esper but not quite five-color. Where Atraxa pulls ahead from each deck respectively is being less artifact-focused, which means that some of the commonly played stax pieces geared at stopping the powerful artifacts in this format don't have nearly the impact on you as they do on Tivit.
The same sort of exploitable weakness Kenrith has for being largely focused on Dockside Extortionist combos is also mostly dodged here as well. Atraxa is the most focused on the long game of the three decks and will often look to assemble its combos via an overwhelming amount of card advantage than by using tutors to find each piece. Naturally, Atraxa still plays a number of tutors, but it's far more modest than other cEDH decks that are looking to win the game faster.
The inevitability of Atraxa that's gained by having the literal best creature you can put in the command zone in this format for attacking and blocking means that leaning hard in the grind game and into this developing midrange and creature-focused metagame is a recipe for success. Naturally losing the color red is a steeper cost than ever, but Deflecting Swat is hardly a card you would be interested anyway, and being so focused on using the command zone as an outlet means you don't feel the lack of Underworld Breach combos as a way to end the game nearly as difficult. Having no Dockside Extortionist is the real loss here, especially with access to a number of creature tutors, but the clones you get to play can often cover for you there.
The Gameplan
The gameplan for Atraxa is easy to grasp and follows every "combo control" deck's script to the letter:
- Grind out your opponents by accumulating more value over time and stopping them from enacting their gameplans
- Assemble your combo once your opponents are depleted of resources
To this end, there are a multitude of value engines in this deck that are seen scarcely anywhere else. The normal fixtures that draw cards are present as well as "value engines" that simply make mana in order to cast the abundance of cards Atraxa is looking to draw. Picking your spot to win with Atraxa, I expect to diverge enough from the normal heuristics in cEDH that playing this deck takes some adjustment, but played proficiently and with some component political maneuvering Atraxa is a top contender at any cEDH table.
In general, assembling your combo should be mostly an afterthought through the phases of the game. Your priority is on getting value engines running and protecting yourself against the decks looking to win the game quickly via either your own interaction or the rest of the table's. You largely want to constantly be finding ways to play more turns and draw the game out as long as you can, and when your opponents are depleted on resources or you are overwhelmingly ahead on both mana and cards, find one of your combos to close the game.
The most common ways to close the game are Displacer Kitten combos alongside Teferi, Time Raveler, Hullbreaker Horror infinite mana combos, and Food Chain combos with Misthollow Griffin. Naturally, all these combos work in such a way that, once infinite mana is made, there's also the means to repeatedly use the triggered ability of Atraxa, Grand Unifier to draw your deck and close the game either with a Finale of Devastation or Thassa's Oracle.
The Best Atraxa Cards
Nailing down the "staples" for Atraxa is a little risky, because the interactive nature of the deck means there is always room for argument on what the optimal collection of value engines and interaction is for a given event. Despite this, we're going to cover Atraxa as it looks today with the caveat that much of the interaction can change by the week even if much of the rest of the deck stays the same.
Win Conditions and Combos
Food Chain + Misthollow Griffin
Thassa's Oracle + Demonic Consultation/Tainted Pact
Teferi, Time Raveler + Displacer Kitten + Free Artifact
Hullbreaker Horror
The win conditions are the most static elements of the deck list and also among the most lean. This fits within the deck's gameplan nicely, as a critical mass of interaction and value engines are necessary to stay alive long enough to leverage Atraxa herself to punch a combo through. This explains the presence of only a single "cast from exile" creature in Misthollow Griffin, naturally excluding other options, like Eternal Scourge. Griffin being blue makes it the easiest to get into exile from one of the Force of Will-style effects, and the diminishing returns on another "cast from exile" creature is too high to justify inclusion.
Interaction
This density of interaction should feel familiar as it's incredibly similar to the other cEDH decks looking to play long games to leverage their massive creature in the command zone. Again, these are subject to change based on the weekend, but the raw density of interaction will remain nearly identical even if the specifics change a bit from week to week. The largest notable exclusions here are Fierce Guardianship and Deadly Rollick, which makes plenty of sense when you look at the upper right-hand corner of your commander.
Protection
The presence of white in Atraxa's color identity means that the best of the Silence-style effects to use for protecting your own combos are going to make an appearance. This is especially true of the ones that double as interaction, like Ranger-Captain of Eos, which I suspect is one of the strongest tools for slowing games down in cEDH at large.
Value Engines
One of the most iconic and core parts of the Atraxa deck are its host of value engines that take up a large swath of the deck. Notably engines that make Treasures from opponents casting spells convert into cards via Atraxa, Grand Unifier herself and therefore are strong enough in their roles to make the list here. These cards are really what demonstrate Atraxa's identity of a "control" deck looking to grind, and facilitate the interaction list as more often used to stop opposing wins than just as protection for your own wins.
Broken Mana
One of the powerful aspects of a deck like Atraxa that leans on creatures and "value engine"-style cards to supplement the mana production needed to control the game is the lesser reliance on artifact fast mana. This is a draw to the deck, as much of the prison elements look to attack that fast mana in one way or another, and only reaching for the most powerful of the bunch makes your deck much more difficult to exploit with commonly played stax effects.
Tutors
You can tell almost as much about a deck by the cards it excludes as the cards it includes. In this case, this list is very light for the amount of colors we are playing. The absence of cards like Mystical Tutor, Wishclaw Talisman, Beseech the Mirror, and Diabolic Intent makes a loud statement about this deck's intended path to victory. Naturally we would want to max out on tutor effects if we were looking to win the game as quickly as possible.
Cutting back on the tutors and only playing the ones that serve all our gameplans and don't strain the mana makes a loud statement that the actual win condition here is card advantage from value engines, not punching a combo through in the first few turns. Of course there will still be some hands that combo quickly, and turn-one combo kills are still possible with the right combination of cards, but the modest amount of tutors played really highlights that quick wins are intentionally uncommon, as this deck is designed to play a long game.
Filling Out The Decklist
The staples list above is fairly long and is not all inclusive. Clones, like Flesh Duplicate, Phyrexian Metamorph, and Phantasmal Image are common enough that I would consider them staples but are neither enough of the deck to warrant their own section nor critical to the primary functions of the deck.
Additionally, there is a host of "mana dork" options, like Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarch, Deathrite Shaman, and Delighted Halfling that make an appearance fairly commonly but the numbers on those vary enough, especially with the strong presence of Orcish Bowmasters in the cEDH metagame right now, that it's safer to lump them in with the rest of the mana sources at large than make any assertions on which are considered staples.
Below is an example of a typical Atraxa deck as it exists in the metagame right now. There will be some variations naturally as things develop and more tournaments happen, but I would expect the decklist to never vary by more than 20 cards or so. That may seem like a lot, but compared to the divergence in decklists we see with decks like Kenrith, it's quite modest.
Personally I am far too addicted to casting Underworld Breach and Dockside Extortionist to ever have Atraxa, Grand Unifier as my main deck, but Atraxa is still extremely powerful and commands respect. Particularly with how cEDH has gotten slower and more creature-focused over time, Atraxa is the best way to "go over the top" of the slower midrange decks like Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy and Talion, Kindly Lord and beat them at their own grindy game.Thank you for reading and let me know in the comments what deck you would like to see next!
