Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice!

Atraxa is a four mana 4/4 with flying, vigilance, deathtouch, lifelink and at the beginning of your end step you proliferate.

Atraxa is an incredibly popular Commander, in fact according to EDHREC Atraxa is the most popular Commander on the website and its easy to see why. Four strong keywords and a powerful ability that can enable all sorts of playstyles.

It can be difficult to write about an extremely popular Commander, but one of Atraxa’s lesser known (comparatively) deck archetypes is Sagas, and I though that it would be interesting in trying to create a decently powered Saga deck using Atraxa as the Commander and cheaper cards.

I understand that Atraxa is powerful on their own, and even trying to make a lower powered version is a challenge in and of itself, but I think its worth the challenge.

First we need to find some synergies with Sagas, which when they were introduced were batched into a keyword known as historic, which counts artifacts, legendaries, and of course Sagas.

Cabal Paladin is one of the first sort of things we are looking for, giving us value whenever we cast a historic spell by dealing two damage to an opponent.

Similarly we have D’Avenant Trapper and Diligent Excavator to tap our opponents creatures and mill our opponents respectively. Sagas are an inherently slow game plan, so we need to make sure that we are slowly needling our opponents whenever we can.

There is also Jhoira’s Familiar to make our historic spells cheaper, Banish to Another Universe which has affinity to historic permanents that can exile an opponents creature, and Crystal Skull, Isu Spyglass which allows us to play historic cards from the top of our library.

Then we also have Historian’s Boon which creates a 1/1 whenever a nontoken enchantment enters and when the final ability of a Saga triggers, you make a 4/4 Angel token with flying and vigilance.

The next thing that we need to look for are some Sagas that we would like to get to the end quicker that normal.

Binding of the Old Gods is a solid choice because it can destroy any nonland permanent an opponent controls, then allows you to get any Forest card from your library and put it onto the battlefield, and then give the rest of your creatures deathtouch.

Another great one to include is Rite of Belzenlok, which makes four 0/1 Cleric tokens and then makes a 6/6 black Demon creature token that requires you to sacrifice a creature or take 6 damage at the beginning of your upkeep.

To help with that, there is also Genesis of the Daleks, which makes a 3/3 Dalek creature token for each lore counter on it, then gives an opponent a choice in either destroying all Daleks and dealing damage equal to the total power of Daleks that were destroyed to each opponent, or destroy all non-Dalek creatures.

If we want to make those Daleks into even bigger threats there is Jugan Defends the Temple, which makes a Monk that is a mana dork, puts a +1/+1 counter on up to two creatures and then transforms into Remnant of the Rising Star, a flying creature which when another creature you control enters, you can pay X to add that many +1/+1 counters onto that creature and as long as you control five or more modified creatures, Remnant of the Rising Star gains +5/+5 and trample.

This only fuels Atraxa’s proliferate ability even more.

There are also utility Sagas like The Night of the Doctor and The Eldest Reborn to clear the board a bit, The Phasing of Zhalfir for protection, The Birth of Meletis and Azusa’s Many Journeys for ramp, or The Bath Song and Love Song of Night and Day for some card draw.

Now all we need is a way to finish, and while Sagas can generally be a slow durdling playstyle, we do have ways to close out the game.

Narci, Fable Singer draws you a card whenever you sacrifice an enchantment, which you do when you resolve most Sagas final abilities, and whenever that final chapter of a Saga ability resolves each opponent loses X life and you gain X life where X is that Saga’s mana value, which incentivizes you to play expensive Sagas.

There is also Satsuki, Living Lore, which can add a lore counter to a Saga and when it dies you can either return a Saga to your hand from the battlefield or from the graveyard.

If we want even more Sagas on the battlefield, then we also have access to Ian Chesterton, which gives Sagas we control a Replicate cost equal to their mana cost to copy the spell getting double the value.

Value is the name of Atraxa’s game, and even with these relatively affordable cards (Atraxa notwithstanding) , we have access to a deck that can definitely hold its own.

It is made even more powerful with Atraxa, which goes to show that even a Commander with a five simple keyword abilities, one of which activates at the end of the turn, can make an incredibly powerful deck.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual