Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Traxos, Scourge of Kroog!

Traxos is a four mana 7/7 with trample, enters the battlefield tapped and doesn’t untap during our end step, and whenever we cast a historic spell then we can untap Traxos.

I am surprised I haven’t done a Traxos blog before because, in my personal opinion, Traxos is one of my favorite Commanders because of how I personally find it a very interesting puzzle in getting Traxos to untap frequently, while also making sure we have enough ways to untap him as necessary.

The goal of the deck is to use Traxos being able to untap itself frequently to our advantage, whether that’s to add mana, draw cards, or some other interesting effect that we can take advantage of tapping Traxos while having cheap spells to untap Traxos to repeat this process.

The first thing to look for are the cheap historic spells we can use to untap Traxos easily.

Tormod’s Crypt is an excellent utility artifact that we can play for zero mana and tap it and sacrifice it to exile a player’s graveyard, which is most effective as more of a deterrent than anything because if we have it in play then the graveyard players either work to remove the Tormod’s Crypt or convince us not to target them.

Mishra’s Bauble helps us get some draws in because we can look at the top card of a player’s library and then draw an additional card at the beginning of the next turn’s end step. We can use it on ourselves to peek at our next draw or get a bit of information on what our opponents have, especially if they like to rearrange the top of their libraries.

Urza’s Bauble on the other hand let’s us peek at a random card in an opponent’s hand and then draws us a card at the beginning of the next upkeep, again giving us a bit of information while providing a free bit of card advantage.

Memnite and Ornithopter are zero mana creatures we can use to act as chump blockers with Ornithopter having flying, Spellbook has it so we have no maximum hand size, and Welding Jar let’s us sacrifice it to regenerate an artifact which we can use to protect Traxos.

We can also use cheap artifacts like Voltaic Key to untap Traxos if we don’t happen to have a historic spell to cast, Voltaic Servant to do it at the beginning of the end step, and Manifold Key to also untap Traxos but also have the utility in making Traxos unblockable.

One of the better ways to untap Traxos or any of our other artifacts would be through Clock of Omens, which let’s us tap two artifacts we control to untap a target artifact, and if we can get a large number of artifacts in play then we can make use of that even more effectively.

The next thing we need are the cards that are going to be fueled by Traxos via tapping.

Originally today’s article was going to be about Dawnsire, Sunstar Dreadnaught, but I think it works better as a support piece in Traxos because we can use Traxos to turbo fuel Dawnsire to get to ten charge counters so that when we attack we deal 100 damage to a creature or Planeswalker and then when we get twenty charge counters on it then it becomes a flying 20/20.

Another Spacecraft to look at is The Eternity Elevator, which normally adds three colorless mana which is always helpful in recasting Traxos if necessary, but when it gets to twenty charge counters we add X mana of any one color where X is the number of charge counters on it, which can help us get a ton of taps and untaps for Traxos and even The Eternity Elevator for a ton of mana.

There are also of course Vehicles that we can use, with one of my favorite in this case being Consulate Dreadnaught, which is a one mana Vehicle that is a 7/11 but has a Crew cost of 6, which with Traxos is nothing.

Mobile Homestead can be used to help us get more lands into play whenever it attacks, Reckoner Bankbuster can draw us cards and then make a Pilot and a Treasure token, Smuggler’s Copter can help us fix our hand whenever it attacks or blocks, and Careening Mine Cart gets us a Treasure token whenever it attacks.

Reaver Titan is a bit on the pricey side, but it has protection from mana value three or less and whenever it attacks it deals 5 damage to each opponent while having Crew 4, and if we manage to get a decent number of untaps with Traxos then we can get all of these Vehicles up and working.

The last thing we need are ways to take advantage of the fact that we have a ton of artifacts now in order for us to win the game.

Karn, Scion of Urza is a solid way for us to get a bit of card advantage immediately in revealing the top two cards and having an opponent put one into our hand and the other into exile with a silver counter that we could put into our hand later, but the last ability of Karn makes extremely good use of the fact that we are playing a ton of artifacts by making a Construct that gets +1/+1 for each artifact we control.

Adaptive Omnitool is also a pretty good way for us to get Traxos bigger because it gives the equipped creature +1/+1 for each artifact we control and whenever the equipped creature attacks we can look at the top six cards of our library and reveal an artifact and put it into our hand.

Blinkmoth Urn can be used to give us colorless mana equal to the number of artifacts we control, and even though it is symmetrical, we can counteract that by tapping it with Clock of Omens so our opponents can’t get that mana.

We can then use all of the accumulated mana from our various sources to cast some big X spells like Hangarback Walker so that when it dies we can make a number of Thopter tokens equal to the number of +1/+1 counters that we on it which can help further untap Traxos with Clock of Omens.

There are also some of the pricier colorless Planeswalkers where if you have access to them then that would definitely help, with Tezzeret, Cruel Captain being one of the better ones. You put a loyalty counter on him whenever an artifact you control enters, can untap an artifact or creature and if its an artifact creature then it gets a +1/+1 counter, tutor an artifact with mana value 1 or less into your hand, and can give us an emblem to put three +1/+1 counters on an artifact we control at the beginning of our combats, where if the artifact wasn’t a creature it becomes a 0/0 Robot artifact creature.

Traxos is a neat engine Commander that plays really well with artifacts, and while it entering tapped and unable to untap itself unless we cast an artifact spell can be seen as a hindrance, I find it to be a fun way to build a deck and make use of the fact that it can untap itself multiple times.

The issues are apparent, in that any mass artifact removal does harm us immensely, and the fact that Traxos untaps only when we cast an artifact spell and not when an artifact enters does make it less abusable.

If Paradox Engine were a legal card for Commander, then this would be one of the perfect decks for it, but that can be said with a lot of degenerate combo decks, so a lot of our untapping and tapping shenanigans are slower and often require mana to untap, which means that if Traxos gets removed it can be a bit of a pain to cast him again and make use of the untap cards we have access to.

Otherwise Traxos is a solid toolbox artifact Commander, in that you playing your artifacts nets you access to a massive artifact creature that has trample and can win the game in a couple of turns through Commander Damage if all else fails, which is always a nice option to have amid other artifact shenanigans.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual