Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to be taking a look at Traxos, Academy Guardian!

Traxos is a four mana 1/5 that costs two mana less to cast if you’ve cast a noncreature spell this turn, and also has flying, vigilance, and prowess.

Game Plan

Now that the set has been revealed, its time to take a week and look at a bunch of the new Commanders that are coming out from Reality Fracture!

Starting with the Echoverse Traxos, this Traxos is a neat inversion of not only the Traxos from main universe in that this Traxos doesn’t tap because of vigilance, but this Traxos cares about any noncreature spell to gain an effect rather than the other Traxos from this set that can only untap when you cast an artifact or creature spells.

Mono blue spell slinger is an interesting archetype because while you don’t have as many ramp options as other colors, one thing blue does excel at is cheap spells that can cantrip you, as well as making use of cheap artifact synergies to keep the gravy train rolling.

Support

Other than the usual one mana cantrips of Opt, Consider, and Gitaxian Probe, we have an axis to take advantage of cheap artifacts in order to get Traxos out faster at a reduced rate.

Mishra’s Bauble is perfect for us in this case because it is a zero mana artifact that when we crack it can let us look at the top card of a player’s library and then draw an additional card at the beginning of the next turn’s upkeep. We can play it on turn two with no issues so we can cast Traxos onto the battlefield as early as possible.

We can even wait until turn three if we don’t mind waiting because of Etherium Sculptor which makes artifact spells we cast cost one mana less to cast. This means we can cast a cheap one mana artifact like a Sol Ring for free, which can then make Traxos only cost one blue mana, meaning we can free ourselves up for more casting more spells as needed.

Since we work well with artifacts, then we can also use cards like Sai, Master Thopterist to our advantage because whenever we cast an artifact spell we create a 1/1 Thopter token with flying, Whir of Invention to cheat an artifact into play by also using our artifacts to help by using Improvise, and Mystic Forge to let us look at the top card of our library and cast artifact or colorless spells from the top of our library and tap to pay 1 life to exile the top card of our library.

We would also like Traxos to get a bit bigger so we have the potential to win via Commander Damage, so Wizard’s Staff is actually pretty good for us since it gives the equipped creature prowess and if an ability of the equipped triggers, that ability triggers an additional time, meaning Traxos effectively has quadruple prowess.

There are even cards like Magic Damper to help protect Traxos in combat because it gives target creature +1/+1 and hexproof until the end of turn, while also untapping it if that becomes something that we need to be concerned with.

Our biggest asset, however, is Urza, Lord High Artificer which when he enters we create a 0/0 Contruct artifact creature token that gets +1/+1 for each artifact we control, let’s us tap an untapped artifact we control to add blue mana, and for five mana we can shuffle our library and exile the top card and until the end of turn we can play that card for free.

If we get a bunch of cheap artifacts in play or ways to get artifact tokens in play , like The Mechanist, Aerial Artisan which makes a Clue token whenever we cast a noncreature spell, then we can cantrip our way through our deck by using those artifacts as mana rocks to fuel our way to a win.

Funnily enough, Traxos, Scourge Eternal and Traxos, Scourge of Kroog work really well in combination with Urza in this deck because they untap whenever we cast an artifact spell, meaning we can tap them for blue mana, cast an artifact spell to untap them, and potentially generate a ton of mana.

Setbacks

Traxos does seem to be very reliant on having the right cards in your hand at the right time. While we have plenty of ways to get Traxos cheaper via cheap or free noncreature spells, we still need some creatures for the deck to work effectively.

Artifacts tend to be fairly fragile while on board, and while we do have access to cheap counter spells and counter spells that happen to synergize well with artifacts like Stoic Rebuttal which gets one mana cheaper if we have Metalcraft active, it may not be enough in some cases.

It’s the classic deck builders conundrum of making sure that you have some interaction in your deck, despite you wanting to make sure you have the cool stuff that let’s your deck “do the thing”. It takes a bit of time and balance to get right, but not an insurmountable hurdle.

What can be an insurmountable hurdle is not having your cheap to free things be able to be played. There are plenty of ways to get artifacts to be essentially free or artifacts that are already zero mana, which means something like Vexing Bauble or Thalia, Guardian of Thraben can ruin your plans fairly quickly.

Any ways that can tax your spells can be brutal, especially if there is a control deck in play whose whole goal is to tax noncreature spells. Blue doesn’t have as many ways to ramp as the other colors, and while High Tide is a great card, it cannot be our one way to get some burst mana.

We also will struggle with some recursion because blue doesn’t have as many options that are available to do so. Emry, Lurker of the Loch and Bilbo, Thief in the Night are great because they can let us get our artifacts back into play while they are both cheap to get into play, they are vulnerable until they can let us do that.

Bracket Rating: 3

This is interesting because I often do bracket ratings off of the cards that I see are most played for those Commanders as well as general vibes, but newer Commanders always provide a wide range of options that it’s hard to get a read some times where I think they will go.

I think that Traxos has the potential to be a solid Commander, however I do think that the issues of interaction and preventing potentially free casting prevents me from placing Traxos any higher than bracket 3.

Traxos works very well with previously existing artifact strategies and can actually be a good Commander for even a pure spell slinging Commander that wants to just be casting spells, though it will need a bit more help in that regard.

A solid Commander, especially for an uncommon.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual