Atraxa, Praetor’s Voice

The Commander 2016 decks brought the first cycle of four colour legendary creatures for use in the format. Among them for the white, blue, black, and green Commander was Atraxa, Praetor’s Voice a 4/4 Flying, Vigilance, Deathtouch, Lifelink Angel with a proliferate ability. New Phyrexia being as popular and powerful as it was brought much flavour to this powerful legend and has kept quite the impact over the years. The praetors themselves of course are still as devastating as ever within the format. With it’s recent reprint in the Double Masters set it’s a fine time to show some of it’s capabilities in a fun little Superfriends style deck.

Synergies

Doubling Season: A classic enchantment used in conjunction with Planeswalkers. With every Planeswalker one of the things that is analyzed is if can use their ultimate ability if their starting loyalty was doubled because of this enchantment. There is also Deepglow Skate which works differently but works nonetheless. In this deck version there are at least a few Planeswalkers which can use their ultimate like this, most of which will bring you incredibly far ahead of the game.

Shalai, Voice of Plenty: A defensive creature to help keep your Planeswalkers safe from spot removal spells with Hexproof. By protecting her with Lightning Greaves it leaves your opponents in a difficult situation, where targeted removal won’t be able to go after them. Granting this same defense to your other creatures and yourself is really just an added bonus.

Ajani Steadfast: A Planeswalker that really supports other Planeswalkers. Both Ajani Steadfast and Ajani, the Greathearted have the ability to give loyalty counters to each other Planeswalker you control. Since the Greathearted was a rare planeswalker from War of the Spark it has a passive ability, a plus, and a minus, but no ultimate. Steadfast however has a huge defensive ultimate, preventing all damage to you and your planeswalkers except for 1 damage from every source.

Planeswalker Support

Oath of Nissa: All the enchantments from the cycle of Oaths are great in Planeswalker based decks and is one of the most staple out of them. A simple low cost enchantment that digs for a Planeswalker, creature, or land while it’s passive ability is something to assist when you’re casting Planeswalkers. Being able to use mana of any colour to cast your Planeswalkers make the colour requirements much easier. Casting a Planeswalker using only mana rocks like Sol Ring, Mana Vault. and Mana Crypt is something usually left to Ugin and Karn but with Oath of Nissa you can do the same with any Planeswalker.

Inexorable Tide: This enchantment is a passive and doesn’t do much by itself but it turns every spell you cast into a proliferate trigger. While especially and dangerously effective with an Infect strategy it is perfectly viable here. It’s potential is in the extent you can proliferate per turn unlike Karn’s Bastion, Flux Channeler, Evolution Sage, and even Atraxa.

Eerie Ultimatum: There’s very little reanimation to recover Planeswalkers. While Obzedat’s Aid is nice and all I prefer a little more mass recursion. With the printing of Eerie Ultimatum we can recover every permanent in your graveyard. Since for some reason they didn’t have it exile upon resolution when you recur or play Eternal Witness then you’re ready to do it all over again.

Combos

Magistrate’s Scepter: Starting with a choice that is used in combination with the proliferation more than the Planeswalkers themselves. Whether with Doubling Season, Atraxa, or any other proliferate cards, it really doesn’t take that much to take infinite turns.

Oath of Teferi: What’s better than activating a Planeswalker ability once per turn? Well twice of course! With the new Teferi, Master of Time as well that’s two activations for each players turn. In a 4 player pod that’s going straight to 11 loyalty in one turn cycle. Nothing like a good Time Stretch.

The Chain Veil: What’s better than activating a Planeswalker twice per turn? The Chain Veil is one of the most dangerous pieces in any Planeswalker focused deck. Notably for it’s combination with Teferi, Temporal Archmage but with enough Planeswalkers and enough ways to generate the mana and untap it then infinite activations is very achievable. I did not run a second piece in this list to go infinite though so it is placed here for extra value. A deck can certainly focus on this ability but it becomes very linear in strategy and I quite prefer the game variations that this sort of deck brings.

Summary

At this time Atraxa is the only non-partner combination if you want to play the Witch-Maw colour combination. Of course that’s not a bad thing, Atraxa is an amazing Commander with plenty of potential. Taking advantage of her proliferate ability is pretty straightforward and the more Planeswalkers that come out, the more different counters that are integrated into the game, the more possible strategies this Commander will have to play with.

There are of course a variety of different ways to build a deck since there are experience counters, poison counters, +1/+1 counters, -1/-1 counters, loyalty counters, charge counters everything and more that you can proliferate. If you like the list or if some of the pieces give you some ideas then I’ve done my part. Play this how you’d like, run what you have, just watch out when using Ichor Rats.