MTG Salvation

I'm pretty still new/fresh to MTG, I've been playing for just under two months and I've gotten really into the game. So with that in mind, I'm still a bit unfamiliar with some of the more popular or staple cards for EDH/Commander so something that might be obvious to others might not be for me.


That being said, I've been working on an Atraxa counter deck


I picked up the commanders anthology, found a budget upgrade guide suggestion, then found a few more of my own cards I'm interested in and mixed them in. As of now I like where the deck is, for the most part, but I really need to work on making it more competitive and faster. My LGS has a handful of people with competitive oriented decks and I usually end up in the dust. I'm hoping to fix that with some upgrades/guidance if at all possible.

The cards I'm currently considering cutting are which consists of:

• 1x Altered Ego
  
• 1x Cauldron of Souls
  
• 1x Darksteel Reactor
  
• 1x Ichor Rats
  
• 1x Reyhan, Last of the Abzan
  
• 1x Viral Drake

Mostly due to the poison theme being super slow for the two poison cards I have (Sort of a backup win con? But from playing it seems to be far too slow without the deck more themed for It), Darksteel reactor being almost hilariously slow after actually playing, Cauldron seeming a bit out of place, Altered Ego also kinda alright but usually too expensive/useless for my meta, and Reyhan being pretty subpar too. I might be missing something, but that's what I'm leaning towards cutting.

I currently have all of the cards in the 'Maybe' board on the tappedout decklist to add to the deck, potentially anyway:

• 1x Lighthouse Chronologist
  
• 1x Shalai, Voice of Plenty
  
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
  
• 1x Doubling Season

I'm hoping for suggestions on where to maybe take this deck or cards to make it more competitive for my LGS.


The Meta for my LGS seems to be very very combo and control heavy currently. There's three specific people I have in mind, and while not entirely familiar with their decks, I can give a rough gist of them. These are the normal winners and they're who I'm hoping to take down/stand up against.

One plays a blue artifact deck with (I'm like 90% sure) runs Arcum Dagsson as commander. It's focused on getting infinite mana, making all cards artifacts on the field with Mycosynth Lattice, then making all of his artifacts indestructible. He can untap regularly thanks to Paradox Engine and it's nearly impossible to deal with when he gets going. If he can't get an infinite damage combo off he can still have us sacrifice literally all creatures on our field utilizing an infinite mana combo and constant untaps on his commander.

Another plays a graveyard themed deck with Meren of Clan Nel Toth that runs multiple tutors and seems to focus on getting out some insane combos off. He runs one card that allows him to retrieve things from exile, but otherwise he can't really recover from it if the proper pieces are exiled. He uses the 'Mike and Trike' combo ( Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion )
along with Protean Hulk. Typically when the Hulk dies it's almost always game.

The other plays a mix of decks that pretty much runs the same as the first two mentioned but with some different commanders/themes. Worth noting he also has a 'flicker' deck that focuses on exiling cards for a turn, then they come back. He can untap on every person's untap phase with another card so in our games (Usually 4 players) he can exile 4 different things. This really hurts my deck thanks to losing the counters, but he's only used this one once against me.

So, in the Atraxa precon, there were numerous infinite combos with Reyhan. I cut Atraxa and have a really fun and powerful Reyhan and Ishai deck.

To be competitive, you will need to make your deck less 'fair'. Right now, you are winning with combat damage mostly... if you cut Reyhan, I think you still have a few combos but way fewer. Combat damage is fun, but it is not very good unless you are faster than your opponents. Since Arcum can reliabley assembly a lock by turn 5, you will need to do some pretty unfair things to race with combat damage.

Step 1: Improve your land base. Panoramas and storage lands are weak and will slow you down too much against tuned decks.
Step 2: Choose a direction for your deck - do you want combo, infect, Stax? I agree about cutting your infect cards if you only have 2 of them... but think about what would happen if you went all in on infect? You can cut Reyhan if you are not dedicated to comboing... but if you want to combo out, keep him and add synergistic cards. What direction do you want to take your deck?
Step 3: Come back here and let us know what direction you have chosen and we will help you to this end.

My land base is certainly something I've noticed. It's hard to justify spending the money on 'just' lands, but as I've read and looked more it makes more sense. Particularly since it's a better long term investment anyway.
I guess the obvious ones are aim for shock lands followed by fetch?

Reyhan I didn't really realize the combo potential initially, though it makes a lot more sense now. Infect seems like a pretty gimmicky/cheap way to win (To me at least) and I know it has a bit of dislike in the LGS. Usually infect decks get singled out pretty quickly.

Stax seems really interesting/fun to be honest. I'd really like to build towards that. The tanglewire alone was one of my favorite inclusions and played properly it's a lot of fun. It seems like Stax isn't too good with Atraxa though, or maybe I'm just not familiar enough with it?

To be honest I don't *have* to stick with Atraxa. Any solid budget-ish cEDH deck in the 300-400 range is what I'm hoping to end up with, then work on upgrades going forwards.

Also thank you so much for the suggestions/help!!

Stax... Smokestack fits in well. Winter Orb and Stasis are good with Planeswalkers that untap lands, and PW are great with proliferate.

There are fun things you can do with Parallax Wave and Parallax Tide.

you mentioned tanglewire... you can find more here: https://edhrec.com/commanders/atraxa-praetors-voice-stax-theme.


If Stax is something that interests you, Karador, Ghost Chieftain and Derevi, Empyrial Tactician are good options. They are also very hated decks.

Atraxa also plays with a few different toys than these two decks, so it can still be interesting.

If I wanted to build an Atraxa stax deck, I would probably have a plan of winning with planeswalkers or with a combo. In either case, I think that Sage of Hours will fit well.