Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice is the default commander for this
list, and I’ll be sticking with the defaults for all 5 decks this time around.
I’m just contrarian enough that most years I wind up going with one of the
alternate choices on 1 deck out of 5, but this year we got a bunch of Partners
as our alternates and very few of those options interest me. So for once I’m
sticking to the face commanders.
Atraxa herself is an impressive gal with a veritable
cornucopia of keywords, but the one that seems to have everyone’s attention is
“proliferate”. Not that flying, vigilance, deathtouch and lifelink aren’t all
great to have, especially all at once, but they hardly suggest a solid “build
around me” theme the way proliferate does. Now, if we want to play devil’s
advocate and say we want to focus on that top row of keywords instead of
proliferate, I’d wager we could do that. Atraxa would make an imposing Voltron
commander for sure, though she lacks the most coveted of all Voltron keywords:
hexproof. Nonetheless, I can see Atraxa being quite formidable at the head of
either an Equipment-based or Aura-based Voltron deck. You could even make the
proliferate ability relevant with equipment like Ring of Kalonia or Umezawa’s
Jitte. Or you could just put various Swords of Power and Value on her and win
with hard-to-stop General Damage kills. Or could you imagine Atraxa wearing a
bunch of the “Deity” enchantments from Shadowmoor (think Shield of the
Oversoul, Steel of the Godhead, etc.)?
Yeah, I think a Bant-plus-Black Enchantress deck could be viable.
But we aren’t trying to be all Hipster and have the most
outside-the-box Atraxa deck ever, right? What’s the point of having ignoring
the coolest keyword in our commander’s text box? If we’re playing Atraxa, you
can bet we want to be proliferating a lot of counters. The only real question
is what kind of counters we’re going to be proliferating. Going by EDHREC’s
statistics, I’d say it’s clear that the most overwhelmingly popular answer to
this question is “loyalty counters” – as in Planeswalker counters. Yep, Atraxa
Superfriends is pretty much the Meren Stax or Nekusar Wheels of this year’s
crop of commander decks. All the cool kids are using Deepglow Skate to ultimate
like five Planeswalkers in a single turn. I’m pretty sure I’ll get around to building
that version someday, but for now I want to stick with the original deck’s
default theme: +1/+1 counters.
Literally the night before Atraxa was spoiled, I had
dismantled my Karador deck with the aim of rebuilding it as Anafenza and giving
+1/+1 counter Abzan one last shot before I gave up and went back to Karador for
good. Then the next day, Atraxa appears. That night I sleeved Karador right
back up, made a few minor tweaks, and called it a day. So now instead of
waffling back and forth between Abzan counters and Simic counters, I can just
mash the two together!
Other popular options include Energy counters and Poison
counters. I dislike poison (as does my playgroup) and I don’t feel like Energy
is quite well-supported enough to carry a deck on its own.
Let’s go ahead and take a look at the starting list for
Breed Lethality as it is, straight out of the box.
Creatures
Atraxa, Praetor’s Voice
Thrummingbird
Festercreep
Scavenging Ooze
Abzan Falconer
Orzhov Advokist
Tuskguard Captain
Necroplasm
Champion of Lambholt
Reyhan, Last of the Abzan
Vorel of the Hull Clade
Crystalline Crawler
Custodi Soulbinders
Forgotten Ancient
Bane of the Living
Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker
Corpsejack Menace
Fathom Mage
Master Biomancer
Elite Scaleguard
Reveillark
Deepglow Skate
Kalonian Hydra
Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper
Vulturous Zombie
Juniper Order Ranger
Ghave, Guru of Spores
Enduring Scalelord
Spells
Hardened Scales
Disdainful Stroke
Solidarity of Heroes
Brave the Sands
Manifold Insights
Grip of Phyresis
Inspiring Call
Mortify
Putrefy
Duelist's Heritage
Bred for the Hunt
Languish
Citadel Siege
Tezzeret's Gambit
Ancient Excavation
Mirrorweave
Migratory Route
Sylvan Reclamation
Cathars' Crusade
Merciless Eviction
Spitting Image
Sublime Exhalation
Duneblast
Treasure Cruise
Sol Ring
Fellwar Stone
Golgari Signet
Orzhov Signet
Simic Signet
Commander's Sphere
Darksteel Ingot
Cauldron of Souls
Astral Cornucopia
Lands
Arcane Sanctum
Ash Barrens
Azorius Chancery
Command Tower
Darkwater Catacombs
Dreadship Reef
Evolving Wilds
Exotic Orchard
Golgari Rot Farm
Murmuring Bosk
Opal Palace
Opulent Palace
Sandsteppe Citadel
Seaside Citadel
Sungrass Prairie
Temple of the False God
Terramorphic Expanse
Underground River
Plains x5
Island x4
Swamp x5
Forest x7
So, as you can see, we have a handful of cards that deal
with +1/+1 counters, plus a couple of other types of random counters thrown in
here and there. Much of the deck is devoted to generic utility stuff and
off-theme jank like Grip of Phyresis or Brave the Sands. Overall, though the
creature portion of the deck is mostly on point, and the mana situation looks
acceptable.
One of the things I often end up doing is playing a bit of
musical chairs with the new cards in these decks. Meaning, there will often be
cards in one deck that seem to make more sense in a different deck. For
instance, Duelist’s Heritage is a card I would much rather have over in
Saskia’s deck, while for some odd reason, that deck got a copy of Evolutionary
Escalation, but this deck – the one that cares about +1/+1 counters – didn’t!
So I often start by looking at what we can do just by making a few swaps
between the decks themselves, without introducing cards from outside the set.
First, let’s single out the newly-printed cards within this
deck.
Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper
Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker
Reyhan, Last of the Abzan
Orzhov Advokist
Crystalline Crawler
Deepglow Skate
Manifold Insights
Grip of Phyresis
Duelist's Heritage
Ancient Excavation
Migratory Route
Sylvan Reclamation
Sublime Exhalation
Ash Barrens
Of the alternate commanders, Ikra Shidiqi’s lifegain is nice
to have, but she has virtually no synergy or mechanical relevance to this deck
whatsoever, with very few creatures having particularly high Toughness stats. Ishai
fairs a little better, as she is thematically relevant, in that she does deal
with +1/+1 counters. However, all she does is grow and fly, which isn’t
particularly exciting. Reyan is the best of the three, giving us the ability to
redistribute counters as our creatures die.
Orzhov Advokist is a bit cutesy but I’ve been happy with how
it plays and I’m very hesitant to cut anything that gets counters onto Atraxa
directly. Crystaline Crawler is surprisingly powerful, and has already
contributed to some of the most broken turns I’ve taken with this deck.
Deepglow Skate is obviously an MVP as well. Manifold Insights is a card I like,
and would happily keep around, but really it could be any generic draw spell
for purposes of this deck. Grip of Phyresis is strictly a metagame call: if you
keep getting beat up by equipment, keep it; otherwise, ditch it immediately. Duelist’s
Heritage is way too off-theme and belongs more in Saskia anyway. Ancient
Excavation is another generic draw spell I like a lot but doesn’t specifically
need to be in this deck for any reason, and could become some other draw spell.
Migratory Route will basically always be landcycled, as it does virtually nothing
in this deck. Sylvan Reclamation is an exceptional card; though not on-theme, I’d
likely keep it based on strength and utility alone. Sublime Exhalation I
seriously dislike, and especially in this deck. Finally, Ash Barrens is an
unassuming little card but I’ve been really impressed with it in these decks.
If you have the duals available to build a “perfect” mana base, I doubt you’d
need it, but for anything less than the most dual-laden decks, I’d keep it
around.
So we are for sure keeping: Reyhan, Deepglow Skate,
Crystalline Crawler, Sylvan Reclamation and Orzhov Advokist, Ash Barrens.
And we are cutting: Ikra Shidiqi, Duelist’s Heritage,
Sublime Exhalation, Migratory Route, and Grip of Phyresis.
Cards we’d like to keep but could cut if we needed to:
Ishai, Ancient Excavation, Manifold Insights.
Moving on to the remainder of the deck, what else can we cut
easily? From the creature section, I’d start by removing:
Festercreep
Necroplasm
Custodi Soulbinders
Bane of the Living
Enduring Scalelord
Vulturous Zombie
Festercreep is a card that I like in theory but it just
doesn’t do what it does efficiently or reliably enough. However I have to jump
ahead a bit here, and mention the interaction with Mirrorweave. You see, if you
target a creature that is normally a 0/0 but has counters on it, like
Festercreep for instance, all other creatures in play will become a copy of
that creature, but won’t get the +1/+1 counters on them. So, basically,
everything that is not receiving a buff from either a +1/+1 counter on it or an
“anthem” effect like Always Watching will die. Against many decks, this gives
Mirrorweave the potential to kill everything except our own creatures, even
indestructible ones. So, while I do recommend cutting Festercreep due to its
low power level, we really want to watch our count of 0/0 creatures, or else we
will have to cut Mirrorweave too! I’d like to keep the ‘Weave around if
possible, so when we go looking to add stuff in, we’ll have to try to add back
in a few more 0/0 creatures to keep that Mirrorweave option viable.
Anyway, moving on. Necroplasm is kinda like Festercreep in
that it does what it does too inefficiently. On top of that, if often comes
with too much collateral damage to our own board as well. In theory, Atraxa’s
proliferate trigger should let you fiddle with the numbers to blunt the impact
to our own permanents but in reality that just doesn’t play out. It’s a
terrible card. Cut it! Following that theme, Custodi Soulbinders is also cut
for power level reasons. It’s just too low-impact and that activated ability is
overcosted. We aren’t a token deck anyway. Bane of the Living is off-theme and
as the only morph in the deck, it will never have the “gotcha!” value that it
is supposed to have. Enduring Scalelord returns us back to the land of “On
theme but too weak”. As does Vulturous Zombie. I actually do like the plant
zombie, as it at least has flying… but assuming we’re keeping Ishai (and that’s
no guarantee) we don’t really need or want to generic flyers that just get
bigger and don’t really do anything else. We want more out of our synergies
than simply large attackers.
I’m on the fence about Reveillark, Vorel of the Hull Clade
and Ghave. Reveillark is off-theme but it’s actually really good in this deck
as it can get back almost anything. Remember, Ghave may be a 5/5 in play, but
in the graveyard he’s a 0/0. Speaking of Ghave the only reasons I’m iffy on him
is that I’m just not sure how good he is outside of being a commander, as I’ve
never really seen him in the 99 of a deck before; also, as I mentioned, we aren’t
a token deck either. Still he’s probably good enough I should keep him around.
Finally, Vorel feels really win-more to me. I feel like he’s only ever going to
be really good when we’re already way ahead. That said, I did use him to double
up Crystalline Crawler counters a few times and that always led to big, flashy
plays. So he probably deserves a chance to prove himself a bit more.
I can also see an argument for cutting the Outlast guys –
Abzan Falconer and Tuskguard Captain. I’ve been happy with them so far, but
they are certainly not the highest-performing creatures left in the list. I’d
keep them for now, but after a round or two of upgrades they should be near the
bottom of the list in terms of power.
Now for the spells. And remember, we’ve already made cuts
from the newly-printed subset of cards, so I’m just looking at the reprint
portion here.
Disdainful Stroke
Brave the Sands
Spitting Image
Treasure Cruise
Merciless Eviction
Cauldron of Souls
Duneblast
Starting off, I’m throwing out almost anything that is off
theme. I mean, it’s fine to keep Mortify and Putrefy because A) we need some
interaction, and B) they’re really strong cards. It’s unfeasible to say we aren’t
going to have any generic utility in this deck. It’s just that if we’re going
to have it, we want the best options. Cards like Disdainful Stroke and
Merciless Eviction do not, in my opinion, represent the best options available
to us. Spitting Image gets cut because, as I keep saying, we are not a token
deck. Brave the Sand is very subpar; I can’t think of any EDH deck I’d run that
in. Treasure Cruise is a perplexing inclusion, as we aren’t set up to Delve
reliably. Cauldron of Souls is also kinda iffy; I get why it’s in there, but I
don’t think it’ll ever really work out that way. If you’re wondering, the idea
is, in theory, that it makes our creatures unkillable. You give them all
persist, they come back with -1/-1 counters, but all the +1/+1 counter stuff
will negate those counters so we can keep persisting our guys ad infinitum.
Yeah, right! Way too cute, even for me. Duneblast is also kinda painful. Sure
we get to keep Atraxa or whatever our best creature is, but still. This deck
just can’t afford to spend a billion mana killing our own team. We can do better.
Other cards that we might cut, but just as easily might keep
include: Solidarity of Heroes (was on the chopping block immediately, but was
surprisingly good in actual play, earning itself a reprieve), Languish (again,
has played better than expected, but still don’t love it), Mirrorweave (as I mentioned
above, it depends on how many 0/0’s we wind up with to make the sweeper play
feasible), Commander’s Sphere (a fine mana rock, sure, but is it the best
option?), and Darksteel Ingot (ditto).
And, frankly, you could easily replace Mortify/Putrefy with
any number of equally-generic removal. Swords/Path, Krosan Grip, Return to
Dust, etc., the list goes on. But swapping one generic utility spell for another
generic utility spell is boring, so I’ll just say “season to taste” here. If
you have extra Path to Exiles, I’d certainly try to squeeze it in somewhere.
Whatever.
So now that we’ve identified what we don’t want in the deck,
let’s talk about what we do want in the deck. Here’s a quick wish-list:
Noble Hierarch
Mikeaus, the Lunarch
Cold-Eyed Selkie
Armorcraft Judge
Ezuri, Claw of Progress
Spike Weaver
Etched Oracle
Altered Ego
Cultivator of Blades
Sunscorch Regent
Archangel of Thune
Verdurous Gearhulk
Primeval Protector
Retribution of the Ancients
Pentad Prism
Evolutionary Escalation
Toxic Deluge
Sultai Charm
Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
Doubling Season
Inexorable Tide
Tempt with Glory
Honestly, the card pool for +1/+1 counter shenanigans is so
deep that I’m sure you call could come up with a list of cards of similar
length but sharing only a few cards in common. I mean, maybe Abzan Ascendency
is better than Tempt with Glory, and maybe we should be running Abzan Charm,
not Sultai Charm. I’m just basing this off playing a handful of games and
noting what I saw as inherent weaknesses. Notably, I had trouble drawing cards,
and trouble getting counters on lots of permanents. I kept passing the turn
with Atraxa in play and nothing to proliferate, and I kept running out of gas.
Both are pretty notable faults with a deck like this.
Now, sadly, we have more cards to add than what we’ve cut so
far, so it looks like we’ll have to make further cuts to get everything we
want, or maybe give up a few of the cards on our wish list. We have 18 cuts
solidified and 22 potential additions. So we need 4 more cuts to make this
work. Since we’re adding in a couple of mana producers in the form of Noble
Hierarch and Pentad Prism, I’m fine going ahead and cutting Darksteel Ingot and
Commander’s Sphere. I would suggest Bloom Tender in lieu of Noble Hierarch if
you don’t have the one-drop at hand. And you could make the case for cutting Fellwar
Stone for the Prism, keeping one of the three-drop rocks. This is pretty
subjective, so I’ll just say cut your two least-favorite mana rocks for Noble
and Prism and be done with it.
I’m also happy replacing either Mortify or Putrefy with
Sultai Charm (or Abzan Charm). Actually, you know what? Let’s just scrap both
two-color removal spells and throw in both three-color Charms. Done! Still
leaves us with one more cuts, though. Of the cards I was on the fence about, or
could take or leave, I think Manifold Insights is the card I’m happiest to cut,
as I could easily slot it into another deck and we’ve beefed up our draw
package enough to not need it.
Now that that’s done, we need to talk about the land
situation.
The deck starts with a surprisingly solid mana base, but
obviously some improvements can be made. I don’t think we need 39 lands,
especially with the more robust draw suite we’ve added. I think we can safely
cut 1 down to 38, so that opens up one more slot for a business spell. We’ll
put that on hold for later, though. Looking through the lands, the one that
jumps out to me as something we can cut is Temple of the False God. Look, I’m a
big fan of TotFG and I probably run it far more than I should in decks that it
shouldn’t be in. I’m aware of all the risks inherent to the card, but usually I
feel the rewards far outweigh the risks. Not this time, though. Having Temple
in my opening hand is almost always an automatic mulligan. Having a four-color
deck with a commander that costs nothing but colored mana… it’s just too risky.
So, out with Temple.
I’ve also had multiple games where I drew too many Forests.
Plus I’m the type of guy who just likes to even things out, so I’d go -1
Forest, +1 Island. We are, I believe, upping the number of blue mana symbols in
the deck after all.
Next, I want to cut one more Forest in favor of a Vivid
Grove. I don’t want to run all the Vivids – too many tapped lands will slow us
down to a crawl – but Green is our most important color, so if we’re going to
run one, this would be it.
Finally, we’ll just cut one of each basic, plus Terramorphic
Expanse to make room for the following: Saltcrusted Steppe, Mana Confluence,
Llanowar Wastes, Reflecting Pool, and Hinterland Harbor. I’m not going all-out
with the mana bases on these decks, as I simply don’t have the duals to do so.
Remember, I have 24 other EDH decks sleeved up. But ultimately I feel like the
starting lists have pretty good mana already. They’re budget mana bases, but
they get the job done. Obviously if you have the better duals (Shocks, Fetches,
ABUR duals, etc) you’ll use those. But I feel that these lists really only need
minor improvements to be acceptable, and going all-out won’t make that big of a
difference overall.
So, to my specific choices… I wanted Saltcrusted Steppe as
the mirror to the Dreadship Reef already in the deck. Might as well cover all
four of our colors with storage lands, right? Llanowar Wastes and Hinterland
Harbor were chosen just because they were G/x duals that don’t come into play
tapped (not always, at least). Mana Confluence (or City of Brass, if you prefer) is just another Command Tower, virtually. With Atraxa’s lifelink, we’ll rarely notice the life loss from Confluence.And of course, Gavony Township is the ultimate +1/+1 counter land. Oran Reif and Novijen are also worth looking at, but neither one comes close to Township; they're each far too restrictive for my tastes.
Putting it all together, we get this:
Creatures
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice
Noble Hierarch
Mikeaus, the Lunarch
Thrummingbird
Scavenging Ooze
Abzan Falconer Orzhov Advokist
Tuskguard Captain
Champion of Lambholt
Cold-Eyed Selkie
Reyhan, Last of the Abzan
Vorel of the Hull Clade
Crystalline Crawler
Etched Oracle
Forgotten Ancient
Armorcraft Judge
Spike Weaver
Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker
Corpsejack Menace
Fathom Mage
Ezuri, Claw of Progress
Master Biomancer
Altered Ego
Elite Scaleguard
Reveillark
Cultivator of Blades
Sunscorch Regent
Archangel of Thune
Verdurous Gearhulk
Deepglow Skate
Kalonian Hydra
Juniper Order Ranger
Ghave, Guru of Spores
Primeval Protector
Spells
Hardened Scales
Retribution of the Ancients
Solidarity of Heroes
Evolutionary Escalation
Cyclonic Rift
Inspiring Call
Toxic Deluge
Sultai Charm
Abzan Charm
Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
Bred for the Hunt
Languish
Citadel Siege
Tezzeret's Gambit
Ancient Excavation
Mirrorweave
Sylvan Reclamation
Cathars' Crusade
Inexorable Tide
Doubling Season
Tempt with Glory
Sol Ring
Fellwar Stone
Pentad Prism
Golgari Signet
Orzhov Signet
Simic Signet
Astral Cornucopia
Lands
Arcane Sanctum
Ash Barrens
Azorius Chancery
Command Tower
Darkwater Catacombs
Dreadship Reef
Evolving Wilds
Exotic Orchard
Gavony Township
Gavony Township
Golgari Rot Farm
Hinterland Harbor
Llanowar Wastes
Mana Confluence
Murmuring Bosk
Opal Palace
Opulent Palace
Saltcrusted Steppe
Sandsteppe Citadel
Seaside Citadel
Sungrass Prairie
Underground River
Vivid Grove
Plains x4
Island x4
Swamp x4
Forest x4
Now, we’ve got the matter of that one land slot we freed up
for a spell. What do we want to add in to plug that hole? Well, my first inclination
when cutting a land is to add either ramp or draw, but I feel like we’re
covered in both categories. Looking at the stuff we cut and the stuff we added,
I feel like we have pretty solid utility/removal as well, though we could always
use more. I can certainly see adding a Beast Within or some other random spot
removal as a good way to go. But, I am also reminded that we just cut quite a
few sweepers and only added back in the Toxic Deluge. I’m still very loathe to
blow up our own side of the board, but luckily we’re playing Blue, so we don’t
have to worry about that. Yep, the final addition goes to none other than
Cyclonic Rift. I can almost hear you all rolling your eyes, but hear me out.
One thing I’ve learned from playing this deck is that it
does NOT like to start over from scratch with its board state. It takes time to
build up a critical mass of counters, and even if you can just dump your hand
post-Wrath, you’re still a long way from where you were. You lose all those
turns of proliferation. Therefore, it is very, VERY valuable to have “sweepers”
that don’t impact us. Toxic Deluge will occasionally have collateral damage,
but most of the time it should leave all our important stuff intact. Rift is
even better at this, as it will literally never impact our side of the battlefield,
at least not directly.
So, add Cyclonic Rift to the above list, and there you go,
our full 100 is done. At this time, I feel I should remind my dear readers of
my current approach to deckbuilding. I used to be a hardcore Good Stuff aficionado,
but lately I’ve been far more interested in exploring themes. Mechanical
themes, not flavor ones, but still… Point is, I tend to forsake boring stuff
like spot removal in favor of just doing what the deck wants to do as hard as I
can. However, few decks can reliably operate effectively without good
interaction. As good as our plan may be, we’ll always have a risk of being
trumped by an opponent with an even bigger, better plan. We need removal, we
need card draw, we need ramp and sweepers. All of these things are very
necessary but they get in the way of fun stuff.
My current philosophy is to build in as much of the
mechanical theme as possible – in this case +1/+1 counters – and then slowly increase
the good stuff and utility until the deck works. I feel like this list is
awesome at doing stuff with +1/+1 counters, but probably a bit lacking in the “stop
my opponents from winning” department. It’ll take some playtesting to know
where the right balance is, exactly, but I’d rather err on the side of theme to
start with. I’m sure I will eventually add in some more boring stuff to make
the deck win better, but for now I am satisfied at just doing the +1/+1 counter
theme as well as possible, and worrying about the rest later.
So, there you have it, folks. That's my take on Breed Lethality. There is a LOT of room for you to do your own thing with it. For instance, I've seen some lists taking advantage of the Modular ability to do silly thinks with Arcbound creatures. Other keywords to look out for include: Outlast, Bolster, Support, Graft, Evolve and Scavenge, to name a few. There's also Amplify, Devour and Monstrosity as well.
I should note, as well, that I do not build "budget" decks. I use the cards available to me. I am lucky enough to have some expensive cards at my disposal, might as well use 'em, right? That said, it should almost always be possible to make budget substitutions if you want or need to. For instance, if you don't have Noble Hierarch's lying around, you could always use Bloom Tender. If even Bloom Tender is too rich for your blood, try Gyre Sage or Birds of Paradise. If you want a budget alternative to Archangel of Thune, that's a wee bit tougher as there's nothing that quite matches what she does... but you could make do with pretty much any flyer that cares about +1/+1 counters. Maybe just put Vulturous Zombie back in, in her place. Heck, I would not mock anyone for running High Sentinels of Arashin. Point is, almost anything you run is going to lose that sweet synergy with Sunscorch Regent, but as long as it's on theme, it doesn't really matter.
I don't know what to tell ya if you don't have a Doubling Season, though. I guess it technically isn't necessary, but there's nothing that can really stand in for it (screw Primal Vigor, that card is GARBAGE).
Of course there are always cards I try to fit in and can't find room for. In this case, the list is too long to mention every card I considered, but some of the ones I gave more serious thought to include: Mer-Ek Nightblade, Primeval Bounty, Verdant Confluence, either Anafenza, Dromoka the Eternal, Mindless Automaton, Contagion Engine, Chasm Skulker, Fertilid and Hangarback Walker.
Another thing I considered was throwing in Odric so the whole team can capitalize on Atraxa's keyword salad, but ultimately discarded that idea as too silly... but who knows, maybe you can make it work?
Finally, one other Planeswalker I considered was Ajani, Mentor of Heroes. He distributes +1/+1 counters, sort of draws cards, and has one of the least-scary ultimates ever, so doesn't always draw tons of hate.
Well, folks, that's all I have. Hope you enjoyed this look at Atraxa, and the Breed Lethality deck. Let me know in the comments what cards you have added to your build.
Enjoy!
So, there you have it, folks. That's my take on Breed Lethality. There is a LOT of room for you to do your own thing with it. For instance, I've seen some lists taking advantage of the Modular ability to do silly thinks with Arcbound creatures. Other keywords to look out for include: Outlast, Bolster, Support, Graft, Evolve and Scavenge, to name a few. There's also Amplify, Devour and Monstrosity as well.
I should note, as well, that I do not build "budget" decks. I use the cards available to me. I am lucky enough to have some expensive cards at my disposal, might as well use 'em, right? That said, it should almost always be possible to make budget substitutions if you want or need to. For instance, if you don't have Noble Hierarch's lying around, you could always use Bloom Tender. If even Bloom Tender is too rich for your blood, try Gyre Sage or Birds of Paradise. If you want a budget alternative to Archangel of Thune, that's a wee bit tougher as there's nothing that quite matches what she does... but you could make do with pretty much any flyer that cares about +1/+1 counters. Maybe just put Vulturous Zombie back in, in her place. Heck, I would not mock anyone for running High Sentinels of Arashin. Point is, almost anything you run is going to lose that sweet synergy with Sunscorch Regent, but as long as it's on theme, it doesn't really matter.
I don't know what to tell ya if you don't have a Doubling Season, though. I guess it technically isn't necessary, but there's nothing that can really stand in for it (screw Primal Vigor, that card is GARBAGE).
Of course there are always cards I try to fit in and can't find room for. In this case, the list is too long to mention every card I considered, but some of the ones I gave more serious thought to include: Mer-Ek Nightblade, Primeval Bounty, Verdant Confluence, either Anafenza, Dromoka the Eternal, Mindless Automaton, Contagion Engine, Chasm Skulker, Fertilid and Hangarback Walker.
Another thing I considered was throwing in Odric so the whole team can capitalize on Atraxa's keyword salad, but ultimately discarded that idea as too silly... but who knows, maybe you can make it work?
Finally, one other Planeswalker I considered was Ajani, Mentor of Heroes. He distributes +1/+1 counters, sort of draws cards, and has one of the least-scary ultimates ever, so doesn't always draw tons of hate.
Well, folks, that's all I have. Hope you enjoyed this look at Atraxa, and the Breed Lethality deck. Let me know in the comments what cards you have added to your build.
Enjoy!
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