Understanding the Food Chain Combo
What is Food Chain?
At the heart of the Atraxa cEDH strategy lies the infamous Food Chain combo. To truly appreciate the power of this deck, one must understand how Food Chain works. In its simplest form, Food Chain is a sorcery-speed enchantment that alters how creatures are sacrificed. When you sacrifice a creature, instead of going to the graveyard, it is exiled, and you get to add mana of any color equal to its mana value to your mana pool. This simple alteration opens the door to incredibly powerful plays. The core of the combo relies on exploiting creatures that provide recurring mana and can be sacrificed repeatedly to cast other creatures from your hand.
How It Works
Imagine a scenario where you can continuously exile and recast creatures, generating mana each time. If you’re sacrificing a creature for more mana than it costs to cast, the possibilities are endless. That’s the essence of the Food Chain strategy. By using creatures with specific abilities and a strong commander like Atraxa, you can potentially achieve infinite mana very quickly.
The Power of Infinite Mana
The magic of this strategy lies in the continuous chain of actions, creating an exponential growth of resources that can overwhelm opponents. With infinite mana, you can usually win the game on the spot.
Key Components
Several key components comprise the Food Chain combo. The first, of course, is Food Chain itself. It acts as the engine, fueling the madness. Another critical element consists of creatures with mana generation. A primary example is a creature that can be cast multiple times from your graveyard, thus generating mana infinitely. Finally, a win condition is required, allowing you to put that limitless mana to good use and close out the game.
Significance in CEDH
The concept of “infinite mana” is a cornerstone of cEDH, and it is the goal in many decks. With infinite mana, you can cast your entire deck, activate abilities endlessly, and essentially control the game. This is why Food Chain, and the ability to reach infinite mana so easily, is such a potent strategy.
Atraxa’s Role in the Food Chain Strategy
Atraxa as Commander
Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice, is a formidable commander in her own right, but she truly shines when paired with the Food Chain strategy. Atraxa embodies a four-color identity (White, Blue, Black, and Green), giving access to the strongest cards in Magic: The Gathering. This rich pool of cards allows for a wider range of support options, and ensures the deck has powerful answers to any situation. Her color identity immediately offers incredible advantages over mono or two-color commanders.
Her Advantage
Atraxa’s true power in this strategy comes from her ability: Proliferate. Proliferate allows you to add a counter on any permanent or player that already has one. This synergy is absolutely crucial to the Food Chain strategy, since it gives the deck incredible versatility.
Proliferate Synergy
Atraxa’s ability to proliferate is valuable on many fronts, from accelerating mana production, to adding counters to planeswalkers for additional value. Ultimately, Atraxa is the perfect complement to the Food Chain strategy.
Card Choices and Synergies Within the Atraxa Food Chain Deck
Essential Cards
Building a competitive Atraxa Food Chain deck involves choosing a balance between consistency, speed, and resilience. The following are essential cards, but the choices can vary with meta shifts:
First, mana acceleration is crucial to getting the combo online quickly. Mana dorks like Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarch, and Fyndhorn Elves can get you off to a fast start. These creatures provide mana early on, allowing you to ramp into a faster Food Chain. Mana rocks like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and Arcane Signet offer explosive mana production. These are staples in cEDH, allowing for accelerated plays and powerful turns.
Second, tutors are indispensable in any cEDH deck, and that’s no different here. Tutors allow you to find the specific pieces of the Food Chain combo, or any other cards you need for protection. Demonic Tutor, Imperial Seal, and Vampiric Tutor help you dig for the combo pieces or key cards. Mystical Tutor, Worldly Tutor, and Enlightened Tutor are used to find other pieces, like counterspells or specific creatures.
Counterspells are critical to protect your combo from disruption. Force of Will, Force of Negation, and Counterspell are your go-to options. These cards ensure your combo goes off uninterrupted, protecting your key plays from removal or opposing counterspells.
Removal and board wipes are important to control the board and make sure you can survive to get the combo going. Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile take care of problematic creatures, while Cyclonic Rift and Toxic Deluge can clear the board and reset the situation.
Creature Selection
Within the Atraxa Food Chain deck, specific creatures are the engine of the combo. The following are generally used:
Squee, the Immortal is a perfect fit because it can be sacrificed to Food Chain and then cast from exile again and again.
Eternal Scourge offers a similar function, and gives you another option to get the Food Chain working.
Proliferate Package Options
Another aspect of Atraxa decks are the various ways to proliferate, which makes the deck even more flexible and powerful.
Contagion Clasp/Engine provides a way to proliferate. These artifacts proliferate at instant speed, allowing you to generate more value from other permanents.
Atraxa herself is also a proliferate engine. This ability can stack counters on your creatures to ramp up mana production.
Other Supporting Cards
Beyond the combo pieces, other supporting cards are essential to provide card draw, protection, and interaction.
Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora are staples in cEDH, providing card advantage at a low cost. These enchantments help you refuel your hand while your opponents are spending resources to stop you.
Dockside Extortionist can generate tons of mana, helping you to find additional resources.
Hatebears/stax pieces are very important to the deck. Hullbreaker Horror and Drannith Magistrate slow down the opponents and allow you to take control.
The Combo Line and Execution
Step-by-Step Breakdown
Knowing the cards is only half the battle; knowing how to execute the combo is the rest.
The combo is a multi-step process, which when successful, leads to victory.
Start by accelerating your mana. You will want to play mana dorks, artifacts, or any other means of accelerating mana as fast as possible.
The second step involves casting Food Chain. With sufficient mana, cast this crucial enchantment. Once Food Chain resolves, the fun begins.
Next, sacrifice a creature to Food Chain. This is where your mana generation begins. If you use the same creature, such as Squee, the Immortal, you can put the creature back in your hand and recast it, repeating the process, generating more mana each time.
As you continuously repeat the process, you are generating infinite mana, a critical point.
After generating infinite mana, you want to find a way to win. There are many options, the most common being to find the win condition.
Winning the Game
One common win condition is to use a creature to deal damage. With enough mana, you can cast several creatures.
Another common win condition is the ability to cast a planeswalker.
Example Turn Order
Here’s an example turn order. Turn one, cast a mana dork, followed by a mana rock on turn two. On turn three, cast Food Chain. On turn four, you can cast Squee, the Immortal.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Atraxa Food Chain in CEDH
Strengths
Understanding the advantages and disadvantages of the deck is crucial for strategic planning and decision-making.
The first strength is its speed and consistency. This combination allows the deck to generate a large advantage quickly and reliably. With the correct hand and the right draw, this deck can quickly bring the combo online, putting immense pressure on opponents.
The second strength is resilience. Being able to play from the graveyard is a major advantage. Even if the Food Chain is destroyed, the deck can typically rebuild its combo.
The third strength is color versatility. Having access to all four colors allows the deck to be versatile.
The last strength is the synergy with Proliferate. As Atraxa proliferates, you can add counters to key permanents.
Weaknesses
While the Atraxa Food Chain deck is very strong, there are weaknesses.
The first weakness is a vulnerability to graveyard hate. If opponents can keep creatures out of the graveyard, then the combo is rendered useless.
The second weakness is its reliance on certain cards. If the correct combo pieces aren’t drawn, or if the combo pieces are destroyed, the strategy is rendered ineffective.
The third weakness is the complex nature of the deck. There is a large learning curve, and the player needs to understand the interaction of each card to optimize the deck.
The fourth weakness is the stax effects. These effects can be difficult to play, especially when facing other players that may benefit from them.
Metagame Considerations
The cEDH metagame is in constant flux, and deckbuilding needs to adapt to stay competitive. In the current cEDH meta, Atraxa Food Chain faces a variety of challenges, including other combo decks and control strategies.
The best way to deal with the changing meta is to make changes to the build. More removal may be required, or more counterspells, or other changes. This is constantly evolving, and the decks need to change as well.
Deckbuilding Tips and Guidelines
Card Selection and Mana Curve
Building a successful Atraxa Food Chain deck is a blend of art and science.
The first thing is to make sure to have a good mana base. Since the colors required are numerous, a solid mana base is the foundation of a good deck.
Balance the mana curve. The deck requires many cards, so it is important to find a balance between the spells and creatures to maximize efficiency.
Tutors and Removal
Ensure the balance between tutors and removal. A healthy balance between combo pieces, tutors, and removal allows for a flexible strategy.
Protection
Use counterspells and protective spells. These will help ensure that the combo is not interrupted by opposing strategies.
Conclusion
Atraxa Food Chain is a powerful strategy in the cEDH format. The deck showcases an impressive level of power and provides an incredibly fun and exciting experience.
By understanding the core of the combo, the card choices, and the strategic considerations, you can pilot this deck to impressive success. The combination of speed, resilience, and color versatility makes Atraxa a formidable commander. While the learning curve can be steep, mastering this deck is incredibly rewarding.
The Atraxa Food Chain deck is an investment of time and resources, but it is well worth the effort.
If you are looking to enter the cEDH format, or looking to add a new commander to your collection, then look no further than Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice, and the Food Chain combo.
Appendix/Resources
For those interested in further exploration, here are some valuable resources:
Find decklists and discussions on online platforms like Moxfield and EDHREC.
Deckbuilding tools can assist in creating and testing new lists.
Understand the format’s terminology with a glossary of terms, like “stax” and “meta.”
