It's too bad this card doesn't have flavor text,
because it clearly has a story to tell. The one
time that returning to a plane would actually
add something meaningful to the story, we just
get a one-shot! Still, that doesn't really take
anything away from Atraxa herself. In addition
to awakening many people's nightmares of New
Phyrexia, she does the "unkillable angel" thing
almost as well as her predecessors Akroma and
Pristine Angel. The fact that she uses
proliferate rather than infect means that she's
not just a good endgame for poison-based decks,
but for any of the common strategies that use
counters of various kinds, from planeswalker-based
control to Thallids.
Proliferate is a very dangerous ability,
especially if it's repeatable, and Atraxa
certainly is dangerous. Being able to tick all
your planeswalkers up is rather nasty, as is
giving out more +1/+1 (or -1/-1) counters…and if
you're the horrible person who tries to poison
everyone to death, this poisons them to death
even faster! Being able to proliferate every
turn, indeed, is a scary prospect, and Atraxa
makes it likely you’ll get this at least once.
She’s also dangerous in combat, killing almost
anything she does battle with and gaining you
crazy amounts of life in the process. She's very
dangerous on offense, and she's even able to
help you on defense. Out of the five four-color
commanders, she's either the best one or
second-best one by a comfortable margin, and
she’ll be a massive threat at every table.
