Powered Up Atla (EDH / Commander) [Revision 1]

Atla Palani Primer

Let me introduce to you my deck build around the ability of Atla Palani, Nest Tender.
She is a 1RGW Human Shaman with base stats 2/3 with the ability to pay 2 mana and tap to create a 0/1 defender egg token. Her passive ability says that whenever an egg you control is destroyed, you reveal cards from the top of the library until you reveal a creature. This creature is put on the battlefield and takes the place of the egg.
So, this ability seems good but restricts our deck in a way that is kinda unique: you have to avoid small creatures because it’s such a wet fart if you crack an egg just to get for example an Elvish Mystic. Therefor our creature base consists of only 13 creatures. We’ll go into detail which creatures were chosen why.
Another part of this ist hat we can’t use normal green mana dorks. I mean, we could, but we don’t want them. So we have to rely on mana rocks and other ramp spells, which luckily green does offer. One that is rarely seen because it is quite nieche is Primal Growth. This ties in to our plan perfectly. All you have to do is sacrifice an egg, get two basic lands tapped and an additional creature on the board for 3 mana – valuetown!
Another important tool that we need is stuff to get rid of the eggs. An opponent might swing at us when Atla is on the board and might forget that we can always produce an egg when Atla is untapped and weh ave 2 mana open. But I promise they won’t make this mistake twice. That being said sac outlets are just so important.
But let’s start with the fun stuff – big, dumb creatures. There are several great creatures but the MVP is probably the Worldspine Wurm. It is a trample 15/15 wurm that, if it somehow goes into the graveyard, get’s shuffled back into our library. If it dies from the board, you get 3 5/5 wurms with trample too. This thing is basically unkillable and our biggest „normal“ win con. It "dies" to exile but if you have a sac outlet on board you might react to the cast of the exile spell by sacrificing your wurm so that it will die, produce his baby wurms and get’s shuffled back into your library – so the next egg might be him again. The 2nd best creature is a classic green creature: Seedborn Muse. It untaps all permaments during each other player’s untap step. This means you can produce at least 4 eggs per turn cycle instead of just 1. It is pretty self explanitory. The third spotlight will be put on Zacama, Primal Calamity. If you draw him and have to hard-cast him you at least get to untap all your lands. It also has a ton of value and has a gigantic target printed on it’s head(s). This guy cleans the board and eventually will win you the game if untouched. The other creatures also are chosen very careful because you want value from them. Either they have trample, have flying/reach or have a decently good side effect either when entering the battlefield or attacking.
Let’s move over to the sac-outlets. The obvious answer here would be Ashnod’s Altar, but there are also other good options like Culling Dais, Skullclamp, Goblin Bombardment and Thornbite Staff. But I wanna talk about some old cards that rarely are seen: Fanatical Devotion and Martyr’s Cause. Fanatical is a great card, it gives out Regeneration to one of your creatures, most likely Atla. This means that the next time the creature would be destroyed instead it will get tapped and all damage is removed. What better way to react to a board wipe then generating an egg, saccing it instantly (get an cracked egg roll that will sadly die but might add some ETB value) and regenerate your leader. Also this can be used to politics, because it doesn’t have to be your creature. The other tool in Martyr’s Cause will prevent all damage to a single creature or player from one source. This is an even better tool for politics. You can get value by striking deals if, let’s say Player B attacks Player C with his commander for 5 damage. All you have to do is strike a deal with Player C and prevent all damage from that one source, that btw is not a target therefor even if they have Swiftfoot Boots or Lightning Greaves on you can protect them.
We have a bunch of protection spells too because the strategy is quite straight forward – you need to keep Atla Palani on the field no matter what. The sac outlets help but what if you don’t have another option? Well, there are still Boros Charm, Grand Crescendo, Heroic Intervention and Teferi’s Protection.
Warstorm Surge will put in a lot of work for you. All the creatures are big, so this will deal a ton of damage – and if you have trouble and no sac outlet, just shoot the damage on one of your eggs.
Another new addition to my deck is Penance. This is pretty useful if you draw one or more creatures and don’t want to cast them hard – because why should you, egg cracking is way more fun. This manipulates your library. This also can make sure you don’t have to discard a card for maximum handsize if you somehow find a way to draw a ton of cards. What it also does is damage prevention from black or red source. And also this avoids the „target“-clause…
Lastly I would like to explain the cheeky infinite combo that this deck can pull of. You need Worldspine Wurm, Maskwood Nexus, Atla Palani and Goblin Bombardment on the board. If your opponent doesn’t interrupt this combo you just win the game by an infinite loop of sacrificing the wurm to the Goblin Bobardment, deal 1 damage to some face, get 3 new worms and since Maskwood Nexus makes everything every creature type you also get a new Atla trigger. So you get 3 new creatures on board. The wurm gets shuffled back into your deck, so you might crack it again with either one of the three tiny wurms or the other creature you flipped into. And with every sacrifice you get another Atla trigger, getting another creature which can be sacrificed and so on. If you get the 2nd coming of the Worldspine Wurm you basically got the infinite combo. This can be looped until each opponent dies.
The Aether Flash will let every egg die instantly, so you get a mystery cast for 2 mana. But what it also does is hinder your opponents of casting tiny creatures. Maybe there are a few token decks at your LGS, then this is a perfect card. My other creatures are all not affected by this card.
If you have any further questions, feel free to ask. I love to talk about this deck and am really passionate about at least 95% of the deck.