So I made an Athreos deck! any pointers?

[Mellow, Interplanar Visionary]

I made a deck using Athreos, God of Passage a while back as simply a test to see how I might make use of the commander's ability...

I was going to swap out Cranial Archive for Kozilek, Butcher of Truth but realised I may not know what would work well with this commander, that I might have just been throwing cards that seemed to work in favor of the ability into the same general group...

so I turn to you folks to see how I might be able to improve upon this deck (I can already tell the list might be pretty extensive too)

so here's the Athreos deck for you people (who I know understand this game more than me by leaps and bounds) to look over https://deckstats.net/decks/201325/3015530-here-lies-athreos

[Elan Morin Tedronai]

Aren't you playing with too many Lands? 42 is quite a lot. You don't have mana value more than 4 and even only 1 card costs 5. Why don't you lower them to 35 or 36 at upmost?

[Mellow, Interplanar Visionary]

Aren't you playing with too many Lands? 42 is quite a lot. You don't have mana value more than 4 and even only 1 card costs 5. Why don't you lower them to 35 or 36 at upmost?

Habitual, when making a deck I (for better or for worse) go for a 45 land (including the tower) setup with even color distribution, I really should get around to fine tuning the mana count with my decks...

[WWolfe]

Aren't you playing with too many Lands? 42 is quite a lot. You don't have mana value more than 4 and even only 1 card costs 5. Why don't you lower them to 35 or 36 at upmost?

Habitual, when making a deck I (for better or for worse) go for a 45 land (including the tower) setup with even color distribution, I really should get around to fine tuning the mana count with my decks...

I'm just curious, how much do you have mana problems? I'm sure with that many lands you have no problem hitting your land drops, but how often do you find yourself not having the right colors? Looking at this deck, the mana sources are basically a 50/50 split but your deck is almost 70% black.

[Mellow, Interplanar Visionary]

Aren't you playing with too many Lands? 42 is quite a lot. You don't have mana value more than 4 and even only 1 card costs 5. Why don't you lower them to 35 or 36 at upmost?

Habitual, when making a deck I (for better or for worse) go for a 45 land (including the tower) setup with even color distribution, I really should get around to fine tuning the mana count with my decks...

I'm just curious, how much do you have mana problems? I'm sure with that many lands you have no problem hitting your land drops, but how often do you find yourself not having the right colors? Looking at this deck, the mana sources are basically a 50/50 split but your deck is almost 70% black.

A part of it is that I set the mana in advance (a 50/50 split that I can later adjust with time)

[Fuzzy2Wasy]

Can do some fun things with Shadowborn Apostles

https://deckstats.net/decks/161626/1757255-athreos-god-of-passage-w-shado

[DanyTheWarrior]

I made a deck for a friend some time ago using Athreos as a commander, it has more of a "life tax" subtheme than yours, but you can check it out for inspiration: https://deckstats.net/decks/27018/1730516-athreos-blood-taxes-for-mam-os

(Sorry for the long maybeboard, my brewing process is... exhaustive lol)

But anyways, in my opinion, to make the best use out of Athreos the deck should make your opponents REALLY think if it is worth to let you return whatever creature you control that happens to die. For that purpose, a bunch of small deathtouch-esque creatures do a lot of work, also creatures with strong death triggers. I feel that your deck lacks this feature in particular, but your take on it may work great anyways, cause after all you probably will return your "innocent" creatures more.