Last updated on May 28, 2025
The Ur-Dragon | Illustration by Jaime Jones
It's official: The Ur-Dragon has been crowned the most popular legend in Commander. After years upon the throne with countless superfriends and infect wins under its belt, Atraxa, Praetors' Voice has been usurped.
Still Second Place
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice | Illustration by Justin Hernandez & Alexis Hernandez
The news comes from EDHREC.com, a Commander deck aggregator that compiles user-submitted decks and provides valuable statistics on the cards people are playing, the commanders they're building, and the themes that their decks fall into.
Among their key metrics and statistical offerings is a list of the “Top Commanders,” sorted by popularity over the last two years. Atraxa, Praetors' Voice has been on top of that list for over half a decade. Released in Commander 2016, Atraxa rose to the height of popularity almost immediately, quickly de-seating the ever-sitting Oloro, Ageless Ascetic at the time (Oloro's still top 100, at 54 as of today).
It's easy to see why Atraxa captured the imaginations of casual Commander players, too. It's extremely open-ended, with proliferate being one of the biggest build-around mechanics in all of Magic. You can specialize into anything from charge counters and shield counters to -1/-1 counters and those filibuster counters you definitely bought online for your one copy of Azor's Elocutors. Atraxa also oozes with aura as one of the original 4-color commanders, complete with a smattering of excellent combat keywords. Long live the queen and all that, but nearly eight years of dominance seems like a great legacy to leave behind.
And it's not exactly gone from the format; Atraxa's now merely the second most popular commander, still ahead of #3 contender Edgar Markov by almost 4,000 listed decks.
Dragons Reign Supreme
The Ur-Dragon | Illustration by Justine Jones
It's not exactly a mystery why The Ur-Dragon has been creeping up on first place. Tarkir: Dragonstorm was a massive success, and all the dragon support that flowed into the format gave players their yearly reminder that dragons are in fact really cool, powerful, and incredibly over-supported.
There are currently 36,067 Ur-Dragon decks listed on EDHREC, followed up by Atraxa's 35,992. Not that this isn't reflected on the “Top Commanders” page, which hasn't been refreshed as of Wednesday morning. It was a close race, but Tarkir gave the 5-color legend exactly what it needed to take the #1 spot. You'll also note that typal commanders tend to be extremely popular already; of the top 10 commanders in the format, seven of them care about specific creature types. Kaalia of the Vast and Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm are also in the top 10 as dragon or dragon-adjacent commanders. People love their firebreathing death lizards.
But there are other reasons Atraxa might not be keeping up. For one, it is a nearly decade-old commander at this point, and there's no shortage of new commanders to build around. That includes the more recent, arguably better version from Phyrexia: All Will Be One: Atraxa, Grand Unifier. This value slop commander sits at #51 in the top 100, with about a third of the total decks as the original. It's not swapping places any time soon, but it's direct competition for this exact quad color combination.
There's also the novelty factor. Atraxa 1.0 is a known factor. People have been passing off their Atraxa poison decks as a 7-out-of-10 for years, and no one's buying it anymore. It's open-ended, but it's not exactly unique anymore.
And of course, there's the fact that the character of Atraxa was absolutely punked by a steel beam in March of the Machine (Atraxa's Fall). Since the angel horror‘s presumably not made of jet fuel, the character went out in a whimper (on a common, no less), which definitely hurt her image in the eyes of the public for years to come.
A Coup on the Horizon?
Sauron, the Dark Lord | Illustration by Kieran Yanner
It's very possible that Atraxa claws its way back to the top in the near-future. Tarkir: Dragonstorm hype has died down in the wake of Final Fantasy, so the influx of dragon decks should taper off soon enough. All it takes is one new set featuring a new or returning counter type to get the Atraxa hivemind back on board. In fact, there's already speculation that Edge of Eternities will feature the return of proliferate, at least as the theme of one of its Commander precons. If the commanders underdeliver but the new Commander cards are worth playing, that could be enough to help Atraxa take flight once more.
Or maybe a Universes Beyond commander emerges as a new contender out of nowhere. Sauron, the Dark Lord is comfortably sitting at #5 on the list after two years in the format, and the Final Fantasy newcomers are no joke. Y'shtola, Night's Blessed has that same open-ended design that makes Atraxa appealing, and Vivi Ornitier has turned many a cEDH player's head. Both have cracked the top 400 commanders before even being released, so who knows where they'll land in a year's time?
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