Daxos the Returned.

Daxos has interesting components. The interplay between his experience counters and his active ability is not immediately obvious. He gives you creature token threats, but is asking you to cast enchantments. The cost of the token doesn't change, so you have to cast three or more enchantments for the tokens to become cost effective. Even then, its still a three mana ability, putting it out of range of a use whenever mentality. Its going to take serious commitments to use that ability multiple times in a turn. Thinking about enchantments and creatures, the overlap is in Anthem effects. Enchantments that make your creatures better have been part of the game since Alpha with Crusade. Here, they not only make all of your creatures larger while in play, they also make all of Daxos' tokens larger permanently on cast. To support this direction, B/W tokens is an archetype that pops up now and again, and it similarly crosses heavy token production with strong Anthem effects. Tokens increase the value of the anthems by increasing the number of 'creatures' in the deck without taking up additional slots. The also give you multiple bodies per card, increasing the potency of the Anthems. Its worth noting that in this instance, I'm sticking to permanents instead of playing the traditional Lingering Souls/Raise the Alarm token producers. B/W is much better at permanents, a la Emeria Shepherd, than it is at instants and sorceries. Those one shot token producers are also a bit too low impact in a format like Commander.

The other aspect of the tokens that Daxos produces is that they are enchantments themselves, providing a huge number of triggers for Constellation cards like Doomwake Giant. Unfortunately, Constellation payoffs that are important for EDH largely landed in green with Eidolon of Blossoms and Strength from the Fallen. However, the ones that are relevant are still stronger here than anywhere else. Curiously the card Skybind both exists and received little fanfare. Its a strong card that combines well with the deck's themes, and helps contribute to a sub-theme of creatures that like to be journeyed. The creatures in question tend to make tokens, which ties into the Anthem theme of the deck.

Decklist: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/02-11-15-nRh-daxos/
Bullshit Scale: 3

These enchantments are double anthems for Daxos' tokens as long as Daxos is on the battlefield when you cast them. I included True Conviction, even though it isn't technically an Anthem. It gives the creatures enough of a punch to win the game and dominate combat. Marshal's Anthem is fine to cast without kicker, but its main objective is to be kicked 2-4 times. As you'll see later, we can go big with our mana. That's mostly used for Daxos' activated ability, but it comes with some side benefits too, such as including Marshal's Anthem. While Eldrazi Monument isn't an enchantment, +1/+1, flying, and indestructible is an incredibly strong effect. Its worth the inclusion, though you do need to continually be producing bodies for it to be functional. It helps protect against the large number of board wipes you'll see at some EDH tables. The evasion is also important. Not a lot of the tokens naturally fly, and you can still be stymied on the group by an opposing Rhys or Ghave player.

I stuck mostly to white token producers because of Crusade and Honor of the Pure. Bitterblossom isn't worth the trouble since it produces black tokens by the above Anthems. Several of the token producers make soldiers, so I included Captain of the Watch as another card to pump my army. I don't have enough unity to go for something like Shared Triumph, but since Captain makes it's own army, its worth the inclusion. One of the reasons the deck can get away with so few protection effects is that it runs many such 'Army in a Can' variants. Making tokens so quickly is a way to get back on the board in the face of a heavy control deck.

These cards trigger off casting enchantments, or in the case of the Constellation cards, enchantments coming into play. This lines up with our commander's experience condition and thus work along a primary axis of the deck's design. Skybind is great, it gives us repeatable uses of enter the battlefield effects and can reset some of our mana when making tokens with Daxos. If we have permanents that tap for multiple mana, its possible to reset them and make even more tokens the next turn.

Since the deck invests heavily in anthems, it makes sense to eschew instants and sorceries in favor of enter the battlefield effects. These creatures add value to the deck while still operating on the play creatures and attack plan. They give a good range of effects, and can combine with Skybind to make an excellent value train. Many of them help with recovering from removal. As the deck wants to over commit to the board, having ways to pull stuff back from the graveyard will help go long against other decks with substantial removal.

As much as I enjoy niche appeal in cards, sometimes you need to have some good old fashioned wheel greasers. These cards are just tutors, card draw, protection, etc. As an aside, I don't mind tutors in non-combo shells nearly as much. If you aren't using tutors to just win the game, they lose a lot of their bite. I think Dark Prophecy and Necropotence are a little ambitious on the mana, but not too much. Their upside is definitely worth the risk of not casting them immediately. The deck is definitively light on removal. It leans on making a scary board and interlocking effects from enchantments to push the game towards completion and overcome the positions of it's opponents. Below, I describe a different sort of Daxos deck that takes this idea to the extreme. For this deck, I think this section is the most customize-able. Its also an excellent place to put various hate cards like Stony Silence or Painful Quandary if there's some combos or strategies that are prevalent in your play group that you consider to be a problem.

I alluded above to the importance of mana in the deck. Daxos' ability is the late game power of the deck. Being able to make 3 mana 5/5s or better is quite strong. However, that means the deck needs to get Daxos out before casting too many enchantments. A solid ramp amount of ramp ensures keeping Daxos on the table even if we're going to have to recast him 3-4 times. That's a tall order, but not out of reach. It also means that we have a plan for what we're doing with all this extra mana once he's on the table. The deck won't simply waste it. This is similar in approach to Ghave, where any additional mana can be used to fuel an important activated ability. This selection of artifact mana makes a good dent, but they can still destroyed. The real mana power comes from the lands which tend to evade removal even better than enchantments.

These lands give the deck phenomenal late game mana for Daxos. Serra Sanctum in particular is excellent since the tokens themselves are enchantments, constantly building your mana pool by making creatures. Urborg + Coffers is a tried and true approach to generating copious amounts of mana. Of course, its riskier in a deck that only runs 5 or so swamps naturally, but honestly you only need this to come only late in the game, which gives you time to find it once the rest of the game plan is online.

Daxos was fun to build because it went in such an odd direction. This is a deck that I think doesn't have a better potential leader. I don't know what I would do to power this up beyond including some of the more expensive enchantments to lock my opponents out, Nether Void and Chains of Mephistopheles chief among them. Its worth noting that there is a completely different Daxos variant that I believe to be quite strong, though it is terribly unfun. Daxos Punisher is going to terrorize some shop, with all the strong B/W hate cards and the ability to have Daxos be your sole win condition. This is my first draft of it and it is mean.

I'm going to go through all 10 new legends in WUBRG order, marquee cards first, then secondary generals. Next week its Mizzix. Till then, cheers!