When devign (the period of overlap between design and development) began, lead developer Ben Hayes had an idea
The two cards don't actually have anything to do with each other beyond sharing an artist, which I think makes the joke a bit more ridiculous
It's more likely that after a few years of declining profits, we'd start to see layoffs at Wizards supporting R&D is expensivewhich would mean fewer new Magic cards and products (somewhat ironically creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, since less products would mean less reprints, driving up prices on cards even more and making fake cards even more appealing) until eventually Wizards just shuts its doors and Magic becomes a dead game
The deck is designed around +1/+1 counters, which works with Atraxas static ability to give you a proliferation trigger at the end of your turn
Black Lotus is the most expensive Magic card of all time, and it sells for a whopping $500k+
And 1049 out of a total 2234 Eriette decks (told you she was popular) submitted to EDHREC run the card