Hey! This is my Marchesa, the Black Rose deck. If you have seen my other decks you know that I'm a bit of a Johnny, that is winning with style, in innovative ways.
The goal of the deck is to:
- Abuse the cool interactions of the cards
- Recur creatures with big effects and win by out-value
- Do big plays with Insurrection
Personally, I'm not a fan the usual way Marchesa, the Black Rose is played, with Stealing other peoples stuff, sac them and take control of them permanently. Another common way to build is by using Warstorm Surge or Purphoros, God of the Forge. There are a few things i dont like about this. For starters -it's very slow. They don't do anything the turn you play them and pinging and poking your opponents over and over messes with Dethrone a bit. Not to mention the unnecessary hate that will gain you, which makes the politics aspect of commander harder to pull off, personally I really enjoy the politics of commander, and dethrone as an excuse for attacking someone really can offset the hate that a normal attack would have gotten you from the player being hit if you do it right. So That's the way I wanna go here.
Life total management
One thing that becomes important is to manage your own life total, for dethrone to be active we need atleast one more player have more life than you, or tied for most life with you.
We have a couple ways to make sure we are low enough to always be able to dethrone someone:
Unspeakable Symbol: The card that basically every marchesa deck needs. It does everything we want to do. Putting +1/+1 counters on creatures in instant speed while managing our life total.
Greed: Carddraw is important, and it's always great to have a mana sink so we have something to do with our leftover mana, especially since we can use it in the endstep before out turn to get our life total from highest to whatever we fell like dropping to just in time for our turn. I first had Erebos, God of the Dead in this spot but in this deck the effect: "Your opponents can't gain life." is a bad thing so I went with greed instead.
Treasonous Ogre: By itself, the effect of turning life into mana is very powerful, especially when we want to keep an eye on our life total. I've heard stories of this card just winning the game too. How many times haven't we all been in that "if only i had 2 more mana"-spot especially in a deck like this where the high red CMC card Insurrection is a win condition.
Pain lands: Caldera Lake, Mana Confluence, Sulfurous Springs & Underground River.
Cards on trial period
Some cards are included beacuse of their fun mechanics or big potential but i will have to evaluate them over time and maybe take a few of them out for something better. Here are a few of the cards with an uncertain future:
Reef Worm I imagine this guy can be brutal in the deck, with a sac outlet this immidietly is a 9/9 for 4CMC. If we get a +1/+1 counter on him we essentially got a reproduction factory of very big very scary things. what's more is, if we can recur this a couple of times with counters or with effects like Mikaeus, the Unhallowed we got ourselves an anti-boardwipe creature. Beacuse if they do wipe us we got a bunch of dudes that only get bigger. Hopefully it doesn't just work in theory but in practice too.
Vigean Graftmage: The graft mechanic is allowing a creature with graft to move a +1/+1 counter from itself onto a creature that just came into play. Very powerful in this deck. unfortunately graft is almost only found in green and/or blue so there are slim pickings for us in grixis. I think the effect is worth the inclusion of this card. Especially since the graftmage is a Wizard and that is kind of a sub-theme in the deck. I will keep an eye on him tho and we will see if the inclusion is worth it.
Profaner of the Dead: I think this might be very powerful in this deck where we dont might exploiting and sacrificing creatures. Basically it's a repeatable Cyclonic Rift as long as we have something to exploit. Since it is a wizard in addition to being a creature there are some minor advantages to be gained with our sub theme with wizards. We will see tho, it might not work as well in practise.
razaketh, the foulblooded
: A sac outlet that helps to manage our life total all while tutoring in instant speed? Sure, that sounds great! We will see if the 8 CMC is too much tho.
Vindictive Lich: A new card from commander 2017, a wizard wich seems to be broken once you start bringing him back over and over. we will se if it's worth the spot.
bloodline necromancer
: Recursion is always something I enjoy, and being able to recur Wizards over and over once we get a counter on this guy seems very powerful. Especially since we have a sub-sub theme of vampires in this deck too.
DUSH DUSH DUSH: STATS!
Im a big fan of the podcast the command zone and their philosophy of what every deck needs, here are my list of the essentials:
Mana ramp: 10
Carddraw: 9
Board wipes: 6
Targeted removal: 7
My comments
I look forward to evalutaing this deck over time and fine-tuning it.
A suspicion I have already is that i might have too many sac outlets. there are eight in total:
And that's not counting cards like Disciple of Bolas & Sidisi, Undead Vizier. A few of them are part of infinite combos or win conditions so I keep them all in for now and will evaluate wich will be removed or replaced over time.
I also think the number of single target removal might drop to maybe five over time. For now im just excited to not only be stuck in Dimir and be able to use the artifact destruction in red.
I have been meaning to expand from my normal Dimir-only attitude and i've had my eye on grixis a while now, so im glad i made myself a marchesa build im exited about.
In my other decks Zombie tunnel vision and The Scarab God's infinite zombo combo I try to avoid combat very actively by winning in other ways. Feel free to check them out and let me know what you think in the comments, cheers.
I Stole many, if not all the ideas below from the reddit user "ASpicyStrawberry" and his deck Marchesa the Immortal Rose. Word for word it's his reasoning from reddit iv'e put in the description below this point.
(if you've listned to the command zone podcast you might know I stole some of their best ideas from their marchesa deck tech episode aswell.)
Infinites:
Sage of Fables / Mikaeus, the Unhallowed / Metallic Mimic + Glen Elendra Archmage / Puppeteer Clique (Wizards with Persist) + Any Sac Outlet = Infinite of X where X is the output of the Sac Outlet so Goblin Bombardment = Infinite Damage, Altar of Dementia = Infinite Mill etc. Sage of Fables and the other cards allow Persist'd Wizards to instantly remove the Persist when they come back from the graveyard and allow them to be sacced again.
You can also go Infinite with Metallic Mimic on Beast and just keep recurring River Kelpie to also draw your Deck. This actually works with any Persist Creature in addition to Metallic Mimic.
Heavy hitters that work well with Marchesa:
Flayer of the Hatebound can be looped twice on each player's turn granted you have a Sac Outlet and Marchesa, the Black Rose. Burning someone for 9 dmg a turn is enough to eliminate something every single round. You can add in Hex Parasite to remove the Undying Counter on Flayer of the Hatebound to loop this for as much mana as you have. This is probably the quickest way that I close out games.
Greater Gargadon: He starts off as a Sac Outlet for R, which is what you always need, and eventually turns into a 10/8 that can't die. He's one of the bigger Creature in my Deck and always puts on a clock.
Grimgrin, Corpse-Born is a powerhouse. You get a +1/+1 Counter every time you Untap him and every time you kill an opponent's Creature, which is every time he attacks! That, combined with being a Sac Outlet for others, makes him shoot extremely high in Power while also removing important threats.
Scourge of the Throne is probably the best finisher for a Marchesa Deck. Since Marchesa, the Black Rose gives him Dethrone and he also Dethrones by himself, you get double the +1/+1 triggers. On the first combat, he jumps from a 5/5 to a 7/7. Then he untaps your entire team and swings again at a 9/9 Flying Dragon. I've been able to 1-shot someone at 40-Life specifically because I gave this Scourge some Haste. My 3 Haste enablers are Swiftfoot Boots, Lightning Greaves, and Olivia, Mobilized for War.
Yahenni, Undying Partisan is rather new on our radar, but I've grown to love him. He's an Indestructible Sac Outlet that also grows every time an opponent's creature dies. The Haste is rather irrelevant, but he can become extremely huge in a short time while supplying his Sac Effect to your other Creatures.
My last suggestion would have to be Pyreheart Wolf. A bunch of the Creatures listed here are powerhouses, but they all don't have great evasion (Minus the Scourge). Pyreheart Wolf allows you to have an Immortal Menace-enabler to push through all of your damage. Not only does blocking become extremely hard, but sometimes you need to Dethrone with Marchesa, the Black Rose, but the only player you can attack has a Creature that will block and kill her.
