Marchesa, On the way to the top!

Commander / EDH* UBR (Grixis)

Bloodytrailz

Creature (32)

• 1x Alchemist's Apprentice
• 1x Arcbound Worker
• 1x Baleful Strix
• 1x Bloodtracker
• 1x Carrion Feeder
• 1x Cytoplast Manipulator
• 1x Drana, Liberator of Malakir
• 1x Fleshwrither
• 1x Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1x Goblin Cratermaker
• 1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1x Grim Haruspex
• 1x Hostage Taker
• 1x Impaler Shrike
• 1x Metallic Mimic
• 1x Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
• 1x Nevermaker
• 1x Oona's Blackguard
• 1x Plaguecrafter
• 1x Rakdos Cackler
• 1x River Kelpie
• 1x Sage of Fables
• 1x Smothering Abomination
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Spark Double
• 1x Thalakos Deceiver
• 1x Thief of Sanity
• 1x Vindictive Lich
• 1x Viscera Seer
• 1x Voidmage Prodigy
• 1x Yahenni, Undying Partisan
• 1x Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Land (36)

• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Crumbling Necropolis
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Forge of Heroes
• 1x Graven Cairns
• 1x Guildmages' Forum
• 1x High Market
• 6x Island
• 1x Luxury Suite
• 1x Morphic Pool
• 3x Mountain
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Shivan Reef
• 1x Sulfurous Springs
• 8x Swamp
• 1x Temple of Deceit
• 1x Temple of Malice
• 1x Underground River

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Dictate of Erebos
• 1x Goblin Bombardment
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Phyrexian Reclamation
• 1x Unspeakable Symbol

Sorcery (3)

• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Last One Standing

Commander (1)

Artifact (14)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Chromatic Lantern
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Phyrexian Altar
• 1x Rakdos Signet
• 1x Scroll of Fate
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Creativity
• 1x Talisman of Dominance
• 1x Talisman of Indulgence

Instant (5)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Negate

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Marchesa, the Black Rose , grixis commander extraordinaire. The game plan of this deck is gain counters to repeatably utilize enter the battlefield effects thanks to our commander alongside the sub themes of some wizard tribal and Marchesa's greatest trick. When you gain control of an opponents creature temporarily, attack the player with the highest HP (on the throne) and sacrifice that creature before the trigger for them regaining control, you gain control of that creature, permanently.

Obligatory shout out to Lokotor and his Marchesa, the Black Rose primer found here > Marchesa, The Black Rose - Primer. I drew heavy inspiration from his choices and wisdom but also took the list in a direction I find suitable for myself and my metagame.

Marchesa's Machinations (The tools we need to succeed.)

Marchesa's ability to keep her allies in the fight for the throne rely entirely on them having +1/+1 counters on them... so to that end, the future queen has come stocked with tools to make sure her allies are always ready to return from the graveyard. She's also recruited some allies that aid her in keeping her army in play as well.

+1/+1 Counters And Recursion

Arcbound Worker -- Comes into play with this own +1/+1 counter and can distribute a counter to an artifact creature (we have 3 others) when he dies. This card exists as a free sacrifice for our outlets.

Bloodtracker -- Pay a black mana and 2 life to give bloodtracker a counter that draws a card later.

Carrion Feeder -- Sacrifice other creatures to give carrion feeder his own counters.

Cytoplast Manipulator -- Can donate it's +1/+1 counters as creatures enter the battlefield.

Drana, Liberator of Malakir -- When Drana attacks, on first strike phase, she gives all other attacking creatures +1/+1 counters.

Glen Elendra Archmage -- Persist is a form of self reanimation. If she would die without a -1/-1 counter she comes back right away. With many other supporting cards we can cancel out that -1/-1 counter fairly easily.

Metallic Mimic -- Can grant counters to creatures as they enter the battlefield. Wizards, Humans, Vampoires or Zombies will be your main creature types but a couple other useful types exist as well as 1 or 2 copies of a type. (Bird, Golem, Specter, Merfolk, Faerie). The big trick with metallic mimic is the ability to reset what he's giving counters too based on your current needs. If he has a counter or Mikaeus (and is a non-human) in play, you can sacrifice him to have him come back as a new creature type. Metallic mimic effectively lets you use properly matched creature type creatures as sacrifice fodder on EVERY player turn thanks to gaining a counter on entering the field.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed -- Absolute unit. Mikaeus carries so much weight in this deck it's not even funny. He gives 20 of our 29 creatures +1/+1 and undying. The way Marchesa and Mikaeus work is nothing but beautiful. A creature with a +1/+1 counter dies and comes back at end step. It now has no +1/+1 counter (usually) so if it dies again, Mikaeus's undying triggers and they come back into play with a +1/+1 counter. Also plays well with Persist (Puppeteer Clique & Glen Elendra Archmage). He doesn't protect Marchesa or our other humans, so keep it as a priority to keep +1/+1 counters maintained upon our vulnerable humans. Puppeteer Clique - Has Persist like the Glen Elendra Archmage above and is also a wizard so has all the same combos to remove the -1/-1 counter.

Rakdos Cackler -- Similar to arcbound worker above. He gains his own +1/+1 counter upon entering the battlefield so he can be repeatedly sacrificed for free.

Sage of Fables -- Other wizards that enter the battlefield do so with a +1/+1 counter on them, which accounts of 11 creatures... he also functions as a source of repeatable card draw.

Yahenni, Undying Partisan -- Gets his own counters when opposing creatures does and can make himself indestructible.

Mark of Mutiny -- Steals a creature and gives it a +1/+1 counter.

Unspeakable Symbol -- An absolute staple for Marchesa. Pay 3 life and you can put a +1/+1 counter on a creature at instant speed.

Forge of Heroes -- Capable of granting Marchesa a +1/+1 counter upon entering the battlefield. Guildmages' Forum -- Capable of granting Marchesa and a few other creatures a +1/+1 counter as they enter the battlefield.


Honorable Mention: Herald of Secret Streams -- He doesn't grant counters but he gives them a greater purpose. Any creature you control with a +1/+1 counter is unblockable. With dethrone you gain the counters on the declare attackers step before blockers are declared, so they are unable to block once they are allowed to declare defenders.

Sacrifice outlets are extremely important in adding utility to our deck by giving us the ability to sacrifice our creatures to re-use their enter the battlefield effects on top of gaining the bonus of whatever our sacrifice earns us.

Sacrifice Outlets

Carrion Feeder -- Cheap CMC, no cost to sacrifice a creature to gain a +1/+1 counter on itself.

Plaguecrafter -- Can sacrifice a creature or just itself to force opponents to sacrifice.

Profaner of the Dead -- Sacrifices a single creature on entering to bounce opponents creatures.

Sidisi, Undead Vizier -- Sacrifice another creature to pick any card out of your deck.

Viscera Seer -- Low CMC, sacrifice creatures to scry which helps to filter our draws.

Voidmage Prodigy -- Sacrifices wizards to counter spells.

Yahenni, Undying Partisan -- Sacrifice other creatures to gain indestructible.

Diabolic Intent -- Single use sacrifice that lets you draw any card from your deck.

Ashnod's Altar -- Sacrifice creatures for colorless mana.

Phyrexian Altar -- Sacrifice creatures for colored mana.

Goblin Bombardment -- Sacrifice creatures to ping targets or players.

Infernal Tribute -- Pay 2 mana to sacrifice ANY permanent and draw a card.

Shifting Shadow -- Sacrifices a creature on your upkeep but brings creatures into play from your deck.

Phyrexian Tower -- One sacrifice per game round for 2 black mana.

High Market -- One sacrifice per game round and gain 1 life.

Due to Marchesa's dethrone mechanic, we more or less never want to be sitting with the highest health points, tied for the highest is acceptable but never exclusively the highest life total. We can't guarantee that our enemies will be willing to attack through our resilient creatures so we need to take our life into our own hands.

Staying Off The Throne

Bloodtracker -- Pay a black mana and 2 life to gain a +1/+1 counter on bloodtracker.

Ashes to Ashes -- Single use, pay 5 life to exile 2 creatures.

Toxic Deluge -- Allows you to choose any value for X, taking as much damage as you want to take.

Talisman of Indulgence -- Pay a life and tap for colored mana.

Talisman of Dominance -- Pay a life and tap for colored mana.

Phyrexian Reclamation -- Pay 2 life and 2 mana to bring a creature from the graveyard back to your hand.

Unspeakable Symbol -- Pay 3 life to give a creature a +1/+1 counter at instant speed.

Lands -- 5 of our lands are capable of dealing 1 damage a turn to us, 2 of them deal 2 damage when they ETB if we choose.

Card draw is the backbone of most good commander decks, and we have the privilege of black & blue as grixis, so we are going to draw some cards. Most of our card draw sources are repeatable sources of draw thanks to how it functions with sacrifice & reanimation. Of particular note, in most cases unless noted otherwise, if you have just the creature in play + marchesa, you can draw cards from it once per game round without losing the creature BUT if at any point you have Marchesa + Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + A non human creature to sacrifice + a sacrifice outlet OR Marchesa + Metallic Mimic with a matching creature type + a sacrifice outlet you can trigger the creatures card draw on each players turn without losing it.

Card Draw

Alchemist's Apprentice -- Self sacrifices to draw a card, also combos with Sage of Fables in place of metallic mimic.

Baleful Strix -- Draws a card when entering battlefield.

Bloodtracker -- Draws cards equal to +1/+1 counters on it, can pay to draw more cards.

Disciple of Bolas -- Sacrifice another creature to draw cards equal to it's power.

Grim Haruspex -- Draw a card whenever ANOTHER nontoken creature dies. Sacrifice this in response to a board wipe if you don't want to draw too many cards.

Impaler Shrike -- Self sacrifices upon hitting a player to draw 3 cards.

Sage of Fables -- Doesn't combo with the mentioned combos but you can pay 2 mana to turn a +1/+1 counter on any creature into a card. Marchesa only cares about creatures having a single +1/+1 so feel free to eat up extra counters.

Sidisi, Undead Vizier -- Sacrifice a creature to draw a card out of your deck and can be it's own sacrifice.

Solemn Simulacrum -- Draws a card upon death.

Thief of Sanity -- Pseudo card draw by taking opponents cards into your casting repertoire. Of note: cards exiled by thief of sanity can be played even if the thief is permanently removed. Doesn't work with sacrifice combos.

Trophy Mage -- Draws any one of our artifacts whenever it enters the battlefield.

Arcane Denial -- Single use, single card draw.

Diabolic Intent -- Single use, sacrifice any creature and draw any card from your deck.

Commander's Sphere -- Sacrifice to draw a card.

Skullclamp -- Throw this cheap to equip artifact onto a creature before you sacrifice it and draw 2 cards.

Infernal Tribute -- Pay 2 mana, sacrifice a card, draw a card.

Necropotence -- A powerhouse of a draw spell. You no longer draw during your end step, but at any point you may pay 1 life to draw a card during your own end step.

Phyrexian Reclamation -- Pseudo card draw by placing creatures from the graveyard into your hand.

Rhystic Study -- Another powerhouse draw spell, each time an opposing player casts a spell they either have to pay 1 mana or allow you to draw a card.

Shifting Shadow -- Pseudo card draw that lets you play creatures directly from your deck into the battlefield.

Our removal suite comes in two major flavors, edict effects (causing players to sacrifice their creatures) or through taking their creature temporarily and sacrificing it to keep it on your side permanently. We also have counter spells that are effectively removal, but will be covered in another section below.

Removal

Cytoplast Manipulator -- You can use her to give an opposing creature a +1/+1 counter as it enters the battlefield and then tap her to steal their creature permanently.

Hostage Taker -- You can capture and cast opposing creatures and artifacts that are in play as your own.

Plaguecrafter -- Can force a sacrifice on creatures and planeswalkers for each player.

Profaner of the Dead -- Sacrifice a creature and bounce all of one players creatures lower than toughness.

Thalakos Deceiver -- Steal a creature from any player permanently for basically free. (Does not require you steal from the player you attack.)

Vindictive Lich -- Forces a single player to sacrifice a creature.

Zealous Conscripts -- Can steal any permanent (even lands) temporarily, sacrifice creatures to bring them onto your side. Combos with Infernal Tribute as a way to get rid of any card, enchantments, lands even if it's indestructible.

Cyclonic Rift -- One of blue's best commander cards. 7 mana and your opponents pick up everything but their lands and put it back in their hands.

Chaos Warp -- One of few ways to effectively deal with enchantments.. and everything else.

Reality Shift -- Similar to chaos warp, but exiles a creature and they get to manifest.

Ashes to Ashes -- Exiles two creatures at the cost of 5 life.

Blasphemous Act -- Usually cast for a very low CMC and wipes the board pretty clean.

Toxic Deluge -- Fairly cheap board wipe that kills indestructible, also helps with keeping your life down as you can choose any value for X.

Mark of Mutiny -- Steal a creature and it gains a +1/+1 counter meaning you don't even have to attack the throne target in order to keep it permanently.

Goblin Bombardment -- Sacrifice to ping, enough pings can kill most things.

Grave Pact -- If you lose a creature, everyone loses a creature.

Dictate of Erebos -- If you lose a creature, everyone loses a creature... at instant speed! Cast this in responce to your own sacrifice triggers to force surprise sacrifice triggers for your opponents.

Everything above does great against creatures primarily, however not every card played is a creature so we need other tools to cover the rest of the field. We want to break up combos in hand, make sure scary enchantments or exile effects never see the light of day and just keep ourselves safe from everything else that our opponents might try to do to take the throne from our grasp. We have two primary ways of achieving these goals, forced discards and counterspells.

Interrupting Their Gameplan

Glen Elendra Archmage -- Pay 1 blue mana and self sacrifice to counter a spell. Combine with Metallic Mimic or Sage of Fables or Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and you can repeatably counter spells as long as you have blue mana to spend on it. Can very easily place a soft lock on the game.

Voidmage Prodigy -- Similar to above but not quite as potent on it's own. Pay 2 blue and sacrifice any wizard to counter a spell. Doesn't combo as easily with Mikaeus unless you have a non-human wizard to sacrifice + Marchesa in play. Can't soft lock the game like Glen Elendra Archmage can because of the lack of persist.

Oona's Blackguard -- Every time a creature you control with a +1/+1 counter deals combat damage to an opponent they discard. This can cause A LOT of discards and put all your opponents into a hellbent state very quickly.

Puppeteer Clique -- This is our primary way of controlling opposing graveyards. Thanks to persist you can sacrifice the puppeteer in response to a reanimation spell, have it come back on the stack, and then reanimate the target of the opposing reanimation spell.

Scavenger Grounds -- Poof out all graveyards, we use reanimation but MOST of our reanimation occurs at end step and doesn't rely on our creatures sitting in the graveyard waiting for reanimation, the only exception is Phyrexian Reclamation .

Vindictive Lich -- Can force discards as one of it's options upon death.

Arcane Denial / Counterspell / Swan Song -- Low CMC but effective counterspells.

The above cards dictate our major goals, however there are cards in the deck designed to support the rest of the deck and help it come together. These are the unmentioned, the ones that sit in the shadows and make sure your agents are able to do their job.

The Unmentioned But Important

One thing that yet to be mentioned is ramp. In grixis we have no real option in our colors so we rely heavily on artifacts to provide is with some accelerated mana. Our focus is in the ability to generate black mana, then blue, then red (thus the inclusion of some izzet mana artifacts).

Chromatic Lantern -- Greatly assists our heavy black cost cards and our pay colored mana effects (Glen Elendra Archmage, Voidmage Prodigy, Bloodtracker etc).

Commander's Sphere -- Taps for any color we need and can draw us a card if necessary. Dimir Signet / Rakdos Signet / Fellwar Stone / Talisman of Dominance / Talisman of Indulgence -- 2 CMC mana rocks that allow us to get Marchesa out on turn 3 potentially.

Sol Ring -- Commander powerhouse artifact, it's so hard not to include a sol ring.

Solemn Simulacrum -- can be repeatably sacrificed with a counter to trigger his enter the battlefield ramp repeatably.


Other notable cards that perform some function in the deck:
Desecrated Tomb -- creates a steady stream of 1/1 flying bats we can use to block flyers, sacrifice for effects or just beat opponents down with.

Path of Ancestry -- This hits on 15 of 29 creatures, so it's a decent source of scry triggers and an all-colored land.

Basilisk Collar -- Lets you stabilize your life total in the case you get too low or can be attached to a tiny creature to make them a threatening blocker.

Lightning Greaves -- can grant haste to new creatures or be left on Marchesa to protect her presence on the field. Be wary of unequipping Marchesa if you don't have a way to product her from exile effects.

Arcane Lighthouse -- remove hexproof and shroud from opponents creatures so you can steal them or remove them. (Sacrifice effects also get around hexproof and shroud).

Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	7 - 0 Mythic Rares 38 - 0 Rares 22 - 0 Uncommons 13 - 0 Commons
Cards	97
Avg. CMC	2.93
Tokens	Manifest 2/2 C, Morph 2/2 C
Folders	Wizard #1