Persistent Traitors

Commander / EDH* Counters Midrange Multiplayer Reanimator UBR (Grixis)

GS10

Creature (34)

• 1x Apprentice Necromancer
• 1x Baleful Strix
• 1x Butcher of Malakir
• 1x Carrion Feeder
• 1x Chasm Skulker
• 1x Drana, Liberator of Malakir
• 1x Falkenrath Aristocrat
• 1x Flayer of the Hatebound
• 1x Garna, the Bloodflame
• 1x Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1x Grim Haruspex
• 1x Herald of Secret Streams
• 1x Manic Vandal
• 1x Matter Reshaper
• 1x Mausoleum Wanderer
• 1x Mulldrifter
• 1x Nin, the Pain Artist
• 1x Olivia, Mobilized for War
• 1x Oona's Blackguard
• 1x Profaner of the Dead
• 1x Pyreheart Wolf
• 1x River Kelpie
• 1x Sadistic Hypnotist
• 1x Sage of Fables
• 1x Scourge of the Throne
• 1x Shriekmaw
• 1x Siren Stormtamer
• 1x Taurean Mauler
• 1x Treasonous Ogre
• 1x Vigean Graftmage
• 1x Vindictive Lich
• 1x Whisper, Blood Liturgist
• 1x Yahenni, Undying Partisan

Land (35)

• 1x Blighted Fen
• 1x Crosis's Catacombs
• 1x Crumbling Necropolis
• 1x Dimir Guildgate
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Grixis Panorama
• 1x High Market
• 4x Island
• 1x Izzet Boilerworks
• 2x Mountain
• 1x Opal Palace
• 1x Rakdos Guildgate
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Rocky Tar Pit
• 1x Smoldering Marsh
• 8x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Isle
• 1x Tainted Peak
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Vivid Crag
• 1x Vivid Creek
• 1x Vivid Marsh
• 1x Wandering Fumarole

Enchantment (12)

• 1x Arguel's Blood Fast  ^Flip
• 1x Attrition
• 1x Black Market
• 1x Goblin Bombardment
• 1x Grave Betrayal
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Greed
• 1x Imprisoned in the Moon
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Phyrexian Reclamation
• 1x Unspeakable Symbol
• 1x Warstorm Surge

Commander (1)

Artifact (13)

• 1x Altar of Dementia
• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Obelisk of Grixis
• 1x Rakdos Signet
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Talisman of Dominance
• 1x Talisman of Indulgence
• 1x Thought Vessel

Instant (5)

• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Counterflux
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Terminate

Sorcery (2)

• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Cruel Ultimatum

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* MAJOR UPDATE IN PROGRESS, CHECK BACK IN A FEW HOURS :)**

DISCLAIMER: This is not a perfected list, it's just my fun deck, made with budget restraints in mind and not meant to be hardcore-competitive. It's meant to be fun and balanced to play with friends and not tournament level play. Keep that in mind, but still, feel free to suggest any potential improvements! No EDH Deck is ever finished, so in the future, some of your suggestions might find a way into the deck!

Marchesa, the Black Rose is not a question, she is the answer! Her abilities are just straight out brutal. Yes, she needs building around, but if you get the deck working towards her abilities, man, she's just dirty! You can pretty much develop such a board where you are immune to board wipes and you even welcome them, while that is the only way your opponents might have some hope of swinging back into the game. And being Grixis, allows you to keep tricks up your sleeve as well. You will be the aggressor, don't get me wrong, but you'll run Counterspell, Dissolve, Counterflux and some suit of strong countermagic. The deck is also well suited to run a lot of threaten effects, grabbing your opponents best stuff, which I did for a while until my meta shifted to work around that. Marchesa is really versatile and lets you build around in so many different ways, this is the one I'm going for (and I'm going on a not so big budget too) and is very much tied to my own meta, but the deck itself has endless different possible ways to be built.

With Marchesa you must establish your board by not being the player with the most life. You can't be on the throne while you develop your board position, otherwise, your deck will be filled with meaningless cards that won't be extraordinary. I've seen this happen in two ways:

• One way is everybody on the table sees "Wait, the Marchesa player is on the Throne, let's keep him in check and not attack him, no reason to help his game plan"; if this happens you'll probably have time to find your key cards and start building your board until you can finally feel safe to start attacking, or you find a way to lower your life or distribute counters and make Marchesa insanely good.

• The other way is just do your thing and let opponents attack you, don't block until you're lower on life than everybody else. It is a bit harsh to have to control your life this way, but once someone else is on the throne, you'll build such a strong position on board that your lower life total shouldn't matter.

So, since we don't want to depend on our opponents to play our own, we need to get around that, so there are lots of cards to distribute +1/+1 counters or have activated abilities that require you to pay life and enable Dethrone. Unspeakable Symbol is absolutely mandatory in this deck, but cards like Greed, Treasonous Ogre, Olivia, Mobilized for War, Drana, Liberator of Malakir and so on fit Marchesa like a glove, and will make your board both big and incredibly hard to deal with. My particular playgroup helps a lot enabling dethrone due to a few lifegain strategies, so even though I run these enablers, I must be careful not to drop too low that I become an easy target.

Cards with Undying and Persist are specially resilient, but with Marchesa on the battlefield, they're virtually indestructible. Flayer of the Hatebound is extraordinary since it will ammount in lots of damage with creatures coming back with Marchesa. Besides, Undying creatures will come back if they don't have a counter, and they'll come back with Marchesa if they have counters. Glen Elendra Archmage is an infinite Negate on a stick since she'll come back, she's not as resilient as a Undying Creature, but you'll have lots of ways to put counters back on her, negating the persist counter.

The way I've come to change this deck basically makes me the player demanding an answer from the table. Cards like Mer-Ek Nightblade work sometimes better than a prison deck, Oona's Blackguard strips away most of our opponents' hands like nobody's business and has to be dealt with, while Yahenni, Undying Vizier and Falkenrath Aristocrat menace to take the game on their own if left unchecked, and they're not easy to deal with. If somehow the rest of the table is more developed than your side, you'll have ways to tutor for either a board wipe or Grave Pact so that you can start forcing your opponents' boards down and eventually try and win with an overdeveloped and hard to remove board.

Test list as of March 8th, 2017. Foreign cards representing proxied cards, still to be replaced by the real ones coming in. The list had been unchanged in a while and it is was being overcome by most decks in my playgroup, so I'm looking for new cards to fine tune the deck and make it step up. I'm still keeping budget in mind, but obviously every suggestion is still welcome (Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion might be expensive, but that alone might be better and cheaper than changing half the deck with generally weaker cards, so everything is going to be taken into account)

Maybeboard

To keep the decklist easily readable, I've taken out the maybeboard and listed it here. These are the cards currently being considered but not in the deck. These were either tested and cut for other cards or weren't tested at all because of local availability or budget.

At this point, my priority is to streamline the deck. I feel that it loses overall power by trying to do a lot of different splashy things and relies mostly on an unremovable board to win the game. Sometimes I feel like I go too wide and not tall enough, and having a big finisher demanding an answer over and over again might be more powerful than a whole frightening board that can get one kill at the cost of losing my own safety net. I'm looking for a lower curve, and more ways to control/tempo the game in my favour. Cards in bold are current test priorities.

• Archaeomancer

• Ashnod's Altar

• Baleful Strix

• Cruel Ultimatum

• Dictate of Erebos

• Dreadbore

• Erebos, God of the Dead

• Ertai, Wizard Adept

• Fire Covenant

• Jokulhaups

• Living Death

• Manic Scribe

• Mikaeus, the Unhallowed

• Phyrexian Altar

• Thraximundar

• Triskelion

• Tuktuk Scrapper

• Vandalblast

• Vicious Shadows

Change Log - October 24th 2016

After extensive testing, Viscera Seer as a sac outlet seems consistently less impactful than it should. I'd rather run another source of value than another sac outlet with a less impactful ability, since every time my opponents are pulling ahead, sacking for Viscera Seer doesn't get me anywhere and when I'm ahead it just doesn't make a world of difference. I'm adding a Marchesa staple that I've been meaning to pick up and only did now. River Kelpie is usually hard to deal with and gives immense card advantage, also allowing and encouraging me to attack more fearlessly, since I'd welcome most trades in combat. There isn't a huge pressure to fill the board early with Marchesa, since we don't mind losing some life early game, so hopefully the change to the mana curve isn't going to be too negative.

Out > Viscera Seer

In > River Kelpie

Lifegain lands were completely out of place. I meant to have them as a way too stay away from dangerously low life totals, but I ended up drawing them early in the game with no ways to actively lose life, and still needed to play them to have land drops. After testing, I decided to cut them.

• Out > Dismal Backwater, Swiftwater Cliffs, Bloodfell Caves and Radiant Fountain

• In > Tainted Isle, Tainted Peak, Rocky Tar Pit and High Market

I also finally found a fair priced Chaos Warp which is definitely coming in the deck. For now it replaces one of the suboptimal removal spells, but in time I might need to adjust cutting some creatures for additional removal.

• Out > Murderous Cut

• In > Chaos Warp

I'm also thinking the deck needs more reaction and that's why I'm pondering cutting some creatures for some forms of countermagic or disruption.

I am now considering Cruel Ultimatum, Counterflux and Phyrexian Arena as higher priorities for future upgrades. Maybeboard was updated accordingly.

Test Log - March 8th, 2017

With the last sets, and especially Commander 2016 release, my playgroup improved a bit, and an Atraxa, Praetors' Voice deck found its way in, which is a big hurdle to overcome with a Dethrone deck. For this reason, I've been trying to make some adjustments in order to make Marchesa more balanced against the current playgroup's level.

• Out > Dack's Duplicate, Disciple of Bolas, Murder, Thalakos Deceiver and Slave of Bolas

• In > Falkenrath Aristocrat, Mer-Ek Nightblade, Oona's Blackguard, Sidisi's Faithful and Yahenni, Undying Partisan

These changes essentially give me more counter synergy, being it in added value to creatures with counters, or ways to get counters by themselves, disregarding Marchesa's Dethrone. This will help establish a board and take advantage of those counters. On the way out on the other hand are cards that work poorly without counters and have generally high variance in game situations.

• Out > Fleshbag Marauder, Hellhole Flailer, Mindswipe Merciless Executioner, Insurrection

• In > Abyssal Gatekeeper, Counterflux, Decree of Pain, Phyrexian Arena, Sidisi, Undead Vizier

These changes are more tied to my own metagame. First of all, Mindswipe is cool, but there are too many lifegain decks in my meta, so it is pretty much always suboptimal. With a new Ydris deck joining in, I'm adding in Counterflux as a way to prevent the wild Storm win that might come up now and then. There are also more than a few killing floor type of decks, making Insurrection rarely perform as it should, and for that reason I value Grave Betrayal over it. Again, due to that particular metagame, Fleshbag Marauder and Merciless Executioner are usually bad 3 drops, since I mostly trade one creature for an edict effect with no particular upside. Abyssal Gatekeeper is slightly better overall, allowing me to attack and gain a counter with dethrone, before having the effect, won't need to sac another creature, will most times be reusable and even if it isn't a 2 drop with no recursion feels better than two others at 3 CMC. Phyrexian Arena really doesn't need a justification and helps both with dethrone and drawing cards since Disciple of Bolas is coming out. Hellhole Flayer somehow never brings added value, theres always something better to focus the play than it's activated ability and the deck could use an additional board wipe. Decree of Pain is expensive, but my personal favorite in EDH (that or Toxic Deluge, but that's more pricy and in a metagame filled with lifegain decks, I really don't want more ways to drop my life total). And finally Sidisi, Undead Vizier will function as a mostly reusable tutor for whatever I need. 5 mana is higher than I'd like to play, but I don't feel the need to invest on the real cheap tutors for a deck which is meant for fun, especially one that's not comboing off with anything in particular.

Even after reviewing the whole deck and not being able to fit Grave Titan in any particular category, I can't bring myself to take it out. It might not be a game ender, it might be at its best as a win more card, but it is a very powerful one in any board state, which is why I'm chosing to keep it.

THB Update after a long time!

The Dominaria update I planned never stuck, and after a very long time, I've picked the deck up again for a new upgrade. Some old cards are coming in for consistence purposes, and some new spice is coming in as well.

In comes Woe Strider, which is a complete all star for the deck, providing an added sac outlet, while being an Escape creature (which works great here) that comes back with +1/+1 counters already.

Less exciting, but still very important is Talisman of Creativity. The missing talisman is another Dethrone enabler while lowering our mana curve and providing some much needed ramp.

Dreadhorde Butcher gets counters by itself, does incremental damage even when it dies, and comes back right away, also 2 CMC hasty attacker fits just right in how I want this deck to play.

Soul Diviner functions mostly as a Sage of Fables with no mana activation cost to draw, but will incidentally remove persist counters and make for some fun interactions.

Champion of Wits should have been here for long now, but with Woe Strider coming in, it now feeds it as well as Phyrexian Reclamation. Given the added synergy, I think Champion will fit nicely, unless...:

There are some cards I'm considering, and the first two can easily interchange with Champion of Wits, for just one more mana: Thought Sponge or Bloodtracker, with Dethrone and a sac outlet are great card advantage, but I want to focus on cards until 3 CMC. I'm pondering if the 4 mana for this draw engine "slot" is worth it over consistently fast paced game.

Syr Konrad, the Grim seems very good, but at 5 mana I think there are much better stuff we might be doing, so he's not making the cut.

The list will be updated in the next few days.

Also: Check out the combo version I've been playing in MTGO

Date added	7 years
Last updated	4 years
Key combos	Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 0 Mythic Rares 34 - 0 Rares 33 - 0 Uncommons 17 - 0 Commons
Cards	102
Avg. CMC	3.31
Tokens	Morph 2/2 C, Squid 1/1 U
Folders	Actual EDH Decks, Tagged - EDH, Z-Decks to Monitor, Commander deks / EDH