Queen Marchesa's Game of Thrones

Commander / EDH Aikido RBW (Mardu)

ImaWizardHarry

Land (35)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Fabled Passage
• 1x Field of Ruin
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Hall of Heliod's Generosity
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Maze of Ith
• 1x Mistveil Plains
• 2x Mountain
• 6x Plains
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Savai Triome
• 3x Swamp
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Vault of the Archangel

Sorcery (11)

• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Disrupt Decorum
• 1x Molten Psyche
• 1x Mythos of Snapdax
• 1x Painful Truths
• 1x Ruinous Ultimatum
• 1x Scheming Symmetry
• 1x Vandalblast
• 1x Wheel of Fortune
• 1x Winds of Abandon

Instant (16)

• 1x Angel's Grace
• 1x Anguished Unmaking
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Comeuppance
• 1x Deadly Rollick
• 1x Deflecting Palm
• 1x Delirium
• 1x Despark
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Flawless Maneuver
• 1x Generous Gift
• 1x Hallowed Moonlight
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Teferi's Protection
• 1x Wear / Tear

Enchantment (12)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Blind Obedience
• 1x Curse of Opulence
• 1x Ghostly Prison
• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Legion's Landing  ^Flip
• 1x Necromancy
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Repercussion
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Underworld Breach

Commander (1)

Artifact (15)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Boros Signet
• 1x Conqueror's Flail
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Orzhov Signet
• 1x Rakdos Signet
• 1x Scroll Rack
• 1x Shadowspear
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sunforger
• 1x Sword of the Animist
• 1x Tome of Legends
• 1x Wayfarer's Bauble

Creature (10)

• 1x Archfiend of Despair
• 1x Containment Priest
• 1x Drannith Magistrate
• 1x Frontier Warmonger
• 1x Kambal, Consul of Allocation
• 1x Ob Nixilis, Unshackled
• 1x Sun Titan
• 1x Tymna the Weaver
• 1x Verge Rangers
• 1x Zo-Zu the Punisher

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Maybeboard

Creature (10)

• 1x Academy Rector
• 1x Brallin, Skyshark Rider  ^Flip
• 1x Demon of Catastrophes
• 1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 1x Filth
• 1x Glint-Horn Buccaneer
• 1x Kederekt Parasite
• 1x Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion
• 1x Weathered Wayfarer
• 1x Windborn Muse

Artifact (1)

• 1x Mirage Mirror

Instant (7)

• 1x Backlash
• 1x Bedevil
• 1x Boros Charm
• 1x Call the Coppercoats
• 1x Kaya's Guile
• 1x Price of Progress
• 1x Rakdos Charm

Sorcery (4)

• 1x Dredge the Mire
• 1x Last One Standing
• 1x Merciless Eviction
• 1x Reanimate

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Authority of the Consuls
• 1x Captive Audience
• 1x Duelist's Heritage
• 1x No Mercy
• 1x Phyrexian Reclamation
• 1x Stranglehold

Land (3)

• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Sanctum of Eternity
• 1x Slayers' Stronghold

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Intro to Political Subterfuge

"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." - Cersei Lannister

This list is inspired by and driven to emulate the playstyle of deck:https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/primer-political-subterfuge-marchesa-aikido/?cat=custom&sort=name.

The goals are

• Play opponents against each other through manipulation
• Fly under the radar with minimal board presence
• Maintain a potent Sunforger package and interact with the board at opportune times
• If necessary, combo out when the time is right

Something that should become apparent quickly is how many pieces are cards you would play in their own right, regardless of their incredible synergy. In this way, you should almost never feel like you have a dead draw, but rather, that the floor is you have potent interaction / removal, and the ceiling is you're just one card away from winning the game.

Politicking, or How to Pilot

This is a control deck. In a multiplayer format like Commander, the challenge of this archetype is maintaining card advantage, therefore our #1 priority is to establish a supply of card draw as soon as it is safe.

This can be achieved by playing Queen Marchesa and beginning the Monarch cycle, or landing a piece such as Phyrexian Arena or Necropotence. (There are obviously other draw engines available. Skullclamp works especially well with our commander, turning our assassin token into guaranteed card draw.)

Following our fuel lines, the #2 goal is to secure ramp and hold interaction at a rate that does not intimidate the table. Effectively, to never be as developed as the table leaders unless we're ready to go off. This can mean making deals with one opponent to spite another, or simply leading them into each other with open-air threat assessment.

With Sunforger, it's very easy to buy political favors with our toolbox of answers, and sometimes, we can even take advantage of the blowout cards listed below.

With time, the deck will become familiar enough that the win conditions in-hand will become obvious. To help us build to those cards, there should be sufficient board control and interaction to reset things as we go. Mythos of Snapdax is a very cost-efficient, egalitarian reset button that will please everyone at the table except the leaders. Ruinous Ultimatum is the kind of card you play to lock in your advantage close to your own win.

Speaking of, let's look at the fun we have in store ;)

Win Conditions

Win Conditions

1. Opponents kill each other
2. Targeted Blowout
3. Combo

Opponents Kill Each Other

This is the ideal; and, like the stars, while we may never get there, we still chart our course by them. (-Charles Schurz)

All we really want is for our opponents to focus on each other rather than us, and slowly whittle each other down. If they successfully take 20 life out of one another, they should be within striking distance of the next section. If we can't encourage them into doing so with favors and removal, we can move onto the next section...

Targeted Blowouts

Situational kills always present themselves throughout a match of Commander.

Creature Blowouts:

• The next time an opponent plays a giant Lord of Extinction and tries to swing at you, drop a Delirium and watch them fold under their own weight
• If combat damage is getting big, Arcbond can end the table, and Angel's Grace is just one way you can save yourself
• If the board is looking fairly developed, Repercussion with either Blasphemous Act or Disrupt Decorum makes for a fun time

Non-combat Blowouts:

• If they try to Comet Storm or Aetherflux Reservoir you, Deflecting Palm, Deflecting Swat and Comeuppance have you covered
• If you've got aggressive ramp players, Price of Progress will hit them substantially harder than anyone else - Ob Nixilis, Unshackled (and to a lesser degree Zo-Zu the Punisher) will mine far more salt than expected if you can follow up with Scheming Symmetry, Field of Ruin, or my favorite, Winds of Abandon

Combo Finishers

Unlike the opportunistic fun illustrated above, sometimes you need to end the game on your own terms, even when playing a deck designed to steer opponents that way. Given the amount of resources we're dedicating to interaction and control, we want to minimize the deck-building cost as much as possible for our own finisher(s).

While the linked primer offers a few options, I find the Breach Combo to be the most efficient in this regard, utilizing pieces we'd already be running:

BREACH COMBO:

• Underworld Breach
• Wheel of Fortune
• Smothering Tithe
• Angel's Grace

To spell it out, 1) play Smothering Tithe, 2) play Underworld Breach, and 3) then wheel. You will have enough cards in the graveyard to recast the wheel, and Tithe will pay for each subsequent cast. 4) You can Angel's Grace at any point in this combo to prevent a loss from decking yourself, after which you re-cast the wheel until all opponents have been decked instead.

Angel's Grace might be the weakest card on its own, but offers additional protection from the AoE Blowout cards listed above, so is still a useful draw, and in such case, can be recast with Breach later.

Date added	3 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	11 - 0 Mythic Rares 56 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 6 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.72
Tokens	Assassin 1/1 B w/ Haste, Elephant 3/3 G, Gold, Monarch Emblem, Treasure, Vampire 1/1 W