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Marchesa’s Metallurgic Machinations

Commander / EDH Aristocrats Artifact Bracket 3 Counters Modular Sacrifice UBR (Grixis) Value Engine

ironwolf1

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Artifact (45)

Payoff (11)

Graveyard Interaction (2)

Tutor (2)

Land (36)

Responses and Removal (15)

Modular (11)

Other Counters (9)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Marchesa, the Black Rose

Outlet (16)

Ramp (16)

Draw (11)

Burn (4)

Maybeboard

Cards I own (12)

Burn (4)

Responses and Removal (4)

Graveyard Interaction (3)

Not in Collection (8)

Artifact (7)

Payoff (4)

Tutor (3)

Outlet (8)

Other Counters (6)

Draw (4)

Bullshit (1)

Ramp (1)

The Machinations Laid Bare

This deck revolves around using the third ability on Marchesa, the Black Rose to recur artifact creatures (as well as some other creatures) using creatures with the Modular ability to move around counters and loop my entire board. It’s an Aristocrats strategy through and through, which means I need that perfect mix of sac outlets, sac fodder, and sac payoffs (which can come from either death triggers or ETB triggers through Marchesa’s recursion), and if I whiff on any part of that equation, the deck will struggle. But when it hits, oh boy does it hit. Marchesa’s ability to bring back your board every end step can let you churn out value in absurd speed once you have an engine running.

Modular and derivatives

A key part of what makes this deck a specifically Artifact themed strategy is the use of creatures with Modular. Modular allows the creature to enter with counters, making them ideal sac fodder for Marchesa’s outlets. But they also allow the counters they hold to be moved to another artifact creature, incentivizing me to build other artifact creatures into the deck to provide easy targets for the modular counters and allow me to have access to even more recur-able sac fodder.

The all-stars of Modular in this deck are Arcbound Ravager, providing a sac outlet on top of the Modular body, Scrapyard Recombiner, who can go grab any of my Construct creatures, and Arcbound Condor, who can turn my board sacs into removal when everything revives at end of turn. Just about any creature with Modular who fits in a reasonable curve is worth running in this deck though, so I have a lot of little dudes like Arcbound Worker who don’t look like much but provide key fodder.

Another creature I have to shout out in the Modular section is Iron Apprentice. This little 1/1 common is genuinely one of the best cards in my deck, because it can put its +1/+1 counter directly on Marchesa when it dies, where the other Modular creatures need help to get a counter onto Marchesa herself. Getting counters on Marchesa in an accessible and repeatable way makes this deck extremely hard to deal with, and Iron Apprentice does it with any of the free sac outlets I have in the list.

Outlets

Having outlets to enable on demand sacrifice of my creatures is a major key for this deck. Without the ability to sacrifice them, all my modular dudes are just a bunch of good chump blockers that offer no real threat to anyone.

Any outlet is a good outlet, but the best of the best for this strategy are the instant speed, repeatable sac outlets. These are what can allow me to loop my entire board on every player’s turn, potentially generating insane value without ever needing to untap my lands. The all time classic here that has been an all star in Aristocrats strategies for years and continues to be an all star for this deck is Phyrexian Altar, along with its good but slightly less versatile cousin Ashnod's Altar. Sacrificing to activate a mana ability is crazy powerful, and the fact that it comes with no additional costs or tapping is even better. Just about any instant speed free sac outlet is worth serious consideration. Altar of Dementia and Spawning Pit *list* are two good examples of instant speed sac outlets that don’t necessarily contribute much to my winning with their abilities, but they do allow me to vanish my board at instant speed so they will always have a place in my list.

Lands that come with outlet abilities stapled on, even ones that require tapping and thus are not repeatable, are still worth running just as backups or because their tap sac ability provides significant value. Phyrexian Tower is probably the best of these, as it can ramp me for 2 mana on its tap sac ability. Susur Secundi, Void Altar probably provides the most overall value here, with the tap sac ability providing a strong draw engine, but it’s locked behind Station so it’s a bit of a challenge to get it online.

Finally, I wanted to give a shoutout to Yawgmoth, Thran Physician in the outlet category. He is an absolute house in this deck. Technically not a completely free outlet as he costs life to activate, but it’s well worth paying the life to get a sac outlet that also removes creatures and draws me cards. He’s an incredible value engine that does just about everything I want as both a sac outlet and a sac payoff.

Payoffs

The third piece of the aristocratic puzzle I need to put together is payoffs. Having a bunch of creatures I can sacrifice and recur over and over is all well and good, but I need to be gaining some sort of advantage from it all or else I’m just spinning in place. Modular can somewhat be its own payoff, since you can keep counters accumulating as long as you keep an artifact creature on the board, but keeping a creature on the board is often disadvantageous. In order to consistently gain value while also being able to protect my board through sacrificing it, I need to have engines that use death triggers or ETB triggers to generate value.

The first major category of payoff is card draw. Grim Haruspex is a staple in aristocrats for a reason, turning death triggers into card advantage is very powerful with a sac engine. Skullclamp is similarly powerful, and while I don’t run quite as many 1 toughness creatures as many other Skullclamp users, Skullclamping a big dude who gets sacrificed to an outlet works just as well as having the Clamp itself do the killing. Creatures with draws on their own ETB or LTB like Thought Monitor or Solemn Simulacrum can be game warping as well when I can recur them, generating a shitload of card advantage on every turn.

The second major category, and one I hope to expand due to how critical it is for letting the deck turn the corner and go for the win, is burn. Cards like Flayer of the Hatebound and Marionette Master are all stars in this category, allowing the board entering and exiting to turn into massive damage. Triskelion provides a beautiful synergy with the Modular creatures here, allowing me to stack up and burn off my extra counters as things leave the battlefield. I need more in this category, I had Marionette Apprentice in my initial list and I probably need to find a place for it to return.

A related subcategory to direct burn is creature removal. I have a couple recursion targets that do removal on their ETBs, namely Noxious Gearhulk and Demonic Junker. Gearhulk is an all star, since it is fetchable with Scrapyard Recombiner and gains me life. The life gain in particular is incredibly clutch late game, as this deck is regularly gonna be playing around at low life totals and attempting to win on the verge of death. Junker has a powerful ETB, but being a vehicle means recurring him can be tough if I don’t have a repeatable crew available. Also, I found in my initial play testing of the deck that the self-targeted destroy to get the counters on Junker has a major disadvantage in having to go on the stack. The good sac outlets have the sacrifice as part of the cost, so they can’t be responded to meaningfully when you want to activate them and evacuate your creatures. Destroy on a trigger means someone can respond with removal and hose my triggers.

The final category of payoff that is also very important is counter manipulation. My all star card here is Mm'menon, Uthros Exile. Being able to distribute counters immediately on your whole board when the team comes back in from the yard makes the recursion decisions much easier, and preserves board power well. Extruder distributing counters on an instant speed free sac outlet would be well worth the Echo cost, but Echo can be circumvented through Marchesa’s ability at the cost of not being able to use it for combat on your turn.

Veggies

Any good deck will also need a fair share of ramp and interaction to be successful. On theme or no, you need some Counterspells and such on hand to help escape from potential fuckery. And ramp is always good, being able to cast and recast your commander at or ahead of curve is the most important thing to do consistently.

Ramp in an artifact deck is rather easy with the number of efficient mana rocks in print. Mox Opal is in here because I own a copy from an old Modern deck I dismantled years ago, and I wanted to be able to put it in a deck. Lotus Petal is on the chopping block for Liquimetal Torque, I’m just still too scared of the color screw to go through with the change. There’s a requisite smattering of other 2 mana rocks, and a few artifact cost reducers to really let me dump hand with expediency.

For spell based non recurring creature removal, the knob I have the most leeway with is board wipes. The recursion ability means I can be very cavalier with board wipes and make them one sided when I can get counters on Marchesa. The deck is running 3 for now, but that number may go up or down depending on how much grief they end up causing in games. My current selection of wipes is Blasphemous Act, Blasphemous Edict, and Toxic Deluge. First one to go out would probably be Blasphemous Act, and the next one in would be Living Death.

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90% Casual

Competitive

Revision 15 See all

(5 months ago)

-1 Altar of Dementia maybe