Full control variant that specializes in safely establishing monarch and keeping the crown for the entire game. The problem I had with the
Wildfire
control variant is that the wincons were high cost spells that were shut down by a few well-timed counters. It was also heavily outpaced by well-tuned zurgo bellstriker decks. So far the full control list plays a lot smoother.
Differences from wildfire control:
PROS:
this control list can live without Night's Whisper, Read the Bones,
Painful Truths
and Phyrexian Arena, because timed properly, monarch is all you need. This has 2 advantages. First is that you will have more room to add threats or answers to the deck. Second, which i feel is very important is that you have less self-inflicted life loss, which is very relevant in an environment where burn can kill you just like that.
lots of removal, lots of answers to any permanent type.
hefty amount of hand disrupt, you can have them topdecking very early depending on the draw
overall decent matchup against all deck types. The tools are just all there, with more tutors than average. I sill haven't tried this against all-in combo though.
many threats in the deck double up as life gain tools, buying the player time to stabilize.
this is the only full control deck i've encountered that does not have an outright mismatch against Zurgo Bellstriker. Update: with the most recent change, matchup has now been slightly positive.
CONS:
Very narrow room for error. It's quite unforgiving when you bring the Monarch online too soon or too late. The list is very light on creatures, so if an aggro deck takes the crown via combat, you have a low probability of taking the crown back outside of recasting her. You constantly have to keep the board clean and watch your opponent's untapped lands before letting the Queen into the game.
Requires vast knowledge on how every deck in the meta plays (something I personally need to work on). This list is very toolbox-y, with different permutations of a winning hand and by extension, a losing hand. If you're facing an unfamiliar deck, it will be difficult knowing what hands to keep, and how best to take advantage of all the tutors. Ideally when facing an unfamiliar deck, you should have downloaded how that deck works by game 2.
Finishers are Batterskull and Wurmcoil Engine, as well as planeswalker ultimates. Till you get any of those, it's a grind. There will be games where you just win by swinging marcehsa for 3. It's slow, grindy and occasionally frustrating.
Flipside of having no outright mismatches is that it has no easy matches either. It struggles a little more against blue-based control and a little less against non-red creature-heavy lists, but every match will feel like a grind. The toolset is vast, but it takes a lot of practice knowing what hands to keep or what cards to tutor for. Just like with most control decks, it's not exactly pick-up and play.
If this deck would ever have a bad matchup, it would be all-in combo. We don't kill fast, and we don't have counterspells. Creature-based combo like the recently unbanned Yisan is manageable thanks to removal. But if a combo relies on merely resolving a spell and combo-ing off to win, we have no real response for it. The thing is, at 20 life, dedicated combo decks will die to a lot of things. The only combo deck getting results in the current format is I think high tide Jace or Baral combo. The scarcity of this archetype in 20 life is a big part of what makes Queen marchesa so good right now.
GENERAL STRATEGY: Hand disrupt and removal early game, sweep, cast queen marchesa on an empty board, and pull away with the card advantage. Threat density when drawing cards will be much better than the wildfire variant since there are less mana rocks.
Against control: hand disrupt, Cavern of Souls are key, so tutor aggressively early game and the rest should be easy. Other than that, hand disrupt and counterbaiting is also a legit strategy. It depends on what you want, really. You can bait with marchesa so that you can resolve your threats, or vice versa. Once monarch has been established you will eventually overwhelm them with card advantage.
Against aggro: always remove and sweep, never make the mistake of casting queen march when they have a creature that can swing the next turn, unless you have a way to immediately remove it.
WATCH OUT FOR: Manlands. sometimes you sweep then think the board is clean, cast queen marchesa then the next turn opponent kills her then swings with a mishra's factory or mutavault. That will be a tough mountain to climb. Might be nice to save a bolt or a dead/gone for those occasions.
Total games played: 473 (overall roughly 75% winrate as of now)
MATCHUPS + STRATEGY(to be presented in percentage ratio, not raw number of wins and losses)
As of May 9, 2017:
Titania 60-40 (strategy: allow the ramp via dorks, then sweep on your turn. This puts her behind a few turns. Or better yet, Balance setups. Pretend to be screwed, stay at 2 lands, bolt titania when she comes down, then untap, cast balance. It's very unlikely to catchup from there. These setups are easy because the deck plays a crapload of tutors.
Atraxa control 4-1 (raw number since it's only been a few games)
Atraxa midrange 1-1 (it was a counter proliferate based deck, didn't get to test too much but this is going to be more positive than it looks. I lost 1 because I expected control and aggressively tutored for defense grid when I should have been looking for a sweeper.
Queen Marchesa mirror 0-2 (Again, raw for now. My opponent had 20 freaking planeswalkers, casting 1 per turn, plus a monarch mirror really overwhelms this deck. However, that deck consistently lost to mono-red in 5 or less turns. I wouldn't sleeve one up for tournament play)
Saskia 80-20
Doran 60-40
Zurgo Bellstriker 60-40 on the play, 40/60 on the draw: He is a bit of a problem in particular because a good list has enough instant burn to kill the queen, and access to a lot of creatures with haste. This is one matchup wherein a clear board does not guarantee you a secure crown. This is why I have a lot of cheap instant speed removal to keep threats from swinging. Hand disrupt is there to thin out their hand and gas them out faster, and a resolved timely reinforcements more often than not gives you enough breathing room to stabilize. From there, wurmcoil engine, kaya and batterskull can pull you out of topdeck burn range, with enough tutors to help find them. This is one of the few matchups where you cast queen march as a last resort rather than a go-to strategy. Fetch for basics when possible, because price of progress is a bitch. Magus of the moon is a problem sometimes, but the deck is loaded with a lot of mono R removal. Blood moon is obviously a bigger problem, but imo optimized zurgo lists shouldn't be playing enchantments that aren't named sulfuric vortex (or maybe pyrostatic pillar) anyway. This deck runs
Circle of Protection: Red
which fixes the matchup problem on its own. But watch out for the occasional Skullcrack and craftier zurgo players who also run
Flames of the Blood Hand
.
Talrand, Sky Summoner: 75-25
Rafiq of the many/Bant 50-50: Bant in general seems to be a color that I personally struggle with a lot. Unlike zurgo where the adjustments needed are obvious, I can't seem to think of anti-bant tech other than to try and outmaneuver your opponent and hope your draws help you do so. True-name nemesis + rafiq protected by soft counters is definitely the worst case scenario, but other board states hurt us as well. The bant list I'm playing against also has a lot of manlands. I noticed I win most of my matches via planeswalker pressure. I find getting at least one planeswalker to resolve while keeping opposing creatures at a minimum puts us in a great spot. Late game, bant's soft counters don't do much to hurt us.My winrate started to improve after I started being cautious about when monarch should go online.
Nissa flipwalker (rampy eldrazi) 60-40: Balance/mass land destruction = win. They can't counter anything we do, so frequent sweeps and aggressive tutoring brings us on top most of the time.
Selvala (MonoG) 60-40: Same as nissa, sweeps + MLD setups are key to the matchup.
Geist 60-40: Since we have pyroclasm, radiant flames, rolling earthquake, toxic deluge, damnation, wrath of god, council's judgment and liliana of the veil, we have a lot of outs vs geist. Problem is if he resolves with mana open to protect him, we're screwed. Pressure with hand disrupt, counterbait with walkers and even marchesa if necessary. It's not mono-blue so even if there are a crapload of counters, mathematically speaking not every card in his hand will be a counterspell. Difficult matchup, but definitely winnable. I have not tested against geist since adding innocent blood and diabolic edict, but I'm guessing that will make the matchup even more positive.
Baral 80-20: Given that it's a combo deck, I'm shocked this match swings so much in our favor. But then again, baral's wincon is mostly Polymorph --> emrakul, so getting rid of baral solves that problem. And with all our removal, it's not so hard to keep baral in the command zone. The 20% loss ratio came from losing via Baral's plan B, which is Hinder/Spell Crumple --> Tunnel Vision. Using hide / seek to extract emrakul from the library is a really good play. They're pretty much out of wincons if they do not play a backup eldrazi.
