Marchesa, The Black Rose - Primer
Commander / EDH Aggro Aristocrats Counters Primer Sacrifice Stax UBR (Grixis)
Land (35)
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1x
Blood Crypt
- 1x Bloodstained Mire
- 1x Cephalid Coliseum
- 1x Choked Estuary
- 1x City of Brass
- 1x Command Tower
- 1x Dragonskull Summit
- 1x Drowned Catacomb
- 1x Fabled Passage
- 1x Forge of Heroes
- 1x Ghost Quarter
- 1x Graven Cairns
- 1x Guildmages' Forum
- 1x High Market
- 2x Island
- 1x Lazotep Quarry
- 1x Mountain
- 1x Phyrexian Tower
- 1x Polluted Delta
- 1x Reliquary Tower
- 1x Scavenger Grounds
- 1x Smoldering Marsh
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1x
Steam Vents
- 1x Strip Mine
- 1x Sulfurous Springs
- 1x Sunken Hollow
- 4x Swamp
- 1x Tainted Isle
- 1x Underground River
- 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
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1x
Watery Grave
Sorcery (7)
Creature (27)
- 1x Aether Channeler
- 1x Baleful Strix
- 1x Canoptek Tomb Sentinel
- 1x Carrion Feeder
- 1x Cytoplast Manipulator
- 1x Dauthi Voidwalker
- 1x Dockside Extortionist
- 1x Drana, Liberator of Malakir
- 1x Glen Elendra Archmage
- 1x Grim Haruspex
- 1x Imperial Recruiter
- 1x Iron Apprentice
- 1x Mausoleum Wanderer
- 1x Nicol Bolas, the Ravager Flip
- 1x Oona's Blackguard
- 1x Plaguecrafter
- 1x Sage of Fables
- 1x Scorn-Blade Berserker
- 1x Skinrender
- 1x Smothering Abomination
- 1x Spark Double
- 1x Viscera Seer
- 1x Voidmage Prodigy
- 1x Warren Soultrader
- 1x Wurmcoil Engine
- 1x Yahenni, Undying Partisan
- 1x Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
Enchantment (7)
Commander (1)
Artifact (13)
- 1x Ashnod's Altar
- 1x Fellwar Stone
- 1x Lightning Greaves
- 1x Mana Crypt
- 1x Mox Diamond
- 1x Phyrexian Altar
- 1x Scroll of Fate
- 1x Shadowspear
- 1x Skullclamp
- 1x Sol Ring
- 1x Talisman of Creativity
- 1x Talisman of Dominance
- 1x Talisman of Indulgence
Instant (10)
Marchesa, the Black Rose - Primer
Grixis.
- Cunning & logic, perfection through knowledge.
- Selfishness, power through ruthlessness & opportunity.
- Impulse, Freedom through action.
Death, Darkness, Undead, Hatred, Envy, and a lot of other bad things for our opponents.
This is a primer for the queen of the grixis color wedge. (Or at least the one who will become queen.)
Be sure to check the "considered cards" section during spoiler seasons! (As well as generally for updates/changes)
See Also, Budget Marchesa, and Moxfield List
Marchesa, the Black Rose is a commander who offers an extremely resilient gameplan with a powerful synergistic effect to build around.
This Deck is good for intermediate skill level players as there are some neat interactions and a lot of synergistic cards to play around.
You will like playing this deck if you like sacrificing creatures, stax like decks, and playing games close to the wire.
You will not like this deck if your meta has a lot of graveyard hate or enchantress decks.
Marchesa is a great “75%” or “mid-power” commander. She excels at a table with mid power decks and fairs well with battle cruiser and other decks in these ranges of play. Marchesa does not work at a 100% competitive table as well seeing as the nature of gameplay is much different.
Marchesa and all her creatures are extremely resilient, the only way to get rid of them is generally with multiple cards that exile creatures and graveyards.
The deck thrives in a creature oriented meta and has strong card draw and protection available.
Grave hate can really put a damper on our strategy, cards like Rest in Peace
can be GG since we have few ways to deal with enchantments. Cards like Bojuka Bog generally are annoying, but not game ending for us as we don’t constantly rely on the graveyard like a reanimator deck.
Grixis is a bit lite on the ramp effects, so grab yourself some mana rocks.
The deck is fairly reliant on Marchesa to be in play, so constant hate on her can be an issue, but generally it’s very easy to play around since she can bring herself back from the grave.
- Dethrone: Whenever this creature attacks the player with the most life or tied for most life, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
First a few important things to note about dethrone.
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Dethrone doesn’t trigger if the creature attacks a planeswalker, even if its controller has the most life.
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Once Dethrone triggers, it doesn’t matter what happens to the players’ life totals before the ability resolves. You’ll put a +1/+1 counter on the creature even if the defending player doesn’t have the most life as the ability resolves.
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The +1/+1 counter is put on the creature before blockers are declared.
So, let’s talk about Dethrone. On its face, it makes our creatures bigger when we’re behind on life and, importantly, if we are tied for most life as well. So Dethrone is a mechanic which helps us push towards a lead. And best of all it’s on attack, so even if there are blockers we can still get the counters.
From this we know Marchesa gives us value while we are working in the shadows to usurp the throne, eg the highest life total. Innately this means she is geared towards playing from behind.
- Other creatures you control have dethrone.
Great, so not only does Marchesa get stronger from attacking the opponent in the lead, but she makes it so all of our creatures do so as well. This means we don’t necessarily have to attack with her to get value from her or the Dethrone ability.
- Whenever a creature you control with a +1/+1 counter on it dies, return that card to the battlefield under your control at the beginning of the next end step.
Now here is where we get to Marchesa’s really important ability. If Dethrone is Marchesa’s bread, this is her butter. Any time any creature we control with a +1/+1 counter on it dies it comes back at the end of the turn it died.
This is where we build our deck.
So how do we do that?
First, we know we want to make +1/+1 counters and to sacrifice creatures and then in some way profit from those things.
A few things to note about the ability:
- “At the beginning of the next end step”
This means we can recur our creatures with +1/+1 counters over and over and get a ton of value from them, but only once per turn. And it leaves them vulnerable in the graveyard until that next end step. This means instant speed sacrifice outlets are prefered, and that we have to pay attention to when we sacrifice things as they don’t come back instantly.
- Marchesa doesn’t care where the +1/+1 counter came from.
This means we do not have to attack a player and trigger dethrone to benefit from her last ability. Any +1/+1 counter will do.
- If Marchesa has a +1/+1 counter on her when she dies, she will return to the battlefield under your control because of her own ability.
So not only do our other creatures all have recursion, but she protects herself as well. Important to note about this is that you must put her in the graveyard and not into the command zone for this to work. But because of this, Marchesa is an extremely resilient commander. Most of the time your entire board will be invulnerable to anything but repeated exile effects.
Getting marchesa out as early as possible is generally step one. In the intermediary turns resolving other cards is of course fine. You need to get her out and you want to attack with her at least once to get a +1 counter on her. From there she can sit and watch for the majority of the game.
By running a decent selection of ramp artifacts you should be able to get her out around turn 3 pretty commonly. At this point many decks are still just getting set up, so it should be fairly easy to get her on board and dodge removal.
Once Marchesa is safely on board with a +1 Counter our strategy becomes one of attrition. The Black Rose is a deck based around gaining slow, inevitable, incremental value. All the while slowly draining our opponents.
The optimal board state is to have a creature like Iron Apprentice that is free to sacrifice since it has its own +1 counter by default, and some kind of value engine which we can fuel with our Lamb of choice. Cards like Skullclamp, Grave Pact, Shifting Shadow, or etc. There are approximately ten cards in each category (Altars, Lambs, & Value), so you should pretty reliably be able to get an engine running in every game.
You should strive to complete as good of a land base as you can afford. This is MtG and that means the more money you spend the better your mana base will be, so I’ll leave the specifics to you since, outside of suggesting that you run as many fetches and duals as you can, there’s not much to be said on this front. I will note that the deck is mostly black, and then some blue with just a little red, so you should try to primarily run B/x duals.
That said, I’m going to primarily focus on just our utility lands here.
- Pain Lands
Underground River, Sulfurous Springs, City of Brass, Cephalid Colosseum
Managing our life total is fairly important in this deck. Being able to move our life total down at will to enable Dethrone triggers can be important at times, and so pain lands give us a good tool for the job.
- Sacrifice Lands
Phyrexian Tower and High Market
These are uncounterable sacrifice outlets we can use to trigger our ETB and Dies effects as needed.
This acts as an insurance policy for Marchesa, ensuring that she comes out immediately with a +1/+1 counter to protect herself from removal, as well as occasionally doing the same for other creatures like Baleful Strix if we so choose
Gaea’s Cradle be gone! Removing cards like Nykthos and Cabal Coffers can be critical in some games.
Most decks run cards like swiftfoot boots, and so having the option to remove that can be important at times. You could cut this if it’s not an issue in your meta though.
Between necropotence, recurring Toothy triggers, and various other effects, we can end up with a relatively full hand. Discarding to the graveyard isn’t as beneficial in this deck as it is in other grave based decks, so I’ve opted for a relatively unobtrusive way to keep the excess cards.
This lets us ensure that other graveyard decks can’t get the jump on us, and generally it won’t impact us much due to the nature of marchesa’s ability only leaving creatures in the yard for a turn at most.
It’s a pain land most of the time and a triple loot when we need it. We can pop it at EoT just before Marchesa pulls a bunch of cards out of the yard and be able to get threshold fairly reliably.
A great insurance policy for Marchesa, ensuring she comes into play with a +1 counter immediately and it doesn't care if we cast her, meaning we can use it when she comes back from the grave too.
The two most important things in MtG are Card Draw & Ramp. If you’ve got a good kit for those things you’re likely to win most games.
1 mana, Draw two. This card works well with a lot of decks, and since we’re planning to sacrifice our creatures often this gives us some added juice, and means that even if we don’t sacrifice something with an ETB or other effect, we still get great value.
Similar to Skullclamp, this gives us card draw whenever we kill a creature, and that will be often. An advantage of Grim Haruspex is that it’s ability will work on our opponent’s turns as well, whereas skullclamp is limited to our turn only.
There will be many times when creatures we control have more than one +1 counter on them, and this lets us turn excess counters into new cards.
Rhystic Study, and Necropotence are format stars and will each give you a good amount of card draw if you can get them out for even one turn cycle.
Thief of Sanity lets us deny card from our opponents as well as gain access to some off color effects like ramp spells and etc.
This card is addressed further in the "Altars" section as he primarily serves as a sacrifice outlet, though the fact that he also acts as removal and card draw is a bigger plus than the Swiss flag.
Cards like Baleful Strix, Solemn Simulacrum, & Impaler Shrike are all reusable sources of card draw so long as we can get +1 Counters out on them. Cards like Iron Apprentice and Arcbound Worker have some great synergy here as they can be freely sacrificed and will enable other creatures to be as well.
I’ve been experimenting with a few other cantrips. Faithless Looting is my current favorite, being able to dig through 4 cards with one spell.
I think card selection is slightly more important than raw card draw in EDH. Cards like Impulse which allow you to dig four cards deep help dramatically in this regard. It being an instant is also significant as it allows you to leave up counterspell mana and if nothing happens you can still make use of the mana before your turn.
Being in Grixis we’re essentially limited to only artifact sources to get us ramp.
Ideally you want to keep most of your ramp to CMC 2 or less, but there’s only so many options that fit that criteria, and not all of them are in budget for a lot of people.
Talisman of Dominance and Talisman of Indulgence
These are essentially the pain lands of mana rocks. CMC 2, come in untapped, and add colored mana when needed.
As we’re in a 3 color deck, chances are high that at least one other person will share a color or more with you. At worst this is a 2 mana colorless rock and probably still worth running.
Sweet, sweet enchantment removal. (or other things too I guess) and in the time between when you kill someone’s Rest in Peace and when you cast it it can be a mana rock. Good times. It seems like a lot of Mana, but in grixis were pretty much always forced to pay 7-10 Mana for this. Between Oblivion Stone costing 8+, All is Dust at 7, Scour from Existence at 7 and Nev's disk having to survive a turn I'd rather have a Mana rock for the early game as a bonus to my expensive Rest in Peace/ Blood Moon killer.
Both card draw and ramp, recurring this guy over and over again is a great way to kick your game into warp drive.
Mox Diamond, Mana Crypt, etc…
If you got ‘em they’re good. But not everyone’s been playing for long enough to own them since back in the day and they’re only going up in price. Other options like Mind Stone or Everflowing Chalice may be good replacements. Hedron Archive is another good, cheap rock that can be card draw later in the game.
Repeatable Ramp is always good in grixis. This card is a real workhorse.
Marchesa will let us flip any permanent we place with this card. Lands, Enchantments, Artifacts, Creatures, whatever. even looking at it as essentially just another mana rock it's still not bad, but the ability to cheat in some extra land drops is what's really caught my eye here.
Instant Speed is always a plus, and the life loss is hardly a drawback
Probably the best tutor in the game. Get anything you want for 1B
Recently reprinted, this is basically just another Demonic Tutor in our deck.
This lets us control our life total in a pinch, paying as much life as we need, and also allowing us to essentially find any card we need for UB and a couple life.
70-75% of our creatures are searchable with recruiter.
9/10 times this is going to have basically no cost since +1 Counters are easy to come by. So cheating out a creature every turn for essentially free goes a long way to creating a strong board state.
Marchesa gives us the ability to create +1 counters by attacking the player with the most life, but that’s not always a good idea. Sometimes they have a board that’s too big, sometimes they have a ghostly prison, sometimes you need blockers. There’re plenty of reasons you might not be able to get Dethrone triggers.
With that in mind it’s extremely important that we be able to keep our game plan going without relying on the combat step. To that end we want to try to select creatures, spells, and effects that can accomplish this.
For example, Unspeakable Symbol allows us to create instant speed +1 counters, meaning we can recur our Wurmcoil Engine or an Evoked Muldrifter with ease.
The following are examples of cards that create their own +1 Counters, independent of Dethrone triggers.
additionally, any creature with flying is generally able to secure a dethrone trigger in combat with little issue.
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Guildmages' Forum/Forge of Heroes
That’s approximately one third of our creatures which are totally self sufficient.
There are an additional two creatures which create +1 Counters in Sage of Fables and Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. They only put +1 Counters on other creatures, but they do enable some pretty crazy plays as well.
Virtually all of our sacrifice outlets should be free and function at instant speed so we can make use of marchesa’s ‘return at end of turn’ ability. On our opponent’s turns as well as our own.
Phyrexian Altar / Ashnod's Altar
Some of our best sacrifice outlets as it lets you turn creatures into mana at instant speed.
Being able to set up our draws is nice
He even sets himself up to be sacrificed safely. (he can self cannibalize too, so that’s good)
Sac outlet and card draw, plus 4 power flying. Worst case scenario it can suicide if you haven't got much to feed it.
Not only does he let us sacrifice creatures, but again, he creates his own +1 counters making him even better as a choice.
Lands are generally a lot harder to remove and though they only let you sacrifice one creature per turn they’re a valuable tool in our box.
This card lives up to its namesake. Instant speed sac outlet, instant speed draw, instant speed removal. I have never been disappointed even a single time I have resolved Yawgmoth. He seriously gives some insane value. This is now definitely one of my top cards for this deck. I was admittedly a bit put off by the thought of my deck becoming mono four-drops at first, but he has performed significantly better than I had hoped. dropping another four-drop to slot him in was easy and I have not missed the card he replaced since he was added.
Ready for the slaughter, these creatures are important as they allow you to freely sacrifice something each turn.
This fella is a hard worker alright. 1 mana for a creature that comes in with a +1 counter right away and since he only has 1 toughness Skullclamp loves this guy. He can even pump up other creatures like Wurmcoil Engine, Baleful Strix, Plaguecrafter, or Glen Elendra Archmage when he dies, getting them ready for their turn on the altar.
Rakdos Cackler or Arcbound Worker, these guys aren't quite as good, but again, being ready to go from the gate is a good thing. We can sac them every turn without worry.
Not only is this a good blocker, but if we can recur it it can also be a good source of card draw.
You might be thinking “no we definitely don’t want that” but that’s not correct, sacrificing her is a very powerful strategy. You can take a creature with her, leaving her with one +1 counter still. Then sacrifice the creature you took and then sacrifice her. This results in you getting to keep your opponent’s creature indefinitely and also getting to refresh Cytoplast Manipulator for round two. Or you can just use her to graft your own creatures as protection.
Solemn Simulacrum, Atsushi, the Blazing Sky
Both Card Advantage and Ramp in one easy to recur package. What a deal!
It's a clone with its own +1 counter, so chances are it'll be fairly decent with that alone, but on top of that it can be a second Marchesa since the copy is not legendary.
I used to run Phyrexian Metamorph as a clone effect that could double as a mana rock or other artifact in a pinch, but hostage taker is much better for the deck. They have the same CMC, and accomplish the same goal of allowing us to get an opponent’s card, but hostage taker is a permanent copy, so when we reset hostage taker we don’t lose anything, and also our opponents lose their best artifacts/creatures indefinitely. We do unfortunately have to play the mana for the card we take, but you don’t have to only take big bomb creatures, you can merely steal cheap creatures and rocks like Sol Ring or Fellwar Stone or Elvish Mystics and you’ll get ahead in value fast.
We have a good density of creatures we can sacrifice for free, and if we can get this looping multiple times in a turn cycle somehow then it’s a very painful attrition war for our opponents to fight.
This will pump out a stream of steady tokens all game, on anyone's turn, and they're all flying creatures too, meaning they're probably going to be able to connect for 2 each with quite some regularity. (Assuming you don't sacrifice them for something else first.)
This card doesn't quite fit perfectly into any one section, it does a lot of different things in the deck. It works as a big beater, sacrifice fodder, removal, life total manipulator, and a token maker. As the game moves on lifelink is a pretty important keyword for us too. We can be playing close to the wire at times and being able to refill with a few lifelink tokens or the original can be important. Once we have the board controlled with Grave Pact or similar we don't need to worry about life totals as much, it's more about closing the game out before anyone can re-stabilize. Cards like Cytoplast Manipulator, Drana, Liberator of Malakir, or Unspeakable Symbol can supplement dethrone entirely once we're at this stage of the game too.
This is a very good creature for us. As I have mentioned before, flying is a great evasion option, but the ability to secure extra combat steps is fairly important as well. As you'll notice, the majority of our creatures don't have a ton of power. Many are sitting in the 1 - 2 range. Dethrone triggers will ensure that they are all getting at least somewhat of a buff, but getting to swing in at someone with four or five 2/2 creatures twice in one turn means we're probably knocking someone out of the game.
According to multiple judges I've spoken to, this interaction does work, though I will edit if proven otherwise.
Animating the Mirror as a creature, getting a +1 Counter on it, and sending it to the graveyard will bring it back at EoT.
In addition to it already being able to turn into almost anything on the field you need it to be, this interaction really pushed it over the top as an include.
Regarding Board Wipes: Marchesa is extremely resilient to board wipes, even Merciless Eviction can suck it if we have a sac outlet on board. Clearing the board means that we have essentially lost nothing save for perhaps some tokens or a creature or two, and our opponents are back at square one.
Re: Merciless Eviction, if you have a sacrifice outlet on board, simply sacrifice all of your creatures and then marchesa last and you should have everything come right back into play at EoT safe and sound. Assuming you have some +1 Counters floating about.
Generally this ends up costing R seeing as in a 4 Player game 8 creatures on the board is easy to come by. As you’ll see, our other board wipes are generally a bit more expensive, so this gives us a cheap, early option.
At 8 mana this is very expensive, but generally the problem with board wipes is that you want to have enough mana to cast a few cards and start rebuilding your board. We don’t have that particular problem as our creatures rarely stay dead. The cycling mode is available as an instant speed token hoser, and the 8 mana mode will usually net us somewhere around 10 cards on average.
I’ve elected to not run Damnation in favor of Decree of Pain for now, but you can run either one based on your preference/meta. If you need an earlier wipe then you’ll have to go for the CMC4 choice.
The Number 1 best blue spell. As with Decree of pain, 7 mana here can be tough, but it will generally win you the game if you cast it.
This is a recurring, single sided board sweeper. It may not hit the big stuff all the time, but being able to clear out a token swarm or a bunch of angels can be very difficult for some decks to handle. A neat interaction is to play him while sage of fables is in play, and exploiting himself, essentially permanently denying any creature with toughness 3 or less until you decide to stop. It's not in my list right now, but it is a very good choice still.
A good alternative to something like Decree of Pain. I chose to go for decree since I wanted to have the option to cycle at instant speed if I needed, but you could definitely run this instead if you have more of an enchantment problem in your meta.
We run a small package of counterspells and a few creature based options that we can re-use.
While this does give our opponent some cards, it is a hard “no” for 1U, which is good as we may not always have UUx open for other counters, and there’s no conditional clause, such as ‘non creature’ or etc.
Probably the best counterspell in the format. It does cost UU, but getting some free mana our next turn is a big plus.
This counters most of the important effects in EDH that we need it to for U, and gives them a meaningless bird token in exchange.
Voidmage Prodigy / Glen Elendra Archmage
There are a fair number of wizards in the deck actually, but most times Voidmage will just be sacrificing himself. Having a reusable counterspell on the table is also a huge psychological factor for opponents.
The big daddys of decks that focus on sacrificing creatures. These two enchantments will let you put a strong lock on the board considering how many death triggers you’re going to be able to get in a round.
Ignore the part about Rogues, we’re not concerned with it. However, having every creature force a discard on hit can really put an anchor in the side of our opponent’s plans.
A 4/4 flying creature for 4 mana with a good ETB would be playable on it's own. Throw in the option to transform him into a great PW if we want and that's just icing.
Taking good cards from our opponents and either exiling them, playing them, or sending them to the grave at our discretion is just too good on a cheap flying body.
This cheap equipment gives us a way to regain some life later on in the game when we might be running low, and offers some good combat play with Deathtouch.
Standard EDH staple creature protection option.
One of our few ways to deal with enchantments, and a generally decent removal effect in color.
Instant speed exile effects are always first choice for spot removal, and this is one of our few, few options in our colors.
Generally paying the 5 life won’t be too damaging to our game, and sometimes may even be needed. You’ll have to see if this option works in your meta. Personally I’m still testing it out, but exile effects are a little hard to come by in grixis. You could try Hero’s Downfall or some other removal as well.
Being able to spot remove a planeswalker is something that I like to have on hand.
Almost every deck runs artifacts, and being able to get rid of a few here and there can really help push you ahead. Vandalblast, Shattering Spree, and By Force are other good options depending on if you need to hit a lot of artifacts at once or just a few here and there. scalpel v hammer
Works as ramp in the early game and carries over to removal later on if we need it. One of our very limited options for enchantment removal.
The ETB alone can be removal for smaller targets, and this can potentially synergize with Yawgmoth, Thran Physician's proliferate as well.
Pulling from EDHREC to see what cards are popular with Marchesa, I see several that might draw your attention, and I’ll go over why I’m not running many of the most popular options.
Flayer of the Hatebound/Stalking Vengeance/Warstorm Surge
I actually used to run Flayer back in the early days, along with Stalking Vengeance, but they’re both just so incredibly expensive. By that stage of the game their effects aren’t even that important either. For 6-8 mana there’s a lot of better things you can be doing. If you run them see how many games you go where they just sit in your hand as you say “hmm i’ll play them next turn maybe”
Making most or all of our creatures unblockable seems great, we can get in for a ton of damage or even knock someone out. But truth be told it’s not that important. If you attack and they do block you’re coming out ahead on the trade 9/10 times and so there’s not really much downside there, you’ll have a clear board the next turn probably. And we’re practically immune to board wipes, so we don’t have to worry about that the board getting too full to attack through either. I’d rather run Damnation in this slot given the choice since it’ll be a lot more effective at solving this problem.
I’d opt for Phyrexian Metamorph as it can copy creatures or artifacts, and potentially costs 1 less mana. The haste and extra instance of dethrone aren’t that important compared to the flexibility of being able to copy artifacts and creatures. i opted for Spark Double as a clone effect though since it generates +1/+1 counters and can even act as a second Marchesa.
I recommend Grim Haruspex instead. It’s 2 mana less and does essentially the same exact thing for our purposes not to mention it's less color pips, has morph if needed, and is also a wizard.
When it hits it’s pretty cool, but for 7 mana it’s not going to hit often. I spent far too many games with this just clogging up my hand and haven’t missed it once since I cut it.
The tutor package I’m running seems to work well enough that I haven’t bothered with her.
Captivating Crew/Mark of Mutiny/Threaten/Zealous Conscripts/Act of Treason/etc etc
Stealing things with these effects is a popular strategy people play with marchesa, but I’m not going that route, so these cards have little place in this version of the deck.
He’s a sac outlet that makes his own +1 Counters, but if you don’t have a creature to sacrifice he is useless and also ultimately he’s a 5/5 beater with no evasion. I’d rather run a cheaper sac outlet or a better beater.
He’s very expensive at CMC7. while he’s a strong threat for the late game I’ve been tuning my deck’s average CMC lower, so cards in the 7 drop slot have been making their migration. He generally is impactful as soon as you play him since he has haste and a built in way to get +1 counters, but i think his place is in a more battle cruiser type meta.
This card does nothing. I have no idea why people run it. All your creatures come into play at EoT from Marchesa’s ability, so that means if you sacrifice them on your opponent’s turn they can still attack on your turn. The creature’s we have available that come in with +1 counters by default aren’t really that important to attack with in the first place. do you just reallllly need to swing in with that arcbound worker right away on T5? She’s a 4/4 for 4 mana with no evasion in two colors with an irrelevant ability. I don’t see any reason to run her.
At 5 mana this guy is relatively expensive and honestly my opponents usually don’t have anything better for my game plan than I do, so there’s not usually much need for the ability. That said, you might have a use for him in the right meta, but i generally avoid him.
I feel like 3 mana per use is a bit much for this and there’s only so many basics in the deck. Solemn Simulacrum is generally better
it isn't a bad card, but Yahenni, Undying Partisan is better. Why not both? Gotta make room for cards somewhere.
What have I been telling you about 7 drops?
We have better ways to control our life total than this and we’re pretty light on red cards, so the mana isn’t really needed either.
many of our creatures make +1 counters out of combat, so the ability isn’t needed that much, and at 6 mana it’s probably not worth it.
I just don’t want to run the combo, but you totally can.
What are you trying to do? Run a mono 7 drop deck here? How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man? Running Sidisi or most other low cost tutors is the better option I think.
See Herald of Secret Streams / Dack's Duplicate
I’m cautious about including too much lifegain in the deck, and at 6 mana he’s a bit tough to play as he’s getting to the top of our curve and is essentially just a removal spell anyway. I prefer Merciless Executioner type effects for looping removal.
We’re not really going to have very many creatures in our graveyard to make use of, and she paints a huge target on your head when you play her for .. 7 mana.
Not a bad way to get bodies on the floor, but you’ve got to have a sac outlet around and you’re only making 2/2’s with your 6 mana time sink. There are better ways to make tokens in my opinion.
Actually this is not a bad option. it's definitely something you could consider. So far I've found other options like Desecrated Tomb provides a larger number of tokens to the board over the course of a game though, and flying is usually more relevant than islandwalk.
Vigean Graftmage and other Graft creatures
By and large they all have pretty useless abilities so I’d skip almost all of them.
It always took me way too much effort to get this thing moving. It’s cool when it works and you’re pumping out a 9/9 every turn, but it just didn’t happen enough for my liking.
Personally I don’t rate it very highly in EDH since you just don’t really have high enough fetch land / shuffle effect density to make great use of it like you do in Legacy. Cards like Ponder and Preordain are better here.
Living Death/Animate Dead/Reanimate/Necromancy/etc
We’re not running a reanimator deck, we’re running a recursion deck. Our creatures typically aren’t in the yard more than a phase or two, so these effects aren’t very useful. A single Phyrexian Reclamation should be enough for our needs. Living Death has some utility as a pseudo board wipe though.
Black is a very popular color in EDH, so I avoid Doom Blade type effects.
Honestly I prefer Shifting Shadow for cheating creatures out. Shadows guarantees you get something every turn, whereas Sneak Attack requires something in hand. Not to mention that by and large our creatures aren’t terribly expensive to play, so I think finding them in the deck is a bit more important than merely cheating them out.
if you are looking for a cheaper way to cheat things out then Scroll of Fate is a good option that can even let you ramp lands.
It's not actually any great savings on mana compared to Unstable Obelisk, All is Dust, Perilous Vault or Scour from Existence since it still costs 8 mana to use it, and if you want to save anything it costs even more, as well as placing a large target on your head.
For me Grim Haruspex synergizes better, and personally I'm not a fan of the life loss on reaper being mandatory when the same effect is free on GH. There are plenty of life total manipulating effects in the deck as it is, but you could definitely run this card if you want to. Especially if a card like Necropotence or Rhystic Study is out of budget.
I felt that Toothy, Imaginary Friend or Impaler Shrike would be a better option since they don't require much upkeep, but i've elected to go for some alternative, lower cost cards like Watcher for Tomorrow instead. you could probably run any of these cards though if desired.
Grenzo, Dungeon Warden & Timestream Navigator this is a pointless 3 card do nothing win more combo that should never be run in this deck. the time and effort involved in piecing this jank together in any given game is not worth it. these two cards have no other synergy with the deck in any way and should absolutely not be given a second thought. if you're going to run a combo you may as well run a better one considering it'll probably require less effort for most of them.
Maybe-board cards are possible substitutions you might make based on your meta, play-style, etc, as well as cards I am actively testing. For cards I am testing I will touch on them briefly below.
I will also try to address the cards being replaced and my thoughts on the choices as well.
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93% Casual
Competitive
Revision 153 See all
(2 months ago)
| +1 | Aether Channeler | main |
| -1 | Atsushi, the Blazing Sky | main |
| -1 | Banewhip Punisher | main |
| +1 | Chthonian Nightmare | main |
| -1 | Embereth Veteran | maybe |
| -1 | Gonti, Lord of Luxury | main |
| +1 | Lazotep Quarry | main |
| -1 | Mari, the Killing Quill | main |
| -1 | Mirage Mirror | maybe |
| -1 | Phyrexian Reclamation | main |
| +1 | Skinrender | main |
| -1 | Temple of Deceit | main |
| +1 | Warren Soultrader | main |
| -1 | Watcher for Tomorrow | maybe |
| Top Ranked |
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| Date added | 8 years |
| Last updated | 2 months |
| Legality | This deck is not Commander / EDH legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 12 - 0 Mythic Rares 49 - 0 Rares 23 - 0 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons |
| Cards | 100 |
| Avg. CMC | 2.62 |
| Tokens | Bird 1/1 W, Bird 2/2 U, Copy Clone, Energy Reserve, Manifest 2/2 C, Morph 2/2 C, Treasure, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Deathtouch, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Lifelink |
| Folders | Marchesa the Black Rose, Cool decks, Cool EDH Decks, like, EDH Primers, 75%, Want to build!, Merchesa, Things I want to build, Saved |
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