ALL HAIL THE QUEEN *Primer* (Politics EDH)

Commander / EDH Aikido Control Multiplayer Pillow Fort RBW (Mardu)

Junkygoatgibblets

Subterfuge (24)

• 1x Benevolent Offering
• 1x Breena, the Demagogue
• 1x Crown of Doom
• 1x Curse of Bloodletting
• 1x Curse of Chaos
• 1x Curse of Disturbance
• 1x Curse of Opulence
• 1x Curse of Stalked Prey
• 1x Curse of Vengeance
• 1x Curse of Vitality
• 1x Humble Defector
• 1x Hunted Dragon
• 1x Hunted Horror
• 1x Hunted Lammasu
• 1x Mathas, Fiend Seeker
• 1x Scheming Symmetry
• 1x Secret Rendezvous
• 1x Tempt with Vengeance
• 1x Tempting Contract
• 1x Vow of Duty
• 1x Vow of Lightning
• 1x Vow of Malice
• 1x Vow of Torment
• 1x Wishclaw Talisman

Army (8)

• 1x Alliance of Arms
• 1x Archetype of Courage
• 1x Heliod, Sun-Crowned
• 1x Imperial Recruiter
• 1x Nyx-Fleece Ram
• 1x Strionic Resonator
• 1x Sun Titan
• 1x Teysa Karlov

Ramp (3)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Thought Vessel

Land (32)

• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Isolated Chapel
• 1x Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
• 5x Mountain
• 6x Plains
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Smoldering Marsh
• 3x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Field
• 1x Tainted Peak
• 1x Thespian's Stage
• 1x Throne of the High City
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Sovereignty (12)

• 1x Baleful Mastery
• 1x Blind Obedience
• 1x Bloodthirsty Blade
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Council's Judgment
• 1x Dauthi Voidwalker
• 1x Disrupt Decorum
• 1x Esper Sentinel
• 1x Opposition Agent
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Spirit of the Labyrinth
• 1x Swords to Plowshares

Commander (1)

Protection (16)

• 1x Athreos, God of Passage
• 1x Blood Artist
• 1x Circle of Despair
• 1x Crawlspace
• 1x Ghostly Prison
• 1x Inkshield
• 1x Mangara, the Diplomat
• 1x Marchesa's Decree
• 1x Maze of Ith
• 1x Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker
• 1x Nils, Discipline Enforcer
• 1x Orzhov Advokist
• 1x Selfless Squire
• 1x Sphere of Safety
• 1x Teferi's Protection
• 1x Windborn Muse

Finishers (4)

• 1x Captive Audience
• 1x Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
• 1x Master of Cruelties
• 1x Stuffy Doll

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Maybeboard

Other (13)

• 1x Aegis of the Gods
• 1x Agent of Erebos
• 1x Anax, Hardened in the Forge
• 1x Aphemia, the Cacophony
• 1x Archetype of Aggression
• 1x Athreos, Shroud-Veiled
• 1x Daxos, Blessed by the Sun
• 1x Erebos, God of the Dead
• 1x Grim Guardian
• 1x Heliod, God of the Sun
• 1x Iroas, God of Victory
• 1x Mogis, God of Slaughter
• 1x Underworld Coinsmith

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Those who Seize power must have the means to hold it -Queen Marchesa

We are back at it with making a primer for a deck that I love! My name is Junky, and I LOVE magic. I also love building decks, even if I don't always get to play them! This is a WIP build irl, but the full deck list is right here, waiting to be fully purchased and played. I hope you enjoy my take on a Queen Marchesa Deck!

A huge thank you to alexjustdoit whose Marchesa Aikido deck inspired me to make my own take on the Queen! Long may she reign!

Introduction

What does our Kingdom Stand for? Show

Marchesa knew her rival would take his own life, but she wanted him to have the final victory as he died, even if she had known his play all along.

The goal of this deck is simple: Use everyone's plans against them. We employ the use of curses and enchantments to goad the other players into attacking major threats at the board, all while slowly building up our kingdom to withstand the wrath that is sure to come our way eventually. Our creatures will offer us protection and ways to control our opponents, and at the end of the game will end up slaying those who have dared to oppose our rise to the top of the pile. The deck in and of itself is not extremely fast, relying on making deals and showing gestures of "good favor" to those around us, while plotting their downfall. We are playing a bit more aggro than some political decks, and making sure that when push comes to shove, we can wipe out a single-player as quickly as possible.

Should you Rule this Kingdom? Show

This is not a straight forward deck, as you will see as we get into the strategies and synergies later on. This deck will require a lot of maneuvering and thinking to come out on top.

You may like this deck if:

You enjoy Politics

You enjoy keeping the game at YOUR pace

You want to think about your next move AND your opponents next 3-4 moves in response to your actions

You want to feel like Royalty

You probably won't enjoy this deck if:

You want to go super fast

You like Combos

You want to let other's play their games their way

You don't like manipulating the table to get a win

Note: This kind of deck will require you to be playing in a specific type of meta. You don't want to play this with people who get easily salty. You'll also definitely want to be having the "rule 0" conversation with the table before breaking this deck out. This is, in essence, a control deck. People aren't going to be able to do a lot of things without YOUR say so if you're piloting this correctly.

Like a Chess game

Be as Cunning as a Snake Show

"The Black Rose doesn't tolerate Weeds." -Unknown

So as mentioned before one of our main tactics is to rid the table of threats to us in particular. We are going to do this through the use of our curses. Curses, in my opinion, are extremely under-valued in EDH. We will be using curses that don't immediately hinder or hurt the player being cursed, but instead the curses will be used to incentivize other players to attack that person in order to gain "value." Below you'll find some of the heavy hitters in the curse pile.

Curse of Opulence: Grants players Gold in exchange for attacking the cursed player, while also having the bonus of giving us a gold too. This means that we don't even need to attack the player to benefit from this curse.

Curse of Vitality: This one allows for life-gain. Giving us and any attacking player 2 life when they attack the cursed player.

Aside from Curses we also have just normal enchantments. The main one in this category is:

Marchesa's Decree: This enchantment acts as a deterrent to hitting us wide, as it will deal one damage per creature attacking to that creatures' controller.

Appear as Gentle as Lamb Show

"I did offer them a choice...." -Queen Marchesa

The other half of this deck is just a straight forward Pillow Fort strategy. We are going to make it either impossible to attack us through cards like Ghostly Prison, Windborn Muse, Crawlspace, Sphere of Safety and all of the Vows, OR making it so it's just not WORTH attacking us. Athreos, God of Passage means that we can just sit there and respawn our creatures the next turn, Queen Marchesa makes death touch assassins when we're not the monarch (we will rarely BE the monarch), and Archetype of Courage gives those tokens first strike meaning they'll NEVER die from blocking non-indestructible creatures! The next section will show exactly why this deck personifies a wolf in sheep's clothing.

A Strong Kingdom Runs like a Machine

Combos Show

None. We don't have any combos that guarantee us a victory in this deck and this was done on purpose. The point of this deck is to win strictly through Politics. If we just combo'd off for a win (pretty easy in a deck with black, red, and white), it would defeat the whole purpose of the deck! It's also the reason we have almost no tutors in the deck. We aren't trying to look for ways to win. We are trying to use the materials at hand to win.

Synergy Show

"The more secrets you have, the more easily you become my pawn" -Unknown

We DO have some fun synergy in this deck.

Master of Cruelties+Rogue's Passage+Marchesa's Decree means that when we hit someone, they just can't attack us anymore, lest they die from the Decree of the Queen!

Nyx-Fleece Ram+Heliod, Sun-Crowned(Blood Artist can be substituted in for nyx if you want to get more aggressive with your tokens) can actually be a fun little engine when they're on the board! The life gain means you can stay ahead on that commodity while also getting buff tokens (or in some cases a buff sheep).

If you have Tesya Karlov and Blood Artist on board and someone decides to boardwipe you could possibly drain the board for most of, if not all of their life. This is a great way to hold the board hostage and make people think twice about their decision to wipe.

I'm sure there's more, but these are the one's that are the most fun for me. Let me know if you see any down in the comments though!

Reigning Through Time

"Hail to the Queen! Long May She Reign!"

Early Game Show

Our early game strats are pretty straight forward: Depending on your hand you're either going to start incentivizing people at the table OR you're going to start building the fort. Either one of these is good, and will lead to the other in the mid game. We want to make sure we aren't getting taken out early, which is when we'll be at our weakest. Any hand with at least 2 of our colors and either curses or protection spells is going to be good for us, and should be kept. Hands that have less than 2 mana of any kind need to be mulligan'd UNLESS you have a rock to go with it. Our deck has a relatively low cmc, but our land base is low to make sure we can get cards we need quickly. This could be changed in the future, but usually I say if you have 4 lands in hand it's a keeper. Guaranteed land drops for 4 turns can be super strong for our game plan, especially if we hit all three colors. Getting Marchesa out early can give us a good way to get players attacking everyone BUT us.

Mid Game Show

This is the switch position. Whichever strategy we started with should be solidified enough at this point to switch to the other. Preferably we'll have the curses out first, and then pillowfort super hard here. Near the end of this stage of the game is where people really start to realize that we've become much more of a threat than they initially thought. We either have tons of tokens, wayyyy too much mana (gold is king), or a drain engine on the board that makes boardwipes detrimental to the person wiping. Now is the perfect time to take back the monarchy too. If we're pillowforted enough they're playing one spell per turn, forced to pay 4+mana per attacker, and only attacking with 2 creatures per turn, with some not being able to attack us AT ALL.

Late Game Show

This is where we swoop in to steal the win from the "king" of the table. Now our game plan is NOT to play kingmaker. That is a taboo at many tables. However, we do want to ensure that whoever is last is the absolute worst match-up for us. This can be done by cursing a player to oblivion, OR casting the vow's on their threats to make sure they can't touch us. Imagine the infect player's face when they realize that their Blightsteel Colossus can't touch us.... Our goal is to politic our way to a one-on-one then reign the full force of the kingdom down on whatever poor soul is left to deal with us. Captive Audience is a fun card for the endgame. Master of Cruelties and Stuffy Doll are very strong at this point in the game, especially if you have the rogue's passage out. Saving a Bojuka Bog for that graveyard player could be a horribly mean way to end the game out. The point is that at this point in the game, you should have enough stuff or value to end it one on one. It won't always be the nicest win, but it should be relatively quick. Once you hit end-game you should be striving to end the game in 3-4 turn cycles as to not prolong and give the other person a chance to come back from the brink.

Look Out!!! Show

Empty for now as I'm still figuring out this deck's weaknesses. Obviously, we are going to be weak to any counterspells or mass enchantment destruction. Other control decks can force us into a battle of attrition, which is something we MAY be able to win, but it really depends on what they're doing and if they have an infinite combo they can stall for. I'll list decks/cards as I figure them out! Let me know what you guys think as well, a lot of you are much more well versed in MTG than I!

Expand the Kingdom

Eidolon of Rhetoric

As I continue to build and play this deck I'm hoping to figure out where my weakspots are and work within the guidelines I set for myself to make this deck as strong of a political Enchantress deck as it can be.

PLEASE leave suggestions for me in the comments for what YOU think this deck could use.

A Kingdom's Greatest Assets

Best cards in the deck! Either for flavor or fun purposes

Queen Marchesa

Master of Cruelties

Curse of Opulence

Wishclaw Talisman

Top Ranked	Achieved #101 position overall 3 years ago Achieved #74 position in Commander / EDH 3 years ago Achieved #3 position in Commander / EDH RBW (Mardu) 3 years ago
Date added	3 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 0 Mythic Rares 45 - 0 Rares 24 - 0 Uncommons 4 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.06
Tokens	Assassin 1/1 B w/ Haste, Centaur 3/3 G w/ Pro Black, Elemental 1/1 R w/ Haste, Gold, Horror 4/4 B, Inkling 2/1 WB, Knight 2/2 W w/ First Strike, Soldier 1/1 W, Spirit 1/1 W, Monarch Emblem, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B
Based on	[Primer] Political Subterfuge - Marchesa Aikido alexjustdoit EDH