Marchesa, the Black Rose sees victory from the very beginning, grabs hold, and never lets go. Get ahead of your opponents with innocuous early drops like Sage of Epityr, Dusk Legion Zealot, and Trinket Mage, then bring them to their knees by reusing those creatures' effects turn after turn while your team stays immune to most wraths and removal. Shut down their hands with Oona's Blackguard, their permanents with Hostage Taker, their spells with Mausoleum Wanderer, and their graveyards with Heap Doll, then draw through your deck with your Alchemist's Apprentice and Grim Haruspex effects until you find a haymaker to take total control of the game.
The deck's gameplan revolves around value creatures, +1/+1 counter enablers, sacrifice outlets, and strong removal:
Mausoleum Wanderer, Baleful Strix, Phantasmal Image, Imperial Recruiter: The early turns are Marchesa's strong point, something many players miss when building decks around her. Playing 1-, 2-, and 3-mana value creatures is a great way to take advantage of Marchesa's ability, because you can play her on 4 and immediately recur those value creatures while everyone else is still durdling with their mana. I personally like to overload on card quality creatures to ensure I hit all my early land drops and find the missing parts of the Marchesa Three-Piece™ (value creature, counter giver, sac outlet), which is why you see Sage of Epityr in the same deck as Imperial Recruiter. Depending on your playgroup and preferences, cards like Blind Zealot, Burglar Rat, Sedraxis Alchemist, or Spiketail Hatchling could be solid early value creatures that, if recurred enough times, can actually win you a game on the spot.
Vigean Graftmage, Sage of Fables, Metallic Mimic, Cytoplast Manipulator, Sparring Construct: Cards that give my other creatures +1/+1 counters are the most important enablers in the deck as they let me repeatedly sacrifice my creatures for value with Marchesa's ability bringing them back. The graft creatures are especially strong since Marchesa protects them and they protect Marchesa. These creatures also allow me to reuse 1 creature effect on each player's turn with a sac outlet, as the graft creature returns with its counters at end step, then its buddy returns and immediately gets a counter, letting you do it again on the next player's turn. Metallic Mimic was an insane godsend from AER. It usually names Wizard or Human and is able to loop multiple creatures every turn while costing a tidy 2 mana which helps for curving out.
Viscera Seer, Carrion Feeder, Bloodthrone Vampire, Dross Hopper,Goblin Bombardment, Spawning Pit: Marchesa needs sac outlets to recur ETBs with her ability so we play all of the cheap ones, the cheaper the better. I'm not interested in anything above 2 CMC, which competes with my best value creatures. I want to be able to play the sac outlet on turn 1 or 2 into a value creature on 3 so I can recur it on 4 with Marchesa, and if a sac outlet gets removed I want to be able to play another one without it taking my whole turn.
Demon of Dark Schemes, Mindslicer, Awaken the Erstwhile, Puppeteer Clique, Hostage Taker, Sower of Temptation, The Eldest Reborn, Grenzo, Dungeon Warden: The deck wants to curve out early so there aren't many high-cmc cards, but there's a ton of efficient mana sinks between all the card draw and effects like Gonti/Hostage Taker or Grenzo/Demon. I want my wincons to also do things while Marchesa is dead, and so we have theft effects and mana-efficient army makers. Almost all of these cards produce multiple non-token bodies, which means a snowballing effect when Marchesa recurs both the creature's effect and the effect of the creature it stole. Mass discard is also great, as our draw engine will sit on board and pull us far ahead while our opponents discard their spot removal, counterspells, combos, or hate cards that would have stopped us. Lastly, we have infinite combos with Metallic Mimic + Murderous Redcap + sac outlet killing the table and Mimic or Sage of Fables + Puppeteer Clique or Glen Elendra Archmage producing infinite triggers. Find an opponent's Protean Hulk and you win.
Fire Covenant, Blasphemous Act, Last One Standing, Boompile, Oblivion Stone, Engineered Explosives: Boardwipes are usually great against most EDH decks but they're especially strong in this deck since you can play out your board anyway and return your creatures thanks to Marchesa. Boompile/Engineered Explosives/Oblivion Stone are especially strong power plays when combined with a Marchesa returning your board and can answer any problem enchantment locking you out of the game like Rest in Peace and Wheel of Sun and Moon. You can also hold them up as instant speed removal, like for that annoying Containment Priest. Toxic Deluge and Cyclonic Rift are also strong options here.
Gamble, Muddle the Mixture, Imperial Recruiter, Trinket Mage, Spellseeker: Tutors help assemble the Marchesa Three-Piece, find wincons when my board is strong, find one of my few boardwipes or removal spells for grave hate, etc etc. Tutors are obviously strong and while the deck appreciates having many tutor effects, there aren't many tutor cards that are good for the cost, since I really want to start curving out on the board as soon as possible. The creatures being recurrable tutor effects is especially crazy and Imperial Recruiter usually finds a sac outlet, then Metallic Mimic, and can then assemble a bunch of free value or a game winning combo.
Our counterspell suite is pretty scant, mostly being low-cmc Negate effects to protect Marchesa and/or combos and prevent our opponents from comboing out or playing Rest in Peace style effects that lock us out. Combined with all the card draw and removal attached to our value creatures, we can play a value-heavy control game just as well as a combo game, and with our low CMC creatures, we can also beat down if the situation calls for it. I love Marchesa because she cranks out value like nobody's business and always has something to do, and if you play my decklist, I think you'll see just what makes her so special.
