Openil

Honestly I think Court of Ambition draws far too much attention even though it’s really tempting to play it. It’s great if you’ve already assembled your shield, but without them it’s not subtle enough. We’d be targeted just for playing it. And even then enchantment removal would ruin our setup. I personally think the best win cons are the ones we pull out of nowhere and win right then. Court gives them too much time to find an answer.

Abzkaban almost as soon as i posted it i had the same thought, a bit to aggressive, the white one that makes a 1/1 flyer each turn to get the monarch back or a 4/4 flyer if you already are almost seems better just for being a bit worse, if that makes any sense

Personally - while I think the new Monarch cards are very cool and flavorful - I don't see this as the deck for them. They really incentivize opponents to attack us - which is the opposite of what we are trying to normally do - without providing enough value for painting such a target.

With Weathered Wayfarer taken out of the deck, how's Scroll Rack's functionality in the deck?

Are Top/Rack absolutely needed in this deck?

neek-oh

I can say from experience playing a similar list that scroll rack + land tax aren’t needed for the deck to function well. There are other sources of card draw for us, and usually we hold up answers anyway so we don’t want to be too aggressive with our draws all the time. That being said, it’s an excellent source of card advantage if you can afford it, and it’s not really reliant on Wayfarer to function well.

neek-oh

I agree with Abzkaban, and I'd just add that when considering cards like this I would urge us all to consider them in a vacuum rather than as parts of combos (for ex. Land Tax + Scroll Rack) as we're never realistically going to tutor for the other half when there's so many other things we could tutor for, and so considering them on their own merits outside of interactions with other cards is usually the most realistic.

That being said - Top and Land Tax are all stars and really go a long way. Scroll Rack is great but if I were to drop one of the three, I'd start there probably.

I've been meaning to work Weathered Wayfarer back in, but just for its ability to ensure land drops / fetch utility lands, and not due to any interaction with other pieces. Same goes for Top, Land Tax, and Scroll Rack. All are powerful effects in their own right, and either earn or lose their spot in this list on their own merits. Incidental synergies with other "utility" or generic advantage slots are nice to have, but not a reason I typically include/exclude a card.

This is why I often talk up the benefits of Land Tax and Scroll Rack but rarely bother to mention their "combo" together - as unless you don't have much else in your deck to tutor for (might be possible in a budget list that just happens to have these two cards) you're going to always tutor for other things anyway, instead of a somewhat tenuous two card finite draw engine.

Thank you for the detailed responses!! I realized my mistake, thinking Weathered Wayfarer was Land Tax (which synergized with Scroll Rack). My bad!!

I have both Rack and Top in the deck but was thinking of taking them out for Yuriko and I wanted to see what's everyone's thoughts on Rack/Top.

Just a random thought, i notice you have six basics, two of each, have you considered switching 1 of each to be a snow basic and using Tainted Pact as a additional 2 mana tutor?

That's a clever idea. It is quite costly for a tutor however and you run the risk of exiling half your library which can be detrimental to Sunforger and other tutors

I'm very interested in building a similar deck, but I'm fairly new to EDH and am wondering if you can explain why this deck doesn't need to run board wipes (aside from blasphemous act). How would this deck try to deal with an opponent who has built up an oppressive board state.

nade0 There are probably better people to answer this than me but I will try. At the end of the day cEDH doesn't tend to get to the point of big boards, and if it does they are usually infinite and trying to win that turn. That being said things like Solemnity + Glacial Chasm are how you answer a big board.

If you are new to EDH and the other people in your group aren't playing cEDH, or for that matter running $5000.00 decks, you probably don't want to try and emulate this deck exactly, I have a more budget version up that is trying to emulate this at a lower power level and runs a couple more wipes and even then it runs just shy of $1000.00, depends how much you are looking to spend.

Hey nade0 - This deck is very flexible and is really meant to be shaped to suit your own meta. The above example is alexjustdoit's list and is tuned for a competitive meta. As Openil has said, lists that run against more creatures can slot in some wipes.

At the end of the day however we have ways to combat go wide strategies: Ghostly Prison or No Mercy effects are quite good there. Comeuppance is just a beating, Rakdos Charm does work etc.

The number one thing we can do against these kinds of decks though is just be the worst option for aggression. Taxing them with the above fort cards, threatening key pieces with removal, convincing the owned of the big board that another player is a bigger threat and/or retaliation when we are targeted. The core idea here is you use that big board to your advantage as much as you can - thus we tend to be a bit more light on mass removal. Hope this helps explain the mind set a little more.

Openil - just for clarity, this isnt intended to be a cEDH deck nor is it intended to function (well) in a cEDH meta. cEDH is simply too fast, and this deck does not currently run enough stax to bridge the gap. For cEDH, you would need to rely much more on combos nearly every game, and at that rate you're much too slow and inconsistent, the aikido shell just holds you back rather than a dedicated combo oriented shell.

This deck is however intended to function in a "pretty high powered" casual meta. When playing in more middling metas, I sometimes take out Sickening Dreams, or Ad Naus altogether, simply because combos like that tend to be frowned upon by middle power casual players, and it gets a lot of salt (which just isn't fun for me or the table when people get salty).

Additionally, the deck cost as it stands is simply because I enjoy the project of making something sub-optimal, as optimal as possible. I hope the price alone does not cause anyone to infer that this is intended to be a cEDH deck. It can function probably 90-95% the same on a sub-$800 budget (I haven't really been keeping up with prices in the last year, might be you could go even lower with all these new reprints).

Now, to the original question nade0 brought up -

With an "oppressive board state", assuming due to creatures as you mention, there's effectively three flavors - either they're going infinite token generation (or simply a shit load), they you have a bunch of creature based engines set up, or somewhere in the middle with a lot of big stuff but not 20+ of them.

For the former there's Rakdos Charm, simple enough.

For the latter of the three, you'll be relying on a lot of single target removal.

The middle is where it can get a bit tougher. Admittedly, there's no easy answer, but you'll be relying on pillowfort pieces while you a) just try to stay alive to where your opponent is below 20 ish life, and b) get damage in via Delirium type effects or some flying sunforger equipped beats, or even a Boros Charm. This sounds roundabout, and it is, but keep in mind that we play the long game and have high survivability so life totals are typically pressured, and with damage doublers we get a surprising amount of reach with seemingly incidental chunks of damage. There's also a lot of ways you can get creative to steal a win - part of the fun of this deck. You do need to be careful though, and use your removal well, lest you let their engines generate too much value and run off with the game.

To answer your more explicit question - why no board wipes? Because many players don't like them when they're cast. Sure, sometimes the table is relieved if someone really is running ahead (in which case I either didn't use removal correctly, or I got unlucky and never found any via any means), but for the most part it is a net-negative in a sociopolitical aspect. Making other players groan does not do much for your wanted perception of non-aggression.

Oh, also, Winds of Abandon is a good one if you really want to run another. Especially if you're running stuff like Acidic Soil. Nothing wrong with that if you feel like you'd do better with another boardwipe. Everything is meta dependent.

Hey alexjustdoit , I was recommended to look at your deck from Abzkaban. The problem I have seen with Marchesa decks is that from 45 vidoes on youtube I have seen only 1 game was won by Queen Marchesa. I was wondering how good your deck was at winning (pre combo removal and after combo removals)?

I love playing magic for fun but the fun for me and my friends is also having competitive back and forth games. Queen Marchesa is someone I always wanted to build around, but she seems to have good interactions , but low win cons. Anyways, thanks for reading. (long may she rein)

jackcity - The answer on win percentage is really going to come down to your meta. However, I think this deck can be fairly competitive in all but CEDH environments. If you show up with even the most optimised list above to a table full of focused CEDH combo decks you're going to get run over most games, no questions. However in a '75%' meta or lower this deck does quite well. I win quite frequently in my group, but not enough to make the deck oppressive or unfun to play against.

If you're looking for good 'back and forth' games this is a fantastic deck for that. You sometimes will strike out of nowhere to steal a win that looked like it was nowhere within reach. It's very much about balancing the game, trying to stop anyone from running away too much and keeping a lot of tension on the table until it's time to strike.

That being said - it is not an easy deck to play. There are a lot of lines and I've thrown away possible wins by making a move at the wrong time or answering the wrong thing. Your win % will very much be influenced by your comfort and experience with the deck and archetype, as it plays differently than most everything else I've ever piloted.

As for the 1/45 Youtube Marchesa wins, my only comment there would be that Marchesa is a very open ended commander and I would be very surprised if this deck resembled the majority of the ones you watched (and if so I'd love some links because I've yet to find much Aikido content). A lot of Marchesa decks are heavily political focused, playing sub-optimal cards like all of the 'will of the council' cards and such. In no way is that an attempt to knock anyone else's deck - EDH should be about fun first in my opinion - however, this list is very focused. While the path to victory might differ from game to game, we know exactly what it is we are trying to do and every card in this list serves a very important purpose. It's highly rewarding to pilot and I believe leads to very fun, memorable games for the whole table.

jackcity : Another thing to take into account is that Marchesa Aikido and control is much more niche than traditional Queen Marchesa decks. I have yet to find a single game published that plays an Aikido playstyle. This leads me to believe that this form of Marchesa isn't represented among those 45 videos and it would be unwise to utilize that statistic to destabilize the credibility of the deck. Furthermore, most people who build Marchesa outside of this archetype build it not to win as much as specifically make the game more fun. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, however, that might explain the data.

jackcity - as for a quick and dirty, direct answer - I was tracking game stats for a while. With combo I was around 60% winrate on PlayEDH mid (this was back before they added low power, so there was more variance in power level back then, but my deck was rated as mid and still is), and without combo it was like 45-50%.

If you play it well, it is very strong. It's all about the politics. It can be pretty easy to either directly or indirectly lose the game for yourself.

I think nowadays in PlayEDH mid, it is probably around 40% - definitely a bit lower, but I haven't been playing as much lately, and I made some changes to my paper list, so I don't really have a sample size to make that number meaningful.

Thank you guys (alexjustdoit , Seabody ,and darklord1135. You convinced me too get alexjustdoit/ Seabodys Queen Marchesa deck. I appreciate the well explained answers. The versatility and lines make her seem too much fun,too not play.

The Youtube videos I saw didnt seem to be aikido Queen Marchesa. However; youll be pleased to know that the one deck that did win was aikido based I believe.

Link to video: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs2elt40LwI&list=PLuiDWOPyvD8rjD_VD9lB_RSEv4Yfvh3Cg&ab_channel=TheGMGC)

Link to decklist: https://archidekt.com/decks/741121#Queen_Marchesa_Aikido

So, your decklist is running at around $5000. Do you gentleman have a more budgeted version? Also, Do you proxy cards?

Thanks again :)

Hey jackcity - glad you've decided to try it out! There is a budget section under the "Flex Slots" header. Biggest costs in the above list are the manabase and expensive tutors. By removing those you can significantly reduce the deck's cost, you'll just lose a little consistency which really only matters in higher powered metas. Of the cards in the above list in the $20-$100 range absolutely 0 are required to make this deck function and all can easily be replaced with budget versions or other cards.

One of the best parts about this deck is just how flexible it is. You can adapt it to your meta, powerlevel and budget without too much trouble. I'd highly recommend joining our discord to get lots of ideas from other's lists. We're also always talking about interesting interactions, game reports etc. It's a great place to help you shape something up:

Marchesa Aikido Discord

jackcity - check the budget section on Flex Slots too

jackcity The deck is listed at around 5,000 USD, however, it is worth noting that many of the cards are in expensive versions and the actual list is probably thousands of dollars cheaper. You can build this deck powerfully at around 300$ dollars though it begins to weaken lower than that.

Sorry I fucked up your beautiful 77 upvote count, liked the deck too much to not give it some love ;)

There's no question Mirage Mirror is a powerful card... but it's so win-more, don't you think? And it can only sometimes do fancy Aikido flips! Maybe something to consider cutting if you decide to throw Naus in.

Duelist's Heritage is... honestly not a bad card by any stretch (you know this, I'm thinking out loud here), but I wonder if this could be the card you burn in a pit to add Mr. Tarl back in.

But you could leave this deck how it is and never change it and it'd still be amazing so I don't care. Just please never cut Hushbringer . It's such a meme to have that hilarious art on the battlefield.

Omniscience_is_life - I really, really, really, hate the art of Hushbringer. Just... why WotC.

Ad Naus and Mirror have both been in and out of the deck many times. Mirror is heavily meta dependent... sometimes I really like running it, sometimes it feels a bit useless. I kinda go back and forth on it. The ceiling is pretty high though. I've copied opponents' smothering tithes, mana doublers, wincons, my own combo pieces to essentially dodge removal as I attempt to win, etc etc.

Sometimes it also kinda sits, if I have other things I want to play and there's nothing good to copy (or nothing that isn't very niche to an opposing strategy, and useless to me).

I ultimately decided to keep Heritage over Tarl. When I took him out I considered Heritage. After his ETB, Tarl has to attack himself to be of use, and I often didn't have a safe attack that wouldn't result in him getting killed. With Heritage also being able to be used on opponent's attacks (they also often forget I can do it, and this can shift the game), it ultimately won out.

Tarl can be great though so really up to the pilot. And I was getting squeezed for slots again to try out some new tech like Sword of the Animist , which may or may not stay due to a very low basic count that I really can never find a way to increase meaningfully.