Ok, seems like you're on top of things. Just wanted to hear some justifications and keep you on your toes ;)

Omniscience_is_life absolutely not you madman.

Would Solitary Confinement be worth to run for a pillowfort?

iLuv3M3

That depends. Are you able/willing to pay the cost each turn? Will it just become a target in your meta, or will it actually pillowfort you? I find producing the card advantage to keep this on the field can be tricky. Even with monarch you can sustain it but bet no card draw. And you have to pitch something you may need to use. I personally don’t play it, but there have been aikido decks who do. It was mentioned in the original primer as a talking point somewhere.

Don’t you need a Silence effect with the Breach combo since opponents will eventually draw into interaction? Am I overlooking something?

As another fun combo option; since you’re heavy on Sunforger and already running Dockside Extortionist and Boros Charm - if you replace Reverberate with Reiterate and make room for Cloudstone Curio , Dockside and Cloudstone make infinite mana which you can dump into Sunforger into Reiterate copying infinite 4 damage Charms :)

Kalo_Wen - technically you're correct, ideally people are tapped out or we have Silence or Grand Abolisher or some sort of counterspell ready (these cards go in and out of my list) but in reality every time I hit that point, people just scoop, as it is tedious to play out since even if they do draw into interaction, I'm also just outvaluing them as I generate basically infinite mana and dump all my permanents from my hand and grave repeatedly etc. I think only once has anyone not scooped, in all the games I've won that way, and even then after a few wheels they scooped as well.

I'm perfectly happy as it stands now though, even if people don't scoop, as it leaves me in such a winning position that I've won anyway, and I generally shoot for a win later on in the game when players are more hamstrung and less able to do much about it.

Running more recursion is also a good way to combat this. But Silence is probably one of my preferred since you can cast it off Sunforger and then it's basically GG.

I largely agree with your thoughts on the MH2 cards, not the biggest fan of the new sword in my particular build (Could certainly build in more synergy to accommodate) but the other two cards are slam dunks in my opinion.

Have you thought about Wandering Archaic  ^Flip as a potential source of politics and defense?

Selakah - yeah, there are some thoughts on it in the updates post.

Eagerly awaiting the DND update, especially interested in your thoughts on Hellish Rebuke it doesn't protect you from the damage but damn does it feel Akido to me

Openil - I like it, kinda a cross between no mercy and batwing brume. If it were sunforgeable I would probably cram it in but as it stands now, I'm not sure what I would be willing to take out for it (and it would have to be more compelling than the other cards I've recently taken out but miss).

Two questions:

What's the play pattern with Dream Devourer been like?

Have you tried out a more goad-focused list? I'm thinking about Grenzo, Karazikar the Eye Tyrant, Geode Rager.

yeti1069

One of the others here might be able to give you more anecdotes on Dream Devourer but the idea is that you can a) keep card advantage even when drawing a lot of cards, b) reduce mana costs, and c) protect your cards from discard. I haven't gotten to play with it as much as I would like yet.

I have not made a goad focused Marchesa list, but I have a K&T aikido list with more goad effects. I like goad, just haven't been able to fit it into this one as much. If you come up with something I'd love to take a look.

Not sure I attack enough to make Grenzo worthwhile, and the deck doesn't really make tokens. The beholder aligns with Breena, I think. I like the idea of the elemental, but the deck isn't getting more than 1 landfall per turn outside of fetches so it may not cut it.

I have been loving Kardor enough to get an Eldrazi Displacer for my list, and the Ant has been decent. I figured going a little heavier on goad might be good.

Proxied up a Vengeful Ancestor and had a run with him in the deck. Solid performance keeping threats off of me. Also had out a Mirage Mirror that would have done some serious work copying if I wasn't also mana screwed.

Vengeful Ancestor has been okay so far. Not stellar, but solid. Karazikar on the other hand has only shown up once, but was fantastic! It goads up to three creatures a turn depending on attackers/blockers, does so the turn it shows up, and then draws up to 3 cards over the turn cycle. Makes goad a little easier to pallet for the other players, and plays into some of the other mechanics/cards in the deck.

What about You Find Some Prisoners , sunforgerable, removal, card draw, ticks a lot of boxes but very narrow in each of them

Cards like Fire Whip , Power of Fire , and Viridian Longbow turn Marchesa into a rattlesnake. Warstorm Surge is also fun with Marchesa; if someone takes your monarchy, you get an assassin that kills a creature on entry at the start of your turns.

Openil - I think it's fine. I like multi-mode cards, very flexible.

Played the deck earlier this week at my LGS and it had a lot of fun interactions and the political aspect was great with a few surprise turnaround deflecting palms/delirium, but I'm a very new player to magic and my friend put together the cards for me based on the current "main" decklist. Unfortunately the main list seems to have removed a lot of key pieces from the notable synergies section(namely Underworld Breach, Repercussion, Wound Reflector, Delaying Shield, Solemnity).

I'm sort of trying to figure out what some of the cool more combo'y/multiple cards wincons are since I don't see an alternative way to actually infinite wheel mill without the underworld breach, or a way to do something to the same level as repercussion+blasphemous act. So I'm wondering what the wincons are that I might not be noticing or what cards I should replace to get all of those notable ones back into the deck.

Dangermaze

Current list no longer matches the primer completely, though the general idea is still there. Cards referenced in the primer, if not in the list, should be considered as good card options generally.

If you look back through the last few blog/update posts here you can see the evolution but here's the main points on list vs primer currently:

• wheeling combo is gone: underworld breach was removed, this is necessary. You play smothering tithe, breach, and wheel, then recast wheel from GY, keep going until you wheel into Angel's Grace or a way to tutor it, wheel to deck everyone

• Repercussion combo is gone: further effort by me to remove combos / instant wins. Arcbond and Blasph Act are still in, and useful, but no longer a real combo.

• Solemnity / Delaying Shield / Phyrexian Unlife - damage shield combos removed as I wanted to take out Solemnity to play things like Selfless Squire and Phyrexian Unlife was already less useful without Ad Naus, so I just took out all three to make room in the list. Dark Depths out as well since I'm not running Solemnity and only sometimes run Mirage Mirror

• Wound Reflection was a bit hefty in CMC and sometimes garnered negative reactions at the table and attention/hate on myself, and though I love playing this card for the shenanigans it opens up, I also needed room in the list to try new cards anyway so it's out for now. It isn't essential and doesn't rly combo with anything it just gives you more reach. Play it if you want.

The deck now is a bit less explosive, has no real direct wincons (at least of the sense that are typically seen in the power levels I typically play this deck in), and more skill intensive with longer more delicately balanced games, but is also usually more fun (for me and the table), more on theme, and generates less attention/threat in games. Depending on meta you can adjust to taste or as required to keep up.

If you wanna discuss more specifics, the Discord is a good place, discussion is pretty active and people have a wide variety of lists.

Here's my (not fully updated) list with some goad stuff: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/yJWWqvNkKkijW0_OBkkJNA Recently added Geode Rager as well, and in the one game he showed up, did some real work.

Vengeful Ancestor has been solid over more games. He's a decent body, with flying, for a reasonable cost, and getting a goad right away, and each turn, has been valuable. The second ability has actually been relevant twice: once where an opponent had a lot of creatures with Infect, and they had to devote all their resources to avoid getting the team goaded and killing themselves, which also meant they had to slow things down a lot.

Karazikar has been amazing! Typically goads 3 creatures the turn it comes down, and opens up opponents for some damage/helps get Monarch back if I've lost it. Then the card draw makes the goading feel less bad and takes a little heat off of me. People don't like being forced to attack (not me). Who knew?

I'm LOVING Eldrazi Displacer alongside some of the good ETB creatures, but especially Kardur.

I've been using Incendiary Command rather than Wheel of Fortune, partly because Wheel is ridiculously expensive and I don't have one, but also because it provides an alternate way to win with the same combo when someone has an Eldrazi titan or something to auto-shuffle their graveyard (plus some added utility when casting it outside the combo).

yeti1069 thanks for the playtesting notes, keep up the experimenting!

Oh, and I've won two games with Brash Taunter now. In one, I kept using the fight ability at EOT to ping opponents for big damage, including fighting my own Selfless Squire. In another, he helped kill 2 players off of an Arcbond.