I build a lot of Commander decks.

I'd say about one in every five I build for my column gets built in paper; additionally, I build others that come my way. I'm a fiend for hyper-budget decks, so I build decks that cost $10 or less or $1 to put together or whatever. I also sometimes just get an idea and build it with no column attached, like the Rogues kindred deck I built last year. It's not unusual for me to show up at game night with three or four new decks, and I often don't play them for months.

(I also don't take them apart, which is a different thing that requires way too much space in my house.)

But when I tell you there's one deck I've played probably more than any others, it means something. The fact I keep coming back to it is really unusual. It's this one, built around the queen herself, Marchesa, the Black Rose.

I encourage you to read the source article, but the gist was this: playing out of the graveyard is uncomfortable for me. Self-mill is strange, and the idea of throwing resources away and not casting them or otherwise putting them on the battlefield is a bizarre concept in my head. So I built a deck explicitly designed to throw cards into the graveyard, where each individual card wasn't particularly important, but rather the way the whole deck worked together was the key.

The deck worked really well. My little $75 deck held its own against three $1,000 decks (unearthing the Kederekt Leviathan after they'd just dropped every Eldrazi in the game was pretty awesome). It won out of nowhere in a five-player game that cast Cyclonic Rift six times off of a single copy. It regularly surprises me by winning, or at the very least not just rolling over and losing, and playing the deck is really fun. It's fun to keep getting creatures back and back again. It's fun to watch opponents try to figure out if they should block to kill, block and lose their chump, or just take the damage. It's also fun to see your opponents figure out how to be the person with less life than someone else!

So I knew it was time for an update, if for no reason other than to make sure Preacher of the Schism wound up in the deck. Let's take a look where I landed, then we'll talk it through.

Marchesa EDH | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Marchesa, the Black Rose

• Creatures (28)
• 1 Anathemancer
• 1 Anger
• 1 Champion of Wits
• 1 Combat Courier
• 1 Covert Cutpurse
• 1 Danny Pink
• 1 Demonlord of Ashmouth
• 1 Drana, Liberator of Malakir
• 1 Flayer of the Hatebound
• 1 Greedy Freebooter
• 1 Gutter Skulker
• 1 Heart-Piercer Manticore
• 1 Herald of Secret Streams
• 1 Hexmark Destroyer
• 1 Kederekt Leviathan
• 1 Malevolent Hermit
• 1 Marchesa's Smuggler
• 1 Mirrorhall Mimic
• 1 Mischievous Catgeist
• 1 Overwhelmed Archivist
• 1 Preacher of the Schism
• 1 Pyreheart Wolf
• 1 River Kelpie
• 1 Scorn-Blade Berserker
• 1 Scourge of the Throne
• 1 Terror Ballista
• 1 Triarch Praetorian
• 1 Witch-king, Sky Scourge

• Instants (8)
• 1 Death Rattle
• 1 Dig Through Time
• 1 Electric Revelation
• 1 Fervent Denial
• 1 Forbidden Alchemy
• 1 Logic Knot
• 1 Murderous Cut
• 1 Think Twice

• Sorceries (12)
• 1 Crawl from the Cellar
• 1 Deep Analysis
• 1 Dread Return
• 1 Echo of Eons
• 1 Faithless Looting
• 1 Ignite the Future
• 1 Lidless Gaze
• 1 Mystic Retrieval
• 1 Scour All Possibilities
• 1 Sever the Bloodline
• 1 Treasure Cruise
• 1 Wake to Slaughter

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Uncivil Unrest

• Artifacts (10)
• 1 Anduril, Narsil Reforged
• 1 Crucible of Worlds
• 1 Dimir Keyrune
• 1 Ebony Fly
• 1 Guardian Idol
• 1 Izzet Keyrune
• 1 Kolaghan Monument
• 1 Rakdos Keyrune
• 1 Silumgar Monument
• 1 Trading Post

• Lands (40)
• 1 Canyon Slough
• 1 Castle Locthwain
• 1 Castle Vantress
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Crumbling Necropolis
• 1 Drannith Ruins
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Forge of Heroes
• 1 Geothermal Bog
• 1 Great Furnace
• 1 High Market
• 1 Karn's Bastion
• 1 Minas Morgul, Dark Fortress
• 1 Molten Tributary
• 1 Nesting Grounds
• 1 Otawara, Soaring City
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Seat of the Synod
• 1 Shivan Reef
• 1 Smoldering Marsh
• 1 Sulfurous Mire
• 1 Sulfurous Springs
• 1 Sunken Hollow
• 1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
• 1 Temple of Deceit
• 1 Temple of Epiphany
• 1 Temple of Malice
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 The Black Gate
• 1 Tyrite Sanctum
• 1 Underground River
• 1 Vault of Whispers
• 1 Volatile Fjord
• 1 Xander's Lounge
• 2 Island
• 2 Mountain
• 2 Swamp

Buy This Deck Export text

The gist of the deck originally was this: play creatures, likely ones which put a few cards in the 'yard. Play Marchesa. Attack the person with the highest life total, have some creatures die, return them, mill more stuff. A lot of the stuff in the 'yard was useful from there via flashback, unearth, or some other way, and what we didn't need we could delve away on Treasure Cruise or Murderous Cut. Ultimately we'd either get such a roll going with Marchesa and maybe Anger in the 'yard we couldn't be stopped, or we'd get some sort of soft combo going with Trading Post which ground out too much value, or we'd cast Rise of the Dark Realms and beat the snot out of everyone with all their stuff.

The basic structure remains, but the newer version does away with the self-mill. Why? I don't know - I still don't like it, even after playing this deck for eight years. And we don't need it anymore; we can just draw the cards, and if they wind up in the 'yard due to discard, that's fine. Our creatures still get to come back if they have counters, and we can still dig through our deck with abandon, we just get more shots with the cards before they're delved away.

We've got 40 Lands, many of which fix our mana. Because this deck doesn't have a budget limitation, I also included a Crucible of Worlds (which we can buy back with Buried Ruin or Trading Post) and as many duals as I could with the card type "Mountain" for Anger. We've also got seven mana rocks, all of which can turn into creatures. This is important, because we don't actually need to ramp to Marchesa (or anything, really), but those guys get the counter when they attack, which means they come back on our end step. This is worth it. I've won games with Dimir Keyrune.

We also draw a lot of cards. I love stuff in this deck like Combat Courier; we play it out, attack with it, put the counter on it, then sacrifice it to draw a card... and it comes back. Repeat next turn. Scorn-Blade Berserker is even better, because it puts the counter on itself if we need it to! Mischievous Catgeist is great fun: do they let it through and let you have the card? Or block and kill it, where it can either come back itself, or get disturbed back on to something much worse, like a Gutter Skulker? Champion of Wits lets us draw and discard, or we can eternalize for a net of two cards. Danny Pink is an awesome new addition, because we put counters on stuff all the time. And, of course, Preacher of the Schism does a lovely job of drawing us action when we happen to be on the throne ourselves. Triarch Praetorian can be an expensive Sign in Blood, but it can also be a repeating Sign in Blood if you get it rolling.

We've also got some instants and sorceries like Think Twice and Deep Analysis to draw. Echo of Eons is a new one I'm curious about; draw seven is always a lot, but the fact it's symmetrical... I don't know. Mileage may vary. It can be really frustrating for someone who's curated a hand or graveyard, that's for sure, and we don't really care. We work with what we've got.

We've dropped most of the big fatties; there are a few, but they're smaller. Rather than having one big guy, I've found the deck is much more effective with a lot of smaller ones where their abilities are always relevant. So, we've got Heart-Piercer Manticore, who can be hilarious if we can get it rolling with Marchesa. I love the idea of the Manticore plus Flayer of the Hatebound; a couple of good attacks and a lot of damage has been thrown around. Just keep attacking the person on the throne and let your creatures die and come back. Don't get greedy and worry about it if one of them dies permanently. It'll be okay. Besides, we probably want to take the damage to make sure we don't wind up on the Throne ourselves, which is the biggest problem this deck has in my experience. That said, Hexmark Destroyer is basically unblockable and rather large, so it's possible it could be a win-con all by itself.

Fervent Denial is a terrible counterspell, but it has flashback so in it goes. Murderous Cut is back from the first round, and it's awesome here. We've got creatures that kill things when they enter, too, which works wonders if they start rolling with Marchesa. Sever the Bloodline should get played more; it's expensive and slow, but it Exiles and absolutely wrecks most token decks.

We've also got some fun new toys. Wake to Slaughter is a fun little game to play with an opponent. No matter what, they're probably going to lose. Lidless Gaze, too, is a fun little minigame to introduce. Herald of Secret Streams is fantastic here.

But the one I'm most excited about is Uncivil Unrest, which doubles up most of our damage, which means people are going to block more, which means more of our stuff will die and come back... it's just awesome. Plus we can put a counter on something right away, which is marvelous when our Creatures all come back on our end step, because we don't care if they have Haste at that point and it means we can block and bring them back again!

The key is to not get attached to any specific strategy. It's a lot less likely Uncivil Unrest will get milled in this version of the deck than the previous one, but even if it does, don't worry about it. Keep playing. Throw it away. Everything will still work just fine.

What's your favorite graveyard strategy? I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks for reading.