Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Marchesa, the Black Rose!

Marchesa is a four mana 3/3 with dethrone, which means if you attack the player with the most life or tied for the most life you put a +1/+1 counter on her, gives your other creatures dethrone, and if a creature you control with a +1/+1 counter dies, then you return it to the battlefield under your control at the beginning of the next end step.

This Marchesa is an interesting contrast to Queen Marchesa in that this Marchesa is a +1/+1 counters deck with a reanimation package attached to it, which definitely allows for some interesting deck building choices and restrictions.

The way that we are going to focus on for the deck is to do what we can to make sure that we have a lower life total then our opponents to trigger dethrone, as well as making sure we have alternative ways to get +1/+1 counters, also getting some creatures that don’t mind dying over and over again.

The first thing I think that we should focus on in finding ways to make sure that we can get ourselves to a lower life total than our opponents.

Fortunately Unspeakable Symbol is card that can not only get us to a lower life total than our opponents, but can also at instant speed put a +1/+1 counter on a creature that we control, all for the low low price of 3 life.

We can also make use of utility cards to get us at a lower life total than our opponents, Feed the Swarm and Withering Torment being some examples that not only destroy a creature or an enchantment, but also have us lose some life in the process as well.

In terms of getting some value for playing into a sacrifice strategy while also losing some life, Plumb the Forbidden is a way for us to sacrifice creatures we control with +1/+1 counters as an additional cost for the spell to draw cards equal to the number of creatures that we sacrificed, and losing 1 life as for each sacrificed creature as well.

We have the classic Sign in Blood effects to draw two cards and lose 2 life, like Night’s Whisper, Succumb to Temptation, and Blood Pact to help us dig through our deck while also maintaining a lower life total than our opponents.

There are also cards that cost Phyrexian mana to get us to a lower life total and casting a cheap or “free” spell. Gitaxian Probe can help us gain information on an opponent’s hand while drawing us a card, Gut Shot to deal 1 damage to any target, and Dismember to get rid of a problematic creatures.

The next thing that I think that we should take a look at are creatures that don’t mind dying, and generally have a benefit when they do die.

The first thing I look at in this regard are creatures that either have Undying or Persist, which are ways creatures can come back onto the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter like Flayer of the Hatebound which deals damage equal to its power or another creature that enters power, or a -1/-1 counter like Glen Elendra Archmage which can sacrificed itself to counter a noncreature spell.

We can also work to steal our opponents creatures with Puppeteer Clique, which takes a creature from an opponent’s graveyard when it enters, giving that creature haste and exiling it at the beginning of the end step while also having Persist, which means that if we can get a +1/+1 counter to counteract the -1/-1 counter when it comes back, then that means we have a recursive way to steal our opponents creatures.

If we just want a way to get a ton of bodies in play, we can use Chasm Skulker which gets a +1/+1 counter whenever you draw a card and when it dies it makes a number of 1/1 Squid tokens with islandwalk equal to the number of +1/+1 counters on it, which means that we have a way to get a ton of tokens and get Chasm Skulker back over and over again.

Another way that we gain value from creatures are the dragons from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty who all have pretty decent death triggers that can potentially be repeatable.

Atsushi, the Blazing Sky can exile the top two cards and let you play them until the end of your next turn or make three Treasure tokens, Junji, the Midnight Sky can have each opponent discard two cards and lose 2 life or reanimate a non-Dragon creature from a graveyard while having us lose 2 life, and Kairi, the Swirling Sky can bounce things that have a total mana value of 6 or mill six cards and return up to two instants and/or sorceries to our hand.

The last thing that we need to consider is that we can take advantage of the fact that the creature doesn’t need to go to our graveyard when it dies for us to bring it back.

This means that effects that let us take control of our opponents creatures like a Molten Primordial, which can take control of up to one creature from each of our opponents, if they happen to have +1/+1 counters and were sacrificed, then that means we can take control of them permanently.

We can further manipulate this sort of effect by using something like Cannibalize, which has us pick two creatures an opponent controls, exiles one and puts two +1/+1 counters on it, then use something like Act of Treason to steal a creature for a turn, then sacrifice it to something like a Bloodflow Connoisseur then we can steal a powerful creature while exiling another potential threat.

This seems like a lot of effort to go through to steal a creature, but we don’t need to always put a +1/+1 counter on things since it is the most common counter to put on things. We can just use Threaten effects and a sacrifice outlet like an Ashnod’s Altar to steal a creature with a +1/+1 counter, sacrifice it for some mana and then it comes right back for us to use as we like.

Marchesa is an interesting way to have a creature reanimation strategy, and while it can fuel itself in the regard that we just need to keep our life lower than our opponents, that can also be risky. The lower our life total might incentivize our opponents to attack us, especially when we start stealing our opponents creatures.

If a board wipe is played and not many of our things had +1/+1 counters, then that can spell disaster for us. Still, it is an interesting way to play a reanimator strategy that also happens to have the potential for a theft subtheme.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From J.M. Casual