Depending on how the colors work out for the remaining decks (assuming Rakdos/Mardu Vampires and Dimir/Grixis wizards) it makes the decision to only have four decks very strange.
Hopefully the Vampire deck doesn't go the Falkenrath route of caring too much about combat and they incorporate something else more along the lines of Olivia Voldaren/Dark Impostor/Malakir Bloodwitch effects.
Just a quick question for the more practiced Marchesa, TBR players; How effective/powerful is Mikaeus? I held off on finding one because it was proving tricky to find but I lucked into one and I'm trying to decide on whether it's destined for Marchesa or Meren. I just noticed that apart from just Marchesa herself there are a decent number of Humans in my (and most) Marchesa builds so I'm just wondering how effective Mikaeus generally turns out to be?
Side note, I think Razaketh (preferably with a way of cheating it out) could be extremely powerful in Marchesa. Razaketh + Sneak Attack shenanigans sounds exactly like where we want to be.
As long as you find a Commander group that has the same objectives you'll be fine. The biggest variable in enjoying Commander is how much everyone in the group likes the type of game being played.
You sound like you're geared towards slightly more competitive and less casual Commander, if you find a group that's into that you'll likely enjoy it a lot.
If by "abusing your opponents" you mean doing degenerate and broken things to try and win as fast and as spectacularly as possible that's great, but if you mean trying to make the game as unenjoyable as possible for other players you may run into more resistance and find fewer and fewer players that enjoy that kind of game. Extreme stax decks are enjoyed by far fewer players (as in playing against) than just brutally fast combo decks.
Is the uptick in Fae decks partially why Cryptic Command seems to have gone up in price again recently? I could've sworn it was around the $18-$20 mark about a month or so ago? I don't know much about the deck but I can only assume it runs some number of Cryptics.
I'm sure you'll get really good use out of Whip, Tev. Because the deck is generally really abusive of its own life total having ways to not die to another opponent doing something crazy (Got Comet Storm'd to death for 22 by a Mizzix deck recently on T6 after having Phantasmal Image copy my Pain Seer -_-) having ways to stabilize your own life total is really crucial. Whip is also 4CMC so much easier to dig for consistently, and the synergy with Whip + Unspeakable Symbol is fantastic. I'd also agree on Living Death, because most Marchesa builds tend to be low to the ground and relatively fast (in EDH terms at least) we're never going to have stacked Graveyard's like a Meren/Karador type list where Living Death probably gets like 8-12 targets on average, so I think it's a good cut.
Something I've realized with the Marchesa deck is every card really, really needs to pull its weight, establishing advantage early in the game is crucial so sitting with a hand of 5/6 drops that are too situational or not impactful enough is a bit of a death sentence, so like Plush says if a cut seems controversial but you've noticed how it's a dead card too often it's definitely the right call, I'm kind of in that situation with River Kelpie. On paper (excuse the pun) it seems amazing, but its cost is generally too high and I think our card advantage engines need to be at much lower CMC, things like Grim Haruspex/Pain Seer/Dark Confidant/Phyrexian Arena are more where we want to be.
I'm on the same page about Flayer I think, I've never cast it and gained huge advantage from it within the first two turns of it being down. When you're behind it's doing nothing to catch you up, and if you're ahead it's too win-more. Instant impact really seems crucial for this deck to maintain its tempo.
Also, as an aside, how has everyone been finding Combat Celebrant? I've been super impressed, I run Lightning Mauler as an early haste enabler and it's amazing how quickly the deck can rack up damage early in the game with Celebrant and a couple of other higher power creatures.
I don't think Vizier has a place in this deck unless the format slows down considerably, it unfortunately doesn't help any of our troublesome match ups either.
I run a very similar list to yours and I'd say Whip of Erebos is a great inclusion. If you've got ways to manipulate your life total, Unspeakable Symbol being the most ideal, the Whip makes it possible to make your creatures quite massive while simply recouping the lost life through combat. The ability to recur a relevant creature from the GY should you need it also isn't irrelevant. I played a game recently where my opponent Wheel'd with Jace's Archivist and dumped Scourge of the Throne in my GY, the Whip allowed me to bring it back while I had Unspeakable Symbol out and take out the remaining two opponents with the two combat steps. Whip is a synergistic card in this build in general I think.
I'd also recommend trying out Perplex if you can find a cut for it, it's a fair soft counter in certain contexts but most of all you can Transmute it to find Unspeakable Symbol or any other 3CMC card you may require, but mostly it's just a second copy of Unspeakable Symbol.
Generic tribal-matters cards as good inclusions would be a great idea, yeah. Urza's Incubator, Coat of Arms, Cover of Darkness, etc could all be cool not only in the Precons but if people want to build their own tribal decks.
It's a useful card, I ran it in my Meren deck for a while and I'm currently running it in a non-Boonweaver Karador. As a one-time use reanimator it's quite useful, but I've found times where it kind of rots in my hand because I don't have another creature to discard to it. I'd say the best use I've found for it is combining it with Birthing Pod and Fierce Empath, use the Empath to search up a large creature, sac it to the Pod to get Body Snatcher and discard the recently tutored up bomb to be reanimated.
In any BX decks with lots of sac effects like Carrion Feeder/Viscera Seer looking for varied ways to reanimate I'd say Body Snatcher and Summoner's Egg are good considerations. Summoner's Egg seems like a potentially better option just because it can be reused while Snatcher exiles itself, but I've used it to good effect quite often, especially since it can reanimate the big Eldrazi by pitching them to its effect and sac'ing in response to the shuffle trigger.
I doubt Amonkhet has anything that's more efficient than what's in the list already. Manglehorn could be a consideration to replace Rec Sage in artifact heavy metas, and perhaps the Serpopard could be a consideration for control heavy metas.
I'm not quite sure I'd say any version of the deck has a "good" match-up vs GX Tron in general. With a deck like this your match-ups against specific decks are only as good as the bullets you have access to.
Running Magus of the Moon vs. not running it and coming up against big mana is worth more than just 1-2 percentage points.
I've played about 4 or 5 matches against DSJ, I'm running a fairly standard list with 4 Chord/4 Path/2 Eldritch Evolution as my non-creature spells. In my experience bullets won't really help in this match up, if any exist. Their discard spells tend to go for your non-creature spells, while they hold up removal for your creatures. A decent player will only leave you with whatever they can deal with or just out-power.
IMO the issue won't be finding silver bullets since it's unlikely you'll ever have a board state or hand that'll allow you to Chord for more than 3, or have a creature to sac to Evo. I can see CoCo builds perhaps being able to overwhelm the board if they're fast enough, but I'm not sure since I don't have experience with it.
Side note, I think Razaketh (preferably with a way of cheating it out) could be extremely powerful in Marchesa. Razaketh + Sneak Attack shenanigans sounds exactly like where we want to be.
You sound like you're geared towards slightly more competitive and less casual Commander, if you find a group that's into that you'll likely enjoy it a lot.
If by "abusing your opponents" you mean doing degenerate and broken things to try and win as fast and as spectacularly as possible that's great, but if you mean trying to make the game as unenjoyable as possible for other players you may run into more resistance and find fewer and fewer players that enjoy that kind of game. Extreme stax decks are enjoyed by far fewer players (as in playing against) than just brutally fast combo decks.
Something I've realized with the Marchesa deck is every card really, really needs to pull its weight, establishing advantage early in the game is crucial so sitting with a hand of 5/6 drops that are too situational or not impactful enough is a bit of a death sentence, so like Plush says if a cut seems controversial but you've noticed how it's a dead card too often it's definitely the right call, I'm kind of in that situation with River Kelpie. On paper (excuse the pun) it seems amazing, but its cost is generally too high and I think our card advantage engines need to be at much lower CMC, things like Grim Haruspex/Pain Seer/Dark Confidant/Phyrexian Arena are more where we want to be.
I'm on the same page about Flayer I think, I've never cast it and gained huge advantage from it within the first two turns of it being down. When you're behind it's doing nothing to catch you up, and if you're ahead it's too win-more. Instant impact really seems crucial for this deck to maintain its tempo.
Also, as an aside, how has everyone been finding Combat Celebrant? I've been super impressed, I run Lightning Mauler as an early haste enabler and it's amazing how quickly the deck can rack up damage early in the game with Celebrant and a couple of other higher power creatures.
I'd also recommend trying out Perplex if you can find a cut for it, it's a fair soft counter in certain contexts but most of all you can Transmute it to find Unspeakable Symbol or any other 3CMC card you may require, but mostly it's just a second copy of Unspeakable Symbol.
In any BX decks with lots of sac effects like Carrion Feeder/Viscera Seer looking for varied ways to reanimate I'd say Body Snatcher and Summoner's Egg are good considerations. Summoner's Egg seems like a potentially better option just because it can be reused while Snatcher exiles itself, but I've used it to good effect quite often, especially since it can reanimate the big Eldrazi by pitching them to its effect and sac'ing in response to the shuffle trigger.
Running Magus of the Moon vs. not running it and coming up against big mana is worth more than just 1-2 percentage points.
IMO the issue won't be finding silver bullets since it's unlikely you'll ever have a board state or hand that'll allow you to Chord for more than 3, or have a creature to sac to Evo. I can see CoCo builds perhaps being able to overwhelm the board if they're fast enough, but I'm not sure since I don't have experience with it.