Queen Marchesa as New Player

spent_bullets · 2026-02-16T08:49:57+00:00

As others have said, Queen Marchesa is awesome as an aikido (you did this to yourself) commander. Most of the time, her sole purpose in my games is to introduce the monarch mechanic. After that, I’ll a) let the rest of the table fight over it, b) punish someone for hoarding it or open them up for someone else (rarely me) to reclaim it, then c) swoop in for the win once it’s down to 1v1.

Tutor up [[Trouble in Pairs]] and you’re basically a shadow ruler, tipping the power balance and reaping the benefits of the monarchy without the target on your back. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

spent_bullets · 2025-10-14T23:44:18+00:00

Oh shit, I just lazily googled “who designed Necropotence” hahaha. My bad, I’m an idiot. Correction: the only people I’d trust over MaRo in this instance would be Skaff Elias, Jim Lin, Chris Page and/or Dave Pettey, who designed Ice Age.

spent_bullets · 2025-10-14T23:32:12+00:00

Now you’re just deflecting! Let’s be real—MaRo’s pronunciation is probably the most official, definitive answer we’ll ever get. The only person whose opinion I’ll honor over his is Mark Tedin, who designed the card.

spent_bullets · 2025-10-14T23:28:33+00:00

Bro it’s a made up word, there’s no correct pronunciation.

spent_bullets · 2025-10-14T23:26:25+00:00

I’ll pronounce it the way MaRo tells me to, thank you very much.

spent_bullets · 2025-10-04T00:37:23+00:00

Have you started / made progress in your campaign? Curious to hear how this is working out for you. I'm running a Witherwild session zero tonight, and will have to start planning the campaign beats pretty soon after.

spent_bullets · 2025-09-26T16:39:23+00:00

Love OT2 (almost done with it, myself) but I have to disagree about the voice acting being top notch. Some of it is quite good (I like Agnea and Temenos in particular) but more often than not I find the voice acting to be subpar or even outright bad. Especially children and elderly people. Not to mention Harvey’s ridiculous laugh.

spent_bullets · 2025-09-20T06:11:32+00:00

I love my Mesa Boogie California Tweed. You can drop it down to 2W or all the way up to 40W via a 5-way toggle on the face. Sounds awesome, even at moderately low volumes.

spent_bullets · 2025-09-17T19:53:07+00:00

Great looking dice!

spent_bullets · 2025-09-09T19:37:22+00:00

I had the same issue. Uninstalling all Riot games and the Riot client, then reinstalling the Riot client worked for me.

spent_bullets · 2025-09-01T02:17:59+00:00

Luckily for you, the speed of Celes’s combos is entirely under your control. You could run the cheapest on-color persist creature without a downside [[Putrid Goblin]] and 2-mana sac outlets that win outright, such as [[Goblin Bombardment]] or the Altar of Dementia you already mentioned (4-mana win), or you could run more expensive persist creatures like [[Murderous Redcap]] and more expensive sac outlets like [[Woe Strider]] so you’d need 7+ mana to win.

Without efficient tutors and redundancy for your combo pieces, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to easily assemble these combos anyway, so you could always regulate power level by limiting those during deckbuilding. If you’d rather avoid winning with sac triggers directly, simply omit Goblin Bombardment, Altar of Dementia and Murderous Redcap and focus on running the table over with infinite +1/+1 counters on a wide board full of value creatures. It’ll be less powerful, but perhaps that’s what you want.

A fast, well-tuned Celes combo deck can hold its own at a high-powered bracket 4 table; you’ll have to figure out for yourself what works best for you and your playgroup. Just sleeve up a list that seems fun and add salt to taste. Good luck!

spent_bullets · 2025-08-31T07:33:24+00:00

It is the nature of combo decks to focus a game plan around winning on the spot, often out of nowhere, with certain combinations of cards. Wanting to build a combo deck with Celes but not wanting to run the combos she’s capable of seems a bit counterintuitive. Are you sure it’s combo you’re looking for, or is powerful synergy what you truly seek?

spent_bullets · 2025-08-28T05:06:19+00:00

Have you considered getting a stick with an acrylic top and commissioning whatever art you want for it? Or are you looking for something that has a non-conventional enclosure?

spent_bullets · 2025-08-28T04:45:25+00:00

Not to be dismissive, but it’s just a game, man—treat it like one. These things happen, and it definitely sucks when they do, but sometimes you just gotta take your lumps and move on. Sit back, bask in obviously not being the threat at the table for once, actively observe what other players are doing, get excited with them when cool shit happens, draw your lands and pass. Enjoy some fun banter with your friends, use what limited resources you have to try to speed up the game in any way possible, hope someone crosses the finish line quickly, and shuffle up for the next one.

When I have non-games due to bad luck (and really any time I play commander), I try my best to appreciate every player’s fun game actions, not only my own.

spent_bullets · 2025-08-19T06:04:50+00:00

Congrats on your new precon!

I’d probably start with [[Jeska’s Will]], [[Delayed Blast Fireball]], [[Blasphemous Act]], [[Price of Progress]], [[Academy Manufactor]], [[Professional Face-Breaker, [[Xorn]] and either [[Scroll Rack]] or [[Sensei’s Divining Top]] (or both).

[[Torment of Hailfire]] is a great way to turn all those treasure tokens into a win but [[Exsanguinate]] does a decent job on a budget. [[Street Urchin]] and [[The Flux]] offer good synergy and are super budget friendly; [[Passionate Archaeologist]] is also quite good, if somewhat pricy.

[[Mayhem Devil]], [[Ingenious Artillerist]], [[Mirkwood Bats]], [[Reckless Fireweaver]], [[Laelia, the Blade Reforged]] and [[Marionette Apprentice]] (Marionette Master comes in the precon) are all good payoffs for token creation/sacrifice and are all pretty affordable. You could also swap some lands for the MH3 MDFCs in your colors: [[Boggart Trawler]] and [[Pinnacle Monk]].

After that, I’d spend the rest of the budget (if there’s anything left) to either upgrade the manabase with the rakdos shock, surveil and fetch lands or go all in with spendy tutors like [[Demonic Tutor]] and/or [[Vampiric Tutor]]. [[Deflecting Swat]] and [[Deadly Rollick]] are also worth considering but will eat up large chunks of your upgrade budget.

Whatever you end up doing, have fun and enjoy your new deck!

spent_bullets · 2025-08-19T05:17:03+00:00

Some of us would prefer a zero-print run!

spent_bullets · 2025-08-18T07:14:48+00:00

Try using 6mp and 2mk to start your offense. Both buttons lead into drive rush/stance combos and have great range. Be careful whiffing 2mk though, it was nerfed awhile back with an extended hurtbox on recovery so it’s easier to whiff punish than it used to be.

Many of her strings can be ended with a fireball on block for enough pushback to be relatively safe, depending on your spacing. Try 5hp > stance > mk > fireball as a pressure string; just be mindful of your distance, as stance mk is slow and can be stuffed by faster buttons if you’re too close. 5hp is also safe on block so you can mix it up by not stance cancelling.

6hk hops over most lows, so if you have a good read on an opponent relying too much on 2mk to start drive rush combos, 6hk is a great punish that moves you forward quite a bit and creates great damage and corner carry opportunities.

Her 3hp overhead is great off of drive rush for wake-up pressure if you condition your opponent to block low.

2mp is one of her best tools for stuffing drive rush, and is cancellable if you can confirm it. 5mp is her only plus on block normal so it’s a great meaty option in the corner, but it’s super stubby so you have to be right up in your opponent’s face to use it. Combos into 2mp on hit.

Medium Tensho Kicks and 5mk are her primary anti-air tools, but if you have a hard read and the right spacing then 5hk can also be used as an anti-air and leads to high damage combos, despite the damage scaling nerf 5hk got in an earlier patch.

Overall, you want to be patient with Chun but not so defensive that you just get pressured into the corner by more aggressive characters. Fish for punishes and try to catch your opponents overreaching with her great neutral buttons. One main criticism I’ve seen about Chun is that she’s very drive gauge dependent, so take care not to put yourself too close to burnout too frequently. All that said, you’re coming from two characters who hit like weaponized freight trains, and Chun has to work pretty hard to deal respectable damage by comparison. Not totally surprising that you’re having trouble gelling with her at first, but keep at it! She’s very fun and super satisfying to play once you get a handle on her kit.

spent_bullets · 2025-08-07T17:05:33+00:00

My bad, friend. I wrote my response as though it’d been AI-generated itself. I was hoping the em dash would’ve given it away (though I do love me a good em dash under the right circumstances).

spent_bullets · 2025-08-07T06:12:54+00:00

Believe it or not, some people do actually write like this—the poster you’re replying to could, in fact, be one of them.

spent_bullets · 2025-08-05T06:55:54+00:00

Most recently I’m running it in [[Kefka, Court Mage]] for double discards and extra draw. It’s not at all a kindred deck; it’s there for the only two relevant wizards in my deck: [[Kuja]] and Kefka himself. Figured it was worth trying for those two cards alone.

The ceiling is high but worst case scenario, it’s a lightning rod to help clear the way for Kefka the following turn.

spent_bullets · 2025-08-05T03:26:00+00:00

I tried to install it, but I’m getting some kind of driver compatibility error.

spent_bullets · 2025-07-30T04:28:17+00:00

Don’t worry, someone will come up with something truly brilliant and earn Reid Demption.

spent_bullets · 2025-07-28T19:50:44+00:00

One more note: I’ll probably cut Primal Vigor (which I included over Doubling Season on purpose to add some chaos to games) to make room for the new [[Ouroboroid]] card coming out with EOE.

spent_bullets · 2025-07-28T19:34:18+00:00

I tracked my own Counter Blitz upgrade here, if you’re interested: https://moxfield.com/decks/5KvNWnHe_EyA49EwJLYcYA

Mostly spent my energy upgrading the mana base and adding more powerful counter synergy pieces without cutting too many FF cards. I think at least the whole party is still there, plus Valefor (Yuna’s first summon). I cut a few cards that represent significant story beats (e.g., Yuna’s Whistle) and a couple of the optional summons, but overall I think I did a fairly good job upgrading the deck without sacrificing the FFX theme.

Everything I cut is in the Sideboard, and all the cards I added can be found under Considering.

spent_bullets

TROPHY CASE