Marchesa, Queen of Dissuasion

General Goals and Thoughts

The main goal of this deck is to enhance interactions by combat, while deterring opponents to attack the crown. This decklist was carefully built with a budget in mind (~150 euros from cardmarket) and tries to improve the game experience of all players around the table while maintaining a decent power level (this is not a group hug).
For these reasons, you'll see that this decklist varies significantly from other Queen Marchesa's decks, mostly by restricting the amount of stax, aikido and increasing the political and combat based archetype.

The main strength of this deck is to never be too threatening to the group. For these reason a lot of group hate cards are not included because we do not want to draw attention towards us. This makes it a strong deck in multiplayer games, where due to its high amount of interactions it will help us create alliances and turn opponents against each other. Thanks to these politics, it often lets us finish in 1v1 situations where we can finish our opponent through combat or burst.

In the following sections I've grouped cards by the main ideas this decks wants to do:

WORK IN PROGRESS

> Force combat

• Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor
• Rite of the Raging Storm
• Breena, the Demagogue
• Xantcha, Sleeper Agent
• Vengeful Ancestor
• Combat Calligrapher
• Combat Calligrapher
• Kardur, Doomscourge
• Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant
• Curse of Opulence
• Shiny Impetus

> Dissuasion

• Soul Snare : very underestimated card only 1W and it strongly suggests your opponent to not attack you.
• Curse of Opulence:
• Spear of Heliod
• Cunning Rhetorics
• Mangara, the Diplomat
• Duelist's Heritage

> Protection

• Ghostly Prison
• Kor haven
• Archon of Absolution
• Righteous Aura

Weaker Permanents are Stronger

Looks like a controversial title but I'll try to explain myself. In previous versions of this decklist, I was running cards like Wound Reflection or Kambal, Consul of Allocation, which are very strong but come
with a drawback: shifting the table attention towards the Queen. This is completely the opposite of what this deck wants to do ! Most of the time, if your pod has a good threat assessment these kind of permanents will be destroyed before one table turn. So if you're not using them to directly finish the game I think these cards anti-synergies with the deck, which is why I've replaced Wound Reflection with Dictate of the Twin Gods that I always use with flash to finish the game.
In contrary, "weaker" permanents are much more suitable here (and by weaker I mean permanents that don't directly create a big threat) . They have two main advantages: first they are less likely to be targeted by removal, second they usually have a lower CMC.

Take for example Sphere of Safety and Spear of Heliod. The first cost 2 more mana and is often much better at preventing players from attacking you. For these reasons Sphere of Safety is card that will be seen as a "problem" for all my opponents and likely to get removed. On the other hand, the Spear of Heliod is a tool of dissuasion which can become political: say for example, "If you don't remove it, I will not destroy this creature with the spear". So opponents will often want to keep their removal for stronger permanents and even if they do remove it, you only lost 3 manas to cast it not 5.

After multiples games, your pod will likely understand that apart from big X finisher spells, you're not going to be a direct threat to the group. For these reasons it's usually a deck that will not get targeted first and likely to stay long enough to have a important impact on the game whether it wins or not.

Staples Remover, Budget considerations and Diversity

One of the Great advantages of building with a budget restriction is to look for alternative cheaper cards. I personally much prefer running little bit weaker alternatives that fit a theme of my deck than staples that are auto-included in 90% of Mardu decks (like Wrath of God for example). Bear in mind, that this is my personal opinion and if you prefer to run your staples like most of my pod do, just go for it.
Although sometimes there are just not any good alternative to a staple, most of the times I believe you can find a card that has almost the same effect without loosing too much power level.

Take Promise of Loyalty for example, it's a 5 CMC boardwipe that leaves one creature for each player. In most decks and situations it'll be seen as a much weaker version than Wrath of God. However in this Queen Marchesa decklist which wants opponents to attack each other the card becomes much stronger: it reads "sacrifices" instead of "destroy" and prevents the remaining creatures from attacking us basically granting two desirable effects from a single card.

Don't misunderstand me, in some cases staples are so broken that removing them will clearly lower the power of your deck. You'll see for example that I'm running Anguished Unmaking, Swords to Plowshares, Grim Tutor, etc... However because I wanted to run 11 removals, at some point the 10th and 11th staples were relatively bad enough for me to consider spicier alternatives. So I've replaced them with cards like Council's Judgment that greatly improves the interaction and fun of the game for everyone and Soul Snare which is an insanely good card specifically for this deck.

Finally being on a budget forced me to search for alternatives of expensive cards. When I started looking for tutors I knew that I couldn't afford Demonic Tutor, but at the same time Diabolic Tutor felt like an absurdly worse version. The alternative I've found: the transmute mechanic from Shred Memory. I've basically build my deck around it, preferring every 2 CMC cards over others : looking for a finisher ? Go find Torment of Hailfire, 2CMC. Protection for your permanents ? Boros Charm, 2CMC. A removal ? Vanishing Verse, Terminate, etc... A Boardwipe ? Starstorm ! I'm not affraid to say that in this deck, Shred Memory is an uncounterable Grim Tutor that doesn't tax your life.