CJB: Thrumming it with Marrow-Gnawer
Excelsior, and thanks for joining me for another edition of Commander Johnny-Boosh!
Today we are going to go Tribal, as well as rule-breaking and potentially-infinite (or at least, a very long time indeed).
“Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Rats in the Walls
Yep, that's right: We is talkin' Rats!
And, here are the combo pieces that cause the main threat!
They are not the entirety of your strategy, but there sure are fun! Also, it's always amazing putting in 22 Relentless Rats in a singleton deck.
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- So the main groovy gravy of the deck is the aforementioned Thrumming Stone and Relentless Rats combo, but the best part is if you also manage to get out Door of Destinies. Since the Ripple 4 effect actually casts the extra Relentless Rats, it also triggers the Door, growing them exponentially. So far, I've managed to get out fourteen Rats with one Ripple 4 casting, and I've played about thirty games.
- If you never get the Stone, this is still a great beatdown deck that is just Tribal Rats. Pumping spells include Caged Sun, Gauntlet of Power, Adaptive Automaton and Door of Destinies, plus the whole Relentless stacking. Pack Rat and Swarm of Rats can grow pretty big too. Liliana of the Dark Realms can also pump a rat as well.
- There's lots of Tutors and card-draw in here in order to fish out your Thrumming Stone. Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, and Demonic Tutor are the standard Tutor triumvirate. Staff of Nin, Necropotence, Phyrexian Arena, and Coercive Portal are all there to fetch extra cards. Ratcatcher is even a repeatable tutor for Rats.
- Mana Ramping is handled by Expedition Map, Sol Ring, Unstable Obelisk (which also doubles as removal), Mana Crypt, Crypt Ghast, Nirkana Revenant, Caged Sun, Dark Ritual, Gauntlet of Power, Lily, Nykthos and the Coffers.
- Speaking of Mana ramp: this deck has a whole lotta Artifacts, so Mishra's Workshop makes the cut. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth makes it even better.
- I included the Wilds and the Expanse and the Glaciers in order to thin the deck further and scoop out swamps.
- Overruning your opponent with Rat tokens is your second win-con (I guess the first is overruning with Relentless Rats).
- This deck only rocks 36 lands, because, besides the usual trifecta of Ugin, Karn and All is Dust, and Caged Sun, Staff of Nin and Nirkana Revenant which are nestled in the 6-CMC slot, most of the spells are very reasonable to cast. In fact, besides what I just mentioned, everything else costs Five mana or less, and the average CMC is three. Rippling also lets you cast things for free, and there is a ton of mana ramp in here.
- Mimic Vat goes great in this deck. In theory, you are likely sac'ing at least one Relentless Rats to Marrow-Gnawer, which can be Vatted at a later time, and the Vat-temporary-token can also be sacrificed in future to Marrow-Gnawer for its activation cost. If you are sac'ing nontoken creatures to 'Gnawer, then Ogre Slumlord fits in beautifully.
- Yay Swarmyard!
- This deck definitely packs a nice amount of removal, which includes Gild, Hero's Downfall, Unstable Obelisk, Karn, Lily, Ugin, All is Dust, Damnation, Mutilate, Silence the Believers, Crypt Rats, Sever the Bloodline, and the various lands that destroy other lands. Mutilate or Crypt Rats may work out to your advantage: if you have thrummed up enough Relentless Rats with-or-without a big ol' Door of Destinies, you may be able to mutilate all of your opponent's creatures and keep most of yours.
- Nezumi Graverobber, Volrath's Stronghold, Living Death, and Patriarch's Bidding help revive fallen Rat friends, and your own mass removal.
- Lightning Greaves' inclusion shouldn't need explaining, and Ink-Eyes is just one of the coolest Rats ever, and can sneak into play after 'Gnawer gives a regular ol' rat Fear.
As I said up above, I got to Thrum off 14 Relentless Rats, but could not grab a screen capture in time, and hunting through my games history to grab a still has proven fruitless.
The above screenshot is just a great board position. As you can see in this game (well, you can't see my hand, but I had the Thrumming Stone in it the whole time) I never got to Thrum, or Gnaw anything, but I did get to keep casting Rat after Rat until I overwhelmed my opponent.
This partial screenshot shows the stone in my hand, with the ability to cast it and roll off the combo shortly after. My opponent was playing a monogreen build, and couldn't stand up to the Fear granted by Marrow-Gnawer.
I wanted to share this with you to expose this weird bug I found. It may be known, I didn't double check the bugblog, but look at my flipped Nezumi!
After flipping him, it acts like an enchantment rather than a creature, even though it's a creature. It's lined up right next to my Arena, and attacking with it taps it under my other creatures. Just visually weird, not a gameplay-breaking bug. I shot off a "hey there's a bug" email to the mothership through their unnavigable forums.
So really, the strategy here is to bash people's faces in with an ever-growing amount of rats.
Grenzo the Relentless
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- That's right, Grenzo is back! I may have teased that I was working on a Goblin Tribal Grenzo Commander deck in Freed From the Real episode 329, but I wound up making a Relentless Rats version instead.
- So I discovered that Thrumming Stone needs to go into my original Grenzo deck, as every spell then allows you to manipulate 4 cards onto the bottom of your library. In Fact, this amalgam of two decks I love allows Grenzo to either Grrenzo in Relentless Rats, or if we cast them, we can Thrum them in. The deck pulls double duty to load up your board with rats.
- Ratcatcher joins Purphoros, God of the Forge in being a creature over power 2. All the other creatures-- all the Relentless Rats, and Marrow-Gnawer as well, are power 2 and so Grenzo can still be cast for only two mana. The Rats are 2/2 until they hit the field and get the Sliver-esque bonuses, so Grenzo will always snag them with his ability.
- No Tel-Jilad Stylus in this build. Replaced by Soldevi Digger. The Stylus doesn't make sense here because nothing in this deck is an Enters-the-battlefield trigger.
- Revive the Fallen replaced by Patriarch's Bidding.
- Necropotence and Phyrexian Arena added to draw into the Stone and more rats easier.
- Chaosphere was added since this thing is lacking in flying.
- Since you are likely to be Grenzoing half of your Rats onto the field, I opted not to put in Door of Destinies but instead, Shared Animosity.
- This deck managed to fit in the awesome combo of Crypt Rats and Akroma's Memorial. Both are good cards on their own, but really work out nicely when they're together.
Thanks for joining me again, I had a lot of fun exploiting the Relentless Rats loophole in singleton.
Did I miss anything you would've included? Lemme know in the comments below, or maybe shoot me a message in Twitter: @CmdrJohnnyBoosh.
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1 Comments
I remember when thrumming stone + rats was a fun idea in old extended. (At least I think it was old extended) Back in early 2007 I had a friend who loved that deck idea so much that it was all he played. Love this take on it with Marrow Gnawer. Nicely done once again, Adam.
PS: sorry for the delayed comment, its been a hot horrible week so far and I am lagging behind in getting stuff done.