The Rats! The Rats! We’re the Rats!
Art: Marrow-Gnawer
by Wayne Reynolds
Welcome to another installment of Brewed EDH:
Table of Contents
Todays Featured Commander is:
Marrow-Gnawer is a fun rat tribal commander from Kamigawa that allows us to sacrifice a Rat to create more Rats! Since we are a rat colony deck we can utilize our multiple instances of rats for crazy amounts of tokens and overwhelm our opponents with the Rat Pile! This may not be the strongest deck but this is a ton of fun and a very goofy commander deck!
The Deck:
Marrow-Gnawer Rat Pile
| Commander (1) 1 Marrow-Gnawer Creatures (42) 1 Pack Rat 1 Piper of the Swarm 35 Rat Colony 1 Karumonix, the Rat King 1 Filth 1 Skemfar Shadowsage 1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel 1 Ogre Slumlord Spells (8) 1 Darkness 1 Vampiric Tutor 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Exsanguinate 1 Torment of Hailfire 1 Deadly Rollick 1 Pile On 1 Living Death Artifacts (10) 1 Skullclamp 1 Sol Ring 1 Jet Medallion 1 Bontu’s Monument 1 Herald’s Horn 1 Aetherflux Reservoir 1 Thrumming Stone 1 Bolas’s Citadel 1 Caged Sun 1 Obelisk of Urd Enchantments (5) 1 Bad Moon 1 Phyrexian Arena 1 Grave Pact 1 Koskun Falls 1 Whip of Erebos | Lands (34) 1 Bojuka Bog 1 Cabal Coffers 1 Demolition Field 1 Field of Ruin 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx 1 Path of Ancestry 1 Reliquary Tower 1 Rogue’s Passage 25 Swamp 1 Swarmyard |
Why Marrow-Gnawer?
The main reason we chose Marrow-Gnawer is because he gives all rats fear and can sacrifice our rat colony’s to make more Rats. Fear is a great combat evasion tactic to let us swing in early and often with less chance of blockers on our low health rats. Marrow-Gnawer is very easy to cast in our deck and combined with our tribal buff cards like Obelisk of Urd
can make the rats from Marrow-Gnawer 3/3’s with fear which can end games quite quickly
Deck Overview:
The main goal of our deck is to get Rat Colony
on the board and start swinging. Even though the rat colony’s boost themselves we also have tribal cards to make them even bigger like Caged Sun
and Obelisk of Urd. We also have ways to make our rat’s cheaper like Bontu's Monument
and Herald's Horn
. One of the best card in our deck is actually Thrumming Stone
which allows us to cast a rat colony and get more rat colony’s off of the ripple effect. We are also packing a ton of ways to make our rats more evasive like Piper of the Swarm
which gives all of our rats menace. Karumonix, the Rat King
is also great in our deck since he gives our rats toxic 1 which can end games very quickly once he hits the battlefield and we start swinging with the rat pile! Ogre Slumlord
gives our rat pile deathtouch which makes combat that much easier! Since our rats die very easily we also have Grave Pact
which is a great payoff for our rats dying. Pack Rat
is especially good in our deck because it can get to a crazy power and toughness and we can copy it this is one of our best targets with Marrow-Gnawer. Skemfar Shadowsage
and Gray Merchant of Asphodel
are great ways to deal massive damage and gain lots of life.
Strengths of the Deck:
- Easy to build a large well-stated board
- Marrow-Gnawer giving Rats fear
- Reanimation package lets us recur the colony
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- Maelstrom pulse is amazing against our deck
- Total creature list bad against a lot of hate / interaction
- Once out of steam can be difficult to recover
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Main Win Conditions:
Our main condition is Rat colony’s + Anthem effects to boost them further. we solely rely on combat damage to win the game!
Conclusion:
In Conclusion Marrow-Gnawer rat pile is in every way a meme deck that is not the best but is still a fun and inexpensive commander deck with a ton of meme potential! While it doesnt play any combos there is a lot of Rat support in MTG and you can end games with the endless rat pile!
Thanks for Reading to the End!