Vren, The Relentless Rats

Commander Overview

Vren is a really cool commander, I mean, let’s be real, who doesn’t love rats! Well, this rat is quite mean, but it is a powerful commander. Not only is it a strong commander because of its token production, but it can really harm creature-based strategies. The token production at every end step allows us to benefit from our opponents removing their creatures as well. Whether our other opponents remove their creatures or we do the constant token production, it is powerful. Combine that with a strong stat line and ward two, and this card is hard to get rid of and can continuously cause problems for our opponents, and that’s without the rest of our deck causing even more problems.

How to Play the Deck

The game plan of our deck is really straight forward, we want to remove as many of our opponents creatures as possible so we can generate a ton of rats, we of course have our own rats that can cause signifcant problems for our opponents like Ashcoat of the Shadow Swarm which can make us into a real threat in combat. Cards like Ogre Slumlord that allow us to be even more of a threat in combat. Killing opponents’ creatures is a top priority for our deck and something we do as much as we can Vren assists a ton with this since whenever an opponent’s creature dies, they get exiled, which can devastate graveyard decks or decks that focus on combo creatures. We are more of a midrange deck with a control package, but can ruin our opponents’ boards quite a bit and hit them back very hard.

Synergy’s in the deck

Our whole deck has so many synergies; all of the rats interact very well with each other. Some of my favorite interactions are with Lord Skitter, Sewer King. With all of our removal, being able to exile cards that didn’t get exiled makes our matchup against graveyard-focused decks even better. Piper of the Swarm is another creature I think is really awesome for the deck. We often have a ton of rats on the field. Hence, being able to sac three and take an opponent’s creature is really easy for our deck to do, and with cards like Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos in the deck, we can sometimes ruin their boards. In contrast, we can take a creature from an opponent, just an awesome piece of synergy for the deck. Piper also gives all of our rats menace making us even stronger in combat. I also love both Raise the Palisade and Crippling Fear. Being able to have multiple one-sided ways to clear the board really helps us against creature-heavy decks. In my experience, opponents will not have many rats on the field, so these are effectively board wipes for us.

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: We actually have a very good early-game in the deck, we have some very cheap rats that allow us to disrupt our opponents like Gnat Miser which can really throw off your opponents if you drop that in the early-turns, being able to limit an opponnets hand size is so strong especially in the early turns where cards in hand matter a lot. We also have rats like Burglar Rat and Nezumi Informant, which can disrupt our opponents as well. These are other cards that give a big advantage in the early game.

Mid-Game: By the time we hit the mid-game we typically have our commander out and can start settling more into our control package and removing our opponents creatures a lot more, we also commit a lot of our best rats and rat support creatures like Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni and Marrow-Gnawer both of these can cause huge swings for the gameplan and overwhelm our opponents a lot.

Late-Game: The late-game is where things start to get really crazy. This is when we start using our mass removal, like Crippling Fear, to swing the game for us and kill our opponents through combat. Since we have a lot of token production from Vren, we can get a ton of value out of Eliminate the Competition and Blasphemous Edict, since we oftentimes have so many creatures, both of these cards affect our opponents much more than they affect us.

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

We have a decently low mana curve in the deck, so we don’t have much ramp. We, of course, have both Sol Ring and Arcane Signet like most decks in the format, we have no problem getting our commander out early and accelerating the game plan, but ramp isn’t something we are overly concerned about.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

We aren’t super heavy on card draw, our control package makes it so we don’t care that much if the game goes long, because of that we can afford to not draw a ton of cards all the time, we do have the extremely powerful Skullclamp and this is a true card draw machine especially with our commander and all of the tokens they produce. Whether we have Skullclamp or not, we are perfectly ok with the game going slower.

Removal

We are very good at removing opponents’ creatures; that really is the name of the game for this deck. We love removing our opponents’ creatures since our commander exiles them when they die. Having that ability is truly invaluable for a deck. There is absolutely zero chance of recursion. Eliminate the Competition is just nuts in this deck, sac’ing all of our rat tokens and destroying a ton of opponents’ creatures and creating even more rat tokens at the end of the turn is just nuts. Swarmyard Massacre is another piece of removal for the deck that is pretty much one-sided and allows us to hit our opponents hard. It is a little pricey mana-wise, and we do have Toxic Deluge in the deck as well, but Swarmyard being one-sided is a lot better than Deluge, especially if we are ahead. Removal is a big part of our deck and is a core part of our game plan.

Protection

Beyond our commander having ward two, we don’t have a ton of protection in the deck. We do have some, like Feign Death and Supernatural Stamina, which are great responses to our opponents’ removal. The last of our protection is our counterspell package, like Arcane Denial and Counterspell, as well as Swan Song, which can protect us and counter our opponents’ stuff.

Utility / Support

White Lotus Tile is a powerful card in our deck. Having additional mana is very nice for the deck overall. We don’t have a ton of X spells, and anything but this card allows us to accelerate our board and become threatening a lot quicker.

Since we are running both Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos, having both Ashnod’s Altar and Phyrexian Altar provides us with additional mana. We can devastate our opponents’ boards and produce a decent amount of mana in the process.
Since we are perfectly ok with slowing the game down, we are running Propaganda, which can make attacking us really tough, especially in the mid-game when mana is a lot tighter. If an opponent’s deck aims to go wide, propaganda can really stop that and let us continue developing our board. Increasingg our rat count is very important to us. At the same time, a majority of our creatures are rats we do have quite a few strong creatures that arent like Ayara, First of Locthwain and Species Specialist being able to make all of our creatures rats allows some of our removal like Crippling Fear to not affect us at all.

Mana Base

Swarmyard is by far my favorite land we have in the mana base, being able to tap and regenerate one of our rats is very strong for our deck and allows us to play through a lot of our opponents’ removal. Our land base is straightforward. We skew heavily towards black in the deck, but we still have a nice amount of dual lands for color fixing. I played a bunch of games with this deck and never had any mana issues.

Win Conditions

Our only win condition is combat, it is much easier for us to buff up our board with cards like Ashcoat of the Shadow Swarm, which allows us to hit like a truck, and if an opponent can’t block our army of rats, they are certainly going to be in trouble.

Strengths of the Deck

We don’t really care about the pace of the game; we can go more aggressive or more controlling. Our deck is very strong at running down opponents’ built-up boards.

We are shockingly strong in combat. We can overwhelm the board and hit very hard out of nowhere. Many opponents do not expect how hard we can hit in combat.

Weaknesses of the Deck

It can be a rough game if we are not able to stick our commander, some opponents will go after our commander a lot because they are a huge part of the deck.

Board wipes can be tough for our deck to recover from.

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs Trostani Discordant. Matchup Record: 5-0

Trostani is a perfect matchup for our deck. They go pretty wide with their tokens, but we often go a lot wider. They also don’t have many ways to stop us from destroying a majority of their creatures.

I had no trouble with this matchup, and it went very well.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Ashcoat of the Shadow Swarm, Grave Pact and Crippling Fear

Game 2: Vs Bhaal, Lord of Murder. Matchup Record: 2-2

This is an interesting matchup for the deck. We did split the games, but I still don’t know if we are favored. Our creatures being goaded can be problematic because we like to attack when we want to. Being forced to attack can be tough and force us into bad situations.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Dismember, Go for the Throat and Sheoldred’s Edict

Game 3: Vs Arabella, Abandoned Doll. Matchup Record: 3-1

This was a matchup that is absolutely winnable but is a bit tough; having early removal is truly key in this matchup. It can be very tough for us to win if the Arabella player has a very aggressive start. If you can keep their commander contained early, we will devastate them.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:

Conclusion

Vren, the Relentless, is such a fun commander to play and rats are so much fun to play with. At the same time, this certainly isn’t the strongest deck in the format, it’s a ton of fun and can be powerful, it’s also super on theme, if you love themed decks and having a bit of fun (while your opponents have no fun) then I hope you all enjoyed this one as much as I did.