Gnawer

Hello all, Hope that you're all well.

Looking at putting together Marrow-Gnawer as a commander but hung up on if i want to go relentless rats or rat colony.

Prefer the relentless rats in my opinion, seems it holds more resilience, despite being primarily an aggro deck, as it gains toughness unlike colony. Ideally want to avoid being locked out od game via effects such as plague engineer and ethereal absolution etc.

Colony looks like it snowballs faster gaining from all rats, not just from its own self/selves.

Any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated.

Will likely be testing tonight online.

I’ve seen usual interpretation for them to be either or and I was wondering if there was like a rigid interpretation for it or something

Hallo everyone,

First time posting here.

I currently working on a Rat-tribal/disease-theme Deck with marrow-gnawer as the Commander. I got the Rat-tribal stuff I want to do together pretty quickly.

Now I‘m struggling with the diseases. I‘m looking for enchantments, instants and sorcerys that are named after (or are a reference to) real diseases and things associated with diseases.

I already got:

[[Pox]] [[Smallpox]] [[phthisis]] [[contamination]] [[Nettlevine blight]] [[pestilence]] [[traveling plague]] [[necrotic plague]] [[exotic disease]]

I‘m happy for all suggestions

Edit: Thank you all for your suggestions there are some interesting cards here. I hope i find enough Space in the Deck to fit the Cards i like

Rat's tribal ban: " Rat’s children must not kill vermin of any kind. "

Since the Glass Walkers' ban is not to harm cockroaches, vermin here just means "rodents" -- rats and presumably mice living in cities and houses. All right. So... where does this leave squirrels?

My question for those who've played or ST'd a campaign with Bone Gnawers: how did you or the Storyteller rule on whether Bone Gnawers could head into a park at night and feast on tree rats?

I've posted a similar question before on this sub a long time ago, but I've made quite a few changes since then so I hope this doesn't violate the rules at all.

Real quick though, I just want to preface that I'm very well aware that Marrow-Gnawer nor rat tribal as a strategy in general is nowhere near cEDH-viable. However, my goal was to make this deck as good as it could possibly be considering our choice in commander and strategy's inherit limitations.

DECKLIST: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/nbGVZpyhD0CF3xGyAI6IwA

The main goal of the deck is to pump out as many rats as possible using either our commander or our other effects to combo out a win via one of our outlets. Alternatively, we utilize a self-mill strategy to fill our graveyard with rats in order to win with the effect of Mortal Combat.

BUDGET: Effectively limitless since I'm more than willing to proxy whatever I need.

WIN CONDITIONS:

Marrow-Ganwer + Thornbite Staff: Probably the most well-known and common combo in rat tribal decks. It's fairly basic and has the benefit of only requiring our commander and a single rat so we should almost always have access to it assuming we have the mana.

The only issue is that in order to win on our combo turn, we need some kind of outlet such as Ayara or Altar of Dementia. Otherwise, we need to wait for our next turn and hope we're able to swing into everyone with our infinite rats without getting blown out by the rest of the pod (which is likely since you've effectively announced you're going to win your next turn).

Secret Salvage / Peer Into the Abyss + Mortal Combat: The idea is to mill out our rats via end of turn discard in order to take advantage of Mortal Combat's effect to win the game. This can be done at instant speed to catch people off-guard with Emergence Zone as well in order to avoid announcing that you're going to win next turn and minimize the chance of being countered.

It also has the added benefit as serving as a back-up win condition should your rats be completely wiped after a failed combo attempt.

Ayara + Plague of Vermin: A simple, albeit expensive two-card combo that can instantly kill a table while also serving as an emergency plan if all our rats were to somehow get exiled or are otherwise unavailable.

META: Unfortunately, I don't have a set playgroup so I don't have a specific meta I need to prepare for. So until tha

"Genomics researcher Anders Bergstrom and his colleagues recently sequenced the genomes of 27 dogs from archaeological sites scattered around Europe and Asia, ranging from 4,000 to 11,000 years old. Those genomes, along with those of modern dogs and wolves, show how dogs have moved around the world with people since their domestication.

All the dogs in the study descended from the same common ancestor [11,000 years ago], but that original dog population split into at least five branches as it expanded in different directions. As groups of people split apart, migrated, and met other groups, they brought their dogs along. Dog DNA suggests that their population history mirrors the story of human populations, for the most part."

Now, these two points are particularly interesting:

1. "The ancient genomes suggest that dogs all share a common ancestor, which they don’t share with modern wolves. According to Bergstrom and his colleagues, that probably means that dogs all descend from one group of wolves, and that group is now extinct.

Modern gray wolves don’t appear to be very closely related to any of the ancient or modern dogs in the study. That suggests that since domestication set them apart, wolves haven’t contributed much DNA to dog bloodlines."

2. " The oldest dog in the study lived with Mesolithic hunter-gatherers about 10,900 years ago in what is now Sweden. Its DNA suggests that most of its ancestors were from an eastern branch of the dog family tree—the branch that gave rise to Siberian dogs, indigenous North American dogs, and even New Guinea singing dogs and Australian dingoes.

But some of the dog’s ancestry also came from the branch that had followed humans into the Levant and southwest Asia. Those bits of DNA were probably picked up as souvenirs when the dog’s ancestors met dogs from another population. In other words, by 11,000 years ago, dogs had had time to become a species, divide into distinct populations as they moved apart, and then meet again and exchange DNA."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/10/ancient-dna-sheds-light-on-our-prehistory-with-dogs/

Been doing builds of characters from various franchises in an attempt to explore the depth of PF2e character creation. Also started going deeper into the itemization, too. If you want to see a write-up on the choices I made for each level and the reasoning behind them, check out my blog post on the character here: https://bjacobt1.wixsite.com/monstermonday/post/full-build-friday-marrow-gnawer-mtg

With that out of the way, here's Marrow-Gnawer from Magic the Gathering.

Level 20 Marrow-Gnawer, Page 1

Level 20 Marrow-Gnawer, Page 2

Lemme know what you think, what other characters you might like to see, and have a great day!

When I first started playing MtG my first real deck was a rats deck. I had a [[Marrow-Gnawer]] back then, but lost it along with a lot of cards I used to have. Cut to now, I recently opened a foil Marrow-Gnawer from a Mystery Booster! I would love to build an edh rats deck, but haven't figured out exactly how I want to execute it. I have about 20+ [[Relentless Rats]] and a [[Thrumming Stone]] already, so that is one option. I also know a lot of rats have discard effects, so discard seems like an option too. I could also just get what rats I think are cool and just do plain rats tribal. Relentless rats sounds fun and gimmicky, but seems fragile and repetitive. Discard might not be super fun for people it plays against, but I don't think it's too mean to try it. And I'm just not familiar enough with the different cards available for a plain rat tribal deck. Does anyone have any recommendations for this type of deck? This would also be my first mono-color edh deck, so is there anything I should keep in mind with that?

Any constructive critizism is appriciated. Since i'm currently stuck on what to remove from the deck as i'm 3 cards over. If you also have ideas for cards that would work great in the deck, that would be greatly appriciated too :D

Deck list: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3339336#paper

Hello guys this is my first post and I'm novice in the magic world. I'm trying to build a rat colony deck cause it seems pretty fun, being aggro and having a good game closer through combo. I'm trying to build 25 rats with altar and thumming combo plus the utility rat creatures such us ink eye, specialist, Piper swarm, patron, nezumi grave etc ... What should I build to be more aggressive through rats and help combo??

https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/16/21067251/magic-the-gathering-secret-lair-announcement-preview-year-of-the-rat-release-date-price

[[Marrow-Gnawer]], [[Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni]], [[Pack Rat]], and [[Rat Colony]] will receive foil reprints with new art in an upcoming Secret Lair on January 27. Like previous secret lairs, it will be available for 24 hours.

Images of new artwork

In a [[marrow-gnawer]] / [[rat colony]] deck, [[Skullclamp]] seems like an auto-inclusion. However, I already have [[Caged sun]], [[Vanquisher's Banner]], [[Coat of Arms]], and [[Door of Destinies]] because the deck used to be [[relentless rats]]. Is skullclamp too big of a nonbo with these 4 cards to warrant putting it in the deck?

EDIT: I proxied the rat colonies last night and threw in skullclamp. Sweet baby jesus did it make a difference. The deck is faster, more aggressive, does more damage, creates bigger blockers, combos faster, and the down side of my creatures dying isn't awful because I run a couple mass recursion effects. Night and Day difference.

And skullclamp... what a card. This was my first experience playing with and it does serious work. I didn't care at all when I drew an anthem that was a nonbo with it, especially when I drop thrumming stone and a rat, pull 23 more rats out of my deck, and then sac 5 of them to draw 10 cards. Good lord did I have fun with rats last night.

https://archidekt.com/decks/406758#Dad_Hates_Rats

Looking to cut about 8 cards from this list. I'm kinda trying to keep things budget-ish. Hence no cabal coffers/urborg. I'm not really concerned with things being super competitive. I don't even really get to play much anymore, I just like to build decks. There's always room to upgrade down the line.

I'd be open to other suggestions as well. mostly my card choices were budget reasoned, but there are some that I just like. I like limited opponents hands as a form of 'removal', but the Misers could go. I also have a number of buffs because rat colony only buffs power, not toughness, so that's me trying to give them some legs. Bad Moon could probably leave as it helps opponents too. the Bontu's Monument/Carnival of Souls combo needs to stay. Graveshifter is likely not up to snuff.

Just need some insight is all. I'm to close to this as I've wanted to make a rat deck for AGES and I'm not sure what to cut. Thanks in advance!

Hello , I'm trying to put together a Marrow-Gnawer list that I can use when playing lowerish power tables, LGS is 50% high powered/ tuned "casual" and 50% pre con+ lvl decks. I want to use [[Relentless Rats]] and [[Marrow-Gnawer]] but other than that am unsure. I put together a list that seems decent but would like opinions. https://archidekt.com/decks/396320#Rats For those of you that play [[Marrow-Gnawer]] is there anything that i've left out, or should be taken out. I have [[Gauntlet of Power]] and [[Caged Sun]] but i'm not sure if there worth running. Any help is appreciated.

https://archidekt.com/decks/386297#Rat_Tribal

Trying to refine my marrow-gnawer rat tribal deck and reduce the cost of the deck as well as improve the consistency of the deck. I had originally planned to make it as a €100 deck (on cardmarket) but have now decided to drop the deck down to €40-50

Current game plan is to get a lot of rat colony's and other rat creatures onto the field with fear from my commander and kill my opponents. I'm thinking that while I was originally planning on doing this it could be better keeping the majority of the unique rats but swapping some of the rat colony's for a more discard focused deck.

Cards in the maybeboard were cards that were originally in the deck when I had a higher budget but I will soon be removing them to start making way for useful discard cards that could fit the theme.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, thanks for the help!

More a curiosity then anything but would anyone say the Bowery from John Wick is a good example of a Bone Gnawer sept? The disenfranchised homeless people, secret homeless camps armed with weapons, “ all that you deem not to look at”.... I was just watching the film and I realized they seemed to have a distinct Bone Gnawer feel to them

I am having a hard time deciding what to do with my Rat deck. I currently have a [[marrow-gnawer]] deck that is not nearly as aggressive as some of the lists I see online. I use [[relentless rats]] rather than [[rat colony]] because I like having the extra toughness seeing as how I mostly use my rats as a big wall to protect myself while I prepare my actual win conditions.

I CAN win, and have won, with my relentless rat damage (especially with [[thrumming stone]] enabling it), but more often than not I use my commander's ability (sometimes with [[thornbite staff]]) to ping the table to death with [[ayara, first of locthwain]] or [[bontu's monument]] OR I use [[syr Konrad, the grim]], [[altar of the brood]], and [[mind crank]] to mill and ping, OR I just use my wall of rats to hold off attackers until I can ramp into a big enough [[Gary]], [[exsanguinate]], or [[torment of hailfire]].

I love how the deck has so many ways to win and every game feels much different than the last. Even though at the core it is just a "janky rat deck" according to a lot of people, my win rate with it is pretty decent. The only problem that I have with this deck is that it isn't particularly fast or aggressive. I guess what I am curious about is whether or not changing to rat colony instead of relentless rats would increase the speed and aggressiveness enough to offset the potential loss of blockers that don't die every time they block.

PROS:

1. Faster/easier to get out in multiples.
2. I could put [[skullclamp]] in the deck. Nuff said.
3. They get buffed by ALL rats, making it easier to win via combat damage.

CONS:

1. Less toughness means they die when they block (although it will usually be a trade), and my meta is pretty creature heavy.
2. I spent over $50 on relentless rats. :/
3. Damage based board wipes would suck a bit, although I am pretty much the only person in my playgroup that uses them (for now).

I am currently leaning TOWARD the switch, but I am curious to see what any, more veteran, rat players have to say.

Thank you for reading!

This is my first time building a mono color deck, and also my first time building tribal, so I'm not feeling super confident in my choices. I'm hoping to abuse [[thruming stone]] and the 25 [[relentless rats]] to cheat out a bunch of stuff decently early. I then plan on using some tribal nonsense to make a boatload of killer rats that will swing for crazy damage. Add in some altars for Mana/card draw. mix in a [[nyx lotus]] and [[exsanguinate]] to drop life totals, and I'm feeling pretty good. Any input?

I also know 25 of the relentless rats might be silly, but something about the 25(rats)*4(ripple) appeal's to me on a very base level

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/frank-sinatrat

Thank you very much!

Hello all, Hope that you're all well.

Looking at putting together Marrow-Gnawer as a commander but hung up on if i want to go relentless rats or rat colony.

Prefer the relentless rats in my opinion, seems it holds more resilience, despite being primarily an aggro deck, as it gains toughness unlike colony. Ideally want to avoid being locked out od game via effects such as plague engineer and ethereal absolution etc.

Colony looks like it snowballs faster gaining from all rats, not just from its own self/selves.

Any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated.

Will likely be testing tonight online.