This year's GenCon event and as per usual, you might've seen me behind the CoolStuffInc booth buying cards from people. While it's great getting to see all the cool things people bring to the table, what I enjoy most is the discussions I get to have with those people. Many times you'll run into newer players and just as often you'll find yourself talking it up with an old-timer, reminiscing about Magic's distant past.

This got me wanting to take a look back at some older cards again in the form of PreDH. At the same time, I'm loving Bloomburrow and wanted to do something that covered those vibes as well! So I got to scouring the different potential commanders that existed in the era and stumbled onto a great one to discuss: Marrow-Gnawer!

Released with Champions of Kamigawa back in 2004, this rat lord really gets to do some pretty silly things in games of Commander. It also just so happens that rats are one of the primary creature types in Bloomburrow, with many rats also showing up in sets throughout the last couple years to help support its appearance here. Given that, I figured it'd be nice to take a little bit of a step back in time and see what a rat-focused deck might've looked like in the early 2010s.

Let's take a look at my take on a PreDH Marrow-Gnawer list!

Rats, It's Marrow-Gnawer! | Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Marrow-Gnawer

• Creatures (32)
• 1 Brass Herald
• 1 Crypt Rats
• 1 Ghostly Changeling
• 1 Gnat Miser
• 1 Infected Vermin
• 1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
• 1 Locust Miser
• 1 Nezumi Graverobber
• 1 Nezumi Shortfang
• 1 Patron of the Nezumi
• 1 Phyrexian Plaguelord
• 1 Ratcatcher
• 1 Rotting Rats
• 1 Scrib Nibblers
• 1 Skullsnatcher
• 1 Stronghold Rats
• 1 Swarm of Rats
• 1 Throat Slitter
• 1 Viscera Seer
• 13 Relentless Rats

• Instants (2)
• 1 Doom Blade
• 1 Go for the Throat

• Sorceries (8)
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Diabolic Intent
• 1 Diabolic Tutor
• 1 Lab Rats
• 1 Night's Whisper
• 1 Patriarch's Bidding
• 1 Plague of Vermin
• 1 Sign in Blood

• Enchantments (4)
• 1 Attrition
• 1 Necropotence
• 1 Oversold Cemetery
• 1 Phyrexian Arena

• Artifacts (15)
• 1 Caged Sun
• 1 Charcoal Diamond
• 1 Coat of Arms
• 1 Darksteel Plate
• 1 Door of Destinies
• 1 Eldrazi Monument
• 1 Elixir of Immortality
• 1 Gauntlet of Power
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Phyrexian Vault
• 1 Shield of Kaldra
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Strata Scythe
• 1 Thousand-Year Elixir

• Lands (38)
• 25 Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1 Barren Moor
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Crypt of Agadeem
• 1 Ebon Stronghold
• 1 High Market
• 1 Peat Bog
• 1 Polluted Mire
• 1 Scrying Sheets
• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Swarmyard
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Wasteland

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The big thing that surprised me when going through cards for this list was just how overwhelmingly bad rats were during this period of the game. I find that so much funnier given how popular Marrow-Gnawer was even back then. Seriously, so many of the cards of this era were awful and provided me with a really low number of playable options. When cards like Disease Carriers, Dirty Wererat, and Kuro's Taken are among your better contenders (all of these I just cut for more Relentless Rats) you know it's rough out there. That's to say nothing of other cards like Plague Rats and Pestilence Rats that weren't even worth the consideration.

What's even weirder is some of the cards that were purposefully left out. For example, consider cards like Chittering Rats and Okiba-Gang Shinobi. Both have a pretty solid pedigree in Constructed formats - particularly Pauper - where they can rip apart opponents' hands. In a multiplayer setting, though, it's much harder to take advantage of them in a meaningful way. As such, looking for cards that do more generic things or else ones that impact all opponents is that much better for a list like this. Admittedly, a lot of the rats in this deck are, as mentioned before, largely filled out by a large chunk of Relentless Rats, which feels boring but at least somewhat effective.

While most rats of this era aren't that great, there are some really solid effects among the bunch. The original Kamigawa block was a huge boon in this regard, thanks to the Nezumi of the plane. This gives us cards like Gnat Miser and Locust Miser to chip away at opponents' hand sizes and make it difficult to manage resources. You can also rip away cards from their hands as well with Nezumi Shortfang or various Ravenous Rats variants (primarily Stronghold Rats and Rotting Rats here). Then, once their graveyards are filled up, you can either exile the cards with Nezumi Graverobber or else steal them with Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni.

There's also a decent amount of ways to deal with creatures via the rats as well. Crypt Rats and Infected Vermin are the biggest instances of this, with both allowing you to deal large amounts of damage to the entire board all at once. You can also get in a lot of good hits with Throat Slitter to do more targeted removal. Additionally, while not necessarily a rat itself, Phyrexian Plaguelord turns all of your rats into removal spells, which is easy to pull off thanks to the amount of tokens you're able to churn out with Marrow-Gnawer itself.

So, the quality of rats may not be the greatest, but that matters little when you're still overrunning your opponents with tons of rats. What I find actually amusing about this list, however, is the cards that surround these middling rat cards. When you think of cards like Demonic Tutor, Skullclamp, Necropotence, and so on, you think of all the powerful things you can do with them. What are you doing with those cards here, though? "Oh hey, I hit a Scrib Nibblers off of my Necropotence. Yippee!"

The simple fact of the matter is that while many of these cards often do inherently broken things, in a deck like this they don't always have the level of synergy as they would in higher power lists. They do have great things they can do still. Finding a Coat of Arms or an Attrition, for example, can really turn the tide of a game heavily in your favor. In most cases, though, you're just sifting through your list for more mediocre fodder for the churn. That's fine though when it's all you really need to get the job done and close out the game!

Given a lot of this, most of the other cards are pretty generic. Caged Sun, Door of Destinies, Gauntlet of Power, and Eldrazi Monument all pump your creatures a little. Brass Herald can do the same as well while also finding you some creatures in the process. None of these feels particularly spectacular except for possibly Door of Destinies, which can get out of hand fast. When you get Marrow-Gnawer going, though (something made much easier by Thousand-Year Elixir), even as little as one or two wide pumps is all you need to turn an army of nuisances into a veritable threat.

If you're feeling like there's maybe not much to this, then you'd be right. It's a fairly straightforward Commander experience that makes for a fun time if that's your thing - particularly in PreDH - but I've found this type of gameplay often wears thin for many players. It also makes it hard to cover since it's pretty straightforward with simple effects and mild synergy. So instead, let's look at the kinds of cards that have come out since the PreDH era and see if there's anything else that might look good for a current Marrow-Gnawer build.

Now to be clear, I'm not providing a decklist for this. Instead, think of it as a sort of precon upgrade article like I usually do, but for the list already provided in this article. I'll talk about some of the cards that have come out since and see if there's any gems that might work great alongside Marrow-Gnawer - namely among the rats that have come about since. We all know you can slip in a Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat here to synergize with the sacrificing just fine, so let's go on the hunt for some more interesting options instead.

Looking through Scryfall, I count approximately 40 rats for PreDH with a Black color identity. When switching to ones from throughout the entire game, that number increases to 77, meaning there's 37 new ones among the bunch, and there's some solid heaters here. Most of them are still pretty rough. I don't think people are exactly clamoring to include cards like Gutter Skulk and the newer Daggerfang Duo into their decks, but there are still some great options to pull from.

One of the more obvious ones that comes to mind is Pack Rat, a card famous for the ways that it destroyed Return to Ravnica Limited. Here, it's basically a Relentless Rats army all in one card, almost negating the need to even run any of that obnoxious card anywhere in your list. Lord Skitter, Sewer King also provides a similar army, filling out your board with great Marrow-Gnawer fodder as well as good graveyard hate to deal with cards you make your opponents discard. Speaking of good sacrifice fodder, Wave of Rats is really powerful, as you can attack with it, have it deal damage, sacrifice it to Marrow-Gnawer, and get it back for free right away.

Finally, there's a couple of additional legendary rats that are really powerful. Ashcoat of the Shadow Swarm and Karumonix, the Rat King are both excellent at helping refuel your hand as the game goes on. Not only that, but they help take out your opponents quickly thanks to their pump abilities (or in Karumonix's case, more of a toxic approach). Old Flitterfang rewards you for your sacrifices to Marrow-Gnawer by giving you food tokens that you can sacrifice to keep you alive longer. Finally, Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion allows you to sneak in a powerful ninjutsu card that can steal away cards from your opponents' decks for you to then take advantage of. Not a bad way to give your deck a little extra reach!

While I'd hoped there might be some solid options to pull from in Bloomburrow proper, there ultimately wasn't all that much. In fact, when it comes to rats that have a Mono-Black color identity, the set only has three. One is the aforementioned Daggerfang Duo and the others are Wick's Patrol and Thornplate Intimidator. We've already established that the Duo isn't great, and the others aren't all that far behind. Both Wick's Patrol and Thornplate Intimidator can have a bit more utility to them than many other rats on the block, but they're expensive to pull off and don't have the largest impact on games of Commander.

So, while Bloomburrow itself may not have provided as much gas as I'd have hoped, I still think there's a lot of fun options for players to build a really cool rat Commander deck around. Marrow-Gnawer has proved to be a regular favorite in spite of the lower average quality of rats the game has to offer, and a deck like this shows exactly why. It's the definition of hitting quantity over quality and bombards your opponent in a deluge of fuzzy little rodents. If that's your speed, then you're sure to have a good time with it at your next Commander night! Pick up a copy and give the deck a try.

Paige Smith

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