New sets always make me think of the set rotation. Yeah, I know, it’s not coming until this summer, but we actually get TWO rotations this year, and Magic 2010 really changes how Core Sets impact the face of Standard.
With the absolute dearth of information coming out about Alara Reborn, a mere TWO WEEKS before the Prerelease, I’ve been thinking about the rotation, and the 10th Edition cards that I didn’t get a chance to play with. I had been thinking about so much, in fact, that I did a little Internetz-browsing through my favorite Magic search engine before suiting up a new deck to take off to Friday Night Magic this week.
I love Friday Night Magic. In the Springs, it’s home to a wide variety of types and styles of players – sort of a minor-league States tournament. Some people bring their tournament-level deck, all decked out and practiced and tweaked; some people bring their pet decks, their Black-White lifegain double-Unholy Strength-my-guy deck. It’s more forgiving if someone wants to bring a below-the-radar deck and play around.
I prefer, when given the chance, to play a different deck at each FNM. It doesn’t improve my chances when I get to a big PTQ-level tournament, but it does mean I get a new experience each time. And really, that’s what I’m in it for. If I wanted to play eighty games with a specific deck, I’d hop on Magic Workstation or something and bore myself to tears. So, given the time, I’ll build a new deck each week.
This week, reeling with nostalgia and thinking about 10th Edition as I’ve done in the past, I started digging through the cards that are most likely gone that I haven’t had a chance to play with yet. Looking at the list, I was reminded that I had recently increased my collection of Relentless Rats… and so I set about making a deck for them.
Relentless Offense
The reason I like Relentless Rats is because it gives you two things that you’re looking for in an aggro creature base: One, consistency, and two, creatures that improve when you play more than one. In any given game, you are practically guaranteed to draw four to eight Rats, and even three on the board is an offensive force to be reckoned with. AND a nice side effect of the current switch from Firespout to Volcanic Fallout is that Relentless Rats is a one-for-one switch; even two Relentless Rats can survive a single Fallout without blinking.
Relentless Rats has a downside, of course, and that is that without any buddies, he’s just a Gray Ogre. And that three casting cost means it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to dump more than one on the board for the first few turns.
And you can’t just make a deck that’s forty Relentless Rats and twenty Swamps, either. Trust me, I tried. It just folded to Wrath. And some of these newfangled token decks can actually outrace a one-Relentless-Rat-a-turn clock. So it needs a little utility – maybe a little disruption?
Here’s the deck I put together for Friday Night Magic.
22 Relentless Rats
4 Thoughtseize
4 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Shriekmaw
3 Scarscale Ritual
2 Scepter of Fugue
2 Profane Command
2 Leechridden Swamp
3 Graven Cairns
4 Crumbling Necropolis
1 Mountain
10 Swamp
Sideboard:
4 Volcanic Fallout
4 Unmake
3 Deathmark
2 Bitterblossom
2 Mind Shatter
Rare Cost Summary:
Thoughtseize ($25.00 x 4 = $100.00)
Thorn of Amethyst ($2.00 x 4 = $8.00)
Scepter of Fugue ($2.50 x 2 = $5.00)
Profane Command ($6.00 x 2 = $12.00)
Graven Cairns ($5.00 x 3 = $15.00)
Mind Shatter ($2.50 x 2 = $5.00)
Bitterblossom ($20.00 x 2 = $40.00)
It’s so funny to look at this deck, because it really is the sort of deck that happens when your collection is funds-limited. I’ve had plenty of time to trade for those Thoughtseizes, but my collection only contains a couple of Scepters since it’s new and relatively hot in Standard right now. And the manabase, given my druthers, would probably not contain Crumbling Necropolises, maybe instead using Sulfurous Springs or something.
So the rest of the deck. Thoughtseize, Scepter of Fugue, and the sideboard Mind Shatters are to provide disruption. Scarscale Ritual is the best card-drawing option available, and you generally don’t care about putting a -1/-1 counter on a Rat. Thorn of Amethyst is another disruption tool, and the time it gives you against a more-controlling deck can be enough. Shriekmaw slides under the Thorn’s cost-increase and is a good removal source AND a good backup attacker.
The sideboard looks a little strange, even typing it up. Obviously I wanted better removal options against bigger creatures like Doran and Rafiq, and Deathmark provides that, although the fact that it’s not instant speed sucks. Unmake is in there for another removal option, although it’s not the best either nowadays. I wanted a board sweeper against Faeries, but only had Fallouts on hand, so that’s where the Red “splash” came from. Bitterblossom is an attempt to provide a faster clock against control decks.
The nice things is that the expensive cards have cheap options: Thoughtseize can be replaced by Distress easily enough, since you don’t really have a second-turn play that you’re interrupting for it. A turn slower, but otherwise exactly the same effect. And you can very easily run all Swamps as a land base by swapping Infests into the sideboard for the Volcanic Fallouts. The Bitterblossoms can come out of the sideboard.
But before we get into a pure budget build of this deck, let me go through a night’s worth of FNM and get some idea of how the deck plays.
Round 1 versus Boat Brew: The long and short of this matchup is that there’s not enough removal for an opposing creature deck. Even sideboarding in 13 cards and siding out useless things like Thorn of Amethyst and the discard elements don’t change the fact that you are not faster than them – and because you don’t have time to set up, you’re almost forced to turn your Rats into blockers early on. 0-1.
Round 2 versus Blightning: On the other side, against a deck that runs singleton guys instead of the three-for-ones in Boat Brew, the Rats show their strength, bulking each other up and avoiding most of the burn damage. And even if you’re discarding Relentless Rats to Blightning, you’re still probably drawing into more. 1-1.
Round 3 versus Realm Razer: Did you know that this deck still exists? Nope, me either. It’s over in two as this deck comes straight out of December to spoil my fun, complete with Firespouts as if no Conflux had ever happened, ruining the perfectly-laid plans of “multiple Relentless Rats.” The lack of instant-speed kill in the deck means that Realm Razer rules the roost in game two. 1-2.
Round 4 versus Esper. My opponent has mulligan troubles in game one and mana troubles in game two. Not a sterling recommendation, but the deck can produce consistent results, and that means it can take advantage of a deck that’s stumbling on the other side of the table.
Round 5 versus Power of Progee: Hey guys, I hope I spelled that right. The deck is a Blue-Green deck centered around the Dramatic Entrance combo with Progenitus, in this case supporting it with Thornling. The Blue is for Negate and Mulldrifter. The first game is back-and-forth as we trade creatures, but eventually Progenitus shows up and provides the offense in ten-point swings. Game two sees Brian get stuck on lands, and I make up for it by bum-rushing him with Rats. But in the final swing game, Brian makes Progenitus early and it’s like, what the heck do I do with that? 2-3.
Round 6 versus Swans: George bumped into some mana troubles, and while Jace was drawing us both a bunch of cards in game one, my Scepter of Fugue was making sure it was, um, “less” even. Eventually I run him out of counters and removal and keep a handful of Rats on the board long enough to kill him. Game two sees him get stuck on a low land count, and I swarm the board with Rats to quickly take advantage of his stall. 3-3.
I had a good time with the deck – and more than one person had to actually read Relentless Rats as I played out the fifth, sixth, and seventh version.
The shortcomings of the deck, from a strategic standpoint: The sorcery-speed of all the removal, save for the Unmakes. That’s easily rectified by swapping in Terrors or, if the deck stays B/R, Terminates when Alara Reborn comes out. I’d like to keep the Thorn of Amethyst just because it does impact the games against control decks, but maybe it’s best in the sideboard for now.
The shortcomings of the deck, from a budget standpoint: Right now, Relentless Rats is actually an expensive uncommon, despite having no presence in any format. Casual players are keeping the price high, evidently, and unfortunately the Rats themselves require you to have somewhere in the vicinity of 18-20 just to START to think about building a deck around them. Players have had two shots now to pick them up, and they ARE uncommons, but if you’ve still got to buy ten to flesh out a deck, it may be better to spend that money on something with a little more staying power – Wraths or some of other format-staple.
Relentless Rats: The Budget Version
20 Relentless Rats
4 Shriekmaw
4 Terror
4 Distress
3 No Rest For The Wicked
3 Scarscale Ritual
3 Leechridden Swamp
19 Swamp
I cut down on the number of Relentless Rats to take into consideration the fact that they are going for $2.50 right now. Terror’s instant-speed becomes a necessity, but there’s also still room for Shriekmaw. No Rest For The Wicked takes the place of Profane Command, giving you some resilience to mass removal as well as an early play option that will pay dividends later in the game. Forced to make some bad trades? Bring them all back. Get tricked during combat? Rewind your forces back to their pre-combat state.
Thinking back to last week’s column, I was also considering what it would look like if you replaced Blightning’s “regular” set of creatures with Relentless Rats. The problem is the mana curve, most likely. Blightning works because you back up early creatures with the disruption of Blightning and the burn, not because you have bigger creatures.
Next Week
The absolute dearth of information about Alara Reborn has made for slim pickings for interesting articles to write. As official previews begin over on the mothership and other places around the Internetz, now we’ll start getting a bigger picture of the new set. Prereleases are only two weeks away – hopefully you’ve already made plans to attend one, whether it be at your local shop or at one of the Big Regional Prereleases that StarCityGames.com is a part of. I’ll be at the one in Denver, and I’m already looking forward to it!
Dave
dave dot massive at gmail and facebook and twitter