#marrow-gnawer

[ratking-usurper]

If this happened to me Id swoon Betrayers of Kamigawa? A fine aged set perfect for a distinct sophisticated lady.

[bace-jeleren]

The Kamigawa novel trilogy has been a fuckin blast so far, lemme tell ya...

[ratking-usurper]

[shortsweetespresso]

I made a Marrow-Gnawer commander deck and holy shit the exponential creation of rats is hot and sexy

[umberu]

How society sees rats:

How rats actually are:

As a rat lover, I'd like to request that going forward rats be White and mice be Black.

Rats are social animals who get very sad without friends while mice are soulless murder machines

I don’t anticipate that happening. Rats need a better PR team.

[colorless-catgirl-token]

Masterlist of our Decks

Hi! We're @the-many-children-of-the-void and this is a masterlist post of our Magic the Gathering decks. We play most of these online, with our partner system on untap.in. This list will get updated when we remember to do so.

EDH Decks

Allie's Decks

APV-B (Atraxa, Praetor's Voice): Our budget Atraxa deck, runs infect, +1/+1 counters, stun counters and so on. This is the only deck we own a physical copy of (we don't play in-person very often) and it was built by buying Corrupting Influence and taking it apart.

Let It Go (Hylda of the Icy Crown): It's a deck that's all about tapping your opponent's creatures. It isn't very optimized yet but Allie is slowly getting there.

Broken Human (Surrak Dragonclaw): Our "fuck you" to when our partner system plays control. It was also the deck where we had a major breakthrough in deckbuilding philosophy.

Atraxa, Uncorrupted (Atraxa, Praetor's Voice): A return to our roots, re-building the oldest deck concept we ever had, an Atraxa deck without any fancy poison or stun counter shenanigans.

Annie's Decks

Annie's Project (Lathril, Blade of the Elves): It's an elf token deck. That's kinda all there is to say.

Erica's Decks

Echo (Aesi, Tyrant of the Gyre Strait): Landfall deck with lots of ramp and card draw. Usually able to get just an obscene number of lands on the battlefield.

Harbinger (Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker): Shadowborne Apostles deck with big fancy demons. We haven't had a chance to test this one yet.

Kate's Decks

Cantre'r Gwaelod (Niv-Mizzet, Parun): Card draw burn deck, pretty much. The goal is to draw as many cards as possible and slowly burn away your opponent's life.

Neiko di Angelo's Decks

Holiday // Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Marrow-Gnawer): Rat colony deck, very heavily based on Violet's deck from Game Knights #63

Lazarus (Phenax, God of Deception): Mill deck in Neiko's two favorite colors. Not much else to report back about this one.

Calvin (Gishath, Sun's Avatar): Dinosaur tribal deck. Our partner system doesn't really have a concept of "low power play" so this deck doesn't really get played but it is one Neiko is happy with.

Antithesis (Zhulodok, Void Gorger) Eldrazi, baby. I have no idea how well it works.

That's all for now.

[ratking-usurper]

Yea, yea, yea, metal bands and all. What about naming black Magic the Gathering cards? We need more of these words for my Marrow Gnawer deck.

they need to come up with more words like necrosis and miasma and mausoleum and cadaver and morose and decrepit and stuff like that just so metal bands can expand their vocabulary

[elite-fours-karen]

After years of wanting to build a Marrow Gnawer deck, finally ordered the cards for it despite his price!

[dailymtgflavortext]

A sumptuous feast with friends starts the new year off on a good paw.

-Marrow-Gnawer

Happy new year!

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

A Family can be a cocky mage sugar baby to the Goddess of the Night, his warlock shrek boyfriend who really likes to hug him, a dark flower witch who wants nothing to do with them, and their rat gang lord friend who got dragged into it, and that's beautiful.

[mayhamster]

While these are some super cool commanders, I think some of the other commanders in the set are also worth a mention:

Vren goes nuts with something as simple as a Grave Pact, and just gets more and more disgusting the more stuff you add. Braids? Sure, why not. Lord skitter? But of course. Marrow Gnawer? You've practically won. Then you start tossing in Accursed Marauder, Rankle Master of Pranks, and two of the three Sheoldreds and things just get out of hand.

The Infamous Cruelclaw and Mr Foxglove are very similar, with the difference being that Cruelclaw goes off the top and has to discard, while Mr Foxglove needs things in hand but can also draw cards. Both of these are incredibly strong. Cruelclaw can turn that discard disadvantage into an advantage with things like Sheoldred Whispering One, Breach The Multiverse, and Sepulchral Primordial, turning one one free card into two or more. Meanwhile Mr Foxglove can do something similar with Ghalta Stampede Tyrant, Ojer Kaslem, and Kodama of the East Tree, as well as ensuring he'll always get his activation with an Ancient Silver Dragon or Jin-Gitaxias Core Augur.

Lastly is Flubs The Fool. He is just so incredibly versatile that it boggles the mind. He can do Discard, Landfall, Card Draw, Impulse Draw, Self-Mill, Chaos, Cheerios, Madness, Foretell, the list goes on and on and on. hell, if you wanted to be funny, this might be one of the only decks where Deck Of Many Things is viable. (Not necessarily good, mind you, but usable). Also, certified Silly Little Guy status.

bloomburrow might have the title for the strongest complete set of face commanders on average for any commander product. all four of these guys just have absurd lines of text on them.

Bello working off of both enchantments and artifacts is incredibly open-ended, and making each of them 4/4s with indestructable is by far the silliest part. the card gives you a lot of leeway. you can use both artifacts and enchantments for the best of both; they all are given haste, so you don't have to set up before you pop off; they all are given indestructible, so you're never punished for swinging board; they are each given an individual card draw instance, so you have plenty of cards to work with. bello is in my opinion the strongest of the bunch because he's so much more honest than the other three and still does all that!

Hazel is one of my favorite magic characters ever. god i love her. she's the face of my new golgari storm deck i'm excited to showcase at my table tonight :) in my opinion Hazel is so strong because she just does so much! mana? big check. she'll make all the mana you need as long as her and her army stick on the field. plus, she makes the army herself with the populate effect every end step! Hazel is technically the most restrictive of the four, requiring a tap to make mana and an end step to make tokens. however, Hazel's effects are so strong she doesnt care. Hazel is, in my opinion, the most versatile commander of the four. want a simple tokens deck packed with overrun effects? check, hazel makes two squirrels for each of your end steps and black and green are packed with solid big-board effects! want a value-pile populate deck? check, hazel can make a copy of any token every end step, and support the deck with her mana ability! want an aristocrats pile built around strong sacrificers? check, that's golgari's whole deal, and hazel turns the sac fodder thralls into mana and then makes more of them! want a combo-heavy spellslinger storm deck? check, Hazel has you covered in the mana department even if you run only 11 or so token making effects, allowing you to stack your deck with card draw to storm off! she can do a lot of things if you just build her in the right way, and she's definitely my favorite golgari commander of all time :3

Ms. Bumbleflower has. i mean. cmon. "Whenever you cast a spell, target opponent draws a card, then put a +1/+1 counter on target creature"? she is one of the best combo deck face commanders ever. any storm count spell loop can be implemented and if she's out she has the potential to make infinite value with the vast array of scurry oak effects, and even without them she will deck out your opponents unless they draw into a counterspell or removal piece. in this way i almost think ms. bumbleflower is too weak for cedh tables (who are running so many free counterspells and removal spells) but too strong at any other table; she's in a bit of a weird spot. still, ms. B could easily be a contender at a cedh table with how light of a touch she needs to pop off. i havent really explored ms. bumbleflower combo routes at all, but MH3's Evolution Witness comes to mind immediately: "Whenever one or more +1/+1 counters are put on Evolution Witness, return target permanent card from your graveyard to your hand." i'm almost sure theres a relevant permanent card that can be inserted in between those two girlies to deck out every opponent :P

finally, Zinnia. did you know that Hazel of the Rootbloom isn't even the strongest token-based face general in bloomburrow commander? this is because while hazel can make copies of any token, you have to first create the tokens yourself. furthermore, the vast majority of the tokens you copy in hazel are smaller, less useful simple tokens. Zinnia makes good tokens. any card in your hand with zinnia on the field can be copied for 2 mana, with the copy being a 1/1. we don't care about power and toughness though (least of all because Zinnia themselves becomes bigger with every new token, making it an effective threat without even trying), we want token copies of strong creatures with good abilities. a token copy of a creature can often be much stronger than a nontoken creature. this is because the tokens can be doubled, populated, and copied very easily! Hazel might make a big board of dorks that can be tapped for mana, but Zinnia makes a big board of threats that have strong and valuable abilities, especially in tandem with each other. if i was building the deck, i'd think Sakashima of a Thousand Faces would be a relevant include, copying creatures and offspringing himself for even more, while enabling legends that go infinite with a copy of themselves (my lovely Omarthis, Ghostfire Initiate jumps to mind!) to be offspringed as well for a GG.

the bloomburrow face commanders are probably my favorite set of them we've ever had. id love to know your opinions: do you think this is the strongest overall set of face commanders? furthermore, what's your favorite set of face commanders? id love to hear! thanks for reading :D

[venser]

marrow-gnawer is so cool and fun. making your creatures virtually unblockable is sooooooooo sexy

[cabalt]

Year of the Rat~ while I'm mixed on the execution of Secret Lairs, I couldn't help myself with this set because the art was just so nice and I've been wanting to make a Rat deck since Kamigawa really and this gave me the kick up the arse to do it.

[modpix-blog]

Oh shit I forgot I have a rat themed magic the gathering deck!

[littlemisspipebomb]

so back in ye olden days of 1993 magic the gathering originally had a relatively short run, known as Alpha, quickly followed up by Beta which sold out almost as fast. There's minor differences between the two printings but dw about it. Then they made a bunch more, and to make sure collectors didn't worry about their cards losing value they made this new printing distinct by giving it a white border.

Henceforth every time a card was reprinted it was given a white border. This continued through the 90s, but became a bit of an issue. Some languages didn't get every set, so even a set full of reprints would have a couple black border cards because that's the first version of it in a language. For obvious reasons this was dicontinued, also cause they're widely regarded as kinda ugly.

I've been using "2000s border" to refer to any card printed in the frame below, even though that's technically wrong on both counts. Frame and border are different things, and cards were printed with the old frame until 2003. The change happened in 2003 with 8th edition, where white borders were retained, but the white was phased out a couple years later. There's a couple reprints like this Kamigawa card in 9th edition, but that's not really actually I'm referring to. It's a little weird, but a basic ass card reprinted in a core set is nothing new.

Who could forget dear rat boy? Marrow-Gnawer was also printed in Kamigawa, and because it's his first printed that's a black border. But then a year later in 2005 there was a weird little promo thing.

Salvat and Hatchett (one of two magazine publishing companies, depending on territory) released one of those "buy a magazine every month and every issue contains a new chapter of a magic encyclopedia" magazines. But with it they included a little pack of cards that ended up creating a whole themed deck. It actually brings us another "weird printing that shouldn't exist", a 2000s border card with the little "this card has an ability in the graveyrd" tombstone. These cards weren't reprinted properly until later, when they simply didn't add the tombstone, making it (I believe) the only time they were seen on this frame.

hey abt the magic card printing (https://www.tumblr.com/mtg-cards-hourly/746508558615592960/browse-once-great-literaturenow-great)

i haven't looked it up but just looking through other cards from the deck it's printed in i think it's because it's bc they retained the original set symbol while updating the card frame creating this weird anachronistic card, am i right?

you got it! But there's actually one more little thing that comes from this card being in 2000s border with a 90s set symbol: the card was always at uncommon but the original printing didn't have rarity colours. so the silver is a weird anachronism thing.

I absolutely love this stuff, people should ask me about white border kamigawa cards

[thecornwall]

Cornwall’s Random Card of the Day #121: Marrow-Gnawer

Marrow Gnawer is a legendary rat from Champions of Kamigawa, seen here in it’s Jumpstart: Historic Horizons printing.

The Nezumi of Kamigawa are a race of rat people. This was a great opportunity for WotC to give the Rat tribe some tribal payoffs and here we are with a good one. This dude was one of the big Kamigawa Legendaries that people liked. Weird that it gives all Rats fear not just yours, I thought we were done with that kinda templating by this point in history. I’m only just now realising that all the Nezumi are white or gray furred, something I never figured out before due to just how intricately armoured they tend to be and the fact that as they were on black cards, I assumed they were black furred!