Pack Rats
Standard forum
Posted on Nov. 4, 2013, 12:53 a.m. by heartnet2034
Idk if this is the correct place to discuss, but what is the big deal with Pack Rat in all the devotion to black? It only adds one to devotion and its ability is ok, but when would you want to discard for its ability?
notamardybum says... #3
Pack Rat s power and toughness is equal to the number of rats you control, so in combination with Mutavault the power and toughness will go up when it becomes a creature.
November 4, 2013 12:59 a.m.
heartnet2034 says... #4
Yes I saw that but is it really worth it to say " I would like another devotion, so I'll just discard Hero's Downfall or Thoughtseize
November 4, 2013 1 a.m.
All of you guys are just partly right. The thing that makes Pack Rat so strong is Underworld Connections . Drawing an extra card per turn makes it a monstrous beast! You keep their board clean with all the removals black has access to right now and overwhelm them with Pack Rat . However it is kinda risky, as you have to commit quite a lot to it. Still Pack Rat wouldn't be playable without Underworld Connections .
November 4, 2013 1:04 a.m.
vampirelazarus says... #8
Pack Rat lost me a game.
Dude had four of them, and killed everything I had.
November 4, 2013 2:20 a.m.
Pack Rat doesn't usually win games. Its generally a fairly average 2 drop which adds devotion and does very little else. However, occasionally you get too many lands, or creatures you don't need and suddenly it just takes over the game. It can become huge, gain a tonne of life and provide a massive amount of devotion. As far as I know it isn't a 4 of in Black Devotion, and I only play 2 MB. Its just a card which can dominate the field some of the time, and can chump block or provide an extra devotion on a turn when the deck doesn't play much else since most of the 2 drops are removal.
November 4, 2013 3:01 a.m.
vampirelazarus says... #10
I couldn't get rid of it, and he couldn't play anything else.
So yeah, overwhelming.
November 4, 2013 3:02 a.m.
Another thing is that the deck that runs Pack Rat also runs a good amount of land and quite often I've seen people choose to make a new rat rather than cast anything else, much like limited rtr.
November 4, 2013 3:11 a.m.
if your asking whats the big deal with Pack Rat then I feel like you haven't run into someone playing with them yet. They can be a nuisance. People aren't discarding Hero's Downfall and Thoughtseize they get rid of the cards that aren't going to benefit them based on what you have on the board or what they've seen in your hand via Thoughtseize . As someone mentioned, it's not a 4 of in the deck so it's not something you always play early, like Putrefy said, it's strong because of Underworld Connections . You can build tons of card advantage in those mono black decks, but it means nothing if you can't do something with those cards. Now, with Pack Rat you have something to do with those extra lands your drawing, or those extra whip's that you can't play because one is on the board, or even erebos (if your running more than one in the deck). Like always black has a ton of removal, and playing against a deck that can remove all of your creatures, then create new creatures of their own that inherently buffs all their other creatures (every time you make a rat each other rat gets +1/+1 essentially) is no picnic.
November 4, 2013 3:47 a.m.
Pack Rat can take over a game pretty quickly if your opponent fails to understand what's going on. I more than once surprised my opponent with a late Pack Rat that quickly turned into 3 3/3s and a turn after 5 5/5s. Not much he could do about it. But I also run only 2 mainboard. However I have 2 in the sideboard so I can swap them against aggressive decks or decks that run many tokens, where my Desecration Demon s don't do much. It's fun when you win a game against controlish decks that have an AEtherling online simply due to overrunning them with rats.
November 4, 2013 3:47 a.m.
they're good for the first game in the mirror match as well. Odds are if your opponent is playing mono black they some Desecration Demon you can keep them tapped down with your rat tokens till you run into a Hero's Downfall . The thing about it is, the first copy is a 2/2 for 3 mana, then its a 3/3 for 3 then it's a 4/4 for 3... the more you do it, the more beneficial it is. What's that your playing Devour Flesh ok I'll make a rat in response and sac that. The way they get used now, i'm really surprised they weren't abused like this sooner
November 4, 2013 3:56 a.m.
I think they weren't abused sooner because in the multi colour decks of RTR they were pretty bad. Sure, they could still snowball, but they provided far less advantage when things like Supreme Verdict and Bonfire of the Damned were so prevalent. The Devotion decks besides black have far less removal, and essentially no sweepers, so the only cards really seeing play that deal with it is Verdict and Detention Sphere , which are both Esper. Most other decks have very few answers if the rats get going, and even if they don't they still provide devotion, which obviously wasn't a thing pre rotation.
November 4, 2013 4:22 a.m.
even with spot removal though, these things are close to impossible to get rid of. The only way to spot remove them is to catch them without enough mana available because they can always create a copy in response. The only thing that really deals with them is pure board wipes like Supreme Verdict
or Detention Sphere
like you named. If I have 3 rats out and you used Bonfire of the Damned
and announce and pay X=3, I can always make another rat in response and now they're 4/4's so that 3 damage doesn't stop them or even worse, I could just activate Mutavault
for 1 mana and now they're bigger as well, and the same works for Anger of the Gods
. I do realize this means you have to save mana behind on most turns, but I feel like a deck designed to abuse these things would already be doing that in order to create rats on their opponents turn to avoid summoning sickness.
November 4, 2013 4:40 a.m.
But its an on board trick, so its possible to play around. Now a lot of that stuff has disappeared and Esper is the only deck that really plays Board wipes, so its a lot more viable.
November 4, 2013 6:26 a.m.
The "trick" with activating Mutavault is kinda dumb. You activate Mutavault in response to Bonfire of the Damned x = 3. This means your 3 Rats become 4/4 and Mutavault a 2/2. Damage resolves, Mutavault dies, Rats become 3/3, Rats die.
The other point with discarding is true however :)
November 4, 2013 6:39 a.m.
ahh yes, silly me. I was thinking that damage is done to everything simultaneously so it wouldn't kill the rats, but wasn't thinking about damage not being cleaned up till the end so they'd be 3/3's with 3 damage marked on them. Oh well it was just a hypothetical anyways, I was just trying to point out how ridiculously hard these things can be to get rid of. Also, with all the other rats that are available in black which would increase their p/t as well, a rat deck seems like it could be a pretty viable agro style deck.
November 4, 2013 7:24 a.m.
Yeah, I didn't think Mutavault worked... But its true, they can get pretty hard to remove if you don't deal with them straight away. How many rat cards are actually in standard though? There are 4 cards (Including Ogre Slumlord ), 2 of which are pretty bad. On the other hand, a Legacy rats deck would be hilarious.
November 4, 2013 7:56 a.m.
I don't know exactly how many there are, I just had a couple pop into my head when I was writing that last post, like Drainpipe Vermin and Gutter Skulk , they're not necessarily the greatest, but in an aggro type of deck they would only need to do two things, be able to do damage early and be rats to boost the Pack Rat .
November 4, 2013 8:05 a.m.
after a quick gather search it turns out those are the only 3 in standard lol.. I guess between those 3 and the Ogre Slumlord you have a decent starting point. Then all you would need is draw card abilities to keep your hand stocked full of cards to so you can discard and make copies.
November 4, 2013 8:08 a.m.
harrydemon117 says... #23
Rats rats rats....this is why Ratchet Bomb is STILL staying in my sideboard even IF tokens aren't much of a thing :)
Get two counters, pop it, pied piper plays his tune and all the little ratties go bye bye to the graveyard
November 4, 2013 10:16 a.m.
sweet idea, now all you gotta do is lose the first game and see what they got, sideboard it in and then hope you get it with enough time to add 2 counters before they kill ya lol
November 4, 2013 10:26 a.m.
harrydemon117 says... #25
I have other ways to deal with them game one. Mostly counterspells and instant speed removal or Anger of the Gods
.
I also bring in Pithing Needle against decks using it as I can name Pack Rat , the land that Underworld Connections enchants, Erebos, God of the Dead , Whip of Erebos or whatever else suits my fancy.
November 4, 2013 10:32 a.m.
Yeah, those are the only ones. I suppose if you had them plus Ogre Slumlord as 4 ofs you'd have 16 creatures. Obviously you run Thoughtseize , Hero's Downfall , Doom Blade etc. Maybe an Abhorrent Overlord or something. You could discard them to Pack Rat , then whip them back next turn. It could be playable.
November 4, 2013 10:40 a.m.
harrydemon117 says... #28
@abenz419: You won't like me when I'm angry!!! haha
I have just noticed an increase in the presence of monoblack devotion decks and the main problems people have been having against them. I have had to tweak a couple of my decks to combat this as we need to all the time depending on what the metagame is
November 4, 2013 11:06 a.m.
Yeah, it's what you gotta do.
I like to joke with my friends that I'm always ahead of the curve when it comes to building the next greatest deck, my only downfall is that I don't play competitively a lot (only make it to FNM like once or twice a month because of the time it starts and how long it runs doesn't always fit my schedule) so by the time I get around to passively finishing the decks I've come up with the pros start using it and all the cards I need have skyrocketed in price lol. Like as soon as Thassa was spoiled I was like I need to make a mono blue deck, and of course that was the first thing out so prices on things like Master of Waves that I wanted to put in there jumped. I have this mono black deck that I've been slowly making, and of course that's the next biggest thing so now that all I need are 3 hero's downfall to finish off the deck that I came up with, it's jumped from $5 to $20. And like I said I don't play competitively a lot so spending $60 bucks for 3 cards just to play casually with some friends doesn't really seem worth it. So, FYI, I've been thinking about making a mono green deck. That means if there are any green cards you want, get them now. The prices are about to jump on them lol.
November 4, 2013 11:20 a.m.
I love the idea of Pack Rat ] and I've seen it be massively successful, but let me throw two simple problems with Pack Rat .
- While each rat you gain, you get essentially a +1 +1 counter on all your rats but each rat you lose will cause you to get a -1 -1 counter on each rat.
Ex: You have two 2/2 rats on the board. I Flames of the Firebrand the first one for 2, which results in a death causing your other rat to drop to a 1/1 which I use the remaining 1 damage to finish it off. With burn spells, it's an illusion if anything with the rats.
- The second problem with the rats is you can simple Detention Sphere them all at once. You are discarding cards and using all your mana to pump up a sizable army of rats, but a 3 mana enchantment spell will kill your entire plans and probably the match for you.
November 4, 2013 5:28 p.m.
that's the thing though, it would be more of an aggro style deck which means you don't have to build up a sizeable army or have time to draw into that detention sphere, if it's not in your opening hand or your first couple of draws it may be too late. Also, just because your discarding cards doesn't mean you need to discard other copies of Pack Rat
. Holding an additional Pack Rat
in your hand would be your defense against things like Supreme Verdict
and Detention Sphere
because all you would need to do is play one the next turn and start copying. Plus, aside from Pithing Needle
and Ratchet Bomb
(two cards that are typically sideboarded and not main) the things named all require you to be playing W/U or W/U/x , and it's not like your gonna run into that matchup every game. And if it does become a problem then that's when you add Overgrown Tomb
so you can side in Golgari Charm
and just regenerate your rats after a board wipe.
Besides this was all just hypothetical, it just came up because of the topic. It's not like i'm actually putting together a rat deck
November 4, 2013 6:05 p.m.
Yeah. I said playable. There is no way I would take this deck to a tournament, its just speculation. But I would have Mutavault in, which does give some Wrath resistance, so that helps
LightAndDarkness says... #2
Pack Rat may only give one devotion, but each copy also adds one devotion.
November 4, 2013 12:55 a.m.