MTG Combo: Marrow-Gnawer + Thornbite Staff

Marrow-Gnawer
Thornbite Staff

With Thornbite Staff equipped to Marrow-Gnawer, whenever you sacrifice a rat to Marrow-Gnawer with at least one other rat out, you create two rats and untap Marrow-Gnawer to repeat until you have infinite rats.

Latest Decks

Verminous
by TheSurgeon

Verminous thumbnail
EDH 38 / 9
Marrow-Gnawer feature for Verminous

Discussion

dudesquirrel on

6 years ago

CardTyrant! I love this deck and decided to build it myself with a few alterations after playing it with my group. Have you considered Altar of the Brood for an instant speed table library mill? With all your single creature pump spells, an infect creature like Septic Rats could also be a welcome addition instead of something less impactful like Typhoid Rats or Rancid Rats. You can even just have it ping people to fatal infect damage using Thornbite Staff after it gets big enough! That especially helps after the anthem effects(i.e. Caged Sun, Door of Destinies, Eldrazi Monument, etc.) makes it so Marrow-Gnawer + Thornbite Staff no longer kills your rats to enable the infinite combo. I also really enjoy Torment of Hailfire with all the mana we're generating. There are a couple more things i've changed in mine, so please let me know what you think! Here's mine.

Quicksilver on Dumb Rats Commander Edition

8 years ago

I find your lack of Marrow-Gnawer + Thornbite Staff disturbing.

PookandPie on Oloro the out there

8 years ago

Oloro is in your title, but you used the plural of deck in your comment. Do you want more than just Oloro combos?

Also, what kind of combos are you looking for? You say degenerate, but that varies by playgroup. Most combos the average player considers degenerate are garbage, competitively, and typically the best 'combo' at tables with powerful decks and knowledgeable players is A Good Deck + Ad Nauseam or Doomsday, or something. So, because I don't know what you're looking for and you gave practically 0 information to make suggestions simple, here's every single infinite combo I can think of or find in Esper (and some of these aren't even registered as combos on the site, so... I found that interesting. Had to go back and separate those ones card by card):

And after this, I'm out. I'm going to go back to playing Fire Emblem: Fates. Fwiw, I hope this helps, and I just zoned out in a phone call with a person I didn't want to speak to for about 20 minutes while formatting this, lol.

Boscogn on

8 years ago

The way this deck plays is very combo. It however has a tough time living long enough in multiplayer. I've found it to be extremely useful if playing heads up /w french rules used as aggro.
Note: With Marrow-Gnawer + Thornbite Staff and 2 other rats you get infinite rats. If you add a Ashnod's Altar to this combo you can player kill everyone at the table unless their player can't be targeted by spells or can redirect prevent the damage.
How does this work?
Use Marrow's ability with thornbite equipped to him and have 2 other rats on the table. Then you tap marrow and sac 1 rat for total of 2 rats left which makes 2 rat tokens. Because something died thornbite causes your general to get untapped. Do this say 1000 times and you'd have a 1000 1/1 rat tokens with fear. Then you can sac a rat to the alter for 2 colorless and use that mana to pay for Thornbite's ability to deal 1 damage to something. Kill your tokens to burn the table If you run low for some reason make sure you leave two rats on the table to make more rats then rinse and repeat.

There are other combos with things like Altar of Dementia which can mill your opponents in the same way. Tons of ways to win. Relentless rats + thrumming stone allows you to ammass a very large board very quickly. Unless running lots of utility rats your rat tutors are kind of useless. Deathtouch ogre is a must though. Being combo however means you really need control to make it so i recommend things like Smokestack, Contamination, Living Death. Also more tutor like Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor. More draw can help here too with Skullclamp. I don't recommend Necropotence one Mindslaver and you're dead. Also add Cloak and Dagger put it on the field for two and get a free equip when you play your General.

For more protection of your stuff you can run Guardian Beast also if your concerned about not drawing relentless rats consistently use Soul Foundry to make sure you always can get one to trigger Thrumming Stone.