Grenzo's Thrummin' Dungeon (PRIMER)

Commander / EDH BR (Rakdos) Casual Combo Theme/Gimmick Tribal

FenIsABasicSwamp

Creature (36)

• 1x Burnished Hart
• 1x Crypt Ghast
• 1x Crypt Rats
• 1x Dualcaster Mage
• 1x Duplicant
• 1x Epitaph Golem
• 1x Feldon of the Third Path
• 1x Flayer of the Hatebound
• 1x Fulminator Mage
• 1x Garna, the Bloodflame
• 1x Goblin Welder
• 1x Grim Haruspex
• 1x Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
• 1x Legion Loyalist
• 1x Magus of the Coffers
• 1x Magus of the Moon
• 1x Magus of the Wheel
• 1x Magus of the Will
• 1x Marrow-Gnawer
• 1x Nezumi Graverobber  ^Flip
• 1x Ogre Slumlord
• 1x Plaguecrafter
• 9x Relentless Rats
• 1x Sire Of Insanity
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Stingscourger
• 1x Vesper Ghoul
• 1x Viscera Seer

Instant (1)

• 1x Chaos Warp

Land (36)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Canyon Slough
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Crypt of Agadeem
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Foreboding Ruins
• 1x Graven Cairns
• 1x Isolated Watchtower
• 5x Mountain
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Opal Palace
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Rakdos Carnarium
• 1x Rakdos Guildgate
• 1x Smoldering Marsh
• 7x Swamp
• 1x Swarmyard
• 1x Temple of Malice
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Vesuva
• 1x Volrath's Stronghold

Enchantment (8)

• 1x Braid of Fire
• 1x Curse of Opulence
• 1x Fallen Ideal
• 1x Flameshadow Conjuring
• 1x Mana Echoes
• 1x Mindmoil
• 1x Mortuary
• 1x Shadows of the Past

Commander (1)

Artifact (15)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Cloak and Dagger
• 1x Coalition Relic
• 1x Crucible of Worlds
• 1x Desecrated Tomb
• 1x Heartstone
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Reito Lantern
• 1x Scroll Rack
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sword of the Animist
• 1x Teferi's Puzzle Box
• 1x Tel-Jilad Stylus
• 1x Thrumming Stone
• 1x Trinisphere

Sorcery (3)

• 1x Damnation
• 1x Living Death
• 1x Vandalblast

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Maybeboard

Artifact (7)

• 1x Caged Sun
• 1x Defense Grid
• 1x Goblin Charbelcher
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Null Brooch
• 1x Ring of Valkas
• 1x Ring of Xathrid

Creature (6)

• 1x Disciple of Griselbrand
• 1x Grenzo, Havoc Raiser
• 1x Mad Auntie
• 1x Oona's Blackguard
• 1x Relentless Rats
• 1x Singe-Mind Ogre

Enchantment (4)

• 1x Experimental Frenzy
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Oubliette
• 1x Volrath's Dungeon

Sorcery (3)

• 1x Decree of Pain
• 1x Disrupt Decorum
• 1x Doomsday

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Atmospheric music from Blade Runner 2049 to set the mood for Grenzo's Dungeon shenanigans.

INTO THE DUNGEON: Finding the Key to Unlock Grenzo's Trapdoor

As with all of my decks, especially my decks built since 2017, I'm trying to do something unique, or at least uncommon, with this deck. Grenzo is inherently on a very different game plan than any other deck because it's the only card that interacts directly with the bottom of your library (the dungeon), but I want to try to do things that other Grenzo decks aren't doing either. I independently came to the idea of using Thrumming Stone with Grenzo to stack the bottom of my deck after casting every spell, even without having any cards like Relentless Rats , Rat Colony , or Shadowborn Apostle . I am still running a limited Relentless Rats package to make a bunch of fatties and play into the rats theme.

I'm really building decks nowadays to be very flavorful and on-theme, so in that vein, and to play into the Thrumming Stone synergy, I decided to make this a tribal rats deck. The rats synergy isn't super strong, but there's enough there to make it explosive enough on the critical turn I think.

Plan A & Key Cards to Execute Plan A

The main plan here is to get as many rats out as possible, Relentless and otherwise. There's a balance to strike between casting cards from your hand or playing the dungeon lottery with Grenzo. Also, there's some critically important mental math to do in this deck to determine if you should play Grenzo on turn 2 or not. He gets a lot of the creatures in the deck if he's on 2 power with no counters and gives a big tempo boost potentially that early. One of the greatest things about Grenzo is his scalability though: he gets bigger and bigger and more reliable with his dungeon ability throughout the game as you recast him with more and more mana.

I'm not typically interested in getting big creatures and turning them sideways, but it seems to be the best endgame to aim for here. To that end, we're really aiming for a turn with a lot of Relentless Rats in play, Shared Animosity to make them even bigger, and a Legion Loyalist to give them all trample when they swing in for the kill. This goes even better with a bunch of Pack Rat tokens and rat tokens from Marrow-Gnawer or Ogre Slumlord too. A big enabler for this is also Garna, the Bloodflame to give haste to the team but also act as recursion from boardwipes.

Plan B for When Plan A Doesn't Work Out

Direct damage is a great alternate win condition in red decks so I've included Flayer of the Hatebound because the Relentless Rats enter the battlefield as massive creatures from the graveyard. It's a really interesting nuance of Grenzo, Dungeon Warden 's ability in that he puts the bottom card of your library into the graveyard and then into play. With a couple cards you can sequence a giant Relentless Rat into play over and over again:

1. Play Mortuary and Shadows of the Past and Flayer of the Hatebound
2. Sacrifice a Relentless Rats /the Flayer (or any other creature, but it's faster with a big RR) to Ashnod's Altar and stack the two enchantment triggers to put the RR on top of your library with Mortuary and then scry it to the bottom with Shadows. Mana Echoes can also fuel this combo with another sac outlet.
3. Use your general to put the Relentless Rats from the bottom of your library into the graveyard and then into play for infinite instant speed damage.
4. Alternatively, you can do this combo with Dualcaster Mage to infinitely copy a spell, yours or someone else's, or do it with Stingscourger to bounce all of your opponents' creatures.

Another great wincon and card that gives excellent flexibility in this deck is the other iteration of Grenzo, Grenzo, Havoc Raiser . With a ton of rats swinging in, especially tokens that you don't care about surviving, you can exile your opponents' libraries gradually and get access to all kinds of spells a Rakdos would normally never have access to.

Discussion of Combos, Key Cards, & Unique Synergies

The most key cards for the main dungeon strategy of this deck are:

1. Thrumming Stone to keep ordering the bottom of your deck with every spell you cast.
2. Mindmoil to also order the bottom of your deck every time you cast a spell.
3. Shadows of the Past : It's EDH, creatures are dying all the time and this let's you order the bottom of your library with every one. Can be used for infinite synergies.
4. Teferi's Puzzle Box to let you order the bottom of your library every turn while also keeping your opponents from maintaining a consistent game plan.
5. Braid of Fire uses the old drawback of impending manaburn to fuel free uses of Grenzo's dungeon ability every upkeep.
6. Desecrated Tomb gives you a bat every time you successfully use Grenzo's ability since the creatures enter the battlefield from the graveyard.
7. Magus of the Will + Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker or Flameshadow Conjuring to make a Magus whenever you want to play the cards from your graveyard that Grenzo dumps in that aren't creatures. Feldon of the Third Path is good for the same thing if Magus is in the graveyard already.
8. Crucible of Worlds to get back lands that you dump in the yard with Grenzo.
9. Fallen Ideal and Cloak and Dagger to make Grenzo bigger to ensure he can bring anything into play from the dungeon. Fallen Ideal is also a great sac outlet and lets Grenzo swing in for easy commander damage if you have a bunch of tokens to sac.

Note: Oubliette is in here because an Oubliette is literally a windowless cell underground beneath a dungeon. It was too flavorful and random to exclude.

If you like this deck or have an on-theme suggestion, please upvote and comment to share your thoughts! Never stop brewing! Never stop creating!

Credits: I mined some good ideas from the Grenzo pilots that came before me on this site, namely: the inimitable VietMoneys, Jazzyboy, and snowfox54119.

Top Ranked	Achieved #25 position overall 5 years ago Achieved #24 position in Commander / EDH 5 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH BR (Rakdos) 5 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Casual 5 years ago
Date added	5 years
Last updated	2 years
Exclude colors	WUG
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	5 - 0 Mythic Rares 47 - 0 Rares 26 - 0 Uncommons 10 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.14
Tokens	Bat 1/1 B, Copy Clone, Gold, Morph 2/2 C, Rat 1/1 B
Folders	Revisions (Potential), Test, Grenzo Primer, Bangers by other people, DEcks