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The Rats ofMagic: The Gathering’s Bloomburrow form deep, symbiotic connections with insect companions. In the village of Conch, psychic rats bond with Snails instead of insects, and no bond was deeper than the one between the prodigy Wick and his companion snail, Grotgyre.
When a plague swept through the Snails of Conch, Wick was driven mad by the disease. Haunted by visions of eyes and spirals, his madness eventually gave way to enlightenment, and Wick, the Whorled Mind began traveling the Valley, spreading the word of the snail. And now it’s time to spread the truth to your commander pod.
Sample Decklist
Wick, the Whorled Mind provides an effectsimilar to Amass for Snails, which he can then capitalize on by sacrificing the Snail into a beefed-up Fling effect, dealing damage, and drawing cards based on how big your Snail gets.
Although that Fling effect gives you access to all Grixis (blue/black/red) colors, you’ll want to keep playing Rats in order to keep building up your Snail.
Go for the Throat
Xander’s Lounge
The Commander
Wick, the Whorled Mind is a 2/4 legendary Rat Warlock who hassynergy with both Rats and Snails. Whenever a Rat enters under your control, Wick checks to see if you have a Snail. If you do, that Snail gains a +1/+1 counter. Otherwise, you create a +1/+1 Snail token. This effect functions almost identically toamass, but does not interact with amass effects, so you can’t use Foray of Orcs to turn your Snail into a Snail Orc Army.
Wick’s second ability allows you tosacrifice your Snail to deal damage equal to its power to each of your opponents, and then draw cards equal to its power. It’s like a beefed-up Fling that hits all of your opponents! This ability does require blue, black, and red mana, so it’s a little more expensive than Fling, but the addedcard draw and damage to all opponentsmore than make up for the difference.
Thanks to his activated ability,Wick, the Whorled Mind is the only Grixis (blue/black/red) legendary Rat, making him an excellent commander for a Rat deck if you want to delve into both red and blue. Single- and dual-color Rat decks already work well, and Wick allows you to slot the most favored Rat commanders into your 99, allowing your deck to be a threat whether or not he’s on the battlefield.
Only three cards in thirty years of Magic’s history reference Snails, and the Dogsnail Engine Contraption from Unstable doesn’t really count. SoWick will almost exclusively interact with his own Snail token, unless you include Skullcap Snail or Changelings in your deck. This allows a little flexibility in building up either a disposable Snail token or a utility Snail with additional effects.
How To Build The Deck
The fact that Wick checks for Rats entering means that you’ll want tokeep the pressure on your opponents with a constant stream of Rats. Thankfully, he doesn’t care if your Rats are tokens or nontokens, so you can take advantage of a handful of token generators and abilities to create more Rats than your opponents can handle.
Your growing Snail (or Snail token) is also a potential attacker or blocker, and you’ve got access to red combat tricks to buff it after attacking to kill a blocker or stack more damage onto an opponent.
Ramp
Grixis colors don’t have the best mana acceleration, lacking green’s land ramp, white’s catchup effects, and mono-black’s swamp payoffs, so you’llrely mostly on artifacts for consistent mana acceleration. In addition tothe standard mana rock package of Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Mind Stone,andFellwar Stone,add Thought Vesseland Decanter of Endless Water to ensure you can keep all those cards Wick will help you draw.
All three of the Talismans in Grixis colors will serve you well, generating colorless mana most of the time, but providing mana from one of two colors in exchange for one life when needed. Wayfarer’s Bauble further fixes your mana by fetching a basic land from your deck and putting it into play tapped, giving you a reasonably safe boost early in the game.
Ashnod’s Altar is a great addition: This classic artifact allows you tosacrifice creatures for two colorless mana each. If you control a lot of creatures, this can produce an overwhelming amount of mana. you may also use it to sacrifice your Snail tokens when they first come into play, regaining two mana each time you get a Rat. If your Rats only cost one mana, that’s a gain!
Cabal Coffers is one of the most efficient lands in a mono-black deck, but it falls apart with a second or third color. But Three Tree City has a similar effect for a specific creature type, instead of Swamps. Naming Rats when it enters play, you should be able togenerate a ton of mana in the color of your choicealmost immediately.
Draw
Wick, the Whorled Mind offers a lot of draw himself, since thebigger your Snail grows, the more cards you’ll getwhen you sacrifice it. But it’s important to have some amount of backup. Grixis has a lot of great draw options, and you’ll be just fine adding a few staples like Phyrexian Arena and Treasure Cruise into your deck.
To increase the draw off of your Snail, add Skullclamp and attach it to your Snail. The +1/-1 from the equipment will already draw you an extra card and do one more damage to each opponent when Wick throws it, butSkullclamp will also draw you two more cardswhen the equipped creature dies. One generic mana for three damage and three cards is a fantastic deal!
Ashcoat of the Shadow Swarm is an expensive addition, but a powerful one thatbuffs your growing army of Rats in addition to offering a pseudo-draw/recursion effect, milling four cards into your graveyard at the end of each of your turns before returning two Rats from your graveyard to your hand. This not only helps you find important creatures, it also helps keep your best rats coming back turn after turn.
Karumonix, the Rat King works well as a “secret commander,” changing the playstyle around himself and turning the Rat swarm into a poison deck by giving all of your Rats toxic. Even without that effect, playing him allows you tolook at the top five cards in your library and keep any number of Ratsthat you find before pitching the rest into your graveyard.
Pack Your Rats
Rats have a lot of synergies, and you’ll want to have a ton of them in play so that they can support each other and so that your Snail can grow.Pack Rat is an excellent exampleof this: its power and toughness are equal to the number of Rats you control, so the more you have, the bigger it gets, and you’re able to copy it by paying three mana and discarding a card. If left unchecked, this can quickly get out of hand!
Marrow-Gnawer is the go-to commander for mono-black Rat decks. He has an activated ability similar to the popular commander Krenko, Mob Boss, where youtap him to create a 1/1 Rat token for each Rat you already control, doubling the size of your board. Marrow-Gnawer’s ability is slightly inferior, since you have to sacrifice a Rat to use it, but he also gives all rats fear, making them unblockable except by black and artifact creatures.
Lord Skitter, Sewer King is a little slower, only giving you one 1/1 Rat token each turn, but he also raids your opponents' graveyards, exiling important cards they may want to bring back later. That ability triggers each time you get another Rat, so you can quickly consume a whole graveyard and keep it empty, decimating players who use a recursion strategy.
For a huge swarm,you can’t go wrong with Song of Totentanz. For one red and X mana, you get X 1/1 Rats that can’t block, and then you give all of your creatures haste so they can all attack at once. This is great for a surprise attack against an opponent without blockers (especially if Karumonix, the Rat King is in play), but also works well to make some ratty combos.
You can make a bunch of Rats, grow your Snail, then sacrifice the lot to Ashnod’s Altar todouble your mana poolfor a Fireball or to pay for more Rats!
Totentanz is a good fit himself, along with Ogre Slumlord. Both reward you with 1/1 Rats whenever your nontoken creatures die. This makes them anexcellent foil for board wipes, which will leave you with at least a few Rat tokens, and possibly more than you had before your opponent decided that a Wrath of God was in order.
Dirty Rats, Dirty Tricks
Red includes a handful of combat tricks to buff your creatures, but Rats can be sneaky by themselves.
Rats with ninjutsu, like Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni,can be played after blockers are declared to return an unblocked creature to your handand replace that creature with themselves. Not only does that put another +1/+1 counter on your Snail, it puts an inexpensive Rat with an enter effect back into your hand so you can play it again.
They also usually have a beneficial effect, like Ink-Eyes resurrecting a creature from an opponent’s graveyard under your control when she deals combat damage to a player.
Shapeshifters with changeling count as all creature types, including both Rat and Snail, soplaying a changeling without a Snail in play will cause it to enter with a +1/+1 counteron it, in addition to triggering other effects. Taurean Mauler is a great addition, because it will also grow as your opponents cast spells. Let it grow as they attempt to deal with it before Wick throws it straight at their heads.
Gnawing Crescendo is one of your best combat tricks. Use it to get more damage from your unblocked Rats, to surprise your opponents by buffing your blockers and then replacing them when they die, or respond to a board wipe by ensuring that some of your own creatures survive.
Conspiracy plus Wick, the Whorled Mind createsan endless Rat loop. If you declare “Rat” when you play Conspiracy, all of your Snail tokens (and other creatures you control) will count as Rats instead of any other creature type. So, as soon as another Rat comes into play, Wick will make a token named Snail that counts as a Rat instead. Then he’ll make a Rat token for that Rat, and so on.
This combo can’t be stopped without other game pieces, so if nobody can stop it,the game ends in a draw. However, if you have Impact Tremors in play, you’ll quickly kill all of your opponents, and if you have a sac outlet like Ashnod’s Altar, you’re able to accumulate infinite mana, life, +1/+1 counters, or whatever else you get from the sac outlet.
