I know there are other developers trying to break this idea but I've been thinking about it a lot lately and found that I wanted to build this deck.
Do you know what are we talking about? Keep reading
I always love pack rat because it's a big card that can do insane things. When you try to break it your attention goes inmediately to training grounds so why not try to build a "rat deck" without lot of rats but only the good ones. Then I thought that probably there should be more good rats but I don't want to make a silly deck full of rats so I choose nezumi graverobber and typhoid rats with any throat Slitter. Well we have now the rats, more support for them? Yes Swarmyard and mutavault comes to my mind.
Well now we need more action so what can we add to the mix? Tasigur could be an option but his ability is not going to be bonkers here so what more?? Well, The scarab god seems to be perfect here also.
Are there more good dudes to exploit the grounds that could be useful by themselves?? well Kalitas, traitor of geth sounds appealing too and helps nezumi to have clean the opponent's grave. Also a single whip of erebos seems appealing here.
With all these activated abilities we should play necrotic Ooze for sure
Guul Draz Assassin seems good here also so why not? Magus of the coffers seems useful also and can be used via scarab god, whip and ooze.
So with all these cards I made the following monster:
I've to admit that you are right in lot of your suggestions. In my testings there have been lot of times where I hadn't enough lands to play confortably and even more reason to increase the land count is because I can discard them to pack rat so I'm going to increase the number to 24 lands.
Also 4 inquisition are not enough to control games (I should add more) so I will make room for them in sideboard.
Finally Vraska's contempt is slow for modern as you told, but I like it because the exile clause. Anyways I'm going to replace them with other kind of removal (one more dismember and at least one more) and see how does it works.
The combo with gravecrawler seems very difficult to assemble (you need 4 pieces). I'm wondering if mindcrank + Duskmantle guildmage combo would be an option to the deck. The problem is that mindcrank by itself is useless but with necrotic ooze we would have redundancy for the mage (if he dies) so not sure if wasting 8 slots in the deck worthwhile. But also we have Shred memory which have synergy with nezumi graverobber plan and is able to search for any of the cards of the combo. Also there is beseech the queen so tutors should not be a problem. What do you think?
I've tested the combo and mindshrieker and both of them dissapoint me. The combo is not consistent and need to waste lot of slots in the deck. Mindshrieker is not bad but also is not good. I'm going to try new toys. I'm thinking in:
The shapesharer counts as a zombie and a rat, so pack rat and the scarab god benefits from it and also it can copy any big bad boy in the table to do obscene things.
The Ludevic's test subject can be converted using 5 mana (thanks to TG) and you have a massive 13/13 trampler. Meanwhile it can chumpblock little weenees. The good thing is that you can convert it at instant speed. The bad is that it requieres lot of blue mana.
Mindshrieker is something I'm testing right now. Not very great.
Walking ballista could be a good addition too. And gross with TG, but again not sure about it.
Another things that could fit are hex parasite against affinity and planeswalkers.
All this three cards can be obscene if you have some green to play them and brutal if you have lot of green. The problem would be to build the deck in order to have as much black and as much green as you can while having blue also for grounds and the scarab god.
Beside of that, colossus have nice synergy with the pack rats and with the scarab god which is nice
So now I have problems with manabase. I was thinking on including some birds of paradise and noble hierarch (or arbor elf) and fill the manabase with Green-X lands and 4 urborg for having lot of black too.
Tested the green version but not very good results. The mana base was horrible and sometimes I found training grounds in my hand without any source to cast it
Also although new creatures were good with TG, having so much green for colossus was a hard task.
Jade mage and feral hydra were good but at least the hydra was a easy kill vanilla monster and colossus were removed all day long so again not convinced on this new version.
I've been looking for more black / blue creatures to use in this deck that were as good as pack rats are. Any idea is really welcome!!!
I've been testing other versions of the deck and find a new course for the deck. After thinking a lot I'm more convinced that a zombie subtheme would complement the deck a lot. In that way, the combo of kalitas, traitor of ghet + training grounds + gravecrawler + other zombie is more feasible.
Also happens that zombies have nice cards that can take advantage of training grounds and also will have great synergy with the sacarab god.
This new list can clog the board easily while being able to disrupt the opponent. Also creatures are right on themselves but much better with training grounds Which is great.
I'm going to test this list extensively to adjust some numbers but right now it works good.
Yesterday I tested the deck and I'm very happy with it. I had to do some changes and tweak some numbers but right now I think I have a good list. This is:
The changes I've made is including again mindshrieker because it has great synergy with training grounds but also with Grave Marshal. So now the deck has 12 creatures that become absurd with training grounds and that helps each other and are independent because pack rat requires cards in hand, minshrieker requires cards in library and Grave Marshal cards in graveyard so you have three angles of attacking and also each plan fuels the others.
I've reduced a lot the plan of attacking opponent's graveyard because sometimes is irrelevant and others doesn't affect the game a lot. Anyways I've kept 1 Shred Memory because It also has the ability of search any of my threats or any removal. It's more versatile although I'm not sure if using beseech the queen would be better. Also there is the new tutor of ravnica but not being able to search also for the ilusion is another handicap. What do you think??
The deck is really fun and can do some gross things. I.e. in a game yesterday against a 8 rack deck, I drew a mindshriek, and under a ensnaring bridge I could attack with my 1/1 and finished the opponent in one only swing.
Another one was against a rock deck. I created 8 zombie tokens with marshal and he was not able to find a maelstrom pulse, so died under a zombie army.
I'm also thinking if aether vial should be useful in the deck to put my threats at instant speed (so zombies and rats can attack in the turn I want them to do). In paper it seems good because I can play it in the fist turn and sit on two to play almost everything. THe issue is that is useless in mid game and is not a creature. What do you think??
Is anybody also interested in this deck? I think it's good and really fun so I reccomend you to test it!!
Still trying to improve some things of the deck altough right now it works really fine. First of all I have to cut 5 cards MD. Every card has it's own purpose so I'm not really sure what to cut there.
I'm doubting a lot with cryptbreakers. They are card advantage in middle game and benefits a lot from a training grounds, but they only create one or two tokens usually and I found myself using it in conjuntion with the tokens to draw cards and pinging me in the process. I'm not sure if there are better options for the one drop slots. The zombie thematic was mostly used for them but not sure if they worthwhile. While stitcher's Suppliers are performing really good giving me fuel for Marshal, tasigur and the god, the cryptbreakers are not making a jood job after all. I'm thinking on replacing them with one of the following candidates:
I played a BUG midrange deck based around training grounds a couple of months ago. It was quite fun to play but a bit to slow and inconsistent for my local meta, I did feel like it had potential tho and could probably be a bit more streamlined.
I know there are other developers trying to break this idea but I've been thinking about it a lot lately and found that I wanted to build this deck.
Do you know what are we talking about? Keep reading
I always love pack rat because it's a big card that can do insane things. When you try to break it your attention goes inmediately to training grounds so why not try to build a "rat deck" without lot of rats but only the good ones. Then I thought that probably there should be more good rats but I don't want to make a silly deck full of rats so I choose nezumi graverobber and typhoid rats with any throat Slitter. Well we have now the rats, more support for them? Yes Swarmyard and mutavault comes to my mind.
Well now we need more action so what can we add to the mix? Tasigur could be an option but his ability is not going to be bonkers here so what more?? Well, The scarab god seems to be perfect here also.
Are there more good dudes to exploit the grounds that could be useful by themselves?? well Kalitas, traitor of geth sounds appealing too and helps nezumi to have clean the opponent's grave. Also a single whip of erebos seems appealing here.
With all these activated abilities we should play necrotic Ooze for sure
Guul Draz Assassin seems good here also so why not? Magus of the coffers seems useful also and can be used via scarab god, whip and ooze.
So with all these cards I made the following monster:
4 typhoid rats
2 Guul Draz Assassin
4 Pack Rat
4 Nezumi graverobber
2 Throat Slitter
1 Kalitas, traitor of ghet
2 Necrotic Ooze
1 Whip of Erebos
1 Magus of the coffers
2 The scarab god
1 Tasigur, The golden Fang
1 Dismember
1 Cast Down
2 vraska's Contempt
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Swarmyard
2 mutavault
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Darkslick Shores
2 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Watery Grave
4 Swamp
The only issue I've found yet is that we need some kind of card advantage to be able to broke pack rat so I'm thing on cards like chart a course, sign in blood or any recursive card like squee, goblin nabob, veilborn ghoul or ....
Also nihil spellbomb could be great as a 2 x as bojuka bog for helping and synergy with nezumi graverobber . What do you think?
What do you think? Any idea or suggestion is welcome!!
I've to admit that you are right in lot of your suggestions. In my testings there have been lot of times where I hadn't enough lands to play confortably and even more reason to increase the land count is because I can discard them to pack rat so I'm going to increase the number to 24 lands.
Also 4 inquisition are not enough to control games (I should add more) so I will make room for them in sideboard.
Finally Vraska's contempt is slow for modern as you told, but I like it because the exile clause. Anyways I'm going to replace them with other kind of removal (one more dismember and at least one more) and see how does it works.
The combo with gravecrawler seems very difficult to assemble (you need 4 pieces). I'm wondering if mindcrank + Duskmantle guildmage combo would be an option to the deck. The problem is that mindcrank by itself is useless but with necrotic ooze we would have redundancy for the mage (if he dies) so not sure if wasting 8 slots in the deck worthwhile. But also we have Shred memory which have synergy with nezumi graverobber plan and is able to search for any of the cards of the combo. Also there is beseech the queen so tutors should not be a problem. What do you think?
So the current list of the deck is:
4 typhoid rats
2 Guul Draz Assassin
4 Pack Rat
4 Nezumi graverobber
1 Throat Slitter
1 Kalitas, traitor of ghet
3 Necrotic Ooze
1 Whip of Erebos
2 The scarab god
1 Tasigur, The golden Fang
2 Dismember
2 Cast Down
2 Victim of night
3 Swarmyard
2 mutavault
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Darkslick Shores
1 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Watery Grave
4 Swamp
3 Bojuka bog
I've been testing it and works better than espected. Being able to beat Ur mages, humans and some other decks.
Any help and suggestion is very appreciated. Lot of thanks
The shapesharer counts as a zombie and a rat, so pack rat and the scarab god benefits from it and also it can copy any big bad boy in the table to do obscene things.
The Ludevic's test subject can be converted using 5 mana (thanks to TG) and you have a massive 13/13 trampler. Meanwhile it can chumpblock little weenees. The good thing is that you can convert it at instant speed. The bad is that it requieres lot of blue mana.
Mindshrieker is something I'm testing right now. Not very great.
Walking ballista could be a good addition too. And gross with TG, but again not sure about it.
Another things that could fit are hex parasite against affinity and planeswalkers.
Any more ideas or suggestions are welcome
All this three cards can be obscene if you have some green to play them and brutal if you have lot of green. The problem would be to build the deck in order to have as much black and as much green as you can while having blue also for grounds and the scarab god.
Beside of that, colossus have nice synergy with the pack rats and with the scarab god which is nice
So now I have problems with manabase. I was thinking on including some birds of paradise and noble hierarch (or arbor elf) and fill the manabase with Green-X lands and 4 urborg for having lot of black too.
So the list could be something like:
4 typhoid rats
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Arbor Elf
2 Guul Draz Assassin
2 Feral Hydra
2 Jade Mage
4 Pack Rat
4 Nezumi graverobber
2 Chameleon Colossus
2 The scarab god
1 Tasigur, The golden Fang
2 Dismember
3 Cast Down
3 Swarmyard
2 mutavault
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Breeding Pool
2 Bojuka bog
What do you think?
Also although new creatures were good with TG, having so much green for colossus was a hard task.
Jade mage and feral hydra were good but at least the hydra was a easy kill vanilla monster and colossus were removed all day long so again not convinced on this new version.
I've been looking for more black / blue creatures to use in this deck that were as good as pack rats are. Any idea is really welcome!!!
Also happens that zombies have nice cards that can take advantage of training grounds and also will have great synergy with the sacarab god.
The list of zombies (all ) should be:
From this list the most playable ones that also have synergy with the deck are :
From this list, the marshal can do obscene things with a full graveyard and training grounds.
Also we must include the usual suspects for this kind of deck like gravecrawler and stitcher's Supplier
So right now the core of the deck should be:
4 Cryptbreaker
4 Gravecrawler
4 Stitcher's Supplier
4 Relentless Dead
4 Graveyard Marshal
4 Pack Rat
2 kalitas, traitor of ghet
2 The scarab god
1 gray merchant of asphodel
3 Fatal Push
2 Dismember
2 Cast Down
1 Swarmyard
2 mutavault
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Darkslick Shores
1 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Watery Grave
4 Swamp
2 Bojuka bog
This new list can clog the board easily while being able to disrupt the opponent. Also creatures are right on themselves but much better with training grounds Which is great.
I'm going to test this list extensively to adjust some numbers but right now it works good.
Any advice or suggestion is welcome!!
4 Cryptbreaker
4 Stitcher's Supplier
2 Relentless Dead
4 Graveyard Marshal
4 Mindshrieker
4 Pack Rat
2 shriekmaw
1 Fleshbag Marauder
2 The scarab god
1 gray merchant of asphodel
3 Fatal Push
1 Shred memory
2 Dismember
1 Cast Down
2 Victim of Night
2 mutavault
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Darkslick Shores
1 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Watery Grave
4 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
The changes I've made is including again mindshrieker because it has great synergy with training grounds but also with Grave Marshal. So now the deck has 12 creatures that become absurd with training grounds and that helps each other and are independent because pack rat requires cards in hand, minshrieker requires cards in library and Grave Marshal cards in graveyard so you have three angles of attacking and also each plan fuels the others.
Also because the scarab god and grave Marshal the deck need as much creatures as it can, so because of that, I've included shriekmaw as another piece of removal that have synergy with Grave Marshal and Mindshrieker.
I've reduced a lot the plan of attacking opponent's graveyard because sometimes is irrelevant and others doesn't affect the game a lot. Anyways I've kept 1 Shred Memory because It also has the ability of search any of my threats or any removal. It's more versatile although I'm not sure if using beseech the queen would be better. Also there is the new tutor of ravnica but not being able to search also for the ilusion is another handicap. What do you think??
The deck is really fun and can do some gross things. I.e. in a game yesterday against a 8 rack deck, I drew a mindshriek, and under a ensnaring bridge I could attack with my 1/1 and finished the opponent in one only swing.
Another one was against a rock deck. I created 8 zombie tokens with marshal and he was not able to find a maelstrom pulse, so died under a zombie army.
I'm also thinking if aether vial should be useful in the deck to put my threats at instant speed (so zombies and rats can attack in the turn I want them to do). In paper it seems good because I can play it in the fist turn and sit on two to play almost everything. THe issue is that is useless in mid game and is not a creature. What do you think??
Is anybody also interested in this deck? I think it's good and really fun so I reccomend you to test it!!
As always, any advice or suggestion is welcome!!
It's working really nice now although I feel it can be refined a bit right now.
My current list is:
4 Cryptbreaker
4 Stitcher's Supplier
4 Graveyard Marshal
4 Mindshrieker
4 Pack Rat
4 shriekmaw
1 Fleshbag Marauder
2 The scarab god
2 Tasigur, the golden fang
3 Fatal Push
2 Beseech the Queen
2 Dismember
1 Cast Down
2 Victim of Night
2 mutavault
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Drowned Catacomb
2 Watery Grave
4 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
3 Marsh Flats
Still trying to improve some things of the deck altough right now it works really fine. First of all I have to cut 5 cards MD. Every card has it's own purpose so I'm not really sure what to cut there.
I'm doubting a lot with cryptbreakers. They are card advantage in middle game and benefits a lot from a training grounds, but they only create one or two tokens usually and I found myself using it in conjuntion with the tokens to draw cards and pinging me in the process. I'm not sure if there are better options for the one drop slots. The zombie thematic was mostly used for them but not sure if they worthwhile. While stitcher's Suppliers are performing really good giving me fuel for Marshal, tasigur and the god, the cryptbreakers are not making a jood job after all. I'm thinking on replacing them with one of the following candidates:
Each of them have a nice usability. Which dou you think is better? Right now I'm interested in the first three of them so I have to test them.
As always any idea or suggestion is welcome!!
I played a BUG midrange deck based around training grounds a couple of months ago. It was quite fun to play but a bit to slow and inconsistent for my local meta, I did feel like it had potential tho and could probably be a bit more streamlined.
4 verdant catacombs
2 polluted delta
2 overgrown tomb
2 watery grave
1 breeding pool
4 creeping tar pit
3 mutavault
2 swamp
1 forest
2 island
4 training grounds
Planeswalkers 6
4 liliana of the veil
2 liliana, the last hope
Creatures 12
4 warden of the first tree
4 pack rat
4 tasigur, the golden fang
Spells 15
3 fatal push
4 thought scour
2 life from the loam
2 abrupt decay
2 raven's crime
1 cast down
1 go for the throat
I was quite impressed with warden of the first tree and if I were to run this deck again I would prob move the life from the loam and raven's crime to the sideboard and replace them with thoughtseize and inquisition of kozilek. It is also very possible that thought scour should be removed entirely, as with the loam package gone, it is only there to help power out a quick tasigur, the golden fang but that might not be enough and would be better suited as an assassin's trophy.