Pestilence Rats MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Pestilence Rats’ power scales with the number of cards in your hand, incentivizing a strategy focused on maximizing the number of options available to you, thus maintaining card advantage.

Resource Acceleration: Pestilence Rats work well with decks that accelerate resource gathering. Using cards that increase your hand size can directly boost the Rats’ power, giving you a larger threat on the board swiftly.

Instant Speed: While Pestilence Rats themselves are cast at sorcery speed, its scalable nature makes it synergistic with instant speed spells that allow you to draw or discard, adjusting its power dynamically and unpredictably during your opponent’s turn or at the end of their turn.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Pestilence Rats necessitates a strategic hand management as it can force you to discard valuable cards to utilize certain abilities, leaving you at a potential card disadvantage against opponents.

Specific Mana Cost: The cost to play Pestilence Rats is not simply generic but requires specific black mana, making it less flexible and primarily confining it to mono-black or two-color decks that can consistently produce the necessary mana.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: While Pestilence Rats may offer an appealing effect for a rat-themed or pestilence deck, its mana efficiency is questionable. The cost-value ratio is considered high when compared to other creatures in the same mana range, potentially making it a less optimal choice for many deck strategies where every point of mana counts.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Pestilence Rats has a scalable power level that can adjust easily to the size of your deck, making it a flexible addition to mono-black decks or any strategy focused on rat tribal synergies.

Combo Potential: This card’s power is tied to the number of Rats you control, which can become quite formidable in conjunction with duplication and token-generating cards. It fits like a glove in strategies revolving around exponential creature growth.

Meta-Relevance: In environments where creature decks reign, Pestilence Rats can serve as a threatening blocker or attacker. Its ability to grow as you commit more rats to the board makes it a card that can rapidly adapt to the shifting tides of a game. Tailor your deck with this in mind, and Pestilence Rats can become a valuable asset against the current creature-heavy metagame.

How to beat

Pestilence Rats is a unique creature card in Magic: The Gathering, known for its power that’s equal to the number of Rats you control. This can be quite intimidating, especially when facing an opponent who’s running a rat-themed deck stacked with a swarming strategy. But fear not, there are tactics to undermine the pestering power of these Rats.

To successfully combat Pestilence Rats, removal spells that can take care of multiple creatures at once, such as board wipes, are highly effective. Spells like “Wrath of God” or “Damnation” can clear the board of all creatures, rendering the strength of Pestilence Rats irrelevant. Additionally, targeting the key rat-generating cards with spot removal or counter spells will greatly diminish the potency of a Rats deck. Keep in mind enchantments like “Swords to Plowshares” to exile them or “Pithing Needle” to suppress their activated abilities. This way, you can prevent the Rats from multiplying out of control.

Ultimately, the strategy to overcome Pestilence Rats involves disrupting the swarm synergy and utilizing spells that can affect multiple creatures. Keep your board clear and their numbers manageable, and the Rats won’t stand a chance.

BurnMana Recommendations

Dive deeper into the MTG landscape with Pestilence Rats and harness their scalable might for your strategic advantage. Whether you’re expanding your collection with versatile cards, exploring rat tribal synergies or simply seeking a card that adjusts to the ebb and flow of the game, Pestilence Rats could be your next clever play. Engage with a community that’s as passionate about MTG as you are and discover further ways to optimize your deck building. Revel in the game’s complexity and refine your tactics. Join us to uncover more insights and take your MTG expertise to new heights.