Rapacious Guest MTG Card


Rapacious Guest offers card advantage by diminishing opponent’s hand and enabling graveyard strategies. It requires careful mana management, and high casting cost is a strategic consideration for deck builders. The card’s adaptability and meta-relevance make it a versatile inclusion in diverse competitive decks.
Card setsReleased in 3 setsSee all
Mana cost
Converted mana cost3
RarityRare
TypeCreature — Halfling Citizen
Abilities Food,Menace
Power 2
Toughness 2

Text of card

Menace Whenever one or more creatures you control deal combat damage to a player, create a Food token. Whenever you sacrifice a Food, put a +1/+1 counter on Rapacious Guest. When Rapacious Guest leaves the battlefield, target opponent loses life equal to its power.


Cards like Rapacious Guest

Rapacious Guest carves out its own niche within the panorama of creature cards in Magic: The Gathering. It echoes some traits from cards like Vampire Opportunist, both sharing a focus on dealing direct damage to opponents. While Vampire Opportunist requires mana expenditure to activate its ability, Rapacious Guest instead relies on a condition of treasure token sacrifice for its effect, adding a strategic layer to resource management.

Comparing further, Dusk Legion Zealot presents an interesting parallel, offering immediate card draw at the cost of life upon entering the battlefield—quite the opposite of Rapacious Guest, which instead chips away at an opponent’s life total indirectly. Then comes Bogart Shenanigans, which has no life-gain or -loss triggers but creates a punishing environment for goblin tribal strategies. Though not as strategically flexible as Rapacious Guest, it underlines the diversity in creature abilities.

Choosing the right card always depends on the deck’s synergies and overall strategy. Within the vast world of creature cards, Rapacious Guest has its advantages, particularly in decks where sacrificing treasure tokens aligns well with your game plan, offering a combination of direct damage and resource usage that can turn the tide of a match.

Vampire Opportunist - MTG Card versions
Dusk Legion Zealot - MTG Card versions
Vampire Opportunist - MTG Card versions
Dusk Legion Zealot - MTG Card versions

Cards similar to Rapacious Guest by color, type and mana cost

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Nantuko Husk - MTG Card versions
Nettling Imp - MTG Card versions
Royal Assassin - MTG Card versions
El-Hajjâj - MTG Card versions
Plague Rats - MTG Card versions
Frozen Shade - MTG Card versions
Scathe Zombies - MTG Card versions
Sorceress Queen - MTG Card versions
Wall of Bone - MTG Card versions
Lost Soul - MTG Card versions
Mindstab Thrull - MTG Card versions
Mischievous Poltergeist - MTG Card versions
Strongarm Thug - MTG Card versions
Razortooth Rats - MTG Card versions
Ghastly Remains - MTG Card versions
Lord of the Undead - MTG Card versions
Deepwood Ghoul - MTG Card versions
Dross Prowler - MTG Card versions
Nim Lasher - MTG Card versions
Nim Abomination - MTG Card versions
Nantuko Husk - MTG Card versions

Card Pros

Card Advantage: One of the strengths of Rapacious Guest is its ability to provide card advantage. By compelling players to discard, it effectively diminishes their choices and strategically narrows down their potential plays, making the card a solid choice for decks focusing on disrupting the opponent’s hand.

Resource Acceleration: A key feature of the Rapacious Guest is its synergy with cards that benefit from discarding. It can help accelerate your resources by enabling graveyard strategies or triggering abilities of cards that activate upon discarding or whenever a player discards, thereby enhancing your board state and advancing your game plan.

Instant Speed: Although Rapacious Guest is not an instant itself, its interaction with other spells that operate at instant speed can be advantageous. By forcing a discard at a critical moment, you’re able to disrupt instant speed plays from your opponent, which can be incredibly timely during tight gameplay moments. Understanding when to deploy Rapacious Guest alongside your instant speed spells can be a game-defining skill.


Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Playing Rapacious Guest comes with the caveat of requiring you to sacrifice a vital card from your hand. This can compromise your game plan, especially when your hand is already limited.

Specific Mana Cost: With a casting cost that necessitates both black and red mana, Rapacious Guest necessitates a dedicated mana base, restricting it primarily to Rakdos decks or those capable of supporting its color requirements comfortably.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: For its abilities, Rapacious Guest’s mana cost sits on the higher end of the spectrum. There are other options within the mana range that could potentially provide a greater impact on the battlefield or your overall strategy.


Reasons to Include Rapacious Guest in Your Collection

Versatility: Rapacious Guest is a unique pick for decks that capitalize on sacrifice mechanics. Its ability to drain opponent’s resources while you build up power makes it adaptable in a variety of strategies, from aggressive to mid-range decks.

Combo Potential: With its potential to consistently chip away at an opponent’s life total whenever you sacrifice a creature, this crafty card can be the cornerstone of powerful combo engines. This opens up synergies with numerous other cards that thrive on such interactions.

Meta-Relevance: As the game environment shifts regularly, a card like Rapacious Guest can gain prominence in metas where life totals are a battleground. This card’s implicit threat can modify how opponents play, making it a relevant choice for competitive deck builders intent on staying ahead of the curve.


How to beat

Rapacious Guest is a crafty creature that can complicate the board state in Magic: The Gathering. Known for its ability to exploit the death of other creatures, it feeds off graveyard activity and can rapidly grow out of control if left unchecked. Beating this card requires a strategy that limits the opportunities for it to benefit from demise and graveyard interactions.

One effective tactic is to employ removal spells that exile rather than destroy, bypassing the graveyard and thus depriving Rapacious Guest of its power source. Cards like Path to Exile or Silencing those who can stifle abilities are invaluable tools in your arsenal against such a threat. Another approach is to manage the creature count on your board, minimizing losses and the subsequent growth of Rapacious Guest. Utilizing instant speed interactions can catch your opponent off-guard, preventing them from gaining the upper hand with this creature.

Remember, understanding your opponent’s game plan and disrupting it while advancing your own is key to any match in Magic: The Gathering. With a thought-out strategy and appropriate countermeasures, you can ensure that this card does not become an overwhelming problem on the battlefield.


BurnMana Recommendations

Leveraging the subtle intricacies of MTG requires both knowledge and creativity, especially when cards like Rapacious Guest come into play. With its dual potential to tip the scales in card advantage and accelerate your strategies, it demands consideration for inclusion in decks that thrive on disruption and graveyard tactics. As you ponder the ebb and flow of your deck’s synergy, consider the impact that Rapacious Guest could have on its dynamics. Are you ready to harness its capabilities to the fullest? Delve deeper into the art of the game with us and discover how to optimize your deck’s performance with insightful tools and strategies.


Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Rapacious Guest MTG card by a specific set like Tales of Middle-earth Commander and Tales of Middle-earth Commander, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.

For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.

Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.

Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Rapacious Guest and other MTG cards:

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Printings

The Rapacious Guest Magic the Gathering card was released in 1 different sets between 2023-06-23 and 2023-06-23. Illustrated by Bartłomiej Gaweł.

#ReleasedNameCodeSymbolNumberFrameLayoutBorderArtist
12023-06-23Tales of Middle-earth CommanderLTC 4302015NormalBlackBartłomiej Gaweł
22023-06-23Tales of Middle-earth CommanderLTC 282015NormalBlackBartłomiej Gaweł
32023-06-23Tales of Middle-earth CommanderLTC 1112015NormalBlackBartłomiej Gaweł

Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Rapacious Guest has restrictions

FormatLegality
CommanderLegal
LegacyLegal
OathbreakerLegal
VintageLegal
DuelLegal

Rules and information

The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Rapacious Guest card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.

Date Text
2023-06-16 Do not eat the delicious cards. No, not even for second breakfast.
2023-06-16 Food is an artifact type. Even though it appears on some creatures in other sets, it's never a creature type.
2023-06-16 If an effect refers to a Food, it means any Food artifact, not just a Food artifact token. For example, you can sacrifice Lembas, an artifact card with the Food subtype, to activate the last ability of Bill the Pony.
2023-06-16 Rapacious Guest's third ability triggers whenever you sacrifice a Food for any reason, not just to activate a Food's activated ability.
2023-06-16 Some spells and abilities that create Food tokens may require targets. If each target chosen is an illegal target as that spell or ability tries to resolve, it won't resolve. You won't create any Food tokens.
2023-06-16 To determine the amount of life the target opponent loses from Rapacious Guest's last ability, use Rapacious Guest's power as it last existed on the battlefield, not its power in the graveyard.
2023-06-16 You can't sacrifice a Food token to pay multiple costs. For example, you can't sacrifice a Food token to activate its own ability and also to activate the last ability of Bill the Pony.