Card Talk 2

Arni Metalbrow card art

Today is the second post in my Card Talk series.

Reminder on how Card Talk works:

• I go to Scryfall and select 'Random Card'
• I present and blog about the card. I could discuss any aspect: the art, abilities, cost, set, impact on the game, and so on. Stream of consciousness.

For me, Card Talk is a fun, uncurated way to look at Magic's cards, mechanics, history, art, sets, and so on. And of course it exposes some of my own preferences, biases, and memories of the game. 

Today's card is . . .

Pestilence Rats

Rats. Another black card. Anyway . . .

Magic has a fair number of rat creature cards (73 as of this post). Almost all are mono-black; five are either white/black, blue/black, or black/red. But you get the point: rats are evil little creatures. A handful of rats have discard or exile effects, but I will focus on a more intuitive ability for this creature: strength in numbers.

Pestilence Rats gets stronger when other rats are on the battlefield. Anyone's rats—even those controlled by other players. This "even opponents' creatures matter" theme is typical of older tribal cards (see Lord of Atlantis or Elvish Champion as examples). More recent cards in this vein tend to focus on your creature only (Blex, Vexing Pest or Captivating Vampire). But I digress.

Rats like other rats, so casual decks focusing on this creature might include Pack Rat, Rat Colony, Plague Rats, or Relentless Rats. Two of those (Rat Colony, Relentless Rats) let you violate the "only 4 copies of any card" rule. (I have a fun blue-black rat deck featuring 20 Rat Colony pairing with Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugivite to make them unblockable.) 

Pestilence Rats came out of Ice Age. Released in 1995, I was getting into Magic around that time, and Ice Age helped draw me in—I loved the packaging art (see below).

image from here

The art was cool, but the set wasn't; Ice Age had cards that were too wordy and too weak. Even today, the most valuable card from the set goes for just over $30; most other sets in that era are far more valuable. And Pestilence Rats is an example of that: it is underpowered for its mana cost (and still cheap; you can get a copy for $0.34 even though it was never reprinted). To have any hope of viability, you would need 4 copies in your deck and require one (or more) opponents to have the same. Almost certainly will not happen.

Speaking of art, this artwork was done by Jeff Menges, who drew 58 Magic cards, 15 of which were in the first set, Alpha. His Black Knight, Grizzly Bears, Bog Wraith, Merfolk of the Pearl Trident, and Swords to Plowshares stand out to me.

What I like most about Pestilence Rats? The set it belongs to and the associated memories. I do not think I own the card, and would never play it if I did.