Is Pack Rat good enough for Legacy?

[edwardeng]

Hi All,

A friend of mine just posted up an article discussing some possibilities of Pack Rat being playable in Legacy. Curious to get some feedback. What do you think?

http://www.galactictreasures.com/blo...hmage-level-46

Thanks,
Ed

[Asthereal]

Pack Rat is absolutely playable, but in most strong decks there are better alternatives. There are two decks where I can see it being viable as a sideboard option to beat slower decks: Shardless and Jund. It already sees play in Pox, but I am reluctant to call that a strong deck.

The nasty Rat does allow for a few nice tricks with the graveyard. Stuff that comes back from the grave works nicely with it, but Pack Rat's biggest upside is that it doesn't need the grave to be effective. It just makes it a bit better. Idea:

Creatures:
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Gravecrawler
3 Bloodsoaked Champion
4 Rotting Rats
3 Pack Rat
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Lotleth Troll
1 Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
4 Vengevine /31

Spells:
4 Thoughtseize
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Liliana of the Veil /11

Lands:
4 Bayou
2 Swamp
2 Forest
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest /18

About some of the cards:
- Rotting Rats comes back from the grave, grows Pack Rat, is a Zombie for Gravecrawler and it's a discard outlet.
- Vengevine, Gravecrawler, Bloodsoaked Champion and Haakon are the other cards that keep coming back.
- Lotleth Troll is a Zombie for Gravecrawler, a discard outlet and a stalling device against opposing creatures.
- Deathrite, Thoughtseize, Decay and Liliana are just good cards, the latter also adding as discard outlet.

Considering all this, my guess would be that Pack Rats might actually be one of the worst cards in the list.

[Hopo]

Pack Rat has seen some play in reanimator's sideboard to sidestep traditional hate. It is quite easy to see that the card is too slow to be a backbone of a deck's strategy in legacy. It is a decent win con but until the first activation, it's as fragile as anything. There are lots of cards that can take over the game once you have control. Pack Rat is as good as anything then but that's not how one should evaluate a "Pack rat deck." The linked article pretty much shows what happens when you try to play the card: you need a goodstuff.dec to support it and it will always be the worst card in the deck.

[Ricardio]

Life from the loam is a must play alongside it. The issue lies with it being 3 to activate. I guess training grounds is a thing but that's probably too cute. Like a bug shell with gy interaction and lotv. could be interesting enough albeit there may be other things to work with training ground. Not sure what though.

[maharis]

I was tooling around with a BUG Standstill/Chalice deck that played a Pack Rat, and Rat was super strong under Standstill and/or Chalice.

DTT banning made me shelve it but I think they could be replaced with Thirsts for Knowledge, but then again that might just be a shitty Tezz deck.

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post903798

[MaximumC]

The issue lies with it being 3 to activate.

This is exactly it. The ability is sweet, and it's a very potent weapon to slowly take over the game while being difficult to remove, but look at the mana investment we're talking about:

1B - 1/1
3BB - 2/2 and 2/2
5BBB - 3/3 and 3/3 and 3/3
7BBBB - 4/4 and 4/4 and 4/4 and 4/4
etc

On top of that, for every removal spell your opponent has, you're set back a whole level of development.

The only saving grace is that you spend 2B in chunks and you can do so at instant speed. So, I think you need the following all to be true for this to make sense:

1) You're playing a reactive control deck that wants to keep it's mana up all turn and then dump it into Rat only if it had nothing better to do;
2) You have a way to abuse or benefit from discarding cards; and
3) You are not better off using other more typical control finishers like those in Miracles.

So we're probably talking about a UB control deck of some kind, maybe UBg for Deathrite Shaman. I disagree with the Article in the OP, since that tries to use Pack Rat as just another beatstick like Tarmagoyf, and I think that's a fool's errand. There are better cards if you just want to tap out and beat face. Rat's advantage is that you can wait until the end step to decide whether you're deploying a threat this turn, kind of like Faeries.

[Weapon X]

I've been playing it for a long time. Most notably in my bride of young Frankenstein build and dragon combo. Basically anything with reanimation. It furthers your main reanimation plan while putting on pressure independent of the graveyard.

[tescrin]

If you don't want Liliana of the Veil, it's not a bad way to get rid of excess discard spells. It can smooth out draws in the late game by making sure new cards are dudes.

I think the main issue is the mana issue; similar to SFM. It brings consistency to the late game, but it doesn't help much early on.

[rufus]

Life from the loam is a must play alongside it. The issue lies with it being 3 to activate. I guess training grounds is a thing but that's probably too cute. Like a bug shell with gy interaction and lotv. could be interesting enough albeit there may be other things to work with training ground. Not sure what though.

There are some possibilities ... Feral Animist,Wandering Goblins,soulfire grand master,Izzet Guildmage... not sure many are good.

[Dark Ritual]

I was tooling around with a BUG Standstill/Chalice deck that played a Pack Rat, and Rat was super strong under Standstill and/or Chalice.

DTT banning made me shelve it but I think they could be replaced with Thirsts for Knowledge, but then again that might just be a shitty Tezz deck.

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post903798

A lot of stuff is effective with a standstill out, however, getting to that board state is difficult and standstill has inherent problems in legacy in that there are decks that are far too good at making standstill a dead card if you don't have some busted crap out like crucible + factory/waste. Yeah if you resolve rat into standstill and opponent doesn't have an answer for rat in response to standstill you will be drawing 3 in short order. Just not consistent enough with the format as it is.

Pack rat is a solid card but very susceptible. You have to get to 5 mana to protect it from removal with its ability and 5 mana is infinite as running it out on turn 2 it dies to every removal spell in the game unlike goyf for example. And if it survives you need to invest more mana into it for it to be a threat. There are matchups where it would be sweet of course, but that's true of virtually every card out there that is powerful.