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Relentless Rats

Creature — Rat

This creature gets +1/+1 for each other creature on the battlefield named Relentless Rats.
A deck can have any number of cards named Relentless Rats.

CMC
3
Mana cost
{1}{B}{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
rare
Set
Secret Lair Promo
Price
$9.26
EDHREC rank
#10826
Buy on TCGplayer
Relentless Rats card art
Relentless Rats scales with itself — every copy on the battlefield pumps every other copy, so a critical mass turns a pile of 2/2s into a lethal board almost without warning. The rule bending that lets you run any number of copies is the card's entire identity, and commanders like Syr Konrad, the Grim and Rat King, Verminister are built to exploit exactly that density.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Rat King, Verminister

Rat King, Verminister

29.0% of decks · synergy 0.27

Rat King, Verminister is the native home for Relentless Rats — his ability rewards flooding the board with Rats, and the no-copy-limit rule means you can stack as many Relentless Rats as your mana supports, turning every additional copy into a lord effect for the entire pack.

02
Ashcoat of the Shadow Swarm

Ashcoat of the Shadow Swarm

24.4% of decks · synergy 0.23

Ashcoat of the Shadow Swarm cares about Rats dying and recurring, and Relentless Rats feeds that loop cleanly — dump multiples, trade them in combat or sacrifice them, and Ashcoat's trigger keeps the gas flowing while the survivors keep getting bigger.

03
Karumonix, the Rat King

Karumonix, the Rat King

19.7% of decks · synergy 0.18

Karumonix, the Rat King wants a critical mass of Rats to spread poison counters, and Relentless Rats is the easiest way to hit that mass — each copy also makes the rest of the board more threatening, so Karumonix's poison plan and the power-boosting plan reinforce each other.

04
Marrow-Gnawer

Marrow-Gnawer

19.1% of decks · synergy 0.17

Marrow-Gnawer turns any board of Rats into an exponential token engine, and Relentless Rats is the ideal raw material — sacrifice a handful, double the board, and the mutual-pump clause means the new tokens and the surviving originals are both substantially larger than when you started.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is where Relentless Rats lives — the 99-card singleton rule has an explicit exception for cards that say you can run any number, which means a dedicated Rat deck can fill 20-plus slots with copies and turn that redundancy into geometric scaling. In Legacy and Vintage, the card sees fringe play in niche Rats tribal lists but lacks the speed to compete with those formats' top strategies. Pauper is the one competitive format where Relentless Rats has a real claim — it's common-legal, cheap to acquire, and the self-synergy is powerful enough for a focused swarm build. Pioneer and Standard aren't options.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

There's no true budget replacement for Relentless Rats because the any-number rule is unique to a handful of cards — if you want that same copy-stacking effect in black, Pack Rat is the closest analog, trading the static pump for an activated ability that makes tokens at the cost of discarding. If you just need Rat bodies that scale, cheaper tribal fillers like Rat Colony offer a similar "run any number" clause at a lower price point, though they don't pump existing creatures the way Relentless Rats does.

Price Context

Current price

$9.26 mid tier

At $9.26, Relentless Rats sits in the mid tier — reasonable for a card you might want 20 copies of, though that math adds up fast if you're building a dedicated list. Demand is stable and tied directly to Rat tribal's Commander popularity, so the price reflects genuine play demand rather than speculation.

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Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.