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Hello spicy people of the internet! Spice8Rack here, aka. And Who Could Forget Dear Rat Boy
and this month my partner and I got two new baby rats, Samba and Disco
to be friends with our other two rats, Pocket and Clover. We have to quarantine
our two new rats in their own cage for a while and slowly introduce the pairs to each other.
So this month is going to be really, really busy for me. But I thought it would be
both fun and thematic to talk about one of my favourite tribes in Magic.
That of the humble rat.
Just like our world's rats, Magic's versions of these rodents can be found all over the place.
From Dominaria, Rath, Alara, Mirrodin, Amonkhet, Kaladesh, Tarkir, Zendikar, Innistrad, Fiora,
Ikoria, Eldraine, Shadowmoor Ravnica, and even whatever the piss the Portal: Three Kingdoms plane is.
On the whole, Magic's rats are not too dissimilar to normal rats.
With almost every plane's versions being small, nibbling, creatures, who only occasionally
turn into zombie monsters the size of a human.
The sole exception to this trend, however,
can be found in the swamp-dwelling Nezumi on the plane of Kamigawa,
who are a society of anthropomorphized rats made up of gangs of samurai, rogues, and shaman.
It is here that the rats get their two commanders: Marrow-Gnawer,
the cunning first lord of the Nezumi who died saving Toshiro Umezawa
during a battle with Heartless "He-De-See-Gu"... "Heed-Se-"
I'm gonna quickly look up if that's how you say his name.
[Frantic keyboard clattering]
Heartless "Hide-Su-Gu"... "Hi-Tsugu", is the "T" silent?
I'm gonna say "Hi-Tsugu" and you can tell me that I'm wrong in the comments.
-and Ink-Eyes, a necromancer rat ninja in the service of the demon, Kuro the Pit Lord.
Uh, there's also Patron of the Nezumi. But if I'm gonna be honest,
I forgot that it existed as a magic card. So, uh, you know... If you run it, good for you.
Also, if I do a visual overhaul of my, uh, my Patreon page which I've been meaning to do for a while.
I might switch up my- my reward tiers from, like, Charging Badger to Patron of the Akki.
I think that will be- that'll be fun. This is a completely unrelated tangent.
Look at the size of his fucking mouth!
With this clan of humanoid rats, maybe one day we will see a rat planeswalker-
NO!
No.
Not you.
Get out.
Is she gone? Good. [Clears throat]
One day we might even see a rat planeswalker from Kamigawa! I've always wondered what humanoid
versions of animals must think when they come across their non-humanoid counterparts in Magic.
Would Ajani feel weird if he saw you making "pspsps" noises at a cat?
Would Koth get uncomfortable if he walked into your house and saw your gemstone collection?
The only way we'll find out is when Wizards finally returns my emails
about bringing me on board their narrative team.
But lo! There is additional rat lore!
You may be familiar with Lyzolda, the Blood Witch, a prominent character of Ravnica's past.
But, did you know that she kept a host of rats as her pets?
Not only that, she cared for them deeply. Feeding them better than most of the people on Ravnica.
Even going so far as to feed her rats the actual people of Ravnica.
Ah, the Rakdos. I do love them dearly,
and each day I thank God that they're not real and they can't hurt me.
Mechanically Magic's rats tend to do one of several things: Cause players to discard cards,
muck around with the graveyard, create or benefit from fellow rats, synergize with poison counters,
and the most common keywords attached on them are deathtouch
and evasive mechanics like fear, swampwalk, and ninjutsu.
Each of these mechanical abilities are rooted in our cultural understanding of the rat.
Rats nibbling on bones in tombs, thus exiling things in graveyards,
is a common trope in almost any catacomb plunder, from Indiana Jones to Dark Souls.
Discarding cards, often a mechanic associated with the traumatic loss of sanity,
can be linked back to rats throughout stories like Lovecraft's rats in the walls or in the climax
of George Orwell's 1984 where men are driven insane by close proximity to grotesque versions of the vermin.
The rat is, arguably, the most mechanically swarmy creature type in the whole of Magic.
Relentless Rats and Rat Colony are two of only five cards in the whole game
which allow you to put any number of them in your deck.
Pack Rat, Plague Rat, Pestilence Rats, Swarm of Rats all grow as your swarm does.
Ogre Slumlord can fart out upwards of four rats a second, and easily my favorite rat synergy card
has got to be Piper of the Swarm, an allegory for the Pied Piper of Hamlin.
A story which everybody thinks is a horribletale about the mass kidnapping of a town's entire child population.
But what I really think is actually a cautionary tale
about what happens when you don't promptly pay the invoices of freelancers.
Marrow-Gnawer not only doubles your rats at the cost of sacrificing a rat.
But is also one of the few cards in the entire of Magic
where adding adorable artwork onto it only makes the ludonarrative more upsetting.
[Shouting, as if from another room] "No I don't know where he got the meat
and no I haven't seen Remy in a while. Stop asking difficult questions, Sandra."
All of this is reflected in how quickly rats can breed, with wild rats having up to two thousand babies each year!
Wow! That's shagadelic baby-
[Wheezing laughter]
Oh that's the dumbest thing I've ever written.
Rats are, of course, also very elusive creatures, preferring to hide away in tall or sheltered areas.
Even sometimes living in trees, and so evasive mechanics suit them delightfully.
Rat Fact! [Whipcrack]
A rat can fit into any hole it can fit its head into, and so skulk is a frankly perfect rat ability.
Although having just, uh, watched that back I realised that the majority
of wall creature types in Magic have zero power so- or one power or less-
so it means that Rancid Rats, a card which explicitly says that: "They- They're in the walls!"
and, therefore, the walls couldn't block their entrance to your house... can be blocked by walls.
Uh, which unfortunately means that Rancid Rats is the worst Magic card of all time-
[Spice] I am literally recording [T-Posing Housemate Rohan] Oh Nooooo!
[Spice] You fucking bastar-
Rats being the bearers of infection and poison of course find their roots in the Black Death
or Bubonic Plague, the pandemic that wiped out one third of the population of Europe
with which rats are intrinsically linked. When most people think of a rat,
they think of a dirty, sneaky, even dangerous creature. But, as a rat owner,
I really wanted to dissuade some of these assumptions. But, before I do that;
I've actually done a collaboration between Alter Sleeves and Titus Lunter,
yes the Magic: the Gathering artist, to produce a set of Alter Sleeves for a kickstarter project.
These are cute little sleeves that you can fit inside a normal sleeve and they protect your cards
and they also give a cool new border to your cards. The actual Kickstarter has just passed
three quarters of the goal as I write this and there's some days still to go if you want to back it.
I also wrote a wee story for the Wizard Immortal world that this art was inspired by.
So go check that out down below and go check out the Kickstarter as well.
Oh they look- oh they look a bit nice, don't they? Wow, back to the-
Rat Facts! [Whipcrack]
Razortooth Rats aren't far off the truth rat's teeth can chew through wood, lead,
and even steel, but they'll never bite you if they're comfortable.
Clover can't see very well, so she occasionally mistakes my socks for food.
But aside from that I've never had a rat bite. They're delightful.
Rats are also really quiet. That's something that I was surprised about when we first got our pair.
I assumed they'd be squeaking all the time and scuttling up a storm.
But, as it turns out, they only squeak if they're hurt or annoyed.
If anything their water bottle is probably the loudest part of keeping rats.
[Spice gently serenading Clover with Clair de Lune]
[Spice continues, but a rapid clattering of metal on metal starts in the background]
[Spice increases the volume of his serenade, as Pocket makes a colossal racket by simply having a little drink.]
Rats are also super clean. We've had Pocket and Clover for over a year
and they groom and wash themselves all the time. Rats are not naturally dirty.
Quite the opposite it's more often just a case of where they live.
Rats and other "pest" animals get demonised quite often for being creatures that subsist on human waste
and live in the gaps or walls of human dwellings. But, like, if you were a wild animal
born into a maze of concrete with little to no chance of hunting or scavenging fresh food.
Maybe you too would end up living off of those curious boxes of perfectly fine plate scrapings
that these human creatures keep leaving out at night....
Oh geez, it's almost like the quality of the environment is a decisive factor
in how a creature behaves rather than its "intrinsic biological nature".
What a wild, novel idea that is.
Definitely should consider that concept when it comes to resolving issues in human society, no siree!
Additionally the assumption that rats are plague carriers comes from a broad misunderstanding
of the events of the Black Death. Rather than rats spreading the disease it was fleas, and
that's not a kind of trick or abstraction. As studies like this one: "The human ectoparasites
and spread of plague in Europe during the second pandemic" have shown, it was fleas and
other ectoparasites from humans. not rats. that were the primary vectors of the bubonic plague.
Rat Fact! [Whip Crack]
There's a temple in India with thousands of rats. Worshippers bring sweets and cheese
for them to snack on and the temple staff put out big bowls of milk for them to drink.
What a lovely, lovely place. Rats are delightful, friendly, and the best pets that I've ever owned.
Maybe you're already a rat fan, or maybe this video has convinced you to look upon
these perfect little creatures in a new light. I love playing with rats in Magic, so much
so that the only secret lair that I've ever bought (and ever will buy) was the year of the rat.
The rat colony cards are gorgeous and if they didn't cost ten dollars a piece- Waka waka-
I would definitely have an entire commander deck built around them.
this is also a very different video from my normal kind. In the original draft
of the script, I veered off into a tangent about, uh, pandemics and the continued use of rats
as a dehumanizing symbol in racist propaganda. But I realised halfway through
that I really just wanted to make a short video about how much I- I love rats.
if you enjoyed this kind of video do let me know down below and what are your favourite
names for rats? and other questions that willcause you to interact with this video and push it into the YouTube algorithm.
How does my job work? I don't know.
A big old thank you to all of my patrons who make it possible
for me to a continue to make these videos full time, and continue to feed my lovely babes delicious treats!
A special thank you to my 10 dollar patrons, who include:
[Spice Reads Patreon names]
A massive thank you to all of my lovely patrons who have been supporting me throughout the
years- because it's been literally years since I started my patreon and stuff like that.
Ain't that a wild one?
Anyway I'll- I'll see- see you all later and I'll update you with some- some
rat pictures, probably in future videos and twitter tweets.
All right and as always stay spicy.