Commander Deck Tech - Vren, the Relentless

Vren, the Relentless could work really well in a Rat Kindred deck, but that's not what we'll do today. For this build, we wanted to really lean on our commander's ability, which creates a Rat token for each enemy creature we exiled that turn. So, we built a hard control list, with counters, sacrifice, and destruction!

Vren protects itself well with its ward 2, and it's a good blocker because of its 3/4 body. We'll use as many removals as we can to build an army of Rats and defeat our opponents, all while we protect Vren to keep it on our board forever. So, without further ado, let's dive straight into this deck tech!

At first, our strategy only wins games through combat damage, but we can ping a lot of damage with Ayara, First of Locthwain, Mirkwood Bats, or win with the poison counters from Karumonix, the Rat King.

Valley Rotcaller will easily sustain us throughout the match and can be a great finisher when we consider the sheer number of Rats we'll create with Vren and Marrow-Gnawer.

Accelerators

We'll use many mana rocks in our build, but we'll only use the cheaper ones to keep up with the rhythm on the board, namely Sol Ring, which was essential, and almost all that cost 2 mana.

We also play Arcane Signet, Thought Vessel, Talisman of Dominance, Dimir Signet, Fellwar Stone, and Mind Stone. Besides these, we have Urza's Cave, Tolaria West, and Expedition Map to get from our deck our famous pair of lands, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Cabal Coffers, which will give us a great advantage.

You can also get Three Tree City, as this deck will create a huge number of Rats.

Removals and Counters

Yeah, we added an absurd number of removals to this build. The deck needs to be annoying like this so we can create numerous Rat tokens and then finish our opponents with them.

Starting with our counters, we use: Counterspell, Swan Song, Strix Serenade, Negate, Arcane Denial, Drown in the Loch, and An Offer You Can't Refuse. It is a good amount and selection of counters, as we need to destroy creatures, so they have to resolve first. We'll only destroy them after that.

However, if your opponent plays something that is too problematic to even go on the board, you'll have to counter it. And, of course, you can use these counters in other situations that may disrupt your game plans, like against a global destruction.

As global removals, we use Damnation, Toxic Deluge, Kindred Dominance and Cyclonic Rift. They're more efficient for our game plan, particularly Kindred Dominance. It lets us destroy all enemy creatures on the board and keep only our Rats alive, and also creates more Rats for us if Vren is on the board.

Damnation and Toxic Deluge do their jobs fast and efficiently, and Cyclonic Rift can either remove all blockers from our way or save us from complicated situations as the game goes on.

We have an array of removals that don't target anything, and remove creatures by sacrificing them. Some of them force us to sacrifice creatures too, but that won't be an issue once we have at least one or more Rat tokens to sacrifice. We use Liliana's Triumph, Sheoldred's Edict, Soul Shatter, Vona's Hunger, Mire in Misery, and Make an Example. Vona's Hunger's city blessing, in particular, easily triggers in this deck.

Some remove several creatures all at once, but, out of all of them, Rush of Dread is definitely stands out the most. As it is a modal spell, we can pick and use any of its effects, and, thanks to its Spree, we can pick all of them at once if we have enough mana. We'll be able to not only force an opponent to sacrifice half their creatures, but also discard half their hand, and/or cut half their life points. It is very versatile and can be quite useful mid to late game.

Before we move on to the other removals we added, allow me to point out that we can also use Arcane Lighthouse and Detection Tower, which are lands, to deal with creatures with Hexproof and Shroud. That being said, the other removals we use cost 2 mana or less: Pongify, Rapid Hybridization, Go for the Throat, Infernal Grasp, Bitter Triumph, and Feed the Swarm. They'll both deal with creatures and enchantments, and Pongify and Rapid Hybridization, on top of it all, also leave a 3/3 creature token behind, which we'll eventually remove to create even more Rats.

Card Advantage

Of course, as any great Commander deck, we also need to draw cards in some way or create card advantage. Braids, Arisen Nightmare combines the best of these worlds because it forces our opponents to sacrifice permanents and draws us cards if they decide not to.

As we'll create a reasonable number of Rats, we added Kindred Discovery, an enchantment that draws us cards even when we play tokens. So, it will draw us many cards, even if we end up not playing that many creatures.

Speaking of tokens, we brought a few cards with Bargain straight from Eldraine. Rowan's Grim Search and Farsight Ritual, for instance, let us manipulate our top deck, put some cards in our hand, and are even better with their Bargain. We'll use this mechanic nearly every time we cast any of these cards. Read the Bones and Dig Through Time basically do the same as Rowan's Grim Search and Farsight Ritual: they draw and let us select cards, so they'll get us ahead in card advantage and give us some room to breathe.

We also use Night's Whisper because it's simple and straightforward: it costs 2 mana, draws 2 cards, and also forces you to lose 2 life.

Finally, we have two enchantments to draw more cards in some way. Namely, Phyrexian Arena, which works well, is cheap, and helps us in the long term as it draws us 2 cards per turn, and Rhystic Study.

Obviously, Rhystic Study's card draw relies on your opponents, which will have to pay 1 mana whenever they cast a spell if they'd rather deny you a draw. However, at first, you may draw many cards if your opponents don't want to pay that mana and prefer to optimize how much mana they spend versus how many spells they play that turn.

Creatures, Sacrifice, and Other Resources

And, finally, let's start with our resources. Even though Vren has ward 2, if your opponents decide to just pay for its ward, they'll easily be able to remove it. So, we added Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots to protect him a bit more, and also because we can use these boots on other creatures to give them haste.

As we mentioned before, we added a few cards that can easily be our win conditions. Ayara, First of Locthwain will draw us cards and almost completely drain our opponents with Vren, or with the great number of Rat tokens Marrow-Gnawer will create, which, in turn, will give Fear to our Rats. Piper of the Swarm will also give our Rats evasion, this time with Menace. Its ability, which creates a Rat token, is decent, but the main reason why we added it to our build is that we'll be able to steal creatures with its second activated ability. Sacrificing three Rats will also be a piece of cake with Vren and Marrow-Gnawer in the deck.

Another card that stands out because it creates many Rat tokens is Ogre Slumlord, which is almost like another Vren on the board. Besides creating a Rat token any time a nontoken creature dies, it gives your Rats deathtouch. This will turn them into incredible blockers. And, if these creatures give us as many Rat tokens as I think they will, Mirkwood Bats will be just as impactful as Ayara, for instance.

Karumonix, the Rat King can give our opponents an early death, as it gives all our Rats Toxic 1. Valley Rotcaller will deal a lot of damage and also give us lots of life in the process, particularly if you play it with Roaming Throne, naming Rats. Roaming Throne, in turn, works really well with almost all the Rats we mentioned before, but it is particularly efficient with Vren. Another Rat that will trigger extra times with Roaming Throne is Lord Skitter, Sewer King, which we added to deal with any cards our opponents plan to bring back from their graveyard.

Besides our target removals, we also have practically all creatures that force our opponents to sacrifice their own creatures. They're quite efficient because, with only one of them, we might get up to 3 Rats with Vren.

They are Accursed Marauder, Plaguecrafter, Fleshbag Marauder, Merciless Executioner, Demon's Disciple, Gravelighter, and Wasteland Raider. Wasteland Raider, in particular, has Squad - for each two extra mana we use when we cast it, we'll get a copy of it. These creatures are quite popular in Commander, and are great in our strategy. Vindictive Lich forces an opponent to sacrifice a creature, forces another to discard two cards, and then forces a third player to lose 5 life.

To complete our deck tech, we also added Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos. With the creatures we listed above, and each of these enchantments on the board, we can force our opponents to sacrifice two creatures at once. It works well with our sources of self-sacrifice, like Piper of the Swarm, Marrow-Gnawer, and our Bargain spells. Eradicator Valkyrie is another source of self-sacrifice we have, and deals well with not only creatures, but also planeswalkers. We'll make the most out of the absurd number of dead creatures we'll have with Morbid Opportunist, which will draw us many cards, either on our turn or our opponents'.

We also added an alternative version if you would rather not invest that much money in this deck. This list has the same hard control style with several counters and sacrifice removals, and has many of the same cards, so we kept the essence of Vren's strategy.

Final Words

This is an interesting list for who's playing it, and a bit unsavory for who's facing it. However, MTG is about picking archetypes you like to play, and not liking some strategies is part of the experience. Vren is a great commander for Rat lovers or hard control enthusiasts!

Did you like this list? Would you change anything? Do you prefer the budget version? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading and see you next time!