There are few cards in MTG as prolific as Relentless Rats. Despite never really being a powerful archetype, or even particularly good in Commander, the card has a cult following that has persisted, and grown, over Magic’s many, many years. As a result, fancy alt-art variants of the card are still being printed today. Not only that, but they’re still selling for wild prices, too. Today we see yet another example of this, as a gnarly new Relentless Rats Bonus Card steps into the ring. It’s certainly the most graphic one yet, but will it be the most valuable?
The New Relentless Rats Bonus Card
This new variant was revealed in a Reddit post from deathbyhistory. Reportedly, they snagged the card as a Bonus in the Featuring: Andrew MacLean drop. It’s worth noting that, as with past Secret Lair versions of Relentless Rats, this isn’t a guaranteed Bonus Card. In fact, it appears to be a very, very rare one. Some drops, such as the Monty Python one, have specific Bonus Cards included. Others draw instead from a generic pool of Elves or Slivers.
For drops in the latter group, there’s a low chance you’ll open a rare Bonus Card instead of a generic one. We’ve seen quite a few of these so far, and they mostly follow the same theme. Each of these rare Bonus Cards is a member of the prestigious ‘A deck can have any number of cards named X’ club. Both Shadowborn Apostle and Persistent Petitioners have several variants here. Relentless Rats, of course, has a fair few of its own.
This new version is definitely the grisliest yet, too. The art, rendered beautifully by Sachin Teng, shows a person covered in Rats, in the process of eating the very skin off of their face. It’s a good thing the color palette is bright, or this would be one of the darkest pieces in MTG. In addition to the striking artwork, this version also carries on a tradition from the other Secret Lair Relentless Rats cards: the flavor text.
Each of these cards has flavor text in the template “If you X them, they grow Y.” This time it’s “If you starve them, they grow voracious.” Fitting, given the art. Past versions have read “If you provoke them, they grow malicious,” and other variants. Perhaps a mini-story is being told through flavor text here, for only the most dedicated Rat fans to see?
The Swarm Grows
Flavor and art aside, this new Relentless Rats Bonus Card has some serious financial potential as well. Not only is Relentless Rats a beloved archetype, but you also need 20-30 copies of it to construct a deck. This puts a big premium on fancy foil variants, especially the rare Secret Lair cards that have been cropping up.
The other Secret Lair Bonus Card variants of Relentless Rats are all selling for huge money at the moment. Number 757, the angelic Rats, is the cream of the crop. That bad boy will set you back around $94. Hot on its heels is number 756, the Ninja Rats. This goes for about $92, so there’s really not much in it. After this things drop off a lot, but number 755, the royal Rats, is still worth about $45. Not too shabby at all.
These three cards are the best point of reference when determining the potential value of today’s new one. There is one more Relentless Rats Bonus Card, number 752, but that hasn’t been in circulation long enough to have any real pricing data. Based on this information, then, we’re looking at somewhere between $45 and $100 for number 754. The main deciding factor for the price here is almost certainly art. And with how striking 754 is, I could see it rising quickly to the top of the Rat heap.
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