Grail Ratagnan Guide

Ratagnan is Grail’s starter: a purple musketeer rat with a rapier and a hat that shows up on the Steam header. The demo was his campaign. The 1 September 2026 release still expects you to learn the game here before you spend 200 trophies on Mabel. This page is his kit. General rules stay on how to play.

Why he is the tutorial

His pool is full of small, readable attacks. Jab is the two-pip stick you sell later. Toothpick applies bleed on a short upgrade ladder (3/4/5/6 in the 0.39 notes). Bayonet is a trigger attack that used to double and now deals +50% when the effect fires, with damage 10/20/30/40. That is a complete sentence of a character: hit often, mark bleed, hit again.

If you try to turn him into a four-pip bomb thrower, you are playing Zappy with the wrong portrait. Stay cheap. Stay thin. Read energy and cards.

Bleed plan (default)

1. Find Toothpick or another applicator.
2. Keep at least two cheap hits in the deck so bleed detonates.
3. Sell extra heals once Apple has taught you the strip rule (10% of heal).
4. Upgrade Toothpick before you upgrade a card that did not play.
5. Take traits that mention bleed or attacks, not cheese.

Stilettos (“27 twice”) is a burst that also double-taps a bleed mark. It is a luxury, not a replacement for Toothpick. Status math is on status effects.

Poison plan (optional)

Old city canal scales poison apply and increase to 50/75/100/125 on the 0.39 track. Cheese lines can feed it. This is a second Ratagnan save, not a splash on the bleed save. Poison wants shuffles; bleed wants chip. Mixing them is how you get a deck that is too fat to chip and too slow to shuffle. If you commit to canal, cut the bleed applicators.

Iconic and extras

Rapier of the Rat is his Iconic. Treat it as a build-around if it drops, not as a reason to keep every other sword. Marron glacé is a 0.39 Ratagnan card — food, not a second rapier. Eat it if you need heal/strip. Do not collect it because the name is pretty.

Secret events exist for every character in 0.39. If an event names a musketeer or a city canal, it is probably yours. If it names a prosthetic or a carrot roast, it is not. Skip other people’s story.

Shop discipline

Ratagnan shops will tempt you with every animal in the forest. The test is pip count and status name. If the card does not say bleed, poison, attack, or heal, you need a better reason than rarity. Guardbot can still be correct if it auto-plays and buffs the cheap hits you kept. Lance can be correct if snapshots you face are fat. Neither is a default buy.

Use the card tier list as a filter, not a shopping list. Use starter builds for a named first kit. Use upgrades and enchantments only on the card that played last fight.

PvP reads when you are Ratagnan

Snapshots will try to out-heal your chip or out-shuffle your poison. If they over-heal (1.0), you need more detonations per cycle, not a bigger single hit. If they shock you, your energy income becomes a tax — kill faster or strip. If they are thinner than you, you added too many souvenirs. PvP battles has the scout script.

When to leave Ratagnan

Leave when you can explain a six-win run in one sentence and you are bored. Then unlock Mabel at 200 trophies or Zappy when his price shows on the select arrows. Do not leave because you lost to a Mabel snapshot; copy her discipline, not her portrait.

Ratagnan is not the weak starter. He is the kit the designers used to teach pips. If he feels weak, count unfilled cards before you count trophy gates. Then open the run planner and cut one card.