So this is a deck I have been working on while. Whenever I have a few extra dollars laying around I try to upgrade this deck depending on how it's been working out in our play group which mixes between hard control, Atraxa Stax, and Dragons Rs. So our meta game is quite diverse as between the six of us in our tight playgroup, we each have three to four different decks depending on our mood and who we are facing. This deck holds a special place in my heart as it isn't necessarily overpowered, nor does it recover all that well after four board clears. But it does have something to replace that, a quick start will leave you with the power to kill two players turn six if necessary. When not interacted with we simply stay low to the ground and hope one anthem can fade a counter and we usually just win that turn. I have play tested this deck with both relentless rats and rat colony to find out which is better and I usually find that rat colony is just better most of the time. While sometimes you go up against token style strategies and they just chump you for days and kill your one toughness creatures. Most of the time you are not and the key working between the two is relentless rats cares about how many relentless rats are on the field, where as rat colony cares about rats in general. Doesn't matter if they are tokens or random rats they get the buff in power over nothing, while also being able to come out a turn faster due to the two mana cost verse the three mana cost. This deck relies on having many five drop artifacts or enchantment that doesn't allow for others to really interact with our rats out.
Note!!!!
The Commander can be extremely important in certain matchups and when you draw certain cards like Thornbite Staff, Disciple of Bolas, Eldrazi Monument, Illusionist's Bracers, Coat of Arms... most of our "Buffs" while only giving +1/+1, usually have some form of evasion for our extremely tall rat colonies to get through.
Now remember this is a budget deck, while powerful can still be upgraded by removing some of the weirder rats that are more of silver bullets for our meta. By taking those out and adding more tutors and certain mana rocks this can be more powerful. The only reason I don't run the normal mana rocks are because they are banned in our play group, and I find starting out in the lead with this deck is not exactly where we want to be. Don't get me wrong getting one of the buffs or our commander out earlier is nice buuut we try not to make enemies until we can kill them. Also encase you want to add a card that is funny would be to run tainted strike, we get to nine power pretty easily so, ninety five percent of people are not ready for it or have to force the counter on a one mana spell.
