The Ratting Begins
Hello, and thank you for looking at my deck! I wanted to continue with my theme of strange tribal decks, my first being Get Oozed. I've been having a lot of fun making these silly decks! My original idea for this deck was not a tribal, but to do a rat and vampire combination deck (which I may do later), but I was so surprised by the amount of rat cards, that I had to make an all rat deck. Can you believe there was a whole release that introduced a bunch of rat ninjas???
How To Rat
This deck has a few fun ways to set itself up for victory. The first is the combination of Gnat Miser, Locust Miser and Nezumi Shortfang. These cards are huge early on in the game, getting out multiples of them and making your opponents drop their whole hand. Nezumi Shortfang is great for this too, as you can pay 2 mana to have your opponent drop even more cards, then on top of that, when it flips over, opponents loose life for each card they have less than 3. Forcing opponents to discard cards like this also makes Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni more powerful, because she will have a larger graveyard pool to pull from. Scrib Nibblers also plays well into these combos, forcing opponents to throw even more cards away, Okiba-Gang Shinobi also forces players to discard more cards. If you get most of the Misers out, opponents will have to discard any card they can't play, or be forced to play a card they don't want to play yet, because they aren't allowed to have anything in their hand! Just Awful!
The other half of this deck is the rest of the rats! Typhoid Rats, Rancid Rats and Pack Rat The Typhoid, Rancid and Pack rats are all great low mana rats that can be played quickly and get damage done fast. Rancid rats are great because they have skulk and deathtouch already, Typhoid rats are great fodder for blocking because of their deathtouch. Pack rats is a great addition, especially since this is an all rat deck. With 33 total rats that makes Pack rats a possible 33/33!!
I've included Ogre Slumlord and Behind the Scenes to help beef up the rats even more. Since about half the rats are low power and toughness, Behind the Scenes makes them mostly unblockable. Ogre Slumlord (despite not being a rat) gives the rest of the rats deathtouch. Which makes them all fierce blockers, as most opponents don't want to swing with their heavy hitters when they know their creatures can be killed by a 1/1 deathtouch rat. Plus he creates more rats, which will help make Pack Rats stonger, plus give more deathtouch fodder for blocking.
How This Deck Is Exterminated
This deck has a few short comings. Most of the rats are susceptible to abilities and spells that do free damage to the whole board. Cards that do 1 damage to all creatures an opponent controls could really mess up the rats. If you're playing against someone who has a lot of "destroy target creature" cards, things could get hairy, deathtouch rats can't stop that. Additionally, cards that target enchantments could remove deathtouch or Skulk from the rats.
Possible Additions to the Rat Army
Marrow-Gnawer is a little more expensive than I'd want to spend on a silly "vs friends" deck like this, but originally I had 2 copies of him in this deck. I have Drainpipe Vermin in the sideboard as well because it would combo really well with the rest of the "Force your opponents to discard cards" theme, and it would make attacking the rats more costly. I'll likely add them in, with a few more lands.
