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The Aristo-Rats

Commander / EDH* Aristocrats Mono-Black Tokens

dudesquirrel

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Land (35)

Tutor (4)

Recursion (3)

Rats (26)

Aristo-rats (8)

Removal (6)

Anthem (2)

Equipment (1)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Marrow-Gnawer

Ramp (7)

Draw (5)

Combo (2)

Maybeboard

Removal (6)

Land (2)

Draw (1)

Ramp (4)

Anthem (2)

Rats (1)

Aristo-rats (3)

Other (3)

This is a Marrow-Gnawer deck with (hopefully) enough ramp to push out rats as quick as possible to kill the table. I've also incorporated the core aristocrats cards because of the sheer synergy with a tokens strategy.

Marrow-Gnawer + Thornbite Staff Combo for infinte rats and whatever anthem effects you have to kill the table with an infinite amount of flying, indestructible rats(if you have Eldrazi Monument out). The combo works like this. You have two rats on the field in addition to Marrow-Gnawer. Equiping Thornbite Staff allows your commander to untap every time he uses his ability to sacrifice a rat to create x rats, where x is the current number you have. You tap to sacrifice a rat, make two, Thornbite Staff's ability untaps him and you now have three total rats in play. Repeat ad infinitum for infinite fuzzy plague-y buddies. This is an instant win when you have a drain outlet on the field e.g. Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat.

This is still a Relentless Rats deck, so of course we have our Relentless Rats + Thrumming Stone combo. The amount of Relentless Rats to make this consistent is... tricky. I ideally, you would want 25 to maximize your odds of hitting one on the ripple 4 triggers, but I found that board wipes ruin this deck's day. This fact is the reason for the other win conditions and creature recursive effects, but the classic is always welcome! Another, more dangerous, way to get all of your rats out there is Patriarch's Bidding + Secret Salvage . If the table can't get rid of the graveyards(or at least you don't think it can), tutor every copy of Relentless Rats with Secret Salvage and discard them at the end of your turn. On your next turn, mass reanimate them. Very high risk, high reward.

The anthem effects were pretty tough to choose because there are a lot of really good ones to choose from. I thought about putting in Door of Destinies and Vanquisher's Banner because the ripple triggers from Thrumming Stone count as cast triggers, drawing us cards and putting counters on the door. However, my thought is that if any of our plans to dump creatures to the board doesn't work, it probably won't work if they're large either. In addition, I don't feel that we have enough creatures to justify the banner just for the +1/+1 and card draw. Plus, it's realllllly annoying to do the triggers from Thrumming Stone with this thing, especially if you accidentally draw a Relentless Rats. This interaction turns out to be pretty good with Bontu's Monument in addition to its cost reduction for our black creature spells. I don't run this any more, but food for thought. Obelisk of Urd is free most of the time and provides you with a decent bump in the power and toughness of our rat tokens. Ogre Slumlord gives all of the rats deathtouch, making attacking you on the ground kinda awkward, as well as giving us a bit of protection against wraths, since the death triggers go onto the stack post-wipe and we're left with tokens as a result. Attacks from the sky can be problematic, so Eldrazi Monument gives our rats wings and indestructible. The Immortal Sun is amazing. It grows your rats a bit, draws you a card each turn, AND turns off planeswalkers. Slam. Dunk. The only downside is that the draw is in your drawstep, which you won't have if you control Necropotence. It's not a huge deal though, since why draw an additional card when you can draw seven?
Most removal is mostly done through a combination of Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos. The pact effects go very well with our sacrifice outlets, Nezumi Bone-Reader, Viscera Seer, Skullclamp, and Marrow-Gnawer. For additional value, I included Zulaport Cutthroat, Blood Artist, Falkenrath Noble, and Exquisite Blood to try to keep my life total stable for Necropotence draws and slowly draining people. Having one of these on the board with Marrow-Gnawer + Thornbite Staff going off is an infinite life drain/gain combo. I originally had the Exquisite Blood Sanguine Bond combo here, but I've never gotten it to go off. I took out Sanguine Bond to focus on the other aspects of deck, but EB still puts in some serious work all on its own.

Thornbite Staff is a core combo piece, but it can work wonders even when not attached to Marrow-Gnawer. When your creatures have deathtouch from Ogre Slumlord or just naturally(Typhoid Rats or Rancid Rats), you can pay two mana to have that creature deal one damage to another creature. Since the creature doing the damage has deathtouch, it will kill the creature you point it at and the triggered ability of the staff untaps the equipped creature allowing you to selectively kill any creature for as long as you have two mana to re-activate the ability.

We can use Crypt Rats as a selective wrath recursively through Phyrexian Reclamation and Volrath's Stronghold which is pretty legit. After some testing online, I added Damnation for when I have no board presence and need to wrath. Another way to keep control of the board is to use Crypt Rats or Toxic Deluge to kill our rat tokens to trigger the pacts in order to get rid of large groups of creatures.

Some of our rats have pretty good utility in the later game. Nezumi Bone-Reader provides a sacrifice outlet that gets cards out of that pesky blue player's hand. If you have a ton of tokens, you can simultaneously wipe the board through Grave Pact etc. and get rid of all the cards in your opponents hands. Nezumi Graverobber provides a way to keep graveyards in check and might even steal creatures from your opponents graveyards. Think of Graverobber as a bad Scavenging Ooze or Withered Wretch.

There are many Marrow-Gnawer going full force into aggro using the lower CMC of Rat Colony. I've done some testing online using this list but replacing the Relentless Rats with the colonies and a few other changes to reduce the overall average CMC. You can run out an impressive amount of power fairly quickly, but it's very hard to stay relevant for blocking later in the game since they only get bumps in toughness from the anthems. It's a glass cannon approach. On the upside of the colony choice, they get HUGE because their power is increased from any rat on your field unlike their Relentless cousins. In my testing, colony just had a higher fail rate than Relentless Rats as soon as your opponents start getting on board. It may be worth more tuning around Rat Colony, but not in an aristocrats shell like this.

The faster you can get Marrow-Gnawer out the better, which is why we ideally want the more expensive mana rocks like Mana Crypt. Once you get the pact effects going, it's really hard for other creature dependent decks to keep up other than wrathing the board and even then it may be hard if Contamination is on the field. In the early game, don't throw away your rats for chump blocks unless absolutely necessary or if you have Ogre Slumlord out to give them deathtouch. Your endgame is to go as wide as possible or to combo out with an aristocrat style finish with Thornbite Staff, which can be accomplished with as few as one rat besides Marrow-Gnawer.

For longer games with multiple wraths, Crucible of Worlds becomes really good. Being able to recur Command Beacon along with the fetches and Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth can keep you in the game by allowing you to consistently re-cast your commander, thin your deck of basics, and keep your opponents utility lands in check while protecting your own.

Obelisk of Urd -> Contamination and something for Sanguine Bond for hardcore tables

Peat Bog -> Lake of the Dead?

Grim Monolith or Mana Vault? Jumping from 2-5 for gnawer is better with vault because double black...

Ayara, First of Locthwain + Plague of Vermin ?

For the interested, check out my budget version of this deck here.

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Date added 6 years
Last updated 3 years
Key combos
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

5 - 0 Mythic Rares

35 - 0 Rares

34 - 0 Uncommons

10 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.94
Tokens Copy Clone, Rat 1/1 B
Folders EDH, ideas, 00_Primary EDH, RAT DECKS
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