Marrow-Gnawer taps, creating rats and putting one in the graveyard. Staff Untaps him. Repeat. Apply exponent. Make chittering sounds. Zer0w

but tokens dont go in the graveyard right?

or will you sac non tokens

Tokens do go to the graveyard if/when appropriate, but they cease to exist once they're there. They still trigger relevant abilities when they die.

ok i see

Thank you for explaining that, Epochalyptik.

Okay, NoSoyYucateco, after playing things through a few times, and considering all of your recommentations, I've made the following changes:

Removed Demonic Tutor and added Diabolic Revelation. I know you suggested removing Diabolic Tutor instead, but this is also a $$$ decision, in addition to a gameplay one.

Removing 5 Swamps for:

• Adding Vampiric Rites and Skullclamp for draw. (I could have sworn Skullclamp was illegal, but it looks like it's ONLY legal in EDH.)

• Adding Mutilate for mass-removal, and also the killing of indestructible, hexproof, shrouded Commanders. Unlike Decree of Pain this thing can kill almost everything there is (barring regeneration, of course.)

• Adding (unsuggested, but more an oversight on my part) the Commander standard Swiftfoot Boots for Marrow-Gnawer to wear. I realized he's far too vulnerable to stealing, killing, and otherwise doing horrible things to. Now that more of the deck is built with his mechanic in mind, having him able to use said mechanic the turn he arrives thanks to haste and living to talk about it with hexproof, I think it's the right call.

• Finally, because of what you discussed with needing win-cons that don't require victory through a million rat bites... I'm going to playtest out your half-joking suggestion of Bitter Ordeal. At the very least, it'll give me another chance to pull a card (or cards) I don't like from my opponent's deck, I also have the possibility of a mill-victory, which could be really nice in the case of things like Worship and Platinum Emperion.

I'll let you know how it's playing out, but so far I'm really enjoying the changes.

Thanks again!

This is really cool. Just a quick question, though. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you could- in good theory- play all your Relentless Rats in one turn using Thrumming Stone right? I'm not too familiar with "ripple" but, if I understand the text, every time you play another rat off ripple that rat will trigger another ripple and keep the string going. These triggers will stack up if you hit multiple rats in one ripple and you should be able to go through most of your deck and get some 31/31 rats on the field, right?

Once again, really cool deck even if that's not how ripple works. Flavorful, remorseless, and fun. +1 and happy trails.

Yep, jakeelephant006, that's exactly how it works, and unless your opponent has a nice board-wipe in their hand (which you hopefully have un-tutored out for them by then) then next turn you're going to hit them like a giant bag of... well... a giant bag of rats.

Potentially 31/31 Rats, with Fear, Deathtouch, and Lifelink, although that's really unlikely. Even if you only get them to 13/13 or so, that's still 11x 13/13 creatures attacking...

Akroma's Memorial lets them attack that turn, giving your opponents even less chance of wrathing. Another card which can be very powerful is Sword of the Paruns. With oyur commander, it allows you to almost double your rat count per 3 mana invested. and it gives you a way of buffing them for both defensive or offensive purposes.

That sword is very tempting, enpc, though I'm starting to get to that point where each cut kind of hurts. What would you remove for it? It's essentially a more expensive Magewright's Stone, but with the the added +2/0, which is not to be ignored.

Akroma's Memorial would have to replace Liliana of the Dark Realms, since it would stop me from using her second power to buff my own creatures.
Ultimately, though it IS an amazing card, something just doesn't feel right about running a Protection from Black, angelic monument in a mono-black deck focused on a filthy underworld.

I had also considered the very scary Eldrazi Monument for this deck, and discounted it for pretty much the same reason.

That sword though... Going to have to look closely at that...

I dont think you're going to run into the problem of wanting to buff creatures with Liliana of the Dark Realms while having Akroma's Memorial in play often enough for it to be a concern. It does feel a bit weird, but I thing the pros greatly outweigh the cons.

I was weighing them against each other, enpc, since the memorial would have to fit SOMEWHERE.

You will probably seldom, if ever, use Liliana's -3 to buff a rat. She'll be there to grab you a swamp, and for spot removal. Since you have everything on the ground, she's pretty likely to be taken out by flyers before you can ever ult her. Which is fine. She's a good card even without her ultimate.

Honestly, Akroma's Memorial is your best bet to actually pull off a huge combat damage win. It's a pricy card, but you're far more likely to catch opponents off guard by pumping out a gazillion tokens with haste than you are removing the board wipes from their deck. I know it's weird flavor-wise, but it's extremely effective.

Though you have the potential to get some extremely big, unblockable rats here, so a simple Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots could easily be enough to have fatal on an opponent after you Thrumming Stone.

Personally, I would either drop Gray Merchant of Asphodel or Exsanguinate for Akroma's Memorial. They both functionally do the same thing and both hinge on certain cards. Of the two and i nthe current build, I would cut Exsanguinate. The main way that you'll get an instant kill with it is by using Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx as you're not running Cabal Coffers or Ashnod's Altar.

This means that you need to have 1) a high deviation to black, 2) have Nykthos and 3) have Exsanguinate. However, with Gray Merchant of Asphodel you need 1) a high devotion o black and 2) gary. One less card required, making him the better play.

I just noticed you added Bitter Ordeal. If you are going to go that route, I'd have another sac outlet, frankly, because at sorcery speed, it's not going to do a ton without Thornbite Staff, since you aren't doing a lot of wrathing, and your rats often won't be dying to combat damage.

Viscera Seer is a fantastic card that lets you sac at instant speed, paying no mana, in exchange for scrying. With him, you could get some really pretty decent Bitter Ordeals off (even scrying to dig down for it, if necessary.) Plus he's just an all around great card for when a board wipe is on the stack, or worse, your rats are about to get the Merciless Eviction treatment.

If you think he'd be a good addition, I can think about where you might make a cut to make room for him.

enpc I don't know that I would swap out either card for Memorial, since both are playing an important role in that they offer alternative win cons for when combat damage isn't an option.

NoSoyYucateco if you have Bitter Ordeal plus at least one of these, that still gives you 2 win conditions not based around attacking. That should be enough.

I'll give in to the (very sound) logic and more steady win of Akroma's Memorial instead of changing things for odd chance that I win with Bitter Ordeal. The Memorial already fits with everything I have, Ordeal would make me change too many things just to fit one concept.

Thanks for the help enpc and NoSoyYucateco, even though I was being hard-headed about Akroma's Memorial.

No worries. I am hard-headed about cards all the time. People make a lot of poor card recommendations on here, and they seldom offer much help when it comes to making cuts. Sometimes I get a great recommendation, but it takes some sleeping on it before I accept it.

I think that's a good swap. There's a delicate balance between keeping a deck focused and making it versatile enough to have staying power, and to be able to win under various conditions. Most Relentless Rats decks are extremely gimmicky, and as such, tend to be easy for other players to shut down.

Bitter Ordeal is a lot of fun, and has some crazy abuse potential, but you kind of have to build around it a bit to make it reliably useful. If it were an instant, forget about it. It would be in every black deck out there. But as a sorcery, it requires some extensive maneuvering.

Akroma's Memorial, on the other hand, is pretty much always a good draw. Especially if your commander has a critical activated ability, like Marrow-Gnawer.

Now I just need that game where I get both the Dragon Throne of Tarkir and Akroma's Memorial fairly early, and laugh at the doom.

This may seem silly, but if I were building this deck, I would include Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, and Myriad Landscape, in addition to the Wayfarer's Bauble and Solemn Simulacrum I mentioned earlier. Why? Because Thrumming Stone really wants you to have a high ratio of Relentless Rats to other cards, and sucking swamps out makes that more likely. It may seem like not much, but literally one swamp can mean the difference between Thrumming Stone-ing your whole deck, or getting snagged right out the gate.

There is also the new card spoiled:

The Panoramas also do ok work as they can tap for mana as well. You'd have access to Jund Panorama, Esper Panorama and Grixis Panorama.

Yeah. Those are all good too. More mana-intensive, but they can tap for colorless the turn they come out, so they are perfectly playable. I wouldn't do too many lands like these, as they will slow you down if you hit too many of them, but pulling out two cards for one makes your Thrumming Stone all the more consistent.

That was my concern, this deck needs to toss a rat on the table T3. (No game I've won has started any other way) so I need 2 swamps and a whatever ready by T3. After that, I'm solid for a rat a turn.

As long as you can have a land come in untapped on turn 3, then, you should be fine. You don't really have any critical plays for your first two turns. Most of the cards you could drop at this time, like Skullclamp or Swiftfoot Boots, you wouldn't want to anyway, because it's likely to get blown up before you can do much with it.