Pact
05-12-2010, 11:30 PM
Hi, I wanted to share this deck that I've created. Personally, the reason why I like the concept of the deck is that it breaks one of the 2 most fundamental rules of deckbuilding, which is that you cannot have more than 4 copies of a card in a deck. The fact that there's a card like thrumming stone to interact with the rats in such an unfair way is also so key. Here's the deck list:
4 scrubland
4 flooded strand
4 ancient tomb
4 city of traitors
4 urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
1 vault of whispers
20 relentless rats
4 thrumming stone
4 enlightened tutor
4 lotus petal
4 dark ritual
4 cabal ritual
sb:
4 leyline of the void
4 chalice of the void
3 engineered plague
4 defense grid
The deck has a very simple gameplan: unleash a relentless amount of rats. You abuse the unique interaction that exists between thrumming stone and relentless rats to put a very large amount of rats into play, all of which acts as lords for each other. This gives you a large amount of rats, each usually dwarfing any goyfs on the other side of the playing field, to threaten lethal damage in one swing.
Because thrumming stone causes spells that you control to ripple on casting and not resolution, this circumvents traditional counterspells as countering the initial rat does not stop it from rippling into more rats to cast for free. Despite costing 5, it's very normal for you to drop the stone turn 2 or 3.
The deck can consistently drop a stone on turn 2 or 3. You have virtually 8 copies of the stone by turn 2 because each etutors in your opening grip might as well be a stone as you can play it at end of opponent's first turn. You have 8 lands that adds +2. So to have the stone and be able to pay the 5 mana for it by turn 2, you would need 1 of 8 copies of the stone, 1 of 8 2 mana lands, a land, and 2 more mana that you can grab from a combination of 4 dark rits (+2), 4 cabal rits (+1), and 4 petals (+1). It happens fairly often and your opponent's reaction every time is priceless.
Also, depending on the hand you've drawn and the matchup, you may decide to play rats in a more fair fashion. It's very possible to drop a rat every turn from the very first turn until you empty your grip. Again, because each rat acts as a lord, this is actually more dangerous to your opponent than it may seem; 3 rats is actually 12 points of damage.
Card selection:
20 rats: The heart of the deck. I'm sure someone could come up with the math for the optimum number of rats in the deck to ensure hitting rats on ripples but I haven't done it. 20 seems like a solid number as it's a very good number for blue sources for fow, maybe bad logic I don't know.
4 stones, 4 etutor: The stone is your combo piece and each enlightened tutor is another virtual copy of the stone. By having 4 of each, it's almost as if you have 8 stones in your deck by turn 2 because you can enlightened tutor for the stone at the end of your opponent's first turn.
4 dark rits, 4 cabal rits, 4 petals: These are your accelerators. If you've played belcher before, this will come to you very naturally. Think of these as ways to get to your target of 5 mana for the stone. A dark ritual is a +2 while the cabals and the petals are +1. You will rarely have threshold for the cabals and the petals can be targets for etutor if you have stone already and need an extra mana.
4 tombs, 4 cities: +2.
4 scrubland, 4 flooded: Scrubland gives you access to etutor. As much as this deck would like to be mono black, there is no other way to have a stone in your hand as consistenly as enlightened tutor. The black tutors are either banned in legacy or too slow. The fetches can be anything with black or white but I like flooded or polluted because you can bluff blue, this might slow them down a little as they try to play around daze or counterspells.
4 urborg: These fixes your black mana because rats are double black and that can be hard sometimes with tombs and cities. These can also save you a little life as you can use your fetches and tombs for black without fetching them or shocking yourself, though it's still sometimes useful to tap the tomb for colorless to play around daze.
1 vault: Another concession to try to fix your mana. If you see that you will need the 2nd black source, you can etutor for this. It's also the 61st card so you can cut an urborg for it since you never want to see urborgs in multiples.
The sideboard are all enchantments or artifacts to take advantage of the enlightened tutors in the deck.
4 leyline: Your graveyard hate of choice since you're black. If you need it really early like say vs dredge, you can mull into it.
4 chalice: Your combo hate, though this is your most versatile hate as you can easily hate out 0, 1, or 2 really early on as you have a lot of accelerators.
3 engineered plague: A nod to goblins, merfolks or any other tribals. Also randomly hates stuff like thopter/sword combo etc.
4 defense grid: Your hate for fow, daze, spell pierce targetting your stone. Landing a grid will almost ensure landing a stone.
But I'll be honest, this deck isn't going to win any tournaments any time soon. It's not a good deck. It's not versatile. It's a strictly worse version of belcher as both decks accelerate like crazy into 1 or 2 gameplans with almost no protection. Only difference is that belcher's fundamental turn is turn 1 whereas this deck's is 2-3.
On the upside, the deck is hilarious and amazing when it goes off and is fairly budget with only the scrubland and flooded being money. You can replace them with the ravnica white black shock dual and marsh flats without really hurting the deck.
4 scrubland
4 flooded strand
4 ancient tomb
4 city of traitors
4 urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
1 vault of whispers
20 relentless rats
4 thrumming stone
4 enlightened tutor
4 lotus petal
4 dark ritual
4 cabal ritual
sb:
4 leyline of the void
4 chalice of the void
3 engineered plague
4 defense grid
The deck has a very simple gameplan: unleash a relentless amount of rats. You abuse the unique interaction that exists between thrumming stone and relentless rats to put a very large amount of rats into play, all of which acts as lords for each other. This gives you a large amount of rats, each usually dwarfing any goyfs on the other side of the playing field, to threaten lethal damage in one swing.
Because thrumming stone causes spells that you control to ripple on casting and not resolution, this circumvents traditional counterspells as countering the initial rat does not stop it from rippling into more rats to cast for free. Despite costing 5, it's very normal for you to drop the stone turn 2 or 3.
The deck can consistently drop a stone on turn 2 or 3. You have virtually 8 copies of the stone by turn 2 because each etutors in your opening grip might as well be a stone as you can play it at end of opponent's first turn. You have 8 lands that adds +2. So to have the stone and be able to pay the 5 mana for it by turn 2, you would need 1 of 8 copies of the stone, 1 of 8 2 mana lands, a land, and 2 more mana that you can grab from a combination of 4 dark rits (+2), 4 cabal rits (+1), and 4 petals (+1). It happens fairly often and your opponent's reaction every time is priceless.
Also, depending on the hand you've drawn and the matchup, you may decide to play rats in a more fair fashion. It's very possible to drop a rat every turn from the very first turn until you empty your grip. Again, because each rat acts as a lord, this is actually more dangerous to your opponent than it may seem; 3 rats is actually 12 points of damage.
Card selection:
20 rats: The heart of the deck. I'm sure someone could come up with the math for the optimum number of rats in the deck to ensure hitting rats on ripples but I haven't done it. 20 seems like a solid number as it's a very good number for blue sources for fow, maybe bad logic I don't know.
4 stones, 4 etutor: The stone is your combo piece and each enlightened tutor is another virtual copy of the stone. By having 4 of each, it's almost as if you have 8 stones in your deck by turn 2 because you can enlightened tutor for the stone at the end of your opponent's first turn.
4 dark rits, 4 cabal rits, 4 petals: These are your accelerators. If you've played belcher before, this will come to you very naturally. Think of these as ways to get to your target of 5 mana for the stone. A dark ritual is a +2 while the cabals and the petals are +1. You will rarely have threshold for the cabals and the petals can be targets for etutor if you have stone already and need an extra mana.
4 tombs, 4 cities: +2.
4 scrubland, 4 flooded: Scrubland gives you access to etutor. As much as this deck would like to be mono black, there is no other way to have a stone in your hand as consistenly as enlightened tutor. The black tutors are either banned in legacy or too slow. The fetches can be anything with black or white but I like flooded or polluted because you can bluff blue, this might slow them down a little as they try to play around daze or counterspells.
4 urborg: These fixes your black mana because rats are double black and that can be hard sometimes with tombs and cities. These can also save you a little life as you can use your fetches and tombs for black without fetching them or shocking yourself, though it's still sometimes useful to tap the tomb for colorless to play around daze.
1 vault: Another concession to try to fix your mana. If you see that you will need the 2nd black source, you can etutor for this. It's also the 61st card so you can cut an urborg for it since you never want to see urborgs in multiples.
The sideboard are all enchantments or artifacts to take advantage of the enlightened tutors in the deck.
4 leyline: Your graveyard hate of choice since you're black. If you need it really early like say vs dredge, you can mull into it.
4 chalice: Your combo hate, though this is your most versatile hate as you can easily hate out 0, 1, or 2 really early on as you have a lot of accelerators.
3 engineered plague: A nod to goblins, merfolks or any other tribals. Also randomly hates stuff like thopter/sword combo etc.
4 defense grid: Your hate for fow, daze, spell pierce targetting your stone. Landing a grid will almost ensure landing a stone.
But I'll be honest, this deck isn't going to win any tournaments any time soon. It's not a good deck. It's not versatile. It's a strictly worse version of belcher as both decks accelerate like crazy into 1 or 2 gameplans with almost no protection. Only difference is that belcher's fundamental turn is turn 1 whereas this deck's is 2-3.
On the upside, the deck is hilarious and amazing when it goes off and is fairly budget with only the scrubland and flooded being money. You can replace them with the ravnica white black shock dual and marsh flats without really hurting the deck.