Utterly Relentless! Bring on the RATS!!

[optml]

Hi Legacy community,

I hope everyone has been happily brewing and playing. I am trying to make a deck around a rather unique card, that I have had mixed luck with; Relentless Rats.

This little bad-boy gets nice and big, nice and quickly. The most successful deck that I made involved the cute combo of Relentless Rats & Thrumming Stone. Hard cast one rats, and let the rest 'thrum' themselves out of the aether on onto your (now) awesome board.

The only problems I found were reliability and disruption by an opponent. In legacy, getting 5 colorless isn't the end of the world, (hello Mr. Grim Monolith and his buddy Ancient Tomb) but it is a vulnerable artifact. Further to that, the more defensive / protection / draw cards you add, the more diluted the deck becomes and the less likely that Thrumming stone sill thrum as it's needed to thrum. Therefore, has anyone got any ideas on how to make a valid, tier 2 or 3 deck that can at least not embarrass itself in a tournament?
For your reference, below is an initial decklist, but I should say it's going to need improving. This is what I've been using on MWS.

Creatures

20x Relentless Rats

Non-Creatures

4x Thrumming Stone
4x Grim Monolith
4x Serum Powder
4x Dark Ritual
1x Tendrils of Agony
4x Lotus Petal
3x Unmask

Lands

4x Ancient Tomb
2x City of Traitors
8x Swamp

Serum Powder is there to help ensure you draw the thrumming stone.

Assuming you keep a 6-7 land hand, there are 53 or so cards left in your library. Playing 20 rats means a rat every 2.65 cards (i.e. 3 cards). Therefore, there is a fairly good chance that the in the 4 cards that are flipped from stone, that one will be a rat.

Then untap, attack for the win.


The second idea I had (I thought I would be 'relentless' about continuing this post) is using extirpate & surgical extraction to remove a rat from my own graveyard. It is basically a super cheap and efficient 'deck thinner'.

Unfortunately, I haven't managed to make it successfully, and could really do with some constructive criticism about how to proceed.

My list at the moment (poor, I'll admit, and doesn't function how I want it to) is:


// Lands
2 [TSB] Gemstone Mine
4 [7E] City of Brass

// Creatures
24 [M11] Relentless Rats
1 [ZEN] Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 [CFX] Inkwell Leviathan
4 [TO] Putrid Imp

// Spells
4 [NPH] Mental Misstep
4 [NPH] Surgical Extraction
4 [TE] Reanimate
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
4 [MM] Unmask
4 [PLC] Extirpate

N.B. I actually tried to make the deck in Standard as they have reprinted our little hideous rat friend, AND we have access to Surgical Extraction but the only way I could think of abusing a small library was a reanimation shell, and the only standard reanimation spell is Rise from the Grave which is just TOO pricey.

Guys, any thoughts on either deck would be good!

[HokusSchmokus]

Why don't you have Swarmyard somewhere in there?

[Kich867]

I'm sorry I don't really understand, what purpose does removing 20 cards from your deck serve? If your plan is to just make an awful reanimator, why not just make reanimator? Discarding a rat and removing 24 cards from your library seems a bit more complicated than Entomb -> Reanimate.

If anything keep the deck focused on the rats and ways to play a ton of them. However I feel this deck probably leans more towards being a casual deck. In the first list I don't understand why Tendrils of Agony is there, the extra rats from ripple don't count toward storm and you have no janky Glimpse of Nature + Infinite mana engine to play your deck.

I'm sure there's some combo to play them all out, but, look at the list of things that need to go right:
In the event you are allowed to get enough mana accel's on the board / off--
You can get a thrumming stone on the board.

If you can get a thrumming stone on the board within the first turn or two--
You can start playing rats on turn 3-4 and maybe get 1-2 extra per drop.

But you also need to actually draw them after you play the first one or two--
So then you can win.

So in the event no one does anything to you, you can probably kill someone around turn 6 or 7, with no protection or disruption of your own. It'd be kind of like playing a fighting game like Street Fighter with someone, except they can block and you can't.

--If anything, I'd rather see some crazy janky version of mono-black Merfolk except instead of Merfolk you use like 16 Relentless Rats that get friggin huge, with enough disruption and creature kill to keep someone at bay:

18x Relentless Rats

4x Aether Vial

3x Duress
3x Thoughtseize
4x Hymn to Tourach
4x Smother
4x Sinkhole

16x Swamp
4x Wasteland

The goal would be to get an Aether Vial online, blow up their land / hand / board as much as possible (leaving the board for last since once you have a vial online you get free rats per turn).

The above list is pretty terrible but, I think it would probably be a bit more resilient and have a better gameplan than your list. There's less "if's" and more proactivity, you run a heavy disruption package to buy you time to get rats online.

[optml]

Thanks for the comments. The second list is just a rubbish reanimator, but it's not the aim. I just wanted to hear ideas on how (if it's possible) to take advantage of a much smaller deck. (shelldock isle springs to mind).

As far as thrumming stone, the reason tendrils is in there is it DOES count towards storm
"You may cast without paying it's mana cost" still adds up. Also, you DON'T need to draw them.
Example:
T1: ancient tomb, lotus petal, dark ritual, thrumming stone.
T2: Swamp, Lotus petal, Relentless Rats, thrumming stone activates so you flip 4 cards. Hopefully one has a rat, so you cast this, which, in turn, thrums and flips 4, hopefully finding another rat. Proceed accordingly.
T3: Attack
As tears flood down your cheek from sheer joy, you can remember this moment.

Admittedly that is a nuts hand that is disruptable, but that is WHY I have posted on this forum.

[Kich867]

Thanks for the comments. The second list is just a rubbish reanimator, but it's not the aim. I just wanted to hear ideas on how (if it's possible) to take advantage of a much smaller deck. (shelldock isle springs to mind).

As far as thrumming stone, the reason tendrils is in there is it DOES count towards storm
"You may cast without paying it's mana cost" still adds up. Also, you DON'T need to draw them.
Example:
T1: ancient tomb, lotus petal, dark ritual, thrumming stone.
T2: Swamp, Lotus petal, Relentless Rats, thrumming stone activates so you flip 4 cards. Hopefully one has a rat, so you cast this, which, in turn, thrums and flips 4, hopefully finding another rat. Proceed accordingly.
T3: Attack
As tears flood down your cheek from sheer joy, you can remember this moment.

Admittedly that is a nuts hand that is disruptable, but that is WHY I have posted on this forum.

Ah sorry I misread the card, I guess that is a bit nutty. There has to be an easier way to drop Thrummingstone turn 1 or 2..

Here's what I would do given that that works--run it blue/black for hand manipulation and free-cast counters.

Brainstorm
Ponder
Mental Misstep
Daze

Brainstorm will also let you do rather nutty things like draw 3, put 2 Relentless Rat's back--your main phase, cast relentless rats, guarantee 2 rat hits top-deck which puts 2 ripple triggers on deck, basically wins right there.

You'll also be way safer throughout the whole thing.

[jlagrav]

First of all, this deck is hilariously awesome.

Second, you really need to run grim monalith, it can help with some explosive starts.
T1: tomb, monalith
T2: thrumming stone, swamp, dark ritual, rats
T3: win

I also think some disruption like hymn and inquizion/duress/thoughtsieze would be good for the times that you don't start it with the god hand.

EDIT: sorry, missed the part in your original post where you already have monolith in your deck. Disregard what I said.