Piper of the Swarm
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Alchemy Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Piper of the Swarm

Creature — Human Warlock

Rats you control have menace.

, : Create a 1/1 black Rat creature token.

, , Sacrifice three Rats: Gain control of target creature.

legendofa on We killed 1/3 of Europe

9 months ago

What are your thoughts on Pack Rat? It grows alongside Relentless Rats, potentially getting even bigger, and can turn unneeded lands or situational cards into more power. Like Piper of the Swarm, one of them is an army.

KCisSICKnasty on A Powerful Rat

1 year ago

Ooooooo I like that interaction a lot! Thank you for the head's up! I'll definitely start thinking of a cut for Mortuary!

Expedition Map is a good inclusion in almost any EDH deck, so I definitely respect the suggestion. I just don't know what I'd drop for it. I'm finding it hard not to include crazy stuff like Piper of the Swarm to fit the rat tribal theme or just run the Sanguine Bond/Exquisite Blood combo (or honestly, more Rat Colony). Making cuts when it comes to mono-black is rough because there's so many good staples. Dx lol

Rhadamanthus on Piper of the Swarm and …

1 year ago

Your opponent will be able to sacrifice the creature you target. Grave Pact will trigger while you're paying the cost of Piper of the Swarm's ability, and that means its triggers will be put onto the stack on top of Piper's ability and will start resolving first. You had to choose a target as part of activating Piper, so your opponent will know that when it's time for them to sacrifice something. The upside is that you can use this as a way to influence what they choose to sacrifice.

jamesc1221 on Piper of the Swarm and …

1 year ago

Hi,

I have both Piper of the Swarm and Grave Pact in a rat deck I'm building. My concern is that an opponent might sacrifice the card I'm trying to take control of due to the sacrifice cost of Piper of the Swarm's second ability which would trigger Grave Pact.

My question is: When I use Piper of the Swarm's ability to take control of my opponent's creature, is the opponent able to sacrifice that creature before I get the chance to take it due to Grave Pact, or do I take the creature first, then the opponent chooses their sacrifices after?

TypicalTimmy on Card creation challenge

1 year ago

Artwork is borrowed from Piper of the Swarm

Jeremiah, Rat Caller

_Moonie_ on To many rats

2 years ago

Piper of the Swarm might be fun to add into this.

wallisface on rats v1

2 years ago

As an example list that feels a lot more dangerous, while still being fairly “ratty” (and not too expensive):

(This also means you can run Lurrus of the Dream-Den sideboard).

^ upgrading that list, you’d want to include Thoughtseize, swap Extirpate with Surgical Extraction, and upgrading whatever duel-land choices you made.

wallisface on rats v1

2 years ago

Some thoughts:

  • 18 mana is absurdly low. As an example, burn runs 19 lands, and only has cards costing 1-2cmc (mostly 1cmc). You have almost no 1-drops, and a card requiring 4cmc, as well as many creatures with activated abilities requiring mana. I think you need 22-23 lands as an absolute minimum.

  • i’m not sure how much Bad Moon actually helps you here, as the power-increase is low, and it has the chance to also buff your opponents stuff. I also feel like Door of Destinies is probably a bad “finisher card” in that it doesn’t do anything on the turn it comes down, and likely won’t be useful until you’ve cast at least 2-3 rats after its entry. Both of these buff effects feel really weak compared to other modern strategies. I would recommend you’d have better luck playing with more interaction and grinding your opponent down that way - Inquisition of Kozilek would do this deck well.

  • instead of Cast Down, i’d suggest playing Infernal Grasp, which is a MUCH stronger card.

  • Metallic Mimic, Rat Colony, and Typhoid Rats all feel too “cute” to be powerful/useful. Imo i’d just be relying on Pack Rat and Piper of the Swarm to win through value-games (running Unearth to recover em if they die), and packing the rest of your deck full of hand-disruption, killspells, interaction etc. But, in any case, i think you need a second colour in the deck to effectively strengthen this deck. There are a lot of options in all of Red (Lightning Bolt, Unholy Heat, Young Pyromancer), Blue (Counterspell, Drown in the Loch, etc), or Green (Abrupt Decay, Assassin's Trophy, Scavenging Ooze). What i’m getting at, is that it’s gunna be really hard to make this deck work well monocolour.

  • for your sideboard, both Deathmark and Hero's Downfall are pretty bad cards so i’d remove them. You also have, imo, too much graveyard hate (but your meta may require it?). It feels like you need some anti-burn/aggro cards in here.

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