Intro
Welcome to my Rakdos Rat (Ratdos) deck that is coincidently my first tappedout deck too! I have been playing this deck (or variants of this deck while I crafted the required cards) on MTG Arena (Bo1) and have been having lots of fun and so far lots of success. I just recently made it to Platinum using this deck after being stuck in Gold 1/2 using my Orzhov-Vito-Lifegain deck. I would love to hear your thoughts and considerations on the deck, such as tough match-ups and possible solutions, card swaps and upgrades and anything else you have to offer as I plan to keep playing this deck through my ranked grind!!
The Gnawing Plan:
The plan of the deck is to make as many rats as possible with Mad Ratter and slowly grind our opponent to dust with a hoard of little bites (sometimes big bites with Rat Colony) plus burn damage from Priest of Forgotten Gods and potentially Bastion of Remembrance. The ideal combo is to get Mad Ratter out there with Priest of Forgotten Gods and Piper of the Swarm to make lots of rats that can attack through using menace, draw lots of cards and play even more rats while making my opponent sacrifices their creatures.
The Verminous Tide - Card Choices:
Mad Ratter - One of the cards that inspired this deck, he provides us extra rats whenever we draw our second card each turn. To make use of this ability we have lots of card draw effects in the deck, many at instant speed to potentially allow our Mad friend to create more rats on our opponents turns too! Mad Ratter is a card that should be answered by our opponent otherwise it can quickly get out of hand; god help them if we get two or more of this mad chap out. Mad Ratter is weak to removal and can be a little costly at a CMC of four, however the deck seems to function without him.
Piper of the Swarm - The other inspirational card for this deck. Piper provides a few great benefits to the deck. Number one is his passive ability giving all our rat friends menace, allowing our chittering hoard to go wide even more effectively. He is also a great mana sink to create more rats (often for sac fodder with Priest, Rites or the Cauldron) or to steal our opponents best/scariest creatures by sacrificing some of our rats to the Rodent Gods. Lastly (I'm sure there are more benefits), he can be a great early game blocker with his three toughness.
Priest of Forgotten Gods - Priest (of Rat Gods) is the perfect value engine for this deck and plays great with Piper of the Swarm to make more rats with the black mana and/or draw cards and makes new rats with Mad Ratter. Forcing our opponent to sacrifice a creature (great to get around indestructible or hexproof) and take 2 damage is just icing on the cake! Lastly, priest can help us ramp out Liliana early or with the card draw and mana created, let us play additional rats to keep the swarm going and the pressure on our opponent.
Rat Colony - If left unchecked, the colony can become a large creature with all the rats we can create and with menace, is something that needs to be answered lest our opponent eats some large bites or loses their board to him eating it instead. At the same time the colony is not so important that we care if we lose it and can gladly be sacrificed if required.
Typhoid Rats - This sickly rat is a great turn one play and on defense can help threaten big creatures our opponent controls. Like the Rat Colony above, he is not vital to the plan and will gladly lay down his life for the Rat God.
Village Rites - This is a great card draw engine (who doesn't love drawing cards) that can keep the rats coming with Mad Ratter, especially if used on our opponents turn, instantly drawing our first and second cards of the turn and making some more rodent friends. Combined with Claim the Firstborn, Rites can act as a 2 mana removal/card draw combo. Additionally, I find it very satisfying to use when our opponent has a removal card on the stack and we sacrifice the target instead, netting some card advantage and effectively wasting their removal.
Witch's Cauldron - This handy artifact provides us with card draw and some trivial life gain at the cost of sacrificing a creature (ideally a rat token) and two mana (often from Priest of Forgotten Gods). One neat combo with a Mad Ratter on the field during our opponents turn is to use Priest to draw us a card and make us the mana to activate the cauldron, drawing our second card, proccing the Ratter and making new rats for use on our turn!
Liliana, Dreadhorde General - Liliana is a great game closer that has to be answered (yet another card that can spiral out of control). Her passive allows us to easily create rats on our opponent's turns using one of our many sac-to-draw outlets with a Mad Ratter out. Her plus one adds a creature who can be sacrificed or just help add to the pressure. Her minus four can help to clear our opponent's creatures and we don't mind sacrificing our rats for the greater good (plus the two cards of course). It goes without saying that if Liliana gets to her ultimate, it is pretty much game over at that point for our opponent.
Claim the Firstborn. What can't this card do: It can allow our menacing rats to attack through a screen effectively reducing the opponents blockers by one and providing us another attacker to boot! It provides great sac-fodder and pseudo removal; I grimace every time I sacrifice an opponents creature, especially after hitting them with it and then getting value from its sacrifice to the Rat Gods!! It can give Priest or Piper haste to activate on the turn they arrive. The list goes on and I am sure I am missing other uses for it.
Bastion of Remembrance - Bastion provides a few nice, but not vital, benefits to the deck. With all the creatures we are going to have dying (either with self-sacrifices or because rats are not hard to kill to name a few), we can surprisingly quickly burn our opponents to death. Additionally, the bastion provides some board wipe insurance allowing all our wiped creatures to ping our opponent on the way out. Finally, the bastion does provide a soldier token, that will gladly be sacrificed, when it enters the battlefield, often providing us that needed expendable creature to get the engine going.
Heartless Act - This card does what it say on the tin and is our backup removal (cause sometimes, the rats can only kill so much). Being able to use it at instant speed potentially with the mana Priest makes during our opponent's turn effectively nets us a two creature swing.
The Skittering Tide - Maybe Choices:
Pack Rat - The rat pack I could see as a potential (do not have any right now) swap for some of the Rat Colony. It does the same job of being a growing threat that if left uncheck can get out of hand. The pack differs in that it does not provide quite as much hitting power (one less power to be exact) in exchange for much greater survivability. It also offers a mana sink that makes more of itself at the cost of a card which should be ok seeing as we have lots of card draw; discarding an extra land I think would be ideal seeing as our deck is fairly low to the ground. As I read this, I think the Pack Rat might be a straight upgrade over Rat Colony but only testing will tell for sure.
Judith, the Scourge Diva - Judith could be a potential (again haven't used her in Arena but have used her in paper to good effect) swap for Bastion of Remembrance. I think she would aid the aggro/go-wide playstyle of the deck more by buffing up our creatures power at the expense of less burn and no lifegain due to her only proccing on non-token deaths. At the same time, the burn she does provide can target anything. One downside I see with Judith is she is much easier to remove and is not as expendable as the provided soldier token. Overall, Judith I think provides more flexibility at the expense of raw efficiency.
