What Even Is This?
This entire deck revolves around the Bontu's Monument, Carnival of Souls, and Secret Salvage combination in order to deal 40 damage to each other opponent by spamming out Rat Colony, courtesy of /r/BadMTGCombos.
What Does The Combo Do?
By Bontu's Monument and Carnival of Souls, whenever a creature is cast, all opponents lose one life and you gain . Bontu's Monument conveniently also reduces Rat Colony's mana cost to . One Rat Colony goes into the graveyard and is exiled by Secret Salvage to bring every single other Rat Colony in the library into your hand. It then takes merely to put every Rat Colony in your hand into play, dealing forty damage to each opponent and (hopefully) winning you the game.
What Does What?
The keys to this deck are the four cards mentioned above. If any of them get exiled then the entire combo collapses and you might as well concede. Everything else in this deck is centered around this combo. Maralen of the Mornsong provides card search to guarantee that the necessary cards get into your hand. The Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Dark Ritual and Ashnod's Altar function as fuel to get the combo out as fast as possible. Ashnod's Altar also does double duty as a way to get a rat into the graveyard so that Secret Salvage can do its work, together with Entomb,Tendrils of Corruption, Black Sun's Zenith, and Corrupt. In case an opponent has lifegain, Elixir of Immortality, Feldon's Cane, and Thran Foundry allow for reshuffle to get the combo rolling again. Sculpting Steel fills in for any gaps in the three primary card roles I discussed above. To counteract the life loss from Maralen of the Mornsong and prevent opponents from swinging in for the win, Exquisite Blood, Elixir of Immortality, Tendrils of Corruption, and Corrupt all provide some measure of lifegain, the latter three in addition to their other uses.
For alternatives to the primary combo, Altar of the Brood allows you to mill the enemy for 40 cards in addition to the damage. While this probably won't win you the game, it's good to get extra utility out of this incredibly silly deck.
Upsides and Downsides:
The Good:
The Bad:
- very vulnerable to counterspells and mill
- works exactly once and never again
- very very vulnerable to exile
- incredibly dumb
Budgeting?
This deck runs for $241.42 as is, with Mana Crypt making up around 3/5 of that price. Removing it drops the price to a bit over $100.00 depending on what you replace Mana Crypt with, not that I expect anyone to seriously build this deck.
Anything Else?
Please offer suggestions. This deck was literally built in 20 minutes at half past midnight so this probably has huge holes and/or replaceable cards.
