BlackLegendary Creature — Phyrexian RatKarumonix, the Rat King
Mana value3Rank#3,283
The Commander
Toxic 1 (Players dealt combat damage by this creature also get a poison counter.)
Other Rats you control have toxic 1.
When Karumonix enters, look at the top five cards of your library. You may reveal any number of Rat cards from among them and put the revealed cards into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
Guide
Gameplan
Flood the board with Rats, grant them all toxic, and kill the table via poison counters (10 = dead) backed by go-wide combat damage. Karumonix refills your hand with Rats every time it enters, so you rebuild quickly through removal and grind out wide, evasive attacks.
Strengths
- Mono-black gives unmatched tutors, recursion, and ramp (Crypt Ghast, Cabal Coffers)
- Karumonix's ETB card advantage makes it hard to run out of gas
- Toxic plus go-wide creates a fast, alternate win that dodges life-gain
- Cheap commander that's easy to recast after removal
Weaknesses
- Heavily reliant on board presence; board wipes are devastating
- Single color limits access to protection, counters, and flexible interaction
- Rat tribal payoffs are thin, so the deck leans on raw numbers
- Poison plans draw early hate from experienced tables
Key Cards
- Marrow-Gnawer — Token doubler and Rat lord that floods the board with creatures that all gain toxic.
- Pack Rat — Discard outlet that snowballs into a huge army of buffed, toxic Rats.
- Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon — Evasive infect/toxic finisher that can swing games on its own.
- Cabal Coffers — With Urborg it pumps out enormous mana to deploy and pump your swarm.
- Coat of Arms — Anthem that turns a wide Rat board into lethal toxic damage fast.
Upgrade Path
Add proliferate enablers (Tekuthal, Vraska, Thrummingbird) to accelerate poison kills, and tighten the curve with token doublers and anthems. Improve ramp with Cabal Coffers, Urborg, and Crypt Ghast, and add protection like Heroic Intervention plus board-wipe insurance such as Skullclamp and recursion to recover after wraths.
Core Cards
The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.
Win Conditions
- ▸Ten poison counters via toxic combat damage across the board
- ▸Go-wide alpha strike with anthems like Coat of Arms or Door of Destinies
- ▸Skithiryx or proliferate effects pushing players over the poison threshold
Archetypes
- Tribal Aggro — Karumonix anthems Rats with toxic and refuels the swarm for relentless wide attacks.
- Poison/Toxic — Granting toxic to a token army lets you assemble ten poison counters quickly.
- Aristocrats — Mono-black sacrifice payoffs drain the table while the Rat swarm provides bodies.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
