The Commander
Whenever another Rat you control enters, exile up to one target card from an opponent's graveyard.
At the beginning of combat on your turn, create a 1/1 black Rat creature token with "This token can't block."
Guide
Gameplan
Flood the board with Rat tokens and aggressive Rat tribal beaters in mono-black, then close games with overwhelming swarm damage or a big payoff. Every combat you make a free Rat, and each Rat that enters chips away at opponents' graveyards to shut off recursion. You want to go wide fast and back it up with anthems, sacrifice value, or aristocrats payoffs.
Strengths
- Free token generation every combat builds a board with zero card investment
- Graveyard exile disrupts reanimator, dredge, and recursion strategies incidentally
- Cheap 3-mana commander gets going early and rebuilds quickly after wipes
- Mono-black gives access to strong tutors, removal, and recursion
Weaknesses
- The Rat tokens can't block, leaving you vulnerable to opposing aggro and fliers
- Go-wide strategy is extremely fragile to board wipes and sweepers
- Color-locked into black means no access to protection, blue counters, or red burn
- Without payoffs the tokens are small and easy to chump or trade away
Key Cards
- Marrow-Gnawer — Doubles your Rat production and turns the swarm into an evasive one-shot kill via its sacrifice ability.
- Pack Rat — Scales with your hand and snowballs the whole Rat board into game-ending sizes.
- Skullclamp — Turns your endless stream of expendable 1/1 Rats into a relentless card-draw engine.
- Coat of Arms — Massive anthem that makes a wide Rat board lethal in a single attack.
- Ratadrabik of Urborg — Protects your Rat legends and amplifies token output, deepening the tribal core.
- Cabal Coffers — Mono-black ramp that fuels expensive payoffs, overruns, and X-spells.
Upgrade Path
Add token doublers (Anointed Procession, Ratadrabik) and anthems (Coat of Arms, Shared Animosity) to convert raw bodies into damage, plus sacrifice payoffs like Bastion of Remembrance and Zulaport Cutthroat for inevitable drains. Lean into mono-black ramp (Cabal Coffers, Nykthos) and tutors (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor) to find your engine reliably. Protect the board against wipes with cards like Heroic Intervention proxies in black such as Bontu's Last Reckoning timing or simply rebuild fast thanks to your low-cost commander.
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
- ▸Anthem effects (Coat of Arms, Door of Destinies) make a wide Rat board lethal
- ▸Marrow-Gnawer plus a token doubler for a massive evasive alpha strike
- ▸Aristocrats drain via Blood Artist effects and repeated Rat sacrifice
- ▸Pack Rat or Relentless Rats scaling into overwhelming threats
Archetypes
- Tokens / Go-Wide Aristocrats — His free combat Rat plus token doublers create a swarm you can sacrifice for value and damage.
- Rat Tribal — He's a payoff and engine for a dedicated Rat-typal build with anthems and lords.
- Graveyard Hate / Disruption — Each Rat entering exiles an opponent's graveyard card, taxing recursion-heavy tables.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
