BlackCreature — Rat Rogue // Legendary Creature — Rat ShamanNezumi Shortfang // Stabwhisker the Odious
Mana value2Rank#15,777
The Commander
, 
: Target opponent discards a card. Then if that player has no cards in hand, flip this creature.
At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, that player loses 1 life for each card fewer than three in their hand.
Guide
Gameplan
Strip opponents' hands with Nezumi Shortfang's repeatable discard, flip it into Stabwhisker, then punish empty hands as everyone bleeds out from the upkeep trigger. You play a mono-black control/stax shell that loops discard, denies resources, and grinds the table to death while drawing your own cards to stay ahead.
Strengths
- Repeatable, on-command hand disruption from the command zone for cheap mana
- Stabwhisker provides a passive, scaling win condition that punishes the whole table for being hellbent
- Cheap two-mana commander that comes online fast and is hard to fully answer permanently
- Mono-black gives access to deep tutors, removal, and recursion
Weaknesses
- Both halves are fragile small creatures vulnerable to any removal
- Discard is symmetrical pressure-wise but slow against topdeck-heavy or fast combo decks
- Single-target discard struggles against three opponents refilling their hands
- Color-locked: no access to counterspells or efficient artifact/enchantment removal
Key Cards
- Bottomless Pit — Stacks symmetric upkeep discard so opponents stay hellbent for Stabwhisker's life loss.
- Liliana's Caress — Turns every discard you force into direct life loss, accelerating the kill.
- Megrim — Another discard-to-damage payoff that compounds Shortfang's grind.
- Waste Not — Converts opponents' forced discards into mana, tokens, and card advantage.
- Sire Of Insanity — Empties every hand each turn, instantly maximizing Stabwhisker's life drain.
- Necropotence — Refuels your own hand so you keep enemies hellbent while you stay loaded.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana (Dark Ritual, Jet Medallion) and efficient tutors (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor) to assemble your discard-payoff package faster and protect your fragile commander. Lean into mass discard like Sire of Insanity and Mind Twist to make Stabwhisker lethal across the table, and include recursion (Reassembling Skeleton, Liliana, Death's Majesty) so removal on your flimsy creature never sets you back. Finish the curve with a big Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire as a reach win.
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
- ▸Stabwhisker the Odious plus discard payoffs (Liliana's Caress, Megrim) draining the whole table
- ▸Locking opponents hellbent and winning the attrition war over time
- ▸Closing with a finisher like Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire after stripping defenses
Archetypes
- Discard/Stax — Shortfang's repeatable discard plus symmetric discard enchantments lock opponents out of resources.
- Control — Mono-black removal and hand denial let you dismantle threats while grinding to victory.
- Aristocrats-adjacent drain — Stabwhisker and discard-payoff enchantments form a passive life-loss engine that closes games.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
