I happened to open four copies of Karumonix, the Rat King on Arena and I keep looking at the Standard-legal rats and thinking there’s almost a passable deck there. Does it want to be toxic with Blightbelly Rat? Does it want to be ninjas with Nashi, Moon Sage’s Scion and the otherwise unexciting Nezumi Informant and maybe go into blue for Silver-Fur Master? Is it worth it to run Okiba Reckoner Raid even though Karumonix can’t find it (I’m like 99% sure)? There’s plenty of black removal to fill out a deck like this; I just don’t know how to build the creature half.
MTGGoldfish lists some Commander/Brawl decks with Karumonix, but nothing in Standard.
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I’ve been passively observing all of the rats coming into sets recently but I never really considered anything viable there but then seeing Karumonix for the first time really, I think you could probably get there now. At least tier 3. I don’t personally think the ninjutsu-style deck is the right one. There isn’t enough good ninjutsu support and I think rats really benefit more from the toxic mechanic here. I think Blightbelly Rat is really where this wants to be.
Kaito and Karumonix would fill out the 3-drop spot for me, and then I would fill it up with 16-20 more rats. [[Gnawing Vermin]] and [[Blightbelly Rat]] are the first two for sure. [[Tribute to Horobi]] and [[Nezumi Prowler]] both look like pretty good 2-drops too. There could be something from the Dimir Proliferate shell to take as well. Cut Down, Go for the Throat, Bring the Ending, and Experimental Augury.
I think the biggest issues this deck would face from a competitive standpoint in standard right now are that it’s just not as fast or strong as mono white, soldiers, or mono red. Rats and really dimir in general need something much more prominent in that color pair to make any dimir deck more viable right now imo. However, the proliferate/toxic angle could help it get there when the aggro/ninjutsu plan doesn’t really come out.
NB – Cardbot is still a work-in-progress but one of the cards in your list must have tripped it up. I will check that out this week.
Tier 3 is right I think. But I’d settle for something that could steal the occasional win on days when my daily quest involves casting black spells.
I was starting to lean towards the ninjas build, but the problem with that one is the more you develop it, the more it just wants to be ninjas instead of rats and you probably end up booting Karumonix. Not that I have anything against ninjas, but it wasn’t the assignment.
Tribute to Horobi making a couple of tokens that would get toxic from Karumonix is somewhat synergistic. But you’re right, the tribal synergies in a deck like Soldiers are just light-years ahead of anything Rats can do right now.
If I end up building it I’ll let you know how it goes!
This is unrelated, but to me, this is the main problem with Arena. You can’t do anything with those 4 Karumonix cards. Even if you want to build a fun deck to try it out in the play queue, you have to burn wildcards that you can’t get back. And instead of building around something fun like rats, players have to weigh the risk/reward and decide to just spike it and optimize for winrate, like switching to Soldiers entirely or just playing Dimir ninjas instead of rats.
It’s probably impossible to fully solve without changing something big with the economy system there, but it would be nice to at least see something attempted. They have all data on what % cards are played, so even just allowing you to play w/ a certain low % card for free in the Play Queue would be a good first step here. We can’t even play against Sparky with un-crafted cards.
Yeah, it’s kind of weird that I’m thinking about spending wildcards on a Karumonix deck when there are Tier 1 decks that I’m interested in and can’t build yet. Though to be fair, I’m like that with physical cards too. Definitely have some that I should have sold years ago, only I keep thinking I might use them.
Testing cards against Sparky is a good idea. Would save you from the situation where you craft four copies of something only to realize that you misread what it does.
Okay, today’s quest actually did call for black spells so I gave in to temptation and built this list. It cost me 4 common wildcards, 8 uncommon, and 1 mythic (for the second Nashi).
The List
Deck
18 Swamp
1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
1 Drannith Ruins
4 Gnawing Vermin
4 Okiba Reckoner Raid
4 Cut Down
4 Corrupted Conviction
2 Nezumi Informant
4 Blightbelly Rat
4 Nezumi Prowler
4 Drown in Ichor
4 Sheoldred’s Edict
4 Karumonix, the Rat King
2 Nashi, Moon Sage’s ScionSideboard
4 Duress
3 Infernal Grasp
3 Parasitic Grasp
2 Hero’s Downfall
2 Phyrexian Arena
1 March of Wretched Sorrow20 lands, 20 rats plus the Okiba Reckoner Raids, 12 removal spells, and a little extra card-drawing. Curve tops out at 3 unless you count Nashi’s ninjutsu ability (which you should because it’s awesome). Eight total rares and mythics in the maindeck which you could easily cut down to six because the rare lands aren’t essential.
The Games
I took the deck to unranked Bo1 (so ignore the sideboard, which is very much “whatever I had handy”) and played ten games:
Mono-Red - Win
Karumonix refilled my hand with four rats! Results probably not typical. I stabilized at 10 life and they conceded as I was about to ninja in a Nezumi Prowler to gain some more. This may be a controversial opinion but I don’t think Mono-Red is very good anymore. I haven’t been able to rank up with it and I usually don’t have too much trouble beating it.
Dimir Draw Two - Win
My miser’s Drannith Ruins was actually good here, boosting Nezumi Road Captain as well as an Informant to help put the game away. Then Ruins never showed up again for the rest of the day.
Mono-Green Fat - Win
I kept a removal-heavy hand and they conceded after I killed their first five creatures. If they’d known I had no action to follow up with, they might have stayed in.
Orzhov Toxic Tokens - Win
Karumonix only found a lonely Prowler this time. :( Drown in Ichor turns out to be pretty good in this deck; it transformed a Raid ahead of schedule and delayed their Invasion of New Capenna. At the end they gave me a gift by sacrificing all their other creatures to try to transform Elesh Norn; I cast Sheoldred’s Edict in response.
Plains.dec - Win
They played seven Plains and discarded two more to Informants. If there was anything in their deck other than Plains, I didn’t see it. I don’t think this says anything about the viability of Rats but it was pretty funny to watch.
Dimir Ninjas - Win
They didn’t even bother to leave back blockers when I had lethal on board; guess they had given up. In fairness, as a ninja fan myself, I know how easy it is to get myopic about attacking.
Azorius Knights - Win
They didn’t get a lot of Knight synergy going, unfortunately. Gnawing Vermin milled an Adeline, which must have been a disappointment. Karumonix pulled a solitary Gnawing Vermin. Nashi got a Preening Champion from the opponent. This game was the closest I came to a Toxic victory; my opponent conceded at 7 poison counters with a Drown in Ichor on the stack. They could have chump-blocked for a turn but barring a sweeper would have died to both regular and poison damage the next turn.
Mostly Jund Battles - Win
This was a pretty epic fight. Karumonix got five hits!! I had to discard one to hand size! Then I cast it like four more times and it wasn’t always that good, obviously. They dragged me to the bottom twice. They cast Glistening Dawn twice, once for five and once for eight. Nashi hit twice, but only got a Gnawing Vermin and a land. Drown in Ichor actually made a huge difference, because it put their Invasion of Tolvada out of range of their Render Inert. On the second-to-last turn they made a mistake by blocking my Karumonix instead of my Prowler when they knew I had another Karumonix in hand. If they’d made me choose to cast a duplicate legend post-combat, I might not have had enough attackers to get through for lethal the next time. At the end of the game I had 18 cards left in my library and they had 23.
Selesnya Toxic - Win
I played out more creatures and was able to make an attack that should have been at least slightly beneficial for me no matter how they blocked. They didn’t block, so I slipped in a Nashi and stole one of their Slaughter Singers, which was actually pretty relevant since I had a Karumonix on board! They conceded.
Mono-Red with Urabrask’s Forge - Win
They killed my hard-cast Nashi with an Invasion of Tarkir and sent some Feldons after it, but I kept killing the Feldons. Finally they flipped it with Stoke the Flames and I Edicted the dragon. Less of a focus on getting that dragon might have been the right call against a deck they already knew was removal-heavy. They conceded before I had the chance to get Nashi back with Takenuma. It was a turn early to concede IMO but I guess they were out of gas.
Takeaways
I am not lying to you, I seriously won ten games straight with this stupid Rats deck. At a certain point I told myself I’d keep playing until I lost, but I didn’t lose! WHY DIDN’T I LOSE?? Admittedly, the competition was not top-tier – only the Mono-Red decks and Selesnya Toxic were things I would expect to see on the ladder.
The Toxic plan didn’t really pan out; in most games I wasn’t even close to racking up 10 poison counters. If you wanted to push that angle you should probably find room for more Proliferate effects.
Really, I think my victories say more about the power of running 12 removal spells and having a low mana curve than about the power of Rat synergy in Standard.
This deck has no realistic chance of decking the opponent, so who do you target with Gnawing Vermin? I started out milling my opponent just to get some clues to what they were doing. If the answer looked like it might be “reanimating”, I switched to milling myself.
Should I build this deck?
You should build this Rats deck if you also lucked into opening four Karumonixes and a Nashi or two and feel like they’re burning a hole in your pocket. Otherwise, probably not.
