by Johnny Cycles, December 5th, 2025

A few weeks ago I was testing out a janky harmonize deck that tried to take advantage of cheap creatures with a lot of power like Dreamtide Whale and Ravaging Riftwurm to resolve a massive Nature’s Rhythm. Well, one of my first matches was against Rat Tribal, a low-to-the ground, highly aggressive, and highly synergistic deck. I got pretty well stomped.

But, I asked my opponent to send me the decklist so that I could play it for you. Here it is!

Decklist – Rat Attack!

by p00pInMyFacex3
Format: Modern

Creatures (26)

3 Engine Rat
4 Gnawing Vermin
4 Pack Rat
4 Persistent Marshstalker
3 Valley Rotcaller
4 Karumonix, the Rat King
4 Lord Skitter, Sewer King

Artifacts (4)

4 Aether Vial

Spells (12)

4 Flare of Malice
4 Pile On

Lands (22)

2 Cavern of Souls
4 Mudflat Village
1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
11 Swamp
2 Swarmyard
1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Sideboard (15)

4 Damping Sphere
2 Disruptor Flute
3 Force of Despair
2 Nashi, Moon Sage’s Scion
4 Leyline of the Void

Deck Tech

Primary Game Plan

I’ve thought a lot about how to categorize this deck. At its heart, it is a go-wide creature strategy. However, it’s a bit too slow to be called Aggro, but not so top heavy as to be called Midrange, though it has elements of both. It is highly synergistic, with built-in card draw and recursion. And it plays 8 kill spells. It can grow its Rats to epic proportions. And it can win with the gain-and-drain trigger of our only non-Rat creature, Valley Rotcaller.

Thus, our primary game plan is to play a Rat every turn, with our key enablers being our 3-drops – Karumonix, the Rat King and Lord Skitter, Sewer King. The former should refill our hand to ensure we keep the pressure on, while the latter gives us both graveyard hate and a token generator that will grow several of our other rats, enable the convoke cost of Pile On, and potentially allow us to win via poison counters in conjunction with Karumonix.

When we curve out like this, a timely Flare of Malice or Pile On will often be enough for us to punch through whatever damage we need to finish our opponent off.

The Beaters

While our 3-drop Rats are some of our most important, it is really the 2-drop Rats (and Squirrel, which is basically a tree rat) that pack the most punch. The somewhat unassuming Persistent Marshstalker routinely has more than 10 power. Furthermore, being able to recur it in combat will sometimes surprise opponents, while also giving us something to sac to Flare of Malice or to trade up with an opponent’s creature, since we can always get it back later.

Pack Rat is quite literally a 1-Rat army. If you haven’t ever seen this 2-drop in action, let me assure you that if left unanswered, even for a single turn, it will frequently run away with a game. That it gets its power and toughness from our other Rats means those 1-drops that I haven’t talked about grow it, as do the tokens Lord Skitter, Sewer King makes.

Finally, Valley Rotcaller gives us reach on a stalled board, particularly if we have Swarmyard out. There will be plenty of games where we gain more than 10 life from this Squirrel Warlock’s attack trigger.

Synergies

Unsurprisingly, Rats work well in large groups and there are several powerful synergies in the deck. First, Pack Rat and Persistent Marshstalker grow in size based on the number of other Rats we control. Besides the obvious, Lord Skitter, Sewer King produces a Rat every combat to add to our total.

Speaking of Persistent Marshstalker…it’s a great card to pitch to Pack Rat to make more Pack Rats. Another nice synergy is Pack Rat and Aether Vial. A turn 1 Aether Vial ticks up to 2 on the turn we make our third land drop. This allows us to flash in Pack Rat on our opponent’s end step and make a copy of it before untapping.

And in the late game, when Aether Vial is the last card we want to see, we can pitch it to Pack Rat.

Flare of Malice wants nontoken Black creatures to sacrifice and Persistent Marshstalker is fine fodder for this. But even better is Gnawing Vermin. In the right spot, this 1/1 in conjunction with Flare of Malice will take out two of our opponent’s creatures. By the way, we will almost always mill ourselves when it enters.

Lands

Further synergies are found in our mana base. Being both a tribal deck and a single color means we can get away with a lot of utility lands. Mudflat Village is a great way to recur our best Rat that’s been killed or that we’ve pitched to Pack Rat.

Swarmyard feels almost like cheating. P00pInMyFacex3 said that (s)he’s added two more copies for the full playset. I agree.

Shizo, Death’s Storehouse will frequently ensure our lords don’t die in combat. It is particularly good with Nashi, Moon Sage’s Scion out of the board.

Takenuma, Abandoned Mire gives us a bit more recursion, while Cavern of Souls is an all-star in any creature tribal deck.

One land that is conspicuously absent is Mutavault. I think a single copy at the very least would be fine. More than that, I’m not so sure.

Sideboard

A lot of the usual suspects. Leyline of the Void for graveyard strategies. Damping Sphere for Storm, Eldrazi, and Amulet Titan. Disruptor Flute is a kind of catch-all to whatever our opponent is playing that we have a hard time dealing with.

Force of Despair is a powerful answer to both Aggro decks that can flood the board in a single turn (Affinity) and Midrange decks with a powerful finisher.

Finally, there’s Nashi, Moon Sage’s Scion. I’m not entirely sure against which deck we bring this Rat Ninja in, but it seems both powerful and janky!

Match 1 vs. Yawgmoth

Match 2 vs. Golgari Air Ship

Match 3 vs. Storm

Match 4 vs. Rat Tribal

Match 5 vs. Allies

Match 6 vs. Reanimator

Match 7 vs. Eldrazi Yggdrasil

Match 8 vs. Izzet Delver

Overall Record: 4-4

Impressions from Game Play

Our record is respectable, particularly when you take into account a few things. First, we played the mirror, which we lost to the creator of the deck, but the deck itself still got a win, so… Second, we were unable to complete our match against Allies due to MTGO going down for maintenance. And while I think the kind of go-wide strategy my opponent was playing is challenging for our deck, it’s impossible to know how we would have fared after sideboard.

Finally, mistakes were made that cost us at least one match. :)

More reps with the deck would improve our win rate, just like with any deck.

My key take away from this deck is that it is super competitive. We beat two unfair decks in Storm and Reanimator. We beat a Combo deck in Yawgmoth. And we beat a Tempo/Control deck in Izzet Delver. We are aggressive enough to close out games quickly. We have enough recursion to fight through spot removal. We have enough card draw to play a long game. And we have the synergy to overwhelm many board states.

Our problem match-ups aren’t what I expected. I figured we would struggle against specifically the unfair decks. But I think we’re actually weak against Aggro decks that can flood the board or fly over us. Allies and the Golgari Air Ship deck did precisely this. We are well-equipped to deal with one or two big threats, but a board full of them often win the race against our Rats.

Other Rats to Consider?

The deck is great as is and I definitely think p00pInMyFacex3 has assembled the best of the Rats. However, we could also try a version that takes advantage of Rat Colony or Relentless Rats alongside some anthem effects. Coat of Arms is pretty pricey at 5 mana, but a couple of copies would give that kind of deck a powerful finisher. Otherwise, Patchwork Banner is a more reasonably priced anthem effect that could make our team of Rats more lethal.

Piper of the Swarm could take the place of Valley Rotcaller in the current build. The gain and drain of the latter is super powerful, but the drawback is that we have to untap and attack with the Squirrel Warlock before we get that effect. Piper of the Swarm comes down and immediately makes our team difficult to block, while also giving us a late-game mana sink. I wouldn’t cut Valley Rotcaller from the 75, but I could see having it in the board for certain match-ups.

Other Tweaks

Mutavault is an obvious option for the mana base. Otherwise, the combination of Thoughtseize and Pack Rat has won more than one game in its time. A turn 1 Thoughtseize to take the one removal spell from our opponent’s hand into a turn 2 Pack Rat can be game over. Seriously.

Otherwise, Pile On is great, but Fatal Push is a more efficient option that can answer a turn 1 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer.

Conclusion

Rat Attack is a super fun deck full of synergy and power. And while it may seem like a pretty straightforward Aggro deck, it is anything but. The way the cards play together, alongside the recursion, makes this deck much more complex and fun. What’s most impressive about this deck is that Rats haven’t really gotten a ton of love over the years. We haven’t gotten the Modern Horizons Rat yet, for instance. Yet they are still a very competitive tribe.

Thanks for reading and watching! And thanks again to p00pInMyFacex3 for the decklist! I hope the gameplay brought you some happiness and joy!