Typhoid Rats | Art by Kev Walker

Pesky Little Creatures

Welcome back to Singleton Shmingleton, where I bend the singleton rules of Commander by building decks with as many functional reprints of a certain card as possible.

This week's card is a Limited staple, an underrated roleplayer in Commander, and one of the cards that has re-appeared the most times with no other abilities: it's Typhoid Rats.

At one mana, you get a creature that can trade with anything, but in a game with multiple opponents, that's often a good enough deterrent to stop dozens of attacks toward you over the course of a game.

In Limited, Typhoid Rats functions halfway between a creature and a removal spell, and fills such a perfect niche that it has been re-skinned over twenty times now.

Despite filling multiple roles at an efficient cost, Typhoid Rats has seen little competitive constructed play.

This effect just doesn't answer enough problems well enough to compete against the other incredibly efficient or value-generating cards that abound in Standard and Modern.

Back when Eldrich Moon released, Gnarlwood Dryad saw play in a Standard Delirium deck, but it had the upside of often being a 3/3 for one.

And more recently, Standard black midrange decks have played one or two of Tinybones, the Pickpocket as a card advantage machine in grindier board-based matchups.

But the plainer versions of this card have been sadly neglected in the competitive scene.

There are twenty-one creatures for one mana that always have deathtouch. All cluster in green and black. Here they are:

The most played of these cards, in 12,889 decks, is Grist, Voracious Larva. Its transform condition leads to really cool deck construction, and the potential upside is incredible.

The next most played card on the list is Vampire of the Dire Moon, in 28,531 decks. Lifelink is a decent upside, but this card is really on the list as a cheap Vampire.

And most of the play rate of these cards is determined by their types and colors. Green creatures get a bump from all the Fynn, the Fangbearer decks, and creature types such as Snakes, Vampires, and even Assassins get their own little bumps.

The least played card (excepting cards that have been out less than a month) is Pharika's Chosen in only 3,391 decks. It's not in the most common Snake colors, and it doesn't have any other types or abilities going for it.

The Touch of Death

The first place to look when building this deck is EDHREC's Deathtouch theme page. The top two commanders, Fynn, the Fangbearer and Kelsien, the Plague, don't fit our colors, but down the line there are plenty of great green and black commanders for our strategy.

I chose Aveline de Grandpré, since she pays us off for using these creatures for aggression while still leaving us open for other themes.

Among the High Synergy cards, Hooded Blightfang stood out as an incredible payoff, one of the few cards that explicitly rewards us for having other creatures with deathtouch.

Fynn, the Fangbearer also certainly earns his spot in the deck, and when we draw him he'll warp the game around his ability, just as if he were our commander.

Beyond cards that explicitly reward us for playing creatures with the word "Deathtouch" on them, we can run a package of green spells that become incredibly efficient removal in our deck.

Hard-Hitting Question, Coordinated Clobbering, and Horrific Assault can take out any creature without putting our creatures in harm (except for incentivizing opponents to take them out in response).

Bridgeworks Battle and Khalni Ambush do let the opposing creature deal damage back, but they also allow us to run extra removal in our mana base since they're lands on the back. That's a pretty huge advantage.

A Blooming Field of Block-me-Nots

Though small creatures with Deathtouch can appear threatening on defense, they can also mount a quite annoying offense.

Our opponents will be wary to block our expendable critters with any real creatures of their own, and will be greatly tempted to take a few damage instead. We need to set up engines that can profit off of any opponent who takes the easy way out.

In green, Ohran Frostfang and Toski, Bearer of Secrets draw us cards whenever we hit, letting us chain our advantage and deploy more Typhoid Rats each turn.

In black, Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor operates the same way, but Rev, Tithe Extractor and the new Gonti, Night Minister give us cards off of the top of our opponents' libraries.

This kind of effect leads to incredibly cool games, asking us to play with combinations of cards and strategies that we'd never think to combine in deckbuilding.

This is an angle of attack that I would love to lean into. There's a surprising amount of overlap between Deathtouch creatures and casting opponents' spells: We're already playing Tinybones, the Pickpocket, and we can include the original Gonti, Lord of Luxury, as well as Thieving Varmint to help cast all of the cards we steal.

Vraska, the Silencer works slightly differently, but also allows us to take advantage of our opponents' deckbuilding skills.

Having a bunch of 1/1 creatures with deathtouch can give us an early aggressive start, and then we can sit on them for defense while executing everyone else's game plan to find a win.

Along these lines, we've got to include Outrageous Robbery and Predators' Hour. Both offer a ton of card advantage and fit into our theme perfectly.

I've also snuck in a Time of Need to act as an extra copy of Gonti, Night Minister or Rev, Tithe Extractor, since these are our most powerful engine pieces.

And now that I'm looking at it, this deck is primed to include a small Legendary matters package. Four of our core 1/1 deathtouchers are legendary, and we've added enough more to make a quorum.

We can add a few more without abandoning the theme at all: Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire, Glissa Sunslayer, and Aphelia, Viper Whisperer are just incredibly efficient deathtouchers, and Kodama of the West Tree works great with Aveline de Grandpré putting counters on all our creatures.

Giving our modified creatures Trample is also super nice, since that interacts really well with deathtouch.

As a reward for including all of the Legends, we get to play Vraska Joins Up, which almost acts as a redundant copy of Toski, Bearer of Secrets and advances our game plan nicely.

Unassuming All-Stars

There are a few cards that work much better in this deck than on average. Here they are:

Dolmen Gate: This card is incredible when our plan is to attack with our Typhoid Rats. It basically lets us eat any blocker, making our opponents very reluctant to block at all and fueling all of our draw engines.

Oakhame Adversary: There's a pretty high chance this card will cost only two, and it fits our strategy well. It's always been a very efficient body, but I hadn't found a home for it until this deck.

Petty Larceny: We've got a respectable seven Assassins, including our commander, so Freerunning will often be turned on, in which case it's a two mana draw two that gives us a Treasure back and feeds our theft strategy. And even when we have to pay retail for it, it's not a bad deal.

The Decklist

I really dig everything this deck does. Early aggression, goofy creatures, playing opponents' cards, and using draft chaff to kill expensive creatures.

With all of our card advantage engines that give us a card when we hit a player, this deck almost reminds me of the old Edric, Spymaster of Trest decks that would play every Triton Shorestalker and try to chain Time Warps until they drew their whole deck.

The difference is that our payoffs change every game, based on what our opponents bring to the table. When building decks with twenty cards that do the same thing, finding a way to keep the experience new is crucial, and this deck achieves that.

The deathtouch creatures feel powerful. They play both offense and defense well, and generally give opponents headaches.

I firmly believe these creatures are underrated, and I'm going to start taking any excuse, from typal synergies to any extra on-theme text, to include these cards in more of my decks.

Until Next Time

This creature offers a fun deckbuilding challenge: how can we best use a creature that goes tall in proportion to us going wide?

This pulling in two directions has stopped almost all versions of this card seeing competitive play, but how will it work in a deck that's built around making it huge and benefiting from that hugeness? Find out next time on Singleton Shmingleton!

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Pauper Commander - Fynn The Fangbearer