mtg Pack Rat Deck

One thing that's been annoying me about Theros so far is the complete lack of love for rodents, while the possibility of a Minotaur and Gorgon tribal decks is awesome the new block signals the end of the last. All in all I have lost eight cards (Ravenous Rats x4 and Prey upon x4), now the prey upon's can be replaced but it's the four extra furry bodies that i'm going to miss.

Rat cards can easily be slipped into any block really, as they can be found pretty much everywhere. as it stands the majority of my rat deck comes from the Return to Ravnica block and of course features everyone's favourite broken card, Pack Rat. With this deck I wanted to be making the most of those tokens and went Black/Green. this gave me access too three populate spells. Oddly a populate Pack Rat deck isn't something that I have seen much of, I favour it as it means not having to rely on discarding cards for more rats.

Lands

Swamp x10
Forest x9
Golgari Guildgate x4

Creatures

Pack Rat x4
Ravenous Rats x4
Drainpipe Vermin x4
Gutter Skulk x4
Ogre Slumlord x4
Sporemound x4

Other Spells

Druids Deliverance x4
Growing Ranks x2
Doom Blade x2
Mending Touch x2
Down/Dirty x1
Prey Upon x4

I usually sit back building rats until I can swing for lethal, or near to it. A quite mean tactic I like to use is swing big, but not quite big enough to kill, leaving myself open then run a Druids Deliverance on the ensuing counter attack, leaving me a win on the next turn. The Ogre Slumlords mix nicely with a few other cards in the deck, firstly the tokens you receive when a non token creature dies really boosts up the Pack Rats power, secondly giving all rats deathtouch makes Drainpipe Vermin terrifying. With this combo you can chump and kill most targets, pay the black and force a discard, then gain two 1/1 Rat Token's.

The Sporemound's are a big of an oddity, the main reason I am running them is to have another chance at getting tokens on the board in case I can't find Pack Rats or Slumlords.

Now a quick word on Token's, your going to need them. Lot's of them. Currently i'm using Rattatta and Patrat Pokemon cards as 1/1 rats and Dirty Wererats as my Pack Rats. The Pokemon cards won't get mixed up with the rest of the deck and the Dirty Wererat is decently vintage and very probably won't be seeing a reprint anytime soon. Some other Pack Rat token ideas I really like are these and these.

Also been playing alot of DOTP 2013 on my 360 after getting it free a while ago. Currently loving the krenko deck, Goblin Piledriver is awesome.

MTG Life counter

I've tried a couple free life counting apps over the last few months and rarely stuck with them for long. A lot of them just don't feel quite right or lack a easy UI. Then there are the amount of options that you can consider, how many players do you want it to support? Do you want poison counters?

A quick search for a MTG life in the app store shows 62 results, quite a lot to shift through, so I thought I would share with you one of my current favourites, MTG Life and Score (available on the app store for free).

Yes I named my opponent Loser, yes i'm Ten

Now while this app is not as complex as some, you can only show two players and it only keeps track of life. It is by far the nicest looking life counter I think I have ever seen. While being able to name players is a nice touch, its a shame that it doesn't remember names between sessions. 

It has the standard plus/minus 1 as well as the always welcome plus/minus 5, this makes it easy to add life totals although I did notice with play that it sometimes won't register button touches leaving you sometimes searching for the 'sweet spot' on the screen.

But I mean come on, it's just so pretty and nice. If your looking for an iOS life tracking app on your phone this is one of the best.