Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to take a look at Totentanz, Swarm Piper!

Totentanz is a three mana 2/3 with whenever they or another nontoken creature we control dies, you create a 1/1 black Rat creature token with “This creature can’t block.” and for one and a black you can give target attacking Rat you control deathtouch until end of turn.

Game Plan

Totentanz is a typal Commander that takes use of an aristocrat strategy in order to make a lot of a particular creature type, in this case Rats that can’t block.

There are a few directions we can go with this though the primary goal of the deck is to overwhelm our opponents with a massive volume of Rats so that we can win the game, and there are a lot of cards that help facilitate that plan.

Support

First we need the nontoken creatures that will provide some value for us in order to get some number of Rats into play, ideally not just the one that Totentanz makes.

Lord Skitter, Sewer King comes to mind as a way to get a good number of Rats in play because we make a Rat at the beginning of combat on our turn and we also get the added bonus of exiling a target card from an opponent’s graveyard whenever a Rat we control enters, meaning we exile at least one card from a graveyard each combat.

Redcap Gutter-Dweller enters with two of the same Rat tokens Totentanz makes and we can sacrifice another creature at the beginning of our upkeep in order to put a +1/+1 counter on it and exile the top card of our library that we can play this turn.

Marrow-Gnawer is a popular Rat card because we can tap them and sacrifice a Rat to put X 1/1 Rat creature tokens into play where X is the number of Rats we control, which ideally is a good number of Rats due to the sheer volume of Rats we should have and they also happen to give all Rats fear, which can definitely help us potentially get damage through.

There are also creatures that can also make Rat tokens whenever a nontoken creature we control dies. Ogre Slumlord does so while also giving Rats we control deathtouch while Rat King, Pale Piper makes a Rat token whenever they or a nontoken creature we control leaves the battlefield and can draw us a card if we sacrifice a token.

Plague of Vermin is a fascinating late game card because starting with us, each player can pay any amount of life, repeating this process until no one pays life and then each player puts a 1/1 Rat token into play for each 1 life paid this way. This can net us a huge number of Rats, and if we have an Impact Tremors effect in play we can threaten a potential win.

We can even use these Rats for alternate value with cards like Swarmyard Massacre which makes two 1/1 Squirrel tokens and then each creature that isn’t an Insect, Rat, Spider, or Squirrel gets -1/-1 until end of turn for each creature we control that’s an Insect, Rat, Spider, or Squirrel, which is huge for us because we can clear our opponent’s board of problematic creatures that are huge or indestructible and then swing in.

And if we want to go for the huge flavor win, there is of course one of my favorite cards for tokens decks Song of Totentanz, which creates X Rat tokens that Totentanz makes and then give creatures we control haste, so even one mana provides value from making a ton of Rat tokens.

Setbacks

This is a go wide deck, so it is has the problems that go wide decks have against board wipes that are made against it. While we will get some number of tokens back from our nontoken creatures dying, in comparison to the number of Rats we should have it doesn’t compensate as much as we would like.

We also suffer from the issue with needing a good number of nontoken creatures that we want to die in order to get some Rats from the various ways we can get Rat tokens from our creatures dying. Rat King, Pale Piper does help mitigate this a bit because it’s on a leaves the battlefield trigger, but that’s only one way to deal with exile based removal.

The biggest problem with Totentanz is that while he does make Rat tokens, his synergies with Rats is a lot more dubious than other typal Commanders. The ability to give a Rat deathtouch is neat in a Limited format context, but when considering that the ability costs two mana to activate and only targets a single Rat, it doesn’t really do much in the long run with a tokens based deck.

We have cards in our colors that help us get more Rats in play, and while they are often attached to enters triggers meaning we can use any sacrifice outlet to get rid of them, we are oftentimes getting rid of creatures that have solid stats and can block if we need to.

Some of the Rats we make can block, but the primary Rats that Totentanz makes can’t block and that is significant if we want to develop a go wide board because it’s better for us to have options in a go wide deck.

Bracket Rating: High 1, Low 2

Totentanz is a neat card thematically and has some synergies that work well enough with other cards to make use of a lot of Rats, but as a Rat Commander, there really isn’t enough to make the deck perform better against higher bracket decks.

If Totentanz had a better way of interacting with Rats as a whole then maybe I could see him getting more play, but as he stands he serves better being a more thematic Commander than the default Rat Commander.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual