Carrion Rats
Creature — Rat
Whenever this creature attacks or blocks, any player may exile a card from their graveyard. If a player does, this creature assigns no combat damage this turn.
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Hachette UK
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #20704
Carrion Rats is a one-mana 2/1 with a meaningful catch: if you attack or block with it, each player discards a card unless they pay two life. In graveyard-hostile or tax-heavy strategies that want to force discards, that symmetry is a feature — everywhere else, it's a liability that makes a vanilla 2/1 look generous.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Carrion Rats is a fringe inclusion at best — the discard trigger is symmetrical, the life-payment escape valve is trivial at 40 life, and a 2/1 body does nothing in four-player games where board presence matters. Legacy and Vintage have the tools to exploit graveyard disruption, but those formats already have stronger one-mana discard options and seldom need a body attached to a conditional effect. Pauper is the most realistic home, where the common card pool is thinner and a cheap creature with any discard upside earns a second look in dedicated rat or graveyard-pressure shells. Carrion Rats isn't illegal anywhere it could matter, but legal and playable are different things.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Pricing data for Carrion Rats isn't currently available, so treat any listing you find as the market rate until better data surfaces. Given how rarely it sees competitive play, copies tend to be cheap — pick one up if the strategy calls for it, but there's no urgency.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.