Love Death Rats

## Love Death Rats **Core Strategy**: Gain a lot of gold with Deathrattles, Conquer and Holds, sacrifice your own units for high valueable hook targets (2->3). You may play nasty combat tricks with Deathgrip and Mixologist to cheat out wins, HT and Hook high valueable units and distrub his base with Harnessed Dragon. Pit Crew is our purple unit in disguise with potential to be ready multiple times a turn. We have (especially with Karthus) a LOT of pressure and card draw. We will be using the coins mostly to attach equipment and use the hook. The Aim is to: **a) Establish a Battlefield we can hold**: To play High value targets into this Battlefield (Shen / Ahri) to make attacking really bad for the enemy (as well with the potential of mixologist + Deathgrip + HT Combos which can turn the tide completely in a battle). **b) Attack the other Battlefield** with ready / accelerated units and hook those units away to prevent easy combat wins for Draven. In the lategame we should have a good economy to play a lot of our low cost units, do some HT and Hook shenanigans and other stuff to close out the game. ### Rationale - **Deathgrip**: Might shenanings within fights. Example: Killing Mixologist to transfer the might within a fight to another unit, pooping two units out in the process is gaining us a lot of momentum. Also extremly well to kill targets we just HT in the enemy turn because its reaction speed. - **Honest Broker**: Gives us at death a gold token (2 with Karthus) - usable as Baited Hook sac to instantly get Pit crew or Gearhead out (or Karthus / Ahri). Many high value targets. The saved gold from hooking a pit crew can be used to play a gear and immediatly conquer - **Plundering Poro**: Does the same job but as Honest broker, also a good Hook target for our important 3 Energy units. Could be potentially replaced by another Deathgrip - **Unsung Hero**: 4 Card drawn with Karthus is insane. 5 Might can be achieved by BF Sword, Blade of the Ruined King or Deathgrip. Ideal to hook in the lategame an harnessed Dragon - **Sacred Shears**: More Card draw is always good, ready engine for Pit Crew and Drop Boarder - **Baited Hook**: The core idea of the whole deck is to hook in the early our weak 2 might units (esp. broker and Poro, sometimes unsung hero) to get our high value targets out (Gearhead, Karthus). In the late game and midgame its easy to hook out dragon. Also, a nice tech: We want to avoid easy combats with Draven. So in the best case we conquer and then hook our unit we just conquered. The new unit will be played in the other battlefield we hopefully control at this point. This way we stack up a huge battlefield and deny him easy combats in the other battlefield. Also an elegant way to kill targets from Hostile takeover. - **Pit Crew**: Our purple unit in disguise, can be ready multiple times a turn, can be our strongest tool in the whole deck to run away with the game. An idea would be to play actually Orb of regret for more pressure and easy accelerate for the rats - **Ahri**: High value target from Mixologist and Hook, can destroy many when i attack triggers, is extremly good into attacking as well. - **Karthus**: self explanatory, can be easily be hooked out, synergizes with the whole deck - **Shen**: Reaction speed unit to prevent Draven from easy wins. Our best target to get from Glasc Mixlogist (5 Might in defense is incredicle). - **BF Sword**: Staple Statstick for Unsung Hero, accelerated Dropboarder or pitcrew. - **Gearhead**: Busted, accelerated, 3 Might, can be hooked by killing an Broker. Extreme threat. - **Renata Glasc, Mastermind**: We are not lacking Carddraw, but if our gameplan goes well and we are placing Renata in our Hold fortress, then the enemy is commited into playing the fortress. But most of the time you want to have even more card draw to have more options. - **Glasc Mixologis**t: Top 3 Card, fantastic tool with Karthus. It is yet unclear how the Deathknell interaction at the end of the combat works (at least for me) but if i understand the rules correctly this should play out a unit after combat damage into the same battlefield. If you want rationale you can look my username up in Discord. This should trigger a new combat which can be favourable for us if we play something like Shen and another unit into this battlefield. Another good interaction is to have Mixologist and another unit attacking or defending, using Deathgrip on the Mixologist to transfer the 5 Might to the other unit, spawning 1 or two units (Ahri for attack, Ahri or Shen for defense) to explode from 5-7 Might to well over a 15 Might threat if everything aligns. Easy to do with Deathgrip. - **Hostile Takeover**: Busted. Hook Target. Deathgrip Target. HT is guranteed to be a hold tool or a point. Maybe even push to 3. Due to Hook we are in a comfortable positon to play this on our turn while playing units due to baited hook. - **Harnessed Dragon**: Simply a kill action. Not a spell. A big body which kills a unit. We can even choose the unit. Solves a lot of Problems. --- ### Some considerations: - The Zero Drive: I would love to try out this tool especially with Dropboarder and Pit crew. Having a lategame army which we can reliably hook in the early game (especially for dragon) would be amazing. - More Deathgrip, more HT: Strong spells. - Trove Golem (hard to Hook in this list, but not impossible!), 4 Gold tokens to cheese win? Yes Mama - Sideboard: To match Viktors presence we could simply play a Victor list in the sideboard with Armory, Jayce, Imperial Decree, Gear hate - Aspiring Engineer: To get back our gear due to gearphobia - Cloth Armor. Surprise defense tool, especially with Shen - **Dropboarder**: High valueable accelerated unit. With any equipment, even the shears, its in the magic 5 might range to hook out dragon. 2 Copies due to not being as valueable as a hook target as other copies, still a strong unit you should keep in your start hand IMO - **Blade of the Ruined King**: extremely good weapon which synergizes well with the rest of the deck (or to kill a target we just got by hostile takeover) --- ### Battlefields - Veiled Temple: Valueable to ready Baited Hook again or a gold token or to detach without costs. - Power Nexus: Could be a good choice if you won G1 and have a rough idea what your enemy is capable of to cheese a win after one hold with Renata at 5 Points. Its simply gg then. - Vilemaw: Its a bait for many people - this would be our battlefield of choice to actually make our hold fortress --- #### Edits 1/19/2026: Rune Count + Name + Added Ahri 1/20/2026: removed Dropboarder, Plundering Poro and Ruined King to the Bench, added more to Deathgrip, BF Sword, Hostile Takeover and Dragon for more power. Can be greedy tho