Dimir Rat Lock (Pauper)

AKA UB Flicker Control
Writeup by u/MrxRednessX274.

What is Chittering Control?

Chittering Control is a powerful control deck which uses the synergy between creatures like Mulldrifter, Chittering Rats and Archaeomancer, and the card Ghostly Flicker, to generate huge amounts of card advantage and to outpace an opponent.

The deck features a soft lock in the form of Chittering Rats + Archeomancer + Ghostly Flicker.

The 'combo' is during your opponent's draw step, you cast Ghostly Flicker for as many cards as they have in their hands, and thereby soft lock them out of the game. Remember, this can be interrupted if they draw a counterspell or creature removal, so always keep that in mind. Also Remember this combo does nothing about their already established board, you'll have to kill that either through combat, or by using ghostly flicker to blank their creatures during blocks.

One Key Thing to Remember about the deck, despite having access to this combo, we don't always get it, nor do we need to. We play such a powerful removal and counter suite, along with creature recursion that we can often times simply out grind an opponent. Ghostly Flicker is a huge part of this. A huge mistake I see new players making is holding their Flicker's until they think it's safe to go for the combo DO NOT, DO THIS. Ghostly Flicker can generate disgusting value in our deck, if your opponent attacks you with two 2/2's and you have a say a mulldrifter and a chittering rats, block and cast flicker, you just drew two cards, and blanked your opponent's next draw step (theoretically) all while blocking two creatures in combat. A huge part of the deck, is knowing when to just cast a value ghostly flicker. If you establish Ratlock, good for you, but remember it doesn't matter if you get the lock if they have a board full of creatures you haven't killed.

Why Should you Play Chittering Control?

You'll enjoy playing Chittering control if you've been looking for a flavor of UB that isn't one of the main three (why you would want to pass up on the euphoria of casting Forbidden Alchemy eludes me, but you do you man, you do you). Chittering control is a very different deck compared to Alchemy, Teachings or Gurmag Delver. You play a similar gameplan but your execution differs wildly. The deck is also much more resilient to grave hate, as we don't require our graveyard to cast many of our powerful spells.

You'll enjoy playing Chittering Control if you're and ex Drake player too, the decks' play similarly, with ratlock being the fixed version of drake combo. The decks have a similar gameplan while both abusing the power of Ghostly Flicker.

Ghostly Flicker Combo's (Other than Ratlock):
Archeomancer+ Anything: Returns Flicker to hand and probably get's you some form of card advantage, either by drawing two cards or selecting one from the top 2.

Evoked Mulldrifter: This is a spicy one, when you evoke a Drifter, while the trigger is on the stack you can cast flicker, targeting drifter after which the evoke trigger fizzles. This play on its own earns you at minimum 4 total card's drawn, one flying 2/2 and whatever else you gained of your second target for Flicker, all for the low low cost of 6 mana.

Radiant Fountain: Flicker can hit lands, I know right, is there anything this card, cannot enable you to do. By targeting Radiant Fountain+Something else, you're gaining two life and probably drawing a card or something similar. I've surprised burn players doing this before, and if you have archeomancer on board, you can continue doing this the rest of the game. At the very least it forces said burn player to use a bolt on the mancer just to stop the slow lifegain.

Stormbound Geist: Ghostly Flicker resets undying on these guys. While not as powerful as drawing cards it can just get your opponent when they try to kill Geist again, and realize they just wasted another removal spell and will have to end up killing the same Geist up to three times to make sure it stays dead.

Double Archeomancer: Get's back flicker and another spell, turns your graveyard into a free toolbox of reusable spells.

Why doesn't this deck play Gurmag Angler?

I'll be the first to admit it, I asked this question too, but after playing the deck it makes sense. Every creature in this list has a reason to be flickered, every creature does something when it ETB's. Angler doesn't. It's just a big dumb meaty creature. This deck doesn't need that, what it needs is value creatures which generate card advantage, and then by using removal clearing the way for the deck to win that way.

Angler is good, it just doesn't play to this deck's strength, and we're better off running another value ETB creature

Meta Matchups:

Kuldotha Boros:
Not a terrible matchup for us but they can go over and under our creatures with fliers, and can win the game out of nowhere with [[Rally the Peasants]]. Your game-plan here is to disrupt them by killing their early threats and doing your best to control the board. We will win the later game, short of them casting 4 Rally the peasants in one turn we can outgrind them and win that way.

Delver:
A good matchup for us, short of them going three delvers and then ninja, we can generally win against them with relative ease in my experience. Our removal matches up so well against all of their creatures and our creatures are just better. Prioritize killing spire golem with doom blade, and trade creatures as one lategame reaping the graves can undo all the work they've been doing.

Affinity:
A bad matchup for us, quick aggro is very good against us and unless we sequence removal spell after removal spell, we're probably going to lose. Prioritize countering Fling+Atog, use doomblades aggressively, and save your Dead weight for an ATOG if you can because it will kill it unless they keep saccing things to it. I'm not saying you can't win vs affinity but in my experience it's about 70:30 in their favor. The problem with UB as an archetype is we lack strong artifact removal.

Elves:
In short, fuck elves. you're probably not winning against them, they're too fast too powerful, prioritize killing their finishers and hope the removal and counters keep on flowing.

U/R Control:
Not a great matchup for us but not the worst either, I'd honestly say it's about 50:50. Depending on the variant your gameplan changes slightly, you want to kill Alchemists if they have them, but otherwise just play the removal and counter game, prioritize countering mulldrifters, then Sprites and Miscreants, DO NOT let them get Ninja going.

TRON:
RUG: Kill their creatures, beat down with creatures, you can't do much to keep them off tron, all you can do is try to get ahead on cards, and have enough counters/removal
Murasa: Similar to RUG, you have to be the aggressor in this matchup. I won't do a sideboard here, because it's really simple, usually you're not bringing in much, aside from Dispel. Since there are so many variants of Murasa, it's hard to nail down what to do against all of them.

Bogles:
Chainer's Edict is a very good magic card.

Burn:
Burn is still a bad matchup, but it's made considerably better than it is against other UB Decks (Alchemy/Gurmag Delver). Due to our ability to flicker Radiant Fountain. Every three life you gain against this deck, is essentially a counterspell.

The Deck Breakdown:

The Flicker package:
Chittering Rats - This card is just so solid on its own, if your opponent is short a land and you go rat's, next turn rats, you're so far ahead it's not even funny. I can't say enough good things about this card. However if you're not establishing ratlock, or if your opponent doesn't have only one or two cards in hand, I'm usually not flickering this guys.
Archeomancer - Love this guy, get's you back a flicker you used earlier in the game, or basically anything relevant from your graveyard, all around really strong creature.
Mulldrifter - On the shortlist for being the best creature in magic, remember you can flicker an evoked drifter, or just cast him normally. Card puts you so far ahead on cards it's not even funny, love the drifter, live the drifter
Sea Gate Oracle - Good defensive earlier creature, digs two cards deep and replaces itself. Not much to say here really, this guy is really really good.

Removal:
Chainer's Edict - While not at its best right now, Chainer's is still a powerful answer in the format, and will remain as so until every deck is a token's deck.
Doom blade - Dies to doomblade amirite?????
Disfigure - Kills and X/2 is basically the black lightning bolt in our format (internally prepares for the backlash)
Dead Weight - Like disfigure it kills any X/2. Unlike Disfigure, it also kills things like Atog.
Echoing Decay - Kills a whole bunch of tokens.

Counter Suite:
Counterspell - It's Counterspell.
Exclude - This card is so good, counters an important creature spell then replaces itself. If you have budget restraints, you can play [[soul manipulation]] instead. However exclude is so much better because we don't aggressively mill ourselves like Alchemy does.

Utility and Card Advantage:
Ghostly Flicker - The deck's namesake card. It counter's removal, it blank's attacks, it draws you cards, it puts your opponent behind, it gains you life, the list goes on and on. This card is amazing, we only play 2 because we have ways of recurring it if need be.
Preordain - Digs three cards deep and replaces itself, there's a reason why this is a staple in pauper
Unearth - Either reanimates a Chittering Rats or SGO, or you cycle it, card is always relevant no matter what.
Reaping the Graves - This card is amazing, as soon as you're getting more than one creature back, you've made your money back on this card, anything more than that is just gravy. using this card I've undone all the work my opponent has done all game. I can't say enough good things about this card. There's a reason storm is a broken mechanic kids.

Lands:
Barren Moor - Cycle land, replaces itself, you can go turn one more turn 2 Aqueduct cycling moor, card is good.
Lonely Sandbar - See above
Dimir Aqueduct - Our deck is so mana hungry and these are so good because of it, Keeping a hand of this + another land is fien because the meta can be quite slow right now.
Dismal Backwater - Gainland that taps for our colors, can be flickered in a poor imitation of radiant fountain.
Radiant Fountain - Free lifegain, can be flickered with a mancer to make burn players feel sad, which is good.
Island - I like the unhinged ones
Swamp - See above

Sideboard:

Hydroblast - Counters or Destroy's red things, really good in the current meta, shores up a bad matchup. I should probably be playing 4 but I like having the second dispel.
Nausea - Because Tokens are bad
Stormbound Geist - This card causes headaches for your opponent, it demands to be killed and trades for every relevant flier in the format save Wretched Gryff. This creature is a removal spell that can be flickered.
Dispel - Good against spell heavy decks that like to play at instant speed
Deep Analysis - This card helps us to not get out grinded in matchups where our life total matters very little. Draws you so so many cards it's fantastic.
Relic of Progenitus - Graveyard hate is a required part of any good sideboard, never leave home without it.

How to Fight Chittering Control/Additional Notes:

Aggro - The Deck has one hell of a time against fast aggro, if you're playing one of those deck's your matchup is golden
Removal and counters - If you can either counter a ghostly flicker, or kill one of the creatures it target's you're putting yourself ahead on board against us.
Relic - Relic can do an annoying thing where after we cast a flicker, you can crack the relic exile everything, before the archeomancer trigger happens to get it back. Our deck isn't particularly soft to grave hate, but it does still hurt us, if you manage to blank a reaping, then you'll be pretty far ahead of us.
Land D- Land Destruction isn't actually that great against us, unless you're killing our aqueduct on turn two, after I returned a tapland to my hand, eventually we can fight through it and start playing creatures and spells. Land D backed up by fast aggro is the best way to fight the deck however.

When you're sideboarding against us, you want to bring in your grave hate, and any relevant removal. Pyroblast is disgusting as it counter's ghostly, and kills more than half our creature base.
In terms of creature relevance it'll probably look something like Mulldrifter>Archeomancer>Rats>Oracle Though we're going to hold Mancer until we can get the most out of it.

Your best way of Fighting against Chittering Control is to be an aggressive deck already, or prioritize stopping the spells the deck needs to function, we need to keep the cards flowing, countering a drifter hurts, countering a flicker or killing both targets hurts.

Closing Thoughts:

The deck is currently one of the top metashare decks for a reason. We play such a strong gameplan and are very hard to hate out as we don't fold to grave hate like some other UB Variants, and unlike Teachings we play actual win conditions.
In my opinion, Chittering Control is the fixed version of Izzet drake. We play a strong control game while having a combo out, the big differences, drake was broken, because free mana is broken, when your ghostly flicker's fuel your ghostly flickers, we have a problem.
If you enjoy playing UB, and want to play something a little different pick this deck up and give it a go.