Shadowborn Apostle Combo

[JaceBelerenMindMage]

Shadowborn Apostle
Thrumming stone, play every one in your deck, Same works for Relentless Rats

[AdmiralMemo]

Sounds good. Needs a bomb, though, to win the game.

[tamaness]

Relentless Rats works quite well with Thrumming Stone, but Shadowborn Apostle needs a payload to be excellent. I've a friend who runs 20 Relentless Rats in an EDH deck with a Thrumming Stone. It's silly when he gets the stone online.

[JaceBelerenMindMage]

Just turn 8 PLay Deck

[tamaness]

What happens when I cast Bile Blight, Drown in Sorrow, Shrivel, Izzet Staticaster, toxic deluge, Mizzium Mortars, or any number of other universal pings or -X/-X(+) effects? Sure, if I don't have an answer, I'm dead, but if I do, apostle's pretty bad, and I maindeck some of the better answers in Standard right now. Apostle needs to go digging for something.

Relentless Rats doesn't have that problem, as each rat pumps every other rat. Nearly all of the answers that hit Rats are overkill against Apostles (see: Wrath of God, Damnation, Fated Retribution, Planar Cleansing, Supreme Verdict, Apocalypse, Magus of the Disk, Nevinyrral's Disk, Plague Boiler), with the exception of one of the Commands and Elspeth.

Also, I think Apostles are much better when used to hit a turn 4 Griselbrand, then a turn 6 Demon of Death's Gate. I'm not opposed to dumping them with Thrumming Stone; I just think that by turn 8, dropping 40 apostles is going to be pretty bad.