Keyword abilities in magic the gathering exist in every modern set and most of the earlier sets as well and typically they are a quite a lot of fun but on occasion wizards of the coast will create a keyword and discover later that while it may be useful it isn't the best way to build the game up. Shadow is one of those abilities. A powerful ability it led to the problem of decks not interacting with each other so that far to many games turned into two people playing solitaire and seeing who could do twenty damage first. But if you have fewer of these cards it simply becomes another form of evasion and that is what happened in the time spiral block.

Stronghold Rats is an uncommon rat creature from the future sight expansion set of magic the gathering. A 2/1 shadow creature they cost one black and two colorless to put into play and have a powerful ability that is strengthened by the difficulty in blocking them. This ability reads "Whenever Stronghold Rats deals combat damage to a player, each player discards a card."

This is of course an ability that can hurt you as well as your opponent but there are two reason why this is unlikely to truly matter. The first and most obvious is that if you don't have a card that you are willing to discard then you will not attack with stronghold rats. This can on occasion sideline the card since as a shadow creature it can't block but it is your choice.

The second and more likely reason is that you have built your deck with this card in mind and have cards you don't mind discarding. There are a few ways that this could work.

Madness is one of the first possibilities. If you can hit your opponent for two damage, make him discard and put a creature or spell into play for less mana that is clearly a victory.

The second reason would be a card that you want to reanimate. Being able to discard that Akroma and then using your reanimation spell on her is valuable, especially when your opponent had to discard something he or she isn't getting back.

Finally there is the point at which you simply have no cards in your hand. This isn't typically a good thing but if you can keep your opponent's hand low, do damage and not lose anything this can be just fine for a turn or two.

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