(The Odd Acorn Gang | Art by Omar Rayyan)

So, we're leaving behind the cozy, pleasant plane of Bloomburrow to head out to the horrifying eldritch doom world of Duskmourn. Let's wave Bloomburrow goodbye by analyzing a Commander from that plane who slipped Under The Radar with fewer than 500 players building a deck around them so far. The Odd Acorn Gang is the backup commander from the Squirreled Away precon. This troublesome gang of forest fighters offers up a pretty unique take on Squirrel typal gameplay. Before we can analyze them though, let's first take a look at all of the other options out there for anyone looking to build a Squirrel deck...

A Selection of Squirrels

When it comes to picking a legendary Squirrel to slot into the command zone there are five options available (6 if you include the silver-bordered Acornelia, Fashionable Filcher).

There is Toski, Bearer of Secrets who is an invincible and uncounterable 1/1 that allows their controller to draw a card every time one of their creatures deals damage to an opponent. Toski is a fantastic commander, incentivizing decks focussed on swarming the board with creatures that are tough to block.

Unfortunately, Toski isn't a great commander for a Squirrel typal deck. The absence of black in Toski's color identity means that you can't run the other four Legendary Squirrels in your 99 and also cuts your access to several pretty important cards like Valley Rotcaller, Kindred Dominance and Swarmyard Massacre. Toski is the cutest critter on Kaldheim, and they can lead lots of decks very well, but there are more appropriate alternatives for anyone looking for a Squirrel typal commander.

There's Chatterfang, Squirrel General, the Squirrel that started it all and (as I write this) the 19th most popular commander in the game. Chatterfang has earned his place in the top 20 by being a small but mighty powerhouse. This bushy-tailed badass fills the field incredibly quickly, adding on a bonus Squirrel tokens for every token controller their controller makes of any kind. Somewhat cruelly, Chatterfang also allows the tokens he produces to be turned into Squirrel sacrifices in order to destroy the opponents' creatures. Chatterfang, Squirrel General is rightly regarded as a very powerful commander, but if you're here reading Under the Radar then you must be looking for something a bit more niche to sink your teeth into.

Camellia, the Seedmiser puts a new spin on Squirrels by caring about foraging. Forage is a mechanic from Bloomburrow. Several cards from the set allow you to "forage", which means that they grant you a beneficial effect at the cost of either exiling three cards from your graveyard or sacrificing a food. Camellia generates a 1/1 Squirrel token whenever you forage and allows you to pay two mana and forage to put a +1/+1 counter on all of your other squirrels. This means that you're encouraged to build Camellia in a few different ways. You can either make a deck where you keep milling yourself and fill your graveyard up with cards to forage away, a deck that's full of food tokens to be greedily gobbled up by Camellia and co, or a deck that merges these two squirrely strategies into something new. On top of all of this, Camelia also grants all of your squirrels menace because, as anyone who has ever been on a nature walk can attest, there's nothing more menacing than an irate squirrel. This Seedmiser is mightier than she might appear to be, and gives Squirrel decks some new toys to play around with.

Next up, we come to Hazel of the Rootbloom, the primary commander of the Squirreled Away precon. Hazel turns all of your tokens into mana dorks, allowing you to pay two life and then tap her and X tokens down to generate X mana in any combination of colors. Hazel also duplicates a token that you control during each of your end steps. She makes two duplicates if you target a Squirrel token with this effect, meaning that you'll be able to make an extra two mana on your next turn. Although Hazel is brand new, she's become incredibly popular incredibly quickly. She already leads over 3000 decks and is featured in the 99 of more than 6000 decks. Hazel can produce a lot of mana very quickly, and that's not an effect to be underestimated.

Now all of the above commanders are definitely fun in their own right, but the subject of today's article offers something that none of them can provide. Have you ever wanted to use the power of teamwork to build a super-mega-death squirrel? Enter The Odd Acorn Gang.

Acorns Across the Multiverse

The Odd Acorn Gang is a 5/5 Squirrel Warrior for with menace, trample and reach. This makes them the strongest Squirrel in the game at least in terms of raw stats. That's right, these three little beasties can bring down a Serra Angel and fight a Shivan Dragon to a draw.

Obviously, this card has more to recommend it than its 5/5 statline alone. The Odd Acorn Gang grants all of your Squirrels the ability to tap themselves down, at sorcery speed, to give another target Squirrel +2/+2 and trample until the end of the turn. As an extra bonus, The Odd Acorn Gang also provides card draw whenever one or more Squirrels you control deal damage to a player.

This commander can provide the best of both a go wide and a go tall strategy. You'll start your games by doing what Squirrel decks do best and generating a huge number of 1/1 tokens. Once you've amassed a huge squad of squirrels though, then you can really go nuts. Rather than merely attempting to slam them all into your opponents' faces and hoping for the best, you can try to pull off something a bit different. The Odd Acorn Gang's ability enables your squirrels to tap themselves down in order to pump up one, or perhaps several, of your Squirrels into a gigantic trampling mega threat. The Odd Acorn Gang itself makes an ideal target, given its high starting stats, its plethora of powerful keywords and that fact that it will be dealing commander damage to any opponent it hits.

Now then, let's prepare ourselves for the coming of the super-mega-death squirrel by looking at The Odd Acorn Gang's average deck list...

Average Deck

As I write this, it is 09/22/2024 and there are currently 34o decks commanded by The Odd Acorn Gang on EDHREC. Using EDHREC's average deck function gives us this list...

That's a lot of Squirrels! Squirrels are a, relatively, underrepresented creature type. There are only 30 Commander legal Squirrels and two of these, Prairie Dog andHelica Glider, can't be included in the deck because they are white aligned. This means that all of the other legendary Squirrels are in this list. This makes sense since they are some of the most iconic and powerful Squirrels in the game.

Attempting to accommodate some of these other commanders does cause the list to split its focus slightly. For example, we have cards likeGilded Goose and Academy Manufactor in the deck that are here because they care about Food tokens like Camellia, the Seedmiser does. This presents us with a conundrum. We can either lean further into this, and keep this focus on food in place, or attempt to trim this subtheme out. Remember that it is still perfectly possible to Forage by exiling your graveyard and you don't necessarily need to care about Food at all. The changes that I recommend below are focused on helping the deck go wide, so you can make up your own mind regarding what to do about all of this food. It is important to pick a lane here though, the current list's food theme is only half developed and the deck will be better off if it is either expanded or cut completely.

Some of the most expensive cards on this list like Saw in Half and Hazel of the Rootbloom are from the Squirrelled Away Precon, so it's probably best to pick that up if you're hoping to put this deck together. Although that precon is in high demand and can be a bit pricy. The land base here has three pricy includes in Overgrown Tomb,Three Tree City. and Undergrowth Stadium that it would be good to cut if you're looking to save some cash.

5 Cards To Keep

Beastmaster Ascension

Currently in 72% of decks.

Beastmaster Ascension is a complete slam dunk in any deck capable of building up a big board state like this one. You need to attack with seven or more creatures, whether on a single turn or spread out over several, in order to activate Beastmaster Ascension. The card then grants all of your creatures +5/+5, transforming all of your Squirrels from 1/1s into 6/6s and it makes your commander a menacing, trampling 10/10. Whilst, strictly speaking, this does slightly nullify The Odd Acorn Gang's intended gimmick of tapping down all of your squirrels to make one mega squirrel, if your entire board is filled with giant squirrels, who cares about building up one super big one.

Valley Rotcaller

Currently in 86% of decks.

I mentioned earlier that Valley Rotcaller is an essential include in any Squirrel typal decks, now let's talk about why. If there is one thing that Squirrels are good at, it's filling up the board really quickly. Valley Rotcaller punishes all of your opponents by draining them for life equal to the number of Squirrels you control whenever it attacks. Ordinarily, Valley Rotcaller has a single weakness, which is that it's only a 1/3. This means that if all of your opponents have sufficient blockers in place, you'll be faced with the difficult choice of whether to send your Rotcaller to their doom to get a single activation of their ability or to hold it in reserve until the path is clear. The Odd Acorn Gang is a great commander for the Rotcaller. They allow your other Squirrels to pump Valley Rotcaller up, ensuring that it will both survive the attack it makes and get to take advantage of its menace ability by forcing your opponent to double block it if they want to take it down.

Swarmyard Massacre

Currently in 90% of decks.

Here's another card that I gave a shout out to above, and it's no wonder why. One-sided board wipes are among the most powerful effects in the game. There's a reason that Plague Wind costs nine mana. Swarmyard Massacre offers you the same prospect of being able to completely dome your opponents whilst leaving yourself unharmed, but at a fraction of the cost. You do need a large board to make the Swarmyard Massacre work, but with this deck that's easy to achieve. The fact that this card gives opponents' creatures -X/-X rather than merely destroying them is also great, since it gets around indestructibility.

Chitterspitter

Currently in 95% of decks.

While I've always found the implications of Chitterspitter slightly horrifying (Sacrificing a Squirrel to get an acorn counter, definitely has big cannibalism vibes) there's no denying it's a very powerful card. Decks that go wide sometimes have the problem of not being able to punch through for a decisive finishing blow. While The Odd Acorn Gang helps get around that by having all of your Squirrels buff each other up, Chitterspitterpresents another path forward. You can use this card both to secure a steady stream of Squirrel tokens, and to ensure that those tokens are a lot mightier than they seem. Get chittering, and try your hardest not to think about where those acorn counters come from.

Scurry of Squirrels

Currently in 94% of decks.

This card has two copies of the myriad keyword. This means that, In the average four-player pod, Scurry of Squirrels generates four copies of itself whenever it attacks. That's 10/10 total power, including the original, and the potential to put five extra +1/+1 counters onto your creatures. At first, this card might seem like a bit of a non-bo with The Odd Acorn Gang since the extra tokens it generates come into play tapped and attacking and thus can't be used to fuel its effect. Despite this, the two cards actually end up working together pretty nicely. Scurry of Squirrels changes the way your opponents need to divide their blockers, making it more difficult for them to amass enough power to take your super Squirrel down. The handful of +1/+1 counters the scurry generates also buff up The Odd Acorn Gang making it even more of an intimidating threat on future turns.

5 Cards To Cut

Short Bow

Currently in 5% of decks.

Alright, I will come clean. I have absolutely no idea what Short Bow is doing in this deck list. At first, I assumed that maybe it was included in the Squirreled Away precon and that players who were just forgetting to cut it, but no the card isn't in that deck, or any of the Bloomburrow precons for that matter. This random dinky piece of equipment does not synergize with anything else going on here, even the artwork clearly depicts a Rabbit rather than a Squirrel. Maybe its ability to grant vigilance could be kinda useful in preventing your big doom squirrel from tapping when it attacks. If you're looking for ways to keep your attacker untapped though, go with a card like Vivien, Champion of the Wilds, or Sigardian Zealot. Is there something I'm missing here? Let me know in the comments if there's a souped-up Short Bow synergy that I'm just not seeing.

Bonebind Orator

Currently in 37% of decks.

It pains me slightly to put Bonebind Orator on the cut list. They are the most adorable necromancer in the world, just look at the little bug winds they have strapped to their back, you know you love them. All the same, the power level simply isn't there. Bonebind Orator offers a very inefficient recursion effect, you need to pay four mana to return a creature from your graveyard to your hand. That's three mana more expensive than Disentomb which is not a card that anyone should really be running. Just compare this orator to Osteomancer Adept who both offers a more relevant board presence, due to having deathtouch, and brings the card it is reanimating directly back into play, rather than chucking it up into your hand first. Bonebind Orator may have won over our hearts, but don't let it win a slot in your 99.

Putrefy

Currently in 54% of decks.

The removal suite of this deck could be better. This is likely because this commander comes in a precon and people are just keeping the removal spells from Squirreled Away in their lists. Putrefy is a three-mana instant that can destroy either an artifact or a creature. There are significantly better removal options out there and compared to the other removal spells already in this list, Putrefy is the weakest option. Assassin's Trophy is cheaper and more versatile, Tear Asunder can hit more card types and exiles them. Even Binding the Old Gods at least offers a variety of other effects on top of just removing something. Putrefy is honestly pretty putrid.

Nested Shambler

Currently in 40% of decks.

Just because Nested Shambler makes Squirrel tokens, it doesn't mean that the card should automatically get slotted into any Squirrel deck you build. A 1/1 that makes an additional 1/1 when it dies is not impactful enough to deserve a slot in your deck. While it is possible to buff up Nested Shambler, which will increase the number of Squirrel tokens that it generates, there just aren't enough cards in the deck that can pull this off. The complete list of cards in this deck that can increase Nested Shambler's power is: Beastmaster Ascension, Rootcast Apprenticeship Sword of the Squeakand Short Bow. You'd probably rather useSword of the Squeak and Rootcast Apprenticeship to buff your commander, and Short Bow is a card that I have already recommended cutting. This means that Beastmaster Ascension is the only card in the deck that supports the Shambler. You should shamble this card right out of your 99.

For the Common Good

Currently in 31% of decks.

Despite having the word "good" in its name, this card is anything but. The double X's in this spell's cost means that you have to pay two mana every time you want to increase X by one. So, including the green pip in the spell's cost, you'll need to pay three mana to duplicate a token once and then five mana to duplicate it twice, seven mana for three duplicates and so on. This effect is designed for decks that play big tokens, and not for this deck. Spending three mana to get an additional 10/10 Eldrazi is a great deal, spending three mana to get a 1/1 Squirrel is pretty awful. Idol of Oblivion is the only card here that makes a token worth copying with For the Common Good. There can be some utility in just paying one green for this card to get its protection effect, but a sorcery speed effect that only guards your tokens is awkward at best.

5 Cards to Add

Ivy Lane Denizen

Currently in 14% of decks.

Those of you who saw the Scurry Oak in the deck list above probably already know where I'm going with this. This deck is already pretty good at getting a large number of squirrels into play, but if you use Ivy Lane Denizen and Scurry Oak together then you make a theoretically infinite number of Squirrels. Scurry Oak generates a 1/1 Squirrel token whenever you put a +1/+1 counter on it and Ivy Lane Denizen puts a +1/+1 counter on a creature you control whenever a green creature enters play under your control. That means that when Scurry Oak generates a Squirrel, Ivy Lane Denizen can put a +1/+1 counter on it, which will cause it to generate another Squirrel, which will let Ivy Lane Denizen give it another +1/+1 counter and so on and so forth. This loop can continue for as long as you want before you choose to target another creature with Ivy Lane Denizen's effect. The ability to gain infinite Squirrels, along with an infinitely powerful tree is just too nuts to pass up.

Heroic Intervention

Currently in 40% of decks.

When you're playing a deck that's all about getting lots of creatures into play, there's nothing worse than a board wipe. When that Wrath of God or Damnation goes off, all of those Squirrels that you've spent turn after turn cultivating into the perfect woodland war force are destroyed in an instant. Heroic Intervention is the best protection that green has against board wipes, and it will ensure that your coalition of critters lives to fight another day. Other protection effects like Tamiyo's Safekeeping, Snakeskin Veil, or even a good old-fashioned pair of Swiftfoot Boots are also worth considering, in order to keep your commander safe. Heroic Intervention offers full board coverage though, and that makes it the best of these effects and a worthy inclusion in your deck.

Return of the Wildspeaker

Currently in 21% of decks.

Return of the Wildspeaker is a modal card with two incredibly powerful effects to choose from. If your hand is starting to run a bit low, you can tap down all of your Squirrels, using The Odd Acorn Gang's effect, and then use this card's first effect to draw a frankly obscene number of cards. Alternatively, if you just want to overwhelm your opponents with a single massive attack, you can choose the latter mode and turn all of your Squirrels into ferocious 4/4s. I'm sure Garruk would be very proud to see that even the humble Squirrel is still capable of dealing out nature's wrath.

Changeling Outcast

Currently in 10% of decks.

Sometimes even the strongest of Squirrels can't break through your opponents' blockers. Maybe they have a deathtoucher or a Fog Bank or simply an even bigger and scarier threat in play. This is where Changeling Outcast comes in. This card is completely unblockable and also, because it's every creature type, it's technically a Squirrel meaning that it can be buffed up using the The Odd Acorn Gang's effect. This changeling lets you get around any frustrating fringe cases where you would otherwise simply not be able to punch damage through.

Might of the Masses

Currently in 0% of decks.

There is currently exactly one The Odd Acorn Gang deck running Might of the Masses and that's an injustice that simply has to be corrected. This unassuming combat trick can turn a regular attack into a game-ending blow. By making use of this card, alongside The Odd Acorn Gang's regular effect, it's not hard to get its power up to a point where it can cross the threshold of 21 commander damage that is necessary to secure a win. Since this card only costs a single pip of green mana, you will often be able to catch your opponents completely off guard and finish them off at times when they felt they were safe.

Conclusion

So there we have it, I hope this piece has proven that you should never underestimate a Squirrel. After all, as the old meme goes, it only takes 15 Squirrels to bring down Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Hopefully, we'll get more Squirrels in Magic's future. Squirrels are, after all, one of head designer Mark Rosewater's favorite creature types. With a wider pool to choose from The Odd Acorn Gang can be more selective about who they let join their club. It will become easier to set aside the cards that care about foraging and food, to get a build more focused on rushing out as many Squirrels as quickly as possible.

If you're looking for more Squirrel based content, my fellow EDHREC writer Brian Cain wrote an excellent article on making a budget Squirrel Commander deck. I'll see you next time for more Under the Radar!

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