“Step right over and watch me put it down.“
Art:The Odd Acorn Gang
by Omar Rayyan
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
The Odd Acorn Gang is such a fun and flavorful commander and who can’t get down with a deck focusing on both squirrels and food; if you are interested in either of the archetypes, I think you are going to get a lot of enjoyment out of this deck, this deck is strong but is certainly not oppressive in a CEDH style manner and works best at other flavor-focused decks but can hold its own against a lot of strong decks. While this deck can win without our commander, the buff allows us to hit hard and whittle down our opponents quite quickly; the decently consistent card draw helps a ton as well. This deck is most certainly not casual but definitely not competitive and falls into a mid-ground; this is a deck I’ve brought to my LGS and haven’t had any complaints about pub stomping even though I was able to squeak out a win. If you love tokens and food and just a ton of squirrel value, I think you will love this one; without further adieu, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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The Odd Acorn Gang Squirrel Food!
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Why The Odd Acorn Gang?
The Odd Acorn Gang is a huge part of our deck, and in an ideal world, we will have them on the field as much as possible. They work perfectly with cards like Nested Shambler
, and even just being able to buff a squirrel to do more damage or win in combat, it is quite strong; while the first ability is amazing. The second ability is just crazy. Being able to draw every time squirrel hit adds card draw to Golgari, which already has a decent amount of card draw, but more is always better; this also helps with deck construction as we are able to run less card draw since we have a decent amount of it accessible to us in the command zone. If you can ramp and get them out early, I always try to; for the overall gameplan, casting our commander as soon as possible helps a ton with trying to get a win. Our commander having menace, trample, and reach is certainly not a downside, and being able to block flyers or just hit hard is great; a commander damage kill is certainly possible in this deck, but it is not something we actively go for.
Gameplan:
The game plan for the deck is pretty simple. We don’t have any combo wins or anything like that. A typical hand is just a few lands and some castable cards, and we just want to fill up our board with food and squirrels and cast our commander as quickly as possible; beyond that, we love to attack and whittle down our opponents as much as we can. The simple game plan for this deck allows it to be fun and good for players of any skill level, making it super accessible. The number one thing to keep in mind is that we want to cast our commander as early as we can, so if we draw an opening hand with any sort of ramp, as long as it’s okay, that’s almost always a keep.
Deck Matchups:
Since this is EDH, there are an absolute ton of things that can tip a game in your favor or out of it. While an archetype may seem favorable, there are absolutely good and bad commanders for our deck to go up against; I have included both these, which were all played among my testing groups using various decks, and I have included the sample size for clarity purposes. This is just meant to be a guide after testing a bunch of games with this deck!
The information below is notes about specific decks that were featured in our testing pods and how we fared against them. Naturally, EDH is a multiplayer game, so these are just a summary of my notes against different commanders and strategies. When we test these decks we try to test to its strengths and weaknesses to give a full spectrum of what the deck has to offer. Various commanders and archetypes/strategies are used to get the most accurate information.
Commanders, we have a good matchup against:
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
Record against Alesha 5-3
This is a pretty favorable matchup for us. While they can compile a lot of extra damage through a lot of their creatures having attack triggers we are just genuinely better at blocking especially with our commander out, blocking well and outputting high damage is the key to winning against Alesha, while I believe this matchup is favorable it is certainly not to be taken lightly as they can hit very hard and win the game if we are not careful.
Kyler, Sigardian Emissary
Record against Kyler, Sigardian Emissary 3-0
This is a very good matchup for us; while we don’t have a ton of removal in the deck, we have enough to consistently keep Kyler off of the board which allows us to be pretty well-positioned since Kyler is a huge part of their deck, the consistent card draw helps an absolute ton and luckily since Selesnya has very little card draw so we can certainly win in the card advantage matchup.
Doran, the Siege Tower
Record against Doran, the Siege Tower 4-2
Doran is a good matchup for us, we have a decent amount of removal which allows us to take away their commander and our commander and all of our squirrels can make us decently strong at blocking their high toughness attacks, a great hand for Doran can certainly spell disaster for us but is overall a favorable matchup, pack some extra removal for this one!
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Tergrid, God of Fright // Tergrid's Lantern
Record against Tergrid, God of Fright 0-5
This is a pretty horrific matchup for us and one of the worst we can face, not only does their commander steal our stuff but there are so many sacrifice effects within the deck that it can be extremely hard to keep our commander or anything on the board, if they have a slow start and we can knock them out early that’s our only chance.
Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might // Temple of Power
Record against Ojer Axonil 1-5
This is not an easy matchup as they don’t care at all about our entire gameplan and focus on raw damage; because of this, they are a little faster than us. Their commander is their entire deck, though, so if you are able to slow them down or consistently kill their commander, that is the best way to sneak out a win.
Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
Record against Grand Arbiter 0-3
Whether its built as a control shell or a stax shell this commander is oppressive and tough for us to beat, the higher costs disrupts our entire gameplan and we don’t have much recourse to fight against any kind of counterspells or board wipes. Even if we are able to keep their commander off of the board this is an extremely tough matchup for us, the best way to win is to gang up on the Grand Arbiter and hit them with everything we can.
Deck Overview:
This section contains information about cards in the deck and how they function within the deck! I also highlighted some of my favorite cards in the deck!
Creatures:
Since we have a decent amount of Food production within the deck, we absolutely had to include Academy Manufactor
, which needs no introduction and is a powerhouse. the mana advantage and card draw advantage it can provide are very strong and can put us very far past our opponents. Speaking of food synergies, we also have Ygra, Eater of All
, which isn’t a squirrel but is a huge creature that only gets bigger and badder and we can turn our tokens into foods which is very strong, In my testing games I was easily able to one-shot my opponents with Ygra. Peregrin Took
is another great food enabler, and since it only cares about tokens being made, we are able to make a ton of food off Took. I also love Hazel of the Rootbloom
, which is a ton of mana production and being able to make a copy of a token and double if it is a squirrel; this works perfectly with our commander and allows us to maximize our board presence and works very well with our commander. We, of course, have a ton of awesome squirrels in the deck, like Honored Dreyleader
and Scurry of Squirrels
, which can make our board get out of hand very quickly. Valley Mightcaller
may not be a squirrel but benefits from other squirrels ETB’ing and can hit extremely hard, I have closed out games with this card multiple times in testing. Valley Rotcaller
is another ridiculous card and can really hurt our opponents, because of our commander we are easily able to keep them alive at least in combat.
Instants:
A good majority of our instant package focuses on removal, this allows us to slow down or stop our opponents and stop our opponents from winning the game. Cache Grab
is super nice because we can get some additional card selections and get some food tokens. There isn’t too much to say about our instant package, we have a lot of great removal spells and not much else.
Sorceries:
At sorcery speed, we can produce an absolute ton of tokens, with one of the best spells being Chatterstorm
. While we can’t get the storm count crazy high, we can still get a decent amount of production out of it. We also have Acorn Harvest
and Chatter of the Squirrel
these are both pretty strong ways to get more tokens and raise the storm count if we want to cast a big Chatterstorm. One of my favorite sorceries in the deck is Swarmyard Massacre
, which can be a great token producer for us and board wipe for our opponents; since it is in the form of -1/-1 counters, we are able to take out even the biggest and worst indestructible creatures.
Artifacts:
While likely not the most optimized choice we absolutely had to include Acorn Catapult
which can be a great way to finish off opponent’s low-health creatures or we can target our things and just make more and more skills, Acorn Catapult also works very well with Skullclamp
which needs absolutely no introduction and is a ridiculous source of card draw for the deck. All of our tokens and skull clamp also work with Sword of the Squeak
, which can give a huge buff to our creatures; I love putting this on our commander and hitting super hard, being able to easily and cheaply equip it helps as well. Chitterspitter
is one of the best cards in our deck. It can provide a huge buff and is a decent token producer; this card can get out of hand quickly, so I try to maximize the buff by sacrificing every turn, typically this gets targeted pretty quickly.
Enchantments:
Since we are a combat deck that typically floods the board with creatures we can easily turn on Beastmaster Ascension
and once we get it turned on we are extremely hard to stop in combat even without our commander out. Since we make quite a bit of food tokens and squirrel tokens we get a ton of value out of Parallel Lives
, one point of warning with this. All eyes will be on you when you cast this; I always wait till I’m ready to withstand what my opponents will throw at me. Squirrel Nest
and Squirrel Sanctuary
are both cheap and consistent ways to make more and more squirrels, which is perfect for our deck and allows us to get more and more uses out of commanders, ability and hit for more damage. All of these token producers work very well with Growing Rites of Itlimoc // Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun
, which is very easy to flip in this deck and produces a crazy amount of mana, having a little bit worse version of Gaea's Cradle
is perfect for this deck. Since EDH is full to the brim with removal and we have a lot of small tokens, a lot of our creatures die; since we are in Golgari we can get some benefits off of that with cards like Moldervine Reclamation
which can give us life and cards, which is a huge win-win for the deck, the life can especially matter against more aggressive strategies.
Land Base:
We have a very strong landbase that focuses on getting our colors established and being as fast as possible, we don’t have a ton of one drops in the deck, so being able to play an untapped land typically doesn’t matter a lot to us; but we do have some quicker lands like Overgrown Tomb
as well as a bunch of other duals. Mudflat Village
is a new land for the deck that is not only quite strong but flavorful as well; being able to recur one of our squirrels can be great since there is a ton of removal flying around the format. Oakhollow Village
is a part of the same cycle, and that +1/+1 counter can certainly make a difference, especially when we go to combat. This landbase overall is pretty simple but works well for the deck; because of the high density of dual lands, we are not running cards like Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
, and Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
as we don’t typically have any trouble getting our colors established. I typically look to keep two to three lands in a hand and found that is a great starting point, and we will almost always draw into more.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We tend to snowball pretty hard, and with our commander, we can translate that directly to cards and damage.
- With our commander, we have the ability to win easily in combat.
- We are decently well-positioned against aggressive strategies because we are able to gain a decent amount of life through our food tokens.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- Weak to artifact hate
- Weak to creature hate
- There is very little artifact/enchantment removal; Voltron decks can be a problem for us.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thank you for rocking with us during our hiatus! We have a ton of sweet Bloomburrow content coming this week; if you have any suggestions, let us know. I hope you all enjoyed The Odd Acorn Gang, they are certainly a fun, flavorful and interesting bunch. This deck is a ton of fun to play and surprisingly quite strong; this is a perfect deck to bring to an LGS or to your friend’s house to jam some fun games. If you love wacky decks, stay tuned. We have a ton more coming! Thanks for reading to the end and for all of your support!