Hey Y'all!

BPRadiant back with another list for everyone to try out featuring one of my most anticipated commanders in Chatterfang, Squirrel General. First if you don't feel like reading all of this and want to actually watch the games you can do so at the YouTube link right below. And below that I've posted the link to the decklist.

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF7lq3zAQeY

Deck Tech

So first and foremost we are a mixture of an aggro deck and a combo deck. I'm always drawn to combo based commanders ever since I got a chance to play Riku and Animar when commander became an official product. So I'll always gravatate towards making them when given the opportunity. We are aiming to either combo out on our opponent to drain them to 0 or we are looking to go wide with a token strategy to race them down and overwhelm their blockers.

What is the Combo?

Well the main combo is going to be with Pitiless Plunderer and Chatterfang. This is a two card combo that with one other squirrel and a black mana lets you clear your opponents board infinitley. And if you add in a drain effect like Blood Artist then you have a way to win the game. If your opponent doesn't have creatures you need to simply target chatterfang and then hold priority to keep stacking the chatterfang effect while saccing squirrels gaining treasure and squirrels and draining your opponent. It's fairly simple and does take a bit of clicking but usually opponents scoop it up to it after a few turns.

Now we didn't put a ton of ways to tutor for our combo pieces in the deck since I did want to try to make it more about the good squirrel cards we got in as well as keep our options open to aggro if our Plunderer gets exiled for some reason. So we are running a few ways to create a ton of tokens and then gain some synergy with the lord effect and since we can go wide Craterhoof is the best option in green to close out games.

The deck has a lot of outs to any given situation and I think that it is important to know what they are and do your best to play to them. You need to figure out what your opponent is going to be doing so that you can adapt your gameplan accordingly.

Matchups

Aggro - Probably one of the easier matchups since we have board wipes and ways to get out a good number of blockers. Its very easy to stabilize with any of our board advantage pieces in the mid game then using our board to destroy theirs. The important thing here is avoid playing Chatterfang until we are getting value out of him same turn as the uptik in mana cost hurts us the most in this matchup. We are looking to go creature based in this matchup unless you have the combo early on. Then look for a shields down turn to take it.

Midrange - We have to determine if our opponent is a midrange creature synergy or if they are using artifacts and enchantments to create their synergy. This way we know if we need to save removal in the early turns for key creatures or if we should instead focus on trying to be the beatdown on them while they get their midgame strategy setup. You're gonna try to get them low enough that you can go wide as they stabilize with Champion of Lambholt, Craterhoof, or drain effects when they block.

Control - One of our tougher matchups as a combo deck. Here we want to mulligan at least once looking for Toski or Early spells that we can start double spelling. It's fine casting our commander once to try to eat a counter. But if you can wait to try to double spell him out that's good too. When you do double up on spells hold your land for the turn usually as they will have to evaluate if you've got it and what you can do with it. We go low enough that if we can force them to counter instead of draw we can get a good turn around turn 5 or 6 to try to get our board state set. Then we just have to hold on.

Combo - We have a very early combo and its very hard to interrupt compared to some I've seen. If you think they are running combo save removal especially Krosan Grip as it is one of the best combo stoppers our deck has. We can also stop creature based combos pretty well with Chatterfang. This matchup is very easy unless they are boardwipe.deck until they assemble the pieces.

Cards That Have Overperformed

Treasure Vault - This card is a staple in the deck now after trying it. It sets up so many insane turns that I've really never had opponents expecting. Late game setting you up to be up like 6 mana or even developing a board state out of no where for blocks. This card has been a lynchpin of my deck.

Skemfar Shadowsage - This card draining for a big number when the board is gummed up has won me some matches. I'm very happy with the card so far. I could see myself replacing it but I'm currently very high on this card.

Black Market - This card is generally a good card but since we are dealing with a ton of creatures usually this gets a lot of mana fast. The few times I've untapped with it have felt very impactful and it is basically a kill on sight card for our opponents when it sometimes doesn't need to be. Really like how much heat this card draws.

Ruthless Knave - This card is really effective at worst being pay 1 mana make a squirrel. At best getting to dumb free mana into treasure tokens and squirrels. This has been a really great card at letting us accelerate our game plan faster than our opponents.

Wrap Up

So I'm trying something a bit new where I really want to go in more depth with my deck techs instead of going for a higher quantity. I'm gonna do my best to refine my writeups to more what I would post on r/spikes so that you actually have a good idea of what you're going to find when you play the deck. I had a lot of fun with this commander and I do see myself adjusting the deck as sets come into the format. The biggest change I'm thinking now is that if you want to lean into the combo more I think Old Gnawbone could be replaced with a shared summons to tutor out the combo pieces.

I hope you enjoyed the read and if you have any questions or criticism let me know.

As Always Be Radiant!