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Chatterfang, Squirrel General is one of the many commanders available inMagic: The Gathering’sCommander format. It is one of the most popular choices for a Squirrel commander, as well as a great token commander, giving you a variety of options to play with when making your deck.
Chatterfang, Squirrel General has a Golgari (black/green) color identity, and has a plethora of support cards to back it up. The deck also has a lot of combo enablers to win the game out of nowhere, as well as other routes to go down to let you win the game through multiple means.
Hazel of the Rootbloom
Chatter of the Squirrel
Triumph of the Hordes
x11 Forest
x6 Swamp
Blooming Marsh
Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
The deck contains 34 creatures, ten sorceries, five instants, 11 artifacts, five enchantments, and 34 lands. The deck is primarily built around cards that are either Squirrels, generate tokens, and benefit from creatures dying, leading the creatures being the primary card type of the deck.
What Are The Key Cards?
Chatterfang, Squirrel General
Chatterfang, Squirrel Generalis the commander of the deck, and the main card you want to focus on. Chatterfang enables much of your deck to work properly,turning any of your tokensinto Squirrel tokens you can sacrifice for removal.
Chatterfang helps you toflood the battlefieldwith creatures while also give you aconstant source of removal or stat-boosting, whatever you need for the given gamestate. Since Chatterfang has such a low mana cost, you can cast it early in the game to start taking advantage of it right away.
Pitiless Plunderer
Pitiless Plundereris one of the best cards in the deck. It turns anycreature you controldying into a Treasuretoken, which withChatterfang on the battlefield,gives you a Squirrel tokento boot. This can be done both with sacrifice outlets as well as with Chatterfang itself.
If Chatterfang and Pitiless Plunderer are both on the battlefield, you have an infinite combo so long as you have one black mana and a Squirrel that’s not Chatterfang to sacrifice. Simplyactivate Chatterfang to sacrifice a creature, then Pitiless Plunderer will make a Treasure and Chatterfang will make a Squirrel. This gives you infinite death triggers, infinite enter-the-battlefield triggers, and the ability to make all your opponents' creatures have zero toughness to remove them.
You can turn this combo into a win condition ifMirkwood Bats, Bastion of Remembrance, or any card that does burn damage when a creature dies is on the battlefield since you can cause infinite creature deaths through this method.
Scurry Oak
Scurry Oakis a major combo enabler, with multiple ways to create aninfinite number of Squirrel tokensto give it an infinite number of +1/+1 counters. Even without the combos, it is a solid card that gets progressively bigger and becomes more threatening as the game goes on.
The two ways to go infinite are withIvy Lane DenizenandCoat of Arms. Ivy Lane Denizen puts a +1/+1 counter on Scurry Oak, which creates a green Squirrel token, which triggers Ivy Lane Denizen to put another counter on Scurry Oak to make infinite creatures and give Scurry Oak infinite power and toughness. This also generates infinite enter-the-battlefield triggers.
The other combo uses Coat of Arms.You need a way to put a +1/+1 counter on Scurry Oak, such as its evolve ability, which will put the counter on it. Since the Squirrel that enters will automatically have higher power/toughness thanks to Coat of Arms' stat boosting, Scurry Oak’s evolve ability triggers to make infinite Squirrel tokens with essentially infinite power and toughness.
Mirkwood Bats
Mirkwood Batsis what turns the constant token generation a Chatterfang does into burn damage, and punishes your opponents for removing them. Since the burn triggers off of any token entering the battlefield or being sacrificed, the damage it racks up gets out of hand very quickly since with Chatterfang your token generation is generally doubled.
If you are going the infinite combo routes available in a Chatterfang deck,Mirkwood Batsenables infinite burn damage to all of your opponents. This makes it easier to close out a game if you do not win through combat.
How To Play The Deck
A Chatterfang, Squirrel General deckis built around creating tokens and amassing a large battlefield of Squirrelsto overpower your opponents before they can get set up. Due to the low casting cost of most of your cards, Chatterfang can get out of hand very quickly, and force your opponents to have answers they realistically won’t have access to.
Chatterfang decks have a lot of resilience, making it easy to come back from board wipes. It can ramp very quickly, thanks to being able to turn your tokens into mana dorks with cards likeJaheira, Friend of the ForestandInsidious Roots.
There’s aton of draw power in the deck, letting you draw into your main combo enablers faster. Cards that draw and make a token likeDeadly DisputeandFanatical Offeringalso net you a Squirrel token if Chatterfang is on the battlefield.
There are a lot of different win conditions that a Chatterfang deck has. One win condition iswinning through combatby overwhelming your opponents with too many Squirrel tokens to manage, especially ifCoat of Armsis on the battlefield. Another way to win is throughinfinite combosthat can burn out your opponent or give you an infinite amount of tokens that if you untap with, wins you the game.
Since Chatterfang sets up so quickly,you will likely become the public enemy quickly. This means you will need to make some Squirrel tokens fast to act as blockers to avoid being targeted too hard before you get set up. There isn’t a ton of removal in the deck, so if you can only take one person out of the game, make sure it’s the person whose the biggest threat to you.
The cards that a Chatterfang deck plays offer a lot of consistency, from Squirrel tutors likeThornvault ForagertoThe Odd Acorn Ganggiving you card draw whenever a Squirrel deals combat damage to a player.
