There are a couple of things I love above all else when deckbuilding: when an idea evolves over time and when that idea kind of turns convention on its head. This deck does both of those things: you have a token deck that serves a huge value engine and operates with a huge side win condition that focuses on group slug. It all started with Earl of Squirrel being spoiled and I started thinking of what it would be like to play a squirrel tribal deck but considering I would have to force it hard and do all kinds of stupid stuff to make it work as there wasn't a lot of legal squirrel token generators at the time, nor was there a lot of synergy among squirrel creatures at that time. I always wondered what it would be like to actually enact squirrel tribal and then some recent sets dropped some serious squirrel synergy so, after a while, it was a matter of finding a good legal Squirrel Commander that performed the way I want to and that's when I ran into Chatterfang, Squirrel General but it brought up a weird thing that I did not expect from a squirrel token commander: a black mana symbol with a sacrifice ability in the oracle text. So, that got me thinking: well, okay, I don't mind introducing black, that's almost always welcome, in my books, but how do I make it work in a cohesive way? Most of the time, when I'm thinking of Golgari, I think of something like Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons and Infect and creatures with Deathtouch and I suppose that's the kind of theme Golgari goes for, really, but something struck me out of nowhere as I remembered one of my very first built-from-scratch Commander decks that was trying to be a Jund value engine and I thought to myself: "Why do I need to have red to have a sacrifice-based value engine deck?" And after all of that, we've arrived at the deck in its current state, using sacrificing tokens as a means to an end to get me mana, cards, utility, or even, in some cases, get me more tokens. Each token death is meant to be significant, in its most ideal situation, providing me with up to three or four different types of triggers for each token sacrificed, the most significant of which will ping opponents for life and remove threats from the board. It's an unorthodox way for me to play a token deck but there's a lot of room for making this deck insanely good. Of course, though, this deck will slowly be getting better and better as the value engines are somewhat small for now, considering big-money cards like Grave Pact and Doubling Season aren't likely to come down in price anytime soon. Linchpin cards for all-in-one win conditions like Torment of Hailfire are coming, too, as well as protection from stuff like Narset's Reversal.

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96% Casual

Competitive

Revision 7 See all

(3 years ago)

+1 Black Market main
Date added 3 years
Last updated 3 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

2 - 0 Mythic Rares

36 - 0 Rares

26 - 0 Uncommons

17 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.03
Tokens Beast 3/3 G, Clue, Copy Clone, Eldrazi 10/10 C, Food, Human Soldier 1/1 W, Plant 0/1 G, Saproling 1/1 G, Shapeshifter 2/2 U, Squirrel 1/1 G, Treasure
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