Squirrels: Spicy Brew
Eighteen Squirrel cards, four Gaea's Cradle and a false god at the top of the curve. The deck floods the board with 1/1 tokens from turn one: Chatter of the Squirrel makes one for a single green mana and flashes back for two, Acorn Harvest makes two and flashes back for two mana and 3 life, and Squirrel Nest turns any Forest into a token every turn for as long as the game lasts. With the classic Earthcraft combo banned in Premodern, the Nest is honest here, but eight mana elves and Birds of Paradise mean the tokens arrive fast, and every one of them makes Cradle tap for more.
The payoff is Deranged Hermit, four Squirrels and a lord in one card, which Natural Order puts onto the battlefield on turn three for the price of a single token. Squirrel Mob grows with every other Squirrel in play, and three Coat of Arms in the main deck turn a board of eight tokens into eight 8/8s, with the Elves pumping each other on the side. The spice is Karona, False God: a 5/5 haste for five colours that Natural Order cheats out, and whenever she attacks, creatures of one type get +3/+3. Order her in, swing with the Squirrel horde the same turn and the game usually ends before she changes sides on the opponent's upkeep. Should you ever need to hard-cast her, Crystal Quarry turns five Cradle mana into all five colours, and Crop Rotation finds the Quarry, a Cradle, a Treetop Village or, after sideboarding, a Glacial Chasm against burn. Verdant Force is the fair Order target when a 7/7 that makes a token every upkeep is enough.
The sideboard is tuned for the current metagame: Naturalize and Crumble for Stax pieces, Dreadnought and Coat-of-Arms mirrors, three Tormod's Crypt for Reanimator and Angry Hermit, Cursed Totem against Goblin Welder, Sharpshooter and Hermit Druid (the deck can afford to lose its own elves' mana because Cradle and Nest keep working), Fecundity so every token that dies to a sweeper draws a card, and a Phantom Nishoba as the Natural Order target against aggro. A close cousin of this list, JuanMi Zamora's Squirrels with Overrun and Squirrel Wrangler in the main deck instead of Coat of Arms and Karona, went 2-3 for a Top 32 finish in the 39-player Agroliga Live Valdepeñas on August 15, 2026. This exact 75 is DFroster's Moxfield build, last updated September 6, 2026.
Mainboard
- 4× Llanowar Elves
- 4× Fyndhorn Elves
- 2× Birds of Paradise
- 4× Squirrel Mob
- 4× Deranged Hermit
- 1× Verdant Force
- 1× Karona, False God
- 4× Crop Rotation
- 4× Chatter of the Squirrel
- 2× Acorn Harvest
- 4× Natural Order
- 4× Squirrel Nest
- 3× Coat of Arms
- 4× Gaea's Cradle
- 1× Crystal Quarry
- 1× Treetop Village
- 13× Forest
Sideboard
- 4× Naturalize
- 3× Tormod's Crypt
- 3× Fecundity
- 2× Cursed Totem
- 1× Crumble
- 1× Glacial Chasm
- 1× Phantom Nishoba
