Squirrels: Spicy Brew
Squirrels fills the board with 1/1 tokens from the first turn on, starting with Chatter of the Squirrel, which 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 lets a land tap for a Squirrel every turn for the rest of the game. Earthcraft is banned in Premodern, so the Nest doesn't go infinite here, but eight mana elves and two Birds of Paradise get the tokens out fast, and every token adds a mana to Gaea's Cradle, of which the deck plays four.
The payoff is Deranged Hermit, four Squirrels and a lord in one card, and Natural Order puts it onto the battlefield on turn three for four mana and a single token, though the Hermit's five-mana echo comes due in your next upkeep. Squirrel Mob gets +1/+1 for every other Squirrel, and a single Coat of Arms turns a board of eight tokens into eight 8/8s (the deck plays three), while the Elves pump each other too. The spicy part is Karona, False God, a 5/5 with haste that costs all five colors. Natural Order can put her into play, and whenever she attacks, creatures of the type you choose get +3/+3. Order her in, attack with all the Squirrels the same turn, and the game is often over before she switches sides in the opponent's upkeep. If you ever have to cast her, Crystal Quarry turns five Cradle mana into all five colors, and Crop Rotation finds the Quarry, a Cradle, a Treetop Village or, after sideboarding, a Glacial Chasm against burn. Verdant Force is the honest Natural Order target when a 7/7 that makes a token every upkeep is enough.
The sideboard is set up for the current field: 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, Goblin Sharpshooter and Hermit Druid (the deck can live without its own elves' mana because Cradle and the Nests 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, JuanMi Zamora's Squirrels with Overrun and Squirrel Wrangler in place of Coat of Arms and Karona, went 2-3 and finished in the top 32 of the 39-player Agroliga Live Valdepeñas on 15 August 2026. This 75 is DFroster's Moxfield build, last updated 6 September 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
