Upgrading Commander Precon - Squirreled Away (Hazel of the Rootbloom)

Bloomburrow is finally here, and there is a cute little furry friend for everyone! Birds, Badgers, Lizards, Rabbits, Squirrels, and much more. And, of course, we got the product all Commander players eagerly await for any time a set comes out : four new precon Commander decks with this set! All four include several new, exclusive cards, by the way.

So, as usual, we brought you a guide on how to upgrade these decks! Today, we picked Squirreled Away, a deck focused on Squirrels and tokens, with Hazel of the Rootbloom as the commander.

This is a Golgari deck, a color combination already known for its Squirrel decks, with cards like Chatterfang, Squirrel General, for instance. This card was even included in the original "Squirreled Away" precon!

Its commander, Hazel of the Rootbloom, focuses on creature tokens and is even better when paired with Squirrel tokens.

This list offers both Hazel of the Rootbloom and The Odd Acorn Gang as commanders, but we decided to use Hazel as our commander to take advantage of the fact the original list already creates many tokens.

At the end of this article, as usual, we'll show you an alternative list with The Odd Acorn Gang as the commander. It focuses a bit more on Squirrels, and not only tokens.

Hazel of the Rootbloom is a mana dork, as it creates mana according to how many tokens you control. It is also not limited to any specific type of permanent, so Food and Treasure tokens also count. Cards like Academy Manufactor or Tireless Provisioner will be great tools for you when it's time to create mana. Hazel also creates a good number of tokens, and creates even more Squirrel tokens. We'll take advantage of the mana it creates to cast several spells at once or just really expensive spells.

Cards We Removed

The original list has 38 lands. As Hazel itself is a mana dork, and we also have many other mana rocks like Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Talisman of Resilience, and Golgari Signet, we decided to remove 3 lands: one basic land of each, and Viridescent Bog.

We also removed some weaker cards like Wolfwillow Haven and Nested Shambler. As usual, we need to open up some space for our upgrades, so we even had to remove cards that are relatively stronger in this theme, like Arasta of the Endless Web, Chittering Witch, and Moonstone Eulogist. Finally, we removed the other cards listed above.

Squirrels and More Squirrels

Many other Squirrels were released in Bloomburrow, but they weren't in this precon, so we just added them. One of them, for instance, was Camellia, the Seedmiser.

Camellia fits this build like a glove: she both has and provides evasion to your Squirrels with menace, creates Squirrel tokens when you sacrifice Food, and also buffs your Squirrels with +1/+1 counters with her activated ability. Because of this ability's Forage (sacrifice a Food), you'll create one Squirrel token before you put any counters on them. A creature as well-rounded for this archetype as this one was definitely a must.

Valley Rotcaller was also essential, particularly as it can be a finisher. When Valley Rotcaller attacks, each opponent loses life and you gain life equal to how many Squirrels, Bats, Lizards, and Rats you control. Coincidently, the original list has a few of these creatures besides just Squirrels.

It can deal a lot of damage to your opponents and give you a lot of life at the same time.

Thornvault Forager is a mana dork with great abilities: you could use it to create just one green mana, create two mana of any combination with its Forage, or look for a Squirrel in your deck and put it in your hand. With it, we can get Camellia, Valley Rotcaller, Chatterfang, Squirrel General, Toski, Bearer of Secrets, or any other creature in our deck, if Maskwood Nexus is on the board. It is a cool interaction that lets us tutor any creature we need, be it to create more tokens or just finish the game.

Finally, we added a last-minute Squirrel from Bloomburrow, Osteomancer Adept. You can easily pay for its Forage with a Food in this build.

Despite its finality counter, retrieving resources from our graveyard is always relevant, particularly when you can get cards as important and impactful as Academy Manufactor, Beledros Witherbloom, or finishers, like the aforementioned Valley Rotcaller and End-Raze Forerunners.

It is not that easy to find a Kindred deck that doesn't play Roaming Throne for some more damage. Roaming Throne triggers several Squirrels: the commander itself, Valley Rotcaller, Toski, Bearer of Secrets, The Odd Acorn Gang, Camellia, the Seedmiser, and many others.

You can also just name another creature type if you have to: Dragon will give you more tokens with Beledros Witherbloom, Humans will give you more damage with Zulaport Cutthroat, and Boar will give your creatures +4/+4 with End-Raze Forerunners.

To complete this Squirrel section, we also added Squirrel Mob to our upgrade because it could get quite big and deal a lot of damage.

More Resources and Win Conditions (Combos!)

This section is a big controversial: we also added many combo cards to this build. If you would rather not add them to your version, no problem! It's more important to have fun and pilot a deck you actually enjoy.

The combo cards we added to this deck were Pitiless Plunderer, Warren Soultrader, Peregrin Took, and Nuka-Cola Vending Machine.

First, the Pitiless Plunderer combo: anyone who is used to playing Squirrels knows he works with Chatterfang, Squirrel General. Both need to be on the board, and you need to sacrifice two Squirrels with Chatterfang's ability. When these die, they'll create two Treasure tokens because of Pitiless Plunderer, and these two Treasure tokens will give you two Squirrel tokens as well.

So, when you activate Chatterfang's ability again as you sacrifice just one Squirrel, this process will repeat, and this way give you infinite mana with infinite Treasures, and infinite removals thanks to Chatterfang's ability and your creatures dying infinitely. If you have Zulaport Cutthroat, Poison-Tip Archer, or Bastion of Remembrance on the board, you'll simply win the game.

There's another combo with Chattefang: with it, Warren Soultrader, and Prosperous Innkeeper on the board, when you sacrifice a creature besides these three with Warren Soultrader's ability, you'll create a Treasure token, and a Squirrel token.

You'll gain 1 life from Prosperous Innkeeper's ability, and you'll also have infinite Treasure tokens, consequently infinite mana, and infinite deaths.

Finally, we have the Peregrin Took Nuka-Cola Vending Machine combo.

With these two on the board, you just need to sacrifice three Food to draw a card with Peregrin Took's ability. This triggers Nuka-Cola Vending Machine three times, and that creates three Food because of Peregrin Took's ability, as well as three tapped Treasures. This way, you can draw your entire deck and get numerous Treasures, but they'll be tapped.

I'll stress that all of these cards are great in this deck and work regardless of their combos, so it's up to you to add them, as we mentioned before.

Finally, we added some recursive cards that work really well with our strategy. Jaheira, Friend of the Forest will give us even more mana from our tokens, which can be quite useful if Hazel isn't on the board. Mirkwood Bats deals damage to our opponents when we create and sacrifice tokens, and is also a way to finish the game. You can either ping your opponents bit by bit, or use it in one of the combos we mentioned before.

This is it, our upgraded Squirreled Away decklist! We added 12 new cards to make the deck's strategy a bit more consistent and powerful.

The original list is already quite strong for a precon, and apparently already does a lot of damage. With these upgrades, you'll gnaw on your opponents like a hazel!

Alternative list with The Odd Acorn Gang

This is the list we built specifically for The Odd Acorn Gang, like we mentioned before. It's very similar to our upgraded Hazel list, but it doesn't have any combos.

It has a few specific removals and lands, like the new Three Tree City, a great land for Kindred decks. With this list, you can either win with commander damage, or just put an endless army of Squirrels on the board.

Squirreled Away is definitely the most popular precon among all 4! Squirrels have been popular for dozens of years, and this deck only proves how the community loves them. It seems quite fun to pilot, even without combos. Strong and fun!

Did you like this list? Do you prefer the other commander? Did you miss any cards? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below!

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!