Singleton Shmingleton - Overrun
August 15, 2024 by
Jesse Barker Plotkin 
(Overrun | Art by Carl Critchlow)
Nature Doesn't Walk.
Hello, and welcome back to Singleton Shmingleton, where I bend the singleton rules of Commander by building decks with as many functional reprints of a certain card as possible. This week's card is an iconic piece of green's identity, a former menace in Commander and draft, and a piece of art I'd recognize anywhere. It's Overrun. For five mana, you can turn all of your creatures into huge trampling machines, flawlessly integrating two of green's conflicting themes: going wide with small tokens, and summoning massive beaters to smash opponents. With Overrun, you can have your cake and eat it too.
First printed in Tempest in 1997, Overrun has a much longer relationship with the game than I do. By the time I started playing the game, Overrun was entirely absent from competitive formats, though it still captured the minds of kitchen table and Commander players. At that time, I was playing a mono-green deck against my brother that ran about five Savage Silhouettes and a pair of Oakgnarl Warriors, and Overrun was always my best draw. The card has ended games for over twenty-five years, and despite decades of power creep, it still converts a board full of creatures into a lethal attack.
And because Overrun has become such an iconic part of the color green, power creep has embraced it rather than tossing it aside. We have received a new Overrun variant every year or so for the last ten years, and we now have quite a collection. Some of them are stapled to creatures, some dabble into other colors, some are supercharged for a high cost, others are miniature, but they all get your board pumped up for an attack. The interpretations have ranged widely, from Storm the Seedcore's limited but flexible pump to Kamahl, Heart of Krosa's semi-permanent buff, but I chose to only include the one-time immediate effects. By my count, there are seventeen instants, sorceries, and creatures that give you a one-time boost to your team and trample. Here they are:
Overruns
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The most played card on this list, to nobody's surprise, is Craterhoof Behemoth, crashing into 125,280 decks. It remains the premium one-card win condition in green, and ends games with ridiculously little support. What did surprise me was the fact that the second-most played card, Overwhelming Stampede, was right on its heels with 113,521 decks. I still think of this card as a bit of a sleeper, but maybe it's finally found the recognition it deserves. Overrun itself slots into a respectable 39,406 decks, partly because it has been included in almost a dozen preconstructed decks, and partly because of it continues to resonate with players. The least played of these cards, in only 97 decks, is Hustle // Bustle. The color identity doesn't help, but the flexibility is nice, and the ability to flip over a Morph for free seems darn powerful in the right deck. This card should see more play, even if only in a very specialized deck.
Let's Get Pumped!
Overrun and friends obviously reward us for having a lot of creatures in play. With three creatures on the board, Overrun gives us a total of +9 power, but with ten creatures, it gives us +30. For it to begin to knock players out, we'll want to be generating double digits numbers of creatures. Cards like Awakening Zone can give us tokens at a steady pace, where cards like Cadira, Caller of the Small will effectively double any tokens we have, and something like Pest Infestation adds tokens onto an effect we wouldn't hate playing already. Since we're in green, we can add extra creatures right into our ramp package in the form of mana dorks - Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elves, and the like.
There's another kind of token producer that really interests me for this deck, however. Cards like Living Hive and Rapacious One give us tokens equal to the amount of damage they deal to an opponent, which rewards us for pumping them with our Overruns while also fueling later Overruns. This turns our mass-pump spells from strictly a way to end the game into more of an engine that is less likely to get stuck in our hands. There's even a commander with this ability: Tana, the Bloodsower. She's super flexible because of her Partner ability, letting us add almost any colors we want to her identity. There are a lot of exciting cards for this deck in white, so I chose to pair her with Prava of the Steel Legion, another token payoff.
In the last few years, we've received a lot more of these effects, at a much cheaper rate than Living Hive. Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin comes down at three mana, grows quickly, and doesn't even need to connect to make the tokens. Tervigon and Jacked Rabbit come with flexible costs and scale with the pace of the game. Outside of creatures, Pollenbright Wings can grant this ability to any creature we want, and gives it flying, while Scepter of Celebration can move from one creature to another. It won't usually be correct, but you can even enchant your opponents' big creatures with Pollenbright Wings, and because you control the enchantment, you'll still the tokens when it deals damage.
We need a way to pump these creatures up before making tokens, so I've added a couple of creatures that do that while also synergizing with our later mass pump effects. Wild Beastmaster can pump our team a little early, maybe giving us an extra token or two, but in the late game it pretty nearly doubles our Overrun effects. Cultivator of Blades works almost the same way, but also gives us the choice between a bigger body and some Servos on the side.
Resiliency
As it stands right now, this strategy can create some powerful boards, but might run out of steam if the board gets wiped once. By adding some card draw, not only can we reduce the risk of running out of steam in the face of interaction, but we can also dig for more pieces to keep our engine going. The deck really hums when we can play an Overrun every turn, building upon the creatures the last one let us create. Return of the Wildspeaker is some of the best card draw in green, while also being on-theme with its +3/+3 mode. Rite of Harmony can go crazy in this deck with the amount of tokens we create in a turn, and we can guarantee that it will draw a grip of cards by casting it in response to one of our damage triggers that creates tokens. And the new Caretaker's Talent gives us a steady stream of cards while also threatening to turn into a permanent mass pump.
Some Standouts
Here are some cards that really tick within this deck:
Sword of the Squeak: I love this new card, and here is the perfect home for it. Every hit we get in with Tana, the Bloodsower or another one of our token-makers will make the next hit bigger.
Sprout Swarm: An absolute classic that should see more play in Commander. It's not a splashy effect, but having it in hand lets us tap five newly-created tokens to make another one, whenever we want. It's especially exciting with Caretaker's Talent as a way to draw a card on each of our opponents' turns as well as our own. March of the Multitudes gives us a similar effect that is more explosive, but can only be used once.
Emergence Zone: While I do believe that math is for blockers, it is a very important part of playing this deck, and this land can change a lot of combat math. Most of our Overrun effects are at sorcery speed, which means they can't pump the tokens that cards like Adeline, Resplendent Cathar and Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon create tapped and attacking. But Emergence Zone lets us create those tokens and then pump them.
Jaheira, Friend of the Forest: Since this deck is playing Craterhoof Behemoth, Decimator of the Provinces, and End-Raze Forerunners (Not to mention Kamahl, Heart of Krosa and Living Hive), we need a lot of mana. This deck is much more focused on creating an overwhelming board presence than doing it fast. But Jaheira, Friend of the Forest can change that all in a moment. She acts almost as a Gaea's Cradle, but at less than one hundredth of the cost.
Engineered Might: I was not excited to put this card in the deck at first, and it is one of the least played Overruns out there, but in this exact deck, both modes are super relevant. In the initial stages, +5/+5 on the creature that will make tokens is a huge boost, and later on it can pump our army almost as well as any other Overrun.
The Decklist
Tana Overrun
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I love playing this deck. The engine of mass pump effects plus Jacked Rabbit creatures feels powerful and fresh, and the sheer amount of power we can put into play is astounding. Get ready to do a lot of math very quickly, because this deck often wins by attacking with over twenty creatures with two or three effects modifying their power. But then again, at that point you don't need to do much math. The real challenge is in the intermediate stages, where an Overrun might knock out one player, but might also come at a high cost. In a format that often turns into a stalemate as everyone tries to go bigger than everyone else, this deck can go the biggest, and that's worth quite a bit. Board wipes are hard to recover from, but that's the cost of dealing in creatures and pump spells, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Until Next Time
Green remains the only color that is able to return any type of card from the graveyard, and that's a powerful effect. Regrowth is as old as the game, and it and its cousin Eternal Witness have been staples as long as Commander has existed. I usually think of these cards as solid value pieces, but not as being central to a strategy, but maybe that will all change with this next deck. Find out next time on Singleton Shmingleton!
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Jesse Barker Plotkin
Jesse Barker Plotkin started playing Magic with Innistrad. He was disqualified from his first Commander game after he played his second copy of Goblins of the Flarg, and it's all been uphill from there. Outside of Magic, he enjoys writing and running.
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