If anything has been highlighted by recent set releases in Magic recently, it’s definitely Food. The Food Token synergy was at the core of Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth and is a crucial part of Wilds of Eldraine as well. Considering that these are the two most recent set releases as of the writing of this article, interest in this archetype for Commander purposes is understandable.
That said, there are a ton of new Food support cards to look at, many of which released at the same time! This can make choosing cards a little overwhelming. In order to point you in the right direction, we’re here to help!
For reference, Food Tokens themselves are not much to write home about. All they really do is sacrifice themselves for two mana to gain three life. While Food Tokens are not great on its own, there is a lot of support out there that can make this theme a force to be reckoned with.
Here are some of the best cards in Commander for Food decks!
Korvold, Fae-Cursed King
This dragon turns your sacrificial Food synergies up to an 11. Korvold, Fae-Cursed King draws cards at, seemingly, a slight sneeze. This makes Korvold one of the most powerful Commanders in general, and it does synergize quite well with Food decks. At littlest, Korvold turns each of your natural Food sacrifices into card draw and a +1/+1 counter. That said, efficient Food decks will be doing more than this, which turns Korvold into both a draw engine and a one-shot machine.
The downside for Korvold is his color identity. Thanks to Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, there is now a lot of benefit for Food decks to have both white and green in their color identities, which is not something Korvold has. That said, this card is so outright powerful that leaving white at home is definitely worth it. It just means that your Food theme will probably be diluted, which is not to everyone’s tastes.
Samwise Gamgee
Samwise Gamgee is probably one of the stronger Food-based Commanders to choose from. This Lord of the Rings character creates a ton of Food Tokens, making one appear every single time another creature enters the battlefield under your control. To make things better, Samwise Gamgee comes with a built-in payoff for your Food Tokens, allowing you to sacrifice them to return a Historic permanent to your hand from the grave. It can be difficult to put excess Food Tokens to good use, so this secondary ability’s importance cannot be understated.
Samwise does, however, force you to play a creature-heavy build that can take advantage of Samwise’s ETB abilities. If you’re looking for a Commander like Sam, Loyal Attendant that just makes Food passively, Samwise Gamgee may be better in the 99 than as your Commander, but the card is very valuable in both places.
If you want to take things to infinite combo territory, Samwise Gamgee also has that in spades.
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Trail of Crumbs
Trail of Crumbs is not the most exciting card in the world, but it is capable of granting something that Commander players direly need – relentless card advantage. Each time a Food is sacrificed, for the additional cost of one mana, Trail of Crumbs looks at the top two cards and adds one permanent among those to your hand.
As long as you have consistent food creation through means like Sam, Loyal Attendant, Trail of Crumbs can draw a ton of cards. The cost to play it is also rather small thanks to its low mana value.
Trail of Crumbs has been used in competitive formats to grind players into dust. In Commander, it ensures your theme has a way of keeping up with the rest of the table.
Night of Sweet’s Revenge
This new Wilds of Eldraine card features an incredibly powerful ability for a Food deck: turning your Food into mana rocks!
On top of creating a Food Token itself, Night of Sweet’s Revenge also allows your Food to tap for green mana. Since these tokens aren’t creatures, they won’t have any sort of Summoning Sickness to worry about, allowing you to tap your Food immediately. This can easily ramp up to powerful spells, closing the game in short order.
If that weren’t enough, Night of Sweet’s Revenge can also be a win condition! By sacrificing itself and paying seven mana, Night of Sweet’s Revenge offers a Craterhoof Behemoth style of buff (no Haste or Trample unfortunately) that can buff up a team of creatures to end the game outright.
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Peregrin Took/Chatterfang, Squirrel General
Peregrin Took and Chatterfang, Squirrel General don’t quite do the same thing. What they do share, however, is a replacement effect that cares about token creation. Peregrin Took grants an extra Food alongside token creation, making it the better pick of the two for Food decks. Chatterfang is also quite powerful, offering an additional Squirrel alongside your tokens.
Either way, both of these cards are capable of creating insane value every single time you create a Food Token. Considering your deck is set up to generate these each turn, these cards truly do create a ton of tokens.
Past that point, both cards come with their own payoffs, and Peregrin Took’s is easier to take advantage of since you can sacrifice Foods to draw a card. Chatterfang’s ability can be used to remove problematic creatures with smaller amounts of Toughness like Grand Abolisher.
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Academy Manufactor
If you’re interested in building Food in any format and have been curbing the MTG internet, you’ve likely run into a screenshot of someone creating an ungodly amount of tokens in a Food deck on Magic Online. More often than not, this is the card to blame.
Academy Manufactor will turn your Food token generators into Food, Treasure and Clue Token generators. Turning one token that gains three life into something that can draw cards and generates mana, as well as gain three life, is huge. This also occurs every time one Food, Clue or Treasure would be created, meaning that if something like Farmer Cotton creates ten Food tokens, you’re also going to get ten Clue and Treasure Tokens alongside it.
Doubling Season/Anointed Procession/Mondrak, Glory Dominus/Parallel Lives
These aren’t really Food cards, but they are cards that any Food deck would die for in Commander. Doubling Season and its likenesses are incredibly well known cards that doubles all tokens (and counters in the case of Doubling Season) that would be created for its owner. Instead of creating four Food tokens, why not create eight?
Things can get even further out of hand when other token doublers like Anointed Procession and Mondrak, Glory Dominus are in play simultaneously. These effects scale when combined, meaning that, in the situation where four Food Tokens are being created, each of these effects won’t just create four each. If this were the case, and all of the above cards were in play, you would end up with 20 Food Tokens.
Instead, each of these effects will see the number of Food Tokens being created by the previous effect and double it. In the instance that you’re creating four Food Tokens, Mondrak would make that eight. Anointed Procession would see eight, doubling it to 16. Doubling Season would see the 16 tokens and double it to 32. Parallel Lives can finish the chain, creating a total of 64 Food tokens.
If we listed these cards as separate instances, they would take up the entire list. To fix this, we just included them as one slot. Parallel Lives and Doubling Season also saw reprints on the Enchanted Tales list in Wilds of Eldraine, which should hopefully make them a lot cheaper to buy!
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