Bloomburrow preview season officially began today with the debut video and Weekly MTG stream showcasing oodles of cards, Booster Fun treatments, mechanics, and more.
Ian Duke and Oliver Tiu joined Blake Rasmussen on Weekly MTG to discuss the design behind the new cards and show off their previews.
We will kick things off with a reminder of the Bloomburrow set symbols.
From there, let’s check out the lone planeswalker from the main set — Ral, Crackling Wit.
And how about the legendary land for Three Tree City!
Now, dive into the mechanics from Bloomburrow.
Offspring
Offspring is a new keyword found on creature cards that is the latest tweak on kicker. It’s an optional additional cost which you can pay as you cast the card. If you do pay, when the creature enters, you create a token that’s a copy of it, except the token is 1/1.
Gift
Gift is a keyword that represents an additional cost for spells that let you get a stronger effect if you give an opponent a gift, whether that be a Fish token, a card, or something like a Food token.
Class
Class enchantments make their return after their debut in Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. This time the classes care about jobs and talents for the animalfolk in Bloomburrow.
Seasons
A cycle of five mythic rares in Bloomburrow are the Seasons — modal spells that utilize spell-specific resources called paws. Paws are self-contained to the casting of the card then you decide how to spend them. Each Season creates five paws that you can then allocate for whichever effects you want. Paws are not like energy, you can’t bank them for future spells so you should use them all when casting the spell.
Forage
Forage is a new keyword action that you can pay in various instances. To forage, either exile three cards from your graveyard or sacrifice a Food token.
Expend
Expend is a new rules term that tracks how much mana you’ve spent to cast spells over the course of the turn.
There are many specifics for how this mechanic works. Here is what you need to know about how it works:
- An ability like that can trigger only once each turn. It’s looking specifically for the fourth mana, not every fourth mana.
- The permanent with the ability needs to be on the battlefield to see you spend the mana. Notably, if you spend five mana to cast Junkblade Bruiser itself, its ability won’t see that. By the time it’s on the battlefield, you’re spending—at best—your sixth mana to cast spells that turn, so the ability will have to wait until next turn to trigger.
- It doesn’t matter what happened to the spells you cast. They could have resolved, not resolved, been countered, or they could even still be on the stack. You cast them. That’s the important thing.
- All mana you spend to cast the spells counts, not only mana to cover the mana cost. Additional costs such as offspring costs, alternative costs, and the like are all factored in.
Valiant
Valiant is a new ability word that functions similarly to heroic, but is restricted to once each turn and also triggers from being targeted by abilities like being equipped by equipment.
Calamity Beasts
Feast your eyes on a handful of the Calamity Beasts on Bloomburrow. These legendary Elemental creatures also come in special Borderless Field Notes treatments.
Legendary Creatures
Next up are some legendary creatures and their splashy Booster Fun variants.
Mentors
Take a look at some of the signpost multicolor uncommon Mentor creatures. Each creature type gets its own Mentor to clue in players what the type wants to be doing in the Limited format.
Common Hybrid Creatures
We also got to see a cycle of 10 common, hybrid creatures that will be crucial for Limited play. The creatures will fall into each color pair’s type and will lend themselves to multiple Sealed and Draft decks thanks to their mana costs.
Additional Previews
Check out a handful of other preview cards, mostly featuring punny names.
Imagine: Courageous Critters
The Imagine: Courageous Critters treatment will be used on 24 cards, showing cards as if they were transported to the world of Bloomburrow. Each Commander Deck will include one Courageous Critter while Collector Boosters will house the other 20. The treatment goes beyond planeswalkers, extending to creatures (some that were already animals) and even equipment like the previewed Sword of Ice and Fire. These cards will not be Standard legal (other than the Ral, Crackling Wit) and can be played in whatever formats they are already legal in.
Commander Decks
The face-cards for the four Commander Decks from Bloomburrow can be seen below with their corresponding decks.
Promos
The Buy-A-Box promo card for Bloomburrow is an extended-art version of Flubs, the Fool. The Bundle promo is an alternate-art Thundertrap Trainer.
The promo pack promos are Hop to It, Shoreline Looter, Fell, Wear Down, and Stormcatch Mentor.
Seasonal Three Tree City
The legendary land, Three Tree City, will feature four borderless seasonal treatments found in Play Boosters and Collector Boosters.
Autumn | Spring
Summer | Winter
Full-Art Seasonal Basic Lands
Each basic land in Bloomburrow gets a treatment for each season! These can be found in Play Boosters and Collector Boosters in non-foil and traditional foil.
Check out the Collecting Bloomburrow article from WotC for details on Booster Fun variants and specific card pull rates from packs.
Bloomburrow is scheduled to release on August 2. View our official preview gallery.
