Last Friday, I gave my impressions on the first week of Bloomburrow previews through the eye of a Commander fan.
Today, I’m back to look at all the sweet cards that have been previewed this week! Like a cute bunny Rabbit, let’s hop to it!
Gift Giving
As I mentioned last week, I really love the gift mechanic for Commander since you can gift any opponent, not just the opponent you’re interacting with when casting the spell. This opens up room for politicking and dealing, which is one of the fun aspects of multiplayer.
Dawn’s Truce is basically Heroic Intervention for white, and even the slight downside of gifting a card could be a benefit in most games. And it gives you hexproof, which is slightly less useful but could be amazing sometimes. But white isn’t done: Starfall Invocation instantly rockets to the top of the heap of battlefield sweepers for white. One huge downside to a lot of sweepers is how much it sets back a game of Commander, extending the length of a game that is often already quite long. Paying the gift not only helps give a consolation prize to one of your opponents, but it brings back from the graveyard the biggest threat that died from the spell.
Then there’s Dewdrop Cure, quietly an eye-popping mass reanimation spell for small creatures! For three mana and a card gifted to your opponent, you can bring back to the battlefield three creatures with mana value two or less from your graveyard.
Coiling Rebirth is a fun reanimation spell, with the gift kicker getting you a 1/1 mini-me version of the reanimated creature, assuming it’s nonlegendary. Also, in black there’s Cruelclaw’s Heist; while I’m not generally a proponent of hand destruction in Commander, I do like that you get to steal the card and play it later from exile. Instead of just setting the opponent back, you’re also pushing ahead with a resource. You can even gift the person you’re targeting to make up for the heist.
New Legendary Creatures
Last week there were a bunch of legendary creatures previewed, and the hits keep coming this week. While I still don’t like the firehose of legendary creatures that have pushed into every Magic set in recent years, the high volume does mean every Commander fan should find at least one or two to get excited about.
The design of Eluge, the Shoreless Sea is an interesting puzzle. You obviously want a lot of Islands in your deck to maximize the size of Eluge, and you also want to put flood counters on your own lands to discount the instant and sorcery spells you want to cast… but flood counters don’t do anything else on a land that’s already an Island? I’ve always been a big proponent of utility lands in monocolor decks, and the flood counters will make them into Islands to boost Eluge over time. You might also have creatures with islandwalk in your deck and put flood counters on lands your opponents control.
I really like all the abilities stacked onto Kitsa, Otterball Elite. Vigilance is awesome in Commander, and the prowess ability will be tricksy in a blue deck with instant spells. Just two prowess triggers will let you use Kitsa’s activated ability, but there are many other ways to boost your commander’s power in Commander. Blackblade Reforged is one of my favorites!
Token fans are sure to love Baylen, the Haymaker! Whether it’s offspring tokens, Treasure tokens, Food tokens, or even Aura tokens, you can tap any or all of them for a wide variety of effects, all of which are quite good. With enough tokens, you can swell Baylen to truly haymaker size and crash in with trample!
I really like the theme of getting extra when you cast a creature spell with a mana value of four or greater, as exemplified on Helga, Skittish Seer. There are so many incentives for Commander players to make their decks leaner and more efficient – and more like tournament decks – that I truly appreciate incentives pushing in the opposite direction and more in keeping with the long traditions of playing big splashy spells in the format. Helga is another creature that will surely enjoy equipping with Blackblade Reforged.
The Infamous Cruelclaw has a delightful name that will be fun to say as much as possible in each game you play with it. Its ability is quite strong if you can connect with it, and I’d look to pair it with ways to take extra combat steps and permanents that give it double strike. If you want to go high-powered, you can use ways to stack the top of your deck, such as Vampiric Tutor, with some huge effect, such as Blood for the Blood God!, but I’d prefer to just spin the wheel and see what might come up!
Multi-Typal Matters
We finish out the “valley caller” cycle with three creatures that each care about multiple creature types, incentivizing cross-typal synergies. Valley Flamecaller and Valley Mightcaller strike me as aimed primarily for tournament decks, but I can see Valley Floodcaller playing quite well in an Otter-fueled spellslinger deck!
Paw Print Cards
The final two cards in the super-cute “paw print” cycle have been revealed, giving each color some sweet mix-and-match fun! Having “Gathering” on a Magic: The Gathering card feels good, and I really love all the options on Season of Gathering – there’s the game-finishing potential of the first mode, the utility of the second mode, and the raw card-drawing of the third mode. Season of the Burrow plays great with token strategies. It can exile a troubling nonland permanent or two, or bring back a cheap creature from the graveyard and give it an indestructible counter, making it much more resistant to removal. Big thumbs up on this entire cycle!
Classes
When I did my write-up last week, we’d seen two new Classes, and this week, we’ve seen a bunch more! Each seems solid but niche, slotting nicely into decks featuring particular strategies – Innkeeper’s Talent for +1/+1 counter decks, Caretaker’s Talent for token decks, Stormchaser’s Talent for spellslinger decks. Blacksmith’s Talent made me chuckle that it makes an Equipment card called “Sword”, given how many “Sword of X and Y” cards we’ve had over the years.
Other Cards
Okay, time for the lightning round, taking a look at individual cards that caught my eye beyond the grouping and cycles above!
For the Common Good
If you like token shenanigans, you’re going to love For the Common Good! Obviously this goes great with the offspring mechanic, but this will be best when you can make copies of big and powerful tokens, like those made with Helm of the Host; Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker; Rite of Replication; and Irenicus’s Vile Duplication. How about eternalized copies of Timeless Witness and Fanatic of Rhonas? To add to the sweetness of this card, all your tokens gain indestructible until your next turn, so barring an unfortunate mass exile effect like Farewell, you can count on your copies to do some work.
Stormsplitter
Now this is a storm payoff card I can get behind: attacking with a bunch of Otters! My mind immediately goes to ways to keep the token copies – think Sundial of the Infinite and Obeka, Brute Chronologist. I’ll have to take a look at my The Master, Multiplied deck to see if I have enough instant and sorcery spells to justify it there!
Darkstar Augur
So Dark Confidant grew Bat wings and can make a baby version of itself for an extra black mana? Seems pretty good to me! Seems unlikely to be all that great in most casual Commander decks, since the mana curve tends to be quite high, outside of decks with a lot of lifegain or life loss payoffs – Rakdos, Lord of Riots and Rowan, Scion of War spring to mind. High-powered and cEDH decks, though? This seems like a solid inclusion!
Fountainport
As a huge fan of utility lands, I’m excited about Fountainport! If your deck has a fair number of instant-speed reactive spells, this is a great way to use that mana you’ve held up but didn’t end up needing to cast your spell. I have a Zirda, the Dawnwaker deck that will absolutely love discounting all the activated abilities!
Essence Channeler
If your deck both gains and loses life, Essence Channeler is the card for you, especially if you gain a lot of life in small individual bursts like Soul Warden, so Essence Channeler can accumulate +1/+1 counters quickly. You might wan to have a small indestructible creature around to take those counters when it dies. Toski, Bearer of Secrets and Mondrak, Glory Dominus seem like good targets!
Keen-Eyed Curator
Some people have been hung up on the double green mana cost of Keen-Eyed Curator when comparing it to Scavenging Ooze, but that card was already mostly played in heavy green decks anyway. It’s nice that you can use mana from things like Sol Ring to activate this, and it already starts as a 3/3. It shouldn’t be all that difficult to exile four or more card types with this in the mid-game, making the Curator into a 7/7 trampling beatdown machine!
Jackdaw Savior
Jackdaw Savior is like a Scrap Trawler on steroids, but for flyers, and instead of returning the card from the graveyard to your hand, it just puts it right back on the battlefield! It’s important to note that the creature coming back need not have flying, so if a non-flyer has synergy with your deck or is otherwise worth running for a sacrifice effect, like Saffi Eriksdotter, it can still be rescued by your dying flyers.
Fecund Greenshell
Does your deck like big butts? Fecund Greenshell might be for you! It will slot right into decks led by Arcades, the Strategist; The Pride of Hull Clade; and Doran, the Siege Tower. Be careful you don’t end up turning off cards like Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive if Fecund Greenshell ends up giving all your creatures +2/+2.
Dour Port-Mage
Got a blink deck like Abuelo, Ancestral Echo that exiles your own creatures and brings them back for profit? Dour Port-Mage will give you even more value! It also plays great with the Bloomburrow Frog theme of returning creatures to your hand.
Heirloom Epic
Okay, the flavor of this card is super-cute! You can basically “tuck in” (tap) up to four creatures to pay for the activation to draw a card, which is like reading a bedtime story. I can see this slotting in decks that have a lot of convoke synergies, like Emmara, Soul of the Accord and Saint Traft and Rem Karolus.
Patchwork Banner
Typal decks that go wide are going to love this card, especially non-green decks that can really use the mana ramp and color fixing. Thankfully, it’s an uncommon, so it should be pretty cheap to pick up, but don’t sleep on it, because this seems like one of those uncommons that will suddenly be a $5 or higher card a year from now.
Overprotect
Probably the coolest Giant Growth variant every printed! What I want to know is: when do we get a legendary card for Blor the Impervious?!
Tell me, which of the new cards from Bloomburrow are you most excited to put in your Commander deck?
Talk to Me
Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter! I run polls and start conversations about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun! You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.
I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl, and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can. If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel. You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.
And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.
Visit my Decklist Database to see my decklists and the articles where they appeared!
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