It’s official: Bloomburrow is probably the most adorable set of all time. From Rats to Bats to Frogs to Mice, this set was made for those who just want a good cuddle or snuggle. It has even managed to thaw and burrow its way into my cold, cold heart.
Cuteness aside, this set is not lacking in the playability department either. All in all, this is turning out to be a rather well-rounded set. Normally, as a Commander player, I like to stay away from well-rounded things and focus on things that spark joy. So in this week’s piece, I go through every color and share with y’all my favorite card! Will all of them be the chase cards of the season? Well, my name is Chase…so yes!
White
Let’s start with the first letter in the Magic alphabet: W! It has been a journey for me to really dig deep into colors I never thought I’d enjoy. At the top of that list was white. I originally found it to be a boring, unexciting color. I am now proud to say that it has become one of my favorite colors in Magic now! Now that’s what I call growth. So when I looked into Bloomburrow, I was met with an exciting flurry of white cards. In all honesty, I think the designers outdid themselves when it comes to the white cards in the set. However, only one can be my favorite…so imagine my surprise when I noticed that my favorite white card was an uncommon.
Dewdrop Cure is an amazing piece of white recursion. For three mana, you can return two creatures with mana value two or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. However, if you gift a card (letting your opponent draw a card), you get three target creatures instead. The trade seems more than worth it, and it feels like the perfect addition to my Curve Keeper deck. White is what I like to call the ‘after you’ color. It’s very polite, letting you walk through the door it opened (hence ‘after you’). It’s been the butt of many jokes, with Secret Rendezvous coming to mind. This feels leagues ahead of that era. In fact, Dewdrop Cure feels more like a ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ kind of card, and I truly adore that.
Blue
Blue and I have an interesting relationship. If white is the polite color, blue is the egghead color. After I graduated with my Master’s, I thought I’d no longer have to do math…so why is blue trying to force that on me? Nerd! I don’t want to count. I just play Magic so that I can look at the pretty pictures.
Jokes aside, blue is a color I am still grappling with. It seems to really live in the realm of spellslinger decks (at least, in Commander), and those strategies don’t spark joy. In fact, they kind of make me do a thousand-year stare (get it? thousand-year, like Thousand-Year Storm?). Finding a blue spell that truly spoke to me was a bit of a challenge.
Remember when I said I didn’t like spellslinger? Well, it’s time for me to eat my words, because the blue spell I have fallen in like with is Eluge, the Shoreless Sea. There has never been a Commander card as Commander-y as Eluge. The first line of text is pretty standard. Its power and toughness are equal to the number of Islands you control. The second line of text is a bit more interesting, as it puts flood counters on target land whenever Eluge enters or attacks.
What makes this card an abomination, however, is that darned third line. “The first instant or sorcery spell you cast each turn costs U or 1 less to cast for each land you control with a flood counter on it.” Good God, how is that fair?! I am obsessed with it. It might even change my perspective on spellslinger strategies as a whole. Imagine a deck with Stormtide Leviathan, Curse of the Swine, and Sea Gate Restoration. Imagine a deck where you basically get one free counterspell a turn! This is an egghead’s dream, and I hate it, but I love it.
Black
Let’s sashay into the black cards. I am proud to say that I have come full circle as a Magic player. My first deck ever was a mono-black lifegain deck with pieces like Zulaport Cutthroat, Xathrid Necromancer, and Necropolis Regent. Then I went on a journey of self-discovery and learned that I love red more. Now here we are, back at it again with black. I currently have two black decks. While they are both incredibly similar, they both wouldn’t run my favorite black card from Bloomburrow. I guess that means I need a third black deck, right?
Darkstar Augur is Dark Confidant but with flying and the ability to make a token copy of itself. I know Dark Confidant came before Augur, but Confidant is to Clinton Kane as Darkstar Augur is to Brooke Schofield. That is such a niche reference, but the girlies who get it, get it. Darkstar Augur is actually everything to me. Black is the color that taught me life is a resource, and Augur lives by that mantra.
What makes it shine above the rest of the black cards in Bloomburrow is that it is that this reimagining has an offspring ability. By simply paying one more black mana (totaling four mana), you get two Darkstar Augurs. You literally get two Confidants for the prices of two Confidants, which is exciting for me (I don’t even know why). Maybe it’s the fact that it has flying, maybe it’s the fact that it has a thicker booty, I just think this card is so cool.
Red
If you know me, then you know red is my color. It is the core color of my color identity. I live and breathe red. My hair is also red, but that is purely a coincidence! For me, red is aggro. It is pure aggression in the form of noncombat damage. Brutal burns and all that jazz. It’s fast and exciting. It is also BFFs with spellslinger strategies. They just go hand in hand. Maybe red is the gateway for me to finally suck it up and give those strategies a try. I fully expected my favorite red spell to live in the realm of noncombat damage. Instead, it lives somewhere else entirely.
Stormsplitter is a four-mana Otter Wizard. That should be the entire section. It’s an Otter Wizard. How could you not fall in love? But for those of you who want to actually read words, let me lay it down. Stormsplitter is such a cheeky card because it spawns and spawns and spawns. Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery, you create a token copy of Stormsplitter that is exiled at the beginning of the next end step. The more you cast, the more little Otters you make.
I just think this is such a neat design, as you can basically create an incredible, multiplicative army by casting a few spells! If I ever run this card, my goal would be to cast a bunch of instants/sorceries, make a bunch of Otters, and then move to combat with Shared Animosity and just demolish my opponents with my cuteness. Now, I know that this card is called Stormsplitter, but because storm copies aren’t cast, you do not get token copies of Stormsplitter off storm. While that may be a slight bummer, I can assure you that there are still plenty of shenanigans to be had with this little Otter.
Green
Lastly, we have green. Green and I have a complicated relationship. In my opinion, it is the perfect buffer color. I don’t like it on its own, but when paired with other colors (or buffers), then I find it to be more palatable. I love it in Naya and I love it when paired with blue in Simic or white in Selesnya, but on its own? Eh. That doesn’t mean I can’t look past my incredibly correct opinions and find something to enjoy from the green slice of Bloomburrow’s pie!
If green is good at one thing, it’s being ridiculous (and I mean that in the best of ways). Green is the ‘go big, or go home’ color. It is excess in every aspect and I have grown to love that more and more. For the Common Good is one of those cards that has helped facilitate that growth. I love tokens! I think they’re so fun (I mean, I made a Chappell Roan-themed token deck for the Pride event this year).
While I usually don’t gravitate toward X-spells, this one feels different. Common Good calls for you to create X tokens that are copies of target token you control. They then gain indestructible until your next turn and you gain one life for each token you control. This spell would’ve killed in my Chappell Roan-themed deck led by Cadira, Caller of the Small and Delina, Wild Mage.
While my sights are set on creating even more bunnies, imagine making more token copies of your Wurmcoil Engine tokens or your Scion tokens in an Azlask, the Swelling Scourge deck. I can definitely see For the Common Good make waves in Baylen, the Haymaker decks or Hazel of the Rootbloom decks. There is a lot of potential for this card to make waves in Bloomburrow-led Commander decks, and I can’t wait to see how Commander players break it.
WUBRG-Burrow
As a Commander player, I find myself almost always ignoring the main set drops and instead focusing solely on the legendary creatures. Maybe it’s the weird deckbuilding gremlin in me, but I will focus on commanders and discover main-set cards as I go via Scryfall advanced searches. I have a goldfish brain, I know, but recently I’ve been trying to make a habit of paying attention to the less exciting, less flashy cards, commons and uncommons in particular, or cards in colors I seem less interested in. In order to grow as a deckbuilder, I have to look at the whole picture, rather than the bits and pieces that fit me.
While my selections here aren’t exactly a laundry list of commons and uncommons, it definitely includes things I normally wouldn’t look twice at. Even if it doesn’t boat your float, I truly recommend glancing at pieces or colors you might normally avoid. You just might find some gems there. Happy brewing, deckbuilders!