Bloomburrow spoiler season has nearly concluded, and this set looks like a blast. Tomorrow is the last day of previews, with the new cards for the Bloomburrow Commander decks all getting revealed. In typical fashion, to get us hyped about what goodies could be featured within the Commander decks, MTG designer Gavin Verhey released a video where he lays out a bunch of hints about the new cards.
Similar to Mark Rosewater’s Bloomburrow teaser, these hints us the opportunity to try and speculate on what new card designs await us. Today, we’ll be doing just that. Let’s kick things off with a card that gifts an opponent an enormous reward.
Gifting Extra Turns?
So far, most of the cards that utilize the Gift mechanic allow you to offer a pretty tame reward. For instance, Parting Gust shown above lets you give your opponent a tapped 1/1 token in exchange for being able to exile one of their threats permanently. Other cards let you Gift an opponent an extra card. While this is still a cost, it isn’t an outrageous one.
According to Gavin Verhey, though, a new Commander card has the ability to “Gift an extra turn.” This is an absolutely massive bonus, and therefore likely needs to come with pretty high upside for the rest of the card to be worth playing. With this in mind, there are a few different ways that seem most plausible for the card to be constructed.
The first approach, as Reddit user Cvnc suggested, could be to structure the card in a similar manner to Eon Frolicker. In this example, the Bloomburrow card could provide some benefit up front, such as card advantage. Then, if you decide to Gift an opponent of your choosing an extra turn, you get a Teferi’s Protection-style shield protecting you from getting attacked in the interim. In a multiplayer game, this could be used politically to incentive a specific opponent to use their extra turn to attack and disrupt another player at the table.
Another idea could simply be that you get an extra turn in some capacity to help compensate. Being able to Gift the player at the table with the weakest board position an extra turn to enable you to advance you battlefield presence through your own extra turn could be quite nice. Either way, I expect this card to have a big impact on the game with such a large Gift cost associated.
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Another Storm Crow Generator
The final hint Gavin Verhey gave was that there will be a card that references “Storm Crow” in some way. Obviously, this leaves the door pretty wide open as far as what this new card could do. However, almost a week ago, some player noticed that on Amazon, the Family Matters Commander deck picture was accompanied by three tokens. One of these was a Storm Crow token.
This implies that whatever card mentions Storm Crow is part of the Family Matters Precon and is capable of creating Storm Crow tokens. The easiest and probably most likely way this Storm Crow token would be generated in Bloomburrow is as a Gift to an opponent. If cards can Gift 1/1 Fish tokens, why can’t 1/2 Flying Storm Crow tokens be featured instead?
Of course, there’s a chance the design team went a completely different avenue with this. We know that Zinnia, Valley’s Voice cares about the number of 1-power creatures you control. Considering Storm Crow fits the bill, maybe there’s a new way to make a bunch of Storm Crow tokens at once. Perhaps Wizards of the Coast is reframing Crow Storm, which I’m all here for. We’ll just have to wait and see.
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Impact Tremors 2.0?
Another cool hint Gavin provided is that a new red creature with Offspring is being printed “that mimics a popular-in-multiplayer red common noncreature.” This clearly could be a lot of different cards, but with context clues, there are a couple that stand out the most.
Importantly, the red card in question has to be strong in multiplayer specifically. Given that the new version is a creature with Offspring, there almost certainly needs to be a major benefit for creating a second copy. This leads many players to believe that Impact Tremors is the perfect card to be reworked.
Impact Tremors is a solid inclusion in go-wide decks, mainly because it pings each of your opponents when creatures you control enter. With this effect being showcased on a creature with Offspring, if you pay the cost to make a 1/1 copy of your creature, each subsequent creature you play will deal each opponent two damage. This is powerful but not overwhelming if you have to pay a decent amount of mana upfront. The Family Matters deck cares a lot about going wide with small creatures, so seeing a new card that takes a page from Impact Tremors’ book seems great.
There’s always a possibility that Mana Geyser is the red common noncreature being mimicked instead, letting you generate a ton of mana when the new creature enters. However, this design isn’t quite as thematic as the previous example. As such, our prediction here is that Impact Tremors is indeed the card being reworked as a creature with Offspring.
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Other Unique Hints
While the previous three hints are our favorites, there are some others to be on the lookout for while Commander spoilers start to come out of the woodworks. One hint that’s quite amusing is that a new card directly references Sword of the Meek, even with its name. Many players were quick to point out that “Sword of the Squeak” is an excellent and flavorful name that would be a neat card to see. We’ve already seen some Mouse cards from the main set showcase their weapon-wielding abilities, too.
We will also be getting a card with two instances of Hideaway, which has never happened before. Maybe this is another card with the Gift mechanic, and the number of cards you get to look at when your Hideaway card enters is determined by whether you promised a gift or not.
It’s always fun to guess what these new Commander cards will do. The Bloomburrow face Commanders look really sweet this time around, and we’re excited to see what cards will join forces with them. Stay tuned for spoilers being revealed tomorrow, and we’ll check back to see how our predictions held up.
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