Well folks, it’s finally here. After months of speculation and anticipation, Bloomburrow preview season has officially begun. The cute animal floodgates are open, and lovable characters aplenty are spilling out. Truly, it’s a great time to be a Magic player. The Bloomburrow Debut stream was absolutely stuffed with spoilers, including some absolute dandies for Commander players. To make things easier to digest, we’ve spread them out across multiple articles. In this one, you’ll find all of the new cards that care about creature types. As well as a couple of fun surprises at the end.
Alania, Divergent Storm
Let’s kick things off with a little blue/red goodness. Alania, Divergent Storm is a legendary Otter Wizard with a very interesting ability. Whenever you cast your first instant, sorcery, or Otter in a turn, you can let your opponent draw a card. If you do, you get to copy the card in question. A tidy little exchange, all things considered.
Immediately, my gut says this is too slow for Standard. Five mana is a lot, and the fact that the card provides a kind of ‘Group Hug’ effect just screams Commander. To address that elephant in the room: yes, Alania will make a great Commander. Dishing out cards to shore up alliances is excellent, and Alania’s ability can trigger once each turn, of which there are four per round in Commander. Just make sure you have plenty of instants and Otters with Flash to hand.
Circling back around to Standard, I really don’t see Alania making the cut. The Otter deck appears to be an Izzet spellslinger type deal, which typically prefers to stay low and play for tempo. A five mana do-nothing creature really doesn’t support that plan. If you like casting spells in Commander, however, then you really Otter pick up a copy of this card. It will serve you well.
Camellia, The Seedmiser
Now onto something a lot more interesting for 60-card formats. Camellia, the Seedmiser was actually teased on Twitter last Friday, but now that the Bloomburrow Debut spoilers are out we have the full picture. Camellia is a 3/3 for three with Menace, which also grants Menace to all your other Squirrels. A kind of keyword lord effect for those playing Bloomburrow’s green/black Squirrel deck. Menace is an easy ability to undervalue given how common it is nowadays, but it is a form of evasion and is particularly dangerous granted en masse like this.
If Camellia’s text stopped there she’d likely make a solid signpost uncommon. This is 2024 Magic, however, so naturally she has two more abilities squirreled away. Firstly, whenever you sacrifice one or more Foods, Camellia creates a 1/1 Squirrel token. Said token will have Menace thanks to Camellia’s first ability, so that’s a lot of extra aggression if you’re playing Food cards. Fortunately, Food appears to be a mechanical focus for green/black in Bloomburrow. As evidenced by Camellia’s final ability.
By paying two generic mana and Foraging, Camellia lets you put a +1/+1 counter on each other Squirrel you control. Forage is a new mechanic, and it’s quite simple. To Forage, you can either exile three cards from your graveyard or sacrifice a Food. In Camellia’s case, the latter will always be the best option. Because of how triggers resolve, you can sacrifice a Food to her third ability, create a Squirrel with her second, and have it get a +1/+1 counter when the third ability resolves. Very clever. This seems like a pushed and versatile card and an obvious auto-include in any Squirrel deck in Standard.
Finneas, Ace Archer
Speaking of auto-includes for go-wide Typal decks, Finneas Ace Archer is another legend who fits that bill. At a baseline, he’s a 2/2 for two with Vigilance and Reach. Not a bad rate so far. His real value comes with his ability, however. Whenever Finneas attacks, you can put a +1/+1 counter on all your other tokens and Rabbits. After doing so, if the total power of your board is 10 or more, you also get to draw a card.
Based on what we’ve seen of the set so far, Rabbits will be great at generating a lot of tokens and buffing them up. Just look at Carrot Cake for the former and Oakhollow Village for the latter. In any deck running cards like these, Finneas should be a shoo-in. Being able to buff your board and restock your hand in case of a board wipe is a great combination. He’s easy to slot into an aggressive curve, too, thanks to his solid stats.
That said, it’s not all sunshine for our furry friend here. Since he has to attack himself to trigger his ability, Finneas makes a terrible topdeck later on. He’s also just a 2/2, which makes him very vulnerable to removal. Doubly so since the power of his ability makes him a bit of a lightning rod. He lacks the versatility of Camellia, but if you can curve out with him then you’ll have a great time.
Kastral, The Windcrested
From the warrens to the skies, next on our tour of the Bloomburrow Debut spoilers is Kastral, the Windcrested. Like Alania before it, this is a five-mana card with a Typal payoff ability. Unlike Alania, however, Kastral can have an immediate impact and is a beefy 4/5 flier as opposed to a 3/5 on the ground.
Kastral’s ability triggers whenever one or more of your Birds deals combat damage to a player. Given that most Birds have Flying, this shouldn’t be at all difficult to organize. Even on the turn you drop Kastral you should be able to trigger it, provided you have a decent air force assembled. What do you get when it does? A choice of three very solid options.
The headliner here is obviously the first choice, which lets you cheat a Bird from your hand or graveyard into play with a finality counter on it. Depending on the other Birds we see in Bloomburrow, this could be very potent indeed. Even with just Salvation Swan, it should feel pretty good to pull off. Swan actually works doubly well here, since bouncing creatures gets rid of their finality counters and brings them back in full form.
The other two abilities are less flashy but no less exciting. Putting a +1/+1 counter on all your Birds is solid, and includes Kastral too, essentially making it a 5/6 flier right out of the gate if you wish. Drawing a card is always good, but will likely be a last resort if you don’t have a target for the first ability or a board for the second. Despite costing five mana, Kastral seems like a great top-end for a Bird deck in Standard, and an even better choice to lead such a deck in Commander.
Muerra, Trash Technician
Coming back down to earth a bit, we get our first taste of the green/red Typal strategy for Bloomburrow. That’s right, it’s nature’s favorite bin-raker, the Raccoon! Clearly inspired by their real-world counterparts, Muerra, Trash Technician is adept at generating resources out of nowhere. In this case, mana and cards.
To start with, Muerra is a 2/4 for three mana. Those are actually great stats, particularly on a creature you want to stick around for ability reasons. Muerra also has three separate abilities, all of which seem pretty stellar in a red/green deck. At the start of your first main phase, Muerra grants you a red or green mana for each Raccoon you control, itself included. Assuming you can drop a land and Raccoon on each turn of the game, this will bring you to seven total mana on turn four. Which is good, because Muerra’s other abilities are all about spending it.
Muerra’s other two abilities both make use of the Expend mechanic, which is brand-new for Bloomburrow. Basically, Expend triggers when you spend a certain amount of mana to cast spells in a turn. In Muerra’s case, those ‘certain amounts’ are four and eight mana. If you spend four, you gain three life. If you spend eight, you get to exile the top two cards of your deck and play them until your next turn.
This last ability has serious potential. Thanks to the extra mana from Muerra’s ability, you can be Expending eight as early as turn five. Once you are, he essentially draws you two extra cards a turn, like a Gruul version of Consecrated Sphinx. This comes on top of gaining you life so you can stick around to play them. Just remember that Expend only counts mana spent on spells, not on abilities, etc.
Flowerfoot Swordmaster
From one new mechanic to another, the Bloomburrow Debut spoilers continued by showing off Flowerfoot Swordmaster. This card packs in both Offspring and Valiant, two new Bloomburrow additions.
For starters, Flowerfoot Swordmaster is a 1/2 Mouse Soldier for one white mana. Honestly, that’s very nearly good enough; an aggressive deck like red/white Mice needs a critical mass of early creatures to succeed, and 1/2 is a premium stat line. The fun doesn’t end there, however as the card also has an Offspring cost of two. This lets you create a 1/1 token copy of Swordmaster by paying two extra mana. How good is that? To properly answer that, we need to look at the card’s final ability.
Swordmaster also has Valiant, which is a new take on Heroic that only triggers the first time you target the creature in question each turn. When it does, it gives all of your Mice +1/+0 for the turn, itself included. We already know Mice are going to be big on combat tricks thanks to Might of the Meek, and Swordmaster is just further confirmation of that.
Is the card good? In aggressive Mouse decks, absolutely. Offspring gives it some nice flexibility and value on later turns, while its Valiant ability can easily end games early with the right draws. This is an easy staple inclusion in Mice decks, and probably nowhere else.
Warren Warleader
Sticking with Offspring for a minute, we also saw a mythic rare with the ability among the Bloomburrow Debut spoilers. That card is Warren Warleader, and it may just be the top-end Rabbit decks are looking for. For starters, it’s a 4/4 Rabbit Knight for four. Not amazing stats, but not embarrassing either. Things really get cooking, though, when you get to the attack trigger.
Whenever you declare an attack, with or without Warren Warleader, you can either create an attacking 1/1 Rabbit token or buff your attackers by +1/+1 for the turn. Both of these are great choices in a go-wide Rabbit deck. Following up a turn two Finneas with this on four should also feel great since you can stack the Finneas trigger after this one for near-guaranteed card draw.
This card is great as-is, but Offspring really pushes it over the top. If you pay six for your Warleader instead of four, you get a 1/1 token with the exact same abilities. This means your next attack will net you two Rabbit tokens, a +2/+2 board buff, or a mix of the two. That’s a ton of value, even for six mana, and provides crucial flexibility that can keep aggressive decks like Rabbits in the game beyond where they’d normally taper off. This is a very scary card and the kind of Mythic I can see being undervalued until players get to try it out.
Valley Questcaller
The cards we’ve covered so far all support one creature type in particular, but Bloomburrow has cross-type support cards too. Case in point: Valley Questcaller. Like Lupinflower Village, which we saw back at MagicCon, this supports four different creature types, these being Rabbit, Bat, Bird, and Mouse. The card is a two mana 2/3 that lets you Scry whenever a creature of one of those types enters. It also serves as a lord for the types, buffing them by +1/+1 while in play.
Affecting four different types gives Valley Questcaller a lot of versatility, but a quick glance shows that it will work better with some more than others. Rabbits and Mice, being go-wide creatures, will naturally benefit the most from both the Scry and the lord effect here. Rabbits in particular, since Questcaller is a Rabbit itself. Birds seem to lean towards the higher end of the mana curve so far, and Bats are essentially a question mark, so I’m less confident about those at present. That said, those are both types known for their evasive creatures, which do appreciate a lord effect, so never say never.
However things pan out, it’s hard to see Valley Questcaller not becoming a staple in one Typal deck or another. A 2/3 for two with a relevant type and two stellar upsides is just a ton of value, even for 2024. It might even end up seeing play in decks of all four types. Such is the power of card selection and board buffs.
Maha, Its Feathers Night
Those are all the typal support cards revealed in the Bloomburrow Debut spoilers, but we have two more surprises for you before you go. Also revealed were two of the Calamity Beasts, the main antagonists of the set’s storyline. We saw one of these, Lumra, Bellow of the Woods, back in February’s First Look article. That was a fairly spicy card, but the two revealed today are even more so.
We’ll start with Maha, Its Feathers Night. This is a 6/5 Flying Trampler for five, with Ward – Discard a card. Immediately this screams ‘finisher.’ A 6/5 flier is no joke for five mana, especially with relevant protection. Topdecking a removal spell against Maha will do your opponent no good since they’ll also need a fodder card to get through the Ward.
As powerful as that is, creatures need a little more oomph than that to see play nowadays. Thankfully, Maha is packing some. While it’s in play, all of your opponents’ creatures have base toughness 1. That makes them very easy to pick off in combat or with ping or -1/-1 effects. Tectonic Hazard and Glistening Deluge are two excellent examples that you’ll be able to run alongside this in Standard. This goes quadruple in Commander, where you can easily wipe out a whole table’s worth of creatures after Maha hits.
It is worth noting that this only affects base toughness, so if your opponent’s creatures have +1/+1 counters or are benefiting from Lord effects, Maha won’t prevent that. Regardless, the card has enough raw power and utility to make a dent in Standard and beyond.
Ygra, Eater Of All
The last card for this batch of Bloomburrow Debut spoilers may also be the spiciest. We’ve already discussed how Food is back in Bloomburrow, but you probably weren’t expecting a card that turns every creature in play into Food. That’s exactly what Ygra, Eater of All does, however, and it has a mind-boggling range of implications.
This ability is both a blessing and a curse. Turning your opponents’ creatures into Food makes them vulnerable to artifact removal, and allows them to contribute to Ygra’s power scaling on death, thanks to that last ability. On the other hand, it also gives your opponent the option to cash their creatures in for life and to sacrifice them to get through Ygra’s Ward ability. Swings and roundabouts, indeed.
Naturally, this card will work best in a deck designed to take advantage of Food tokens. A Squirrel deck that relies heavily on Forage, for example. It can also contribute, albeit slowly, to lifegain synergies. The fact that Ygra begins as a 6/6 and can easily scale up from there does a lot to convince me that it might be Standard playable. You can even follow it up with an artifact wipe like Cease/Desist to clear the way for a huge swing.
That said, this is such an out-there card that it’s pretty hard to evaluate for Standard at present. Especially before we know what other Food synergies will be present in Bloomburrow. I have no doubt that the card will excel in Commander, however. Making everyone’s creatures Food is funny enough to guarantee Ygra a spot in pods until the end of time.
Read More: MTG Bloomburrow: Release Date, Spoilers, Commander Decks
