Recently, Wizards of the Coast has been subtly fiddling with the release cadence of sets to give players a break. Ideally putting an end to the relentless spoiler season, this tweaking should have been a welcome change. Unfortunately, despite Wizards’ best intentions, leaks have spoiled the show somewhat.
With countless cards being revealed ahead of their time, MTG’s spoiler season feels well and truly neverending. Even this week, which was meant to be a brief reprieve from spoilers, has been inundated with a steady drip feed of Bloomburrow leaks. Sadly, it’s difficult not to pay attention to these since the leaked cards we’ve seen have each been incredibly exciting.
As with all leaks, there’s no guarantee they’re the real deal. Given the quality of many leaks, especially the one we’re covering today, there’s a non-zero chance this card is fake. With that being said, it’s best to retain some healthy skepticism when looking at leaks, especially when their quality is this egregious.
That all being said, we can’t help but be excited for everything Bloomburrow might have to offer. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the latest terrible-quality leak!
Three Tree City
Three Tree City is a new Legendary Land that appears to function similarly to some very broken MTG cards. Much like Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, this Bloomburrow card can create an insane amount of mana in the right deck. To reap this reward, however, you’ll need to choose the right creature type.
When Three Tree City enters (the new shorthand for Enters the Battlefield), you get to pick any creature type you like. As with Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, however, it’s best to pick a creature type that your deck is built around. As, when paying two for Three Tree City’s second ability you’ll get mana equal to the number of creatures you control with the chosen type.
For better or worse, Three Tree City isn’t quite as busted as Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. Unlike Devotion superstars like Leyline of the Guildpact, creatures can only have one of each creature type. This means you’ll need a boatload of creatures, or tokens, to properly maximize the effectiveness of Three Tree City.
At a minimum, you’ll want at least three creatures of the same type to yield positive value from Three Tree City. Just having two appropriately typed creatures can work in a pinch, however, as you can turn your existing mana into any one color you need, though you will lose a mana in the process. From this angle, Three Tree City can offer quite a bit of utility and fixing in the right deck.
While Three Tree City doesn’t always need to pop off, it’s definitely slower than Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. Due to this, the card is likely not going to see as much widespread play as the Pioneer icon we’re comparing it to. This isn’t to say, however, that Three Tree City is even close to being a bad card.
Where Will Three Tree City See Play?
Just because Three Tree City is more difficult to use than Nykthos doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t see play. Quite the opposite, in fact! Any typal Commander deck with a go-wide function would love Three Tree City! The deck doesn’t even necessarily need to be typal; you just need to be generating a lot of creatures that are the same type. This, of course, extends to tokens.
Following this train of thought, Three Tree City has the potential to be terrifying in Cadira, Caller of the Small. This card creates tons of Rabbit tokens, which can, in turn, allow Three Tree City to generate a ton of mana. Similarly, Krenko, Mob Boss is going to seriously love having Three Tree City in play.
Turning our attention toward competitive MTG, Three Tree City is a much harder sell, but it may nonetheless see play. Since Elves are a fringe playable deck in Modern right now, this card could slot into those lists. Thanks to this deck going wide with tons of Elves, this card should be a great fit, although Elf decks are rarely missing mana.
For better or worse, most competitive typal decks will benefit more from running Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. Since this card is faster, and typal decks are often primarily one color, there’s little reason not to run this card. Ultimately, despite its somewhat lackluster competitive appeal, typal players should get excited nonetheless. If this card is indeed real, Three Tree City has amazing potential, even if it’s not the best in class.
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Player Reaction
Being playable in myriad Commander decks, and potentially even competitively, there’s a lot to talk about with Three Tree City. Despite this, when the card was leaked onto Reddit, most MTG players didn’t seen to pay much attention to the card itself. Instead, players were more focused on the absolutely bizarre quality of this leak.
It almost seems a tradition now that any leaks from an upcoming set look beyond scuffed in one way or another. It’s common for leaks to be blurry to the point of being unreadable, or to be inexplicably deep-fried. This leak, falls more into the latter category, as the card is not only almost illegible but it’s also incredibly messed up.
“It almost feels like a meme at this point that the quality of “leaks” for a new set are in the most horrendous, washed out, low quality images.
Sir_Jimmy_Russles
At least with that consistency you can assume its legit.”
Many commenters seem to think that this is done on purpose. By messing with the quality of the image, it becomes more difficult to trace the person who managed to take a picture of it. One commenter even compared the quality of these leaked images to those from Manga or Japanese games. Images of this quality are very common in the world of leaks, which hardly makes them feel like a coincidence. Considering the quality of modern cameras, even on phones, images looking this bad almost certainly seem intentional.
Other commenters who have put their tin foil hats on believe that Wizards of the Coast themselves are leaking these cards on purpose. This creates some hype and discussion surrounding the new Bloomburrow set ahead of the beginning of each spoiler season. Considering how out of hand the Modern Horizons 3 leaks were, we personally doubt this. After all, those leaks likely caused some serious damage to the biggest spoiler season of 2024.
Gaea’s Cradle At-Home
It will be interesting to see if this typal Nykthos land is the real deal or not. It doesn’t seem to be quite as abusable as Nykthos itself, but it is certainly an upgrade for any decks that want to go wide with a particular creature type. This Gaea’s Cradle at home will definitely see some play somewhere if it is indeed a real card releasing in Bloomburrow.
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