As the spoiler season for Bloomburrow draws to a close, the Commander decks have arrived to steal the show. Offering unique themes and adorable critters throughout, there’s definitely a lot to love. There’s also a lot to keep up with since today all four of Bloomburrow’s precons are being spoiled.
Even before they were revealed, the Family Matters Commander deck looked thoroughly intriguing. Themed largely around the new Offspring mechanic, this deck could give the mechanic legs outside of Draft and Set Constructed. Further supporting go-wide archetypes, this deck’s dedicated support cards could quickly become Commander gems.
Now the Family Matters Commander deck has been properly revealed, we can see these predictions were accurate. In TCGplayer’s charming video, there’s no shortage of Offspring and go-wide support. As always, there are also a few exciting reprints to sweeten the deal that much more.
New Commanders
While there’s a lot that goes into a Commander deck, few things are as important as the Commander themselves. Thankfully, the Family Matters Commander deck has some excellent options to choose from. Leading the charge out of the box, the face Commander of this deck is Zinnia, Valley’s Voice.
Themed around the Offspring mechanic, Zinnia allows you to easily make 1/1 copies of all of your creatures. Ideally, this will be used on creatures with insane ETB effects to double up on value. As if this wasn’t enough, Zinnia also scales with the number of base power one creatures, which Offspring happens to be.
Having been revealed during the Bloomburrow Debut, Zinnia, Valley’s Voice isn’t that new at this point. The same can’t be said, however, for Arthur, Marigold Knight, who is a brand new reveal. Well, technically they were one of the many Commander cards to be leaked yesterday, but they mostly flew under the radar there.
In any case, Arthur, Marigold Knight is real now and they look fantastic. While they are decently expensive at five mana, their ability is more than worth it. Whenever they or another creature you control attack, you get to cheat in a creature. Admittedly this creature does get returned into your hand, and they’re not guaranteed, but the potential is still insane.
So long as you can control the top of your library, or get lucky, Arthur could cheat in some massive threats. Much like Zinnia, Valley’s Voice, you ideally want these to have some pretty spectacular ETB effects. Thankfully, the Family Matters deck definitely has some compelling options.
They may not be the best in class, but cheating in or copying threats like Inferno Titan or Sun Titan will definitely get the job done.
New Themed Threats
While Family Matters may want huge ETB effects to synergize with, there are still a lot of Offspring running amok. Thanks to this, the deck includes a handful of new creatures that synergize with token-based strategies. Agate Instigator, for instance, makes each Offspring you create that much more punishing.
Able to dish out the damage to each opponent, while having Offspring themselves, Agate Instigator could be seriously annoying. When coupled with token doublers such as Anointed Procession, however, this card can become rather scary. Sadly., this fantastic token doubler isn’t found in Family Matters out of the box.
Furthering the support for Offspring, Rapid Augmenter buffs them, while also buffing themselves. For each Offspring you creature, since they’re not cast, you get a +1/+1 counter on Rapid Augmenter. When this happens, they also can’t be blocked, so they should be a reliable and quickly scaling threat. They’ll also work in decks that flicker a lot of cards or simply create myriad tokens.
Speaking of tokens, Jacked Rabbit has the potential to create an awful lot of them. Provided you sink enough mana into them, when they attack you can easily build an army of 1/1 Rabbits. Considering Family Matters’ synergy with 1/1 creatures, Jacked Rabbit has the potential to put in serious work.
On top of the go-wide support, this deck also features Pollywog Prodigy. Synergizing with the major threats with big effects, this Frog Wizard has decent scaling that can draw you cards. So long as they’re big enough, any spell an opponent casts could draw you a card theoretically. Getting to this point without an opponent removing this adorable draw engine, however, is a different story.
Synergistic Support Spells
To complement the new creatures, and the deck itself, Family Matters unsurprisingly also features some new support spells. In total, there are four new spells to gawp at, however, TCGplayer only revealed three of them. For some reason, Echoing Assault wasn’t revealed, despite it being in the official decklist.
Thankfully, while it hasn’t been officially revealed, Echoing Assault was leaked recently, so we know what it does. Giving tokens menace, and temporarily copying a creature too, this surprisingly expensive enchantment has decent potential. Once again, this card synergizes well with powerful ETB effects, though needing to have creatures attack to copy them is a risk.
Moving onto the cards we can actually see, Murmuration is an absolutely wild new Commander card. Not only does it buff your Birds, but it also creates copies of Storm Crow depending on your Storm count. Out of all the new cards we’ve seen today, Murmuration is perhaps the strangest.
As strange as they are, this unique enchantment does fit Family Matters. While the deck isn’t exclusively Bird-focused, the one-power creatures are exactly what it wants. Speaking of what this deck wants, Convoke is a fantastic mechanic for go-wide decks, especially on Calamity of Cinders.
Depending on the state of your opponents’ board, Calamity of Cinders can be a one-sided board wipe. Whether you attack beforehand, or just tap seven creatures with Convoke, this is fairly easy to pull off. Sadly, while Calamity of Cinders can be amazing in theory, catching each opponent completely untapped is hardly guaranteed.
Last but not least, Fortune Teller’s Talent is a rather unusual card in this deck. While knowing the top of your library is useful, especially for Arthur, Marigold Knight, it’s not this deck’s core theme. That said, knowing more information and cost reductions are always useful.
Reasonable Reprints
As always, Bloomburrow’s Commander decks have a fair few decent reprints to boost the deck’s overall value. This time around, however, there are only four cards that are really worth talking about. Selling for $13, $10, and $6 a piece, these cards are welcome reprints but aren’t the best we’ve ever seen.
At the top of the list, Helm of the Host is the most valuable reprint in the entire deck. Selling for around $13, this equipment lets you copy creatures, even legendary ones, every single turn. In Commander, Helm of the Host is a true staple, so it’s great it’s finally getting this accessible reprint.
Dropping down the value order a little, Luminous Broodmoth is worth around $10. Thanks to its reanimation ability, this is decently popular in Commander and fits a fair few archetypes. In Family Matters, this big ol’ moth should help you get the most out of your big creatures and ETB effects.
Lastly, worth around $6 each, Combat Celebrant and Curiosity Crafter round out the notable reprints. Last seen in Amonkhet, the former of these helps you double up on combat steps, which is always useful. The latter, meanwhile, keep your hand full without limit provided you’re hitting opponents with tokens.
A Fun Theme
Ultimately, while we don’t have it in our hands just yet, the Family Matters deck seems interesting but unoptimized. When a fair few upgrades, this deck could really make Offspring work to great effect. As it stands, however, this deck’s identity is somewhat confused, although not without potential.
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