One of the most attractive features of Magic’s newest set Bloomburrow is undeniably the cute and cuddly animals. Wizards knows this, so they went all-out to make this band of critters as playable as possible. For that reason, Wizards of the Coast didn’t just stop at the various draft archetypes for Bloomburrow. They made sure you could run any combination of critters under the same color!
For that reason, a cycle of cards was created that unify critters that appear across a color. Valley Questcaller was the first of these revealed to the world. This cute rabbit appeared in the Bloomburrow Debut video this Tuesday, and unifies all critters across the white color. This includes Rabbits (Selesnya), Bats (Orzhov), Birds (Azorius), and Mice (Boros).
The Blue variation of this cycle has been revealed, and it looks incredibly powerful. With the right setup, this card has some serious Jeskai Ascendancy vibes!
Valley Floodcaller
For tree mana, Valley Floodcaller is incredibly powerful, regardless of whether you care about the affected creature types or not. This Otter Wizard can come down at instant speed, and allow you to play all of your noncreature spells at instant speed. This is enough to warrant Commander play on its own, so there definitely be some demand for Valley Floodcaller.
Otherwise, Valley Floodcaller has a rather infamous effect that is rather similar to what made Jeskai Ascendancy a combo powerhouse over the years. Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, all of the affected creature types across blue in Bloomburrow get +1/+1 and untap. The creature types include Birds (Azorius), Frogs (Simic), Otters (Izzet), and Rats (Dimir). Notably, this includes Valley Floodcaller itself.
The ability to untap creatures can lead to a suite of infinite combos, but only if your creatures share the types that Valley Floodcaller cares about. There are definitely some mana dorks in this category, like Poison Dart Frog, which enables constant mana generation. Birds of Paradise is a rather famous mana dork that works under Valley Floodcaller. Otherwise, the new Clement, the Worrywort can give all of your frogs the ability to become mana dorks. All of this is to say that, even if you don’t go with a route that utilizes something like Maskwood Nexus, Valley Floodcaller can become a win condition that enters the battlefield at instant speed.
Jeskai Ascendancy has a few things over Valley Floodcaller. The biggest of these is that the enchantment also enables looting, which makes it really easy to filter your way to a win condition after you assemble a loop. Otherwise, Ascendancy will untap all of your creatures, regardless of whether they are cuddly critters or not. That said, Ascendancy does need other pieces in place to provide value, while Valley Floodcaller will always be a creature at its absolute worst. Additionally, Floodcaller enables instant speed casting of noncreature spells and comes in at instant speed itself. This is not something that Jeskai Ascendancy does.
This Otter Seems Capable!
We suspect that Valley Floodcaller will be a popular MTG card once Bloomburrow releases. Not only is it a cute and cuddly critter, it also has a very positive effect for many EDH decks. Even if you’re not going all-out trying to pull off Jeskai Ascendancy-style infinite combos with this card, just having it as an instant speed option that allows you to play at instant speed is more than enough.
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