Bloomburrow spoiler season has arrived like a sudden Summer storm, showering us with new characters, new mechanics, and, best of all, new cards. This is the golden time when every card holds potential, and nothing can be dismissed out of hand. There are plenty of flashy mythics to draw your attention in this initial batch, and most are probably quite good. But for my money, the best card of the lot goes to a rather innocuous-looking Squirrel. I’m talking about Osteomancer Adept, a new card that bears a striking resemblance to MTG classic Underworld Breach.
Osteomancer Adept: A New MTG Powerhouse
So what does this new card do? Osteomancer Adept is a 2/2 Squirrel Warlock with Deathtouch for two mana. That’s a Bear with upside, but not particularly impressive by 2024 standards. What makes the card stand out is its activated ability. By tapping the Osteomancer Adept, you unlock the ability to cast creatures from your graveyard until end of turn. Provided, that is, you Forage in addition to paying their normal mana costs.
Forage is a new mechanic making its debut in Bloomburrow. It’s an action you can perform to enable additional effects on cards. Typically green and black Squirrel cards, based on what we’ve seen so far. To Forage, you can do one of two things. You can exile three cards from your graveyard, or you can sacrifice a Food. The former is, as we learned from Delve, much easier to do than you might think. The latter is surprisingly easy too, if you pack your deck with Food generators. The result? Osteomancer Adept is very easy to enable.
Once you do, the card allows you to use your graveyard as a second hand. In terms of creatures, anyway. It’s worth noting that any creatures cast via this ability come with finality counters, meaning they’ll be exiled if they die again. A wise design move to prevent infinite loops, but a knock against the card’s power level to be sure. You can get around this by bouncing the cards back to your hand, however. So combos may not be entirely off the table just yet.
Food Standards Agency
When it comes to MTG Standard, Osteomancer Adept seems like a Midrange player’s best friend. Current Golgari Midrange lists are very creature-heavy, and Adept lets you access all of your fallen friends with ease. You’ll naturally accrue cards in the ‘yard over the course of most games, so it should be easy enough to pay for each Forage that way. Alternatively, you can lean harder into Food with some of the excellent support cards from recent Standard sets.
Perhaps most notable among these is Bristlebud Farmer. Not only is this card a 5/5 Trample for four mana, but it also comes with two Food tokens and an ability that lets you make use of them. It’s actually doubly synergistic with Adept since, if you sacrifice a Food to its ability, you also mill three cards, which fuels the other side of Forage.
Bristlebud aside, you can also make use of the other great Food cards in Standard to power your Osteomancy engine. Restless Cottage is a repeatable Food source that can deal with graveyards. It also fits in a land slot, making it an easy include in any Osteomancer deck. You can even run Night of the Sweets’ Revenge, which allows your Foods to generate mana to pay for your creatures before you sacrifice them. Very sneaky indeed.
Of course, we can’t ignore the Elemental Cat in the room. Ygra, Eater of All is another Bloomburrow card spoiled in today’s debut, and it synergizes beautifully with Adept. Turning all of your creatures into Food allows for an endless stream of recasting, leading to plenty of etb value. Ygra itself also scales up while you do that, making it the perfect complement to the strategy.
A New Underworld Breach?
So Osteomancer Adept has plenty of potential in MTG Standard. That much is obvious at a glance. What’s less obvious is how well the card will fare in eternal formats. For many established Magic players, the immediate comparison that Adept will call to mind is Underworld Breach. A notorious red enchantment so powerful it was banned in Pioneer, Explorer, and even Legacy.
This card is also two mana, and also gives you access to cards in your graveyard in exchange for exiling three cards. There are two key differences, however. Underworld Breach lets you cast anything from your graveyard, while Osteomancer Adept only lets you cast creatures. On the other side of the coin, Osteomancer Adept can stick around to open up your graveyard for use again, whereas Underworld Breach is sacrificed at the end of the turn.
In the decks it’s good in, most of Underworld Breach’s power comes from casting cheap spells and cantrips. Creatures don’t typically factor into things much. For this reason, Osteomancer Adept probably isn’t going to feature in the same kind of decks. The fact that its effect is reusable makes it much better suited to grindy games, however, and accruing long-term value. And the Food synergy doesn’t hurt, either. That said, don’t count it out of eternal formats just yet. Any effect like this needs to be looked at very closely indeed.
Read More: MTG Bloomburrow: Release Date, Spoilers, Commander Decks
