Bloomburrow cards have now been available for tournament play for quite some time, and it’s clear that the set was a lot more powerful than we initially thought. In Standard, a multitude of new archetypes, including Rakdos Lizards and Boros Mice, were made possible by the release of Bloomburrow.
Even still, there are cards from the new set that are criminally underrated. Today, we’re going to focus our attention to an uncommon land that certainly fits the bill. As part of the Village cycle in Bloomburrow, Rockface Village in particular stands above the rest of the pack. Rockface Village plays a crucial role in multiple aggressive decks in Standard. We feel it’s deserving of more recognition than its receiving.
Pushing Damage
- Rarity: Uncommon
- MTG Set: Bloomburrow
- Card Text: Tap: Add colorless. Tap: Add red. Spend this mana only to cast a creature spell. Red, Tap: Target Lizard, Mouse, Otter, or Raccoon you control gets +1/+0 and gains haste until end of turn. Activate only as a sorcery.
On the surface, Rockface Village is a rather unassuming card. It only pumps creatures of very specific types. Paying a mana and tapping Rockface Village itself to give a creature a temporary bonus may not seem super strong either, especially considering that you ideally want to play a creature and activate Rockface Village on the same turn to give the creature Haste. However, there are a bunch of decks in Standard that utilize efficient Mice and Lizards that pair perfectly with Rockface Village.
Mono-red aggro, for example, is an ideal home for Rockface Village in Standard. Early on, Rockface Village helps you cast your small creatures just like a normal basic Mountain would. As the game progresses, though, Rockface Village makes any top-decked copy of Hired Claw or Heartfire Hero into an immediate threat.
Rockface Village gives creature-based aggro decks the extra reach needed to win after the opponent casts a big board wipe. The fact that this bonus comes on an untapped land is a huge boon. And we’re just getting started.
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Reliable Valiant Triggers
- Mana Value: 1R
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 2/2
- MTG Set: Bloomburrow
- Card Text: Haste. Prowess (Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.) Valiant- Whenever Emberheart Challenger becomes the target of a spell or ability you control for the first time each turn, exile the top card of your library. Until end of turn, you may play that card.
The biggest reason why Rockface Village is so important for mono-red aggro and Boros Mice decks alike is that the land can trigger Valiant on command. Both Heartfire Hero and Emberheart Challenger are staples of these two archetypes. In games where you flood or you don’t draw a good density of Monstrous Rage effects, Rockface Village does the trick.
This puts a lot of pressure on the opponent to kill your Valiant creatures immediately. In the case of Heartfire Hero, your small Mouse will continue to grow turn after turn. Even if the opponent draws removal a few turns later, they’ll have to take a big chunk of dasmage from Heartfire Hero’s death trigger.
Meanwhile, Emberheart Challenger threatens to generate a boatload of card advantage over the course of the game. The combination of Emberheart Challenger and Rockface Village gives these aggro decks a much better shot in grindy games.
Rockface Village truly stands out among the rest of the cycle. The opportunity cost to run it in mono-red aggro or Boros Mice is relatively low, and the value it can generate over the course of a long game gives it immense upside. Make sure you respect it, or you risk getting completely run over.
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