Storybook art and expert mechanics combine ensuring fun for the whole family in Magic’s newest set
With the release of Bloomburrow your favourite planeswalkers have undergone some strange changes. Travel to the plane of Bloomburrow has the magical effect of transforming planeswalkers into adorable forest critters. Their cuteness is now canon in the Magic timeline, like it or not.
Bloomburrow features some very endearing aesthetics making it approachable to younger players. It doesn’t pull any punches on the depth and complexity of its mechanics however, this is still a serious Magic set for the experienced player. It might just be possibly one of the better sets for Magic loving parents to onramp their kids into the hobby.
Bloomburrow is another set in Wizards of the Coast strategy to tie Magic to popular trends and nostalgia throwbacks. Anyone who grew up reading Brian Jacques Redwall children’s novels will immediately be familiar with the themes of Bloomburrow. I somehow missed these novels myself and am more familiar with the tabletop role-playing game Mouseguard (itself inspired by Redwall).
There are so many touchstones throughout children’s literature of anthropomorphic animals and their adventures, Disney’s 1973 Robinhood animated film comes to mind. What Redwall and consequently Bloomburrow have done is mix in high fantasy, there’s frogs casting spells and armoured mice styled as knights of old.
Stories such as these often use a literary technique where different animals reflect facets of the human condition. In Bloomburrow, mice are tiny but bold, raccoons are thrifty hoarders, rabbits are social clan warriors and otters are pesky tricksters. The overarching theme of Bloomburrow seems to be little heroes with buckets of courage challenging the dark predators of the forest.
Bloomburrow’s art while cutesy still retains a grounded painterly style reminiscent of previous Magic sets. It’s not stark bright cartoon character’s popping out of the frame.
Many cards feature art in the vein of watercolour or pencil illustrations, harking back to the dry brush watercolour style popularised by the English writer & illustrator Beatrix Potter. Some cards also have a special art treatment where they appear four times, one for each season of the year.
I opened two Three Tree City cards for example and noticed the art was different on each. These theme specific set treatments are great for collectors and players who take joy in personalising their decks.
Many of the famous planeswalkers also appear transformed into cute animals by the magic of Bloomburrow. There is Ral, Crackling Wit, a new iteration of this planeswalker as an otter, aptly aligned with Ral’s unpredictability.
Narset Parter of Veils returns as a heron-like bird, a reprint from War of the Spark. There’s also Nissa, Who Shakes the World hopping into Bloomburrow as a frog.
If your commander is The Gitrog Monster you pretty much have to run from Nissa in her frog version, I don’t make the rules.
Magic’s dip into cutesy art and themes hasn’t diminished the crunchy-ness and complexity of its mechanics. The mechanics in Bloomburrow are on par with previous sets in their depth for strategy and tough decision making.
Many of the core mechanics in Bloomburrow come with a choice to make which is great for the competitive side of Magic. Such choices are often filters for sifting skill levels, a necessary element for competitive play.
There is a new mechanic called Offspring which some creature cards have. If the Offspring cost is paid you get an additional copy of the parent creature except with a 1/1 statline.
While it might not seem appealing to spend extra mana to get a weaker copy of a creature, the value comes in getting ahead on the board from a single card. Not to mention, often the effects on a card are more important that it’s stat line.
‘Expend X’ is another mechanic new to Magic that triggers the moment when you spend that X mana during a turn. The expend mechanic fits better in aggressive decks where you want to be tapping out and applying pressure.
Valiant is a new mechanic that is actually a scaled down version of an old mechanic called Heroic. Valiant triggers the first time in a turn when your creature is targeted by a spell or ability you control. Where heroic triggered every turn, Valiant is limited to once a turn.
This potentially allows the design space of Valiant to have more powerful effects than Heroic could otherwise have. Multi-choice cards have reached their final form with the new Paws mechanic.
Paw cards have a number of effects you can choose when casting them and an allowance of ‘paws’ to buy those effects. Previously multi-choice cards often had limitations like choose one or choose two. With Paws you can tailor build your effects for the situation at hand.
Season of the Bold for example provokes some careful thinking. Extra cards from the top of your library seems great but will you have enough mana to cast them?
Maybe you need a few treasure tokens but also have you considered removing one of your opponents creatures with the three paw effect?
The release of Bloomburrow marks an exciting point in time for Magic as it coincides with Standard Rotation. This is where older sets ‘rotate out’ of the Standard format, in this case Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, Innistrad: Crimson Vow, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty & Streets of New Capenna.
This can be good or bad depending on your perspective. Cards from these sets are no longer legal to play in your deck, you can play them in older formats like Pioneer, Modern and Legacy of course. For many people who play Standard competitively, rotation is eagerly awaited as it brings in a fresh meta. New possibilities can flourish in the vacuum of previously oppressive cards.
There have been some recent changes to the Standard rotation system, I’d like to explain them to you but I honestly find it confusing as heck. It used to be simple, once every year three sets would leave. Now Wizards of the Coast have extended it to approximately two years with some cards from a yet to be released set called Foundations remaining for longer.
I do feel this is a good change for the health of the game even if it always seems confusing ‘what’s in standard’. I tend to use the helpful website What's in Standard? to make sure I’m deck building with the correct cards, it’s usually the quickest way to get that info.
As a red mage I’m just really happy to see the backs of these specific cards below!
If you’re currently playing standard and looking for a cheap post-rotation deck to rack up some wins, red aggro is always a great choice. In the early days of rotation many players have grand designs to cast complicated and expensive spells from the new set.
Aggro decks often move quickly to crush those aspirations with hard realities. The pace is often set by cheap and fast aggro decks in competitive formats.
If your deck needs more than four turns to defend itself or kick off a winning combo it’s unlikely to make the cut and should probably be refined.
My own red prowess/valiant deck I’ve been having a lot of success with is posted below if you’d like to try it yourself or if you’re so inclined have a crack at building your own standard deck.
While the meta is fresh it's never entirely clear what decks will rise to the top after rotation, it’s anyone's game!
Creatures
4x Heartfire Hero
4x Cacophony Scamp
4x Monastery Swiftspear
4x Emberheart Challenger
4x Slickshot Show-Off
4x Callous Sell-Sword
2x Fugitive Codebreaker
Non-creature Spells
4x Monstrous Rage
4x Might of the Meek
4x Rabid Gnaw
2x Felonious Rage
Lands
11x Mountain
4x Blackcleave Cliffs
4x Sulfurous Springs
1x Fountainport
Sideboard
3x Urabrask's Forge
2x Case of the Crimson Pulse
3x Sunspine Lynx
4x Witchstalker Frenzy
2x Koth, Fire of Resistance
1x Mountain
