Bloomburrow Commander Party Event Begins This Friday

Wizards of the Coast has conducted many casual events for Magic: The Gathering over the years. With each set in recent years, Magic has announced a "Commander Party" event to go alongside it. Bloomburrow's release is no different, with Wizards announcing two Commander Party events for the set. These events will happen from August 16th through the 22nd, and again from September 6th through the 12th. What can you expect from these events? 

Bloomburrow Commander Party Gameplay

Commander Party events have some interesting innovations to the rules of Magic. Whether you're embodying a Praetor in New Phyrexia or a mob family in New Capenna, there has traditionally been something new to spice up gameplay. For Bloomburrow, this innovation comes in the form of the Season Wheel. On the aforementioned fuzzy woodland plane, the cycle of seasons is a little erratic, with Calamity Beasts roving through the world and affecting the weather and climate like none other. The Season Wheel (shown above) embodies that idea in gameplay.

When the game begins, the Season Wheel begins on the "Pyreswipe Hawk" space. This space makes it so that creatures cannot attack. As the game progresses, players land on different seasons on the wheel via a "Season Token" that moves around. These seasons all have different effects, from some that trigger once to lasting effects that affect the entire board.

But how does one progress the flow of seasons? That's a job for the Animal Party cards:

Each player begins the game by picking one of ten possible Animal Party cards. These all have some effect that is determined by a coin flip or other equally fair type of random chance. If the coin comes up heads, the player flipping gets an effect that is themed after the mechanics of the animal species on the Animal Party Card. But on tails, the Season Token moves between one and three spaces on the Season Wheel. This is also dependent on the Animal Party card. For clarification, these coin flips do not care about calling the outcome of the flip, so cards that care about winning or losing them will not trigger here.

Some of these Animal Party cards are relatively simple, such as the Bat card above. Others are theoretically a bit more complex and/or powerful in their application:

What Can I Get During The Commander Party?

While supplies last, players will get a promo, retro-frame copy of Heirloom Blade for participating in this event. This card is geared primarily for decks that like to focus on one creature type, so Bloomburrow, a set that asks players to focus on certain creature types, seems tailor-made to this card, in a way.

As mentioned above, the Bloomburrow Commander Party events run twice: once, from August 16th-22nd, and a second time, from September 6th-12th. Are you hoping to attend one of these events? If you are unsure where to find a Commander Party, you can use Wizards of the Coast's store locator page to find a WPN-approved store that is hosting them.