Everything Revealed During The Bloomburrow Preview Stream
On Tuesday, July 9th, Wizards of the Coast revealed a bushel of new cards from Bloomburrow, the latest upcoming Magic: The Gathering expansion. Bloomburrow takes place on a plane of existence devoid of humanoid creatures. In their absence, woodland creatures populate the plane, so prepare to channel your inner Redwall; without further ado, here are the reveals!
Kindred-Matters Archetypes
While Bloomburrow is not explicitly stated to be a "creature-type matters" set, there are assuredly a ton of cards that will reflect creature-type synergies. The "Village" cycle of lands, revealed during MagicCon Amsterdam not even two weeks ago, is a good example of this. Beyond those, however, the Mentor cycle of cards exemplifies this concept fairly well.
Valley Questcaller, seen below, is another card that cares about multiple creature types at once. While at the time of writing we do not know if Valley Questcaller is part of a cycle akin to the Villages, cards akin to it are all but assured to appear.
The ten creature types represented most in the population of Bloomburrow are the following:
- Birds
- Bats
- Mice
- Rabbits
- Rats
- Otters
- Frogs
- Lizards
- Squirrels
- Raccoons
Legends Of Bloomburrow
As is the new normal with every Magic set nowadays, there are many new legendary creatures in the Bloomburrow expansion. These legendary creatures were revealed during the preview stream:
Card Mechanics of Bloomburrow
Bloomburrow has a variety of new and interesting game mechanics that evoke the titular setting. One such mechanic is called Offspring. When you cast a spell with offspring, you may pay an additional cost. If you do, create a token copy of the spell, except it's 1/1. It's little, but these creatures seem to often have a big impact in groups.
Another new mechanic, one you'll have seen on Muerra, Trash Tactician, is expend. Expending mana is now tracked for purposes of abilities like Muerra's, and so each turn you will have to keep count of the total mana you've spent that turn. This may be a strong mechanic as it rewards players for doing something they already do without a payoff.
Gifts are a new mechanic in the set as well. When you cast the spell, you can promise something for your opponent. If you do or if you don't, something additional occurs within the spell's effect.
Finally, the forage cost word is a new mechanic within the set. To forage, you must either sacrifice a Food token or exile three cards from your graveyard, as seen below:
Special Showcase Treatments
Bloomburrow has its share of showcase variants. Below you can see the Woodland treatment, as we showed you on Valley Questcaller. You'll also see the Field Notes treatment, specifically for the Calamity Beasts, fearsome monsters prevalent in the setting.
Beyond the Field Notes and the Woodland showcase treatments, we also can show you several cards with a Japanese raised-foil art treatment. Here are a few of them:
Face Commanders Of Bloomburrow
Being Commander's Herald, we wouldn't leave you in the dark. If we have the face commanders from a series of preconstructed decks, we would naturally tell you all about them! As such, here are the face commanders from the Bloomburrow Commander decks:
Some Other Cards Shown
Other cards revealed today don't quite fit into these categories, but we're more than happy to show them to you now!
Th-th-th-That's All, Folks!
Bloomburrow officially releases on August 2nd. In the meantime, you can watch the debut trailer here.
As always, we ask: are you excited for Bloomburrow? We sure feel the cuteness coursing through our brains! Is there a particular card you want to build around? Feel free to sound off in the comments below!