Magic’s newest expansion takes us to the newly introduced plane of Bloomburrow, a land without humans populated instead by anthropomorphic animals. A new set means new cards, and we’re kicking off our review with the multicolor cards that serve as signposts to let you know what direction each color pair is trying to build in.
Last time we covered the mechanics, and this time as usual we won’t be looking at everything, and we’ll be doing this primarily but not exclusively with an eye for Commander play.
Multicolor Cards
Kastral, the Windcrested
Loxi: It’s interesting that I think this is not too shabby as an option to just jam in a control deck if you have enough Birds to get value out of that first trigger. Not having the reminder text for finality counters threw me for a bit of a loop there. It’s a good card, I think it realistically just wants to be a good midrange-y win condition for a control deck with birbs in it, which is neat for sure.
FromTheShire: Long time readers will know I love me some Birds, and I am stoked about this guy. You fly so you’re definitely connecting with your whole team on someone, and most likely drawing a big pile of cards. The counters can take you from sparrow to eagle in a hurry but that will also make you a clear threat so make sure you have a plan to close out the game in short order, preferably with counterspell or Teferi’s Protection backup since you’re in the right colors. I don’t think you’ll use the first mode as much in Commander but it’s situationally very powerful, and if you wanted to you could build in a way to remove the finality counters and keep your cheated chickadees.
BPhillipYork: Here’s the thing, bird heads are too small. Their brains just wouldn’t be big enough to do magic. It doesn’t make any sense. Magitek, a living island, a time traveling paradox enhancing plot armored guy, Jace and his endless Mary Sue annoyances; whatever. Wildly popular big bad Phyrexians invade and practically the whole invasion ends off-screen, sure. Ancient Elder Dragon from beyond time beats the assembled Avengers and then taunts and betrays his own allies in time for them to turn on him, the sort of cartoon plot that He-Man didn’t blush at running every week in the ’80s, like whatever. But Bird Wizards? Have you seen Kykar, Wind’s Fury? His head is the size of like, a grapefruit, maybe. And look at this thing. You know flying takes a bunch of coordination in the brain. It’s “effortless” because you have a lot of neural wiring hooked up. There’s just no way, at all, that Bird-Man-Wizards would be a thing. The Orcish Rocket Launcher makes more sense. All that aside, this is a fun Bird commander. If you’re playing Magic to have fun, then this is fun. If you’re playing Commander to have fun, then yeah. Bird tribal with some Bird buffs or flyer buffs, some Coastal Piracy type cards to draw with, a bit of ramp from mana rocks, solid. This will let you drop Birds or draw as you need, or else go wide and tall. His modal on hit ability is both decent and flexible as well. Obviously protect him and give him double strike.
Marcy: The big story of Bloomburrow is that it is going very, very hard on typal play, and so this Bird is very much in line with that. I am not sure Bird Typal is actually very solid in Standard compared to the early presence of decks focusing on Lizards, Frogs, and Rabbits, with Rats also floating about; Birds have not seen a lot of play. In terms of Commander, though, I think this Bird might be the word; it certainly isn’t as insanely powerful card, more a ‘fun’ Commander style (I know, imagine playing a game to not just win on turn 2 with non-interaction) that really plays into your deck having a lot of Birds that you can filter in and out of your deck and graveyard.
Plumecreed Mentor
Loxi: It’s a bird that makes your other birds bird harder. Rad.
FromTheShire: The first of our signpost Mentor cycle, Plumecreed feels better for Limited to me, maybe Standard somehow? In Commander having access to the entire card pool means you’re probably not packing too many non-Birds, and I don’t think this is impactful enough to be trying to buff your couple of random utility creatures.
BPhillipYork: Yeah cool, a guy to buff your Birds for Bird tribal, except he buffs non-Birds. You could do some annoying take infinite turns thing with this, also some funny ways to remove flying like handing out a Colossus Hammer, which is probably the funniest thing to do with this guy.
Tidecaller Mentor
Loxi: Definitely not quite what I’d want for Commander, but I can see some play in limited if you have enough actual self mill to get there fast enough for a 3/3 to be useful on board.
BPhillipYork: This seems over costed for 100 card decks. There’s no real tempo here or much synergy and the effect is meh unless you want a 3/3 Rat with menace or a 3/3 Wizard with menace for some other reason.
Marcy: A question you might have is, “does this work in Standard”, and the answer is no. Standard is very, very VERY Aggro heavy right now, and on turn 3, this card does nothing for you, so no, it does not work.
Vren, the Relentless
Loxi: I’m calling this one a bit early: I think this is the type of Commander deck that people build because it looks really cool, but end up taking apart because the play patterns aren’t super exciting. This really just ends up being “kill shit/wipe the board tribal” where you’re rewarded for just blowing up everything that touches anyone else’s side of the board. While I don’t think it’s oppressive or anything and honestly is a pretty interesting a fun design, I think in practice it’s just removal.dec.
BPhillipYork: Well that is a lot of Rats, which is usually what rats are about. Like a lot of rats, very fast. This is really Plague Rats on steroids. The problem with a creature like this is usually that it’s so snowball-like that people won’t let you play your deck. They know if they do you will kill or flicker their creatures, then create X rats that all give each other +X/+X, but then next turn you’ll get Y rats and now all your rats will have +X+Y/+X+Y and then Z rats, and on turn 4 your opponents should be dead. Because it’s EACH END STEP. That’s a lot of end stops. And blue and black have plenty of ways to kill creatures at instant speed.
Carter: Vren is a card where the word “Rat” is what’s known as trinket text — while it can come up as a build around, it’s more for flavor and should not be allowed to distract from the larger package. And goodness, what a package Vren is. Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is a 60-card all-star from back in the day, and Vren blows it out of the water, providing a wide board that scales up to actually threaten combat against midrange, while effortlessly stopping graveyard decks in their tracks. There are a few caveats, however, as this checks during the End Step (Meaning if Vren is wiped alongside other creatures, you lose your Rats), and Ward {2} isn’t fully Hexproof (especially if you’re in the driver’s seat). As a commander, Vren is likely to play as a control deck, ignoring the potential Rat typal synergy, alongside cards that pass around tokens to opposing players for you to kill, exile, and turn into a board. On the whole that sounds pretty enticing to me!
Marcy: It would be really interesting to see a Rat deck that goes wide and over, but there is a slight little trigger on this card that makes some of that less fun: “this turn”, which is fair, as the effect could be too strong otherwise. Still, that means that there aren’t a lot of explosive, huge amounts of rats on the field. I still think there’s something that could be done with this that would be fun, though.
Fireglass Mentor
Loxi: I’ve pretty much made my personal deckbuilding identity as a group slug/punish deck player, so this card is super appealing to me. Since a lot of your group damage triggers in decks like Rakdos, Lord of Riots will go off early in the turn, it’s not hard to get some value from this even if you can’t stick any combat damage. It’s a nice way to get consistent card advantage for a pretty cheap price.
BPhillipYork: So confusion of new templating aside, basically if you attack or nuked your opponents you get to exile draw and choose one to play. That’s extremely solid for 2 mana.
FromTheShire: Excellent card advantage engine, both for Commander with its host of ways to benefit from exile draw and in the Standard Lizard deck which has lots of ways to push damage through and keep churning.
Marcy: This card got a lot of play in the Bloomburrow pre-release and preview content that came out, and for good reason: it makes Lizard typal Rakdos work VERY well, allowing you to filter your deck very, very easily and find exactly what you need. Absolutely a 4 of in a Lizard deck.
Gev, Scaled Scorch
Loxi: Pinging and buffing your lizards is pretty huge, but having a little bit of inbuilt protection to boot is a really nice touch. 2 life might be miniscule, but when everything you have is tapping people for damage, they might have to think twice about each time they get smacked trying to kill this guy. I really like it, it’s a fun identity for lizards and I think is a bit more focused than what they’ve similarly done with Devils in the past.
FromTheShire: Outstanding piece in the Standard deck that buffs your team while throwing damage around and also being painful to remove, and is maybe even better in Commander. The ping and ward are less impactful but odds are good you can ding each opponent so all of your Lizards enter with 3 counters.
BPhillipYork: I never realized there were so many Lizards. 98 or so according to Scryfall (I’m sure there are a couple false positives) and another 18 changelings. That’s definitely enough for a go wide pings and pumps deck, it’s just very linear and obviously threatening. There’s a really nice interaction with All Will Be One in this deck, but I really fear you will struggle to close out games. You’ll probably kill 1-2 players and then get shut down in most games because you’ll quickly be archenemy.
Carter: Gev is a fun little Lizard, but in a competitive context this gecko’s simply the fastest piece to go infinite with Persist and an outlet that’s yet been printed for the Command Zone. So long as an opponent has lost life and you have access to something like Murderous Redcap and a sacrifice outlet, the game functionally ends. That said, in Rakdos you lack protection for this line and are required to rely on speed, with few backups that actually have teeth. If you wanted to play a RBx turbo commander, you already had various Rograkh pairings. Save this anklebiter for casual.
Marcy: Another very solid Lizard typal card for Standard. The strength of Lizards is that they are very cheap and do a LOT, and you can easily have a turn that just burns out your opponent by playing your cheap creatures. And since this says Cast, [Fireflass Mentor] above works very well with this.
The Infamous Crueclaw
Loxi: If you’ve been in the magic scene for any time at all, you’ll be well aware that any cards that allow you to cast things for 0 mana are quite potent. Force of Will is probably the most well known case similar to this, and while I’m not saying this card is even remotely as powerful as Force, it’s a seriously potent way to cheat out some big spells, even more so if you can manipulate the top of your library. If you’re a fan of things like Etali, Primal Storm, this will definitely be up your alley. Getting access to Black mana will give you a whole bunch of new toys to play with.
FromTheShire: Stop me if you’ve heard this before: cheating mana costs is one of the single most powerful things you can do in Magic. Fortunately this isn’t in blue so there’s a lot less top deck manipulation available to you, but even so this can pop out some heinous stuff extremely fast. Spin it to win it on turn 4 and hope you can hit your Blightsteel Colossus.
BPhillipYork: So as I often do, I’ll point out this is a solid extra combats commander. In addition to that it works really well with Conspiracy Theorist and Containment Construct. Pretty solid red black beater commander.
Marcy: Really glad that even if it wasn’t banned, Invoke Despair rotated out, because holy that would have been miserable. Rakdos has a lot of good cards that could take advantage of this, though, but the biggest issue is that Crueclaw here has to get in and do damage, so that’s turn 4 before you can hope to get some sort of hit. Could be fun, but probably not meta defining.
Hugs, Grisly Guardian
Loxi: Honestly, you know where this really shines? In the 99 of a beatdown Najeela, The Blade Blossom deck. This could be a really fun way to just dump some cards onto the board and still provide some sweet midgame value from a bit more ramp. It’s a sweet card, it makes me wish we had a little more natural support for Warriors.
BPhillipYork: Well additional lands are nice but for Commander I never really like “do a bunch of things in one turn” unless it wins the game. Particularly where you have to pay X in addition to 4 mana, how are you going to afford to play any of those X cards? Sure 2 lands, but other than that? Too many other exciting commanders unless you really want to play a Badger commander.
Marcy: Nice art, at least. Not really going to do much else in non-Commander formats, and maybe not even much there either sadly.
Muerra, Trash Tactician
Marcy: The funny thing is that like Birds, Raccoon Typal in Bloomburrow really isn’t that explosive or powerful, but the decks that I have seen try it always run this card for the mana generation instead of the other effects; free mana is free mana, after all.
Loxi: As a commander, this is a really awesome and unique deck since it really benefits off mana sink cards. I’ve always been a huge proponent of having ways to utilize excess mana, even in relatively faster metagames. I think X spells and any multikicker cards will synergize great here, and truthfully the hardest part of this will be keeping tempo with enough Racoons that can hold their weight.
FromTheShire: I’m not sure if this has the support yet to truly pop off in Commander, these kinds of cards are notorious for winding up super strong when a new set gives additional useful cards though. Expend doesn’t really excite me currently but it’s not a bad thing to have tacked on. If you can go wide the mana ramp is what I’m here for.
BPhillipYork: There’s 21 Raccoons and another 19 Changelings you can run, so easily enough typal to cover some kind of weird Raccoon/Equipment/ Bludgeon Brawl deck (because of Bello, Bard of the Brambles). To me there’s no real elegant logic to it, but on the other hand Procyons are cool. Honestly all the Racoons should be very… clever? It feels like a bit of a flavor fail that they have such ordinary abilities. If WotC had done better, they’d have the flavor of some blue trickster type creatures (you know, Faeries) except be red green with lots of kinds of evasion abilities and weird like combat tricks. Instead they have stuff like: “when Brazen Collector attacks add R. Until end of turn you don’t lose this mana until steps and phases end.” Boring. It’s been done.
Wandertale Mentor
Marcy: You’ll want to use this with Muera; not that you have a lot of choices, as I mentioned, because Raccoon typal isn’t as fleshed out as some of the others.
Loxi: This is good in the above deck, but anywhere else I’d pick something else; Ruby, Daring Tracker has haste and can still get a combat bonus when you need it.
FromTheShire: A solid mana dork that can grow into a problem in later turns in 60 card? I don’t hate it.
BPhillipYork: Okay so why doesn’t the Wandertale Mentor have mentor.
This makes me unreasonably angry. If it had mentor it would be good. But it doesn’t. So it’s kind of not.
Burrowguard Mentor
Marcy: This card is terrifying, and you are going to see it beating your face in a lot. Rabbit decks have huge token generation, because rabbits. Get it.
Loxi: This type of card design isn’t really new, but it’s worth noting that it having Trample makes it a pretty scary threat if you can stick this with Haste later in a game.
FromTheShire: This card on the other hand I don’t just not hate, I love it. The trample is massively important, with the go wide Rabbit aggro deck doing things like playing a Hop to It after this and punching through your early blockers for 5. Obviously we’re still early on but right now there seems to be a number of actually viable tribal decks and that is something I have always enjoyed and think is great for the game, so I am going to be thoroughly chuffed if that holds true in the coming months.
BPhillipYork: What did I just say.
Byrke, Long Ear of the Law
Marcy: Shockingly, I didn’t see this one in most of the Rabbit decks, instead opting for token generation to pump up cards like Burrowguard Mentor, because why spend 6 mana when you can spend 2 and win the game?
BPhillipYork: Yeah this is fun. Likely too expensive but potentially can go nuts. If your table is slow and your opponents will let you build giant stacks of +1/+1s go Rabbit-wild.
Loxi: I’m definitely in agreement that this is a bit slow. It’s almost like playing a finisher stamped onto a creature: I’d imagine you either stick him when you already have a pretty developed board and get off a huge attack to either win the game or heavily turn it in your favor, or you play him on curve and he gets whacked before you can attack. I think if you treat him like a late game force multiplier, it’s going to work wonders as a way to close out games.
FromTheShire: Definitely a bomb to close out games, he needs to be dealt with quickly or everyone is going to get absolutely mashed into paste.
Finneas, Ace Archer
Marcy: Token or Rabbit is really important here, as some of the Rabbit typals ran other types of token generation just for the value it provides, but even without worrying about that, you’re going to have 10 power on the board VERY fast and the card advantage you can get from Finneas helps you not run out of steam.
Loxi: I like this more for other formats besides Commander, but if you have any reliable way to make this evasive it can be a nice little support piece. I wouldn’t expect him to live long otherwise though.
BPhillipYork: This is okay but a bit dangerous, needing to swing with a 2/2 to do anything is rough. 2 is kind of the magic number for lots and lots of cheap ways to give evasion so that competes with when you want to cast this somewhat. Hitting 10 power should be pretty trivial so it functionally becomes draw a card every turn, which is pretty solid for 2 mana.
FromTheShire: Agreed that this is likely more for Standard but vigilance and secret reach are a great combo, and he can add a ton of power to the board quickly by handing out counters. Even if he dies it can set you up for a kill the following turn and for 2 mana that’s a damn good deal.
Lunar Convocation
Marcy: Sadly, Lifegain lost a lot of cards in rotation, and I don’t think this is going to quite fill the gap; that said, it certainly isn’t bad, and using your excess life to draw some cards and find solutions is a nice possibility.
Loxi: Lifegain pinger decks could always use another way to get their damage piled up, and this one is cheap and valuable enough that I can totally see throwing it in any decks like Oloro or Athreos (on top of the other Bat cards in this set, of course).
BPhillipYork: Neat. Really neat, on point, fun, not amazing but decent, perfectly on point Orzhov type enchantment. Mana dump if needed, life gain, Bat generator, just all round like this card. Not an auto-include, but a really solid enabler for certain kinds of decks.
FromTheShire: Draining and gaining is what Bat decks want to be doing and this seems like a good enabler. Making tokens and drawing cards on a single card is great.
Starseer Mentor
Marcy: I think the 5 mana kills this; while it is a strong effect, you have to get it to stick, and also live to have 5 mana, and buddy, that’s not very common at the moment.
Loxi: If this was cheaper but on a smaller body, I’d be pretty cool with it. I think it’s a solid limited card, but it’s not really something I’d get for Commander play.
BPhillipYork: Well this is an okay trigger, except its on a 5 mana thing where you have to deal damage (or cause life loss) and only hits 1 person. So for a 4-player this feels bad, and it costs too much, and is too slow, and is really a win more, but it’s really only win a bit more. When you win more it better be crazy.
Zoraline, Cosmos Caller
Marcy: This again seems to try to fill some gaps that the Lifegain rotation left behind, and you do get some solid potential recursion and safety from it. That said, you do need to afford the 2 life, and so the new form of “lifegain but also pay life” in a still very aggro heavy meta might be a hard sell but could be an interesting anti-aggro archetype.
Loxi: This has some crazy synergy with cards like Desecrated Tomb that trigger when things leave your graveyard. It makes for a really well rounded Orzhov-classic style deck where you can gain ‘n drain as your main win condition, but back it up with a sweet reanimator package. I dig it, this one is my favorite legendary in the set for sure.
BPhillipYork: Wowser. This is really good. Really really good, like all kinds of good abilities in every direction. A 3/3 flyer with vigilance for 3 is fine, plus he has two good triggered abilities and gains you life. He also reanimates Permanents not just creatures, which means you can reanimate Dance of the Dead and bring back a huge fatty, or a bunch of eggs, or whatever.
FromTheShire: Super fun and super strong, and vigilance on a flyer so you never stop punching and blocking is excellent.
Alania, Divergent Storm
Marcy: Otter Prowess is a deck that is trying, but sadly, it has the problem of requiring you to do a lot of work to get the win where other decks just dump their hands on turns 3 or 4 and win.
Loxi: It’s a pretty reliable way to copy most spells you have that you’d want to bother to copy, and one card to an opponent is a reasonable tax to pay to be an otter-cosplaying Dualcaster Mage for a bit. It’s very on brand for Izzet, but it provides a neat avenue of playing Otters in a pretty cohesive way.
BPhillipYork: Neat. I mean it will cut into my weird allowance of Otter spells, but it’s a fun way to duplicate things by giving away cards. There’s ways to punish people for having cards, though they are mostly black some are red, and there’s also just handing cards to the least threatening deck at the table. Or duplicating extra turn spells.
FromTheShire: Solid copy effect. In Commander you absolutely need to know if your buddy is running a bunch of extra turn spells in this deck cause if so this needs to die on sight. Otherwise it’s merely very good. For Standard I think this is too expensive, most of the Otter decks I have seen want to be low to the ground and killing you quick with prowess rather than grinding out value like Alania does.
Bria, Riptide Rogue
Marcy: Prowess Lord is a neat touch, and in some of those Prowess typals I’ve seen, this card acts a little bit more like a finisher than a force on it’s own, coming down with mana open to get triggers off.
Loxi: Prowess and evasion makes this a genuinely terrifying threat if you can storm off in a turn, I can see an argument for this in many Storm/spellslinger decks just as a way to turn any utility creatures you have into real threats, let alone using this to buff up already scary creatures.
BPhillipYork: Another good Otter, pairs well with Alania, Divergent Storm, and just fun on its own. Prowess out big unblockable fatties by burning cantrips and kill your opponents off with extra combats or just beat them down over a couple of turns.
FromTheShire: Yeah see this is what I mean. It gets huge, the rest of your team gets huge, everything becomes unblockable, and your opponent just dies. Very, very powerful.
Ral, Crackling Wit
Marcy: Prowess Otter Tribal is, like I said, a deck that is trying, but I actually sadly am not sure Ral makes it work or not; your payoff upon playing him is either a loot or a 1/1, but Drawing 3 is pretty solid of an ability that also diverts your opponent’s attention.
Loxi: Ral keeps the power slickback, even in rodent form. Nice. While he’s been busy Winnie-The-Pooh-ing it in his new Otter form, Ral learned how to make Mark Rosewater bend to his whim and add Storm back into the card design pool. It’s not unreasonable to drop Ral and just pop off from his passive effect, so I think that alone makes him a much scarier threat than most planeswalkers. You need to set up a good turn for him, and even afterwards you need to have enough mana (or survive another turn) to make use of the emblem, but it’s very achievable with some good planning. Even his -3 ability will be super useful when you’re slinging spells. It’s a really good proactive planeswalker design that actually fits pretty well into Commander, which is not super common for the card type.
BPhillipYork: Um, wow. Wait is Ral a rat now? Oh he’s an Otterfolk. Okay. So glad I tune that stuff out. Well this is a gross way to storm off, it’s too bad he can’t be your commander because I would build a deck around him that goes off. Cantrips, your basic suite of “when you cast, add R or a Treasure” doublers, and just kablammo. Get storm and kill people with a Lightning Bolt.
FromTheShire: Between this and Bria, you can see why I don’t think you plan on letting your opponent live long enough for you to cast Alania. The tokens are super valuable to the deck since they can even double up on prowess triggers, and you will see this get up to the ultimate shockingly fast. A lot of the time it will all be on the same turn so you will pop it and then immediately cast something as simple as a Shock with the storm count being like 8-10 and instantly dome your opponent out.
Stormcatch Mentor
Marcy: One of the current stars of the Prowess Typal deck for sure, although the irony is that most of the spells played in that deck are one CMC. Can’t really get around Haste with Extra, though.
Loxi: Sweet, always a welcome card to have when you’re trying to chuck a lot of spells.
BPhillipYork: Um, yeah, good. 2 cost prowess with haste and reduces the cost of instants and sorceries. That’s fine. I mean no, it’s quite good. If you need that, run it. Strong.
FromTheShire: Want to know how your storm count got to be 10? This little guy right here. There are storm decks of some variety in most formats from Legacy to Pauper, and one of the constants across all of them are cost reducers just like this. It even punches well along the way.
Camellia, the Seedmiser
Marcy: Ironically pretty sure this is just for Commander, because Squirrel Typal isn’t a thing in Standard.
Loxi: I quite enjoy this card as a generally good payoff for Food decks, even if you’re not going hard in the paint to make it a full Squirrel deck. If you are (and you should), it’s a pretty cheap and reliable way to always have some threat on the board and really get the most out of the archetype by just going wide and smacking face. It’s worth noting that it only requires you to sacrifice a Food, but not necessarily to the Food’s activated ability: ways to just pitch artifacts for free will help a lot if you don’t have tons of mana to dump into the activated ability here.
BPhillipYork: This is a decent enabler, or you could build a Food / Squirrel deck around Camelia, either way. Alternatively just run it with the really good Squirrel commander, Chatterfang, Squirrel General.
FromTheShire: The flavor here is great, and handing out menace is a solid buff. Plus it also both creates Squirrels and gives them counters? Sign me up. The only problem so far is that it’s a little on the grindy end and right now aggro decks are seeing a lot of success. That’s pretty typical in new formats though and I won’t be at all surprised if this does some work down the line.
Vinereap Mentor
Marcy: Again, seems like this is great for Squirrel typals, but not very great in standard, which doesn’t really have the capability to take advantage of this. Also this art rocks?
Loxi: I can’t explain specifically why, but this art goes so hard.
BPhillipYork: Pass. I mean, fine, get 2 Food. Probably not good enough, maybe in a Squirrel deck for some synergy there.
FromTheShire: Excellent enabler for the Squirrel deck if it materializes.
Ygra, Eater of All
Marcy: I find this card fun, but the Ward is kind of… bad. Giving your opponent a way around it by literally just handing them Food tokens is great flavor, but also just means I 100% rip a removal spell immediately for it. I suppose that’s fair, though, because otherwise this thing would just beat face.
Loxi: Hilariously fun design of making everything Food, and it’s also worth noting that his thing can just get stupidly big in a deck dedicated to sacrificing food itself. The one caveat I’d have with this card is that it can accidentally juice up other artifact decks by making everything an artifact, or even make a well timed Vandalblast spell doom for everyone’s creatures (which could work in your favor if nobody’s got creature removal up their sleeve).
BPhillipYork: Creatures are Food. Eat your Squirrels. All kinds of hilarious things to do with this (like eat your own Squirrels, please). Too expensive, but fun for lower power games.
FromTheShire: This seems ripe for abuse in the best possible way. Making everything into famously fair Artifacts? Why not.
Mabel, Heir to Cragflame
FromTheShire: As one of the cards towards the top end of the Mouse aggro deck in Standard which we’re probably going to be seeing a bunch of, at least until the format gets solved, Mabel is really good. Heartfire Hero into Manifold Mouse into Mabel is a hell of a lot of pressure quickly if your opponent doesn’t have answers. You also have Flowerfoot Swordmaster and Valley Questcaller as additional lord effects, Might of the Meek to push through damage, and potentially Dewdrop Cure to recur your team.
Marcy: Mouse/Mice Typal is taking up a lot of space in the Boros Convoke meta, replacing some of the cards that were lost and adding in new ways to take advantage of the cards that want to do what they’re trying to do in that archetype, and Mabel is one of those cards, acting like a finisher in a lot of cases.
Loxi: This does quite a lot for 3 mana, and while I don’t think it’s a particularly exciting commander, it making an absolutely juiced up equipment while providing an anthem AND a body is a lot in one package. In Mice decks and in some general equipment decks I can see a good use case for this if you can get enough value off having other mice around.
BPhillipYork: Is this the pro-tag-on-ist? Great, make a weird mediocre weapon and give your Mice +1/+1. So, fine for Mice decks. Is that a thing?
Seedglaive Mentor
FromTheShire: This has the problem of not being Mabel. Depending on the list I guess I could see some copies if there’s room but I won’t be surprised if it doesn’t make the cut.
Marcy: As others mentioned, this card is not Mabel, and so if you were looking to do Mouse typal, you want Mabel, and maybe this card. That said, it is uncommon, and this easier to get 4 of.
BPhillipYork: If you’re pumping your own creatures there are just way more abusive triggers than this, unless you Need it to be a Mouse.
Clement, the Worrywort
Marcy: A few other frog cards have this similar ability, so it is very important to read: this is not a MAY ability.
Loxi: Frogs providing bounce mechanics? Yeah, that tracks. What next, bats that have actual vampire-like abilities? Ha… wait.
Anywho, this is a pretty cool card, it’s a good way to recycle any effects as well as just providing some generally nice ramp for everything on your board. I can see this being potent enough to make Frogs viable, since it leans more towards the frogs themselves being support pieces for your big, scary ETB package you want to run.
BPhillipYork: Well this is really fun if you want to make a deck with lots of ETBs. Oh right you can totally abuse with this Intruder Alarm as well. 0 Sets since Intruder Alarm was broken, no surprise there.
Dreamdew Entrancer
Marcy: This really saw some play in draft and I think works in limited as a bomb and possible game ender, but isn’t really seeing much interest outside of that; the frog typal decks stick around a 2-3 CMC curve.
Loxi: This guy comes at me with the Men in Black mind-zapper pen and just expects me not to laugh, who does he think I am?
BPhillipYork: I like this, too bad it’s so expensive.
Lilysplash Mentor
Marcy: While not seeing a lot of play, I do like the ability here, and think this is a fun card that has some nice usages for flipping cards in and out of play.
Loxi: Surely blinking creatures as much as you want isn’t a problem? Roon of the Hidden Realm is quaking at this one honestly, this card has a really high ceiling if you’re prepared to pull off some flicker combos.
BPhillipYork: Hmmmmm well this is a thing that can be broken. Inherently. For example, Peregrine Drake exists as a card in Magic: the Gathering. This instantly (okay actually not instantly, very specifically at sorcery speed) creates infinite mana. The issue is in my neck of the woods if I see this hit the table I’m probably going to blow it up offhand because it’s so inherently dangerous.
FromTheShire: At least it’s a sorcery so you can only go infinite on your own turn I guess?
Baylen, the Haymaker
FromTheShire: Boy Haymaker is an appropriate name because this guy has HANDS. Notably all of these abilities work with any token, and because it’s Baylen’s ability not a tap effect given to the token, your creature tokens can be tapped immediately. There are a ton of ways to double up your tokens and use those tokens for big X spells like Grand Crescendo which can then be tapped immediately for your next big spell and so on.
Marcy: This is a card that doesn’t have a place in Standard, at least not currently, and certainly seems far more for use in a Commander token deck, one that uses Jinnie Fay and Jetmir, or similar token explosiveness.
Loxi: The unique thing here is that it just asks for tokens, not caring what kind. If you can just dive into Food and Treasures, this is a great way to just go full Voltron and beat people into the dirt since it pretty much is a one-bunny value engine.
BPhillipYork: Wow what a totally cool creature. Love it. A way to go berserk with tokens in Naya, solid 3 cost enabler, build your Rabbit/Mice/Soldier/Treasure/whatever deck around this.
Helga, Skittish Seer
Marcy: I do like that you continue to gain mana and power on this as you keep casting things, but overall this just feels kind of… okay.
Loxi: A lot of my love for this card is actually providing a way to play X spell decks with access to White, which hasn’t really been seen in a super synergistic way up until this point. I don’t think it beats out the other cards in the archetype for raw power, but it opens up a lot of fun cards and playstyles for things like Hydras that aren’t available from other commanders, and that’s super cool.
BPhillipYork: I like this. I mean it’s not crazy good, but it makes for fun decks. There’s plenty of solid mid range creatures you can build around, or else set up a combo.
Carter: Helga is notable for being perhaps the single-best commander to pair with a Companion Keruga, and build your entire deck to have mana value of 3 or greater. Companions in Commander have practically fallen off a cliff in terms of playability, following their nerf for 60-card formats, but providing refill for Helga while already doing what she wants likely entices the savvy deck builder to consider the option. Definitely cool to see a Companioned Commander at the table — those deckbuilding restrictions are no joke. In a competitive context, Helga is a Food Chain outlet with exactly Misthollow Griffin, and in Bant that’s a combo you can pretty readily find, especially if Helga is chaining some nearly free Affinity for Artifacts creatures together. I’ve heard the discussions, and seen the lines, but to me, Helga remains a card that’s definitely good but unlikely to be great.
Glarb, Calamity’s Augur
Marcy: I like the art, but that’s kind of it for me here.
BPhillipYork: Well this is a frog, uh, commander. Looking at the top is always a nice ability and the ability to throw it away is really nice, especially if you are trying to combo off with something like Bolas’s Citadel, or just throw things into the yard to cheat them out. Playing lands likewise is pretty nice and is a real card advantage trick, and is one of the things that often screws up Sensei’s Divining Top or Citadel type decks. 2/4 Deathtouch is also a really useful stat block, it’s fat enough to survive things and the deathtouch means it will kill anything.
Carter: There’s a cool duality between Glarb & Helga, but in my eyes it’s quite one-sided. UGx has no shortage of means to access card advantage, and Future Sight-style effects like this often achieve the greatest value when you’re chaining together spell after spell, not one or two big cards. While Glarb’s filtering does mean you’re almost always getting ~1 effective card per turn, in terms of advantage, Helga allows you to pop off, and go tall & wide in a way Glarb simply doesn’t.
FromTheShire: Playing off of the top of your library is very powerful, and in these colors especially you have loads of ways to have exactly what you need there exactly when you need it. Being able to clear lands at least twice is a big upside as well, before you even factor in the extra land drop cards this deck will certainly be running.
Next Time: Monocolor
That wraps up our look at the set’s multicolored cards. Join us next time as we review the sets monocolor cards, picking out our favorites, and talking about the future build-arounds. In the meantime, if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.
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