Bloomburrow Commander Decks: Face Commanders

Hello and welcome back. Bloomburrow has burst onto the scene with lovable and furry characters and interesting new spells. While the set at time of writing is still being spoiled, we did get our first look at the face commanders for the set’s accompanying preconstructed commander decks. Let’s take our first look at these critters and what they bring to the table.

BELLO, BARD OF THE BRAMBLES

This racoon bard is the face commander of the Animated Army deck, which wants you to animate big artifacts and enchantments and swing them at your opponents. While the bard has only one ability and it takes up the whole text box, it’s a doozy. Any non-equipment artifact and non-aura enchantment you have that has a mana value of 4 or more become a 4/4 elemental with indestructible, haste, and whenever they hit a creature, you draw a card.

Let’s start at the surface level. This ability works well with the new mechanic Expend, which so far revolves around spending your forth mana in a turn. While Bello’s ability doesn’t exactly say so, there is some crossing over to accommodate the ability. If you as a Magic player are starting with Bloomburrow, you should be able to grab some extra cards for the deck without issue thanks to this (and from prior sets).

The commander obviously wants us to play more expensive artifacts and enchantments. Creatures that share either type can be considered as well, though they might trade some power and toughness for resilience if you use something like Wurmcoil Engine. It might be a good tradeoff for drawing a card, and with cards like Wurmcoil Engine you could add trample from something like Garruk’s Uprising to make card draw more certain.

Of course using artifacts or enchantments that can dodge board wipes and other removal can be great as well. Again they need to be mana value four or greater. Something to consider as far as enchantments go might be Asceticism, which isn’t as efficient these days but also helps protect against exiling removal that Bello can’t protect against, plus adds protection to Bello himself.

Bello can also lead a deck that revolves around vehicles since he can animate them himself and not have to crew them. Hoardhauler could be good against certain decks, Esika’s Chariot might do well if you’re making tokens, and something generic like the Weatherlight or Sovereign, Consul Flagship could put in work as well.

Since a lot if not all the animation depends on Bello that we know of, protecting them should be a top priority. Since we don’t particularly have to care about equipment or auras, Swiftfoot Boots, Lightning Greaves and Lavaspur Boots won’t be animated and put into harm’s way more than they are already, and the aforementioned Asceticism and like protections can do wonders.

HAZEL OF THE ROOT BLOOM

Hazel here is a powerful mana dork with some Populate attached, though it isn’t specifically Populate if you have some squirrels.

Hazel’s first ability allows you to pay 2 life, tap Hazel and any number of tokens you control to add mana of any color equal to the tapped tokens. It doesn’t limit the tokens in any way, so you can essentially now tap treasures and not sacrifice them for mana. That alone is plenty powerful, but the tokens involved can be anything, like the new fish token or a copy token of whatever else you have going on.

Speaking of, Hazel’s second ability allows you to create a new token of a token you already control, but if it’s a squirrel, you get two squirrels. Like I said it’s basically Populate unless squirrel.

So, the commander definitely wants tokens of any kind really to power out some powerful and or numerous spells. I should point out again the commander does have some crossover with the main set, where squirrels really seem to love food tokens. With those tokens we can create mana of every color, which excluding niche case thing like getting through a Norn’s Annex, I’m not sure is really relevant without steal effects that don’t provide the “mana as any color” clause. However, if you add this to a deck in the 99 that is more colors it takes on a new importance.

Notably, there are no limitations on the use of the mana either, which is more relevant to a deck this might lead. This mana can pay for abilities as much as spells, and adding a Seedborn Muse helps produce mana on other players’ turns.

As far as making a new token goes, there are many, many tokens and token makers to consider. While the commander itself does care about squirrels, you could use 10/10 Eldrazi to 3/3 Golems. The openness of the commander design really means you can use whatever you want and not necessarily depend on squirrels at all.

That said, Chatterfang Squirrel General, which is getting a new treatment with its reprint in the guest set, will love this card.

MS. BUMBLEFLOWER

A new group hug commander hits the roster of legends with Ms. Bumbleflower. It’s a high toughness rabbit with vigilance, but like with most group hug type commanders, attacking isn’t so much what the creature wants to be doing. Rather, it’s ability is where the game happens. With this commander, you cast a spell and a player draws a card. This means that if you affect player A’s creature, you can have player C draw a card. You don’t have to choose the person or their permanents, which allows for more politics.

You then get to put a +1/+1 counter on a creature, which can be good on so, so many cards I think I’ll leave that to the imagination (though I like the idea of Sharktocrab), and the creature gains flying until end of turn. Giving your creatures a permanent buff and temporary evasion is pretty good, and also means this group hug commander can actually help close a game which has been a curse that has followed these kinds of decks around even though a well built one can do that anyway these days.

If you resolve this ability a second time in a turn, you get to draw two cards. Keep in mind that means your opponents of your choice get 2 cards between them, but it evens out in your favor unless you’re feeding an engine like Psychosis Crawler on their side of the board.

There is a bit to unpack with Ms. Bumbleflower. First is that you get to play politics with the card draw, and the draw isn’t optional so you had better be playing something to keep things even. The second is, like I said prior, this commander can help close a game, even on its own given enough time. A rabbit flying at you who is a 7/12 with vigilance is something I think will be more common than not, and this commander is a deceptively power draw engine that replaces the spells you cast, just eventually.

Playing cards at instant speed like counter magic or things with flash can work really well here if you dedicate the deck to doing it. It gives you defense with a flyer and probably interaction on your opponents’ turns. Remember though that to get the card draw for yourself you need to cast two spells and not just one.

I really picture this commander leading a number of different styles of deck, ranging from control to stax, flash style decks, or even mill/draw out someone’s deck. There have been people smarter than I online already figuring out combos for the latter, and if I’m frank this is the commander I’m most looking forward to of the four face ones so far.

Do not underestimate the bunny.

ZINNIA, VALLEY’S VOICE

It seems all the colors get to care about tokens this go ‘round. While Ms. Bumbleflower above might be able to do commander damage, Zinnia gets a straight buff from other creatures you control with power 1 other than itself. That means all those tiny tokens you make can turn Zinnia into a one-shot commander damage wielding bard in the blink of an eye.

Its second ability gives all of you creatures spells Offspring 2, which means you can pay 2 additional mana when you cast a creature spells to a get a copy of it to the battlefield, but the token is a 1/1 instead of another power and toughness. This directly feeds into Zinnia’s first ability while doubling up on your own creature’s enters abilities. It’s pretty strong.

Something to keep in mind with Zinnia is that you have to be casting the creature spell. It doesn’t restrict from where, but blinking a creature won’t allow you to pay for Offspring again. Offspring is also an additional cost, so if you can cast a creature for free, you’d still have to pay 2 mana to get the token.

Putting some convoke into this deck seems fairly easy to do and helps fuel the effect you might want to be doing anyway. Wand of the Worldsoul is probably going to be a staple in certain kinds of builds for Zinnia. Another clear add might be doubling or triple token effects like Annointed Procession and Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation.

Then there is the burn effects of Impact Tremors or Molten Gatekeeper. I’d lean away from Warleader’s Call here because of Zinnia’s 1 power stipulation, but in a flip on that script you might want to add Godhead of Awe to really screw with the board state.

IN THE VALLEY

Honestly all of these commanders look like a great take on archetypes with enough open space to really do what you want. Kudos to wizards for doing that, as I feel like it’s been a long, long time that a whole set of Commander decks were able to achieve that and tie into the set they are associated with to sell more singles.

I also think there is a good spread of strategies here. While three of the decks can seem aggressive depending on the build, remember that they can take different paths. Hazel could be a control deck with spellcasting and token support, Zinnia could be a control Tron deck with a go wide plan B, and Bello is only limited to the 99 the bard leads. Ms. Bumbleflower is also quite open, and not necessarily all defensive either by adding counters and flying to smash into opponents. Really just a good group of legends here.

I know I’m excited for these, but what are your thoughts? Seems the hype is high, with some people comparing this to Lorwyn for a new generation. I tend to agree and welcome our furry friends into Magic.

Until next time, go on a small adventure.