Magic: The Gathering Unveils Bloomburrow, A Woodland World Populated By Animals

Magic: The Gathering is at its best when it has levity and fun, without spilling over into Unfinity-levels of silliness. Think sets like The Lost Caverns of Ixalan and Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty; with their well-realised worlds and memorable cards, they felt like high-points for the game.

Magic: The Gathering is at its best when it has levity and fun, without spilling over into Unfinity-levels of silliness. Think sets like The Lost Caverns of Ixalan and Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty; with their well-realised worlds and memorable cards, they felt like high-points for the game.

After a year of sets that have been good, but not necessarily all-timers, Bloomburrow could be the next big thing for Magic. Its debut today unveiled a whole host of new cards, a world populated entirely by woodland animals, and mechanics that could have a big impact when the set drops on August 2.

The Lore Of Bloomburrow

Magic’s multiverse is a huge place, but most planes have some kind of human on them. Not Bloomburrow. Instead, every sentient being here is an animal, such as the brave Mice, the mysterious Bats, or the chaotic Raccoons.

Even planeswalkers who come to Bloomburrow find themselves transformed into creatures, as happened to Ral Zarek when he got a new, otter-y look on his arrival. This idea is the basis for the Imagine: Critters subset, which reimagines planeswalkers as they’d look when they come to Bloomburrow.

But Bloomburrow isn’t a completely cozy and twee place – the Calamity Beasts cause havoc wherever they go, and it’s up to Ral, the mouse Mabel, and her band of allies to save their home of Valley, and the wider plane of Bloomburrow, from these gargantuan enemies.

The Mechanics Of Bloomburrow

With the launch of Bloomburrow, the Standard format is having its biggest shake-up in years. Not only will we be saying goodbye to Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, Innistrad: Crimson Vow, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, and Streets of New Capenna, we’ll also be getting a whole host of new and returning mechanics.

New Mechanic: Offspring

It’s a meme in Magic that every mechanic is either flying or kicker, and offspring definitely doesn’t help with those accusations. It’s effectively kicker, but with a really massive upside.

Offspring is an additional cost found on creature cards. If you pay the offspring cost while casting the creature, when it enters, you’ll also get a 1/1 token copy of it. This means that you not only get an additional blocker, but also additional enter triggers and double the abilities.

While offspring is an additional cost you pay while casting, the actual act of making the token copy is an enter trigger. This means it’ll be doubled by things like Panharmonicon or Roaming Throne.

Offspring is the main mechanic of the white/green Rabbits, but also headlines as the key mechanic of the red, blue, and white Family Matters Commander deck.

New Mechanic: Forage

Wizards of the Coast has been eager to give Food some more utility, besides just being sacrificed for life. We saw a bit of this in last year’s Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, but Bloomburrow really makes Food a central theme with foraging.

Foraging allows you to either exile three cards from your graveyard, or sacrifice a Food. This is a cost that can be used for all sorts of things, but is mostly found in the black and green colours for things like graveyard reanimation or buffing up your creatures with +1/+1 counters.

New Mechanic: Gifting

Continuing the theme of additional costs and ‘basically kicker’-style mechanics, gifting has your opponents make tokens to improve the effects of your spells.

Parting Gust can be used as a regular blink spell for two white mana, which is good but not great. If you gift a tapped Fish, though, your opponent will make a 1/1 blue Fish creature, and then you can outright exile a nontoken creature instead. You’re giving your opponent a creature, but it could be commiseration for exiling their much larger one.

It’s important to remember that gifting happens as you cast the spell, and doesn’t need the spell to resolve. If you promise a Fish, and then your opponent counters the spell, the Fish will still be made.

New Mechanic: Expend

Magic loves its big-mana archetypes, but Bloomburrow is the first time you’ll be actively tracking how much of that mana you’ve spent in a turn with expend.

Expend only counts the mana you pay to cast spells, so activated abilities, ward costs and the like don’t matter. The effects are somewhat small, as you’re using the mana to cast big spells already – for instance, Muerra, Trash Tactician gives you three life once you’ve spent your fourth