Bloomburrow - A cEDH Set Review | Commander's Herald

Feathered friends, furry friends, fuzzy friends, and fanged friends, welcome to the Bloomburrow cEDH set review! We've got a flexible clone creature, an efficient bounce spell, the highest count of cEDH viable Frogs ever seen in one set, an edgy Weasel, more Magda cards, and a token-themed Warrior that might put the Rabbit of Caerbannog to shame. Bloomburrow is certainly not be the best set for cEDH we've seen this year, but it's an interesting one with a lot of potential, so without further ado, let's jump in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

White

Dawn's Truce

This is the first card on this list to have the gift mechanic, so let's quickly go over it. Simply put, you may promise an opponent a gift as you cast the spell in question, and if you do, that opponent will get whatever gift your card offers. In the case of Dawn's Truce, that would be drawing a card. In the event you do gift them a free card draw, you'll be rewarded with the white version of Heroic Intervention. Unfortunately, Heroic Intervention and its adjacent variants are historically unpopular in cEDH because this isn't a Wrath of God format.

The most common forms of mass removal you'll see in cEDH are Cyclonic Rift and Toxic Deluge, neither of which can be stopped with Dawn's Truce, severely limiting its potential. The best thing to be said about Dawn's Truce is that the gift-a-card clause can actually be an upside in the right scenario. Simply wait for an opponent to exile their entire library with Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact, then force them to draw a card and you can enjoy telling them that they only have themself to blame.

Blue

Into the Flood Maw

There's no shortage of efficient bounce spells in cEDH. Given their utility in hitting most permanent types and the short turn count of an average cEDH game, bounce spells are easily the most common form of removal, and they're usually one mana with a downside like Alchemist's Retrieval) or two mana with an upside like Cyclonic Rift. Into the Flood Maw falls into the former category as an unconditional bounce spell for creatures opponents control and an unconditional bounce spell for any permanent an opponent controls as long as you're happy to give them a tapped Fish. There are rare scenarios where this can be a downside, like if an opponent has a Gaea's Cradle or they're desperate for a spare creature for a Diabolic Intent, but these are infrequent and fringe scenarios.

I suspect that this makes Into the Flood Maw one of the best bounce spells in the format, if not for the fact that it can't be used to target one of your own permanents. Every other bounce effect in cEDH is capable of bouncing a Dockside Extortionist back to hand to double dip on the mass Treasure production, something Into the Flood Maw can never do. I'm hoping that the one-mana pricetag will outweigh that downside and Into the Flood Maw will see play in spite of it, but the Dockside downside is significant and it certainly won't replace the premiere one-mana bounce spell: Chain of Vapor.

Mockingbird

Like bounce spells, cEDH has a number of viable clone effects with a variety of ups and downs. The best of the bunch these days is likely Flesh Duplicate, followed closely by longstanding classic Phantasmal Image, the incredibly versatile Phyrexian Metamorph, Impostor Mech, and the Sakashima duo, Sakashima the Impostor and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces. It won't surprise me if Mockingbird has what it takes to be the new kid on the block and, in the right deck, the best of the batch.

Let's start with the downside: you only get out what you put in. Whereas Phantasmal Image can copy a Tivit, Seller of Secrets as easily as it can copy a Dauthi Voidwalker, Mockingbird requires you to sink mana into the X cost if you want to copy anything that costs more than a single mana. Thankfully, that's the only real downside to the card, and given that the majority of good cEDH cards outside of commanders are in the one- to two-mana-value range, Mockingbird is usually going to be played for the same rate as its contemporaries. In fact, given how juicy a target Esper Sentinel is, it'll actually be half the cost of a regular clone effect when you want the white Rhystic Study. Also, quite unlike its predecessors, it's tutorable with Ranger-Captain of Eos, a powerful card that sometimes lacks viable tutor targets.

The biggest upside with Mockingbird is that the creature you create will have flying in addition to its regular abilities and attributes. This is tremendous news for decks that care about attacking, the most notable being Tymna the Weaver. Clone effects are already highly valued for the chance to get another Dockside Extortionist or piggyback off of someone else's, so having a clone effect that can also attack freely and draw cards is a significant bonus. Now, I'd like some recognition for the restraint I've shown. I waited until the end of the writeup on Mockingbird before talking about Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow!

Mockingbird is the first mandatory Yuriko-enabler printed since Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. There have been a lot of contenders and hopefuls in the last two years, but none have been such obvious inclusions. It costs one mana, it has natural evasion, it's blue, so it pitches to Force of Will, Force of Negation, Misdirection, and Commandeer, and the ability to ninjutsu it back to hand after its first appearance and clone something even better is just exceptional. The question isn't "do I play Mockingbird in Yuriko", it's "what do I cut?". At the moment, I'm thinking Signal Pest or Universal Automaton, but keep an eye on my writeup on The Top 20 Ninjutsu Enablers for Yuriko to find out.

Pollywog Prodigy

Two-mana blue creatures that let you see more cards are now a yearly fad in cEDH. We had Ledger Shredder in 2022, Faerie Mastermind in 2023, and now Pollywog Prodigy is 2024's entrant. At its floor, Pollywog Prodigy is a card that draws whenever an opponent plays a zero-mana spell because it looks for noncreature spells that are less than its power, not equal or less. This being cEDH, there are a lot of those: Jeweled Lotus, Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal, Mana Crypt, Mox Amber, Mox Diamond, and Mox Opal being among the most common. However, those cards costing zero means they're usually going to be dumped from hand as soon as possible, long before you're likely to land Pollywog Prodigy. Sure, you can run it out turn one when you're first in turn order and you'll draw off all your opponents' fast mana, but that's nothing to bank on.

Thankfully, Pollywog Prodigy has evolve, and much like a Pokemon, it's not all that strong until you evolve it. Evolving once is good, but you really need a third stage evolution to make this Frog ribbit (Poliwhirl won't do it, this needs to be a Poliwrath). At three power, you'll be drawing off the majority of the noncreature spells cast in an average game of cEDH, which should amount to an awful lot of card advantage. Obviously the most consistent way to make that happen is with your commander. Better yet is when you have two commanders and both can trigger the evolve, but outside of Tymna and Kraum, there aren't many of those as Rograkh and Thrasios are too small and Malcolm is the same size as Tymna herself. Despite having two evolvers in the command zone, I'd be surprised if Blue Farm played Pollywog Prodigy, as the deck is already full to bursting with high-quality value engines.

Overall I think Pollywog Prodigy is closer to Faerie Mastermind than Ledger Shredder. It needs a bit of help to get rolling, but the majority of decks can get it to two just by executing their regular gameplan, and for just two mana, drawing off every one-mana noncreature spell is a pretty good payoff. Early reports I hear from people playing the card suggest it's promising, if not absolutely amazing.

Valley Floodcaller

If Borne Upon a Wind taught us anything, it was just how good executing a win condition at instant speed can be. Valley Floodcaller isn't quite the same, given it costs one more, doesn't cantrip, and only confers flash to noncreature spells, but it does stick around for a long time, adding a lot of flexibility to how you develop your board with slower rocks and how you find your win conditions with sorcery speed tutors. Some classic cEDH win conditions, like Thassa's Oracle, rely on a creature, in which case Valley Floodcaller isn't especially useful, but others, like Underworld Breach + Brain Freeze, can be done on an opponent's turn thanks to this Otter Wizard.

It also untaps Birds, Frogs, Otters, and Rats, and even gives them a +1/+1 buff! That's more or less just flavor text for the sake of cEDH given how few relevant creatures there are in those types, but there are exceptions. Birds of Paradise is the obvious one, as, wouldn't you know it, it's a Bird, and getting free untaps on a mana dork with every noncreature spell is a nice payoff. The other is untapping Valley Floodcaller itself, relevant in the case of having an Earthcraft and a basic land in play. That aside, the most obvious home for Valley Floodcaller will no doubt be in Zur, the Enchanter, the classic Necropotence deck that plays just about anything that gives more universal flash effects.

Black

Hazel's Brewmaster

Ladies and gentlemen, we did it! Another card that can make infinite green mana with Devoted Druid! Simply exile Devoted Druid with Hazel's Brewmaster and you'll be rewarded with a Food that can tap for green mana and untap if you place a -1/-1 counter on it. Given that Food tokens don't care how many negative counters they're laden with, it's an easy path to tapping and untapping to your heart's content. As to how much play it will see, take a gander at the existing Devoted Druid options:

Is Hazel's Brewmaster superior to some of these options? Yes, but so few of them see play to begin with. The main one is Swift Reconfiguration, and I'd argue that Hazel's Brewmaster[/el] is significantly clunkier to set up with Devoted Druid, not to mention costing four mana rather than just one. That said, Swift Reconfiguration isn't available to Golgari decks, so if you happen to be playing a Golgari deck that cares about making infinite mana, this Bloomburrow Brewmaster is a probably a small step up from Quillspike.

Iridescent Vinelasher

Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin decks love dealing damage to opponents in order to trigger the big Demon and get a playable card into exile. You'll see this effect on other one-mana black creatures, like Disciple of the Vault and Kederekt Parasite, as repeatable ping engines, and Iridescent Vinelasher is the latest in that vein. Offspring is a dead simple new mechanic from Bloomburrow, and the utility here is obvious. If you have two mana left over, you'll get two pings per land rather than just one, which should translate to two fresh cards to play from exile with Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin. If that land happens to be a fetchland, you're looking at four triggers. This is fine, but ultimately can't hold a candle to the next Bloomburrow card on our list.

Red

Coruscation Mage

Coruscation Mage is interesting for one reason and one reason alone: Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin. Like Iridescent Vinelasher, it has offspring, meaning that you can use spare mana to double up on your card advantage engine. Coruscation Mage is preceded by the likes of Kessig Flamebreather, Thermo-Alchemist, Firebrand Archer, and Electrostatic Field, and despite heavy competition, may well be the best of them as it triggers from all noncreature spells rather than just instants and sorceries, and has a toughness greater than one, which is increasingly important in a meta overrun with Orcish Bowmasters.

Reptilian Recruiter

It's been a while since Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker was a go-to combo piece in cEDH, and Reptilian Recruiter is just another in a long line of cards that will go infinite with everyone's favorite meatball-shaped Goblin. If you thought Devoted Druid had a lot of two-card infinite combos, lemme tell ya about Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. In fact, rather than telling you, I'll link you: here are all the two-card combos associated with Kiki-Jiki Mirror Breaker, a list that grows by one upon the release of Bloomburrow and printing of Reptilian Recruiter. Unfortunately, Reptilian Recruiter won't shift the dial on Kiki combos: it's still a bit too slow and too clunky for the majority of decks.

Green

Bloodrot Apothecary

There was a lot of talk on Twitter about Bloodrot Apothecary being an answer to Dockside Extortionist when it was first previewed a week or week or two ago. That might hold true in casual Commander, but in cEDH? A nonsense. To begin with, any card that gives an opponent resources for free is usually a really, really bad card. I don't care if it puts me ahead, I'm not interested in putting anyone else ahead, and that's precisely what Bloodrot Apothecary's enter-the-battlefield trigger does. But that's not my real problem with the Squirrel.

My real issue is that two poison counters per noncreature token sacrificed isn't nearly enough of a deterrent to dissuade someone from using their Treasures. If it gave four poison counters I'd be a bit more interested, but even at five I'm not convinced it would be good enough. Granted, it's asymmetrical, but if you're playing a green deck and you're worried about opponents popping off with Treasures, there's a good chance you're low enough on artifacts that you can justify Collector Ouphe or Null Rod, and if you're overly concerned about your own artifacts, just play Manglehorn. Bloodrot Apothecary is a swing and a miss for cEDH. Dockside Extortionist supremacy will continue until morale improves.

Multicolor

Baylen, the Haymaker

Compared to cEDH favorite Grixis, it's not often that we get a truly interesting Naya commander, but Baylen, the Haymaker looks poised to buck that trend. Combo potential, mana advantage, card advantage, Baylen, the Haymaker looks like it has everything you could want in a cEDH commander. You'll need to jump through some hoops like some sort of trained rabbit, but the payoff for doing so seems worth it. As a tokens-matter commander, the first thing to look for are token-producing cards that already see play in cEDH. Some of the best would be Charismatic Conqueror, Smothering Tithe, Professional Face-Breaker, and, of course, Dockside Extortionist.

Naturally, the goddamned Goblin is also the win condition for this deck, as while Baylen, the Haymaker isn't an outlet for infinite mana, it is an outlet for infinite tokens, easily achievable with the help of either Emiel the Blessed or Temur Sabertooth. Winning from there is a matter of recurring a Lightning Bolt or Twinshot Sniper with an infinitely bounced Eternal Witness, so Baylen, the Haymaker joins the ranks of cards that rest very heavily on the continued legality of the most broken card in all of Commander. See what it makes me do? I was talking about cool token-producers and got distracted by Dockside. Back to the producers.

Beyond the token-producing cards that already see play in cEDH, there are a number that might be worth playing just for the sake of synergizing with Baylen himself. I'm particularly interested in Adeline, Resplendent Cathar as a repeatable source of three tokens whenever you attack, but it's worth noting those tokens enter tapped and need to survive in order to be useful for the Haymaker. There's also Academy Manufactor as a force multiplier and way to turn any Food, Treasure, or Clue (unlikely as most of the clue producers are disappointing) into all three at once.

The cards I'm most interested in are the mass-producing token engines, like Tendershoot Dryad and Illustrious Wanderglyph. A long time ago, when Blood Pod was still considered a staple cEDH deck, Tendershoot Dryad saw some play as a way to take over a game after enough stax pieces had landed to lock the table out of doing anything, and if the big Dryad stands a chance of seeing play anywhere in 2024, it'll be in Baylen, the Haymaker. For a similar effect with a lower floor but much higher ceiling, look to Arasta of the Endless Web. Oh yeah, and it's also a Warrior that cares about tokens, so it might be worth testing in Najeela.

Flubs the Fool

As a longterm fan of Song of Creation, Flubs the Fool is a card after my own heart. I love being rewarded with more cards for playing cards and I'm nothing if not a proud fool. Also Frogs are pretty cool. I wouldn't normally consider a card that wants you to be almost Hellbent before it actually does anything worth doing to be a cEDH contender, but Flubs the Fool looks like too much fun to say no to. The Frog rewards you for playing balls to the walls and putting everything on the line for one massive storm turn, and when it works, it's going to look amazing. When it doesn't, it'll look foolish, but that's perfectly appropriate.

Before getting to storming off and acting the fool, let's look at win conditions. The simplest win conditions for Flubs the Fool will be Underworld Breach and Brain Freeze as the deck naturally fills the bin for easy Underworld Breach lines, and Food Chain and Squee the Immortal for infinite creature mana and infinite draw. The only catch is that you'll need to bounce, destroy, or exile Flubs the Fool in order to prevent decking yourself, as it isn't a "may" trigger.

One of the weirdest things with Flubs the Fool is that you really want to maintain an odd number of cards in hand. If you find yourself with an even count, or worse yet, just two, you'll find yourself in a situation where you're Hellbent with nothing to cast, at which point Flubs won't do anything at all. You can get around this with the help of a reliable discard outlet, like Noose Constrictor, but it's best to keep a close eye on how many cards you have in hand.

Will Flubs the Fool be a serious contender in cEDH? I doubt it; I think too many things have to go right and there are too many things that can go wrong. Will it be a popular commander and attract the silliest people cEDH players you know like moths to a flame? No question. On that note, keep your eyes peeled from a writeup about Flubs the Fool from Ken Baumann of Krark, the Thumbless and Sakashima the Impostor fame in the coming week.

Gev, Scaled Scorch

I confess that I don't see much potential in Gev, Scaled Scorch, despite how enthusiastic some cEDH players I know feel about the little Lizard. The pitch, as explained to me, is that he's cheap as chips and enables Murderous Redcap combos. I must be missing something, because that sounds very underwhelming to me. Combo potential is a great thing for a commander to have, but it's usually disappointing when it's the only thing a commander offers, which is precisely the case with Gev, Scaled Scorch as he isn't bringing any card or mana advantage to the table. As for the Murderous Redcap combo, there are a lot of things that need to go right for it to pop off.

For one, you need Gev, Scaled Scorch, Murderous Redcap, and a sacrifice outlet in play all at once. That's already a three-card (two card if you don't include the commander combo) and those are already a dime a dozen in cEDH. On top of that, you need your opponent to have lost life that turn for Gev, Scaled Scorch to even confer any +1/+1 counters, so you need to have either gone to combat and connected, or run otherwise dead cards that deal direct damage to your opponents. I'm not seeing any real potential for Gev, Scaled Scorch and if I'm honest I don't even see the appeal in brewing him, but I must be missing something, so if you're interested in this little Lizard, sound off in the comments and let me know why.

Lilysplash Mentor

Well, Simic got its very own Emiel the Blessed. Simic just gets everything these days, doesn't it? You can only do the blink at sorcery speed, which is definitely a downside compared to the Unicorn, but it's certainly good enough to do what you want it do, and what you want it to do is make infinite mana with Dockside Extortionist. Typical options for Temur decks to go infinite with Dockside are Temur Sabertooth and Barrin, Master Wizard, but you need Dockside to produce five tokens to go infinite there, whereas you only need four tokens to go infinite with Lilysplash Mentor.

The Infamous Cruelclaw

The Infamous Cruelclaw is a seriously cool commander. I'm biased because I love anything that cares about the top of the library, but this takes the cake for the coolest Weasel I've ever seen. Casting cards from places other than your hand is increasingly a specialty for Rakdos, and while you do pay the cost of a discarded card, the Cruelclaw lets you cheat on costs for otherwise prohibitively expensive spells. We've already seen a commander similar to The Infamous Cruelclaw in the form of Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion, but The Infamous Cruelclaw has some distinct advantages, like baked-in evasion and a whole extra color, not to mention an extra toughness for safer swinging.

The best use case for the Cruelclaw's ability to cheat on costs will no doubt be cEDH staple Ad Nauseam and the increasingly uncommon Peer into the Abyss, but there are other great targets, like Hoarding Broodlord for setting up the Saw in Half combo, or even doing kooky stuff, like casting a Rise of the Eldrazi if you're into that sort of jank. As for how to get cards to the top of the library reliably, Rakdos is spoiled for options. Topdeck tutors, like Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal, are already mandatory inclusions for any cEDH deck, but you can go deeper and play Scheming Symmetry and Cruel Tutor. They might be slow, but if you can win the game that turn, does it matter? There's also Scroll Rack for getting those hard-to-cast spells out of your hand and onto the library and Sensei's Divining Top if you're in a position where you're just blind flipping and hoping for the best.

All that said, The Infamous Cruelclaw is glacially slow and as telegraphed as telegraphed gets. With no haste and an extremely predictable gameplan, the whole table knows that if the Weasel connects with someone's face, the game is either over or in a seriously dire position. This means it'll be easy for them to collude and figure out a way to stop the plan by hook or by crook. The deck is also as susceptible to counterspells as any other Rakdos deck, which is going to feel especially bad when you already discarded a card as part of the cost. I hope The Infamous Cruelclaw sees play because I'm such a fan of the effect, but sadly I think it has a little too much working against it for the Weasel to become a high-tier cEDH deck. Here's hoping I'm wrong, because I often am!

Zinnia, Valley's Voice

Flying is nice, a growing boost to power is nice, but 99% of the power in Zinnia, Valley's Voice is giving offspring to every single creature you cast. Pretty fly for a Jeskai, right? Jokes about the American punk rock band aside, the sheer value that comes from double dipping on every creature in your deck is a hell of a payoff, even if it is an expensive one. The creature might only be a 1/1, but you're usually not playing creatures in cEDH for their power and toughness in the first place. A 1/1 Displacer Kitten bounces just as many permanents as a 2/2, and cards like Imperial Recruiter and Recruiter of the Guard are already 1/1s to begin with, so it's all upside.

The value that Zinnia, Valley's Voice can generate doesn't take much imagination to understand, so there isn't a lot to analyze here. If you have two mana to spare, you get twice as much as you would have got from whatever creature you were playing. When Zinnia was first previewed, I hoped there might be some unique combo lines around Spellseeker in the same way that Inalla, Archmage Ritualist abuses that Battlebond card, but as of yet I haven't seen any. Spellseeker already has impressively convoluted combos in Jeskai that revolve around Ephemerate, Final Fortune, and Enlightened Tutor to set up an Underworld Breach + Brain Freeze + Lion's Eye Diamond win, and unfortunately Zinnia, Valley's Voice doesn't meaningfully improve it.

One potential line with Dockside Extortionist and Cloudstone Curio is to cast the Goblin with offspring and use the token version to bounce the original Dockside Extortionist back to hand. As long as Dockside makes three or more Treasures, this will net you six Treasures and only requires four to loop, leaving you with infinite mana, infinite 1/1s, and Zinnia with infinitely huge power. You'll likely wipe out one player with a Zinnia swing, but unfortunately you still need something to do with all that infinite mana if you want to win that same turn and the tokens don't have haste, so this combo isn't quite ideal, but it's not nothing either. Ultimately, Zinnia, Valley's Voice major value is a force multiplier.

Colorless

Barkform Harvester

Given how rarely new Dwarves are printed, the next best thing for Magda, Brazen Outlaw players is seeing new Changelings. Given that an increasing number of them are artifact creatures, they're actually much better than natural born Dwarves because they enable Magda's primary combo.

Barkform Harvester manages to enable that and then some, as it allows for infinite looping of cards in the graveyard. Until now, a common Magda, Brazen Outlaw combo has relied on Elixir of Immortality's ability to shuffle the bin into your library. You can find out more about that in this writeup on Magda, but the long and short is that with infinite Treasures, Magda can tutor out Twinshot Sniper and Krark-Clan Ironworks, deal two damage, sacrifice the Sniper, loop it back in the library with Elixir of Immortality, then rinse and repeat until everyone is dead. Barkform Harvester simply replaces Elixir of Immortality, as it helps enable the initial combo, not to mention turn sideways in the combat step to help Magda, Brazen Outlaw generate Treasures.

Three Tree Mascot

For a mono-color deck that revolves around Dwarves, it's kind of amazing just how often Magda, Brazen Outlaw gets new cards. I haven't run the numbers, but I'm pretty sure I've mentioned her more than any other commander over the last two years of reviewing sets for cEDH. Anyway, Three Tree Mascot is another Magda card, albeit a very simple one. Washing colorless mana into red mana may come up here and there, but really it's just an artifact Dwarf, the very best type of Dwarf. Neat.

Doom, Gloom, or Bloom?

Bloomburrow is a step up from Universes Beyond: Assassin's Creed, but overall it's low on haymakers... well, except Baylen, the Haymaker. Maybe one haymaker is enough. Blue is the big winner of the set, and a year from now I expect we'll still be seeing a lot of Mockingbird and Pollywog Prodigy. Valley Floodcaller and Into the Floodmaw are a bit sketchier, but I've no doubt they'll find a home somewhere. As for commanders, Flubs the Fool will probably prove too silly to become a real meta contender, and The Infamous Cruelclaw might turn out to be too predictable, but they're both interesting and look like a lot of fun to play, so expect to see them at your local cEDH tables if you haven't already. The best multicolor card from the set isn't actually a commander; I predict it'll be Lilysplash Mentor showing up in all the decks that want to combo off with Dockside Extortionist but don't have access to white.

But what am I missing? What did I underrate or overrate? Which is your pick for the best cEDH card from Bloomburrow?