Bloomburrow Set Review - Minotaur

Three Tree City by Andrew Mar

White | Blue | Black | Red | Green | Artifacts & Lands | Allied & Shards | Enemy & Wedges | cEDH | Reprints | Pauper/Budget

Inside Of You Are Two Cows

Greetings, everyone! We're in the one and only Bloomburrow! Where everything larger than two feet is a calamity, and that includes Minotaurs, based on everything I've seen about the world.

Now, I'm not the biggest fan of cutesy animal fantasy, but I recognize it has its place, and I think Wizards of the Coast has done a great job creating this new world around that sub-genre. Most of my cultural knowledge of the genre comes from books like Narnia, the Silverwing Trilogy, and The Guardians of Ga'Hoole, so I'm not the primary target audience for this set, but I do like what it brings to the table.

As always, this review is targeted toward the formats of Pioneer and EDH, but by all means, you're welcome to apply my thoughts to other formats.

So, let's build our Red Wall and discover the secret of N.I.M.H. as we delve into the world of Bloomburrow.

(side tangent: if any of you guys are looking for more animal-based adventures, I highly recommend the Prog Rock album The Fox And The Bird from the band Ok Goodnight. A music album that tells the story of a fox and bird on a quest to return rain to their forest home)

Black

Coiling Rebirth

I'll be very upfront in saying that this is a very expensive cost for a reanimation spell, especially considering that in Commander Animate Dead is two mana, and in Pioneer a card like Bond of Revival will grant the target creature haste until end of turn.

However, what makes this card interesting is the ability to gift our opponent a card; if we do that, we not only return the target creature to battlefield, but we then make a 1/1 copy of the creature. I can see some powerful applications of this ability considering how important Minotaur lords are. The best part is, in EDH, we can gift a card to a political ally or curry favor rather than give an enemy the advantage.

But in 1v1 formats, I'm more apprehensive about giving a card unless I know it will be better for us than them.

Feed the Cycle, Fell

Shockingly, Bloomburrow gave us two two-mana black kill spells. These are always of interest to me for Minotaur decks as they're often the most efficient removal spells in Pioneer.

Feed the Cycle might be the best of recent spells like it, by requiring to exile a food token or three cards from our graveyard, as an additional cost. However, Minotaurs aren't likely to make Food tokens, and there is no easy way to guarantee three cards are in our graveyard, meaning, more likely than not, Feed the Cycle is no different than Murder, which is rather below rate at this point.

Fell, on the other hand, is two mana to destroy a creature with no condition what so ever! This is frankly unprecedented and would make it one of the most powerful kill spells in the game, surpassing Doom Blade. The unfortunate difference is that Fell is a sorcery and not an instant, so the lack of versatility is what's really holding this card back, but I have hopes that it can potentially be a useful addition to the Minotaur toolbox.

Maha, Its Feathers Night

Maha is something else. While a more combo-centred mind would try and pair it with effects that deal at least one damage to all creatures or give all creatures -1/-1, I look at it from a different angle.

What makes me excited is how impossible it makes our opponents to block in combat. If we have our Minotaur lords that grant trample or first strike, no one will wish to block, as their creatures would die. This, in a way, creates a redundancy with Felhide Petrifier, which grants other Minotaurs deathtouch and thus a similar outcome in combat.

Obviously, Maha is better in most cases for Felhide Petrifier, but I think it's interesting how these similar play patterns are created by vastly different cards.

Even without our lord effects, just making opponent creatures into 1/1s will strip their defences and cripple any counterattacks when we go on the offensive.

Red

Blooming Blast

Blooming Blast to me seems like a cracked version of Searing Blood. They both cost two mana, deal two damage to a creature and deal three damage to an opponent on a condition. The major difference is that Searing Blood required the opponent's creature to die for the face damage. Here, all we need to do is give our opponent a Treasure token.

I think this easily fits into Pioneer Minotaur decks given how mana-efficient it is and replace the condition of face damage as the choice with the gift, so if we don't want to temporarily ramp our opponent then we don't have to, but allowing use to remove a creature and burn is just too much value to pass up.

Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest

Dragonhawk is a very interesting creature as a potential finisher in Pioneer or serious threat in EDH decks.

The key to success is having creatures with power four or greater, as each one will impulse draw for us. This is easy to achieve with all our Minotaur lords, so I can easily see at least three cards being exiled through the Dragon.

But what's good about this is that, since these cards don't touch our hand, it won't shut off Neheb, the Worthy's heck bent ability. In addition, it gives us a lot of card advantage to dig for answers or additional gas. Finally, any card we don't use that turn will burn our opponents for two damage for each card. Since I imagine three to five cards being drawn this way, that will quickly add up dangerous amounts of damage.

I think this has a lot of potential in Commander for the amount of card advantage and damage potential it has. I'm also optimistic for Pioneer, however, given that it requires a large board with high powered creatures, so we probably should already be winning through combat. Therefore, it feels like a win-more kind of card, and it only works if we have assembled our lord cards, so it's a matter of testing to see if it makes the cut I suppose.

Echoing Assault

This is an interesting card in Sethron decks as it gives the Minotaur tokens generated from him menace. More interesting is that for each player attacked we can create a 1/1 copy token of a creature attacking that player. This means if we make tokens of our lord Minotaurs or any Minotaur that cares about attacking and combat is about to get bonkers.

Now this is going to take a bunch of brain power as you have to imagine the stats of creatures after attacks are declared, but I think you can deal some serious haymakers with this card if the board set up is just right.

Sazacap's Brew

To me this the new Thrill of Possibility. It does all the things that Thrill does, but more! If we gift a 1/1 Fish we can buff the attack of a creature for the turn by tw0.

While this is difficult to evaluate, it is a direct improvement on Thrill: at it's worst Brew is equivalent to Thrill, but if we determine that the board state is effective enough to gift a Fish, we can pack on some extra damage.

This is of course based on if its Commander or Pioneer. In Commander we can give the fish to an ally, where in Pioneer we need to be more careful as it should be chosen only if it can by pass the added blocker.

But even still, I don't see a world where this doesn't replace Thrill of Possibility in every Minotaur deck which is based around its discard sub theme.

Sunspine Lynx

This Cat is such a great hate card. It shuts down life gain, punishes decks that rely on no basic lands, and most importantly stops Fog effects. It's everything an aggressive midrange deck like Minotaurs need as sideboard tech for Pioneer.

In my local areas when Pioneer was created, there was always someone that was playing turbo Fog Teferi. Let's just say I'm still haunted from those games, so this card will be my saving grace against that deck should it ever reemerge, but also still be flexible enough that it is tech against other popular decks in the format.

Additionally for EDH this looks like a great card for Mogis, as his whole sub-theme of chip damage needs effects like this Cat to burn people out unhindered.

Multicolor

Gev, Scaled Scorch

This little Lizard is bonkers for Minotaur Commander decks: all we need to do is deal damage to each opponent and then any creature we play that turn enters with three +1/+1 counters! This can be easily achieved through combat, but alternatively cards that have a repeatable damage ability will work just as good.

This playstyle is probably best suited to a Mogis deck as its chip damage sub-theme is likely already playing these types of cards. However, any Minotaur deck can use and I think should be retooled for it, as +3/+3 on every Minotaur is just too good to pass up.

The Infamous Cruelclaw

What I like so much about Cruelclaw is his ability to get Minotaur momentum rolling. In EDH, being able to freely cast the first nonland card in our library just for dealing combat damage is absurdly beneficial for us. Rakdos decks really struggle with acceleration compared to other colors, so essentially cheating cards in can be backbreaking.

This also works beautifully in Magar of the Magic Strings as that deck is already built with casting high-mana spells.

Colorless and Lands

Barkform Harvester, Three Tree Mascot

Here we have the two Minotaurs of the set (by technicality), and they seem fine.

Barkform is comparable to Minotaur Sureshot, in that they are both three mana 2/3s with reach. The difference is that Sureshot has a fire-breathing ability, while Barkform puts card graveyard cards on the bottom of the library, and I just don't see Barkform's ability relevant for Minotaurs in any conceivable manner unless I'm missing some sort of combo piece.

Three Tree Mascot is a little more interesting being two mana. It has the ability to filter one mana to be any desired color. This I don't think is too important for Minotaur decks, but there are corner cases. Given that Minotaur decks are typically Rakdos in nature but skew red means there can be situations where we can't cast our black Minotaur spells, and the Mascot fixes that, so overall I like it, but I doubt I would cut anything in my decks for it.

Patchwork Banner

Stop the presses! A mana rock that is also a kindred anthem! What!? This is just unprecedented.

The closest card I can think of is Icon of Ancestry, but even then Icon didn't ramp you.

This is just everything I could ever want. Rakdos decks already need ramp desperately from mana rocks, so having one that also buffs all our Minotaurs is just gravy. What more can be said other than this rules!

Three Tree City

So let me get this straight. This is a land that ramps you based on the number of creatures you control in the vein of Cabal Coffers. SIGN ME UP! As mentioned previously, Rakdos struggles with ramp, so this land objectively fixes that issue.

Now Minotaurs won't be making use of this as effectively as other kindred decks, like Elves, but it is a big advantage for us, so I'll take that win.

Whispers from the Forest

And with that, the sun is setting and on our animal friends. Only time will tell if we find ourselves transformed like this again, but I think this plane is too small for Minotaurs. Seems this is Dire-wolf territory, and I'm not willing to fight a Calamity Beast on its own terms. I say we rush for the next Omenpath and see what's in store.

Huh, that Omenpath looks like modern door, surely there is nothing too harmful or spooky behind it.

Until then, be sure to check out the other set reviews found on the Commander's Herald news sheets, for other perspectives on this new set.