Hey everyone! I finally swung the door of the content creation dungeon open and took a step out into the sunlight. I could feel the wind in my hair and the sweet scent of flowers in the air. I thought I was finally able to take a well-deserved break when I realized I had actually just walked through a portal to a strange new world. Not only that, but I’ve been anthropomorphized into a freaking squirrel. It’s not the first time I’ve had that problem (don’t ask questions about Bob the Magic Squirrel, trust me, it’s not a path you want to go down), but at least we know that everything is about to get nuts.
I’ll be grading the entire Bloomburrow set for limited purposes. Maybe one day I’ll get out of this endless labyrinth of content creation, but today is not that day.
0.5: Very unhappy to main deck this, but maybe it has fringe sideboard applications. Cards that “could” be situationally decent, but bad in most situations. (Smothering Tithe, Rhystic Study, Mana Flare)
0.0: Unplayable in every possible situation. They rarely print cards this bad these days. (Hew the Entwood, One with Nothing)
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I haven’t seen an archetype that wants to burn through the whole deck quickly so you can set your draw every turn with this. While this doesn’t feel like the fastest format, I don’t really see it coming down to decking that often either.
You can use this with shuffle cards such as Heaped Harvest and Fountainport Bell to get your goodies back in your deck, but it’s not exactly what I would call reliable.
This is mostly filler for when your deck doesn’t get there and you just want a curve filler of a specific creature type.
I’m not looking to spend seven mana to kill a permanent. Part of it is that the upfront two mana would usually be better spend advancing your board so you have to hope it slips into your curve somewhere to get to play the five-mana removal spell later.
Not the best fixing, but at least you can basically cycle it for two mana if you don’t need a land. It does contribute a little bit to various themes like adding a card to the graveyard for Forage or Threshold, but not in a particularly meaningful manner.
We are way, way past the days when Jayemdae Tome was a playable constructed card. No, seriously it was in “The Deck” back in the Type One days. It might even still be played in Old School, but I’m not willing to dive into Reddit to find out.
This is a significantly upgraded version and it’s not even that good in limited. Magic has certainly evolved over the years.
The big thing here is that you don’t often get an opportunity to use mana sink type cards these days. Even though this comes down cheap, it will often just sit there while you play a normal game. The durdly decks such as Simic would rather be doing frognanigans while the fast decks don’t want to play a card that doesn’t kill the opponent.
This plays significantly better when you have drafted your deck correctly. Most of the well built archetypes are going to be almost all of the same creature type making this a Glorious Anthem that also ramps you.
This format doesn’t really care about splashing around, but you can run this if your deck does. It can also be a generic version of any creature type based off of what bonuses you have for that.
This is unsurprisingly going to be good just like it has every other time it’s been printed. This set likes the extra card in the yard and this stands out more than normal without an Evolving Wilds running around.
You’ll want to be running this in any deck that doesn’t have heavy color requirements. While a colorless land can occasionally be a problem this has some nice abilities to produce some value out of a land slot.
I only value the first one at this grade and it drops off pretty hard after that. The surveil is nice with all the graveyard synergies running around, but you really don’t want to be paying two mana for fixing your mana that often.
All of the villages have the drawback of not being able to use the colored mana to play noncreature spells so while they are good, you can’t play too many of them. You really have to count up the cards you can and can’t play off of these villages before you determine if you can consider it a source of that color.
You’ll get some solid run out of this one especially if you are in the frog deck that wants to keep replaying your creatures.
This one lets you sacrifice it to get a creature so it will be more valuable in the decks looking to go later. The Boros decks are trying to race your opponent down so you most likely won’t have enough time to use this.
While this seems very similar to the white one, I like being able to get a specific creature back from my graveyard much better than hoping that the one I want is in my top six cards. There are also a lot of key bats and squirrels that are great to play more than once.
You need to have four creatures of a specific type out for this to do anything. While I can maybe see it doing something in the bunny token deck, it’s not worth it compared to spending most of its times as a colorless mana.
A true classic makes its return. One mana to exile any creature is really, really good. You really don’t care about giving them life when you’re going up this much on mana in the exchange.
You know you’ll be double spelling to fuel this, but it also forces your opponent to choose between stunting their development or letting you get value every time. This card was great the first time, but it’s even better in a set that wants to fill the graveyard.
This is garbage especially as a Special Guest, but hear me out here. If you’re in the rat deck, it could be a decent size for the cost. It’ll probably just end up trading for a token, but I tried.
Do you have an unbeatable bomb creature and really low quality in the rest of your deck? Then you can consider running this. The rest of the time this should be sitting in the sideboard (preferably someone else’s). Tutors aren’t good in normal limited and this one makes you go down a card.
Toski can draw you a ridiculous number of cards which leads to drawing even more cards. He makes them reconsider every block they do because they can’t just let you draw ta pile.
On top of that, he’s Indestructible. Good luck with that.
Another hard pass. There isn’t an artifact theme in this set so this is almost always going to cost four or three at the very best. It is a frog so technically it has some synergies, but not enough to ever even consider this.
For those of you who haven’t had the joy to draft this before, it is absurd. Giving you a Shock and a card whenever it gets through is filthy. Mix it with some evasion and it will bury them in no time.
On top of that, sometimes you just play the Izzet player who will scoop as soon as this hits the battlefield.
This can’t cast noncreature spells so it is limited like the villages without any of the upside. You are also stuck only getting mana for one creature type. While you are likely to be focused on only one creature type, I’d still rather have a basic land.
Wrap Up
Thanks for reading! I’ll be back tomorrow with my guide to Bloomburrow Limited Archetypes. Until then, stay classy people!
If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below.
Josh is a member of the elite limited team The Draft Lab as well as the host of The Draft Lab Podcast. He was qualifying for Pro Tours, Nationals, and Worlds literally before some of you were born. After a Magic hiatus to play poker and go to medical school, he has been dominating Arena with over an 80% win percentage in Bo3 as well as making #1 rank in Mythic.
