Hey all, Strickles here with a complete Alchemy: Bloomburrow set review. I will be evaluating the cards purely from an Alchemy perspective, so let’s go over the questions I ask myself when evaluating new cards and then dive in.
Card Evaluation Philosophy
When evaluating new cards there are three questions to keep in mind when trying to decide if they are going to see play or not:
Will this card be added to an existing deck?
Does this card create a new deck or revive an abandoned deck?
Is this an impactful sideboard option?
And as these cards will also be legal in Historic, Timeless, Brawl, and even limited, I’ll add a fourth question of:
Is this card for a different format?
With all that in mind let’s dive right in, starting with the White cards!
Savannah Lions have already been power-crept several times and Awestruck Cygnet can become quite the threat. I think the baseline evaluation of this card is as a Savannah Lions, because you usually aren’t going to be able to transform it until turn 4 or 5, which is a long time for a one drop to survive in Alchemy.
The ultimate payoff is quite good though, as a 5/4 flying vigilance is going to quickly end the game. I honestly think the best deck for this card could be a B/W Bats deck, since all of the bats have flying and are quite cheap. The intensity also does not reset if this creature is killed, making it a nice target to bring back with Zoraline, Cosmos Caller later in the game.
Overall I think this card has a shot, especially since it can be a good late game top deck if you have already intensified it all the way up.
Cottontail Caretaker is an awesome value card. A 2/2 for two mana is fine, nothing to write home about, and it is (fortunately) limited to only white creatures, but there are a lot of great white creatures that you wouldn’t mind doubling up on.
From a quick search you’ve got cheap creatures like Novice Inspector for an extra clue, and Nurturing Pixie to really keep the value going, bouncing the caretaker back to your hand and something to re-play for value. I’m also excited by the possibilities of a card like Emmara, Voice of the Conclave giving you two big convoke payoffs, even if you don’t get to keep the copy due to the legend rule.
The nice thing is you aren’t forced to pay the offspring cost. So if you play this on turn two and choose your three drop, you aren’t locking yourself out of playing it next turn, you are just giving yourself the option of getting more value on turn four. Oh, and this isn’t really a heist-able card since it has to choose a white creature, so you won’t feel bad when they steal this from you. I look forward to giving this one a shot!
Sandcloud Harbinger is a neat card that can give you a lot of value just from making your land drops. While it does supply each player with three deserts into the top ten cards of their deck, you can also play this with other deserts from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, giving you three life and a card each time you play one.
The only downsides to this is that your opponent gets to draw the card when they play a desert, although you do gain the three life regardless, but also that I would be wary of playing a ton of deserts in my deck since most of them enter tapped or don’t tap for colored mana.
Still, I think it could be fun to try to build around this card, as the value really starts to stack up once you have multiple copies of this in play, drawing two cards and gaining six life with each desert. Regardless this is sweet against aggro decks, as each land drop gaining you three life is going to make it hard for them to finish the game. I’m not sure if Sandcloud Harbinger is going to have a home, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
New Collected Company just dropped. This is better and worse than CoCo in different ways. It’s better because you only need to hit one creature, making the fail rate much much lower, and allowing you to play a few less creatures than you need to in collected company decks. It can be worse in that getting a creature and a 1/1 copy of it doesn’t give you great blockers out of nowhere like CoCo can, and you are doubling down on the same effect rather than getting two different effects.
All that said, this card seems really good in the current Alchemy environment. Boros Mice is a top deck in both Bo1 and Bo3, and this card can nicely slot into the top end of that deck. Offspring is one of the reasons that the deck is so resilient to removal, so getting to use this to offspring a creature that doesn’t have it built in, like Heartfire Hero or Emberheart Challenger is going to make it very hard for the opponent to clean up the board.
Outside of Boros Mice, a new value based White creature deck is begging to be built with Three Tree Battalion and the above discussed Cottontail Caretaker, so I look forward to giving that a try as soon as I can.
This is the kind of fun and silly effects that make me love Alchemy cards. Gift a Rhystic Study is just such a ridiculous line of text. Regardless, five mana Timetwister is not particularly playable in a format like Alchemy. Perhaps in a more powerful format like Timeless this could have a home, or in a Historic Brawl deck that is trying to storm off or wheel through its deck, but Alchemy is not powerful enough or slow enough for this kind of effect to be good.
When Quick Study came out the internet was a buzz about an instant speed Divination. Well here is Quick Study’s older brother. In most matchups gifting a fish to seek two nonland cards is only going to come up later in the game when you no longer need to make your land drops, and at that point the 1/1 fish should not make any real impact on the board.
This being instant speed makes it so flexible for control and midrange decks as they can hold up removal or counterspells on their opponent’s turn and if they don’t need to use them, cast this for two cards. If you are currently playing Quick Study in any of your decks, I would swap them out for Pool Resources.
Shellfish Scholar is such a cool rat payoff. One, it gives all of your rats a sort of built in card advantage since you can eventually replace them by casting the Think Twice, and two, this is going to really quickly enable Threshold, as all of your rats put a card into the graveyard, quickly turning on the activated ability and letting you cash in all of those copies of Think Twice for one mana each.
Sadly, there isn’t really a home for this card right now, and I am skeptical of a 3/2 for three in a format dominated by aggressive mice and a 2/2 first striker (looking at you Impetuous Lootmonger). But I am excited to try to build a rat deck that can make use of the scholar.
Tempest Trapper is a strong payoff for an Otter spellslinger type deck. Tapping for two mana to cast instants or sorceries means you are going to have 6-7 mana to cast spells once you untap with this thing, making it very easy to trigger its ability to exile a card from your library and cast it for free.
This card is even better if you have a Valley Floodcaller in play, as you are going to be able to keep tapping the Tempest Trapper for mana with each spell that you cast. My only concern with this card is that right now casting a four drop and then untapping with it is quite hard. The chances are that your opponent is going to be able to kill it or just go around it as they finish you off with all of their mice.
I think Otters in general have several great four drop options but don’t want any of them because the deck wants to be a cheap prowess deck that tops out at Valley Floodcaller. So I am skeptical of Tempest Trapper seeing play, but don’t let that stop you from trying to go off with it. When it works it is going to be awesome.
This Alchemy set keeps giving us upgrades of existing cards. This time Dusk Legion Zealot is getting a rework as a powerful Squirrel. At a base this card is just Dusk Legion Zealot, but each one you play upgrades the next copy.
While of course the cost of the life can be scary later in the game, and might just be downright bad in some matchups, in a lot of matchups top decking Chittering Skullspeaker and drawing two or three cards is going to completely swing the match in your favor.
I’m not sure what deck wants this currently. There isn’t really a dedicated Squirrel deck, although that might be changing with a card we’ll discuss in the multicolor section, but honestly you could put this card in any black deck and be happy with it. I expect Chittering Skullspeaker to find a home somewhere in the format.
Well Putrefying Rotboar is another sweet payoff for the deck. A 4/5 Lifelink for four mana is fine on rate, but it can start racking up the triggers right away as it itself doesn’t need to attack to start making your opponent feel the pain. This could be the missing piece the Three Little Pigs deck was missing to help it close out games and become a real contender.
Another sweet card for Bat decks, Sanguine Soothsayer is nice on rate as a 2/1 flying lifelink, but when it attacks you get a Sanguine Bond into the top fifteen cards of your deck. This Sanguine Bond is free and draws a card when it enters, making it a fine top deck at any point.
Sanguine Bond adds another way to end the game in your deck full of lifelink creatures and other ways to gain life, like the attack trigger from Zoraline, Cosmos Caller. This should add some nice late game inevitability to the bats deck, as it will get to the point where you don’t even need to hit your opponent, you just need to gain some life to finish them off.
There are also a lot of other lifegain payoffs in the format, so perhaps a deck with the likes of Amalia Benavides Aguirre can emerge to make use of Sanguine Soothsayer as well.
Sacrifice decks and food decks alike got a nice source of card advantage with Tasteful Offering. On rate, two mana to make a food is not good, but getting a two-time boon to seek a nonland card when you sacrifice a permanent is a pretty sweet deal.
My mind immediately goes to something like Overcooked, which provides an easy way to make use of all of our food, but we could also jam this into a deck looking to Forage, seeking us cards as we sacrifice foods to pay for our forage costs. In the late game this is an okay top deck, especially if we already have food in play, letting us cast it, and sacrifice a food right away to seek a nonland card.
There is a lot to like about Brave Meadowguard. A two mana 1/1 that replaces itself with a Might of the Meek is fine on rate, especially since Might of the Meek will also draw a card when you cast it. This can lead to scenarios where later in the game you top deck the meadowguard, use the Might of the Meek right away, and draw another creature or action spell.
While Brave Meadowguard does grow the more you target it thanks to its Valiant ability, if you have any of your other Valiant creatures in play you are most likely going to want to target them instead, making me skeptical of Brave Meadowguard making the cut, especially with another two drop mouse that we will discuss below fighting for that spot in the already tuned mice deck.
Charged Conjuration is a pretty sweet Storm enabler. Not only does it make all of your spells cheaper, making it easier to storm off, but it then turns into a Storm payoff when you sacrifice it. In a format like Alchemy the best choice is probably going to be Empty the Warrens, because I can’t imagine getting a super high storm count and being able to finish your opponent off with Grape Shot.
That being said I’m not sure that Alchemy is the format this was intended for. The problem is that Alchemy doesn’t have any ritual effects, cards that add more mana than they cost, making it hard, even with all of the discounts, to have enough mana to cast a bunch of spells and then sacrifice the Charged Conjuration and still have mana left over to cast Empty the Warrens.
We do have Stormcatch Mentor to further reduce the cost of our cards, but I am skeptical for now of this being a viable deck in Alchemy. Perhaps there are broken things to be doing with this card in Timeless, Historic, or Brawl.
I guess we were due for another Shock variant, since we lost Melt Through and Ranger’s Firebrand to rotation. There isn’t a ton to like about Cindercone Smite though. It can only target creatures and only at sorcery speed. On the games you are on the draw it will be nice, helping you ramp to your four or five mana play, but the games you are on the play it will just feel pretty clunky. For now I would rather play Shock itself or Shove Aside if I wanted one mana red removal.
This spell can’t be countered. All anti-blue players rejoice! Bramblearmor Brawler brings the pain to control players, as first of all just being a scary 5/5 Trample for four mana, but dodging counterspells means that you are always going to get one trigger from it when they cast removal or a sweeper to take care of it.
That trigger of pumping all of your creatures in your library won’t be felt immediately but as the game goes on it is going to make previously benign creatures into serious threats. And in the case where you get two or more triggers, even your one drops are going to be threats that can quickly close out a game.
While there isn’t a dedicated green aggro deck in the format now, I really think all of the pieces are there to make it work, and I expect that Bramblearmor Brawler is the curve topper the deck was looking for, so I will be excited to try it out.
Frogs were already a fine archetype and Fountainport Charmer is a new tool that the deck needs to explore using. The play pattern of Frog decks is to cycle through your frogs, bouncing them to your hand, recasting them, drawing cards, putting counters, tapping things down, etc. So all of those creatures cost one less mana is a pretty big deal in making that loop a lot more efficient.
Paying the offspring will come up on occasion, but most of the playable frogs are either one mana, so won’t make use of the discount, two mana, so only need the one discount, or at three mana only have one generic mana cost so only need the one discount. But the deck does go up to four and sometimes five so if you have extra mana you can pay for offspring.
I don’t know if this card would be a four of in a frog deck, because it is a pretty middling top deck later in the game when you don’t have any creatures left in your hand, but I expect that frog decks will want to try the charmer to see if it makes their loops easier to pull off.
In our continued tour of upgrades, Traverse Valley is at a base a side grade of Lay of the Land, seeking you a non-basic land instead of letting you choose a basic land. I say side grade because Lay of the Land is most often used to get whatever color of mana you are missing, which Traverse Valley cannot guarantee since you have no control of which land you get.
The upgrade part comes in when you are able to pay the kicker cost and Forage to get that land directly into play. There are several ways to make a food for one mana in the format, meaning you could be casting this as early as turn two to ramp into a four drop the next turn. Is that good? I’m not sure.
There are already plenty of two mana creatures that can ramp from two to four, without having to Forage, and I am concerned about what you will be using your other mana for on turn two. I really wouldn’t play this outside of a dedicated food deck, but even then there likely isn’t a need for or space for this card. I bet that Traverse Valley will be awesome in Brawl though.
Vigorous Farming is a cousin of Spelunking, but they serve different roles in ramping you. They are both three mana enchantments that let your lands come into play untapped, but Spelunking is all value up front, drawing a card and putting an extra land into play, where as Vigorous Farming is a slow burn, slowly ramping you as you find and play more and more lands.
The best card to pair with this is Clifftop Lookout, which can put your top most land into play allowing you to make use of that mana bonus. With that being said I am a bit skeptical of Vigorous Farming in a ramp deck mostly because it is unreliable ramp. Your next land could be three or four cards down, and while it will be awesome when you draw it and it taps for four or five mana, you don’t have access to that ramp until then.
The best case scenario with this card is you are finding lands every other turn so you just have a ton of lands that tap for two or three mana. Now, currently in Alchemy there isn’t anything huge to ramp to, but if you are playing a deck with a lot of X cost spells like Doppelgang or Hugs, Grisly Guardian, it could be worth exploring Vigorous Farming as an option.
The Birds of Bloomburrow have a strange theme of wanting you to mix together creature with flying and creature without flying, and most of them the payoff isn’t worth the strange mix of creatures. Ace Flockbringer could completely change that.
Getting duplicate copies of a creature you cast every turn is just insane value. Every turn you get to draw an extra non-flying creature. You do have to have a variety of creatures in over the course of the game since the conjured duplicate gains flying and thus won’t trigger the Flockbringer a second time.
There isn’t currently a home for Ace Flockbringer, and my worry with this kind of set up card is that you are slower than other aggro decks and a bit too clunky and cute to wear down the control decks. However, the value of Ace Flockbringer is so easy to do with some deckbuilding that I don’t expect to be clunky at all.
We’ll see if it finds a home, but I would start by putting it in whatever deck I brew up with Three Tree Battalion, as getting this and a 1/1 copy at instant speed can easily lead to some insane value from the next turn.
Time to dust off your copies of Emmara, Voice of the Conclave, because Buxton, Decorated Host is an awesome convoke pay off. First off, having convoke himself, Buxton comes down as early as turn three, and then if he survives to the end step, will seek a two or one drop permanent thanks to the two creatures you tapped to convoke him out.
The gravy on top is that the seeked permanent goes directly into play, so you added two things to the board on turn three, and the next turn you have even more possibilities. The nice flexibility is that he only cares about the number of tapped creatures you control but doesn’t care how you tapped them. You could have tapped them to convoke, or just attacked with them, or even used them to put a counter on a Warden of the Inner Sky.
Between Emmara and Buxton, convoke has a lot of ways to get a ton of value, making me think it is poised for a comeback. Will it be able to compete with the other aggro decks in the format? Time will tell, but I think it is worth a try.
Bats got some nice toys in this Alchemy drop. Darkstar Banisher is a nice answer to aggressive threats, exiling them permanently, and the exile is very relevant right now with tons of Heartfire Heros running around. While the opponent does get to seek a card when Darkstar Banisher dies, it goes to their hand, not to play, giving you time to keep advancing your own game plan.
While the stats of a 2/2 Flying for three aren’t great, I think this is a totally reasonable sideboard option for Bats decks in Bo3 against Boros Mice and other aggressive decks, and could be main deckable in Bo1 since there is so much aggro in the format.
Keeping with the Lizard’s theme from Bloomburrow, Dazzling Flameweaver asks you to damage your opponent to get some sort of bonus. In this case it is free cards in the form of various Spectacle cards from its spellbook. The base stats of a four mana 4/4 Meance with a nice Ward cost of Pay 3 Life is a pretty reasonable top end for the Lizards deck.
There are two downsides here. First, you have to play the card you exile with Dazzling Flameweaver the same turn, so the turn you play the flameweaver you probably aren’t going to get any value unless it is later in the game. But after that first turn, it will be getting you nice extra value. The second downside is that it only triggers off of combat damage, not any damage like some of the other Lizards, so you do need to be attacking and getting through to get your trigger.
I’m not sure if Lizards needs or wants a four drop at the top of its curve, since it is such an aggressive deck with a low curve, but perhaps finding room for a couple of Dazzling Flameweaver at the top of the curve can help in the more grindy games where you need more cards to close out the game.
Alright I’ve seen a lot of talk about Euru, Acorn Scrounger since it was one of the first cards to be spoiled. Despite what you might have read, Euru is not Rusko, Clockmaker. Rusko required no real building around and your Midnight Clock would eventually trigger and refill your hand. Euru is quite an interesting build around, but you do have to build around it.
If you are playing Euru it is going to be in a dedicated food deck, so that you are able to Forage when Euru enters to get your Chitterspitter, and so you have plenty of tokens to sacrifice to his second paragraph that to help build up the potency of your Chitterspitter.
Chitterspitter can absolutely take over a game, especially if you are growing it by two every turn. I think that Euru could make a Squirrel/Food deck viable, and I am looking forward to trying it out. There is also the possibility of blinking Euru to get more and more copies of Chitterspitter, but then we would have to be splashing into another color, which is doable but it might be better to start with something more straightforward.
I’m sure there are some Brawl players out there that are going to really enjoy Indris, the Hydrostatic Surge. I think that six mana is a bit too expensive for Alchemy, or Historic, or Timeless, but if you ever get to untap with Indris in play you are going to have a good time, as you churn through your deck with all of your spells trying to find your Lightning Bolt to finish off the opponent.
If you are a spell slinger and enjoy storm decks in older formats like Modern or Legacy, they did give you two storm-esque cards this set between Indris and Charged Conjuration, so maybe there is a deck there and I just don’t see it.
We got an interesting frog card earlier in Fountainport Charmer, but Leaf-Leap Guide makes me think that Frogs are going to be the real deal. While two mana for a 1/1 doesn’t seem great, this thing is going to be a 3/3 or 4/4 very quickly. Growing itself and all of your other creatures is going to make it hard for your opponent to compete in combat, and Vigilance means that you can attack and still use its activated ability to return something to your hand.
Currently the Frog deck is reliant on having a Clement, the Worrywort in play to keep churning through your creatures and getting value. Dour Port-Mage is nice for card advantage but two mana to bounce a creature can be a lot. So Leaf-Leap Guide bouncing something for just one mana is going to make it easy to keep all of your triggers going.
I’ve seen some people trying Frogs on the ladder, and I expect that they are going to find room for Leaf-Leap Guide moving forward.
Marshland Hordemaster is kind of like a Lord in a Lizards deck. By itself it is going to be a 2/4 with one instance of Battle Cry but as the game goes on those instances of Battle Cryare going to stack up, and when you attack you will be giving your other creatures +3/+0 or more. This is going to make combat really scary for your opponent as every creature is a threat.
The gravy with this card is the extra text that whenever a Lizard dies you get to drain the opponent for one. This is going to lead to some checkmate situations where you attack with everything and even if they block and trade with your creatures they are going to get drained out.
The Lizards deck is a bit tight at the three drop slot, but I think that Marshland Hordemaster is worth finding room for.
Well, I hope you weren’t tired of playing against Boros Mice, because Recruit Instructor is a sweet new card for the deck to try out. Not only does Recruit Instructor essentially draw you an extra card each turn, those cards can be used to trigger Valiant on any of your mice.
When you don’t have a better target, you can target the instructor itself to get a mouse token, which is nice for adding more pressure to the board, and especially when you have a Mable, Heir to Cragflame in play to buff up your tokens.
The Boros Mice deck is already pretty tight on slots, but I think that it is worth exploring trimming down on some of the currently played two drops to fit Recruit Instructor into the deck. You even have a chance of hitting Embercleave from its spellbook, which, for those who didn’t live through that standard environment, ends the game almost immediately.
Resourceful Collector is both an aggressive card and a value card, which is a bit of a strange combo but I think it works. A 3/3 haste for three mana is totally fine on rate, but then you add in the extra ability of being able to recast cards from your graveyard as the game goes on, you are going to really be able to keep the pressure up as you recast creatures your opponent had previously dealt with.
The only problem is that there isn’t currently a Gruul aggro deck in the format, or a Raccoon deck or anything like that. But maybe it is worth trying out for this card.
Our last card from the set, Thought Rattle, is an efficient hand disruption spell with some upside later in the game. Two mana to exile a card of your choice from your opponent’s hand is fine. We’ve seen this be playable, for this exact mana cost, as recently as Thought Erasure a few years back. While we aren’t getting a surveil here, we do get to exile the card preventing any graveyard shenanigans.
The upside from this card comes later in the game, when we have Threshold, and get to seek a Rat card, and reduce its cost. There are actually a couple of playable rats that I think work nicely inside of a midrange/control deck, mainly Lord Skitter, Sewer King and Vren, the Relentless. I’ve actually been playing around with Dimir Control on the Bo3 ladder, so I am excited to add this to the deck.
Top Cards from the Set:
These are the three cards I think are going to have the biggest impact on the format:
Wow, we did it, all 30 cards in the set. I hope this set review was helpful as you look over the new cards and try to find homes for the ones you are most excited about. While not all of them are going to be top tier contenders, almost all of them can find a home in a sweet deck, so I can’t wait to get brewing and start playing when the set releases on Tuesday, August 20th! Let me know if you think I missed anything and as always I wish you happy brewing and best of luck on the ladder.
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