Hey everyone! It feels like we were just here to go over a new set, but there is no rest for the wicked when it comes to the content creation cycle these days. We’re about to head into the adorable world of Bloomburrow where small critters are running rampant. I’ll be your guide as we will do all that we can to avoid discussing what we have been anthropomorphized into. Just roll with it and it’ll be fine.
We’ll be kicking it off with the usual review of the limited mechanics of Bloomburrow: Offspring, Gift, Forage, Valiant, Expend, and Threshold.
Offspring
We’re talking about the type of offspring that is producing a child not the 90s band Offspring. Don’t want to get those confused so you gotta keep ‘em separated. Hey you knew you were either getting dad jokes or an old man yelling at clouds when you clicked on my article. Be happy that we’re only at the dad jokes section so far.
When you cast a creature with Offspring, you may pay the cost to put a 1/1 creature into play that is otherwise a copy of the card. It basically produces a mini me that can do everything that dad can do.
This is a very solid limited mechanic because it is automatically a two for one with some real power potential based off of which creature you are copying. My prediction is that it will usually be worth holding them to cast with offspring unless you are trying to push the tempo.
Gift
Gift allows you to promise to give your opponent whatever the gift is in exchange for changing the effect of your card. It can be anything from them drawing a card to getting a food token. This mechanic was designed for commander since it allows political plays, but we’re only here to talk about one-on-one limited games where it’s rarely going to be free to do so.
You make the decision on whether or not to give them the gift when you cast the spell. That means you can’t put that decision off until it resolves, you have to commit. However, if that spell doesn’t resolve (from being countered) then they don’t get the gift either.
This feels like a decent limited mechanic because it adds an extra step of decision making where you can weigh the costs and benefits to it.
Forage
Forage is pretty simple; you can exile three cards from your graveyard or sacrifice a food to satisfy the cost of foraging. Then you do any abilities that were tied into that forage as well as any additional abilities that say “whenever you forage”.
Keep in mind that sacrificing a food or exiling three cards from your graveyard doesn’t mean you foraged. You have to actually have a card or ability saying to Forage for it to count.
I always like limited abilities like this that let you use something (your graveyard in this case) as a resource that you normally wouldn’t be able to. One big thing to note is that Threshold is a returning mechanic in this set and you don’t want to be trying to do both in the same deck since they work directly against each other.
Valiant
Valiant is another easy mechanic in which you get a trigger when you target your creature with a spell or ability for the first time each turn. The triggers will vary from creature to creature, but it does add an additional threat that they have to account for beyond normal tricks. Since they are all different triggers, this is an ability where reading the card explains the card.
While each trigger is limited to once per turn, if you have two creatures with Valiant you can trigger both at the same time with Mabel's Mettle. It is also nice with repeatable triggers from cards like Brave-Kin Duo.
Expend
Expend tracks how much mana you have spent to cast spells in a turn and the abilities will trigger when you have spent the required amount in a turn. It only cares about mana spent to cast spells. It doesn’t care about you using mana for abilities or tapping your lands for funsies. It only triggers when you reach the right amount, not for each time you spend that much in a turn.
The card needs to be on the battlefield when you spend the mana to see it. Playing Junkblade Bruiser doesn’t trigger itself since you spent your fourth mana before it was on the field.
This is going to vary from deck to deck. Its easy to trigger from double spelling or playing chonkers, but some decks are going to run out of gas while being filled with cheaper spells. That ends up making you hold cards to be able to trigger this.
Threshold
This is a returning mechanic where you need to have seven or more cards in your graveyard to add an additional effect to a card. If you don’t, you treat that part of the card like it wasn’t there. As you can see on Shoreline Looter, there is a slight variation from being able to completely ignore that part of the card as it instead upgrades it when you hit threshold.
Self-mill and looting are good ways to get there, but you can’t expect to have seven cards in your graveyard through normal gameplay until later in the game.
Wrap Up
Thanks for reading! I’ll be back tomorrow with my limited review of the White cards of Bloomburrow. Until then, stay classy people!
If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below.
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