Last updated on July 24, 2024
Osteomancer Adept | Illustration by Daniel Zrom
Eulalia!! That’s the war cry of the hares and badgers in the Redwall series, a collection of novels centered around mighty mice, bloodraged badgers, heroic hares, wily weasels, and all assortment of other sword-wielding woodland creatures. Here is Magic's stab at its own version of this universe.
If you find the thought of rodents and critters engaging in glorious Arthurian combat exciting, love Reepicheep from The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, or if you too were scarred by that animated version of Watership Down as a child (you know exactly what I’m talking about), I invite you to take a look at Bloomburrow, Magic’s cutest and most ferocious set yet.
Bloomburrow Basic Information
Repel Calamity | illustration by Ryan Pancoast
Set Details
| Set Symbol |  |
| Set Code | BLB |
| Hash Tag | #MTGBloomburrow |
| Number of Cards | 261 (81 Commons, 100 Uncommons, 60 Rares, 20 Mythics) |
| Rarities | Common, Uncommon, Rare, Mythic |
| Mechanics | Class, Expend, Forage, Gift, Offspring, Threshold, Valiant |
Important Dates
| Event | Date |
|---|---|
| Story Begins | July 2, 2024 |
| Previews Start | July 9, 2024 |
| Full Gallery Available | July 19, 2024 |
| Available on Draftsim's Draft Simulator | Now! |
| Release on MTGA/MTGO | July 30, 2024 |
| Available on Arena Tutor | July 26, 2024 (Estimated) |
| Prerelease Week | July 26, 2024 |
| Paper Release Date | August 2, 2024 |
| Open House | August 2, 2024 |
About the Set: The Story
Maha, Its Feathers Night | Illustrated by Alessandra Pisano
Bloomburrow begins what Magic lore refers to as the “Dragonstorm Arc.” It’s intended to be a direct follow-up to the “Omenpath Arc,” which encompasses the stories from Wilds of Eldraine up through Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Starting with Bloomburrow, the Dragonstorm Arc is set to include four sets, up through the announced return to Tarkir in 2025. After that, the story will shift to a third and final arc, which combined with the Omenpath and Dragonstorm Arcs comprise an overarching story currently nicknamed the “Metronome” storyline.
Finneas, Ace Archer | Illustrated by Victor Adame Minguez
The setting is Valley, the characters are quite a crew of critters including Mabel, a mouse, Helga, a frog, and Nerys, a rabbit. The villains are made up of Calamity Beasts, elemental forces that threaten to overpower entire families of animalfolk, and the balance of nature.
Set Mechanics
Bloomburrow Art | Illustrated by Narendra Bintara Adi
Expend
To expend you must spend at least a certain amount of mana in a turn to get a benefit. Muerra, Trash Tactician is good at shopping deals in the canned food aisle. The more you spend the better the deal.
Forage
Forage is an activated ability that operates like delve in terms of exiling cards from your graveyard as part of the cost, with the option of using food to fulfill the cost instead. On Camellia, the Seedmiser pumping your mass of squirrels is a resourceful way to make use of your graveyard cards.
Pawprint Seasons
Bloomburrow‘s pawprint seasons are mythic rare sorceries that allow you to choose more than one mode, and to choose some of them multiple times. Each mode of a pawprint season card has a pawprint value of 1, 2, or 3 pawprints, and you can spend up to 5 pawprints when you cast the card.
Gift
The drawback of a gift is that your opponent gets a bit of value. The important part is that you get to choose if you promise a gift or not. In the case of Parting Gust it sort of toggles between an Otherworldly Journey and a Generous Gift and is an oddly useful bit of interaction.
Offspring
To create offspring you need to pay an additional cost to get a 1/1 token copy with the same abilities of the card. Flowerfoot Swordmaster is a 1-drop that can create a baby, whereas Tender Wildguide and the Tender Wildguide Token have good early-game and late-game abilities.
Class
The return of the class mechanic adds fun roles like artists, bakers, and blacksmiths. You pay a cost, much like the time and training it takes to learn real-world skills in order to level up. For example, Artist's Talent wants you to play noncreature spells and do some burn.
Threshold
Let's check your graveyard. If there are seven or more cards there, you have threshold, otherwise you do not. Tidecaller Mentor makes life a bit easier compared to some threshold cards by only checking when it enters.
Valiant
Appropriately, valiant reads a lot like heroic but is limited to trigger only the first time each turn. Seedglaive Mentor gets a little permanent pump and is complemented nicely with the cantrip red instant, Might of the Meek.
Three Tree City | Illustration by Grady Frederick
Full Card Gallery
White
Blue
Black
Red
Green
Multicolor
Colorless
Lands
Notable Cards
Seasonal Full-Art Lands
Relax and view the four seasons for all five basic lands. For whatever reason, there is rarity among the seasons, Winter is the rarest at 10%, and they get 10% more common as you get earlier in the year, up to Spring at 40%.
Showcase, Field Notes and Borderless Anime
Guest artist David Peterson brings a whimsical fantastic angle on animalfolk. The borderless anime cards look amazing in sleeves, binders, and your opening hand. On the ferocious side, Mitsuhiro Arita, an acclaimed illustrator for Pokémon cards and the Final Fantasy franchise, shows how powerful some of Bloomburrow‘s cards are. The backstory field notes are a unique take on Magic cards, fitting for a set so closely tied to nature.
Imagine: Courageous Critters
Jace, the Mind Sculptor (Imagine: Courageous Critters) | Illustration by Justin Gerard
When planeswalkers planeswalk, they usually don't transform. See what happens to Nissa, Jace, and Liliana, when they arrive at Bloomburrow in these reprints?
It is Ral that shows up as a new card in Ral, Crackling Wit. The Izzet planeswalker supports the spell strategy, draws cards, and produces otters.
The prowess for loyalty makes it a very exciting card for storm decks. The emblem from the -10 ability is a game changer and I'm sure you can think of some instants and sorceries that weren't designed to have storm.
Modal Season Spells
Modal cards are often very powerful since you can adjust what you choose for every situation. The limit of the paws on the card allows for an alarming amount of flexibility.
Wow is Season of Weaving a splash hit! Your can result in extremes like “Draw five cards,” or “Create two copies of your artifact/creatures and draw a card.” In other words, a blast to play since mixing and matching modes is a recipe for fun.
Available Products
Starter Kit
A Bloomburrow Starter Kit is the perfect way to bring your Magic younglings into a fantastic game. Learn how to play Magic by following the Play Guide, or hop onto Arena, and start your new player experience.
The Hare Raising () deck overpowers opponents with a go wide strategy while the Otter Limits () deck provides evasion to its attackers. These 60-card decks are stocked with a foil mythic and four rares that lead a deck you can play right out of the box.
- LOOKING TO HOP INTO MAGIC?—Everything you need to play your first game of Magic: The Gathering is right here. Shrink down to critter size and battle for the Valley with two pre-built 60-card decks.
- TINY TAILS, BIG ADVENTURE—Put your best paw forward and enter the world of Bloomburrow; fight beside adorable critters and prove that bravery comes in all sizes!
- LEARN TO PLAY MAGIC WITH A FRIEND—Perfect for your first Magic game, teaching friends and family, or just a fun game night, learn how to play with the included Play Guide or the interactive online tutorial in Magic: The Gathering Arena
- TWO READY-TO-PLAY 60-CARD DECKS—Buff up an army of woodland creatures to overpower your opponents with the Hare Raising deck or send your Otter friends surfing past your foe’s defenses with the Otter Limits deck
- COLLECT RARE CARDS—Kick off your collection with 2 Mythic Rare cards that gleam with a shining Traditional Foil treatment, plus 8 Rare cards (1 Mythic Rare and 4 Rares in each deck)
Value Booster
The value boosters are a pint-sized offering that focuses on commons and opens up the chance for multiple rares in one 7-card pack. The contents of a Bloomburrow value booster are:
- 3 commons
- 2 uncommon
- 1 wildcard of any rarity
- 1 land (that could instead be a foil or Special Guests card)
You look at the 7-card packs Wizards offers and can see these value boosters are like Pauper side of the beyond booster.
Play Booster
You'll find Bloomburrow play boosters with 1-4 rares or higher, and at least one foil among the 14 cards. You get at least six commons, three uncommons, and one full art land. The 15th slot is the only chance you have to pull foil-signed art cards.
Instead of The List cards being in the mix for possible pulls in your play booster packs, Bloomburrow‘s play boosters have a 1.5% chance of containing a Special Guest instead of a common, and do not have cards from The List.
- TINY TAILS, BIG ADVENTURE—Put your best paw forward and enter the world of Bloomburrow; fight beside mice, frogs, bats, birds, lizards, squirrels, and other critters as you restore the balance of peace in the Valley and prove that bravery comes in all sizes!
- FUN TO OPEN. FUN TO PLAY—Get the best of Draft and Set Boosters, combined into one! Play Boosters are great for Limited play and fun to open, with a possibility of Art cards, Showcase cards, additional Rares, and a foil card in every pack
- BEST BOOSTER FOR PLAYING WITH FRIENDS—Specially balanced for Limited play, grab 6 Play Boosters to build a deck and battle your friends in Sealed games, or grab 3 packs and pass them around to build decks in a Booster Draft
- MAY CONTAIN MULTIPLE RARES—Each Play Booster contains 1–4 cards of rarity Rare or higher, including the possibility of a Borderless Mythic Rare card from Magic’s history
- SHINING FOIL IN EVERY PACK—Every booster also includes at least 1 shining Traditional Foil card of any rarity; in 20% of packs you’ll also find a Traditional Foil Land card
Collector Booster
The Bloomburrow Collector Booster Box looks worth hoarding for a long winter. These boosters are the only way to find cards with raised foil borderless anime, and you'll be able to pluck field notes, woodland showcase, and art from David Petersen and Mitsuhiro Arita.
You'll want collector boosters so you can get foil full art lands, and Imagine: Courageous Critters, a showcase treatment that puts key Magic characters into animal form.
Ral, Crackling Wit (Imagine: Courageous Critters) | Illustration by Rudy Siswanto
Or try to pull a Special Guest like the Sword of Fire and Ice. Few sets have a theme that's close to collecting, and few things evoke the sense of collecting like a squirrel stashing nuts for the winter, I wouldn't blame you for squirreling away a collector booster.
- TINY TAILS, BIG ADVENTURE—Put your best paw forward and enter the world of Bloomburrow; fight beside mice, frogs, bats, birds, lizards, squirrels, and other critters as you restore the balance of peace in the Valley and prove that bravery comes in all sizes!
- BEST BOOSTERS FOR COLLECTORS—Collector Boosters are a shortcut to the coolest cards in a set, with packs full of Rare cards, shiny foil cards, and special alt-art, alt-frame cards
- SOAR TO THE TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN—Collect more hard-to-find Bloomburrow cards with 5 cards of rarity Rare or higher and a total of 5 alt-border cards in every Collector Booster
- COLLECTOR BOOSTER-EXCLUSIVE TREATMENTS—Collector Boosters are the only place where you may find extended-art cards, with up to 2 in every pack, and are the only place you may find a card with a special type of foil treatment
- PLAY A GAME THAT FUSES ART, STORIES & STRATEGY—Magic: The Gathering is a collectible card game that weaves deep strategy with art and mechanics that explore the themes of a particular world and story—whether you want to play a casual game with friends, collect cool cards, or get competitive, Magic welcomes you to The Gathering
Commander Decks
The four Bloomburrow commander decks have either a pair or trio of colors, and include one Imagine: Courageous Critters version of a planeswalker in the 99. Each preconstructed commander deck includes 15 new-to-Magic cards and two foils inside a 100-card singleton deck that is ready for social multiplayer games in one of the most popular formats.
- Animated Army (), Make Trash, Do Smash
- Family Matters (), Make Offspring, Go Wide
- Peace Offering (), Group Hug, +1/+1 Counters
- Squirreled Away (), Hoard Tokens, Squirrels
- TINY TAILS, BIG ADVENTURE—Put your best paw forward and enter the world of Bloomburrow. Fight beside adorable critters and prove that bravery comes in all sizes!
- GET ALL 4 BLOOMBURROW COMMANDER DECKS—Make trash and smash with Animated Army, make offspring and go wide with Family Matters, make friends and then end them with Peace Offering, or hoard tokens to defeat your enemies with an army of squirrels with Squirreled Away
- EPIC MULTIPLAYER BATTLES—Commander is a multiplayer way to play Magic, an epic, free-for-all battle full of strategic plays and social intrigue
- INTRODUCING 40 COMMANDER CARDS—Each deck introduces 10 never-before-seen Commander cards to Magic: The Gathering, including 3 foil cards (one of which is Borderless!)
- COLLECT SPECIAL TREATMENT CARDS—Each deck also comes with a 2-card Collector Booster Sample Pack containing 2 cards from the Bloomburrow set, including 1 alt-border Rare or Mythic Rare and at least 1 Traditional Foil card
If you are curious about these Commander precons and what they can do, check out our Peace Offering Upgrade Guide, or our Squirreled Away Upgrade Guide.
Bundle
A Bloomburrow Bundle has a load of adventure that brings bats, birds, lizards, mice, and squirrels from the Valley. An alternate art promo card comes with the bundle and 30 lands, 10 of which are full-art, five of which are foil. This bundle has a bit of everything, and importantly, nine play boosters.
- TINY TAILS, BIG ADVENTURE—Put your best paw forward and enter the world of Bloomburrow; fight beside mice, frogs, bats, birds, lizards, squirrels, and other critters as you restore the balance of peace in the Valley and prove that bravery comes in all sizes!
- NOW WITH 9 PLAY BOOSTERS—Get the best of Draft and Set Boosters, combined into one! Play Boosters are great for Limited play and fun to open, with a possibility of multiple Rares and at least 1 shining foil card in every pack
- FULL-ART LANDS & SPECIAL ALTERNATE-ART CARD—Every Bundle also comes with 1 Traditional Foil promo card featuring Bundle-exclusive alternate art, and 20 of the 30 included Land cards feature charming Full Art (5 foil, 15 nonfoil)
- EXCLUSIVE ACCESSORIES—In addition to cards from the set, each Bundle comes with Bundle-exclusive accessories, including a special die to track your life total and a sturdy box to store everything in
- PLAY A GAME THAT FUSES ART, STORIES & STRATEGY—Magic: The Gathering is a collectible card game that weaves deep strategy with art and mechanics that explore the themes of a particular world and story—whether you want to play a casual game with friends, collect cool cards, or get competitive, Magic welcomes you to The Gathering
Wrap Up
Bloomburrow Art | Illustration by Adame Minguez
It's Bloomburrow season. You can watch Disney's Robin Hood or pick up a Redwall book to set your mood for this set, and honestly, the book series is a good read anyway.
The setting is fun, a non-humanoid set feels fresh, and the mechanics and characters are intriguing. This set feels like Magic and remains distinct enough from Lorwyn, a set with many of the same underlying features (which we plan to return to in the near future).
Does Bloomburrow make you want to learn the board game Everdell? What excites you in this unique set? Let me know in the comments or over in the Draftsim Discord, and if you'd like to dig deeper into this cute set, check our Bloomburrow Limited Set Review or our ranking for the best BLB cards.
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