5 Commander Deck Ideas from Bloomburrow

By Jonathan Zucchetti

Bloomburrow, the latest MTG expansion, introduces many cute and furry tools for EDH deck builders. Typal decks, both new and established, benefit most from Bloomburrow. In addition, some monocolored strategies now have powerful new commanders, and several staple archetypes got some helpful updates. Today’s article is about 5 new brews with Bloomburrow commanders.

Kastral Bird Typal

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Among the huge quantity of typal-supporting cards in this set, Birds as a creature type flew under the radar (pun intended). While everyone was figuring out what the best Otters or Lizards build might be, Kastral, the Windcrested sneakily presented itself as the new-and-powerful Bird commander. What makes this card stand out are the three abilities it can potentially trigger during each combat step. As long as we hit all of our opponents, we’ll be able to cheat into play (or reanimate) a creature, pump our board, or draw a card.

The obvious limitation comes from the creature type it cares about: who has ever heard about a Bird typal deck? Well, you might be surprised by the number of good creatures that happen to be Birds. If you’ve ever built a flying-matters EDH deck, then you know for sure Empyrean Eagle, Warden of Evos Isle and Kangee, Sky Warden, which are all Birds in addition to their useful effects.

We can also count on many other creatures with powerful abilities on them. Aven Interrupter and Aven Mindcensor are both good at disrupting our opponents’ plans; Kangee’s Lieutenant and Gustcloak Savior favor our gameplan centered around the combat step; Aven Wind Guide and Curiosity Crafter allow us to take advantage of the token sub-theme present in the deck.

To glue it all together, we run some old goodies like Herald’s Horn, Door of Destinies and Vanquisher’s Banner, established typal staples that will help us push through the game and reach the finish line.

Maha Board Wipes

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Maha immediately caught the attention of many commander players. It comes with good stats (a 6/5 for 5 mana) combined with a powerful combination of keyword abilities. Flying and trample almost assure us we are always going to connect when attacking, and ward gives it a soft protection. Yet, the potential for an interesting commander build resides in its static ability. Being able to set all of our opponents’ creatures base toughness to 1 is an effect that is basically asking to be exploited in EDH.

To do so, we want to run as many toughness-reducing effects as possible, thus having one-sided board wipes always at our disposal. In this regard, permanent effects like Kaervek, the Spiteful and Night of Souls’ Betrayal are all-stars that immediately kill other players’ creatures as soon as they hit the battlefield, but we can make work one-time cards like Suffocating Fumes efficiently as well.

What’s crucial to keep in mind when building this style of extremely disruptive deck is having a clear win condition. What really drives people mad is seeing a control player not having a way to end the game. People are usually fine with losing, since they can immediately jam another match, but nobody wants to be held hostage for 4 hours because you didn’t plan a way to finish the game off. In this build in particular, we’re keeping it simple with the win condition, transforming Maha into a hard-hitting machine. I decided to lean into a voltron build full of equipments and auras because it’s the fastest way to end the game as soon as we establish a dominant board state. Cards such as [Lashwrithe](https://manapool.com/cards?q=Lashwrithe, Nightmare Lash and Grafted Exoskeleton make sure we won’t be accused of playing with our food.

If you want to build this deck, I’d suggest you personalize the voltron package as much as possible. This build reflects my own preferences when it comes to equipments and/or auras, but feel free to swap out anything you don’t like. For this deck to work as smoothly as possible, you need to keep in mind the environment you’ll play it in. Does your playgroup run a lot of removal? Then, make space for some more defensive tools. Do they run a lot of big flyers? Some more evasion is what you may need in this case. All in all, don’t settle on the “best” cards in vacuum, rather consider which ones would perform the best in your actual local scene.

Byrke Go Wide Counters

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For the first time in years, I’m interested in a commander that cares about +1/+1 counters. While this archetype is one of the most popular in the format, it has been a hot minute since a new general in this category intrigued me. They all seemed pretty flat and similar to one another, with everyone going wide instead of tall.

Byrke, Long Ear of the Law has fixed this problem for me. First off, being a Branching Evolution on a stick frees many slots in the deck. I chose not to run any of these effects because, while I value redundancy in EDH, I think that having it in the command zone is enough for the deck to function well. Then, its triggered ability is what really sold me on it - it solves the problem of incentivizing players to go wide and and instead rewards them for making their creatures tall.

For this build in particular, I decided to play as many bodies as possible, making sure most of them enter with a +1/+1 counter on it or can put one on another creature. Cards like [Iron Apprentice](https://manapool.com/cards?q=Iron%20Apprentice, Star Pupil and Servant of the Scale were the ones I looked forward to including in this list the most, as they can grow pretty quickly and help other creatures grow when they’re eventually destroyed.

Another pivotal part of this deck is the defensive package. When deploying as many creatures as we are, we are going all in and greatly exposing ourselves to board wipes. To avoid such blowouts, we need to run protection effects that won’t remove the counters we’ve stacked on our creatures. Phasing and Regenerating are the name of the game, with Wrap in Vigor, Teferi’s Protection and Clever Concealment shining bright when preventing our huge board from being destroyed.

One piece of advice when playing this list is to keep in mind how expensive our commander is. Once it hits the battlefield, the party really starts, but we need to play conservatively while we make our way up to six mana. This general hugely accelerates our gameplan, with our creatures growing exponentially once it is online, but we need to have a decent boarc in place, or Byrke will feel like an overpriced 4/4 creature.

Eluge Control

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With this build, we’ll be the bad boys at the table. Eluge is a commander that asks us to slow down the pace of the game, though hopefully our opponents won’t mind since they can enjoy one of the best pieces of art in Magic in recent years. We want to put flood counters on our lands turn after turn, gaining an ever-increasing discount on our instants and sorceries.

To get the time we need to get our strategy going, we want the game to slow down. To do so, we mostly rely on counterspells. Stubborn Denial is a great option, as our commander will most likely meet the Ferocious requirement, while Rewind will give us back the mana we’ve spent (most likely to counter something else) and Three Steps Ahead is a sweet new inclusion with a lot of added flexibility.

Nonetheless, at times we’ll be required to speed up our own game, as our counterspell can only go as far at stopping our opponents. For this reason, we run several flicker effects, which will both trigger our commander an additional time and reset its discounting ability. Displacer Kitten is an all-star for this job, as it will repeatedly exile our commander as we simply play our cards. We can also count on some straight-up flicker cards like Essence Flux, which are also useful to defend Eluge from opposing removals. Lastly, another cornerstone of the deck is Aven Courier, which will easily spread Flood counters on all of our lands.

In order to win the game, we run some heavy-hitting instant and sorceries that we want to pay as few mana as possible for. Mass Manipulation and Clone Legion allow us to take advantage of our opponents’ creatures, since we aren’t really running any creature that can threaten lethal damage. In this regard, Cyclonic Rift is another way in which we can take over the game, as it gives our small creatures just enough time to win the game while other players are busy rebuilding their board.

Changeling Decks Won the Lottery

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While I’ve never built a changeling deck myself, I can’t help but notice how many good cards were present in this expansion for such builds. As creature types are the central piece of Bloomburrow as a set, those commander decks that are based on every type of creature can truly rejoice.

If your build wants more cheap beaters, then look no further than Valley Mightcaller, which starts small but will soon trample over your opponents’ creatures as long as you keep deploying bodies. Also, Finneas, Ace Archer is fit for this role, netting not only stats to your whole board but also cards. Manifold Mouse can come with a small copy of itself attached to it while also letting your other creatures pack a punch.

For those interested in selecting and drawing more cards, Valley Questcaller will provide a useful scry effect and also a soft buff to the whole board. Harnesser of Storms grants more raw card advantage, giving us one additional card whenever we cast a creature. Lastly, Thornvault Forager allows offers mana ramp and also a very powerful tutor ability.

There are also some more expensive hard-hitting cards to choose from. Vren, the Relentless needs the deck to be pretty much tailored around it, but once its triggered ability gets going, other players will have a hard time stopping it. Alania, Divergent Storm trades one card to an opponent for an additional copy of the first creature, instant or sorcery spell we cast each turn. Last but definitely not least, The Odd Acorn Gang is simply a force to be reckon with, giving all of our creatures the ability to pump one another and making sure we keep our hand flowing with cards.