The Bloom of the Burrow, Part 2

Last week, I introduced you to the Exploratory Design and Vision Design teams, showed off some preview cards, and started telling you the story of Bloomburrow's design. This week, I'll introduce you to the Set Design and Commander Design teams, show off another preview card, and finish the story of the set's design. I hope that sounds fun.

Game, Set, Match

I'll start by introducing you to the Bloomburrow Set Design team. As always, I had the introductions done by the lead designer of the team. In this case, that's Ian Duke.

I also want to introduce you to the Commander Design team. That was led by Annie Sardelis, so she'll be doing the introductions.

Finding a Good Mechanic

When we handed off the set from Vision Design to Set Design, we included three general mechanics that wanted to go in all five colors. Let me walk through them.

Offspring

The first mechanic in the set was something we discovered in exploratory design. We were walking through what one expects when thinking about animals, and the idea of young versions of them came up. We loved the mechanic the moment we saw it. It got slotted in when we made the very first file in vision design and never left the set. The mechanic, from its initial iteration, was called offspring. Here's its rules text:

Offspring N (You may pay an additional N as you cast this spell. If you do, when this creature enters, create a 1/1 token copy of it.)

The idea is simple. If you pay extra mana when casting a creature, it comes along with a little junior version of it. The mechanic was purposefully used in all ten core animal creature types, because we thought it was something all the archetypes would enjoy. Like the embalm mechanic from Amonkhet, it did raise the issue of the need for extra token art, but the idea was so cute that we got everyone on board with doing it early in the process.

The design for offspring was interesting. You wanted the creatures to have abilities that were relevant to a 1/1 body, but usually not as potent as with the original creature. The most fruitful design space was triggers, especially "enters” triggers and attack triggers. This made the larger body better for combat while keeping the junior versions relevant.

For a while, there was a sacrifice theme in the black-green Squirrel archetype, but you tend to want to use offspring tokens for sacrifice themes. That worked against the friendlier feel of the set and was dropped.

My preview card today is an offspring card.

Gift

Another question we asked early in design: how do we capture the tone of the world? The set's genre space tends to be a bit lighter in tone, and we wanted it to capture this feeling. Could we make a mechanic that felt lighter, friendlier? Our answer to this is what we called the gift mechanic.

The idea was simple, what if spells had a kicker-like upgrade that, instead of requiring you to spend a resource that you had, created a resource for the opponent. We called it gift because we liked the idea that the way these spells got better was by you doing something for an opponent. Here's the template for gift:

Gift a [thing] (You may promise an opponent a gift as you cast this spell. If you do, they [get whatever you're gifting them].)

The rules text would then explain what would happen if the gift was promised.

The big question was what kind of resources made sense to gift? In vision design, we came up with three that we liked:

A card – We've made numerous cards in the past where you get a cheaper spell and your opponent draws a card. This ability is short and is a decent enough cost that you could get a good upgrade on your spell.

A creature token – The challenge of gifts was that they had to be things that were generically useful. Something that (almost) every deck can use is a creature. Creatures can be a win condition and can help protect you from damage. We talked through larger creatures but eventually centered on a 1/1. Even that proved to be a bit strong, so in the printed version, the gifted creature token is tapped. We made it a blue 1/1 Fish, as that's something the animals like to give to one another.

A Food token – We also looked at various noncreature tokens. The one we liked best was the one already in the set. Something about the genre wanted there to be Food, plus Food felt festive and matched the tone. We did explore just giving the opponent life, but the flavor felt a little off.

Those are the three we handed off from Vision Design. Set Design would add a fourth one, gift a Treasure (which ended up on just one card). They designed a lot of new cards, but the core mechanic stayed as it was handed off. The Commander decks do add two other types of gifts.

Talents & Classes

Another quality we were interested in expressing through design was capturing the feel of a community. There were all these different animals each filling different jobs. Was there a way to make cards that captured this? When we get a question like this, the first thing we do is look back at old Magic mechanics to see if we've done something before that would get the job done. In this case, we found Classes.

Classes premiered in Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. They represented different classes you could take when building characters in Dungeons & Dragons. These Classes were things like Wizard, Fighter, and Rogue. The roles we were looking for were a little less about adventuring and much more about living in a small town (things like being a blacksmith or an innkeeper).

Talents are Classes with a slight flavor tweak. They work the same, are laid out the same, and have the same art ratio. There are two cycles of them, one at uncommon and one at rare.

The Glue

There's one last vision design creation to talk about. One of the biggest challenges in making typal Limited designs is making sure that enough cards are desired by different decks. If only the Otter player wants the Otters, then the draft decks end up too similar to one another draft to draft and it lessens the long-term Limited playability of the set. This means its key to have something in the set that helps make cards attractive to drafters drafting different animal archetypes. We refer to this in R&D as "typal glue."

The most famous typal glue is the changeling mechanic where a creature has all creature types. It was introduced in Lorwyn and then showed up in the first Modern Horizons and Kaldheim. Changeling does show up in Bloomburrow, but just on two artifact creatures.

We ended up using an idea we'd talked about in Lorwyn design, what we call duos. The idea of a duo is that it represents two creatures working together. This allows us to put two creature types on the card, making it attractive to drafters drafting either creature type. The duos are two cycles, both at common, and both monocolor, making use of each creature type twice. This also helps with boosting the as-fan of each creature type.

Just My Archetype

As I explained last week, Vision Design created a typal mechanic called fellowship as the other glue to hold together the set. Set Design decided to pull fellowship (which I'll get into next week) and in its place give each archetype its own mechanical identity. Some archetypes would get a keyword/ability word, while others just got mechanical throughlines. Each would get a small amount (around eight) of typal rewards, skewing higher in rarity. I'll walk through each archetype in order and explain its mechanical identity.

Birds (White-Blue)

Birds are one of two animals in the set that all come with the same keyword—flying (the other being Bats, which I'll get to in a minute). To add a little flavor and keep from having two archetypes all about flying, the Set Design team decided it would be interesting to have many of the Birds mechanically care about non-fliers, creating this synergy where the deck wants a mix of fliers and non-fliers. Being white-blue, it has the normal amount of control elements to help you protect your fliers, which serve as your win condition.

Rats (Blue-Black)

Rats have access to several elements that will slow down your opponent. It has creature kill, counterspells, discard, and strong blockers that will allow you to fill up your graveyard as you're stalling out your opponent. There are then a number of Rats that care about having seven or more cards in your graveyard, upgrading them in the mid- to late game and helping you win.

Lizards (Black-Red)

Lizards are one of the more aggressive decks. Its main strategy is two-fold. First, it has a lot of cards that enhance its creatures in aggressive ways, encouraging you to attack. It then has several effects that deal damage directly to the opponent, so you can plink away at their life total from afar as you're constantly attacking them. Lizards don't have a named mechanic that runs through the archetype, but they do tend to reward you for your opponents losing life.

Raccoons (Red-Green)

Raccoons are a midrange ramp deck that wants to get out a lot of larger creatures. It has cards that grant a bonus if you control a creature with power 4 or more. It also makes use of a brand-new mechanic called expend. Here's the reminder text for expend 4:

(You expend 4 as you spend your fourth total mana to cast spells during a turn.)

Expend rewards you for playing big spells but can also reward you for choosing to play multiple small spells on the same turn.

Rabbits (White-Green)

Rabbits like making a lot of Rabbits. It's the creature that has the most cards that create tokens, and it has the most cards that make multiple tokens. You'll play a lot of Rabbits, which will allow you to create a lot of Rabbit tokens, which will let you build up a giant army that you can then swarm with to defeat your opponent. It has a lot of spells that either reward you for having many creatures or buff your creatures to allow you to attack.

Bats (White-Black)

Bats, like Birds, can fly, but we wanted to give them a different feel. We leaned into Bats caring about life, as white is top in life gain and black is best at spending life as a cost. Bats play more like a bleeder deck where you slow down your opponent with good blockers and defensive spells, using life gain to buy yourself time and life loss to dig into your opponent and finish them off with your fliers.

Otters (Blue-Red)

Otters are the wizards of Bloomburrow. They care about instants and sorceries and have a lot of cards that reward you for casting them. This archetype plays less creatures and more spells, especially ones that help you control the battlefield, and has more of a tempo-oriented play style.

Squirrels (Black-Green)

Squirrels are another creature type to get a new keyword (technically a keyword action) called forage. Here's its reminder text:

(To forage, exile three cards from your graveyard or sacrifice a Food. If a creature with a finality counter on it would die, exile it instead.)

Forage combines the Squirrels' focus on two things: the graveyard and Food. Squirrels have a bunch of ways to get cards in your graveyard and ways, including forage, to use your graveyard as a resource. The archetype also is good at producing and using Food tokens. That, combined with removal and big creatures, helps lead Squirrels to victory.

Mice (White-Red)

Mice are the most aggressive archetype. They like attacking, so they skew toward low-mana value creatures. They also have a new mechanic called valiant. It is an ability word with the following text: "Whenever CARDNAME becomes the target of a spell or ability you control for the first time each turn." It's a variant on the heroic mechanic from the original Theros block, but it's triggered by spells and abilities and only triggers once per turn. Valiant works well with combat-enhancing spells and Equipment.

Frogs (Blue-Green)

Frogs like to jump, so it takes advantage of effects that either bounce it (returning it to the hand) or flickering it (putting it in exile and then bringing it back). Frogs have a lot of enters-the-battlefield effects and triggered abilities that care when creatures enter or leave the battlefield. The synergy grows as you get more permanents on the battlefield, adding extra value to strengthen your late game.

Give Your Game Paws

The final mechanic I want to talk about is another five-color mechanic, but one not created by the Vision Design team. The Set Design team was looking for a fun mythic rare cycle, and came up with a pretty cool idea, something we're calling the seasons.

Each season is a sorcery. When you cast it, you get a resource—five of them, each represented by a paw symbol. There are then three modes. The first one costs a single paw, the second two paws, and the third three paws. You can then choose any number of modes, and you're allowed to choose the same mode multiple times. The only limitation is you have to spend the proper amount of paws to choose a mode. This results in the following five options:

• You can cast the first mode five times.
• You can cast the first mode three times and the second mode one time.
• You can cast the first mode one time and the second mode two times.
• You can cast the first mode two times and the third mode one time.
• You can cast the second mode one time and the third mode one time.
• And technically you can do less than any of the above as you don't have to spend all five paws.

The effects are chosen to synergize with one another and allow for some big moments. A mythic rare sorcery cycle is a high bar to clear, but I think the Bloomburrow Set Design team accomplished it.

Animal Control

That's all the time we have for today. I hope you enjoyed the designer introductions, the preview cards, and all the design stories. As always, I'm eager for any feedback on today's column, any of the mechanics I talked about, or the set itself. You can email me or contact me through any of my social media accounts (X, Blogatog, Instagram, and TikTok).

Join me next week for the Bloomburrow Vision Design Handoff Document when I talk through two big vision design ideas that didn't make it to print.

Until then. May you pick your favorite animal and have fun playing Bloomburrow.