The Lost Bloomburrow Precon: You Otter Be Kidding

Posted on August 8, 2024

With the release of Bloomburrow we were given support for ten kindred concepts to represent the 10 color pairs. For myself, one pair stood above the rest, the Red-Blue (Izzet) Otters. The Otters bring spellslinging, impulse drawing by exiling the top of your deck, and making big token Otters via prowess and other effects. However Otters, along with other groups like Rats and Lizards, were left behind with the four pre-constructed Commander decks. This heresy must be corrected! So now I present the first in a short series covering the "Lost Precons" of Bloomburrow: You Otter Be Kidding.

The Commanders

Like the recent Commander Precons, this deck features a "face" Commander, a backup Commander, and what I call a retro or third alternate Commander from an older set. For our face Commander we have Alania, Divergent Storm. With Alania we plan to cast at least one instant, sorcery, and Otter spell per turn to get the most from Alania's copy ability. For our backup we have the Starter Deck all-star Bria, Riptide Rogue to give all our creatures prowess and swing in with an army of unblockable Otters. Finally for our older Commander I went with Kylox, Visionary Inventor. With Kylox's ability to sacrifice creatures on attack, we can focus on the token makers to have a quick armor for Kylox to use to shoot out as many instant and sorcery spells as possible.

Notable Reprints

When building this deck I wanted to match the total card pricing of the other Precons. Across the board the Bloomburrow Precons sat around $140 USD at time of writing. The grand total for You Otter Be Kidding me lands at $151 as Bloomburrow pricing settles down. A notable inclusion from Bloomburrow is Bria as the card is currently only available in the Starter Deck and sits at $18 on its own.

For cards above $10 we have only two: Jeska's Will and Swan Song. Jeska's Will has maintained its status as a red stable card and still sits at $15-$20 despite the multiple reprints over the years while Swan Song has only seen a solid reprint in the recent Lord of the Rings Commander set leaving it at around $14. Both of these cards work well with the deck and getting them copied takes them to a whole new level of value for your board state.

For other notable reprints we have spell slinging staples like Mana Geyser, Preordain, Ponder, Rapid Hybridization, and Seething Song. Along with those I included Rite of Replication for our second strategy outlined below bringing the total reprint only value to around $100.

Imaginary Critters

Since each Commander deck included a planeswalker in their Bloomburrow-sona, I added Saheeli, Sublime Artificer to the deck fully expecting to see the one and only dinosaur, maybe a raptor, in Bloomburrow.

Strategy

Each Commander offers a different strategy for this deck, ranging for a spell slinging deck much like Stella Lee's Quick Draw precon in Outlaws of Thunder Junction to a swarm of Otter tokens buffed by Prowess.

Spell Slinging

For our face Commander Alania, Divergent Storm we want to cast instants, sorceries, and Otters each turn to gift cards to our opponents and copy those spells. Our quick hits for copies are cards like Stormcatch Mentor that can give us 1-2 mana off our instants and sorceries along with Brainstorm, Faithless Looting, Opt, Preordain, and Ponder for card advantage. Those scry and place back in any order style of cards allow us to stack the deck to get our mana producers like Seething Song or Mana Geyser along with setting up cards like Kylox, Visionary Inventor up for a big pay off when he attacks.

A unique card in the mix is Frolicking Familiar as it comes with the adventure Blow Off Steam, so you'll be able to not only copy the Instant, but also the Otter creature itself whenever you play it from exile. Along with these spells we can play cards like Thousand-Year Storm and the third level of Sorcerer Class to spam damage at your opponents. Want more copies? Twinning Staff and Kitsa, Otterball Elite each net you an extra copy of whatever instant or sorcery you copy with Alania.

Total Token Thrashing

Now for Bria, Riptide Rogue we are going to focus more on their ability to make our creatures unblockable and buff them with prowess. Lightshell Duo, Stormcatch Mentor, and Kitsa will all get double the prowess triggers with Bria on the field. With plenty of creatures to benefit we can use our cantrips and the third level of Stormchaser's Talent to pump out more Otter tokens and haste them with Rapid Augmenter for the fastest combat in Bloomburrow.

Additional we have cards like Rite of Replication and Stormsplitter that will exponentially make more copies of creatures to gain us benefits. For instance what's better than five Otters with prowess? Five Stormcatch Mentors that reduce your instant and sorcery spells and still get that double prowess thanks to Bria.

How does one score in Otterball?

So how does this deck end the game? Much like other Izzet Precons of the past we are going to win with some big instants and sorceries. Perplexing Test can open the board for whatever creatures we have on board if we haven't made them unblockable via Bria or another effect. After the way is clear we can either overload Mizzix's Mastery to cast everything in our graveyard before dropping Grapeshot or we can buff up our creatures and finish things off with Surge to Victory to provide additional card advantage or ensure complete and total victory.

So What's The Catch?

All in all this deck focuses on casting big spells and making even bigger Otters. For folks starting with this precon it should preform just as well as the other Bloomburrow decks and have plenty of paths to upgrade. For me personally I took Bria, Riptide Rogue as the main commander and loaded the deck with more token makers and cards like Impact Tremors to make every token creature entering count. What is your take on this precon? Any cards you feel I left out? What upgrades would you bring to the table? Let us know!

Brandon Ashcraft