What a breath of fresh air Bloomburrow has been.

Honestly? Bloomburrow is not the most powerful set of all time. In fact, it's probably the weakest complete set released in 2024. However, that fact, along with the rich and flavorful themes and wonderful blend of simplicity and fun mechanics sees Bloomburrow having all the hallmarks of a renaissance Magic: The Gathering set.

Magic sets don't always need to be about constant power creep and a million flip cards with a hundred words of text and four special super duper bonus sheets! Bloomburrow is just some good, clean fun, and it's been a blast playing it in Standard as well as drafting it.

So while today's "Early Winners" article may not be as impactful as, say, the Modern Horizons 3 article, it's frankly a lot more fun and enjoyable.

Ygra, Eater of All looks like it's mostly a limited bomb.

It's got a lot of sweet text on it; turning things into food is fun, the ward is fun, and it does get very big very fast, but the lack of evasion or an enters effect is pretty damning in any matchup where just being big isn't good enough. However, it also presents a very interesting combo element.

Ah yes, everyone's favorite cat Cauldron Familiar is back! And back again! And back again!

With a Ygra, Eater of All in play, you can infinitely sacrifice two Cauldron Familiars (which are also food now) to each other to kill your opponent, and you can do this all at instant speed and through interaction if you've got any random creatures or food laying around.

Obviously, we're still in the very early stages, but there have been talks about this being a thing in Pioneer, perhaps even more so if Amalia gets the axe at some point.

Good lord is Emberheart Challenger a good card.

We've been pretty happy with 2-drop 2/2 haste creature with mild upside in Mono-Red in Standard for a few years now, but Emberheart Challenger is something else entirely. Adding prowess to the mix is, as Monastery Swiftspear has shown us for many years, excellent, and if that's all Emberheart Challenger was it would be a fine card.

But once you mix in even a few targeting effects that you already wanted to play, like Monstrous Rage or even something like Rockface Village, and you're already swinging above your weight class. If Emberheart Challenger provides you with one extra card in a game, that's already a pretty sweet rate.

However, if you're actually going deep and trying to target it with a lot of stuff, be it in a pump spell-heavy Gruul deck in Standard, or some sort of heroic-based deck in other formats, things start to get out of hand very quickly. Aggressive 2-drops that draw cards aren't supposed to be this good or fast!

We're just scratching the surface of Emberheart Challenger.

The big brother of Augur of Bolas, Thundertrap Trainer has been showing up here in there in decks looking for an early creature that offers up some selection. Seeing four cards instead of three is a big count on making sure that Thundertrap Trainer doesn't whiff, and while the body is certainly worse than Augur of Bolas, having a 6 mana bigtime mode is pretty awesome.

Six mana to draw two good spells and make a chump blocker as a secondary mode is going to play well in more tapout-based control and spell-based decks, but it will be interesting to see if Thundertrap Trainer can make it to the big time.

Perhaps the weirdest card on the list today, Glarb, Calamity's Augur.

Glarb is somewhat obviously a good card. Compared to something like Courser of Kruphix, an absolutely Standard staple that saw some play in older formats as well, Glarb does about seven more things. Just being able to play lands off the top of your deck is great, but any time you cast a spell too you feel like you're cheating.

But wait, there's more!

Glarb is also a great blocker, able to survive many early attackers and trade with anything with deathtouch, and also doesn't die to Cut Down or most burn spells. This is huge, as Glarb is cheap enough to come down early and get in the way, but also demand a high quality answer that your opponent may have wanted to save for a "real" threat like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or other four and 5-drops. Lastly Glarb's surveil is also excellent, as while he's sitting back on defense, he gets to make a big difference in both your draw steps as well as filling your graveyard.

It's still not clear exactly where Glarb has a home, but he's found a way into a surprising amount of my brews so far and I've been nothing short of "very impressed."

Mockingbird is your classic "better in older formats" design, because it specifically cares about mana costs and gets better the cheaper everyone's cards are. It is another card that is fairly open ended and hasn't found a specific home yet, but it's cheapest way we've ever had to double up on certain effects.

Maybe you want more copies of busted 1-drops like Death's Shadow or Ocelot Pride? Adding flying to either of these cards is a huge upgrade, and you're doing so at literally the exact same mana cost so it's not like you're overpaying, the only opportunity cost is the you need something to copy; Mockingbird isn't a threat itself. It goes even further if you want to copy something that greatly improves in multiples like Venerated Rotpriest, allowing for much faster kills at a great rate.

And it gets even better if you want to copy a creature token! Just imagine a flying goblin shaman token!

Mockingbird is one of the best, if not the best Clone ever printed, and I imagine we are going to see it in a lot of places in the future.

Power In All The Right Places

Bloomburrow isn't a barnstormer power-level wise, but that's okay!

I've had an absolute blast playing the set so far, as it is a perfect Standard set - good solid themes and fun mechanics, a lot to play around with, and some awesome backwards compatibility with many of the cards from the sets currently in Standard, especially Wilds of Eldraine.

Fun is back in style!