The Mechanics of Bloomburrow: Forage

Posted on August 9, 2024

Bloomburrow Mechanics: Forage

Forage is a new keyword mechanic from Bloomburrow. It is found on seven cards, all of which are Squirrels. Forage can be (at time of writing) either an activated or a triggered ability.

To forage, you do one of two things: Sacrifice a Food token or exile three cards from your graveyard. You cannot sacrifice the Food token to forage and to gain the life.

It's worth noting once you've said you're casting a spell or activating an ability, no one else can do anything until you've finished doing it. That means people can't attempt to remove cards from your graveyard or destroy your Food tokens to prevent you from Foraging.

Forage appears as an activated ability on Camellia, the Seedmiser, or as a triggered ability on others. And Corpseberry Cultivator is unique because it both gives you a Forage Trigger and cares about when you Forage. Note Forage (as of now) doesn't require you take the action, and the results are always positive and additional.

Limited implications

Forage is a great mechanic for Limited, because the card is worth something whether you can forage or not. I love cards like Treetop Sentries in Limited; they're great blockers, they're harder to kill with that high toughness, and the mana cost isn't challenging. Then, if you randomly have a Food or cards in your 'yard, you can forage and draw an extra card. This is solid. I ran two copies of Feed the Cycle in my Prerelease deck and it was very successful. I have no problems with a Murder, but the discount option is great.

The really nice thing is the ability isn't parasitic - you can run one card with forage and don't have to do anything to support it. Maybe you get lucky and someone Gifts you a Food and you can use the extra ability, but if not, no big deal and you still get your effect.

Commander implications

Due to the limited color options and relative power level of the effects, I expect forage will show up in three specific places: dedicated Squirrel Kindred decks, decks which already make Food tokens, and Black decks looking for another kill spell (who probably don't actually care if they forage or not - it's just better than Murder). While Squirrel decks have gotten a lot of help in the last few years and are certainly viable as decks, there aren't enough cards with forage to make it anything other than a passing extra ability. However, the fact that Treetop Sentries can trade a Food for a card is a valuable thing, and Thornvault Forager searches out your important Squirrels, so whether or not you use it for mana creation (and thereby forage) doesn't really matter. That card will see play.

Any deck built around Camellia will probably jam most, if not all, of the forage creatures just to generate more Squirrels. Curious Forager requires a few hoops to get the Eternal Witness effect, plus it's limited to permanents and kind of works against its own goal because it exiles cards you might want to be returning, but I can see a place for a non-Black effect that returns a creature.

Forage is a strong keyword useful in many situations without requiring you do it to get value. That's a great mechanic and one I hope to see more of in the future.