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Magic Online Vintage Cube - Bloomburrow Update

Posted on Aug 07, 2024

A Fork in the Road to Las Vegas

If you haven’t heard, Daybreak is collaborating with Ultimate Guard to bring you Magic Online Vintage Cube LIVE: a series of online qualifiers culminating in the Ultimate Guard Finals at MagicCon Las Vegas: a live tabletop Vintage Cube Draft in which the participants keep the cards they draft and compete for the undrafted cards!

Full details here, but it’s an exciting, high-stakes event, and we will be switching to using the iteration of the Vintage Cube described in this article starting with the Feeder League this weekend. It will also be available to play starting today in the Vintage Cube Single Elimination Queue. We didn’t shake things up too much in the middle of this major event. Besides swapping out a subset of the Lands archetype and leaning slightly into wizards and elementals, this iteration is mostly about trying out some promising new Bloomburrow cards, and some potent Modern Horizons 3 cards that missed the cut last time.

OUT

For those among you first-picking Fastbond with these exact cards in mind, we apologize. For now, you’ll have to make due without the Omen/Dryad + Valakut combo in conjunction with Scapeshift and Bounce-Lands. However, there are still several variations of this archetype. Omnath, Locust of Creation, Field of the Dead, Dark Depths and Strip Mine all remain.

IN

School of Wizards

We’re always looking for excuses to bring back old staples, and with recent addition Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student and newly minted Kitsa, Otterball Elite upping the wizard count anyway, we leaned into it a little more with Flame of Anor and the return of a few beloved wizard classics.

Elemental Rise

With Beza, the Bounding Spring coming in and several strong elementals already present in the Cube, we thought we’d give Risen Reef a shot and add a couple of reasonable elementals together with it. Nissa, Resurgent Animist has also been on the shortlist of cards we wanted to try for a while, so it all felt elementary in the end.

Devoted Brewmaster

Bloomburrow has blessed us with another infinite-mana combo. Combining Hazel’s Brewmaster with a Devoted Druid in your graveyard yields unlimited amounts of {G} and is easily enabled by Survival of the Fittest, which can tutor up your Devoted Druid and then bin it to tutor up the Brewmaster. Then turn any other creature into the win-condition beast of your choice after you’ve generated all the {G} you need. How about Walking Ballista, or just a big Eldrazi?

None of these swaps constitutes a full, deep archetype shift, but we didn't want to rock the boat too much with this update. We did want to freshen things up a little and share our excitement for exploring the potential of Bloomburrow's new additions, though, so let us know what you think in the usual social spaces.

For the detailed card-by-card changes and design comments, check out the table below! Good luck in the queues, and we hope to see you in Las Vegas!

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CHANGELIST

Color In Color Out Design Comment
White Archangel Elspeth White Hero of Bladehold Archangel Elspeth plays well with recent additions like Ocelot Pride and Jacked Rabbit, while also just being very solid on its own. Hero of Bladehold is an awesome, long-standing staple, but can definitely take a short break.
White Beza, the Bounding Spring Green Scapeshift Beza gets a shot as a interesting new card. While a 4/5 for 4 isn't all that exciting, you're almost guaranteed to get some amount of additional enter triggers out of this and it might turn out great. Definitely worth a shot.
White Guide of Souls White Benevolent Bodyguard Guide of Souls was on the short list last update, but we decided against it to keep the total number of changes down. We're going to slip it into the mix with this small update.
White Jacked Rabbit White White Orchid Phantom Jacked Rabbit combines reasonable rate and flexibility into a great standalone card, which also synergizes with several other cards in the cube, including old and new Elspeth.
Blue Kitsa, Otterball Elite Blue Chart a Course A vigilant looter with prowess is already very promising, but thrust that into a format where you can copy Ancestral Recall and Time Walk and you've got yourself a good deal.
Blue Vendilion Clique Blue Serum Visions With incoming Flame of Anor's "wizard" clause, we have a good excuse to up the pointy-hat count with some old favorites Vendilion Clique and Venser, Shaper Savant .
Blue Venser, Shaper Savant Blue Treasure Cruise With incoming Flame of Anor's "wizard" clause, we have a good excuse to up the pointy-hat count with some old favorites Vendilion Clique and Venser, Shaper Savant .
Black Bloodchief's Thirst Black Infernal Grasp It's been a while since Bloodchief's Thirst was last in the Cube, but with an influx of "must-kill" one- and two-mana creatures like Ocelot Pride, Bristly Bill, and Psychic Frog,  the one-mana mode is particularly strong right now, and the four-mana alternative will see its share of the stack, too.
Black Darkstar Augur Black Night's Whisper This Dark Confidant variant can double-up on the effect if you're willing to take the risk. We're not convinced this will keep this slot at the cost of 3 mana, but it felt worth a shot.
Black Hazel's Brewmaster Black Dark Petition As mentioned in the article above, Hazel's Brewmaster combos with Devoted Druid for infinite G mana and is also easy to set up with Survival of the Fittest, which is one of the focal points of this and the last iteration.
Black Sorin of House Markov Green Prismatic Omen Much like Guide of Souls, Sorin looked interesting the first time around, but was kept out to keep the total number of changes down. Now he gets his shot!
Black Vampire Hexmage Rakdos Valki, God of Lies Golgari Dark Depths has legs again with Sowing Mycospawn and Wight of the Reliquary, so we thought it would be a good time to re-introduce this old friend. When you're not breaking a 20/20 out of the ice with her, remember that she can take out planeswalkers!
Red Emberheart Challenger Red Harsh Mentor 2/2 haste for 2 with upside is becoming the new gold-standard for red two drops in the Vintage Cube, and this one comes with two bonuses, prowess and potential card draw.
Red Galvanic Discharge Red Arc Trail Galvanic Discharge would've been a fairly easy swap-in for Unholy Heat with the original MH3 update, but with graveyard strategies in full effect and trying to keep down total number of changes, we decided to stall a bit. Instead of Unholy Heat we're swapping out Arc Trail. Its original purpose was to rein in the white menace, but it's been harder on green in practice so we'll try doing without it for a while.
Red Glorybringer Red Obsidian Charmaw Bringing back the glory from the bench, which it has been warming for a while now. We know people love their hasty dragons, so here's one back for you!
Red Grim Lavamancer Red Flare of Duplication Lavaman is back! Mainly for the purposes of adding some spice to Flame of Anor, as well as being a historically solid 1-drop for red, even if it can be somewhat of a double-edged sword with so many graveyard synergies present. Let's hope it only shrinks your opponents 'goyfs and not your own. ;)
Red Hired Claw Gruul Gruul Turf While it's not immediately obvious how Hired Claw will do, the instant speed activation and self-enabling of its activated ability make us hopeful. It can only be effectively blocked by 3 power or 3+ toughness creatures and can grow beyond that if left unchecked, while also maintaining that flexibility of not being forced to sink mana into it.
Green Devoted Druid Green Sakura-Tribe Elder With the brewmaster combo coming in and Valakut leaving, this feels like a natural swap.
Green Foundation Breaker Green Reclamation Sage Making this swap to support the minor Elementals theme; it shouldn't be too much of a downgrade outside of Elementals.
Green Fyndhorn Elves Green Arboreal Grazer With the Bouncelands leaving, Arboreal Grazer loses too much to stick around. Instead, a classic returns!
Green Keen-Eyed Curator Green Scavenging Ooze New S'cooze! Harder to cast for better baseline stats and trample once it gets huge. Let's give it a try!
Green Nissa, Resurgent Animist Green Dryad of the Ilysian Grove A reasonable Lotus Cobra at face value, the creature-searching clause makes Nissa extra-spicy. It's possible to build strong base-green elemental decks with no other elves, which you might want to consider if you run her. By the time you are playing fetchlands with Nissa in play, you are usually more interested in elementals than elves.
Green Pawpatch Recruit Green Pick your Poison Pick your Poison hasn't been terrible, but it hasn't proved important either, and definitely worth swapping in a new card to try out for a hot minute. Pawpatch Recruit is a decent 1-drop and the optional offspring double-up could potentially overperform expectations.
Green Tough Cookie Green Life from the Loam With the introduction of Six, Life from the Loam felt a lot better, but still fell a bit short. Tough Cookie is fun to build around and creates some unique scenarios, as well as offering some synergies with Hazel's Brewmaster and Sorin of House Markov this time around.
Izzet Flame of Anor Simic Bonny Pall, Clearcutter Bonny Pall didn't perform well enough to warrant keeping, but it could make a return in the right context down the road.  Flame of Anor is quite solid as a modal effect, and with the introduction of more wizards to the mix, this will be a two-mode spell a lot of the time without having to stretch for it.
Selesnya Voice of Resurgence Selesnya Selesnya Sanctuary Voice of Resurgence is another Elemental that fits in the Omnath-color-scheme.
Simic Risen Reef Simic Planar Genesis We expect Risen Reef to be a late pick, but it's fun and powerful when it comes together in the right deck. Also, it only costs us a Planar Genesis to splash around with the reef in this elementals-heavy iteration.
Multicolor Leovold, Emissary of Trest Simic Sail into the West Fan-favorite Emissary of Trest is back! As you might have noticed by now, we like to cycle him out every now and then, but we always bring him back.
Multicolor Mana Confluence Selesnya Simic Growth Chamber Rotating bouncelands out allows for Mana Confluence to return.
Multicolor Satya, Aetherflux Genius Multicolor Bring to Light There are now exactly three energy cards in the curation. Is that enough support for such an inherently parasitic mechanic? Yes, because they all stand on their own, each generating and consuming energy for an efficient, powerful effect without any help from the others.
Multicolor Talon Gates of Madara Red Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle Talon Gates of Madara is an interesting land. As a land drop, it clears a blocker for a turn and combos well with wrath effects when you have one nice creature you'd like to keep around. As a four-mana removal-countering or attacker-blinking instant, It's like a Zendikar Rising "spell land" except you get the land drop and the effect of the spell when you use it.
Colorless Lavaspur Boots Colorless Relic of Progenitus Nadu has been fun without being oppressive in Cube, so we're adding another justifiable combo piece. Besides that, it's a decent Urza's Saga target, and haste has some increased value with the many attack triggers in the curation, like Phlage and Kroxa.