Top 10 Bloomburrow Commanders + Lists!

The most recent Magic: The Gathering set, Bloomburrow, brought novelty and diversity to Commander, as well as a wide array of new commanders shaped after different animals. There's one for everyone!

Each new commander has their own strategies, which lets you explore new synergies and combinations.

In this article, we highlighted the top 10 best Bloomburrow commanders, reviewed their abilities, and explored how you can use them to create fun or competitive decks. As usual, we'll only focus on the commanders in the set itself, and ignore the ones included in precon Commander decks.

Rats have been historically known for their Mono Black strategies, and there has been very little support for them besides that. So, a commander that interacts so well with this creature type, with three great colors on top of it all, is quite interesting.

Wick, the Whorled Mind encourages you to build a deck focused on Rats and sacrificing creatures by creating Snail tokens. Then, you'll buff these Snails with your Rats and turn them into real threats to throw on your opponents faces and also get a good amount of card advantage.

This is an excellent commander, but it's a bit slow and relies too much on a specific type of creature. Nonetheless, it combines creating a wide board of rats and making the most out of sacrificing your Snails, a fun strategy overall.

Gev, Scaled Scorch could be in a really cool aggressive Commander deck. We can build this little fella in two ways.

The first is a Lizard deck that deals a small amount of damage which you can stack and use to trigger other effects. It's a pity there aren't that many cards for this type of creature. Still, I really like Iridescent Vinelasher in this deck - it almost seems like this little Lizard was created for Gev, Scaled Scorch.

The other way to build it is by focusing entirely on +1/+1 counters and ignoring the Lizard theme, but we're missing something crucial for this strategy: green. That means, unfortunately, we can't use the most important and common weapons for counter strategies, like Hardened Scales or Corpsejack Menace and Winding Constrictor.

Eluge, the Shoreless Sea is your classic gigantic blue sea monster, and has power and toughness equal to how many Islands you control. When it attacks or enters the battlefield, Eluge lets you put a flood counter on a land, which then becomes an Island besides its other types, and retains its abilities. Unlike a Spreading Seas, this won't disable the land in question completely, so its controller will still be able to use it, but it's perfect to use abilities like islandhome and islandwalk* against any opponent. It's important to note that even if Eluge, the Shoreless Sea isn't in play, the counter you put will still turn that land in particular into an Island.

The best thing about this ability is that you can put these counters on your lands, and build a true private beach for your Eluge, the Shoreless Sea. For each counter you put on one of your lands, Eluge will discount the first instant or sorcery you play that turn (it discounts cards according to how many of these counters you put on your side of the board). This effect discounts both one generic mana and one blue mana, so you might as well cast spells completely for free with this card as your commander!

This card reeks of combos and ill-intentioned Commander plays. The Infamous Cruelclaw's effects trigger when it deals combat damage to a player. Its Menace will definitely help you with that, but you can make it even easier with a Psychic Paper, for instance.

Whenever this legendary creature hits its target, its controller starts revealing cards from the top of their deck, until they reveal a nonland card. Then, they can cast that card. It doesn't matter its type, cost, or anything else - they may cast it.

We can get very creative with it!

You can go the obvious route and use high-cost Eldrazis, like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. However, you may want to go beyond and use other alternatives like, for instance, Dragons. Some players even play very specific combo cards in their deck and over 95 lands to guarantee they can play The Infamous Cruelclaw combo as fast as possible.

The best thing about this clever criminal is that you can build it entirely to your tastes, and break conventional deckbuilding barriers. You can also play some very interesting and fast combos with it.

Bria, Riptide Rogue offers you prowess and an aggressive game plan; with it, you'll buff your creatures and thus guarantee they can attack without any issues. You can build this deck to play fast and pressure your opponents from very early on, or adopt a control approach with tempo elements, like removals and counterspells. That's how you'll protect your creatures until they're ready to deal their final blow.

In both cases, Bria rewards a proactive and tactical game style.

You can use several cantrips, like Opt and Ponder, to buff your creatures even more, and take advantage of cards like Temur Battle Rage and Distortion Strike to give them more evasion.

Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time are great ways to refill your hand and never run out of resources. And, finally, cards like Aria of Flame let you deal a significant amount of damage all at once, and end the game on the spot.

Glarb, Calamity’s Augur reminds me of a mixture of excellent Sultai commanders, and is one of the most promising commanders in Bloomburrow. The best way to build a deck for this little Frog is by including strategies that efficiently manipulate the top of your deck.

Cards like Sensei's Divining Top, Sylvan Library, and Scroll Rack are crucial, and are great with a good amount of mana acceleration. That's how you'll have the resources you need to cast your high-cost spells.

As this commander naturally controls creatures on the board with its deathtouch, cards like Rabid Bite, and manipulating your deck, consider including a control kit to build some board presence and disrupt your opponents. Removals, counterspells, and boardclears will help you control the game and progress your game plan.

Finally, with all your ramp and the iron fist with which you'll control the board, it will be very simple to end the match with an aggressive finisher, like an Expropriate or Torment of Hailfire.

There are many interesting ways you can build a deck for Ygra, Eater of All as your commander, particularly focusing on creating, sacrificing, and taking advantage of food and creature tokens. Straight away, Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest comes to mind, as it supports the sacrifice theme by buffing your creatures whenever any player sacrifices permanents (including food).

This type of deck can win the game in multiple ways. For instance, you can set up a huge Ygra, Eater of All to kill your opponents, or play a combination of food sacrifices with removals, or even exhaust your opponents' resources with the aforementioned Torment of Hailfire.

The key to this incredibly interesting commander is finding a balance between creating food, sacrificing your cards efficiently, and protecting Ygra, Eater of All to truly turn it into a growing threat.

Unfortunately, in Commander, we can't afford to use two Cauldron Familiar in the same deck.

Helga, Skittish Seer is a powerful and flexible commander that rewards you for focusing on big creatures and synergies with +1/+1 counters. If you focus on acceleration, protection, and reoccurrence, you'll get a resilient and impactful deck that makes the most out of Helga's abilities.

Given that cards in Helga, Skittish Seer decks will undoubtedly consume a lot of mana, you'll need land acceleration and creatures that produce mana. You'll be better off playing a good amount of ramp, like Cultivate and Farseek, to get a good variety of colors early on. Right afterward, you can start casting big spells.

The Goose Mother and Hydroid Krasis are great in this list, but creatures like Terastodon are also nice and give this deck everything it wants.

To sum up, Helga Skittish Seer creates a lot of value from each big creature you play by giving you a little bit of life and card, and also buffs herself.

She's an extremely resilient commander that does everything this format wants.

I always mention at the beginning of my articles how we'll ignore commanders included in precon Commander decks, as they are created specifically for this format and thus were designed specifically for EDH.

Flubs, the Fool requires a technical game plan, once it really resembles the complicated Song of Creation. With this Frog, you'll need to focus on keeping a steady flow of lands and spells if you want to get as much value as possible from its card draw ability, and keep playing card after card.

This deck will enjoy effects that let you play multiple lands, filter undesired cards, and protect your key cards while you build an overwhelming advantage. Be it with aggressive ramp, hand manipulation, or land synergy, Flubs, the Fool offers you a unique game style that can both be rewarding and challenging.

Flubs' ability stands out when you have very few or no cards in hand, so you can include cards that get value from nearly empty hands. Gush, Foil, and Daze, for instance, interact well with the idea of putting cards back into your hand and with the fact your commander will let you play extra lands.

Baylen, the Haymaker has what every commander needs to be relevant in this format: you can use it in many ways, and deal with several situations with its many abilities.

Baylen rewards you for focusing on tokens and gives you many ways to convert these permanents into a significant amount of advantage on the battlefield. Either with ramp, card draw, or buffing Baylen to set up powerful attacks, this commander offers you many choices for your particular game state, and lets you deal with problems and accelerate resources.

Baylen, the Haymaker itself will often be your main win condition, as it deals a lot of damage with +1/+1 counters and trample, which you'll tap 4 of your untapped tokens to get. Still, you can use various other strategies to win games with this Rabbit, depending on the type of token you create throughout the game and the synergies you pick. If you have many creatures, for instance, you'll get an insane amount of damage with a Craterhoof Behemoth. If you create many artifact tokens, you can use a Reckless Fireweaver, for example. The same applies to other tactics, like Halo Fountain.

Regardless of the path you take, Baylen, the Haymaker is one of the most fun commanders in this set, and, in this ranking, it is also the strongest.

Bloomburrow is extremely underrated. It just gave us good pieces for the game and fun cards in the shape of lovely furry creatures. These new cards may not be affecting any format like Modern and Legacy all that much right now, but they were interesting enough to steal the spotlight in Commander.

Which of these commanders was your favorite? Tell us in our comment section below!

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!