What Does Bloomburrow Offer that We have Not Already Seen?
General forum
Posted on May 18, 2024, 6:57 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
It seems that many players are excited about Bloomburrow, but I am not certain why that is, since sentient beings that resemble anthropomorphic non-human animals, such as leonin, ainok, and viashino, have been part of this game for many years now, so I wonder what Bloomburrow offers that the game has not already had; is it the fact that the plane of Bloomburrow is inhabited only by anthropomorphic animals, and no humanoids?
What does everyone else say about this? Why are some players so excited for Bloomburow?
FormOverFunction says... #3
Crow_Umbra beat me to it: I think it’s the cute factor.
May 18, 2024 7:59 p.m.
This will be the set that makes Gruul/Naya Zoo Tier 1 for pioneer!
May 18, 2024 8:25 p.m.
My reasons (mostly overlapping with Crow_Umbra:
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It's not Earth-but-with-magic. I expect generic European-style high fantasy, but it's not directly 1-for-1 lifted from an existing culture.
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Redwall was and still is one of my favorite series, and I like the animal fantasy genre in general.
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Expanded creature types. With humans/elves/goblins/whatever out of the way, there's room to explore and develop lesser-used animals that have mostly been set pieces so far.
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Lighter tone. After a couple years of darkness, heavy drama, and yet another apocalyptic event, this looks like it's going to be a good breather set.
May 18, 2024 9:23 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #6
Fursonas for your favorite characters. (and least favorite too.)
May 18, 2024 11:05 p.m.
We have never seen anything like Bloomburrow before. These are not anthropomorphic animals with human-animal hybrid traits like Leonin - they are just regular animals. The plane is the inheritor of a legacy stretching back to Æsop and continuing through the popular Redwall series. It decidedly does offer something Magic has never seen before - and something that has been pretty popular for the past 2,500 years of human history.
May 19, 2024 12:42 a.m.
Crow_Umbra says... #8
You hit on one of the points I missed, legendofa, but I'm also looking forward to the lighter tone. This set feels like it should be a nice palete cleanser from the tone of recent sets, but especially before the horror stuff in Duskmourne.
I hadn't really considered as much before, but to Gidgetimer's point, I kinda wonder if we'll get more fursona-fied versions of known Legendaries via Omenpaths.
May 19, 2024 12:44 a.m.
Goldberserkerdragon says... #9
What makes Bloomburrow cool? The name. The specific coloring of the characters/land. In short... it's all about the cute.
May 19, 2024 8:59 a.m.
I like going to the 2-color identities. It feels like the WUBRG & dilute-identity things have been commonplace. It would be nice to get to a set that continues to define 2-color pairs. Maybe good ole' can be expanded a little finally because to me that color combo could use the most love & innovation. I would also love if there was something on this plane that basically makes already existent characters into either surprising animals or absolute makes-sense animals.
Each set keeps having some sort of Mythic "Golden Fleece type artifact, some great vault or Nexus of Becoming sort of thing. It would be flavorful & could be functionally unique if this plane had some powerful mythic that was polymorph-centered. I also think there is room for or to add more polymorphing to their toolbelts & thus define those color pairs a little better...
Of course, I will probably see none of this. More likely I will see some sort of tribal stuff that won't move the ticker for me.
May 19, 2024 12:54 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #11
Crow_Umbra, Lorwyn/Shadowmoor did not have any humans, either.
FormOverFunction, Goldberserkerdragon, I severely dislike anything that is cute, so I most certainly shall not be heavily invested in Bloomburrow and I also dearly hope that it is not popular with the players.
Caerwyn, regular animals do not possess the capacity for logic and reasoning, so why would WotC wish to make such a set?
legendofa, were not both Eldraine sets breather episodes following extended arcs with very severe consequences?
May 19, 2024 4:18 p.m.
Crow_Umbra says... #12
I forgot that Lorwyn/Shadowmoor didn't have humans. I guess this is the first plane without humanoid species.
We have planes like Zendikar, with floating rock formations and ever-shifting geography, so I think a plane with intelligent & anthropomorphic animals isn't out of the question. Sure, animals on Earth don't have capacity for human-like intelligence, but this is a magical fantasy franchise, so we have plenty of creative wiggle room to work with lol.
As others have mentioned, series like Redwall are already fairly popular.
Cute sells and is popular. Don't like it, then don't buy it, simple as. Personally, I hope Bloomburrow is a success. I hope more of the immediate future of MtG is spent exploring new planes, or revisiting ones that haven't been revisited in a mainstream set yet, like Tarkir & Lorwyn/Shadowmoor in the coming year or two. Put Ravnica, Zendikar, Dominaria, & Innistrad in storage for a while.
May 19, 2024 4:28 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #13
Crow_Umbra, yes, that does make sense, and I have no intention of purchasing any products from Bloomburrow, but I worry that that set may contain some cards that would be great for my decks, so I would then have a dilemma; I have already purchased several cards from Universes Beyond sets, because they were simply too good to not purchase, so I dearly hope that that does not happen, again.
Also, why do people like cute things? Is there no audience for dark, edgy, grim, and gritty stories and media?
May 19, 2024 4:57 p.m.
“regular animals do not possess the capacity for logic and reasoning, so why would WotC wish to make such a set?”
Why did Aesop’s stories of animals displaying a human level of logic and reasoning last for 2,500 years?
Why do so many of our classic fairy tales involve talking animals?
How was Narnia so successful, despite the inclusion of such things as talking beavers, horses, foxes, and more?
How were they able to churn out 22 successful Redwall books?
I honestly do not understand your confusion - it seems unfathomable to me that someone could grow up without experiencing talking, personable, but regular in appearance animals.
That is what Wizards is doing. They are making a plane that does something new for them… but which is inheriting several thousand years of literary legacy.
May 19, 2024 5:12 p.m.
“Also, why do people like cute things? Is there no audience for dark, edgy, grim, and gritty stories and media?”
This is somehow a sillier question than your previous one. Literally no one is saying there is not an audience for dark stories - the fact we just finished up an arc about a bunch of evil corrupting oil that firmly falls into the body-horror genera shows that Magic is very much still here for gritty stories.
People are not saying Magic should not have dark stories - they are just saying they want to see cute stories also.
May 19, 2024 5:18 p.m.
Crow_Umbra says... #16
"Also, why do people like cute things? Is there no audience for dark, edgy, grim, and gritty stories and media?"
Why do people like puppies, kittens, babies, chibi-stylized things? Why do people like edgy, grim, & gritty things? Cute and reviling things tickle different enjoyment portions of our brains. We are not 1-dimensional beings, we can like a variety of different things across a palate spectrum of tastes.
We've already had plenty of Dark and Grim settings in MtG, even just in the past year: Warhammer 40K Universes Beyond (The Grim Dark franchise), Fallout UB, the entirety of Phyrexia: All Will be One, and the upcoming Duskmourn: House of Horror set coming out later this year. We've had plenty of dark, grim, and edgy, and will continue to get more in the not too distant future. Give me my fluffy anthropomorphic change of pace.
May 19, 2024 5:26 p.m. Edited.
Crow_Umbra says... #17
Lol Caerwyn, you and I gave very similar responses. Glad to see we're on a similar wavelength.
May 19, 2024 5:27 p.m.
DemonDragonJ There's incredible audience for for dark, grim, edgy, and gritty. There's tons of literature, music, movies, and all kinds of media dedicated to that. But most people don't want only darkness. Most people don't want only fluffiness either. After two and a half years of stories and sets on the darker end of the spectrum, though, a brightly-colored and gentler world with lower stakes reminds the audience that not everything is despair and world-threatening destruction.
Throne of Eldraine was Arthurian stories and fairy tales. While it wasn't a dark set, it still had a less-accessible theme for the courts, expecting a knowledge of courtly functions in general and the Matter of Britain in particular that many people don't have, and "knights doing knight stuff" isn't a universal draw. It doesn't help that it contributed to 's competitive dominance for that time. When Wilds of Eldraine shifted focus to the fairy tales, it also added the interpersonal drama between the Kenriths and a curse affecting the entire kingdom. So while these broke from the Bolas-Phyrexia-massive war storylines before them, they weren't as light and accessible as Bloomburrow appears to be.
May 19, 2024 5:32 p.m.
As everyone (including me) keeps comparing Bloomburrow to Redwall, I should mention that the Redwall series gets dark and gritty often enough. Off the top of my head, it includes
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kidnapping and child slavery
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severe PTSD
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cannibalism
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sadistic torture and murder
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violent paranoid schizophrenia
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manipulative betrayal
All of these show up pretty regularly--you can expect at least a couple of these to show up in each book, and all of them are used completely seriously and realistically.
May 19, 2024 5:49 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #20
Many animals have Human-like intelligence. Most notably are dolphins, a verity of whales, elephants, octopus, and even dogs and cats. Most household cats aren't very intelligent at all but some do possess quite a developed mind. My cat, Sweetpea, for example not only recognizes her own name but the names of others. If I ask her "Where's Butters!?" she will run off to find her stuffed catnip toy giraffe we have affectionately names Butters.
She also knows how to use doorknobs. She was keen enough to witness how turning a knob opens a door, and learned how to clasp onto it and pull down to turn it.
She knows some doors she can stick her paw under and shake to pop the older latch open with.
Just because an animal hasn't become gifted in sciences and engineering marvels doesn't mean they aren't intelligent.
Just look at crows. Crows are considering one of the most intelligent animals on the planet.
If an animal can reason that doing a specific action yields not only a specific outcome but a DESIRED outcome, I would argue that is the basis for intelligence, Human or otherwise.
May 19, 2024 7:05 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #21
Caerwyn, I am actually feeling rather foolish, now, since I clearly did not think before I made my previous post, so you made an excellent point.
legendofa, I have read all of the Redwall books, and they were some of my favorite books when I was younger, so I suppose that I can understand why some players are excited for Bloomburrow.
May 19, 2024 7:25 p.m.
Last_Laugh says... #22
Bloomburrow makes me think of Blackburrow in the original Everquest.
"Grr bark bark grr" - Fippy Darkpaw
May 19, 2024 11:21 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #24
I will say, in this set’s defense, that I’m glad to see something that isn’t (hopefully) centered too heavily on the planeswalker drama that we’ve been following along with. Assuming it doesn’t all end up being some weird fever dream of Jayce’s, manipulated by Ashiok, it’ll be worth a watch!
May 20, 2024 7:06 p.m.
I still think it would be kind of great if we got an "animalified" planeswalker though.. Like Pigeon-Jace or something. How fun would it be for forced transformation or manifestation on the plane "animalizing" some favorite characters?
May 20, 2024 10:54 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #26
"Fox Jace" is what my entire comment was based on. I hate Jace so much and Furry Jace is no exception.
May 21, 2024 6:50 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #27
FormOverFunction, that would actually be a very awesome twist, in my mind, akin to how there were two episodes of Batman: the Animated Series that were the results of Scarecrow's hallucinating drugs.
May 27, 2024 6:14 p.m.
Gidgetimer that made me smile. It always seems like no matter how much they try to redefine Jace they still don't succeed at making him more likeable. He runs off the original flawed premises of projecting what WoTC had thought the average intellectual magic player idolized. They still try to write him like he is so clever because he uses "mind" magic, yet at the same time they never actually prove it with true cleverness, instead he just exerts mind-power & just overpowers everything... So conceptually about as "clever" as Gruul. If you HAVE the power you do not have to be clever... you just use the power to get what you want. It is so on-the-nose to make him a fox, just one more thing for me to dislike. I suppose he is now closer to Pootchie The Dog, so maybe he can die on his way back to his home-planet like Pootchie did :)
I would argue that these are anthropomorphic & not "just animals" because.. well bipedal, which a fox should not be. Maybe they will have some more characters that are a little more surprising or thoughtful in regards to what animal represents them. I hope someone is a bumblebee... bumblebee wearing pilot goggles?! Chandra Bumblebee, yes!
May 27, 2024 7:47 p.m.
Clever in the same way as Alexander & the Gordian Knot. So we have a super complex puzzle to be solved, I think I will just cut it apart with my sword/"mind-powers". Turns out I could have just done that the whole time!
Crow_Umbra says... #2
At least for me, the handful of reasons I'm excited for Bloomburrow:
Totally new plane, so a fresh slate for us to get to know.
I think most people like cute animals to some degree. A more cutesy take on anthropomorphic animals as opposed to humanoid versions should be fun.
The animals are allegedly going to be centered on 2 color identities like the Ravnican Guilds.
First MtG planes that isn't going to have any Humans. I'm always down for a departure into new territory.
I'm personally looking forward to Legendary Raccoons (I know the Gruul precon will have a Raccoon commander), Legendary Crows, possums, foxes, & a platypus if possible. More than anything, I'd like a Legendary Raccoon or crow as a commander.
May 18, 2024 7:36 p.m.