I haven’t played Magic: The Gathering in a long time. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, but I consider myself a casual fan. I will play when the opportunity arises, but I won’t go out of my way to find a game to play. My uncle surprised our board game group with the Commander Decks from Bloomburrow, the Magic: The Gathering set with a cute animal theme. I haven’t had a chance to play any cards out of Bloomburrow, so it was a nice surprise. I wanted to share my chosen Commander Deck and how the deck worked.

Honestly, I did not choose a deck based on that deck’s ability. I saw the Raccoon on the box and snatched it before anyone else could claim it. The commander in this deck is “Bello, Bard of the Brambles”. He’s a 3/3 for three mana. His creature type is a Raccoon Bard. Look at how adorable this card is! This trash panda is casting spells like nobody’s business. Bello’s ability allows players to turn their artifacts into indestructible elementals to swing at opponents. Another portion of this ability I like is that it’s only on your turn. This is neat because it makes it difficult to target the stuff on my board since my artifacts are creatures at some point and flip back to artifacts. Certain cards in Magic are written to target certain card types, so it made it more difficult for my opponents to destroy my stuff.

While I did not win this game, I had a blast. I had Bello out on the field, including a vehicle that’s basically the Magic version of a hamster ball. I would attack my opponents and create hamsters. It was awesome. I think I had close to ten hamsters on my side of the board. I told everyone at the table that all I wanted to do was see my commander’s ability work, and it definitely did.

I loved this deck! It’s been a while since I played a game of Commander where I had this much fun. I may try the other Bloomburrow decks, but this one will forever be my favorite.