I was part of the playtesting and I'd add a few thoughts: I really wanted to like the raccoon deck, the lack of evasion, the fact that you have to choose between using your mana rocks for mana or attacking, and bello dying and blanking an attack (and rebuilding mana if you chose to attack with your rocks) hurts it a lot. I want to build with Bello, but this deck is a little too unfocused. Zinnia really is a great commander. Yeah the deck doesn't have a lot of amazing cards but that's why Zinnia is so good, they elevate every creature with an ETB to a real threat. Any token doubler or etb doubler takes this deck even further over the top. Squirrels popped off, this deck is clearly the most focused on the kindred side, and the tools it gets for that are really good. Big fan of Hazel not necessarily needing to be a squirrel commander to be good. The group hug deck really feels like a collection of pieces to be take apart and rebuilt. I wanted to see how it played with Mr. Foxglove in the command zone, he seems like a fun commander.
I completely agree with you on your paragraph about Bello. That deck was almost like two decklist smashed together. I believe they did that, so that both commanders COULD be used if you wanted to, out of the box. Now, Bello.... in a deck built around solely him and protecting him whilst allowing you to attack in. (Either with Vehicles that are 4cmc or higher with keywords or Enchantments/Rocks.) Cards like Shared Animosity will kick all of those Elementals into gear to deal massive amounts of damage and you get to draw cards. I am actually building Gruul Enchantress with Wildsear, Scouring Maw. I have been wanting a cascade deck and this wolf really has a unique effect. I am going to add Faldorn, since she creates wolf tokens whenever you cast a spell from exile (Cascading). There are also a few enchantments that either create wolf tokens or boost their power, so I will be doing Wolf typal as a subtheme. Since I want this deck a bit on the higher level of play I most likely will add Food Chain & Squee, The Immortal. This combo will give me infinite mana as well as it will trigger any card within the deck that states "whenever you cast a spell from exile, do X". Anyways, enough typing from me LOL, especially since you didn't even ask. I am just excited to build the Cascade deck. Take care & good luck with your decks.
@@andrewfornes5320 Love those ideas. I thought a fun one would be to play Bello with damage doubling/tripling enchantments like Fiery Emancipation. Then you don't even need a follow up spell, you just punch in for 12 immediately.
I think you may be misreading fisher’s talent. It is at worst a 4 mana phyrexian arena that doesn’t ping you. The draw trigger isn’t actually tied to the reveal effect.
Yeah this card is literally free card draw every turn at base. I’m not cutting it from the deck. Looking at the deck list, it looks really good and like it group hugs effectively
There’s a reason people don’t buy often from card kingdom. They are straight waxing on those prices. My local LCS is selling the precon’s for $150 all four. Amazon has been selling them for around $140 to $150 for awhile. $175 on card kingdom is way too much
@@djayt1215 Nah man, $0 shipping. tax was $8.96. Splitting the four decks with friends at $34.25 a pop. Better than $47.50 per deck to buy them off Amazon. $13.25 in savings per person.
I'm so disappointed in how few new cards there were considering that the selling point is about cute little critters at war :') I was expecting similar amounts of new cards like the fallout commander decks. Is anyone else a little disappointed by that? I guess I'm just sad to see all these humans from other sets in what I thought were going to be prebuilt armies of woodland creatures.
Zinnia was the cheapest because all we had to go off was vibes. Obviously value and competitiveness matters but commander is a casual format and when it comes to precons, a lot of people just buy what looks cool. Squirrels are already beloved, a magic raccoon is awesome, cute bunnies, and … a not cute bird. There are bird lovers out there but I’m not surprised at the values here *before* the decks came out.
I picked the squirel and bird. Was thinking since they came out with nadu i was thinking they might put out some banger birds on the precon. I think i was right
Very fair. I was planning on getting raccoons just because of cuteness till I read the offspring mechanic and decided I wanted to try it out. I'm pretty happy with my choice, it's fun to play
I'm a bird lover, but in the Bant category. Honestly for a NEW player looking for long time value I would recommend buying Family Matters just for the mana base. I don't think there's much that's great to build in Murica colors but the base sets you pretty straight on building Boro, Azorius, and Simic with cards down the line.
My buddies and I opened about 90 packs between the 4 of us tonight of Bloomburrow and we had a blast. One of them pulled a textured foil and we were all jumping and screaming the art and ability's of these cards are by far some of my favorite.
This kind of goes without saying, but Anim Pakal seems like the nuts in Family Matters. On attack, make a bunch of gnomes that are all 1/1s, all of a sudden the commander becomes an immediately lethal threat. It's also worth mentioning that the commander for Family Matters only cares about BASE power, so run all of those anthems, Warleader's Call, etc... It's such a good card.
My friend specialized in "Charity Deck". He gives a lot of freebies from draw to free creature token. But in the end, he eventually kills us in deck destruction. I saw him smiles when he saw Ms. Bumbleflower set, and at that moment I knew that he probably cooked something evil with it... EDIT: HE MAKE IT WORSE!!! NOW HIS DECK CAN ATTACK!!! 😨
Oh i did the same thing i actually removed some of the "scarier cards" that were in the deck and shored up my own defences with a few more counter spells, draw spells and more deny all damage spells 😅😅😅 its more a group hug/control deck now
@@omarsyariefnatasubagyo6627 oh trust me it didnt need much to attack with her its just needs to be able to cast either one or two spells on everyone elses turn its why i added what i did the deck does go insane with just loosing 10 cards
I was really excited for Bello, but after seeing the list calling it "unfocused" is an understatement. Why are all the 4+ mana artifacts just mana rocks? Why are Rampaging Baloths, Tendershoot Dryad, Grumgully, and Ghalta in the deck?
Ghalta because enchantments double up as creatures with a lot of power in your turn, so you can more consistently lower its cost than you could in most other decks. He also makes for an effective big blocker, which is something that the commander can't otherwise provide. Same reason why the dryad and the baloths are in the deck, and the baloths even double up on all the "4 power" triggers that the deck already has. As for the mana rocks, it's just ramp that doubles up for bello's ability. It's basically a more effective replacement for the ramp they would otherwise run
I am baffled as to why Wizards keeps putting realm cloaked giant in decks with no other giant synergy. Without giants, all of the card's value is tossed out the window. Seeing that in an officially licensed WOTC product makes me far more confident in my skills as a deckbuilder. Even if I want to put Krenko, Mob boss into any red deck I know that if I don't have any goblins, there won't be anything for him to double.
Because it's a slightly expensive board wipe that, if you don't need it, is also a chonky body. It's a 2-for-1 that satisfies both the "board wipe" and "big body" slots with a single card. That's all it is. It had nothing to do with giants.
It's just weird in a deck that actively looks to draw itself. I'd take a Settle the Wreckage or Fumigate over the giant. My guess is WotC wanted to have a big chonker for Mr Foxglove to drop.
A good budget upgrade for the Golgari tokens deck would be Grismold. He gives you a token to copy, benefits from your opponents having a bunch of tokens, and likely just gets massive. And he already has trample built in, so he could easily be a finisher.
I think I’m gonna build Bello with heavy modifications (mostly junk from my binder that I never get to run). Gonna throw as many sources of trample in there I can, and stuff like Thunderhawk Gunship to make all the guys fly. A few of the 4 drop modular creatures are very funny too. Evasion and protecting Bello seem like the challenges.
the group hug deck would have been an incredible place to put faerie mastermind and smothering tithe as reprints, its a real shame they didn't put those in. Would've actually been true to the idea of group hug which is "everyone gets a little value, I get a lot".
Why is bloodroot in the bunny deck and not the squirrel deck?😭 these decks just seem so random and unfocused in general. super cute tho and all the new art is so pretty but the gameplay just seems like it will be so clunky
Because Bloodroot plays to the idea that "sure, I'm giving my opponents treasures, food, and whatever, but they can't use them." Also, with as rampant as treasure is running in the current meta, it's a nice piece to keep them in check. That being said, they should have made it a bunny if they were going to put it in the bunny deck. 😅
The biggest issue with Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis is that it is perfectly symmetrical, meaning that the end result of the game probably doesn't change, just speeds up. Peace offering will be a deck that heavily depends on the pilot and who you play against, as you can selectively choose who gets what gifts and who doesn't. It's also less symmetrical, in the same way Cut a Deal is, where everyone gets stuff but you get most. In playtesting it is definitely a bant deck as it seemed explosive in terms of card draw, ramp, and board presence. I have a good feeling about it, but I'm also not surprised it was ranked last here. The greater the disparity and variety in the decks the better this one shines, and all of them want to build up a board state with value so it's a value deck trying to generate extra value by gifting value to other value decks.
The squirell one is so pushed, it's crazy, they put all the love in it, left some crumbs for the racoons and backstabbed all the people that preordered the other two.
the offspring precon is so bad, makes me really sad. They made such weird choices for that deck, why no lunarch veteran, why no impact tremors, Kykar????, akim missing and so on and on.
@@Blacklodge_Willy the precon as it is, not much. But he makes 1/1 tokens that benefit Zinnia and generally goes into the token strategy, furthermore it is just a jeskai staple. But yeah for my opinion skullclamp should have been also in the precon, nesting dovehawk would have been dope, some populate spells and kykar would benefit the deck alot.
You're missing out on mentioning Unwinding Clock, Vedalken Orrery and The One Ring for Bello deck, those cards will definitely be the engine on that deck. And also affinity and prototype card will be great too.
The group hug deck is one of three few times I’ve been more interested in the backup commander than the main commander, it’s a really simple strat but It looks neat and it’s Robin Hood!
I've found many precon decks are better with the secondary commander especially if you keep it strictly preconstruction. It seems the main commanders are designed to be upgraded
I found that Bello, with some modifications, was very powerful. Among other things I added a bunch of enchantments that give creatures trample and/or menace.
I'm really excited to smash my second doctor//leela severteem warrior with the grouphug deck. I feel like Leela makes group hug much more viable because you can just play her early and giving them draws benefits you and also discourages their own draw engines and once people are actually threatening you can play the second doctor to start accelerating the weaker players and yourself.
So, I purchased the Gruul deck and when playing it in a pod with the other three precons, I can tell you... This deck honestly seems like it is 2 decks in 1, smashed together. I purchased the precon because I am actually constructing the back up commander - Wildsear, Scouring Maw. I have been wanting to build an Enchantress deck & love the randomness & just straight value of the Cascade ability. This card, while simple in design, is such a powerhouse in my opinion. I am building the deck with a Wolf token subtheme, which is quite easy to integrate. Faldorn, anothet precon Gruul commander, creates Wolf tokens whenever you cast a spell from exile (Cascade) & there are quite a few enchantments that either create Wolf tokens each turn or enchantments that buff said tokens. I want the deck to be towards the higher level of the play scale, so I am adding Food Chain + Squee, the Immortal for two reasons. 1) It gives me infinite mana. 2) The loop of exiling and recasting Squee, will trigger all of the cards that state "Whenever you cast a spell from exile, do X." All-in-all, this was a meh precon, playing out of the box... but it has interesting sign post commanders and some useful cards within the 99. I do wosh that Bloomburrow would've had atleast 1 Raccoon who took advantage of the Junk tokens from the Fallout Universes Beyond set.
@@Blacklodge_Willy I'm not surprised either but we can admit that placing them inside the commander part of set (based on icon) instead of special guest can be confusing for most people not following Magic that much.
@@Blacklodge_Willy when they previewed it with the commander symbol and the fact liliana was a squirrel I totaly thought they were in the precons. It was misleading
For the squirrel deck, I'd add toxic deluge. It's just so flexible, you can use it to wipe all enemy offsprings for 1 life, including your own squirrel tokens which if you have Pitiless Plunderer and/or Marionette Apprentice is insane for 3 mana. And if you need a big boardwipe you just pump more life into it.
Just had a game with 3 of those (Familiy Matters, Squirreled Away, Peace Offering). Peace Offering actually won. Whenever someone had a board state that could win the game, the Bumbleflower player had a protection spell ready, so nobody ever tried to kill this player. Somehow we lacked removal for most of the game to get rid of Ms. Bumbleflower and Mana Gorger Hydra. They got giant and just beat the shit out of us. It felt as if we got taken hostage by the bunny. Was very surprised how good this worked 😂 Zinnia was good, with lots of solid ETBs and flying creatures. In order to win it would have needed even more mana though (despite not really lacking, but it struggled to keep up with the other 2). It did draw a lot of cards (Pollywog Prodigy!) though and was able to block non evasive creatures well with 1/1s. Eventually it lost to a giant flying hydra with trample. Hazel did great, providing tons of mana to build a big army. In the end it had like 60-70 power on the field. The squirrels got bigger and bigger, though it struggled a lot to block the flying creatures the other 2 decks had. It just couldn't block most of those attacks + take out anyone. It lacked the evasion to take the Zinnia player without it's creatures getting blocked by 1/1s. It also couldn't kill the Bumbleflower player because of it's protection spells (Spore Frog). Overall it was a fun game. Every deck did a lot, but 2 struggled to actually deal with the bunny. Not being able to remove it before it dealt too much commander dmg was a big issue.
I bought family matters as my first commander deck. Then animated army, and truely family matters despite what my LGS said, has been recking other precons. (I play precon only bc I am new to mtg and commander 😊). Feels great to play, awesome deck!
Yall are playing a very different Bello deck cus I managed to get the all the precons and played with some friends a bunch and Bello absolutely smashed all the other ones consistently
@@hernanespineira7090 From what I read Family matters may be stronger overall but I played against Bello few times and this deck is brutal in all possible way...
I really want to build bellow as a modular deck, play expensive artifact creatures with low p/t and extra combat cards to draw myself out. Enchantress could also be fun.
It makes a wonderful politics and +1 counter deck. Rather then giving everyone things, just give individuals gifts and get benefit - with Psychic Possession etc - while making a really beefed up team. Using cards like Scurry Oak you can also gain benefit from putting one counter a time on them.
If Leafkin Avenger is good in the Gruul deck than Fanatic of Rhonas is good too, no? Really helps to boost right up 8 mana range where you can double spell.
Everyone keeps saying that the group hug deck is the worst of the 4 out of the box. While I agree, that just makes me want to get it and make it better to surprise people with what it can do. There's potential there.
I have been wanting to make some cute decks for a while, and usually it only goes so far. An example of a card I liked as an example is Regal Bunicorn. So Ms. Bumbleflower seems to be right. A good group hug is also on my list, so I am kind of into making it work. My previous kind of group hug was Roco Street Chef, but I think my group was annoyed that I was having then lose cards and obviously benefiting by their actions on their turns. I wonder about just full on teaming up with another player in giving them draw.
Maelstrom Pulse is actually decent, imo. It’s 3 mana destroy any non-land permanent. The rest of the text is largely irrelevant, although it can hose tokens. Yeah, it’s a sorcery, but I’ll take the versatility and it’s budget friendly.
Doesn't Bello want Teapot Slinger as a psuedo-Guttersnipe? All the enchantments and artifacts you're playing for his effect are 4-mana or greater, each cast of them means 2-damage around the table. Plus it's a Raccoon so there's potential Raccoon synergies with cards in the main set.
not sure how you can't get value out of fishers talent, at worst its a phyrexian arena at best it's a phyrexian arena with bitterblossom added onto it for 1 more mana.
@@NitpickingNerds the card draw at the end of checking the card is guaranteed, you might have overlooked that. I am 100% putting that card into my upgraded morska precon.
First time I ever preordered the one the nerds thought was the best 😅 And here was me blindly hoping it would be a better bird tribal commander in Jeskai than Akim.
Seen Bello win several games, but I agree with a bunch of their points about the deck. BUT, I don’t care that Ms. Bumbleflower is number 4, because the card is number 1 for me ❤️❤️
I’m not sure how much sense it makes to have a mana sink that is one-turn anthem/pump (Drey Keeper) if you have to tap all of your tokens to get all the mana. Most of the tokens in the deck seem like they’ll be creature tokens.
There's a decent number of noncreature token generators too, and it can make for a decent overrun effect to end boardstates once you have a bunch of tokens.
Gotta disagree with a bit while mostly agreeing. Personally I think that the group hug deck is the second strongest out of the line. Squirrel wants to pretty much do aristocrat things which kinda doesn't work out from what I've seen. other than that, Bello does not perform as good as I hoped.... Gruul doesn't benefit that much from artifacts and enchantments somehow. the cascade wolf is dope though. Zinnia has the same "issue" that every Jeskai Deck has. It's Jeskai. People do not care about Jeskai for whatever reason. She's Jeskai and that's why the deck is expensive. But the deck is just so strong ^^
Bloomburrow is so far off my radar but I can’t stop watching Nerds. I did see that little Landfall boy for one black mana that I’m about to pick up for sure 😂
With Omenpath Journey you aren't gonna get 5 basics though. All the lands need to have different names, and in a gruul deck, you only have mountains and forests.
Any land that isn’t a super important utility land is something I think would be fine to search for (in Gruul I would also play snow forest and snow mountain)
@@AJANI97 it's a 1/1 copy of welcoming vampire so it's etb counts for both so you draw 2 but get a 1/1 not a 2/2 and the 1/1 helps stack ya commanders powers that's how it works
You only draw one card, since offspring is an ETB. The real vampire enters, draws zero cards, the offspring ability goes on the stack, the offspring enters, the real vampire sees the offspring and triggers, you draw a card.
Wizards gave early copies to certain big MTG youtubers, including the Nerds. RU-vidrs get to make their videos early, and Wizards gets free promotion right before the release date to get as many pre-orders as possible.
I would instantly put bloodroot apothecary in a Fynn, the fangbearer deck! 😂 it would be so damn brutal to watch dockside extortionists players halt tossing it down, because of this creature!
Why do you guys always turn any kind of token deck, into treasures matter. If the squirrel precon likes squirrels then put in squirrel upgrades. The “expensive” upgrades you put into the squirrel deck had nothing to do with squirrels. At least mention like Deranged Hermit or something.
It is insane to me that the Offspring deck didnt have either Impact Tremor or Warleader call. Like... You are going to get so many tokens, Why they arent included I still think in the end the potential for the group hug deck is super high, but as it is it lack some punch. I feel like the Bello deck is the more fragile in the end though
The prices aren't dictated by how the deck plays guys. It's determined by the cost of the reprints. That why the squirrel deck is more. MTG finance people don't give a shit about playability unless it affects the price. Late stage capitalism for the win :(
Not many people see it as a high value target. The only time I’ve had it hit against me was when I put it in my 5 color eldrazi deck because the guy knew I had put either Tron lands or the eye of ugin into it and he didn’t play land destruction
Just two cents from a nobody: Watched a few videos. I want to REALLY like your content but one thing truly bugs me. Both of you, especially when you try to talk fast, I have to rewind to put together what you're saying because enunciation and diction just goes out the window. I'd rather the video be 5-6 minutes longer and understand everything as it comes out than have to try to decipher word diarrhea. That way, if I need it faster, I can just adjust playback speed.
This WOULD have been a great opportunity to get my gf more into magic again with how cute the art is. Sadly the balance seems absolutely off here and the cutes one is a group hug.. newer players want to smash some faces
