Magic: The Gathering spoilers for the next set, Bloomburrow, are flying thick and fast, and some of the most exciting cards so far have been the calamity beasts. These enormous elemental animals have had some of the most interesting effects so far, like this Red cat card, which will not stand for other decks’ sneaky shenanigans.
The Bloomburrow card Sunspine Lynx is a 5/4 elemental cat that is designed to punish multicolored decks. When it enters the battlefield, it blats each player in the face, dealing one point of damage for each non-basic land they control.
The lynx’s other effects seem designed specifically to make sure that damage gets done and stays done. It states that damage can’t be prevented, so protection spells go out the window. It shuts down life gain, so there’s no recovering from the punch it delivers. If it couldn’t be countered, too, this card would be perfect.
We don’t necessarily see Sunspine Lynx getting played much outside Standard and Commander, but it’s possible it could make it in older formats, specifically as anti-The One Ring tech. While your opponent will still be able to draw as much as they like, they won’t be able to protect themselves with that irksome artifact.
This isn’t the only interesting cat card we’ve seen from Bloomburrow. We’re also big fans of Ygra, Eater of All. This thing turns absolutely all other creatures on both sides of the board into food, and gets bigger whenever food leaves the battlefield (i.e. is eaten). That’s pretty wonderful flavor, though we do kind of wish Ygra had been modeled on a domestic house cat (surely the scariest predator to all little squeaky creatures) rather than some sort of puma or mountain lion.
A strange side effect of Ygra’s ability is that because ‘food’ is a subtype of ‘artifact’, she also makes everything into an artifact. You can bet Commander players are going to take full advantage of that fact.
For more Magic: The Gathering content, check out our guides to the best MTG commanders, or our MTG release schedule guide.