Artist’s Talent – Bloomburrow
Date Reviewed: August 6, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.63
Casual: 4.50
Limited: 3.75
Multiplayer: 4.00
Commander [EDH]: 4.13
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Way back when I talked about the Mystery Booster playtest cards, we discussed how it’d be great if cards could show a broader range of concepts relevant to each color. In particular, red is the color of emotion and creativity, which encompass many more things than “desire to set people on fire” and “new ways to set people on fire”, respectively. So as you can imagine, I’m very pleased that Artist’s Talent is a card, and that it’s this card specifically. I was not expecting Classes to return in this set, but it feels fine here, as Bloomburrow is much more like classic fantasy themes than the sets preceding it.
Much like Sagas, you expect and hope for Classes to have a “story” or progression of abilities that work together, and this particular one hits that expectation very strongly. Even if you never advance past level 2, the first two abilities work together very well, helping you chain spells in a way that opponents (hopefully) won’t be able to keep up with. All of the upgrades have an obvious issue where if you’re playing the card on curve, you usually won’t be able to level up and then do something that same turn, but that won’t always matter. I could envision a kind of pseudo-storm deck that invests early mana in levelling up Artist’s Talent and crafts its hand for a massive finish that uses all three levels: level 3 is actually very strong to the point of ending the game in a turn when it’s active, and the card itself stacks in multiples.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
Classes are back after their initial appearance in Adventure in the Forgotten Realms, and they do a lot of similar things to how they worked the first time. You get one benefit always, and the others kick in with some more investment.
Artist’s Talent feels like a perfect plant for Otters as a tribe, since they’re both in spellslinging colors and lean heavily into that as their mechanical hook. Being able to rummage through your deck is a good way to find mor fuel, and making spells cheaper is also a good investment, even if you level this up early. I do think the last mode is particularly scary, since it turns burn spells into far bigger threats, and it also has a lot of other fun applications that way if you’re careful.
Seven mana is a fair bit, but splitting the cost over multiple turns helps, and both the base form and the Lv.2 form ae potent enough alone. I think this is the kind of card that will shine very bright with a specific home, thogh it’s a bit too particular for every deck to take advantage of readily.
Constructed: 3.75
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4.25
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