Is Bloomburrow’s Gifting a Card a Balanced Design?

The Gift mechanic debuted in Bloomburrow. Whether it was gifting a tapped fish or gifting a card, the options for interesting decision points on ostensibly modal cards is a nice way of repackaging Kicker. But is it balanced? And for what formats? 

THE GIFTS OF BLOOMBURROW

Today I want to determine the most “costly” of the gift effects, and then evaluate how it has shaped the balancing of these popular spells in different formats.

The different options for us to splurge on a nice present for our opponents are:

• An 8/8 Octopus
• A card
• A Treasure
• A tapped 1/1 Fish
• A Food
• An Extra Turn (!)
• And finally, Living Death

Jokes aside, let’s order these into a rough hierarchy of what is bad to give your opponent. There’s an important distinction to make first, though: some of these are printed in BLC, not in BLB. So, rather than look at these in one large swathe, we’ll start with 1v1 formats and the gifts available for giving.

For this next section, we’ll look at gifting Food, tapped Fish, Treasures, and Cards (which is the rough order of magnitude).

GIFTING IN 1V1 FORMATS

Gifting has been balanced for Limited, quite obviously, because the effects at common are all a Food or Tapped Fish, and the effects at rare are all granting a Card. The uncommons have a mix of both, with one card offering a Treasure. 

Fixing is a huge part of limited environments, and so I’m quite pleased that only one card grants a Treasure in BLB Limited. Depending on the format, gifting a Treasure could be a huge cost, and potentially even backbreaking depending how good the splash cards are, on-rate. I would never depend on an opponent to gift me a treasure to enable my splashes, but we’re all resigned to the fact that when the shoe is on the other foot, it’ll lose you plenty of games.

Bloomburrow itself is a very two-color centric format, with some slight splashing, so doing more gifting of treasure would have been hard to pull off in such an environment. 

Gifting either a Tapped Fish or a Food is essentially giving an opponent life in order to cast an undercosted spell (undercosted for the environment). The reason I place Food lower than a Tapped Fish is because in Limited – and indeed in 60-card formats too – an artifact token that requires mana to gain 3 life is generally going to be worse than a creature token which can chump block more than 3 damage.

What’s more, a creature token can do a lot more things than a random artifact token in the majority of 1v1 decks; it can be buffed with counters or an anthem, initiate card draw, tap for mana, or be sacrificed for spells and abilities much more freely.

When it comes to gifting treasure in 60-card formats, it’ll depend heavily on the format on whether it’s worth the squeeze or not, and to be honest, I feel like the fact we only got one card that gifted treasure to be a sign that Wizards have heard the feedback about rampant treasure ruining formats like Commander, and indeed some Limited formats, and decided to be more sparing with it.*

[*As an aside, of the new treasure cards in BLB & BLC, we’re seeing multiple that make tapped treasures, which makes me happy.]

GIFTING A CARD IN 1V1 FORMATS

Now, here’s where we get to the spicy part: gifting a card. Giving a card is a pretty big cost in 1v1 formats, as 1v1 formats are won and lost on resource management.

While it’s less true than it used to be (thanks to FIRE design, cards designed for Best of 1, and increased modality/card draw in general), it’s still a key part of gameplay and it feels like what this mechanic, and in particular, gifting a card, was designed around.

You can see the tension, and how much Design values that gift of a card, by looking at the rares of the set in question.

Coiling Rebirth is five mana, and it returns a creature from your graveyard to play. Sure, an effect we know, usually at four mana. But wait! If you pay the five mana and give an opponent a card, you get to make a 1/1 token copy if that creature was nonlegendary, enjoying that creature’s undoubtedly killer EtB effect all over again.

To look at the cost-effectiveness of this card, you need to look at the disparity between Zombify and Saw in Half. The latter is Instant speed, three mana, and only legal in eternal formats. If there was a scale with Zombify at 0 and Saw in Half at 10, Coiling Rebirth feels far enough away from 0 that it feels strong. 

An even better example – better in the sense it’s clearer – is Starfall Invocation. For five mana, you get to wrath. If you gift a card, you also get to return something that died this way from your yard into play. This is monumental power creep as far as wraths go, especially for one that’s currently playable in Standard.

Day of Judgment is four mana. Again, there’s a discrepancy between that and Duneblast, a three-color spell at seven mana, which also used to be in Standard. What’s more, the only advantage Duneblast has is that it leaves something in play, so it can be played pre-combat.

Starfall Invocation, on the other hand, gives you an EtB all over again. In a world so dominated by creatures and EtBs, this is very, very strong. Again, if we look at the scale, Starfall Invocation is much closer to Duneblast than it is to Day of Judgment. 

PITFALLS OF GIFT GIVING

One pitfall of gift giving is that you don’t know how the receiver will react. Will they be happy? Indifferent? Moved to reciprocate? Well, in 1v1 Magic at least, it’s unlikely to be the latter. Gifting a card in 60-card comes with real risks attached.

We already discussed how gifting a card can give an opponent resources, and this is an especially relevant decision to make when their hand is low on gas and they’re stumbling.

What’s more, while they won’t be able to use the gifted card before the spell resolves, gifting a card to an opponent with open mana might still prove to be a poor outcome in a format with lots of interaction. 

For the most part, these cards are balanced, though I’m sure some would argue that Kitnap could have been at Mythic just for Limited balancing. 

On that note: If they can put Control Magic into a Standard set by having it gift a card, then they’re obviously not concerned that stealing individual creatures is game-winning, because the quality of removal and necessity of synergy offset the opportunity to take a haymaker. Standard is much quicker and swingier than it used to be, and honestly? Kitnap says a lot about it. But that’s another topic. 

GIFTING IN COMMANDER

Speaking of the outmoded strategy of slamming haymakers, what about Commander?

Well, tapped Fish and Food are irrelevant for the most part, as is a treasure.

An 8/8 Octopus is quite a cost, and there will be many games, and many opponents, that will dictate that giving an 8/8 out for free is a bad move. At five mana, this effect feels, if anything, a little overcosted – at least until you realize it’s every end step, not just your own. Seems fine.

What about an Extra Turn? Well, who is paying six mana for a few 2/2 flyers on top of their Teferi’s Protection while also giving away an extra turn?!

I get that it’s a last ditch effort, but for all in tents and porpoises this is just a six mana instant that makes four tokens at instant speed. Six mana is a hell of a lot to ask to hold up to protect your board, so outside of convoke decks, this hardly seems worth it.

And that’s without considering the fact you’ve giving someone an extra turn. Even if you’re immune while they take it, they can do a great many things to prepare for your return… and maybe even set up a win at instant speed. 

Let’s face it, gifting an extra turn is just something you don’t want to do. The only time it feels like it could be good is if you Demonstrated an Extra turn spell. 

And yes, I didn’t talk about gifting a Card yet. Let’s. 

GIFTING A CARD IN COMMANDER IS (ALMOST) MEANINGLESS

Yeah, I said it. Gifting a card in Commander is pretty much meaningless. 

The format is in a place where most Commanders in the top played Commanders draw cards or provide some form of card advantage. More cards than ever cantrip, or otherwise replace themselves. More cards than ever are modal. And players draw more cards than ever too.

All of this means that the cost of giving a card to another player isn’t anywhere close to the cost in a 1v1 format. Just like blowing up a card draw engine is pretty bad EV once they’ve drawn seven or more cards, giving one extra card out in Casual EDH is ultimately unlikely to affect the outcome at all. 

The reason I put an asterisk on it is because there’s one aspect of it that I actually quite like for Commander: the fact you can gift a card to another opponent, and not the one who you’re targeting/interacting with.

This opens up some interesting table politics. You can play undercosted effects while benefiting a player who is behind. What you’re gifting is a card, sure, but in Commander, that gift comes with an unspoken (or spoken, depending on your attitude) promise attached to it: that your back will get scratched later, too. Or at least it’ll get scratched when everyone else’s backs are being mauled. 

You can only really leverage an extra card, politically, and not the other effects so much. But anyways – ignoring the “fun” aspect of gifting, the whole mechanic is largely flavor text to most cards. Parting Gust is just an incredible removal spell that can also flicker your thing for an ETB. Into the Flood Maw is a better Unsummon at the same mana cost.

ARE GIFT CARDS POWERCREEP?

Gifting cards are noticeably powerful, and for the most part, I think in Limited and 60-card they are – at present – reasonably balanced and not a cause for concern.

The thing that strikes me is how meaningless the gift giving is, from a resources point of view, in Commander. So much so, that I think they risk hastening power creep by making the cards too competitively costed, and outmoding other options. 

Starfall Invocation is a prime example. Save for Farewell, it feels like the most pushed wrath in a long time. I’ve been saying for a while now that the tempo disadvantage of wrathing in 2024 Commander is a steep cost, so you’d think I’d be less critical of the Gift mechanic when it’s on a card that ostensibly solves a problem. 

END STEP

Don’t get me wrong – I love Starfall Invocation. I just think it’s emblematic of the ceiling of this mechanic, and of where balancing for 1v1 and Commander could potentially be at odds. 

I’ll let that one marinate for now, but suffice to say, though I think the Gift mechanic overall is well balanced and offers room for fun when it comes to Commander politics, I am wary of seeing more of this mechanic on Made-for-Commander cards – or just ones that will outmode other options in the Commander card pool.