Desert Bloom Precon: Decklist, Value, and Verdict

Yuma, Proud Protector

This spell costs {1} less to cast for each land card in your graveyard. Whenever Yuma enters or attacks, you may sacrifice a land. If you do, draw a card. Whenever a Desert card is put into your graveyard from anywhere, create a 4/2 green Plant Warrior creature token with reach.

Singles value

$99.02

TCGplayer market, 83 cards, basic lands counted at $0

Sealed price

$113.01

TCGplayer price for the box (Amazon $157.60) · singles are 0.9× that

New cards

10 / 100

First printings in this deck

Bracket

Core, out of the box

Is Desert Bloom worth buying?

from Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander Decks: Are They Worth It? by Timothy Zaccagnino

This deck fails on two fronts: It’s not powerful enough out of the box to compete with the average Commander deck these days, and it’s not interesting or rewarding enough to warrant digging up old desert payoffs from Amonkhet block. The desert tagline misses here, and “lands matter” isn’t an exciting enough fallback to make this deck stand out. Recurring lands from the graveyard instead of getting them from your deck is only so different when your payoffs are still just cards like Avenger of Zendikar and Scute Swarm. The reprint value’s also mid at best, and the notable reprints are very landfall-specific. This deck should’ve persuaded people to scavenge up their old deserts and desert payoffs, but it doesn’t give anyone a compelling enough reason to do that. I’m sorry, but I do-si-don’t want anything to do with this deck.

How Desert Bloom plays

primer from Desert Bloom Upgrade Guide: 21 Easy Changes You Can Make by Steve Vrooman

I really wanted to like Desert Bloom, but the desert payoffs are so few and far between that this just ends up being another landfall deck. It’s a deck helmed by Yuma, Proud Protector (bonus points for trans representation!), who happens to be one of your only notable desert payoffs, and not that compelling of a payoff if you ask me.

Kirri, Talented Sprout is the alternate commander; it’s cute, but ultimately not that powerful either. It’s fun to see a typal legend that ties plants and treefolk together thematically, though. Yuma’s definitely your best bet out of the box.

This is a pretty standard landfall deck, with an emphasis on putting lands in and recurring lands from your graveyard. It has plenty of self-mill and recursion, with the endgame resting on cards like Avenger of Zendikar and Omnath, Locus of Rage. Unfortunately, the desert package feels very secondary to everything else. There are a handful of cards that reference deserts, but nothing that really changes the way you’ll play or pays you off that much for focusing on deserts. Sorry, but we’re just not going to win the average game of Commander with Ramunap Ruins.

I also want to emphasize that the overall card choices for this deck are weak. Avenger and Omnath are past their prime, and there are so many low-tier set-up cards like Eccentric Farmer, Crawling Sensation, and The Mending of Dominaria. This deck just doesn’t have the stabilizing power to spend this much time casting do-nothing enchantments and hoping for the best.