Family Matters Upgrade Guide: 19 Easy Changes You Can Make

Last updated on October 11, 2025

Zinnia, Valley's Voice | Illustration by Lē Yamamura

Jeskai () birds isn’t a popular space in Magic, largely because there aren’t a ton of red birds. But there are some powerful birds with red pips, including previous bird commanders in these colors like Akim, the Soaring Wind and Kykar, Wind's Fury.

Jeskai birds is usually a tokens deck, and what’s exciting about the Family Matters commander, Zinnia, Valley's Voice, is that it synergizes well with creature cards. I’m looking forward to playing Jeskai fliers outside of the well-trodden tokens space.

Maybe that’s why you’re here, but more likely it's because you bought Bloomburrow‘s Family Matters EDH precon and are looking for some good, cheap ways to buff it up before you play with it.

The good news is that this is one of the cheapest sets of upgrades I’ve ever done to a Commander precon, and if you’ve ever played a birds deck or even drafted Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, you may very well have most of what you need to make this deck soar.

The early bird gets the worm, so let’s get to it so you’re ready when the deck is in your hands!

Deck Overview

Skycat Sovereign | Illustration by Slawomir Maniak

Like Steve Urkel’s wardrobe, the Family Matters precon is all over the place. There are a ton of good cards in here, including some really intriguing new ones, but it’s more like the seeds for a few other decks rather than a cohesive whole.

A focus on the powerful Jeskai commander, Zinnia, Valley's Voice, shows a few of the different directions the deck wants to go.

You can pump up Zinnia as an aggressive Voltron commander and go both tall and wide – the offspring ability seems to want to do that with tokens. All of that really feels like a classic Izzet () spellslinger tokens deck which uses Third Path Iconoclast and Young Pyromancer, to name two token makers that fit Zinnia’s 1-power criteria. Make offspring copies of them, and go to town! Then you could use cards like Nesting Dovehawk with populate to keep it up.

But Zinnia doesn’t have synergy with spells. Zinnia wants you to cast creatures, which is why there aren’t a lot of token producers in the deck, and the few we have are similar to the fascinating Echoing Assault that wants nontoken creatures to work with.

Okay, but the stock decklist is full of creatures like Jazal Goldmane which don’t meet our criteria of cheap creatures that buff Zinnia. There are even some, like Cloudblazer, that support a really tiny blink theme.

The goal is to substitute in a bunch of little creatures, which a lot of the deck supports. But which creatures? You could make the case for any number of creature types, but to win this deck needs to be able to attack with the evasion you’ll get naturally if you find Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive, so I think the right answer is something fun that synergizes with my favorite new card in this deck, Murmuration. That's Jeskai birds!

You could do goblins or spirits, of course, but let me show you why birds is the right answer!

Magic: The Gathering Bloomburrow Commander Deck - Family Matters (100-Card Deck, 2-Card Collector Booster Sample Pack + Accessories) Blue-Red-White

• TINY TAILS, BIG ADVENTURE—Put your best paw forward and enter the world of Bloomburrow. Battle your friends with armies of adorable critters and prove that bravery comes in all sizes!
• PREPARE FOR A SPECIAL DELIVERY—Jovial troubadour Zinnia delivers the pain, plus a whole litter of offspring to overwhelm your opponents.
• EPIC MULTIPLAYER BATTLES—Commander is a multiplayer way to play Magic, an epic, free-for-all battle full of strategic plays and social intrigue
• INTRODUCES 10 COMMANDER CARDS—This deck introduces 10 never-before-seen Commander cards to Magic: The Gathering, including 3 foil cards (one of which is Borderless!)
• CONTENTS—1 ready-to-play Family Matters Bloomburrow Commander Deck, a 2-card Collector Booster Sample Pack, 10 double-sided tokens, and 1 deck box

$33.44

Buy on Amazon

Upgrade Plan

Birds are cheap. Birds have a lot of useful typal buffs that still work to trigger Zinnia, who operates on base power.

Zinnia is also a bird! And birds fly. The oldest form of creature evasion in Magic is still the best, and Azorius (), the best color pair for birds, fits the plan quite nicely.

Note that you can use some of the more expensive high-powered bird typal buffs like Kangee, Aerie Keeper, but the curve on this deck is already a bit high, so I’ve focused on lowering the mana costs.

Esior, Wardwing Familiar

Suggested Cut: Siege-Gang Commander

Pour one out for the potential goblins builds, but Siege-Gang Commander is the only goblin card in the deck. I think it could be interesting to reform the deck into a goblins build that splashes blue and white with this commander, but that’s a wholesale rebuild.

Esior, Wardwing Familiar is a nice, cheap bird that provides some extra commander protection.

Skycat Sovereign

Suggested Cut: Angel of the Ruins

The next four cards are the spine of an Azorius fliers deck, with great typal boons and a low cost. Skycat Sovereign does it all for you, with base 1/1 stats, a huge buff, and the activated ability to make tokens.

Angel of the Ruins is one of five high-cost cards I’m removing from the deck that would be fantastic in another deck you’re brewing.

Empyrean Eagle

Suggested Cut: Inferno Titan

I don’t understand why Inferno Titan is in this deck, aside from the chance to reprint it. It doesn’t really fit the plan, but it’s a banger in a deck that wants it.

Empyrean Eagle is a fine typal lord for your fliers, including a few spirits and Spirit tokens the deck produces, although its base stats don’t synergize.

Jubilant Skybonder

Suggested Cut: Jazal Goldmane

Jazal Goldmane already isn’t my favorite card, but I really don’t understand it here, of all the team buffs you could choose. There are certain matchups where its replacement, Jubilant Skybonder, will be gas, thwarting opponents’ will to target your stuff.

Board wipes are a problem, and this human wizard doesn’t help. Feel free to try Judge's Familiar instead if you feel like it.

Watcher of the Spheres

Suggested Cut: Luminous Broodmoth

I want Luminous Broodmoth in so many decks, but it’s kind of a non-bo in a deck with a lot of fliers, so off it goes to some other build.

Watcher of the Spheres has a nice discount effect that can really add up given how cheap a lot of these cards are. Well worth it to have a flying Medallion!

Warden of Evos Isle

Suggested Cut: Shield Broker

Warden of Evos Isle is another flying Medallion, and the cost reduction redundancy is worth it. It's certainly more useful than a Control Magic on a stick in Shield Broker, which makes no sense to me in this deck.

Soulcatchers’ Aerie

Suggested Cut: Helm of the Host

This next section of cards, marked by Helm of the Host, is part of a small sub-theme of copying creatures that isn’t quite supported enough in the deck to be worth it. The legendary artifact is one of the Magic's best equipment and it's great in other decks, but Soulcatchers' Aerie is one of the key reasons to play bird decks at all!

Keeper of the Nine Gales

Suggested Cut: Circuit Mender

Copying Circuit Mender is a joy in the decks built to do that, but it doesn’t synergize with any reasonable plan in Family Matters, while Keeper of the Nine Gales is a frustrating utility effect that’ll likely also annoy opponents who have to read a card from Legions.

Cartographer’s Hawk

Suggested Cut: Loyal Warhound

Cartographer's Hawk is still my favorite creature in the white catch-up-to-lands space. I suppose you could keep Loyal Warhound. But we’re on the bird grind, and we need full potency!

Soulcatcher

Suggested Cut: Junk Winder

You don’t have enough tokens to make Junk Winder reliable, but you’re certainly going to grow a Soulcatcher. This bird soldier isn't a great card, but that's what a lot of your birds are like. They get better with each other and synergize to become more and more of a threat that opponents have to handle.

Ledger Shredder

Suggested Cut: Thopter Engineer

We’re breaking the bank with the expensive Ledger Shredder, perhaps the best of all birds, and losing the very low-impact token maker Thopter Engineer. The Shredder is really great with Zinnia and the other birds, and it’s worth it. There are plenty of other good, cheap birds to use if that busts your budget. Just toss in a Storm Crow and let’s go!

Migratory Route

Suggested Cut: Solemn Simulacrum

We’re once again dumping the sad robot, Solemn Simulacrum. Solemn is a bit too slow for most decks these days, and its lack of synergy dooms it here.

One of the only tokens makers I’ve added, Migratory Route does the Solemn land fetch if you need it and fills the skies if you don’t.

Favorable Winds

Suggested Cut: Cloudblazer

I’m putting in a few cheap team buffs, and Favorable Winds is very high impact.

Cloudblazer seems to have flown right in from my 8th pick in Cube to join some other cards in a blink subtheme your commander wants nothing to do with.

Airborne Aid

Suggested Cut: Blade Splicer

Not exactly a deep cut (heh) for blink, Blade Splicer is Totally Lost in this deck!

How about, instead, some bird-friendly mass card-draw in Airborne Aid?

Distant Melody

Suggested Cut: Restoration Angel

I know I have a few other decks that would be happy to pull in a Restoration Angel, but it doesn’t serve a purpose here. Throw down one more mass card-draw blue sorcery in Distant Melody.

Reconnaissance Mission

Suggested Cut: Cut a Deal

There’s already a subtheme of Curiosity-style saboteur card draw with Curiosity Crafter and Bident of Thassa, so let’s lean in with Reconnaissance Mission.

Cut a Deal isn’t good card draw for this deck.

Shared Animosity

Suggested Cut: Aetherize

Typal decks that can run Shared Animosity absolutely should. It can get super out of hand and isn’t symmetrical like Coat of Arms.

I love Aetherize, but that feels like a weird card to have in an otherwise tap out offensive deck.

Rally the Ranks

Suggested Cut: Pull from Tomorrow

One more typal buff in Rally the Ranks, and one more card draw spell we have better options than in Pull from Tomorrow.

Restless Anchorage

Suggested Cut: Plains

Restless Anchorage isn’t precisely necessary, but let this stand in for other good lands you can use to fill out the underwhelming 3-color mana base that this Family Matters precon ships with. As always, fill it out to the best of what you have on hand if you’re upgrading a precon.

Some bird-focused lands to think about are Lilypad Village and Seaside Haven. You might even find that we’ve lowered the curve enough that you can even cut a land or two for more awesome birds ka-CAW!

The Final Deck and New Cards

Empyrean Eagle | Illustration by Jason A. Engle

And there's the completed deck! You can use the shopping cart button to buy the lot, or the second cart to buy just the upgrades.

Commanding Conclusion

Keeper of the Nine Gales | Illustration by Jim Nelson

I’ve focused the deck on what it does best: casting many small creatures, buffing them, and drawing cards. And I removed expensive cards and various non-working subthemes. If you look more closely at the decklist, you’ll see that we've hit on the synergy joke of the deck better than the original. If the idea is to offspring a cool creature, it’s harder to do that at 2 additional mana with a 6-mana Inferno Titan than with a 2-mana Skycat Sovereign, and having multiples of all your birds is still very additive.

If I was working on this deck, I’d play with it like this (with more land shifts) for a bit and then see about adding in more birds and removing some of the other creatures that may be great in other decks but a bit clunky here, like Pollywog Prodigy.

If you aren’t into birds, I just don’t buy that tokens are the way to go in this deck. But you could play a control-oriented spellslinger deck and maximize the few token makers you can offspring, although so many of them, like Talrand, Sky Summoner, make tokens of the wrong size.

A better way to do something different than birds would be to take another strong typal shell around a creature type with lots of cheap, 1-power creatures. That would most likely be goblins, wizards, soldiers, cats or monks in Jeskai.

Check out our article on EDH precon upgrades in general if you need extra advice, and good luck taking this deck on the road! Let us know in the comments or on Discord how it goes.

And if you are curious about the other three Commander precons from Bloomburrow, check out our Peace Offering Upgrade Guide, our Squirreled Away Upgrade Guide, or our Animated Army Upgrade Guide.

Happy brewing, and in the words of Starfleet Captain Michael Burhnam: Let’s fly!

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