Animated Army Family Matters Peace Offering Squirreled Away

Precon comparison · Bloomburrow Commander

Which Bloomburrow Commander precon should you buy?

Squirreled Away is the one to play the way it comes, and Family Matters the one to upgrade on the smallest budget. Peace Offering suits a player who likes two spells a turn, and Animated Army one who came for artifacts that attack.

Art, left to right: Slawomir Maniak, Aldo Domínguez, Marta Nael and Anna Pavleeva

The four Bloomburrow Commander decks came out on 2 August 2024, the same day as Bloomburrow, an expansion built around ten animal creature types with a colour pair apiece. A Raccoon, a Bird, a Rabbit and a Squirrel lead the four boxes. Wizards announced no suggested price for any of them, so nothing here can tell you which was the better deal on release day. What I can compare is how much each box does for its own commander, and how much its guide then had to buy. Which one I’d hand to which buyer:

• Squirreled Away (black and green), for playing the list unchanged. Hazel makes two copies of a Squirrel token where any other token gets one, and the two cards that keep her supplied with Squirrels, Chatterfang and Maskwood Nexus, are already in the box. Its guide moves the curve least of the four, from 3.31 to 3.18.
• Family Matters (white, blue and red), for the cheapest upgrade. Its guide spends about $57 at September 2026 TCGplayer prices and lowers the curve further than any other, 3.56 to 3.05, mostly by cutting creatures too dear to pay Zinnia’s two-mana surcharge.
• Peace Offering (green, white and blue), if casting two spells in a turn sounds like fun. Ms. Bumbleflower draws you two cards when her trigger resolves for the second time in a turn. The box already has the set’s lowest curve and still too few cheap spells, and its guide doubles the one-drops, five to ten.
• Animated Army (red and green), if artifacts and enchantments that attack are why you’re here. Bello turns nineteen of them into 4/4s on your turn, each drawing a card when it hits a player. It’s the heaviest box at 4.03, still the heaviest at 3.64 after its guide, and a single card in its 99 grants those 4/4s trample every turn.

Four woodland commanders, one row each

Singles value is the TCGplayer market price of the printings each box shipped, summed, as of 24 October 2026. It moves every day, and each deck’s own page carries the current figure. Wizards of the Coast published no suggested retail price for any of the four. It stopped listing them in February 2019 and did not resume until November 2024, so there is no release price to set these totals against. None of the four sets a bracket floor: no box has a Game Changer or mass land denial.

Every commander asks for two things, and one box ships both

Set the four commanders’ rules text next to each other and the same shape turns up four times: a payoff, and a condition you have to meet to collect it. Three of the boxes stock the payoff well and leave the condition to you.

• Bello, Bard of the Brambles turns every artifact and enchantment of yours costing four or more into a 4/4 Elemental on your turn, Equipment and Auras excepted. Each also has indestructible and haste, and draws you a card whenever it connects with a player. The box holds 19 permanents that qualify. Getting them past blockers is the half it skimps on: Garruk’s Uprising is the only card giving your creatures trample on every turn, and Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma grants it only on turns he attacks.
• Zinnia, Valley’s Voice gains +1/+0 for every other base-power-1 creature on your side, and grants offspring {2} to each creature spell you cast. Pay the extra two and a 1/1 token copy of that creature arrives as well, which she then counts. Ten creatures in the box’s 99 have base power 1 already. The trouble is the price of the rest: ten of its creatures cost five or more before the surcharge.
• Ms. Bumbleflower has every spell you cast make an opponent you target draw a card, then put a +1/+1 counter and flying for the turn on a creature you target. The trigger’s second resolution in a turn draws you two cards. The box is generous on purpose, and its guide counts fourteen more nonland cards that feed the table. For the second spell it has five one-drops and eleven instants.
• Hazel of the Rootbloom can tap herself and any number of your untapped tokens, for 2 life, to add that much mana. In your end step she copies one of your tokens, twice if it’s a Squirrel. Of the 99, 31 cards make tokens and eight of those make Squirrels. This is the box that brought the other half too. Chatterfang, Squirrel General adds a 1/1 Squirrel for every token you’d create, and Maskwood Nexus makes your creatures every creature type, so any creature token she copies counts.

A Raccoon, a Bird, a Rabbit and a Squirrel, and how few of each

Each of Bloomburrow’s ten animal types has its own colour pair and its own cards that reward playing it. The Commander boxes put an animal in the command zone and not much of it in the deck. Counting creature cards, commanders included:

• Animated Army: 5 Raccoons among 22 creatures, and no card that names the type.
• Family Matters: 3 Birds among 36 creatures, fewer than its 6 Humans. Murmuration is the one card rewarding Birds, and it makes its own.
• Peace Offering: 2 Rabbits among 27 creatures, one fewer than its Frogs, and nothing that rewards either.
• Squirreled Away: 9 Squirrels among 30 creatures, eight cards that make Squirrel tokens, and a run of cards that pay Squirrels off by name, Squirrel Sovereign and The Odd Acorn Gang among them.

So if one animal is the reason you want a Bloomburrow deck, the Squirrel box is the only one built around it, and most of its Squirrels are tokens that never show up in the decklist. Path of Ancestry tells the same story from a land slot. It ships in Animated Army, Family Matters and Squirreled Away, and scries only when its mana pays for a creature sharing a type with your commander. Bello has four creature cards behind him that qualify and Zinnia has two, and both their guides cut it. Hazel has nine, and hers keeps it.

Thirty-eight lands apiece, and the pip each guide lets go

All four boxes run 38 lands, and none of the four guides changes that number. They trade lands instead. The boxes hold 33 always-tapped lands in all (nine apiece in Animated Army and Squirreled Away, eight in Family Matters, seven in Peace Offering), and after the four guides 19 are left. Peace Offering’s goes furthest, down to three, by buying three shocklands and Botanical Sanctum, the fastland its colours were missing.

No guide fully mends an early second pip of one colour, and each says which one it settled for:

• Animated Army reaches double red by turn three 88.2% of the time after its swaps and leaves it there, because the three cards asking are two five-drops and an X spell.
• Family Matters brings double white by turn three up to 83.9% and leaves double blue as the box had it.
• Peace Offering lets double blue by turn three slip from 76.4% to 74.2%, the price of its land swaps.
• Squirreled Away finds double green by turn three 83.9% of the time, and its guide gets back to that figure after the land swaps by trading one Swamp for a Forest.

The four boxes ranked as purchases

I’ve ranked them for someone who’ll play the deck before changing much. If you mean to rebuild one straight away, Family Matters moves to the front.

Squirreled Away: the fix is in the box, the mana isn’t

Hazel’s end-step trigger is the reason to play this deck, and the box runs short of Squirrels for it until Chatterfang or Maskwood Nexus turns up. Both are in this list, which no other Bloomburrow box can say about the gap in its commander. What its guide finds wrong is the mana: nine always-tapped lands, too little ramp for a commander who costs four, and green short of a comfortable second pip.

Its guide’s fourteen swaps put four new lands and three pieces of colour-fixing ramp in, which takes the always-tapped lands from nine to five. Of the other seven, Ashnod’s Altar comes first at $15.67, ahead of Primal Vigor and Ohran Frostfang. The guide’s September 2026 market pricing put thirteen of the fourteen at about $69.80, and that is a floor, because Overgrown Tomb’s default printing had no price. The curve barely moves, 3.31 to 3.18, the smallest change in the set.

It is also the guide that removes the most of the box’s own new cards. Five of its fourteen cuts were printed for Bloomburrow Commander, Scurry of Squirrels and Gourmand’s Talent among them, against two in Animated Army’s, one in Family Matters’ and none in Peace Offering’s.

Family Matters: the deepest cut to the curve, for the least money

Zinnia’s surcharge is optional, but without it she has only the box’s ten base-power-1 creatures to count, and every offspring token adds one more. So a creature’s real price in this deck is its printed cost plus two, and the box’s ten creatures at five mana or more become seven-mana spells, or dearer, the moment you pay.

Its guide’s thirteen swaps go straight at that. Creatures at five or more fall from ten to four, and the curve from 3.56 to 3.05, and three new lands take the always-tapped count from eight to five. The adds lean on cards that make 1/1s without a creature spell, so no surcharge applies: Third Path Iconoclast and Monastery Mentor on every noncreature spell, Adeline, Resplendent Cathar on every attack. Skullclamp heads the list at $5.83. The guide put the twelve adds that carried a price at $57.26, TCGplayer market for their default printings, in September 2026. Impact Tremors had none, so that total is a floor.

One card it warns against is worth knowing before you buy. Divine Visitation would replace every creature token you make with a 4/4 flying Angel, and a base power of 4 is one Zinnia never counts.

Peace Offering: the lowest curve, still short of a second spell

Ms. Bumbleflower’s draw needs her trigger to resolve twice in one turn, and any turn counts, so two instants at the end of an opponent’s turn will do it. Of the four boxes it ships the lowest curve, 3.21, but only five one-drops and eleven instants, and its guide singles out six of the box’s fourteen givers that feed the table and pay you nothing back.

Its guide’s fourteen swaps cut those six, four slow or narrow spells and four lands, and bring in ten cheap spells and four better lands. One-drops go from five to ten, instants from eleven to fifteen, and the curve drops to 2.84, the lowest any of these decks reaches. Hardened Scales, at $2.86, is its first buy. In September 2026 the guide put eleven of the adds at $55.98, market price on each default printing, and the three shocklands at roughly $7 to $10 each, about $80 in all.

It is also the only guide in the set that frames its next purchase as a bracket decision. Rhystic Study ($69.31 that month) is the card it calls right for this commander and leaves out, because one Game Changer lifts the deck’s floor from Bracket 1 to Bracket 3. If your table plays at 3, that fork is the reason to pick this box.

Animated Army: nineteen 4/4s with no way past a blocker

Bello asks more of the board than any of the other three commanders. His 4/4s are creatures only on your turn and draw only when they hit a player, so the deck’s card flow depends on attacking through a table full of blockers. The box backs him with the heaviest curve in the set, 4.03, and seven cards at six mana.

Its guide’s thirteen swaps came to about $80 at September 2026 market prices, and the two it rates highest are cheap: Primal Rage, under $6, for trample that stays, and Kessig Wolf Run for trample out of a land. The rest add Nevinyrral’s Disk, a sweeper that the animated permanents survive when you press it on your turn, draw that triggers as they enter, and Heroic Intervention to keep Bello alive. Six-drops fall from seven to three and the curve to 3.64, which leaves it the heaviest deck here even after the work.

What no swap fixes is Bello himself. If he leaves, every animated permanent is an artifact or enchantment again, and one that was attacking drops out of combat. Buy this box for the artifacts and enchantments, and plan on protecting its commander.

Pairs worth owning, and what moves between them

No box’s colours contain another’s. Green is in three of them, white and blue in two (Family Matters and Peace Offering), red in two (Animated Army and Family Matters), and black only in Squirreled Away. Family Matters and Squirreled Away share no colour at all, which is a pity, since they are the two decks built on tokens. Squirreled Away has six colourless cards that Family Matters lacks, Skullclamp and Maskwood Nexus among them, and the Family Matters guide buys a Skullclamp of its own.

Six non-basic cards come in all four boxes: Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Command Tower, Exotic Orchard, Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse. Not one guide cuts any of them. Family Matters and Peace Offering overlap the most, fifteen cards, and eleven of those are lands, Temple of Enlightenment among them, which both their guides remove. Peace Offering and Squirreled Away overlap the least: those six and nothing else.

Eight cards on the guides’ add lists are already printed in one of the other boxes. Seven are cards that box’s own guide keeps, so moving one opens a hole somewhere else:

• Peace Offering holds Swords to Plowshares, Generous Gift and Prairie Stream, all three on the Family Matters list.
• Family Matters holds Path to Exile, which the Peace Offering guide adds.
• Squirreled Away holds Skullclamp, for the Family Matters guide.
• Animated Army holds Sakura-Tribe Elder, which the Squirreled Away guide adds, and Beast Within, which the Peace Offering guide adds.

The eighth is free. The Animated Army guide cuts Tendershoot Dryad and the Squirreled Away guide adds it, so with both boxes it simply changes decks. Two adds also turn up on two lists, Heroic Intervention on Animated Army’s and Peace Offering’s and Nature’s Lore on Peace Offering’s and Squirreled Away’s, so upgrading both decks of either pair means buying that card twice.

FAQ

If I can only buy one Bloomburrow Commander deck, which should it be?

Squirreled Away, unless you plan to upgrade before your first game. Of the four, it alone ships its commander’s missing half in the same box, with Chatterfang, Squirrel General and Maskwood Nexus both in the 99, and its guide’s fourteen swaps move the average mana value only from 3.31 to 3.18. If you’d rather rebuild from the start, Family Matters is the cheaper project: its guide’s thirteen swaps came to about $57 in September 2026 and cut the curve from 3.56 to 3.05.

Is there a Bloomburrow Commander deck built around one animal?

Only Squirreled Away, and mostly through tokens. Nine of its 30 creature cards are Squirrels, eight of its cards make Squirrel tokens, and several more reward Squirrels by name, Squirrel Sovereign among them. The other three put their animal on the commander and little else: Animated Army has 5 Raccoons in 22 creatures, Family Matters 3 Birds in 36 and Peace Offering 2 Rabbits in 27. No creature type makes up half the creatures in any of the four.

Do any of the Bloomburrow precons contain a Game Changer?

No. None of the four boxes holds one, and neither are any of the 54 cards their guides add, so every deck has a floor of Bracket 1 before and after its upgrade. The Peace Offering guide points to the card that would: Rhystic Study, which suits Ms. Bumbleflower and would set the floor at Bracket 3 on its own, as would Smothering Tithe or Cyclonic Rift.

Which Bloomburrow upgrade guide costs the least to follow?

The Family Matters guide. It priced twelve of its thirteen adds at about $57.26 in September 2026, using each card’s default printing at TCGplayer market, leaving out Impact Tremors, which had no price. The Squirreled Away guide came to about $69.80 for thirteen of its fourteen that month, also a floor, since Overgrown Tomb was unpriced. The Animated Army and Peace Offering guides each came to about $80. The current figure for each sits in the summary box at the top of its guide.

Why don’t the Bloomburrow deck pages say whether the box was worth the money?

Because there’s no release price to measure against. Wizards went without a suggested retail price on Commander decks from February 2019 to November 2024, and Bloomburrow Commander’s August 2024 release falls inside that gap. Each deck’s page gives its singles value at current TCGplayer prices and, for decks from that window, leaves the verdict out rather than guess at what people paid.

Which Bloomburrow card can change decks for free?

Tendershoot Dryad, if you own Animated Army and Squirreled Away. The Animated Army guide cuts it and the Squirreled Away guide adds it, so it moves from one box to the other with nothing to replace. Seven more guide adds come in one of the other Bloomburrow boxes, Skullclamp and Swords to Plowshares among them, but each one is a card its own deck’s guide keeps.