MTG Bloomburrow’s ravenous Cat Commander is top of the food chain

Jack Bye
MTG Bloomburrow Ygra

Ygra, Eater of All is one of Bloomburrow’s feared elemental Calamity Beasts, and this Golgari Cat Commander has a huge impact on the board by converting all other Creatures into Food.

MTG’s Bloomburrow set may feature cute and cuddly woodland critters, but this non-human world is absolutely packing some powerful new card designs too.

Alongside the smaller-scale critters in this world, what would be underpowered animals on other planes are titanic forces for the regular inhabitants of Bloomburrow. Ygra, Eater of All is one such beast, able to stack up power as other Creatures are devoured.

Ygra, Eater of All is a Legendary Elemental Cat Creature that can be cast for 3BG. As long as Ygra is on the board, all other Creatures are Food tokens in addition to their other types. This works out hugely in Ygra’s favor, as this card gains two +1/+1 counters whenever a Food hits the grave from the battlefield.

Ygra also comes with the protective Ward ability, requiring an opponent to sacrifice a Food if they want to target this card. While this may seem impossible for many decks, Ygra’s board-wide conversion makes it much easier but still sets opponents back by forcing them to send their Creature to the grave for a chance at taking this card off the board.

Starting off as an already intimidating 6/6, with enough Food sacrificed, Ygra becomes a towering threat that can swing for a lethal amount of Commander damage in a single turn.

Alongside Food synergies, Ygra, Eater of All converting all other Creatures on the battlefield into Artifacts can fundamentally change the game and lead to some interesting, unexpected interactions.

For example, Creatures like Karnstructs that scale based on the number of Artifacts on the field would suddenly gain a colossal boost in power and toughness.

While unfortunately the widespread Artifact destruction spell Vandalblast doesn’t mesh with Ygra’s color identity, there are plenty of other options like Nature’s Claim or Krosan Grip available to pick off your opponents’ recently-converted Food.

Food is one of Magic: The Gathering’s most interesting tokens. While its initial showing was somewhat scattershot and underpowered, the fantastic Tales of Middle-earth Food and Fellowship Commander deck and sets like Wilds of Eldraine really put in the work to make food into a relevant resource type.

Now, Bloomburrow is continuing this streak of great food support with the Forage mechanic and Commanders like Ygra, further focusing on this being a strength of Golgari decks and giving the color combo something to work with besides graveyard reanimation.