Magic: The Gathering - Bloomburrow's Family Matters Commander Deck Guide (2024)

Without family, you've got nothing. That's just as true in the Fast and Furious franchise as it is in Family Matters, the new preconstructed Commander Deck in Magic the Gathering's latest expansion, Bloomburrow. This deck focuses on the new Offspring ability to ensure you've always got a growing family of creatures to do battle with.

Simply having a lot of critters isn't all a big family will do for Family Matters. You'll also focus on getting as much value as possible through enter-the-battlefield effects that duplicate as your commander produces more Offspring. Read on to discover the power of family in Family Matters.

Family Matters Commander Deck List

For those wondering what you get in Family Matters, here are all the cards that come in the box.

Family Matters Commander Deck Themes

Just like in Fast and the Furious, Family Matters is all about family. Or more specifically, the Offspring keyword courtesy of Zinnia, Valley's Voice. With Zinnia, every creature cast can have an itty bitty baby (basically a token copy but with power and toughness of 1/1). This provides opportunities to double up on various enter-the-battlefield or triggered effects.

Agate Instigator is a great example. With the Agate in play, every critters deals one damage to every opponent, then Zinnia creates an offspring and deals one more. And if that copied card is something like Thopter Engineer, now you've doubled that to four damage to each and every player.

With so many triggered abilities looking for creatures, it only makes sense for Family Matters to try to generate as many tokens as possible. Jacked Rabbit is perhaps the best example of a token generator in Family Matters, but Murmuration, Elspeth, Sun's Champion, and Siege-Gang Commander are all great for making tokens.

Each creature with base power of one increases Zinnia's power, so generating a lot of tokens can turn your commander into a game-ending threat.

Finally, Family Matters has a tertiary theme of getting the most out of your enters-the-battlefield creatures, even outside of Zinnia's Offspring keyword. Restoration Angel can blink a creature, Luminous Broodmoth returns the recently deceased, and Aether Channeler can bounce a creature back to your hand to be played again (if you don't want to create a 1/1 bird token).

Arthur is a great card that still works in Family Matters, but we're sticking with Zinnia as commander since you can't grow a family without a ton of Offspring.

Family Matters Commander Deck Analysis

As you'd expect, Family Matters is mostly concerned with creatures. Zinnia wants to produce as much Offspring as possible to produce an overwhelming number of both creatures and effects to help win the game.

To that end, the deck's 35 creatures are a Swiss-army knife of abilities. Some help draw cards like Circuit Mender or Spirited Companion, some help save your creatures like Plumecreed Escort or Selfless Spirit, some remove problem cards like Hanged Executioner and Inferno Titan, and some help your army of tokens to overrun your opponents, like Jazal Goldmane and Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive.

Family Matters also has a reasonable number of sorceries and instants to support the mostly creature-focused strategy. Path to Exile and Rapid Hybridization provide some instant-speed removal, Chart a Course, Cut a Deal, and Rowdy Research provide card draw, and Calamity of Cinders, Dusk/Dawn, and Time Wipe are your requisite board sweepers.

Three colors that aren't green can be hard to play with, so most of the artifacts are mana rocks that provide some colored mana. The enchantments are a fine collection of token generators and/or card draw (outside of Fortun Teller's Talent, which we'll replace later), and Family Matters' lands are doing their best on a budget (suggestions to improve that will be found at the end of this guide).

In its base state, Family Matters is a solid deck—perhaps the most solid of all Bloomburrow's preconstructed Commander decks. That said, they're not all gold-tier cards, so we're going to tweak the deck with a few budget upgrades.

Underperforming Cards

But first, let's get rid of some junk. Junk Winder, Inferno Titan, and Angel of Ruins are all somewhat middling for their mana price. There are better ways to remove things than Inferno Titan and Angel of Ruins, and Junk Winder just doesn't do enough on its own.

Inspiring Overseer and Thopter Engineer are fine cards, but there are better options at three mana. Chart a Course, Cut a Deal, and Rowdy Research all helpfully draw cards, but they only do it once and have no synergy with Zinnia. We'll replace them with creatures that can provide repeated card draw.

Finally, Fortune Teller's Talent is a great card, but being able to cast cards from your library is an ability better suited to other commander decks. Family Matters can also afford to drop a single Plains since there are several creatures and a half-dozen mana rocks helping with ramp and mana fixing.

Family Matters Commander Deck Budget Upgrades

With some cuts made, it's time to substitute some budget upgrades. Each of these will work better with Zinnia to help you grow your family in no time.

Image	Name	Reason
	Aerial Extortionist	What's better than one thieving bird? Two thieving birds! Zinnia's ability to double your Aerial Extortionist means you'll have unprecedented aerial control of the battlefield alongside a ton of extra card draw.
	Cayth, Famed Mechanist	Cayth and Zinnia produce a feedback loop that can single-handedly win games. Adding Fabricate to every creature means Zinnia's Offspring ability makes twice as many 1/1 Servos, while Cayth's Populate ability will duplicate one of Zinnia's Offspring while further increasing the number of Servos.
	Guide of Souls	You're going to be making a lot of tokens, which are creatures, and so Guide of Souls will provide a lot of life and a lot of energy to turn your 1/1 tokens into Angels.
	Molten Gatekeeper	Essentially a more expensive Agate Instigator, but one that can bring itself back to life for a single turn. And since Agate Instigator is a great kill card, why not have two?
	Mulldrifter	Evoke Mulldrifter, then use Zinnia's ability to give yourself a 1/1 Mulldrifter. That's five mana to draw four cards. Of course, it'd be better to keep Mulldrifter around so you could draw even more cards with Echoing Assault.
	Nesting Dovehawk	Populate every turn means whatever Offspring Zinnia creats just keep multiplying, and Nesting Dovehawk becomes an ever-increasing threat. The perfect addition for Family Matters.
	Trumpeting Carnosaur	Trumpeting Carnosaur is great on its own. Being able to create a little baby Carnosaur that can also Discover 5 is just fantastic.
	Welcoming Vampire	Reliable, repeatable card draw. Quite a few creatures in Family Matters have less than two power, so you'll even be able to draw cards from non-token creature spells.
	Wingmate Roc	Once again, the multiplicative powers of Zinnia are on full display with Wingmate Roc. One 3/4 Roc begets another, and then Zinnia's 1/1 Roc creates its own 3/4 Roc. That's three 3/4 Rocs and one 1/1 Roc that can be Populated to keep creating more 3/4 Rocs. And if all those Rocs attack, that's 16 life gained per swing.
	Witch Enchanter	Four mana to blow up an enchantment or artifact is a tad expensive, but Zinnia makes the second artifact or enchantment that much cheaper. And if you can't afford it, the other side of Witch Enchanter is a land. Now that's versatility!

Other Budget Upgrades To Consider

• Family Matters could use a bit of help with its mana base. Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse can't even search for an Island, while Adarkar Wastes, Battlefield Forge, and Shivan Reef can deal a lot of self-damage over the course of a game. Consider these alternatives: Spirebluff Canal, Inspiring Vantage, Deserted Beach, Stormcarved Coast, Sundown Pass, Restless Anchorage, Frostboil Snarl, Port Town, Furycalm Snarl.
• Rogue's Passage is also a great addition to help Zinnia get in those last few points of Commander damage to defeat an opponent.
• Want to double down on the Agate Instigator strategy? Impact Tremors, Warleader’s Call, and Witty Roastmaster can help.
• Panharmonicon and Virtue of Knowledge can both double the number of triggered abilities, further improving the damage dealt by Agate Instigator et all.
• Can't find a Trumpeting Carnosaur? Eagle of Deliverance can help protect Zinnia while the Bird Bard creates a baby Eagle to protect something else.
• Yosei, the Morningstar has an interesting interaction with Zinnia's Offspring ability. Once the second Yosei arrives, the Legend rule applies and one of them dies. This causes Yosei's ability to trigger, tapping down five permanents and causing your opponent to skip their next untap step.