Despite this being a learn-to-play product, it doesn’t matter whether Bloomburrow is your first introduction to one best card games of all time or you’re a seasoned Magic player who’s understands such complex ideas as “the stack” and “actually winning the game”. Either way, there’s plenty to enjoy in the MTG Bloomburrow Starter Kit, and it all comes in at a refreshingly reasonable price. 

What’s in the MTG Bloomburrow Starter Kit?

In any MTG Starter Kit, the main event is a pair of 60-card Starter decks. In the Bloomburrow product, both of these are suitably Animalfolk-themed with Hare Raising (a Green-White rabbit-centric deck with a focus on buffing creatures) and Otter Limits (a Blue-Red deck featuring plenty of spell-slinging otters).

With those color pairings, the only section of the MTG color pie that doesn’t get a look-in is Black. Personally speaking, this is a bit of a shame; Black’s mechanics and flavor were part of what hooked me when I first started playing MTG. However, when you dive deeper into what the goals of what a Starter Kit are, its exclusion is pretty understandable too. 

In Magic: The Gathering, Black is often associated with trading off resources like life and creatures to get ahead. With this in mind, it makes sense why the other four colors might serve as a better fit for a beginner’s introduction to the game. Effectively piloting a Black deck requires you maintaining a delicate balance between sacrifice and self-preservation, and this prospect can be a little scary for newbies. 

Beyond the decks, the MTG Bloomburrow Starter Kit also comes with a number of useful extras. Inside are two cardboard deck boxes which, while not practical for long-term use, are handy for players who haven’t built up a collection of MTG accessories yet. As well as that, if you’re fond of Magic: The Gathering’s digital equivalent, you’ll be happy to learn that the kit includes two redemption codes for MTGArena. 

Beyond the decks, the MTG Bloomburrow Starter Kit also comes with a number of useful extras. Inside are two cardboard deck boxes which, while not practical for long-term use, are handy for players who haven’t built up a collection of MTG accessories yet. As well as that, if you’re fond of Magic: The Gathering’s digital equivalent, you’ll be happy to learn that the kit includes two redemption codes for MTGArena.

Other beginner-friendly inclusions are rules reference cards and a how-to-play booklet. This booklet includes a rundown of how to play Magic: The Gathering, as well as a glossary of common keywords players have to get to grips with during games. While the information is comprehensive, there are parts of it which are awkwardly formatted thanks to there being up to three columns of texts on one small page.

Thankfully, I can’t see this problem having any substantial negative impact on players’ understanding of the game but it does make the booklet slightly awkward to navigate. The how-to-play booklet isn’t a total ugly duckling though. The entire Bloomburrow set has plenty of charming art featuring cute pastoral motifs alongside images of Valley’s fuzzy denizens, the Calamity Beasts, and visiting Planeswalkers. Our everything you need to know about Bloomburrow page will come in handy if you need to decode what that all means but lore-aside, just know that there are lots of adorable talking animals.

MTG Bloomburrow starter decks

Among the Starter Kit, are a number of exclusive reprints but unfortunately, these aren’t given new card art to suit Bloomburrow’s world. Not only does this make their exclusivity feel less special, but the presence of humanoid creatures in what is supposed to be a definitively ‘Animalfolk only’ plane is an admittedly small but irritating discrepancy. This is a level of canon-divergence that both the Assassin’s Creed and Lord of the Rings Starter Kits avoided entirely. So, I can only imagine this was a deliberate decision made with the kit’s budget in mind. 

One of these reprinted cards is Colossalification, an enchantment in Hare Raising that’s the purest distillation of the deck’s ‘go-tall’ play style. By tapping a creature and then buffing it by +20/+20, the card is both a valuable beginner’s lesson in combat rhythm and a really powerful end-game permanent for any Green deck. 

Other examples of great cards that bolster Hare Rising’s strategy are Finneas, Ace Archer (buffs creatures when it attacks and provides card draw according to creature power) and Bryke, Long Ear of the Law (which deals out +1/+1 as part of its enter the battlefield and triggered abilities).

Meanwhile, Otter Limits wholly embraces the Izzet (Blue-Red) archetype by incentivizing and rewarding casting non-creature spells. Stormcatch Mentor is a helpful, low-cost card for furthering this game plan, as it not only gets a temporary buff from non-creature spells thanks to Prowess but also reduces the cost of casting them. Bria, Riptide Rogue extends her Prowess to all other creatures you control and allows you to make one of your creatures unblockable — great for landing damage on your opponent.

All in all, both decks are fun to play, well-balanced, and suited for a starter product. Each of them feature mechanics that are mainstays of Magic as a whole but also their respective color identities. However, they also manage to give players a taste of new keywords like Offspring which debuted in Bloomburrow in a way that integrates organically with the decks as a whole. 

If you’re just getting your start with Magic: The Gathering and need some guidance or you’re an established player who fancies some casual 60-card fun on the cheap, the MTG Bloomburrow Starter Kit is well worth picking up.

Are you a Magic beginner looking to try out another format? Check out how to play MTG Commander. Beyond Magic, why not try out more of the best card games worth adding to your collection?

However, a truly great Magic: The Gathering set has to tick off the TCG trinity of aesthetics, mechanics, and worldbuilding. While it might not be at the forefront of your mind while you’re trashing your friends in a game or riding the high of cracking open a Booster pack, a part of what makes Magic: The Gathering one of the best card games on the market is its setting and story.

Recent Magic sets prior to this have regrettably lost sight of this fact (or at the very least their view has gone a little hazy). Even in spite of how high-concept the settings of Outlaws of Thunder Junction and Murders at Karlov Manor both were, I’d argue they failed to deliver on narrative depth and meaningful exploration of their respective planes. Yet, like some kind of whiskered messiah for Magic Story, MTG Bloomburrow appears to be the exact return to form Magic: The Gathering has been needing. 

There’s something rather lovely about how card art, flavor text, and fiction all come together to create such a rich depiction of Magic’s multiverse and the lives of those who inhabit it. Whether it's one of the Power Nine or a simple Token card, each 2.5 by 3.5 inch rectangle of cardboard can serve as a jigsaw piece in the larger puzzle of the game’s canon.

Even those of us who aren’t big nerds who watch hour-long video essays about MTG lore can agree: a card that’s just raw rule text is barely a card worth having. Of course, the folks at Wizards of the Coast are aware that this is the case. The particularly elaborate theming of every Standard set released in the last 12 months is strong evidence of that. But it’s easy to confuse an MTG product with a unique setting with an MTG product with deep worldbuilding and a worthwhile story.   

Take Outlaws of Thunder Junction, for example. It was pitched as Magic’s Wild West set and at least that much was crystal clear in its execution. However, it failed to offer much beyond this campy, Stetson-sporting veneer. Undoubtedly, it delivered some compelling narrative threads within its band of rootin’ tootin’ ne'er-do-wells. However, its central heist plot just floundered – stakes were low and the Fomori vault MacGuffin never felt tethered in any way to where in the multiverse it was held.

Wholly disconnected from any real sense of place, the set wrassled with the restraints of its own genre tropes. What is Thunder Junction actually like? Who are the people there? What is a Fomori vault doing in the middle of the desert? “It’s, uh, you know … a cowboy town”, the set seems to meekly reply. 

Murders of Karlov Manor committed similar sins. While the plane of Ravnica has been poured over so much that it has its very own block, never before in this Guild City had we ever come across a detective guild. Prior to this set, the Boros Legion were the closest equivalents to a de facto police force but the Detectives within Murders of Karlov Manor are entirely unbound by the ten established guilds of Ravnica or the color pie itself.

Change can be good, of course. Although in this case, the ret-con of Ravnica’s guild system doesn’t serve to meaningfully develop player understanding of the world. Instead, it unravels what’s already been established and unfortunately, it doesn’t leave enough of value in its place. 

Bloomburrow has a surprising amount in common with old-school Ravnica. Each of the ten pairings of the color pie not only correlate to various species of animalfolk but also to different vocations and ways of life. For example, the Black-White Bats are brooding clerics and astronomers while the Green-White Rabbits are family-focused chefs and farmers. Each sect has their own set of values, rituals, and routines but they interweave and collaborate with other cultures across Bloomburrow.

By painting such a clear picture of how animalfolk live and work together, the community of Valley appears like a living, breathing organism. Not only does that create added investment in Bloomburrow as a plane but it makes the central threat of the Calamity Beasts all the more devastating.

In our conversation with Bloomburrow’s Worldbuilding Lead, Neale LaPlante Johnson, it became clear that this was by design. As he put it: “Having a mother being a hero is a way to emphasize this isn’t just a set of 20-something heroes living their best life. [Mabel] has a family and she’s fighting for them. That’s what Bloomburrow is really about: it’s about community, it’s about unity with other members of your town … or even your entire plane.”

Through this concerted effort to create a hero with a deep-rooted connection with the world around them, Bloomburrow becomes a plane worth exploring, reading about, and maybe even worth returning to in a future set. 

Want to catch up on everything Bloomburrow? Everything we know about MTG Bloomburrow will fill you in on everything from the set’s story to its product line. Beyond Magic, why not try out more of the best card games worth adding to your collection?

It's not always the case that good source material makes for the best board games (I’m looking at you, The Oregon Trail Card Game). However, Dune Imperium and its standalone expansion Dune Imperium - Uprising are stellar examples of a tabletop adaptation done right. That makes it all the sweeter that Uprising is 13% off right now. 

It usually sports a $60 price tag but you can pick up Dune Imperium - Uprising for $51.99 at Amazon at the moment. Only briefly did we see a drop lower than this, as according to our price tracking software, the game hit $49.58 in July. Even with that in mind, the current discount is more than enough temptation to click ‘buy now’.

Should you buy Dune Imperium - Uprising?

From the wonderfully weird David Lynch adaptation all the way to the current batch of Chalamet-fronted blockbusters, Dune has seen some cracking translations over the years. However, the silver screen isn’t the only place where the Imperium can be brought to life. Sitting around a table with a few of your most tactically-minded mates and engaging in a delicate play for resources and power is one of the most thrilling ways to bring the political intrigue of Dune to life – no CGI needed.

While Dune Imperium - Uprising expands on 2020’s Dune Imperium, you can still enjoy Uprising totally independent of the core game. In fact, this expandalone is just as packed with content. If you’d like though, you can mix and match elements of the core game or previous expansions. Even alone, there’s a great deal of replayability, which is only enhanced by the fact that your playstyle has to shift depending on which character you choose to play as. 

Whether you fancy yourself an underhanded Atreides or admire the guerilla tactics of the Fremen, there are plenty of ways to get ahead in Dune Imperium - Uprising. That said, even if your plan for power falls flat, the gorgeously illustrated cards and spooky sand worm miniatures can help distract you from the sting of failure. If you want even more reasons to add this epic sci-fi board game to your collection, just take a look at our Dune Imperium - Uprising review. 

Looking for more great deals on your tabletop favorites? Swing by our board game deals for a full rundown of the top discounts. If you need some inspiration on what to play next, our list of board games for adults is on hand to help.

Designer Amabel Holland originally designed the cryptic puzzle-game as a more conventional single-player experience about building up city-states in Mesopotamia. While that board game was designed back in 2018, Holland recalls she found “it was missing an indefinable something” at the time, putting the idea on the shelf and periodically revisiting it each year until inspiration struck to include the idea of translating an alien language in 2023 – a concept not often seen in the best board games.

“Part of the problem is that around the time I was finishing work on the original game, I was getting more ambitious,” Holland says. Her previous games include This Guilty Land, which casts the players as representations of Justice and Oppression in a battle over slavery in a pre-Civil War United States, and Table Battles, a simplified wargame system that can simulate different conflicts across centuries of history. “Much of my work in board games is pretty overtly experimental and political. The political games centre around observing and understanding models of systems.

“Board games actually have an advantage over video games here because they can’t hide anything – it’s all made concrete and transparent. In order to operate the model, in order to play the game, you’ll need to understand the whole picture – which makes them a great tool for helping someone understand real-world systems. In this sense, the process of learning the game is a key source of meaning.”

An unsolvable puzzle

As City of Six Moons evolved beyond being 'just' a game, Holland drew inspiration from another puzzle that requires the player to work out its rules and language in tandem, Blaž Urban Gracar’s word-search book LOK, and her own experience attempting to figure out the rules for a German edition of hide-and-seek classic Mister X she had bought in a thrift shop.

“I had to work out how it played based on the icons, based on commonalities between German and English, and based on my own knowledge of how games tend to function,” Holland says. “It was a very enjoyable experience, and I wondered if I might not build that experience deliberately into this game.”

The designer refuses to answer any questions about City of Six Moons’ language or rules, leaving the game in the hands of players to decode and play – even if that means they might never get all the details quite right. (I won’t spoil anything here.) Even so, Holland has carefully designed the symbol-based language to help ease players into the unusual process of translating its rulebook while logically learning how to play along the way. (Beginner tip: start with the first page, which is deliberately easier to decode.)

“This was the major challenge with the game, and it necessitated me rewriting the rulebook from scratch several times,” Holland says. “In order to remain within the conceit, the systems needed to all fold into each other – not a series of discrete puzzles but one big puzzle with solutions dependent upon each other. And the problem with something like this is it’s not a puzzle you can solve, in the sense that 'solving' something involves following a series of concrete steps laid out for you by the puzzle’s designer to arrive at a confirmable solution.”

Keeping the language focused on its purpose as a way of learning and understanding the game means that its icons – lightly influenced by ancient cuneiform writing – can’t be used to translate entire English sentences in the same way as, say, Klingon. It is a language that exists to communicate ideas about the game, in the game.

“It was important to me that this not be a 'language' or a substitution cipher, but a depiction of systemic relationships and concepts via icons – an iconographic language,” Holland explains. “There aren’t really 'sentences' in a traditional sense, so I don’t think one could necessarily use it for narrative purposes.”

A fundamentally different experience

Both the language and the game itself are presented as artefacts of an alien civilisation, with Holland imagining the kind of cultural differences between humanity and extraterrestrial beings that might have shaped their unique gaming habits – some of which also speak directly to what Holland sees as Earthly problems in the civilisation-building and tableau-building genres of board games.

“I didn’t write a wiki for it or anything like that,” she replies when asked how deep the lore of her alien species runs. “When the game approached its final form, these ideas informed what I felt to be the cultural assumptions these visitors would be working from.”

While translating City of Six Moons is more than a prelude to playing the game – it’s an integral part of the complete experience – Holland assures that the fully-decoded rules create a game varied enough to be played again and again, even when part of the puzzle is solved.

“It’s going to be a fundamentally different experience once you’ve figured it out, and perhaps a lesser one, but that doesn’t bother me very much,” she says.

Still, even getting to that point might take players as long as they would spend playing other games night after night.

“It occurred to me after playtesting that the puzzle was going to be really quite easy to solve, so I wondered if I might not do another one that was harder,” Holland says, considering the potential of another game ‘created’ by the same alien civilisation. “But I’ve heard from people putting 20-plus hours into the solution aspect, and still having questions, so apparently it’s much harder than me or my testers thought!”

With City of Six Moons now in players’ hands, Holland expresses joy at watching other people find their way through its puzzle in different ways. Discussions on BoardGameGeek share potential solutions, messages coded in the same alien language and even in-universe theories about who wrote the game’s rulebook. With players already far down the rabbit hole, its real-life creator teases that the game may hold even more surprises than players expect, too

“I’ve seen some of the translations and the assumptions people make are fascinating, both in terms of cultural assumptions and in terms of mechanical blind spots,” she says. “I feel extraordinarily privileged because I get to engage with this game in a way no-one else quite can – I get to observe how others engage with it, how they approach the puzzle. And I know things about the game and its production no-one else does. Because, for example, not everyone has exactly the same components, or exactly the same rulebook.”

With City of Six Moons clearly hooking players with its unique mixture of language puzzle, game design commentary and an actual, playable board game, Holland is delighted that her ambitious vision hasn’t been seen as quite so alien itself.

“I’m really blown away by the success of this game, and the reception to what is on its face a very strange idea,” she says. “This life is full of happy surprises.”

For more recommendations of what to play next, check out our guides to must-have board games for adults and the best card games.

We’ve seen class features thoroughly unpacked in playtests over the past two years, and pieced back together with the abilities that mattered most to us, the players, overall. And the D&D rules revisions seem to be a net improvement to one of the best tabletop RPGs – particularly the changes to the Rogue, which gives the sneaking, trickster class a handful of additional ‘Cunning Strike’ abilities in combat just when other classes are getting second attacks. 

But I have one, major complaint in the class changes we’ve seen, which is the loss of so-called ‘ribbon’ abilities: those that don’t necessarily add much mechanical advantage, or boost the class’s damage output, but help to construct the class fantasy that’s been promised to players.

The Monk is a key example of this. In the 2014 version, the Monk gains Tongue of the Sun and Moon at Level 13, enabling it to understand any spoken language. In a game where each character can usually speak multiple languages anyway, the ability to bypass any language barriers isn’t exactly game-breaking – but it builds up a picture of the archetypal Monk as a mediator as well as a combatant.

 The 2014 Ranger also had a ‘favored’ terrain, in which the party could travel more swiftly through locations that usually impede movement (such as dense forests and marshes), avoid getting lost, move stealthily at a normal pace, and more accurately track creatures nearby. The Ranger was also adept at evading plant-based obstacles, whether natural or magical – something that fits the class fantasy of an outdoor survivalist very well.

The 2024 Ranger ditches these fiddly exploration features for more combat-focused abilities, which speaks to how little development the exploration part of D&D usually gets. Having spellcasting come online earlier is a great help, as is the new Weapon Mastery feature for enhanced weapon attacks, but I sorely miss the presence of any terrain-specific abilities, which for me were crucial parts of the Ranger’s story as a class.

I’m particularly upset about the loss of Song of Rest, a low-level Bard feature that lets you grant temporary HP to allies during a short rest. While there are other ways to heal or defend your allies as a Bard – and the feature has been somewhat shunted to the optional Musician feat, which grants a one-use dice reroll to allies instead – I always loved this ability for how it captures the Bard as a traveling performer, soothing tired adventurers by the roadside. The new Bard gets a lot of new tricks, including far more freedom to pick and choose spells from other classes, but it’s clear that more flavorful aspects of the 2014 classes have been sacrificed to find utility elsewhere.

This is not to call the 2024 revision a failure, by any means. I’m hugely excited to try each of the revised classes for myself, and inevitably there were going to be losses alongside the many gains in this semi-new edition. But some may find that the things that drew them to a class fantasy in the first place have been sidelined – and those players may find themselves missing what they’ve lost.

To prep for the revamp, these are the D&D books we'd advise adding to your shelf alongside the new rulebooks. As for a change of pace, why not take a look at the best board games?

For D&D creative director Chris Perkins, it's all additive rather than reductive. While they iterate on the Fifth Edition D&D rulebooks we got in 2014, the 2024 versions are not attempting to remake that wheel.

"We haven't thrown everybody's expertise out of an airlock," Perkins said when we caught up with him at Gen Con 2024. "It is, at the system level, the same game. But we have also, with 10 years of feedback, smoothed out some of the wrinkles in the bed. Things that people were tripping over have been framed a little differently, so they're easier to [understand], or things that were on wishlists where folks were like, 'oh, I wish this worked this way,' we've done that, where the fans have said it's okay to do that. So we've made some tweaks to things here and there."

Naturally, it's not all familiar. Entirely new rules are making an appearance in the 2024 Player's Handbook too, and that's proven to be a fine line to walk.

"The balancing act is we have to keep it in the space of the familiar while also adding stuff that feels fresh and new and exciting," says Perkins. "Classes that you know, and love, we've juiced them up, we've given them a bit more flair and flash, and things they couldn't do before – like Fighters using Weapon Mastery. This property now sort of gloms onto weapons to make them much more exciting and fun to play. We don't think that those are going to be big lifts for folks, [we believe] they're going to be super excited to dive in and play characters using these new options."

Amping up the fun

It feels as if this revamp has been a long time coming. And in a literal sense, it has; this update for one of the best tabletop RPGs was first announced in 2022. But more specifically, publisher Wizards of the Coast has been pumping out 'Unearthed Arcana' playtests regularly for the past two years. When combined with an extensive social media campaign that details all of the changes each class will receive, the anticipation has reached boiling point.  

With the Player's Handbook's September release day fast approaching and a group of lucky Gen Con 2024 attendees being given it early, that journey's almost over. After countless hours spent refining the system, Perkins is just excited for fans to finally get their hands on this new tome.

"I just want, at very first blush, people to open it up and go, 'oh my God, this is such a pretty book – the art looks amazing, the layout looks amazing. It just looks like a fantastic, fantastic glow-up of the 2014 Player's Handbook.' And then when they started digging into it, just discover all the little things that we squeezed into those 384 pages. Little goodies, some new stuff, some little little bits of added lore."

Thanks to those near-400 pages, there's certainly enough to draw from. Indeed, the new Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual were described by Perkins and lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford as one book split into three during the Gen Con D&D press panel. (You can find out everything revealed in our guide to all the D&D announcements from Gen Con 2024.) 

"Well, that's the weird thing. We don't find ourselves in this space too often where we're not building a new edition. We didn't burn the game down and build a new game on top of it," explains Perkins. "So until your 2025 Monster Manual comes out, until your 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide comes out, you use the current ones. They are perfectly valid. They work together. And so you can build new characters with the Players Handbook that's just come out and then run adventures like Curse of Strahd, or The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, use the stat blocks from the monster manual as they are today. No problem whatsoever. Everything works."

If that's the case, though, why should players upgrade at all?

"I think there are so many user experience improvements at play here," Perkins says. As an example, there's been a lot of emphasis on fixing everything from small stumbling blocks (like health potions using up a full action) to bigger problems such as certain classes being underpowered. The team seems to have also kept the most important goal of any game at the forefront – to make sure everyone's having as much fun as possible.

The new Monster Manual is a good case in point. Its stat blocks are apparently "going to be easier on DMs, and the monsters are going to be doing more interesting things at the table." According to Perkins, this is true across the board. For instance, "all the [DMG's] magic items have, just like the classes, had the fun amped up a little bit. Or maybe they're easier to run."

New horizons, old haunts

Another notable change isn't quite as sexy, but it's arguably more useful. As Perkins explains, "it was very important for us this time around to consult with UX consultants and tap their expertise and get them to tell us how we frame information on a page, or on the inside of a DM screen, so that people can access it in the easiest, best way possible, knowing that people don't generally read anymore. But you know, we're a text based game. And that's the way it is. So we can't get away from no text, we just have to figure out the better ways to present the text that we have. And so everything, even things that seem inconsequential, are hugely impactful, like increasing the point size of our books. At the start of each class, there's like a little summary box that has everything basically in a nutshell. So you don't have to read paragraphs or anything, or you don't have to go digging, or even flip to the next page. [These are] all very deliberate attempts to… help people engage with the game more easily."

That's also why the setting in the upcoming Dungeon Master's Guide was chosen. Even though Baldur's Gate 3 and the recent D&D movie put more eyeballs on the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk is the world being included here – and it's thanks to that streamlined approach.

"Well, what's interesting is that Greyhawk is the first published campaign setting [for D&D]," Perkins tells us. "So one of the reasons it occurred to us that maybe this is a setting to include is because it is the granddaddy of all campaign settings, ever. It inspired, to some extent, how campaign settings were created, and the format that they took for years and years and years. But a lot of people don't know that the original Greyhawk set, the original World of Greyhawk folio, 1980, was very spare. It was like, 'here is a map. Here are some place names with some rulers'.  And like, one paragraph of description about the location, along with some organizations and some cool sigils and other things. That was it. That was Greyhawk. 

"It is, in that respect, a very pure and very distilled experience. And what was magical about it is it didn't have any point of view. It left it up to the DM to take those names, take those places, and put some skin on those bones… It is that concept that we focused on for the DMG, because we knew we had a finite amount of space. We wanted something nostalgic that will make some fans go, 'oh my god, wow, that's unexpected and cool, but not totally out beyond the pale.' But we also wanted to hold true to this concept of, let's give you a bare bones skeleton, a setting that you can then make your own, that doesn't bring in a lot of Greyhawk lore from later editions or installments, and is just inspirational in a non-threatening kind of way."

This isn't to say Wizards of the Coast is slavishly recreating Greyhawk as it existed 30-odd years ago. It goes without saying that certain attitudes have changed over the last few decades, so the team has tried to bring it into the modern day.

"We're also thinking, this can't be Greyhawk 1978 or 1980," Perkins says. "This has to be Greyhawk 2024. So is there anything that is problematic [about the original version]? Let's send it out to the sensitivity consultants, to inclusivity reviewers, get their feedback on the setting, and then work with that. Like, one of the things about the original Greyhawk, and I'll be perfectly honest about this, you look at the lands and the rulers, almost all the rulers are men. That is something we will have to address. And we do."

Fortunately, the venerable setting didn't need too much tweaking. Once a few names or places had been edited, Perkins and the team felt that it has been able to "present a very exciting world for people to build on."

That last point feels very true to the spirit of these new D&D rulebooks. Rather than tearing up everything that came before, it's about filling cracks in the plaster and adding a fresh coat of paint. This feels like Wizards' answer to why players should upgrade; Perkins likens it to the rules glossary in the 2024 Player's Handbook. 

"It's all encompassing, insofar as it covers everything. It's got all the condition definitions, it's got how initiative works, it's got how actions work, it's got everything... It's just sort of following the mantra of the book, which is really kind of paying attention to the user experience, and making it as accessible and referential and resourceful as possible."

For recommendations on what to play while you wait to add these to your collection of D&D books, be sure to check out the best board games.

Even though MTG Bloomburrow shakes things up with the game's patented brand of sorcery, it's still reminiscent of Mouse Guard et al in a nostalgic, fuzzy sort of way. With that in mind, it's fitting for Mouse Guard's creator David Petersen to draw a card for the set in his iconic style. I managed to catch up with him over email to chat about his process, the challenges of collaborating on a franchise like Magic, and how it feels to work on one of the best card games.

GamesRadar+ (GR+): Thanks for speaking with us, David! I just want to start by saying how gorgeous your Mabel card art is. Can you take me through the process of making it?

David Petersen (DP): Thank you! It started with the brief from [MTG] art director Aliana Rood and the world guide for Bloomburrow the team provided. I drew Mabel on copy paper with a pencil, and then on another sheet of paper and on top of a lightpad, I worked on making adjustments and adding her costuming. It’s like a physical-world version of using Layers in Photoshop, but I like the feel of pencil on paper. Then I scanned the various pencil drawings of her, her clothes and accessories, and the setting, and assemble them in Photoshop (making adjustments with proportions and rotations) and lay in some color blocking. That is sent off to the art director for approval. When it is approved, I print out the layout and tape it to the back of a sheet of bristol and ink it traditionally on a lightpad so I have a physical piece of art for sale or display. That is then scanned in and colored digitally. 

GR+: Let's talk about Bloomburrow as a whole for a minute. What appeals to you about this new world, and are there any ideas you wish you'd come up with yourself for Mouse Guard?

DP: I love talking animal stories, especially when, like in Bloomburrow, the animals are more like their real-life species and less like humans with animal features. I was blown away by the worldbuilding and artwork already produced for it. The 10 base animalfolk being dual color to help codify their strengths and personas was a really great idea. But a key difference is there’s no magic in Mouse Guard. My book’s mice are more akin to being a Boy Scout or one of [J.R.R.] Tolkien’s rangers. The only supernatural occurrences in my books are ghosts, so there’s little crossover there. But I do really admire how the lizards were handled to seem like such a foreign culture to most of the others without falling into real-world regional tropes.

GR+: What requirements, if any, were there when designing this artwork?

DP: There were some technical requirements for size and resolution, and then the brief explained the goals of the illustration and I was provided with some reference for Mabel, who’d already been designed. But, I was given plenty of room to be creative and do my take on the illustration without feeling boxed in.

GR+: As this was a chance to put your own spin on Bloomburrow, was there anything you wanted to really emphasize or push in a new direction for Mabel? 

DP: Oh, no. When I’m brought on to a job where there is an established character, I do my best to honor everything in that character’s design as-is and only put enough of my own spin to the linework and texture and color that I’m true to myself as an artist. I may have played with the proportion of the daisy flowers on her clothes, but not by much. 

GR+: Obviously there are similarities between this card and your early work on Mouse Guard, but it feels as if your style has evolved over the years. Does this illustration include or represent any learnings you've made over the course of your career so far?

DP: I’d hope that my work has evolved and grown over the years – one of the worst things an artist can do is stagnate. With Mabel there was a conscious decision to draw her differently than Mouse Guard mice (the paws have 5 fingers instead of 3, the ears are different, and the eyes are bigger), but I hope I brought all the illustrative experience of what communicates ideas through images to Bloomburrow that I’ve learned doing Mouse Guard and other comic covers and that I bring the growth from doing Bloomburrow back to Mouse Guard just in terms of illustration quality.

GR+: What challenges did this artwork present?

DP: My work is so line-centric that rather than painterly shapes that scale down for print easier, I had a real worry the lines would mush together and become unreadable with too much reduction down to card size. So, I tried a Goldilocks approach to find some middle ground for the original art––not so small that I couldn’t draw and ink comfortably, but not so big that the final printing would be muddy.

GR+: If you were able to illustrate any other character, species, or scene from Bloomburrow, what would it be?

DP: I’d have really loved to do some birds. Birds are pretty fun to draw and my wife has a real kinship with birds, so I know it would have been special for her too. It would have been neat to get to do some lizard cards too – breaking expectations of the Mouse Guard Guy drawing something furry. To be honest though, I would be happy to have drawn multiples of each animal type. It was a great gig.

GR+: Now that you've worked on MTG, is it something you'd like to tackle again? Are there any MTG Planes you find particularly inspiring?

DP: I haven’t played MTG since the nineties, so I’m not well-versed in the various planes to tell you something specific, but I love drawing fantasy creatures and monsters and animals, so I’d love to do work for Wizards of the Coast again.

GR+: Finally, what's your favorite aspect of this card art? Is there anything you're particularly proud of?

DP: For Mabel, I really like the cozy setting she’s in and how I translated the Cragflame sword into my style of linework and color.

You can currently get your hands on Bloomburrow boosters and decks at Amazon, but beware – prices are all over the place. It's worth checking in with the likes of Miniature Market in the US and Magic Madhouse in the UK instead for a better deal.

There’s another D&D and BG3 product on the horizon but it’s not another core rulebook or Baldur’s Gate 4 (sorry). Instead, the world of one of the best tabletop RPGs is once again meeting Magic: The Gathering. 

As announced at GenCon, this 50th Anniversary D&D drop will release August 27 and consist of five sets:

• Secret Lair x Dungeons & Dragons: An Exhibition of Adventure
• Secret Lair x Dungeons & Dragons: Astarion's Thirst
• Secret Lair x Dungeons & Dragons: Karlach's Rage
• Secret Lair x Dungeons & Dragons: Death is in the Eyes of the Beholder I
• Secret Lair x Dungeons & Dragons: Death is in the Eyes of the Beholder II

These sets will be available to purchase on the Secret Lair website as well as the D&D Beyond Marketplace. Each one will set you back $29.99 for a Standard Edition or $39.99 for a Foil Edition (the latter of which should be particularly good at capturing the fiery glow of Karlach’s infernal engine).

Predictably, given both games are Wizards of the Coast properties, we’ve seen a number of MTG and D&D crossovers in the past. These range from Secret Lair drops like Saturday Morning D&D and Honor Among Thieves to full blown sets like Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. However, this also isn’t the first time BG3’s band of illithid-infected adventurers have appeared in Magic: The Gathering.

As part of Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate released in 2022, each core party member of Baldur’s Gate 3 featured in their own Legendary Creature card. That said, this was way back when BG3 was still in early access and before most of us had sunk 100s of hours into the game and fully fallen in love with its story and characters.

Two years and one GOTY later, things are different and appetite for this drop will be majorly heightened this time around. However, odds are your thirst for Astarion could remain unquenched.

That’s right — Secret Lair x Dungeons & Dragons will be yet another limited release drop. This approach, as opposed to its print-on-demand alternative, creates artificial scarcity and a prime market for scalpers to swoop in. After last month’s Monty Python Secret Lair was totally sold out within one hour, Magic: The Gathering head designer Mark Rosewater responded to player complaints with a promise to “pass [the] note along” to Wizards of the Coast as a whole. However, it remains to be seen if this feedback will have any effect on future Secret Lair drops.

For something else to play, be sure to check out the best board games and the best card games.

Because there's so much to dig through, I've rounded up everything you need to know about the D&D reveals at Gen Con in digestible, bite-size chunks. That includes info on how the long-awaited 'Project Sigil' will work, what's changed in next year's Monster Manual (the core rulebook we know least about so far), a surprise hit in the 2024 Player's Handbook, and loot details for the revised Dungeon Master's Guide.

Want to know what's new for one of the best tabletop RPGs? Let's dig in.

"Baldur's Gate 3 lives on" in Project Sigil, the new D&D virtual tabletop

• Baldur's Gate 3 characters can be used
• Plug-and-play approach
• Closed beta in the fall

Wizards of the Coast has drawn back the curtain on its upcoming virtual tabletop, codenamed 'Project Sigil.' This is something of a cross between the 3D environments of Baldur's Gate 3 with the functionality of D&D Beyond (interactive character sheets, clickable abilities, that sort of thing). We got a closer look at how it works for both players and Dungeon Masters during the panel, but the biggest takeaway might be that you can use Baldur's Gate 3 characters to continue the party's story.

More specifically, digital miniatures for Astarion and Karlach were shown off in Project Sigil. In fact, it was pitched as a way to go on new adventures with them.

"I think a lot of people are worried about what [Wizards of the Coast]'s going to do with BG3 characters and the story and all this stuff," says game director Kale Stutzman. "What we're trying to do is say, hey, why don't you continue your Baldur's Gate 3 story in here, use the characters however they ended up in your games?"

Naturally, this is just one option. Alongside a plug-and-play system for existing adventures, a lot of emphasis was placed on making your own maps using the built-in editor. Although you can create on a grander scale by putting down forests and creating castles, you can also get granular – like placing individual torches that can actually be turned on and off. In terms of how it works behind the scenes, it feels like the old Diablo map editor or a medieval spin on the Sims; you're able to snap in walls, floors, accessories, and more from a menu along the bottom of the screen.

It's unclear what we'll get for free in Project Sigil and what will be a paid extra, but head of Project Sigil Chris Cao says that you can "easily import existing D&D Beyond maps, characters, and monsters, with built-in rules integration." So at least your D&D content should play nicely together.

We don't have a release date just yet, but you can sign up for a closed beta of Project Sigil that's launching this fall. When the system does eventually come out, it'll be available on PC, mobile, and consoles.

New Monster Manual has fixed a 10-year mistake

• Every old monster has seen changes or additions
• Improved monster 'families' and NPC groups
• New, action-oriented artwork

Next year's Monster Manual is the core rulebook we know least about, but Gen Con started to put that right. During the panel, we got a better look at some of the 500+ monsters featured within and the theme seems to be 'more' – there are more apex monsters, more NPCs, expanded monster families, and stat block improvements across the board. Actually, every single monster from the 2014 MM has been revisited and given something new here.

We've heard about the new high Challenge Rating/CR monsters before (such as the 'Blob of Annihilation,' an ooze that can swallow entire towns), but the expanded NPC roundup is new. Lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford noted that Wizards has "looked at every group of NPCs that we had in the 2014 Monster Manual, and came up with ways to expand [them] so that you also had options in an NPC group that were usable in the larger level range. So you're going to see more mages, more priests, whole new NPC groups. If you ever needed ready-made pirates, we now have a whole section of pirates. If you need a bunch of ready-made performers, we've got you covered, along with many other NPC types. These NPCs have also been organized in with the rest of the monsters. So you can now, along with all of the other critters in the book, with the exception of the common animals, which are hanging out at the back of the book, you can now find all the other statblocks in the book alphabetically."

Monster 'families' have been given a boost too. Before now, Crawford noted that vampires became less and less of a threat as players leveled up… but that's about to change. There are now lower and higher-level vampiric creatures to do battle with, and this isn't an isolated incident.

None of this eclipses the most important and world-shattering change that fixes a long-term injustice a decade in the making, though: housecats finally have darkvision in D&D. 

OK, so I'm kidding about it being a crucial development. But the reason behind the change tickled me. D&D game design architect Chris Perkins takes the blame for that omission in the 2014 MM; it was apparently "because my aunt had a cat and they had to put a nightlight at the top of the stairs, because [it] kept falling down the stairs."

Gamers have fallen in love with a surprising feature in the new Player's Handbook

• The rules glossary has apparently been the most popular PHB feature so far
• Certain class abilities have been nerfed, while others have been buffed
• True Strike has been improved

While there wasn't a lot of content here that we haven't seen before, the Gen Con panel offered a closer look at the changes that have been made since 2014's rulebook – and why those tweaks were made. For example, 2024 D&D Player’s Handbook nerfs one of the best Cleric spells (but that’s actually for the best). To be precise, the Cleric's Spiritual Weapon has been turned into a Concentration spell whereas before it was a bonus action. That means you can't combo it with the likes of Spirit Guardians and slap foes about with impunity, and according to rules lead Jeremy Crawford, this is to aid the flow of combat. 

"We’ve noticed over the last decade and in a lot of our own play tests how many rounds of combat can grind to a halt when you get to the Cleric's turn," he says. "The Cleric takes an action then a bonus action [...] and so we needed to tighten that up."

That kind of streamlining is very much par for the course with these new rulebooks. As an example, the PHB now starts with how to play the game rather than how to make a character – a first for D&D. 

"We are always looking for ways to open more doors into D&D, [and] we felt one of those ways we can do that right here in the game's main rule book is to do a better job of inviting you in right from the start," says Crawford.

Wizards also reminded us of how much 'new' there is in the 2024 PHB; to be precise, 16 of the 48 subclasses are new or redesigned, there are 75 feats, and over 200 of the 375+ spells are new/redesigned. This comes alongside crafting rules, the weapon mastery system that's been advertised for a while now, and info on a rules glossary that the team is apparently very proud of. Crawford noted that "we have had some people who, upon seeing the brand new Player's Handbook, as excited as they were about all the new game features and new rules and new art, came up and said, you know what, I would buy this book just for this rules glossary… this glossary is going to, I think, be the backbone for a lot of groups."

It's not the only thing the team thinks will go down particularly well, though; True Strike has been boosted. Crawford says that it is now "delicious" because "we took it from a sort of buff spell that was almost always a trap to to something that some characters are going to cast round after round after round."

New details on player Bastions and more thematic magic items in the Dungeon Master's Guide

• New, thematic loot tables added for more cohesive treasure
• More info on player strongholds revealed
• Details on tracking sheets for better organization

A lot of emphasis was placed on player Bastions for the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. So long as your DM is ok with it, these allow your character to have a place they can lay low between missions – it's very much like a minigame. 

"In effect, they're like little DMs in the campaign running these sort of microcosm settings in the world that can operate while the other characters are off on adventures," explains creative director Chris Perkins. "So a Bastion is kind of like another resource that characters have to get fun stuff – for their companions, for the party. But it doesn't in any way, shape or form, interfere with what the character is good at. And that is going off on adventures and doing cool stuff."

On the topic of 'cool stuff,' the 2024 DMG will apparently feature many printable sheets to help DMs keep track of everything from NPC details to the names of stores characters can visit. As Perkins notes, "these tracking sheets are not only in the book, but they will also be free to download on D&D Beyond so that people can assemble them and basically make their own campaign journals." When combined with the included lore glossary that gives you the lowdown on major players or locations in the D&D multiverse, organization is  the name of the game. 

Perkins then went on to discuss another first for D&D: a fully-fleshed out setting in the DMG. Players will find the OG world of Greyhawk in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, not to mention five short introductory adventures that demonstrate how to make your own D&D stories. 

"This setting is complete," he says. "It's everything you need to basically just pick it up and play it. But it's also been designed so that it is eminently customizable. We chose Greyhawk for a number of reasons. One, this is [D&D's] 50th anniversary. And Greyhawk was the first published campaign setting. And so [there's] a little bit of nostalgia. but also… one of the things we were struck by was how easy it is to customize. It is actually, in its original incarnation, very bare bones. And that's what we really wanted in this Dungeon Master's Guide – an example of what a campaign setting could be. But one that is not so overwhelming and not so fully fleshed out that a DM can't take it and make it their own."

Finally, another noteworthy change highlighted in the panel was the book's 100+ pages of magic items. This includes loot tables which have been divided into thematically appropriate sections like 'religious artifacts.' Entries in the new Monster Manual will actually point you toward the appropriate DMG loot table, all to create a more cohesive world. 

For recommendations on what to play while you wait, check out our guide to the best D&D books. As for a change of pace, don't miss the best board games.

Sure, it’s fun to have a character that’s so OP they cut through dungeon encounters like a hot knife through butter, but the best tabletop RPGs don’t just offer players an unbridled power fantasy. For the sake of the game’s balance (and your Dungeon Master's sanity), there has to be far more thought put into the limits of what D&D player characters are capable of.

When it comes to magic, the upcoming core rulebooks will re-spec and reimagine almost 400 spells from various Dungeons & Dragons sources like the 2014 PHB, Xanthar’s Guide to Everything, and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Among these, there are some spells like Cure Wounds and Cloud of Daggers that are getting a welcome buff. On the other hand – much to the chagrin of battle Clerics everywhere – Spiritual Weapon is getting cut down a peg or two. But before any salty healer launches their mace through the windows of the Wizards of the Coast office, I think it’s worth hearing the game designers out on why this debuff actually means good things for Clerics and their party members.

According to previous rules for Spiritual Weapon, this second level evocation can be cast as a bonus action and lasts for a minute or until recast. It creates a floating, spectral weapon which you can use to make a melee spell attack on a creature within 5ft of it. Provided you land the hit, your spooky ghost weapon deals out force damage equal to 1d8 + your spellcasting modifier. You can then use your bonus action in subsequent turns to move the weapon or strike again. Given that even all but the most battle-hardened Clerics tend to be a little on the weedier side, Spiritual Weapon is one of the most viable ways to dish out damage to your opponents. It can even be upcast to provide an extra 1d8 for every two slots above the 2nd level. Beyond the quality of damage, you also have the opportunity to deal an impressive quantity. Given that one minute equates to 10 rounds of combat, you can go for the attack with your spiritual weapon up to 10 times before having to recast it. Let me remind you again, this is done as a bonus action, so you can be bonking foes with your phantom hammer while dashing around the battlefield or healing your party members.

2024’s Spiritual Weapon differs in one crucial way: it’s now a Concentration spell. So, instead of defaulting to a minute’s duration, your weapon will poof out of existence if you fail the requisite check or cast another spell that requires your concentration. This slightly limits your ability to juggle other spells on your turn. For example, under these new rules, Spirit Guardians (another must-have spell for a killer Cleric) can’t be used in tandem with your Spirit Weapon to maximize your damage output.

You may be thinking, “Do the team at Wizards hate Clerics? Are they deliberately trying to squash my dreams of becoming the ultimate war priest?” Nope. As explained at a recent Q&A at GenCon, Spiritual Weapon was simply too good for its own good – so much so that it was actively disrupting the pacing of combat. Jeremy Crawford, Dungeons & Dragons’ Lead Rules Designer describes how “one of our biggest concerns is things that bog down play. We’ve noticed over the last decade and in a lot of our own play tests how many rounds of combat can grind to a halt when you get to the Cleric's turn. The Cleric takes an action then a bonus action [...] and so we needed to tighten that up.”

Even OG Spiritual Weapon’s most devout defenders have to admit that doing two extra dice rolls in your bonus action for 10 rounds seriously adds up. So, to prevent your fellow adventurers scrolling on their phone while they wait for you to finish, you might just be in your best interest to accept that the previous magical mainstay of your aggro Cleric build is just a tad more delicate now.

To start diving into these and other changes made in the 2024 Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, you can pre-order it now on Amazon for $49.99. It’ll release September 17, so be sure to book in session zero for your next campaign shortly after that.

This isn't the only big announcement coming out of Gen Con 2024; as it happens, you can use Baldur's Gate 3 characters in new D&D virtual tabletop to continue the party's story. As for recommendations on what adventure to try next, don't miss the best D&D books.