Believe it or not, Bloomburrow could have looked a LOT different.
As revealed in early August 2024 at GenCon, Bloomburrow could have taken a lot of odd paths and could have been something completely different. It is known that they wanted an all-animal plane, even from when it was codenamed "Rugby." But how different a world could it have been? Let's take a look at what they revealed.
Early on in vision design, the first step of creating a new set or expansion, the team was going through a lot different ideas. So what Bloomburrow could have been was, well this:
That is a solarpunk village, and they even got some concept art done of what a village could look like until they ruled it as not being cozy. Another, which they didn't do any art for, was an idea where humans went extinct and animals took over human areas, but this was thrown out as the focus and questions would still be on what happened to the humans. Plus, it really didn't fit in with Magic: The Gathering. The team also had to go through many degrees on how the characters would look, opting for a more animalistic design.
Next up was realism. More concept art revealed that Magic was next working on sort of a proof of concept for calamity beasts, making them more of a sizeable threat. The animal characters, meanwhile, had more human technology on them with metal swords and armor. They also didn't want animal folk fighting animal folk as much.
So visuals were refined even more, putting more and more of a naturalistic spin on them. You still had weasels fighting bats with swords against magic, but everything looked like it could have been plucked out of nature. Or as the team put it, trying to get that 1980s action-adventure vibe.
Well, except the goggles on the mouse.
That pushed them into the pastoral, communal cottagecore angle, as it was testing very well. Even in the late stages, concept art was still off to where it finally landed, with animal sizes still not being finalized and additions we never saw realized such as a fox archer and a bird carrying a way-too-large bag.
Once that was mostly nailed down, concept art still wasn't over with. They had 15 animal types on the roster, but needed to pare it down, ultimately removing many outside of cameo roles, like foxes, weasels, and badgers.
During the first take on them, some they nailed immediately. Weasels and squirrels who vibe was unchanged. But for things like badgers, it looks a lot different.
Final concept art finally figured everything out. From sizes, to designs to even what was worn and wielded.
This also included what older ones would look like.
And younger ones.
They even got into details on how the species would be represented in their clothing. For example, the developers revealed that a frog face and raccoon face could be seen on their clothing, as seen in the concept art:
Like with any Magic: The Gathering set or expansion, a lot of work and rounds of concepts went into the world. And it could have been a lot different.
All concept art courtesy of Wizards of the Coast.
