Many, many years ago, I graduated from university with a Zoology degree. Among my favourite animals are mustelids. For those who are not familiar with this term, it is a family of small carnivorous mammals. It includes weasels, otters, badgers. minks and the fearsome wolverines. Thanks for the lesson, you say, but what does this have to do with Magic, you then ask? Good question, until Bloomburrow previews started, it meant little. But that looks to be about to change.

Previews have just started but we have already seen 11 cards that are related to mustelids. More than half are otters and they are nearly all Wizards. The other creatures are a weasel and a mean-looking badger.

Is there enough to build a deck centered around mustelids? At this point, I’m going to say no unless you ready to go straight into jank territory. Or is there?

These eight creature cards are supported by three additional cards that have good synergy. First up is a sorcery spell, Pearl of Wisdom, that will draw us some cards. Perhaps more interesting is Ral, Crackling Wit. Yes, the Planeswalker from Ravnica appears to have landed in Bloomburrow as an otter.

Finally, the new land Three Tree City, is definitely an auto-include in any typal deck. Unfortunately, its effectiveness is blunted by the fact that the creatures above are not of a single type. Why did Wizards not go as far as assign all of them the mustelid type? I expect we will never know the answer to this question. Three Tree City will still help with Otters but the fact that it’s legendary will prevent using a second to name a second creature type in the same deck.

Looking through these cards, an Izzet build might be possible. Eight cards fit into the deck and could work well enough together to put up a fun deck if nothing else. And let’s not forget that previews are not over yet.

The synergy across these cards lies with Prowess and casting noncreature spells. Ral, Crackling Wit creates counters with Prowess and gains a loyalty counter. Bria, Riptide Rogue and Stormcatch Mentor both have Prowess. And for those creatures that don’t, Bria kindly shares her ability with them. Tempest Angler and Coruscation Mage both also have abilities that trigger when a noncreature spell is cast. Alania, Divergent Storm, also fits into the deck but the random effect can give you a nice upside just as easily as give you nothing or worse give your opponent a card with nothing in return.

Pearl of Wisdom will help keep your hand full of cards, hopefully many being noncreature spells. And given that most of these are Otters, the deck will certainly have a Three Tree City or two in it as well.

Lastly, there are a couple of Otters in the Wilds of Eldraine set. Both could be worthy additions to the deck as well. For the record, there are two other older mustelid cards that will be Standard legal after the release of Bloomburrow but they are both Green. Maybe a Temur build is the way to go, especially as it also allows us to add Hugs, Grisly Guardian, a fearsome looking badger.

Other colour combinations do not appear to have the same number of supporting cards. At this point at least, it looks like the Mustelid typal deck will need to be Izzet or Temur with little other choice otherwise.

I’ll keep an eye on further previews to see how much closer we can get to a functional and hopefully half decent Mustelid deck.