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First introduced in Throne of Eldraine, Food tokens have gone on to become one ofMagic: The Gathering’smost popular artifacts. They synergise well with other artifacts, give you lifegain, and can be used in all sorts of other ways.
One such way is foraging. Foraging debuted in 2024’s Bloomburrow, and gives Food token decks another way to put their treats to use, provided you’re willing to make a few sacrifices.
What Is Forage?
Foraging is keyword that relies on you having either a large graveyard, or Food to play with. The word “forage” itself is shorthand for a cost: eitherexiling three cards from your graveyard, or sacrificing a Food permanent.
Unlike other additional cost mechanics, like kicker or offspring, foragingalways meanseither three cards exiled from your graveyard, or one Food permanent.
This keyword is pretty straight forward, but there is one big way you can be tripped up on it: you don’t have to sacrifice a Foodtoken, just a Foodpermanent. Though they’re rare, nontoken permanents that are Food have become more recent since its debut, with cards like Gingerbrute, Carrot Cake, and Krovod Haunch all being Food you can sacrifice to a forage cost.
As forage is a keyword, you must be specifically instructed to forage. If you exile cards or sacrifice Food for other reasons – like cracking a Food to gain life or using a mechanic like escape –that doesn’t count as foraging, and you haven’t paid the forage cost.
How To Use Forage
Food has become one of the most popular artifact types, with entire decks built around making, sacrificing, and using Food in interesting ways. Forage is just another tool in that toolbox, and so anybodyrunning commanderslikeFrodo, Adventurous Hobbit and Sam, Loyal Attendant, orGyome, Master Chefwill likely find useful abilities with foraging.
Though Food tokens are incredibly easy to make, and nontoken Food comes cheap too, try not to completely disregard exiling cards from your graveyard. This is anti-synergy with mechanics like threshold, butmidrange and self-mill decks with large graveyards anywaywill be happy to throw a few of them away.
Exiling cards to pay for forage counts as those cardsleaving your graveyard, making this an especially good mechanic for Syr Konrad, the Grim or Murktide Regent decks.
Green and black decks are going to make the most use of foraging. Not only are they the two colours most associated with Food in general, in Bloomburrow the mechanic is the basis for the black/green Squirrel archetype.
The Best Forage Cards
Most cards with forage are related to the Bloomburrow Squirrel archetype. There’s cards that eitherenable you foraging, orreward you when you do.
To forage multiple times per turn,Camellia, the Seedmiser’sability doesn’t require tapping, and even gives you additional Squirrel tokens as a reward. WithYgra, Eater of Allout in play too, this gives you an easy source of Food and +1/+1 counters.
Tokens hit the graveyard when they are sacrificed, and then are immediately exiled, so Ygra will get two +1/+1 counters each time you sacrifice one of Camellia’s Squirrel tokens. Throw in an Ashnod’s Altar to make this an infinite combo.
Perhaps the easiest way to forage isThornvault Forager. Just by tapping and foraging, you make two mana of any colours you want. It’s a good mana dork, but it’s better when you also use something likeCorpseberry Cultivatorto forage an extra time each turn and put +1/+1 counters on it as you do.
