Legendary Creature Showcase - The Jolly Balloon Man

Posted on September 27, 2024

Everyone likes clowns, right?

Duskmourn is finally here, and this set looks awesome! The cards are strong, the art is terrifying and evocative, and the accompanying story was one of the best we've had in years. One card that caught my attention early on in spoiler season was The Jolly Balloon Man, a nightmarish clown with a hobby of turning heads into balloons. Aside from having horrifying art by Campbell White, the card itself is interesting and flexible, so today I want to break the card down as a commander and offer some suggestions for great cards in the 99.

To find the best cards for the deck, let's read The Jolly Balloon Man to figure out what it wants to do. JBM, as I'm going to call him, is a 1/4 for 3 mana with haste that, if you pay a generic mana, can tap to create a token copy of creature you control with power and toughness 1/1, flying, and haste. At the beginning of your end step sacrifice that token and activate this ability only as a sorcery. The low mana cost and haste is very nice, as you can activate its ability right away if you have a good target. Its activated ability costing mana and being limited to sorcery speed limits its combo potential compared to something like Kiki-Jiki, but I think that makes it a much less scary card that won't necessarily need to die on-sight.

The upside over similar cards is that it can copy any creature you control, meaning that you can copy legendary creatures to get enters and death triggers even if the token immediately dies to the legend rule. Shrinking the tokens down to 1/1's may seem like a downside at first, but this allows the deck to take advantage of cards that care about low power or toughness, and the flying means you can run cards that care about combat damage thanks to the added evasion. Finally, unlike other temporary copy effects like myriad, you sacrifice the tokens on your end step rather than exiling them, letting you take advantage of death triggers without needing to find other ways to sacrifice them.

With all these considerations in mind, let's start by mentioning some of the best cards to make copies of with our clown friend. JBM's ability lends itself well to a blink-style deck, so let's add in some blink staples. Spirited Companion, Wall of Omens, and Circuit Mender provide card advantage; Solemn Simulacrum, Knight of the White Orchid, and Scampering Surveyor can grab extra lands; and for removal we can run Palace Jailer, Loran of the Third Path, and Skyclave Apparition. There are also multiple cards that can win us the game by dealing a bunch of damage or creating bodies when they enter or die, with my personal favorites being Chancellor of the Forge, Combustible Gearhulk, and Sanguine Evangelist.

With the copy targets out of the way, here are my suggestions for some support cards that, while maybe not being the best copy targets themselves, will help maximize the value we get from each balloon. Delney, Streetwise Lookout is an absolute all-star, making our balloon copies harder to block and doubling all triggered abilities as long as the balloons don't get too big. This means that we get double enters triggers, double attack or combat damage triggers, and double death triggers and every balloon we make. If you have room in the budget, token multipliers can help achieve a similar effect, like Anointed Procession, Mondrak, Glory Dominus, and Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation. Populate effects like Nesting Dovehawk and Song of the Worldsoul will also let us make additional copies of our balloons, and because those tokens are made separate from JBM's ability, we won't necessarily need to sacrifice them on our end step.

Since we are hoping to make tokens every turn, Caretaker's Talent can let us draw cards and eventually buff our tokens, Warleader's Call buffs our tokens while burning out our opponents, and Nahiri's Resolve can blink out all of our creatures to dodge wraths and reuse enters triggers. The last few support cards can give us extra ways to use our balloons before they get sacrificed on our end step, with Ashnod's Altar making mana, Industrial Advancement cheating creatures into play from our deck, and Broadside Bombardiers burning creatures and opponents. The Bombardiers are especially potent, as the balloon copies will keep the original creature's mana value for use with the boast ability.

Finally, if you want to power the deck up to compete at stronger tables, let's talk about a combo you can run to end the game in one fell swoop. While JBM's limitations can make it harder to go infinite, as mentioned before, it isn't impossible. To win the game in one infinite attack, all you need is JBM, Village Bell-Ringer and any creature that produces mana. If you have a mana dork on board, simply tap it to pay for JBM's ability to make a copy of Village Bell-Ringer, which will untap both creatures so that you can repeat this process. This will create infinite flying Bell-Ringers with haste, which can swing for the win.

The combo is a bit less consistent than the simple Kiki-Conscripts combo, as it requires an additional piece, but JBM's haste means you can combo off even if you only have the mana dork in play. You can also play redundant mana dorks, like Ornithopter of Paradise, Iron or Leaden Myr, or even Hedron Crawler, and even if you aren't comboing off with them they can still ramp you into bigger plays on their own.