Over the past few weeks, I've found myself going through the various Bloomburrow Commander preconstructed decks to talk about upgrades. As I've done so, there's one thing I keep realizing in that almost none of these decks is anything like what you'd expect it to be. The main set of Bloomburrow is very kindred/typal based, focusing on interactions within a specific creature type. This only really translates to one of the decks and even then barely at all. As a result, this leaves the other decks playing in some unexpected spaces.

Take the Animated Army deck with Bello, Bard of the Brambles helming it, for instance.

When you see a deck helmed by a raccoon, you'd think that the deck itself is themed around raccoons, right? Well, while there's definitely a reasonable amount of raccoons in the list itself, the majority of the deck is actually focused on playing out large noncreature permanents instead! This is because rather than utilizing the expend mechanic or building up raccoons as a creature type, it instead turns your expensive artifacts and enchantments into creatures that are hard for your opponents to deal with.

This makes Bello an interesting fellow for a commander as a result. The card itself provides an interesting build-around, but one that's so straightforward it almost begs the question of whether it's actually building around it or just shoving a bunch of good stuff into a deck. Sure, it makes your non-creatures into a bunch of 4/4s, but it doesn't provide you a means to do anything with them. Let's take a look at the deck and see if it has decent ways to do this.

Animated Army Precon | Commander

• Commander (1)
• 1 Bello, Bard of the Brambles

• Creatures (21)
• 1 Brightcap Badger
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Etali, Primal Storm
• 1 Evercoat Ursine
• 1 Garruk's Packleader
• 1 Ghalta, Primal Hunger
• 1 Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma
• 1 Grothama, All-Devouring
• 1 Grumgully, the Generous
• 1 Kodama of the East Tree
• 1 Llanowar Loamspeaker
• 1 Lotus Cobra
• 1 Prosperous Bandit
• 1 Pyreswipe Hawk
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Teapot Slinger
• 1 Tendershoot Dryad
• 1 Trailtracker Scout
• 1 Wandertale Mentor
• 1 Wildsear, Scouring Maw

• Instants (5)
• 1 Abrade
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Big Score
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Starstorm

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 Blasphemous Act
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Decimate
• 1 Explore
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Harmonize
• 1 Rampant Growth

• Enchantments (13)
• 1 Alchemist's Talent
• 1 Berserkers' Onslaught
• 1 Garruk's Uprising
• 1 Gratuitous Violence
• 1 Greater Good
• 1 Outpost Siege
• 1 Path of Discovery
• 1 Primeval Bounty
• 1 Rain of Riches
• 1 Sunbird's Invocation
• 1 Thickest in the Thicket
• 1 Unnatural Growth
• 1 Warstorm Surge

• Artifacts (14)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Bootleggers' Stash
• 1 Esika's Chariot
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Gruul Signet
• 1 Hedron Archive
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Rolling Hamsphere
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Spine of Ish Sah
• 1 Talisman of Impulse
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Thran Dynamo

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Domri, Anarch of Bolas

• Lands (38)
• 8 Mountain
• 10 Forest
• 1 Cinder Glade
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Copperline Gorge
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Forgotten Cave
• 1 Game Trail
• 1 Gruul Turf
• 1 Karplusan Forest
• 1 Mossfire Valley
• 1 Mosswort Bridge
• 1 Path of Ancestry
• 1 Raging Ravine
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Sheltered Thicket
• 1 Temple of Abandon
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Tranquil Thicket
• 1 Wooded Ridgeline

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As it happens, this deck does have a handful of solid ways to make use of the fact that all your noncreatures are becoming creatures. The main ones I can tell here are cards like Garruk's Packleader (as well as the similar Garruk's Uprising) and Grumgully, the Generous. Both see your artifacts and enchantments enter as large creatures and give additional effects based on this. Additionally, Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma will pump them all up and the high power of your easy to cast permanents makes playing Ghalta, Primal Hunger a breeze.

The majority of cards in your deck, however, don't really have any direct synergy. Instead, they provide ways of making your creatures dish out more damage. Think cards like Gratuitous Violence and Berserkers' Onslaught, as well as Unnatural Growth making each of your creatures actually larger and not simply doubling their damage output. Beyond this, however, there's not a ton of ways to make use of these creatures. Given that, are there any other ways to make use of Bello's ability to make big artifacts and enchantments come in as big creatures?

One of the more key ones that comes quickly to mind for me is vehicles. The precon itself only has one in it: Esika's Chariot. This card is excellent in the way that it automatically comes into play always turned on as a creature if you have Bello on the board, meaning you can attack with both the Chariot and the tokens it makes. The problem, though, is you have to find a vehicle that will actually work for you with a decent effect, so while Esika's Chariot performs well in this regard, many others do not.

Currently there are only 40 vehicles that have a mana value of four or greater. That's important to note because it means that you can't take advantage of something like a Smuggler's Copter here, limiting your options. The fact that Bello turns them into 4/4s also makes many of them hard to use in a meaningful way. Consider something like Aradara Express, which can be a massive power swing if turned online by normal means. Here, though, it's little more than a 4/4 French vanilla beater, something that's not as worth trying to make use of.

Thankfully, there are a fairly decent number of options for vehicles with reasonable amounts of utility. Hoard Hauler, Nautiloid Ship, and Smuggler's Buggy are all awesome ways of getting incremental value out of your creatures - some of which can prove deadly! Hoard Hauler can ramp you exponentially and the Nautiloid Ship lets you cast your opponents' spells to use against them. Not a bad deal! Weatherlight isn't a bad option either when you're utilizing lots of artifacts and legendary creatures, and Skysovereign, Consul Flagship dishes out tons of damage. All of these get better given the fact that Bello gives each of them haste, ensuring you can get in for substantial hits right when they hit the battlefield.

I also think that some additional considerations should be made for WIldsear, Scouring Maw given its status as the backup commander in the deck. You're not using a lot of high cost artifacts, as most of your key artifacts are small mana rocks to enable you to get your big stuff down as quickly as possible. Given this, are there any additional enchantments that are worth adding in, big or small? Well, yes - especially given how they've been a part of Magic for over two decades more than vehicles.

Here, there's a whopping 249 options to work with as far as non-creature, non-aura enchantments that cost four or more mana go. That means there's no shortage of options that you can take advantage of. Here's a small list of reasonable options for you to utilize:

• Aether Flash - Nonbo with your small token generators, but does nothing to your big artifacts/enchantments with Bello on board while hindering opponents.
• Asceticism - Good protection for your creatures, both ones animated by Bello and ones not.
• Case of the Locked Hothouse - Allows you to play a number of cards from the top of your deck as well as giving you an opportunity to ramp a little.
• City on Fire, Dictate of the Twin Gods, Fiery Emancipation, Furnace of Rath - Each heavily increases the damage output of your creatures.
• Epic Struggle - Gives you an alternate win condition as well as a solid beater.
• Guardian Project - Draws you tons of cards.
• Gruul War Chant - Provides additional power and evasion to your board.
• Honden of Life's Web - Makes small creatures to help during opponents' turns.
• Mana Reflection - Double your mana while bringing the beats.

Additionally, while the focus is definitely on playing big permanents since they're what gets the boon, you should probably consider adding in a few smaller options too. Beastmaster's Ascension quickly comes to mind here, as it rapidly makes your already large creatures monstrous and that much harder to deal with. You're also stuffing your deck full of enchantments, so including something like Enchantress' Presence can provide you with an opportunity to draw more cards, even if it can't animate itself.

With a lot of the ways to add to the deck out of the way, let's talk about something I don't usually touch on as much with these upgrades: cards that can be removed. Looking through this deck, I can't help but feel like there's a handful of inclusions that make for cool cards and designs in their own right, but just feel out of place here. One example that stood out to me here was Evercoat Ursine, a cool card that feels a little weird in this deck. Yes, it can provide you with a nice way of getting out big cards cheaply, but it's not doing a ton on its own and once you get your two spells, it's just a big dumb creature. I also feel like Teapot Slinger is a cool card with solid synergy in benefitting from you casting big spells, but the damage output is largely minimal for most games.

I also find that I'm not a particularly huge fan of the treasures package that's in the precon. That's not to say that treasures aren't good to have access to, but more that the deck doesn't make enough of them to take advantage of some of the cards. Prosperous Bandit getting to make some tokens and Bootleggers' Stash being a treasure maker that also turns into a big creature off Bello? Those are great. However, with only five cards in the entire deck that make treasures, it limits the utility of something like Alchemist's Talent and Rain of Riches. Either make way for more treasure generators or else it's likely best that you should remove these in favor of some of the other cards previously mentioned above.

Compared to many of the decks I've worked on providing upgrade suggestions for in the past, this one definitely feels a lot narrower than most. However, it feels very much like the sort of deck that you can build upon over time as new effects and both big vehicles and enchantments come out for you to make good use out of. No matter how you build it, though, this is the kind of deck that can both provide some excellent gameplay out of the box or with a few easy upgrades. Make it how you want and have a killer time at your next Commander night!

Paige Smith

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