Upgrading Commander Precon - Animated Army (Bello, Bard of the Brambles)

Bloomburrow is here! This set introduced us to a plane that only has nonhuman creatures; even if a Human stepped into this plane, they would become a cute furry thing! There are Squirrels, Birds, Rabbits, and much more, but today we'll discuss a Raccoon!

Out of the 4 new Commander precons, we decided to show you how to upgrade Animated Army, which includes the Unnatural strategy, that is, artifacts and enchantments, and is commanded by Bello, Bard of the Brambles. Without further ado, let's see the list!

You won't often see many Gruul decks centered around enchantments and/or artifacts, but Animated Army surprised all of us with an innovative game plan for these colors. There are already many great cards in the original list, like Greater Good, Unnatural Growth, Kodama of the East Tree, and Ghalta, Primal Hunger.

Your commander options are the Raccoon, Bello, Bard of the Brambles, and the Elemental Wolf, Wildsear, Scouring Maw. This time, we decided to use Bello in our commander zone because he costs less mana and has a great effect: each non-equipment artifact and non-aura enchantment you control with mana value 4 or greater is a 4/4 Elemental creature in addition to its other types, has indestructible, haste, and draws you a card when they deal combat damage to a player.

Bello combines aggression with consistency, as well as the comfort of knowing your cards will be saved after combat. That's its main mechanic.

Wildsear, Scouring Maw is also incredibly strong. After all, giving cascade to every enchantment you cast from your hand is nothing to scoff at. However, as it costs more and doesn't interact with artifacts as well, we decided to only use it as one of the other 99 cards in our deck. At the end of this article, as usual, we'll show you a list with Wildsear as the commander entirely dedicated to it to show you it can also shine in the right build.

Cards We Removed

To be honest, the original list has an incredible game plan, but it doesn't execute it all that well. Many cards included don't really make sense and take up necessary slots, so we removed them and cleared some space to add new, better cards for our upgraded. Among them, we removed bad removals, like Starstorm, and creatures that don't impact the game all that much, like Grumgully, the Generous, as they were in our way.

Some of these cards even look good, like Rampaging Baloths, Evercoat Ursine, or Grothama, All-Devouring, but were thrown carelessly into this list and don't actually make sense. They might be great cards, but, for our Unnatural strategy - that is, artifacts and enchantments - they don't really help as much as they should. The original list also had 38 lands, which we brought down to 35 by removing 2 basic forests and Mossfire Valley.

Ramp and Answers

As Bello only turns artifacts and enchantments into 4/4 Elementals if they cost 4 or more, we decided to add a good amount of ramp to get our game going. The original list already had great mana rocks, like Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Fellwar Stone, Gruul Signet, Talisman of Impulse, Thought Vessel, and Mind Stone - pretty obviously because of Bello's ability.

However, even though we already have all of these mana rocks, we added more ramp to guarantee mana won't be an issue for us for once and for all. We added Three Visits, Nature's Lore, and Kodama's Reach to go with Rampant Growth, Cultivate, and Farseek, which were already in the deck.

Furthermore, we brought some mana dorks that make a lot of sense in this build. For instance, Fanatic of Rhonas, considering we'll have many 4/4 creatures, will give us 4 mana more with its Ferocious ability. Sanctum Weaver, in turn, will probably give us a lot of mana, as we have 22 enchantments in total.

Finally, we have Goblin Anarchomancer, a great tool to discount costs in any Gruul deck.

We also added a few more answers, as we removed others when we were opening some space. Our creatures will be indestructible on our turn because of Bello, but that doesn't mean our opponents won't try to deal with our enchantments and artifacts on their turn.

So, we added Heroic Intervention. Chain Reaction is another great removal, and works almost the same as Blasphemous Act as a global removal.

New Enchantments

Even though Bello interacts with artifacts and enchantments, we only added more enchantments to this upgraded list. It's not a terrible decision, though, considering the aforementioned Sanctum Weaver and Wildsear, Scouring Maw. We added multiple types of enchantments, and they're all essential for our strategy to work.

For card draw, we added Eidolon of Blossoms, which gives more consistency to this deck with its Constellation effect. Guardian Project's effect, in turn, will be even better in this list because it interacts with Bello's ability. This means, if you play Guardian Project with Bello on your board, you'll have 48 chances of drawing cards.

Fortunately, we have cards like Reliquary Tower and Thought Vessel to handle all this card draw and the cards Bello will draw us with our Elementals.

We also added a few options that make our strategy even more aggressive. We already had great aggressive enchantments, like Unnatural Aggression and Berserkers' Onslaught, which buff our creatures and thus let us deal more damage and draw us cards with Bello again. So, to complement them, we added: Gruul War Chant (because of its buff and Menace), Sight of the Scalelords (to buff our Elementals and also give them Vigilance), City on Fire (to triple every damage we deal), and Glorious Sunrise, because of its many effects, namely evasion, mana, card draw or lifegain.

All of these enchantments will become creatures with Bello, as they cost 4 or more mana. Plus, Sight of the Scalelords and Glorious Sunrise can trigger their own abilities if this beloved Raccoon is on the board. It is interesting to bring "self-sufficient" cards to this build, as this way we won't have to rely on third-party effects besides our own commander.

Obviously, we also had to add even more recursion. Thanks to how much ramp this list has now, Case of the Locked Hothouse is quite viable in this build. You can easily solve it, and, when you do, it will extend your hand and let you cast creatures and enchantments straight from your deck. It also lets you play more lands and costs 4.

Nature's Will will bring you some safety, as it taps all the lands a player controls if you dealt combat damage to them with your creatures. It will also set up nice second main phases for you, as your lands will be untapped and your opponent's lands will be tapped. Finally, we have Asceticism to protect your creatures even more with hexproof, besides the indestructible that Bello will give them. It also lets you regenerate a target creature if you need to.

This is our upgraded list! Now we have 22 enchantments (if you consider the two enchantment creatures) and 13 artifacts (if you consider Burnished Hart). In total, you'll be able to turn 38 permanents into 4/4 Elementals with Bello and destroy your opponents!

We changed 17 cards in all, which is a lot compared to our other upgraded lists. The original deck simply had too many weird, senseless cards, and now, with our upgrades, we have more synergy, more consistency, and the best Gruul can offer: aggression!

Alternative List with Wildsear, Scouring Maw

As usual, we'll also show you an alternative list with Wildsear, Scouring Maw as the commander. This list includes 36 enchantments to interact with this commander, and several cards that interact with cascade: Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald, Wild-Magic Sorcerer, Passionate Archaeologist, and Delayed Blast Fireball, for instance, besides many cards with Constellation.

This deck focuses a lot more on enchantments, unlike Bello, but is just as efficient.

I was quite surprised when I saw how many "random" cards were in the original list, and quite disappointed, as WotC could have filled these slots with anything else and it would have been better. The upside, however, is that this meant we had a lot more space to add our upgrades, and this one, in particular, greatly improved this deck's overall strategy. It is a lot more fun and powerful now!

Did you like this list? Do you prefer another commander? Could we have added any other card? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below!

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!