Animated Army Bloomburrow Commander Precon Upgrade Guide

With so many great commander options are being printed these days, the biggest challenge for a new precon deck is to stand out. Newer players want a strong identity to latch onto and guide their early card choices, while veterans want unique themes that let them approach deckbuilding and gameplay with fresh eyes.

The Bloomburrow Commander decks answer this call by transforming classic commander archetypes, just as the plane transforms human visitors into furry critters. Animated Army is sort-of recognizable as an Enchantress deck, trying to stack up non-creature permanents and snowball to victory. 

But the resemblance ends there: there’s more leeway to mix artifacts and enchantments together, and a focus on playing cards from exile that ties in well with cards from recent sets. It’s an intoxicating blend of old and new, familiar and mysterious. Read on for a full precon guide and discover why one raccoon’s trash could be ANYONE’S treasure!

MEET THE COMMANDERS

Bello was the first card I saw previewed from Bloomburrow Commander, and the card which made me ask for this deck to review. I have always loved building Enchantress decks, both in Commander and 60 card formats, but sometimes it feels hard to avoid returning to the same stock cards and combos I’ve used in every other build. What’s great about Bello’s design is how it flips the usual deckbuilding logic of these strategies on their head, while providing excellent benefits to justify the extra trouble!

Decks that focus heavily around enchantments – or artifacts, for that matter – are typically trying to play lots of those permanents very cheaply, since a lot of mechanics care about how many you cast or the number you control. The actual effects of the permanents are almost secondary, since you just need to reach a critical mass where some haymaker spell like Destiny Spinner or Hallowed Haunting can finish the game.

But with Bello putting a stripey paw on the scale, we are much more inclined to look at spells with higher mana value and meaningful effects! Simultaneously, we’re less concerned about finding ways to draw cards or kill our opponents; so long as Bello’s about, we have the freedom to just stack up fun and impactful permanents until our opponents are ground down by indestructible attackers..

Bello may only have the one ability, but it’s a mighty one – and deeper than you’d expect, with plenty of fun niche tech to be developed around the types and keywords it can grant. The stock decklist gets into a few of these, and we will be sure to spotlight a few more in our quick upgrade guide!

Even if I already love the look of Bello, I think these precon decks are always better off when there’s a serious alternative choice for commander. And Wildsear, Scouring Maw is about as serious as you can get – if you only looked at the online buzz for the previews, you might have thought this was going to be the primary commander of the deck!

Equally as solid stat-wise as Bello, and only coming down a turn or so later with green’s natural ramp, Wildsear’s ability rewards similar card choices to Bello’s, although without the dual-support for artifacts.. This lets you swap between them with the stock Animated Army decklist and have two equally ideal for figuring out which direction you’d prefer to take your upgrades.

NEW TECH REVIEW

Even if I’m excited about playing the precon as-built, it’s always important that these reviews consider the perspective of players who don’t need a whole new deck – but who could definitely be in the market for some powerful new spells if the synergy is right! For their sake, let’s quickly go through the most obviously powerful and interesting new printings from the Animated Army precon.

Alchemist’s Talent

There might come a day when new Treasure synergies won’t automatically be the headline for a precon deck, but we still don’t have nearly enough of them to be complacent about this new addition. Alchemist’s Talent may not stack fully with Goldspan Dragon but it’s a great backup piece that works with anything else in this powerful, popular theme – and better yet, it can do quite a lot of work on its own.

Brightcap Badger

Cards which can generate mana from creatures at scale are just as valuable as Treasure synergies, and even more scarce. Again, no mode of playing this card is truly “cheap” by competitive standards, but it is at least flexible and pays for itself quickly. Also a welcome addition for adventure-themed decks!

Evercoat Ursine

DON’T SLEEP ON THIS CARD. 

That’s not just a hibernation joke! Hideaway is both card selection AND a free-cast of any spell you selected regardless of type or mana cost! This kind of trigger has never appeared on a creature before, and with good reason. Flickering and cloning can turn Evercoat Ursine into an absolute value feast, limited only by the need to go through the combat phase to access the hidden spells.

Prosperous Bandit

This card is much more straightforward than Alchemist’s Talent, but it’s still an efficient source of (reusable, scaling) treasure generation, and that is always worth keeping an eye on. Combining “treasurelink” with first strike makes this a top-class option in the ever growing arsenal of red War Economy decks.

Thickest in the Thicket

I find the design here a little inelegant – but like the mammalian muscle on display in the art, its brute effectiveness is hard to deny. Green’s ramp lets it consider a five-mana “bridge spell” that would be too slow on a normal curve. Two cards a turn is probably enough to keep you fueled the rest of the game, if you can keep triggering it. 

This looks like a standout for low-to-mid power casual decks: the kind which probably aren’t giving a ton of slots to other draw spells, and are more likely to play long games with big chunky creatures sitting around.

$50 Upgrade Guide

Normally I start this section by looking for cards we can safely cut from the stock decklist without undermining its core identity and gameplan. That way we know both how many slots we have to fill, and roughly what kind of effects the deck still needs. 

But there’s a first time for everything! Animated Army can utilize an impressive number of different synergies, but so long as we’re turning on Bello’s ability the deck really doesn’t need any specific effects beyond the usual fundamentals of card draw, mana ramp, and interaction. This gives us unprecedented freedom to add and remove cards however we wish, so long as we end up with a reasonable curve!

So, just this once I’m going to figure out my list of additions first. Then I’ll cut my least favorite cards from the stock list until the new cards fit.

ADDITIONS:

I know I identified Bello as an “enchantress” commander, but a lot of artifacts are also excellent in this deck – especially vehicles. Bello animates all of them as 4/4s with no need to crew, and unlike regular artifacts they will often have useful combat abilities!

I’m going with Golden Argosy, Hoard Hauler, Magmatic Galleon, Nautiloid Ship and Thunderhawk Gunship for their combination of efficient cost and strong utility. The Gunship is particularly good since it spits out creature tokens on top of granting our team much-needed evasion. The Animated Army is only animated on our own turn (and only while we control Bello) so token producers like this give us some bodies to use on defense even while our focus is squarely offensive.

Speaking of making tokens, one very fun way to wring some value from Bello’s ability is to start making copies of the artifacts and enchantments you’re playing! They don’t count as creature cards in hand or library or creature spells on the stack – but they do enter the battlefield as creatures. So the little family of Flameshadow Conjuring, Molten Echoes, Mirror March, Mirrorworks, Echoing Assault and Dual Nature are a very effective way to make some (temporarily creature) token copies of very powerful artifacts and enchantments. 

Most of these cards will even trigger off themselves entering so long as Bello is already in play, leading to multiplicative triggers once you start to combine more than one such effect. I’ll top this package off with Life Finds a Way, a reusable populate trigger which can turn those temporary copy tokens into permanent ones!

My final additions are aimed at enhancing and expanding those fundamental gameplay components – ramp, draw, and interaction. Ilysian Caryatid and Whisperer of the Wilds make efficient use of our random 4/4s to eke out extra early mana over other two-mana options. 

Nevinyrral’s Disk is a nice panic button we can hit that won’t even blow up our cards if activated during our turn! Lastly, Stimulus Package, Court of Embereth and Loot Dispute add to our strong treasure subtheme while also building to interesting options: on-demand chump blocks, the Monarchy and the Initiative, respectively. Aetherworks Marvel may not say the word “treasure” in its text, but the synergy is still undeniable – and a deck like ours full of expensive high-impact permanents is exactly the right home for this great card.

CUTS:

This time our cuts aren’t about removing bad cards – Animated Army barely has any of those to start with. But we still need to trim SOMETHING to make room for all the fun new toys I just mentioned. Let’s start with some potentially controversial choices: 

Bootleggers’ Stash is a card I’ve never liked unless you’re untapping lands with Seedborn Muse, or otherwise doing something that banks up treasures efficiently. Primeval Bounty got the cut because it won’t trigger off casting our artifacts and enchantments. Decimate is a cool card, but often awkward to cast since you need the full set of legal targets – there’s no “up to” type wording on a spell this old!

The remaining cut cards are all just effects that I either don’t need in Commander, ones I would rather have on an artifact or enchantment source, or ones which are just less advantageous than other versions we packed. Here’s a link to the upgraded decklist on Moxfield showing off all these changes!

HIT ‘EM WITH THE FUNKY JUNK

This was a tough deck to do the upgrade guide for – because there were too many competing yet equally cool options on how to build around Bello’s ability. With more budget and the chance to try multiple lists, there’s an incredible variety of tech you could choose to employ.

One such route would be specializing in sweeper effects over token-cloning: so long as they deal damage or “destroy” cards your indestructible 4/4s will laugh it all off, while your opponents’ boardstates crumble! Usually you’ll get away with only your commander dying, and if you have the mana to re-cast it then you’ll be able to immediately attack with your animated permanents like nothing happened!

Now, if you hate contributing to your own Commander Tax you could just stick to Fade from History and similar spells that will leave the raccoon alive. But I would actually go the opposite direction: I love the idea of slamming a Jokulhaups or Obliterate or Devastating Dreams once I have some value-generating permanent in play. The slow recovery period from such a cataclysm gives our engines ample time to take over the game.

But mass sweepers and land destruction might feel too mean-spirited for some. Maybe you could play an all-enchantments or all-artifacts version of Bello. Perhaps you can expand on the existing subthemes of treasures or vehicles? Or try something else again – are there any 4-cost artifact or enchantment creatures which benefit from an upgrade to 4/4 indestructible? What infinites can you make happen on your turn by blurring the lines between types: giving enchantments creature keywords like Persist, or repeatedly untapping Gilded Lotus and Thran Dynamo with Aggravated Assault?

This is truly a deck to go deep on, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Bello becomes a fan-favorite commander even among a very strong Bloomburrow class.