The Animated Army Commander precon from Bloomburrow has one of the strangest game plans among recent Gruul decks. Instead of asking you to fill the battlefield with enormous creatures, Bello, Bard of the Brambles turns your expensive artifacts and enchantments into the creatures doing the attacking.
During your turn, each non-Equipment artifact and non-Aura enchantment you control with mana value 4 or greater becomes a 4/4 Elemental creature in addition to its other types. Those permanents gain indestructible and haste, and whenever one deals combat damage to a player, you draw a card.
That changes the normal rules of deckbuilding. A mana rock such as Thran Dynamo can accelerate you when you need mana, then attack as an indestructible 4/4 when Bello is on the battlefield. An enchantment such as Unnatural Growth provides a powerful static effect while also joining combat itself.
Animated Army already contains several excellent examples of that idea. The best upgrade path is not simply to replace every creature with a four-mana enchantment. It is to increase the number of permanents that remain useful even when Bello is not around, protect the commander that makes everything work and give your animated army a better chance of connecting with opponents.
What Bello Actually Wants You to Play
The sweet spot for Bello is a non-Equipment artifact or non-Aura enchantment with mana value four or greater that you would be happy to play even if it never became a creature.
That last part matters.
It is easy to look through Magic’s card pool and find expensive artifacts and enchantments simply because Bello can animate them. The problem appears when your commander is removed. Without Bello, a mediocre five-mana permanent becomes exactly that: a mediocre five-mana permanent.
The strongest cards in the deck therefore perform two jobs.
Unnatural Growth is already one of the best examples in the precon. It dramatically increases combat damage, and under Bello it also becomes another attacker. Warstorm Surge offers a different payoff, turning your creatures entering the battlefield into direct damage while becoming a 4/4 itself during your turn.
Sunbird’s Invocation provides repeatable spell advantage. Gratuitous Violence doubles the damage from your creatures. Berserkers‘ Onslaught gives your attacking creatures double strike.
These cards explain why the stock deck is already so dangerous. Bello does not need a battlefield full of blank objects. He turns real engines and combat payoffs into additional attackers.
That is the principle I would preserve throughout the upgrade.
Animated Army Is More Resilient Than a Normal Creature Deck
Bello also creates an unusual defensive advantage.
His effect applies during your turn. Once your turn ends, those animated artifacts and enchantments normally stop being creatures again.
That means many creature-only sweepers are awkward against the deck. If an opponent casts Wrath of God during their own turn, your four-mana enchantments are not creatures simply because Bello is sitting on the battlefield. A large portion of your board can survive while the actual creatures disappear.
The stock deck takes advantage of this in the opposite direction with Blasphemous Act. During your own turn, Bello’s animated permanents have indestructible, so a well-timed Act can destroy ordinary creatures while leaving much of your attacking force intact.
But Animated Army is not immune to board wipes.
Vandalblast can still be devastating to an artifact-heavy build. Enchantment removal remains relevant. Effects that destroy or exile multiple permanent types can bypass the trick completely, and removing Bello before combat can suddenly turn most of your army back into stationary permanents.
That makes commander protection one of the most useful improvements you can make.
Asceticism is particularly attractive because it protects your creatures from targeted interaction, offers regeneration and, at five mana, becomes one of Bello’s attackers during your turn. It is exactly the kind of upgrade this deck wants: useful before combat, useful during combat and relevant even when you are not simply trying to attack for four.
Heroic Intervention is another efficient layer of protection when you need to save the wider board rather than Bello alone.
The Stock Deck Has More Keepers Than It First Appears
The original version of this guide was too eager to cut cards simply because they were creatures.
That is not quite how Bello should be upgraded.
You still need actual creatures. They give the deck something to do when Bello costs too much commander tax, provide ramp and utility, and remain creatures during opponents‘ turns when most of your animated army has gone back to sleep.
Lotus Cobra and Sakura-Tribe Elder, for example, are not Bello targets, but they help you reach the four-, five- and six-mana section of the deck where the real engine begins.
Garruk’s Packleader is also more interesting than the old article suggested. Bello’s qualifying permanents enter the battlefield under his continuous effect during your turn, so creature-entering synergies can interact with the objects he animates. I would not build the entire deck around Packleader, but dismissing it because the artifacts and enchantments “don’t enter as creatures” is not a good reason to cut it.
The same goes for Primeval Bounty. It costs six mana, which is substantial, but it is a non-Aura enchantment that Bello animates. Its abilities can also reward you for continuing to cast spells and play lands. If your goal is to reduce the curve significantly, it can eventually become a cut, but it is much more synergistic than the previous guide claimed.
Grothama, All-Devouring is easier to question. It is a five-mana creature rather than a permanent Bello can animate, and its unusual fight-and-draw gameplay pulls the deck in a different direction.
Burnished Hart is another reasonable cut. The deck already has Farseek, Rampant Growth, Cultivate, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet and other ramp options. Spending three mana to cast Hart and another three to sacrifice it is relatively slow when the deck wants to move into its four-mana permanents quickly.
The goal is therefore not “cut all creatures.” It is cut creatures that consume space without helping Bello reach or execute his main plan.
The Best Bello Upgrades Add Value Before They Attack
Molten Echoes is one of the most interesting additions because Bello makes your qualifying artifacts and enchantments into Elementals during your turn. Choosing Elemental gives the deck another way to extract value from those permanents as they arrive.
The card is especially attractive because it also qualifies for Bello itself. It is a four-mana non-Aura enchantment, so it can attack as a 4/4 while supporting the rest of the deck.
Fiery Emancipation takes a much less subtle approach. Tripling the damage dealt by your sources can turn a board of otherwise modest 4/4 Elementals into a lethal combat step, while the enchantment itself joins the attack under Bello.
Glorious Sunrise offers flexibility rather than raw damage. At the beginning of combat, it can give the team trample, draw a card, produce mana or provide another useful mode. Bello’s army badly wants evasion because a collection of 4/4 creatures can otherwise be stonewalled by token boards.
That is why combat modifiers are usually better than simply adding another expensive object.
Gruul War Chant can make blocks awkward. Bedlam can radically change combat if your table cannot exploit it better than you can. The stock Berserkers‘ Onslaught and Unnatural Growth already demonstrate just how quickly Bello can convert one successful attack into a huge amount of damage and card advantage.
Current Bello deck data also continues to show extremely high inclusion for cards already found in the precon such as Unnatural Growth, Berserkers‘ Onslaught, Gratuitous Violence and Sunbird’s Invocation, which is another reason not to tear apart the stock shell unnecessarily.
Vehicles Are Interesting, but They Are Not the Whole Upgrade Plan
Vehicles interact with Bello in a particularly convenient way because most Vehicles normally need creatures to crew them before they can attack.
Bello can bypass that requirement for qualifying Vehicles.
A non-Equipment artifact with mana value four or greater becomes a creature during your turn because of Bello, so it does not need to be crewed simply to participate in combat.
Magmatic Galleon is a useful example. Its five-mana price is much easier to accept when the card provides removal on arrival and later becomes another indestructible attacker.
But I would not turn Animated Army into a Vehicle deck just because the interaction is cute.
A Vehicle whose only attraction is “Bello lets this attack without crew” is still vulnerable to the same problem as every mediocre enchantment: it becomes unimpressive whenever Bello is absent.
Vehicles are best when their printed abilities are already worth playing. The free animation is then an additional benefit rather than the entire reason the card made the deck.
That same rule applies to artifacts generally.
Mana Rocks Become Real Threats
One of Bello’s nicest interactions is already hiding inside the stock deck.
Thran Dynamo costs four mana and produces three colorless mana. In most Commander decks, that is the whole story. Here it also becomes a 4/4 indestructible attacker with haste during your turn.
Hedron Archive works similarly while retaining the option to sacrifice itself for cards later.
Gilded Lotus costs five but fixes colors while becoming another attacker.
All three are already in Animated Army.
That is important because the original guide recommended adding Hedron Archive despite the card already being included in the precon.
I would instead use those stock cards as the model for future additions. Bello wants ramp that remains useful after you have enough mana. A four-mana rock does not become dead weight once your hand is deployed because it can keep drawing cards through combat.
The lower-cost ramp still matters, though. Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Talisman of Impulse and the green ramp spells help Bello arrive on turn three and get the first four-mana engine online immediately afterward.
There is no reason to remove efficient early ramp merely because Bello cannot animate it.
The Great Henge Is Powerful, but It Is Not Automatically Cheap
The Great Henge is a legitimate premium option, but the reason needs to be described carefully.
Bello gives you access to 4-power creatures from permanents that were not originally creatures, so Henge’s cost reduction can often become easier to satisfy. Once on the battlefield, it is itself a nine-mana non-Equipment artifact, meaning Bello can turn it into a 4/4 attacker during your turn.
Its mana, life gain and card-advantage engine are all excellent.
But Bello does not magically make The Great Henge nearly free every game. With only a 4-power creature, you are still paying . Larger creatures such as Ghalta, Primal Hunger can reduce that cost much further.
So this is a powerful luxury upgrade, not a card the deck requires in order to function.
That distinction matters for Animated Army because many of its best improvements are inexpensive. Better protection, another strong four- or five-mana enchantment and cleaner lands can improve the deck more than dropping a large part of the upgrade budget on one mythic.
Do Not Ignore the Mana Base
Animated Army wants Bello on turn three and a meaningful permanent on turn four.
That makes tapped lands particularly noticeable.
Wooded Ridgeline is an easy candidate to replace because it always enters tapped. Temple of Abandon at least gives you a scry, but faster builds can replace it as well.
You do not need an expensive Gruul mana base to improve consistency. The stock deck already includes useful lands such as Karplusan Forest, Copperline Gorge, Rootbound Crag, Cinder Glade and Game Trail.
The first goal is simply reducing the number of turns where a tapped land prevents the curve of Bello into a four-mana payoff.
If you want to rebuild that part of the deck more extensively, our Mana Base Upgrade Guide covers how to replace slower precon lands without immediately jumping to premium fetchlands.
What I Would Upgrade First
I would make the first round of changes around consistency rather than spectacle.
Protect Bello, Bard of the Brambles. Add one or two high-quality enchantments such as Asceticism, Glorious Sunrise or Molten Echoes. Replace some of the creatures that do not support the central engine. Improve the slowest lands.
Only then would I start adding expensive finishers.
That approach also protects the deck from its biggest structural weakness. Animated Army looks spectacular when Bello survives, but a build containing too many permanents that are useful only because the commander turns them into 4/4s can become painfully passive after repeated commander removal.
Your upgrades should make the deck less dependent on Bello while becoming more dangerous when Bello is present.
That is a much healthier direction than simply searching Gatherer for every artifact and enchantment with mana value four.
PreconForge Verdict
Animated Army already understands what Bello, Bard of the Brambles wants.
Unnatural Growth, Gratuitous Violence, Berserkers‘ Onslaught, Sunbird’s Invocation, Warstorm Surge, Thran Dynamo and Hedron Archive are not filler waiting to be replaced. They show exactly why the deck works: useful noncreature permanents become an attacking force without giving up the job they were originally included to perform.
The best upgrades follow the same rule.
Add artifacts and enchantments that would still deserve a slot without Bello. Give the animated army better ways to push damage through blockers. Protect the commander that turns the engine on. Remove creatures and lands that slow the curve without providing enough in return.
Do that, and Animated Army becomes more consistent without losing the unusual play pattern that makes the precon worth building in the first place.
