Bello, the Best Bard of the Brambles

Love Raccoons? Or maybe love animating permanents into creatures that shouldn’t be creatures? Then Bello, Bard of the Brambles is the perfect commander for you. It incentivizes you to run artifacts and enchantments of a high mana value, turning them into both creatures and card draw. Since Bello has an effect that is so broad, there are tons of different ways to build it. You can focus on either the artifact or enchantment side, or do a mix of both. Bello, Bard of the Brambles was a precon commander, but is much better off in unique builds (not that the precon is bad). So, this deck showcase will look at various builds of Bello of all kinds.

Universal Bello Cards

Even though these decks have different themes, many share cards universally. There are just some cards that benefit Bello, Bard of the Brambles too much that you can’t ignore them. No matter what flavor of Bello you’re playing, odds are they should include these cards.

Mana Dorks

Mana dorks are creatures that can tap themselves to add mana. The best of them for Bello is Fanatic of Rhonas. Since Bello, Bard of the Brambles makes your artifacts and enchantments into creatues with 4 power, ferocious will almost always be active. Even if Fanatic of Rhonas gets removed, you can reanimate it as a Zombie token. Your mana curve is often high, so you’ll likely expend a lot of mana. This makes both Trailtracker Scout and Wandertale Mentor great options, and keeps with a bit of a Raccoon theme.

Mana Rocks

Mana rocks are Bello’s best friend. They can either be used for mana generation, or as attackers/card draw. And since you draw so many cards, Thought Vessel is particularly useful in making sure you don’t have to discard any of them. Thran Dynamo is a basic mana rock that can add three colorless mana to your mana pool. Ramping in Bello decks is trivial, and Thran Dynamo helps to ramp even quicker. For similar reasons, Gilded Lotus is also great in Bello lists, especially ones that have more colored cards.

Miscellaneous Cards

These are broad cards that are just generically good in Bello decks. One such card is Giggling Skitterspike. Bello will turn it into a 4/4 on your turn, and if you activate monstrosity 5, it’ll gain 5 counters to give you a 9/9. It burns whenever it attacks, as well as if any opponents tries to remove it. Unnatural Growth helps to make your threats even more threatening, as an army of 8/8s is much scarier than an army of 4/4 (of which are indestructible, mind you). Garruk's Uprising gives all your creatures trample, allowing you to get through any defenses with your indestructible artifacts and enchantments.

Bello the Artificer

This build of Bello, Bard of the Brambles is focused on the artifact side of its effect. The deck mostly consists of artifacts and artifact creatures, using cards such as Foundry Inspector and Jhoira's Familiar to discount them. This enable you to get to your big artifact quicker so you can start running away with the game.

Bello, Bard of the Brambles makes your artifacts into Elemental creatures, so you can take advantage of permanents that boost certain creature types. You can name Elementals for Banner of Kinship so it enters with a ton of counters to give a big stat boost. Coat of Arms serves a similar function, but doesn’t need any setup at all (and benefits all your other shaded creature types like Raccoon). A good majority of your creatures are going to be colorless, making Forsaken Monument that much stronger both for damage and for lifegain.

Cybermen Squadron turns all your artifacts into ones with myriad. So, you can essentially attack them at all your opponents, and since they have indestructible, you can do this without worry. Krang, Utrom Warlord provides them with flying and trample, as well as haste and indestructible if Bello ever gets removed. Since you usually want to attack, Unwinding Clock untaps all your artifacts so you can use them for their traditional effects as well.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. The deck can get going very quickly, and once Bello hits the battlefield, can run away with the game.

Bello, Teller of Tales

For this variation of Bello, Bard of the Brambles, it’ll be built around the Saga creature type. While you have Summon Sagas which are creatures such as Summon: Fat Chocobo and Summon: Titan, traditional Sagas aren’t creatures. With Bello, these Sagas can come to life and attack with their Summon brethren.

Since a good chunk of the deck are Sagas and Summons, you want ways to bring them back. Sagas are sent to the graveyard once all the chapters are done, after all. Rydia, Summoner of Mist lets you cast Sagas from the graveyard while Rydia's Return gets two permanents back into your hand. You can also keep counters off of Sagas to keep them around with Power Conduit and Nesting Grounds, just put the lore counter on a creature that doesn’t care about them.

Wildsear, Scouring Maw lets you cascade all your enchantments to get more on the battlefield quickly. With Sagas with good effects, you can utilize Weaver of Harmony to double up on them easily. Destiny Spinner prevents all your creatures and enchantment spells from being countered, allowing you to play the majority of your deck without having to worry about counterspells.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. Go forth and tell the tales of the Sagas like the bard you are.

Fast and Furryious

What if a raccoon could drive a bunch of vehicles? That’s what this build looks at: artifacts. Thanks to Bello, Bard of the Brambles‘ effect, you don’t need to crew your Vehicles to make them creatures on your turn. You can use Unwinding Clock to untap them after you attack and crew them to still use them as defenders. And with how many Vehicles you have, Surgehacker Mech can be used as removal.

Blaster, Combat DJ gives all your Vehicles modular, letting them enter with counters and spread them around for extra damage. Canoptek Spyder nets you some extra card draw on top of all the cards Bello will be drawing you. Thunderous Velocipede puts +1/+1 counters on Vehicles when they enter, and your weaker creatures enter with three extra counters for no cost.

Some Vehicles offer beneficial utility on top of being heavy hitters. Hoard Hauler can net you a lot of Treasure tokens if they have a lot of artifacts themselves. The Regalia provides you with free lands entering the battlefield when it attacks. Smuggler's Buggy can keep being reused to cast expensive spells for free every turn (so long as it deals combat damage).

A sample decklist can be viewed below. Gruul is not a common color pairing when it comes to Vehicles, so running a Gruul Vehicle commander has a fun novelty to it, especially since it’s a raccoon at the wheel!

Bello Pain

In Gruul, there are a ton of ways to make your creatures deal extra damage. With Bello, Bard of the Brumbles, this makes them into damaging creatures that deal oodles of damage. Cards like City on Fire and Gratuitous Violence make your sources deal double damage. If you have multiple cards with this effect, they all stack. So two damage doublers equate to quadruple damage.

There is a subtheme to this build of Bello, that being extra combat. Aggravated Assault is a permanent way to have constant extra combats. Moraug, Fury of Akoum can net you multiple extra combats when lands enter the battlefield. Savage Beating gives your creatures double strike or gives you an extra combat, and can get both effects if you have mana to spend.

When you start an extra combat, you don’t always also get to untap all your creatures. So, you need ways to untap them in order to let them attack again. Vitalize untaps all your creatures for just one mana. Benefactor's Draught untaps your creatures and provides you card draw as well. Great Train Heist gives an extra combat, as well as ramps you with Treasure tokens and gives a stat boost if you have excess mana to spend.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. The deck can build up damage quickly to easily swing out and take everyone out of the game.

Bello and His Rocks

There are countless mana rocks in Commander, and Bello, Bard of the Brambles can turn those into attackers. Hedron Archive and Thran Dynamo are useful for generating mana, but can now be useful for knocking down the opponents’ life totals.

Your creature pool is fairly small, so you want to make sure the ones you do play are impactful. Since most of your deck can make mana from mana rocks, Magus of the Moon can serve as a very useful Stax piece against multicolored decks. All your animated mana rocks have mana abilities, so Raggadragga, Goreguts Boss gives them a stat boosts and untaps them when they attack. For some extra ramp, The Earth King can put excess lands onto the battlefield to always have mana to spend.

A good majority of your deck is mana rocks and lands (more than half in fact), so you want to play a small Stax theme to help keep your life total safe. Cards like Burning Earth and Manabarbs won’t hurt you much since you can use your mana rocks for mana instead. Blood Moon turns all nonbasic lands into Mountains, meaning they can only make Red mana. You also have a handful of Fog effects to prevent damage for a turn to stall out until your mana rocks can attack.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. The deck ramps a ton naturally, and with how much card draw it has, you can flood the battlefield with mana rocks in just a handful of turns.

Bello’s Modular Army

Creatures with modular tend to be 0/0 creatures that enter with counters on them. Bello, Bard of the Brambles turns all your artifacts into creatures with base power 4/4, including artifact creatures (which all modular creatures are). So, normally Arcbound Bruiser is a 3/3, but with Bello, it turns into a 7/7. It gets even better with cards like Arcbound Crusher that have trample as well to make them massive threats.

When creatures with modular enter, they enter with counters. So, you want ways to put extra counters on them to make them even more powerful. Branching Evolution will double up on all those counters, with Loading Zone doing the same. Counters can be used as a utility too. All Will Be One lets you direct damage to a player or opponent when counters get put on a permanent. Terrasymbiosis draws you cards once a turn when counters are put on.

With how many creatures will have counters, proliferating becomes especially strong. Evolution Sage is the best way, only requiring you to play a land (and can play multiple in one turn). Surge Conductor turns all artifacts entering into proliferation. Since your deck is mostly artifacts, almost all permanents will trigger it. Karn's Bastion only requires a four mana payment, and can be used constantly without any other hoops to jump through.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. Unlike other Bello builds, this one doesn’t ever need to cast its commander. However, if Bello hits the battlefield, all your creatures become massive threats and provide a ton of card draw.

In Conclusion

Bello, Bard of the Brambles is a commander that does a whole lot. There are a lot of ways to build him, as broad or as specific as you’d like. The decks gone over in this article are just a taste of what’s possible with Bello.

Since Bello, Bard of the Brambles has such a strong effect, you can really do whatever you like with Bello. Even a weak Bello deck is rather strong. The precon that Bello comes from is quite powerful out of the box, as a matter of fact. Budget or expensive, powerful or weak, Bello is a very fun commander with so many different ways to build it; it’s hard to get bored with the raccoon.