Inspired by my friend’s precon pull from a week earlier, I was interested in Bello’s abilities and decided to give my own take on what the trash panda can do. There’s just something quite fun about a raccoon literally flinging garbage at someone and hoping they die. And that’s pretty much the general energy of this deck.
Bello is an interesting raccoon that does follow the general modern Commander mantra of having some card advantage in the command zone. Bello’s gimmick is that you need to build your deck around non-equipment artifacts and non-aura enchantments with four or higher mana values. These cards will then swing on at your opponents and draw cards if they connect. Bello gives them haste and indestructible as well, giving them essentially safe swings with little drawback. However, this also comes at a bit of a disadvantage as Bello leaves you defenceless during your opponent’s turns.
I’ll be very honest, even though the raccoon transforms your cards into elementals, we’re going to ignore that entirely, namely because we are on Gruul, not necessarily giving us the best elemental support, and on top of that, the raccoon is a garbage slinger not an elemental general.
The first thing I want to note and take out especially are the creatures from the precon. Bello makes creatures anyways, and despite some of these creatures having some decent abilities, I think the focus of the deck implied by Bello should be building exclusively with enchantments and artifacts in mind. I will say, I’m personally not a fan of a singular archetype in deckbuilding (at least card type wise) since it can lead to easy blowouts due to lack of diversity in strategy. But we’re playing an angry raccoon slinging garbage, so I’ll let it slide this time around.
Yes, I know Bello does work with enchantment creatures or artifact creatures, but I thought it’d be a bit of a more fun challenge to build without creatures in mind and really hone in on that angry raccoon energy. I’ll consider revisiting this deck another time to look into another way to incorporate our artifact and enchantment friends.
Likewise, we’ll be removing the sorceries and instants as well since they don’t directly sync with our raccoon man. It is key to note that the cards do incentivize us to ramp which is important since the raccoon bard really cares exclusively about four or higher mana cards.
We’re going to need a lot of mana in this deck. Granted that everything has to actually be mana value four or greater, not that we necessarily need to cast them for that amount, any mana that can push us ahead early will be great to help us get our enchantments and artifacts on board.
We really need ramp, so any enchantment that grabs us lands is very good. Moldering Gym is very sneaky since it does bypass the four mana requirement on Bello since the Weight Room is added onto the total mana value even if you haven’t unlocked that room. Omenpath Journey grabs lands and Prismatic Currents is a little weaker here since it will pretty much only ever grab two lands due to our colours, but it gives us the ability to play multiple lands a turn. If the game goes according to plan, we’ll be able to continuously get a lot of extra hand as our enchantments and artifacts smack our opponents, letting us transform extra hand into extra land drops. Case of the Locked House is an additional great option as well for extra land drops and potential future plays.
I want to remind players that Bello is flexible and cares about both enchantments and artifacts. I’m beginning with enchantments but will continue with artifacts. A key note is the introduction of powerstones which are essentially free artifact ramp for the future, courtesy of the Brothers’ War.
Other advantages we can get can be the above which just give us additional “card” advantage through impulse draw. Vance’s Blasting Cannons doubles as a land if you can get its third-spell-in-a-turn trigger to go off. The Flux carries an initial removal ability and then spirals into constant card flow for a long while. Visions of Phyrexia makes it so we either play our impulse draw or get powerstones.
Ramp is king and our artifacts need to do the same. The inclusion of Hedron Archive in the precon was great, but we can do even more. Meteorite doubles as removal. Sceptre of Eternal Glory is a bit pricey, but, since we’ll be grabbing many basics, we’ll more than likely be able to trigger its second activated cost.
Our artifacts and enchantments also have to double as interaction. Territory Forge is very fun and can be very impactful, letting you steal special lands from your opponents or their key artifacts. The Mightstone and Weakstone gives modular advantage while acting as artifact ramp. Ghirapur Orrery is here because I didn’t want to make a separate block, but us getting more land drops is more important than our opponents. This is because Bello gives haste to all our artifacts and enchantments, letting them swing immediately and leave a lasting impact. The extra potential hand draw is nice for us if we get it, and unfortunate if our opponent does, but we’re really just looking to steam ahead in advantage.
One other problem we’ll commonly face is the lack of defenders during our opponent’s turn. Bello only gives his effects during our turn, so we’ll need someway of making defenders to protect ourselves accordingly. Eusocial Engineering creates landfall tokens as we make our land drops, giving us a bit of defense early in the game and can be deployed cheaply with warp. Sapling Nursery gives affinity for forests which we’ll be easily grabbing and will make us treefolk fighters to keep us alive. Snake Pit is kind of funny, but in the right pod, we’ll be getting plenty of defenders. There’s also the classic Zendikar’s Roil for more landfall nonsense.
Outside of generating actual blockers from our enchantments and artifacts, we have the option of making attacking us less fun. We don’t have access to cards like Ghostly Prison or Propaganda, so instead of taxing attacks, we’ll make it much less opportunistic to hit us.
As for the late game, there’s plenty of options to smack your opponents with. Sandwurm Convergence is one of my favourites as it also generates bodies and stops flyers from attacking you.
One last thing to mention. While Bello gives a lot of nice keywords to your artifacts and enchantments, one that he doesn’t provide that is essential to cut through with damage is Trample. As such, enchantments like the two above will greatly aid in that. Even something like Gruul War Plow will do the trick. Secret Tunnel can cheese two of your elementals through as well. Alternatively, Aligned Hedron Network is a one-sided board wipe that makes the rest of your opponents’ creatures either chump or force your opponent to get smacked in the face.
Did I ever mention that the raccoon can drive without a driver’s license? Yes, Bello can essentially get many vehicle combat triggers without actually bothering with the crew mechanic. Since Bello changes them automatically to creatures anyways, they’re just normal creatures during your turn for the most part. Some fun ones I’ve included are above with the Conqueror’s Galleon giving you a land with a bunch of niche abilities. Cybership and Esika’s Chariot can provide you with blockers with the latter potentially giving you even more treasure tokens for later mana and the like.
That’s about it for the trash-tossing raccoon. He’s a rather standard Gruul aggressive commander, looking to fill the field with powerful and strong artifacts and whipping them straight at your opponents’ faces. I really do like Hoard Hauler above, mainly because it has trample (something Bello really needs) and punishes the greedy artifact players that are always bound to show up.