Monty Python fans and Minecraft players alike know to be wary when fluffy bunnies attack, and anyMagic: The Gatheringplayers who don’t fall into one of those categories are soon going to learn the same lesson. In a land where tiny tails equal big adventures, the most unassuming Mice, Rabbits, and Otters can be forces to reckon with on par with the mightiest dragons of the multiverse.
One mighty Warrior of Bloomburrow, Baylen, the Haymaker, is ready to lead an army of token creatures into battle. Don’t let his little pink nose or fluffy cotton tail fool you, he’s a clever general backed by a whole bevy of bunnies.
Sample Decklist
Rabbits in Bloomburrow are all about working together as a community, so in the spirit of working together we’ve assembled a basic Baylen, the Haymaker deck list that you can use as the template to create your own.
March of the Multitudes
Wooded Foothills
The Commander
Baylen, The Haymaker is the most aggressive Rabbit commander available, being the only legendary Rabbit with red in his color identity and tying for the highest power with Byrke, Long Ear of the Law. Even with these attributes, Baylen, the Haymaker is still just a bunny, and isn’t much of a threat until you put him in front of an army.
Baylen, The Haymaker only costs one each of red, green, and white mana for a 4/3 body withthree activated abilities, each requiring you to tap tokens that you control:
Baylen is a bit of a toolbox commander thatdoes pretty much everything you’ll want a deck to do: he produces mana, draws cards, and attacks with access to trample. While he doesn’t have haste or any kind of protection, he is able toactivate all of his abilities immediately upon coming into playbecause he taps tokens, not himself.
And while he doesn’t have hexproof or ward, if you have enough tokens available you can respond to removal by tapping enough to play him again as soon as he’s destroyed, or buff him enough to survive.
The big restriction you’ll have with Baylen is the need for lots of tokensin order to use his abilities. Fortunately, both green and white are excellent token-producing colors, so with a little bit of planning you’ll be drowning in creatures, Treasure, Food, and other tokens.
This also makes the deck resilient even without Baylen in play, as you can alwaysuse your growing army of tokens to overwhelm your opponents.
Building The Deck
Building around Baylen is fairly straightforward: If you already have a Naya (red/green/white) token deck, you can probably just swap him in as the commander and drive on. Otherwise, you’ve got one main goal:create as many tokens as possible.
The main plan of action is togrow Baylen to enormous proportions and swing for commander damage, but if you have a lot of creature tokens you’ll be able to go wide as a backup plan. Treasure tokens are also going to be important, since they can pay for bigger spells both with and without Baylen.
Ramp
With access to green mana, you’ll be able to use the standard green ramp package, relying on staples like Nature’s Lore, Three Visits, Cultivate, and Kodama’s Reach to put lands into play faster than your opponents.
Land ramp is handy because most commander players hesitate to run any kind of mass land removal, keeping your base reasonably safe while other colors struggle with boardwipes destroying their mana dorks.
Birds of Paradise is an exception: for one green mana you get a creature with flying that can tap for any color mana. Early in the game, this assures you haveaccess to the right color of mana for any other spellyou need to cast and accelerates your game, and later it can be achump blocker to protect you from whatever creature your opponent throws at you.
While not as resilient as lands, mana-producing tokens like Treasure are far more versatile. With Baylen in play, they can be tapped for a half mana, card draw, or to buff your commander, or tapped and sacrificed regardless of his location for pure mana. Smothering Tithe will provide you with a constant stream of Treasure tokens to use as you see fit, or force everyone else to slow down their play in order to prevent you from accumulating tokens.
Even better than Treasure is Gold, since it doesn’t need to tapto produce mana. This allows you to tap all of your Gold tokens to fuel Baylen’s abilities and still have them available to sacrifice for even more mana.
Curse of Opulence will make for a strategic play, allowing you to designate one of your opponents and encourage everyone else to focus attacks on them in order to earn Gold tokens of their own.
Awaken the Woods is an incredible tool for Baylen: It can create many 1/1 Forest Dryad land creature tokens that you may use to produce mana, attack, or pay for Baylen’s abilities. With Baylen on the field, Awaken the Woods won’t even leave you tapped out, because you canuse all of your fresh Dryad tokens to generate even more mana.
Draw
Baylen can draw cards just fine on his own, but there are several other options to take advantage of the token theme to keep your hand filled.
Staff of the Storyteller only costs two mana and comes into play with a 1/1 flying Spirit token and one story counter. Then, any time you create tokens, it gains another story counter, which you may pay one white mana and tap to remove and draw a card.
Once the deck gets running, you should be making a token or two almost every turn, making this a consistent source of card draw.
Staff of the Storyteller specifies “one or more creature tokens,” so it will only get one story counter whether you make one or a dozen creature tokens as a single action.
Idol of Oblivion is similarly useful, tapping to draw a card as long as you’ve made any kind of token that turn. This should be another consistent draw source, butit can also be sacrificed to make a 10/10 colorless Eldrazicreature token later in the game.
Combine this effect with the token-doubling effects we’ll discuss later, and you’ll be cooking.
Skullclamp canturn your one-toughness creature tokens into cardsfor cheap, allowing you to trade field advantage for card advantage as needed. It can also be attached to other creatures in order to give them a slight power boost and reward you if your opponents try to remove your threats.
Clue tokens provide two things: another way to draw cards, and fuel for Baylen. Search the Premises gives you a clue for each creature that attacks you, which means thateach time your opponents target you, they’ll progress your strategy.
If you don’t need cards, you’re able to sit on your stack of Clues for later, using them to generate mana and draw cards through Baylen.
Since Clues don’t need to tap when you crack them, tap your Clues for the mana that you need to activate them.
Finneas, Ace Archer provides a little protection against creatures with flying, and buffs your token creatures (and Rabbits) every time he attacks.Once the total power of your creatures is ten or higher, you’ll also get to draw a card each time Finneas attacks, and that shouldn’t take more than a few turns.
Tokens
The more tokens you have the better, and Baylen doesn’t care about what kind of tokens they are.
Awakens the Woods has the right idea, allowing you to make X 1/1 Dryads for X (plus two green) mana, butSecure the Wastes takes it to another level by reducing the mana cost by one and giving you the tokens at instant speed.
March of the Multitudes is another X mana for X tokens instant, and while it’s initially more expensive the Convoke keyword means thatyou can tap out not only your lands and mana rocks but also all of your creaturesto pay for it.
Academy Manufacturer is a must-have in decks that care about tokens or artifacts but not about type, turning your Treasures, Clues, and Food into all three. Combined with “pillowfort” staples like Search the Premises and Smothering Tithe,you should soon be sitting on a mountain of tokens.
Pair it with Nuka-Cola Vending Machine to get two Treasures, two Clues, one Food, and three life for three mana.
If a creature equipped with The Reaver Cleaver manages to get an attack through, you’ll get a handful of Treasure tokens. If it’s in Baylen’s paws, you canuse those tokens to make him bigger and get even more treasure on your next turn, snowballing until one of your opponents works out a way to stop you.
Jacked Rabbit looks like he ate four dozen eggs every morning to help him get large, and is still hungry. Every mana you pour into the X value will give Jacked Rabbit an extra +1/+1 counter, andevery time it attacks you’ll get 1/1 Rabbit tokens equal to its power.
If you include a Coat of Arms in the deck, you’ll have the potential to double the size of your Rabbit army and Jacked Rabbit’s power every turn.
And More Tokens
Over the years, several cards have been printed with effects to modify the number of tokens that come into play, similar to Assembly Worker’s replacement effect.Doubling Season, originally printed all the way back in Ravnica: City of Guilds,is the gold standard. Doubling Season doubles the number of tokens you create and the number of every type of counter that you place on your permanents. For the budget-minded, Primal Vigor does the same thing for the same mana value and about 20 percent of the cost to purchase, but also affects your opponents.
Parallel Lives and Anointed Procession do half the work of Doubling Season, each one doubling the number of tokens you create.These effects stack, so if you have Doubling Season, Primal Vigor, Parallel Lives, and Anointed Procession, when you tap your Nuka-Cola Vending Machine you’ll get 16 Food tokens instead of one.
Doubling Season-style enchantments aren’t the only way to double your tokens.Second Harvest makes a copy of every token you control, potentially doubling the size of your board, and a thematically-appropriate version is available in the Squirreled Away Bloomburrow precon.
Another card to double the number of tokens you control, even if they aren’t all duplicates, is Cadira, Caller of the Small. Cadira, Caller of the Small is a 3/3 Orc Ranger with trample, andwhenever she deals combat damage to a player, you get a 1/1 Rabbit token for every token you already control.
With all of these token enablers, you’ll be swimming in more tokens than you know what to do with.
Deck Tech
Everybody loves making tokens, but just covering the table with bunnies and Treasure isn’t enough to win the game. Here are a few more tricks to swing the match in your favor.
Decks that play or create a lot of creatures should run Impact Tremors whenever possible. For just one generic and one red mana you get an enchantment that willdeal one damage to each opponent every time you get a creature.
Agate Instigator does the same thing for the same cost, and for two more mana you can get an offspring copy. Just be careful, once you start making lots of creatures your opponents will notice how threatening these permanents really are.
Blade of Selves may not seem like a great option in this type of token deck. After all, the tokens it creates don’t stick around for longer than the combat step. But if you use it while you have Doubling Season or a similar effect in play, you’ll get to keep some of the copies.
Use this trick tomake a bunch of extra Academy Manufacturers, Agate Instigators, or other important nonlegendary creature tokens.
Seedborn Muse and Quest for Renewal can both speed your strategy up by allowing you to untap some or all of your permanents on your opponents' turns. This allows you to tap out toput a lot of counters on Baylen, refill your hand, or play mana-heavy spells each turnand still have everything available for the next turn.
Be careful not to get baited out, though: If you tap everything out just for someone to Murder your Seedborn Muse, it’ll be Rabbit season for sure.
Halo Fountain is one of the few cards that untaps creatures as part of its cost. The first two abilities are good enablers, creating tokens and drawing cards at the “cost” of untapping your creatures, butthe final one is an alternate win condition: If you have fifteen tapped creatures and five white mana available, you can use Halo Fountain to just win the game.
Since you’re able to tap ten creatures for five white mana and creating fifteen creatures shouldn’t be hard,this could win the game every time you draw it, unless your opponents can keep it from coming into play or have a way to stop the ability from resolving.
