The Jolly Balloon Man

$0.92

The Jolly Balloon Man is a three-mana 1/4 with haste. For {1} and a tap, at sorcery speed, it creates a token copy of another creature you control. The copy is a 1/1 red Balloon with flying and haste, and you sacrifice it at the next end step. You still get the enter, attack and death triggers of whatever you copied. The deck is packed with creatures that do something on arrival, plus untap effects that let the Balloon Man activate more than once a turn.

In the recorded games, Witty Roastmaster was a favorite target, pinging every opponent each time a Balloon entered. Skyclave Apparition copies removed permanents, and the flying tokens chipped in damage on the way out. Faster lists ran Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker with Felidar Guardian for infinite hasty creatures, along with Ragavan and Deafening Silence to slow down spell-based combo. Mana Echoes and treasure makers paid for bigger turns. Mana was often the limit, since each copy costs {1} and the Balloons only last one turn. Cheap removal on the commander, such as Feed the Swarm, shut the engine off, and in high-power pods faster combo decks often got there first.