The Beamtown BulliesThe Beamtown Bullies | Art by Tyler Jacobson

Welcome to Technically Playable, where our mission statement is "Every commander is Technically playable" (the best kind of playable). The way this works is every article will have a commander generated using EDHREC's random button, I'll talk through the card and then write about how we can build around it!

This week's random commander is The Beamtown BulliesThe Beamtown Bullies.

When the Henzie "Toolbox" TorreHenzie "Toolbox" Torre deck came out, it was like Christmas. I played Henzie for over a year before eventually taking it apart, and even tried to make some fun builds of Beamtown Bullies, too. The issue with The Bullies is the same as Mairsil, the PretenderMairsil, the Pretender: It has some very oppressive lines, but to make a version of it that's not only good but also fun to play, and play against, is really difficult.

In this article, I'll cover some of the cards used in these more oppressive builds and then talk through some of the cards that have come out since I took my deck apart that I'd use if I rebuilt it.

Bullying the Opposition

The Beamtown BulliesThe Beamtown Bullies is a combo deck through and through. You get one of a handful of creatures into your graveyard, give it to your opponent, and watch them either lose or have such a negative effect that they can't possibly come back from it.

This Deck Has the Weirdest Payoffs

The cards that cause your opponents to immediately lose: are LevelerLeveler, which makes the opponent you give it to exile their entire library; and Inverter of TruthInverter of Truth, which does effectively the same thing if done early enough.

The third card fits into the "negative effects that they can't possibly come back from." While it doesn't immediately lose the game, like Leveler, Eater of DaysEater of Days makes your opponent skip two turns. This should get them in a situation where they're still in the game, but it won't feel that way.

These creatures are so synonymous with The Beamtown Bullies that they're in 83%, 78%, and 79% of decks, respectively.

These are the iconic Beamtown Bullies cards, but there are a bunch of other ways you can punish your opponents for not removing your graveyard.

You can play Worldgorger DragonWorldgorger Dragon in two different ways. The first is, of course, the classic Worldgorger/Animate DeadAnimate Dead combo. This allows you to make infinite mana and win the game in a bunch of different ways, as you can see on the Worldgorger Dragon Commander spellbook page. Alternatively, you can give the Dragon away and leave one opponent with just a 7/7 in play, and, spoiler alert, that's not enough to really be a threat.

You can also turn into a burn deck with Bronze BombshellBronze Bombshell. In combination with Despotic ScepterDespotic Scepter or Staff of CompleationStaff of Compleation, this allows you to keep putting Bronze Bombshell back into your graveyard and giving it away.

If you also have Seedborn MuseSeedborn Muse or Sting, the Glinting DaggerSting, the Glinting Dagger, you can deal seven damage to someone in each player's turn; 28 damage is nothing to look down your nose at.

There are honestly so, so many options. You can run Hunted WumpusHunted Wumpus and Tempting WurmTempting Wurm to cheat stuff into play, Master of CrueltiesMaster of Cruelties to try to knock one opponent down to one life, or even Phyrexian NegatorPhyrexian Negator in response to a Blasphemous ActBlasphemous Act if you're feel particularly cruel.

My favorite version, however, is definitely jamming your deck full of cards like Breaker of ArmiesBreaker of Armies and playing the deck as a way worse version of Slicer, Hired MuscleSlicer, Hired Muscle

Putting Your Deck Six Feet Under

Having these creatures in your deck is one thing. But not only are they a 3 in 99 chance to draw, you actually don't want to draw them at all. The Beamtown BulliesThe Beamtown Bullies only work from your graveyard.

There are a ton of ways to do this. We have our classic noncreature cards like EntombEntomb and the newer Unmarked GraveUnmarked Grave, which work perfectly since all three of our main targets are nonlegendary. We also have creatures that do the same job: Oriq LoremageOriq Loremage works as a repeatable EntombEntomb while Vile EntomberVile Entomber is just a one-off but can also trade upwards, thanks to its deathtouch.

We want to get all three of our key creatures into play under our opponent's control as soon as we possibly can. To do that, we want to be able to tutor multiple creatures at a time. Jarad's OrdersJarad's Orders is pretty good at this since it grabs two cards, but unfortunately puts one in our hand.

The absolute best option in the category is Buried AliveBuried Alive, as it creates a magical Christmasland situation where you play it turn three into The Beamtown BulliesThe Beamtown Bullies, and thanks to haste you can immediately LevelerLeveler the scariest player out of the game. Then on turn five you can drop a way to untap The Bullies, Inverter of TruthInverter of Truth another player and Eater of DaysEater of Days the third.

This leaves us in a 1v1 with effectively a Time StretchTime Stretch worth of extra turns.

These are definitely the best ways to get our payoffs into the grave. But what if we draw them? And what do we do with the card that Jarad's OrdersJarad's Orders puts into our hand? Well thankfully The Beamtown BulliesThe Beamtown Bullies are red, and this gives us a bunch of options to help discard cards. We have the obvious ones in Faithless LootingFaithless Looting and Cathartic ReunionCathartic Reunion (in 87% and 67% of Beamtown decks, respectively) but are those the only options?

Dragon MageDragon Mage works really well with The Beamtown Bullies by giving us a way to discard our hand and draw a fresh seven while also acting as a flying threat. The best part is that because the Bullies goad the Dragon when it's put into play from their ability, the player you give it to has to attack, meaning you're almost guaranteed a new hand. Just make sure you give it to the person playing all of the flyers so it can't be blocked.

We can also use Fauna ShamanFauna Shaman. I like to think of this as a weird version of EntombEntomb that lets us put cards we don't need in our hand in the bin in exchange for something more useful. If it can survive multiple turns, it gets really good because we can chain one Beamtown Bullies target into another, into another, and quickly close out games.

This is one to use your protection on, as it can become very problematic very quickly.

The Last Hurdle

All of this is great, but the real issue here is that last part of The Beamtown BulliesThe Beamtown Bullies ability, "At the beginning of the next end step, exile it." What we need is a way to remove the creatures we reanimate with The Beamtown Bullies so that we can repeatedly replay them.

I mentioned a couple of options above. Despotic ScepterDespotic Scepter and Staff of CompleationStaff of Compleation are the only two cards in Magic that have the specific line of text "Destroy target permanent you own." This is obviously a weird phrasing, and would normally just be used as a different way of sacrificing your creatures. But thanks to The Beamtown Bullies giving away our cards, these instead give us a great way to get those cards back into our graveyard to give them out again.

The real benefit here is that the ability is effectively free. This also extends to some other similar cards. Royal AssassinRoyal Assassin is a really good example as it lets us destroy a tapped creature without spending mana, letting us destroy the creature after it attacks. We can also use Avatar of WoeAvatar of Woe and cheat it into play by reanimating it or wait until enough creatures have died to play it on the cheap.

All of these are great ways to repeat our LevelerLeveler or Eater of DaysEater of Days combo, but can also work with some of the other reanimation targets to generate value, like using Boldwyr HeavyweightsBoldwyr Heavyweights to put all of our useful utility creatures into play. This works really well with Avatar of Woe, as we can let everyone search and then destroy the scariest thing our opponents search for.

New Kids on the Block

Just like most graveyard decks out there, the best new card in The Beamtown BulliesThe Beamtown Bullies is Icetill ExplorerIcetill Explorer. It turns out that getting a benefit from playing the most basic parts of the game, playing lands, is incredibly powerful. Add onto that a Crucible of WorldsCrucible of Worlds and ExplorationExploration, and the $17.99 price tag starts to make a lot of sense. This card is like if every time you took a breath, you got $1 deposited into your bank account.

I've been tinkering with The Bullies for years at this point. I've been trying to make a version that's not super linear to play and not miserable to play against. I feel like Xu-Ifit, OsteoharmonistXu-Ifit, Osteoharmonist is a step in the right direction. By filling up our graveyard with a bunch of massive creatures with downside, like Eater of DaysEater of Days, we can use Xu-Ifit in combination with untapping effects to make a huge army really quickly. Then if we get board wiped, we simply get Xu-Ifit back into play and do it again.

And speaking of cards that untap Biosynthic BurstBiosynthic Burst is another incredible option to add to the deck repertoire. Not only does it untap a creature and play amazingly well with Isochron ScepterIsochron Scepter, it can also double up as a protection spell against any removal that doesn't exile. This is perfect because The Beamtown BulliesThe Beamtown Bullies have a pretty bad reputation in the streets, and instantly become a lightning rod for opponents' removal.

As with all Technically Playable articles, this was a very quick look at The Beamtown BulliesThe Beamtown Bullies as a commander, and a few of the cards that can really make a deck with the Bullies as the commander tick.

Let me know in the comments below if you play The Beamtown BulliesThe Beamtown Bullies, if you want to build a The Beamtown Bullies deck, or even if you just enjoyed this article!

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