Hello everyone, and welcome to Training Tuesdays, the (not-so) premier bi-weekly Digimon series where we take a look at some lower-power decks and how to build them. This week on Training Tuesdays, we're going to be covering the gun-slinging duelist of finality, Beelzemon.
Beelzemon's first real wave of support was in EX-2, focusing around trashing cards from your deck to activate effects both when trashed and when a certain amount of cards are in your trash. Prominent cards from this wave are the infamous EX-2 Impmon and EX-2 Beelzemon, allowing you to trash a significant amount of cards when used in tandem. This didn't push the deck into meta relevance however, being shelved until a better opportunity came. That is, until the release of the Beelzemon Advanced Starter Deck (ST-14) and BT-12 with the Impmon (X-Antibody) line. With these two waves of support, Beelzemon became an instant powerhouse, overnight turning into a dominant Tier 0 deck. Part of why is the repeated
triggers of EX-2 Impmon, whose ST-14 Alternate Art is pictured left. By using the decks variety of new and old tools to trash from the top of your deck, you trash this from the top and then trash another 3. This helps accelerate the amount of cards in trash, which most of the decks effects rely on. This also allows for more chances to hit your trashed from deck (henceforth referred to as "mill") triggers, such as Rivals' Barrage, Death Slinger, and P-077 Wizardmon. These cards on mill, will trigger a variety of effects such as setting on field to recycle a card from trash to hand and gaining memory on mill for the last two, respectively. When combined with the new ST-14 Ai & Mako, allowing you to place a card from hand on top of deck to gain a memory when digivolving, allows for huge swings in the memory gauge and practically free digivolutions from the likes of BT-12 Wizardmon (X-Antibody) and every single Baalmon after their mill effects. This when coupled with something like ST-14 Beelzemon refunding memory when a card is milled for every 10 cards in trash made this deck a speedy, formidable OTK machine. But how does this deck achieve that OTK?
Well say hello to my friend, BT-12 Beelzemon (X-Antibody). The BT-12 wave not only gave us ways to accelerate how many cards are milled, but also one of the single-handedly greatest
OTK enablers this card game has ever seen, rivaling the likes of MirageGaogamon: Burst Mode and BT-17 Fenriloogamon: Takemikazuci. When digivolving with a Beelzemon or X Antibody under it, you can trash one security for every 10 cards in trash, with no limit. This is easily achieved using the decks milling capabilities, but will always be at least 2 when performing your OTK combo. What you need to perform this is 1 security gone if not at 24 cards in trash, at least 20 cards in trash one of which being ST-14 Beelzemon (easily performed), a ST-14 Impmon in your Breeding Area, and BT-12 Beelzemon (X-Antibody) and ST-14 Beelzemon: Blast Mode in hand. You then move out ST-14 Impmon and use its [When Attacking] effect to digivolve into ST-14 Beelzemon from the trash. You then activate St-14 Ai & Mako on field if you have it, then ST-14 Beelzemon to mill 4 from top of deck. Then, activate any mill triggers and Beelzemons effect to both gain memory and <Security Attack +1>. If you had X-Antibody in hand and used it on the ST-14 Impmon, you can also activate it here so if your Beelzemon dies in security you get another Impmon out. After the 2 checks resolve, you can then digivolve into the BT-12 Beelzemon (X-Antibody), activating its [When Digivolving] effect to trash your opponents security. From there, digivolve into ST-14 Beelzemon: Blast Mode in hand, and activate its [When Digivolving] effect to unsuspend and get the final check for game. This speed, a variety of security bombs in the options mentioned beforehand, and EX-2 Beelzemon serving as both board control and swarming allowed this deck to dominate until the limiting of EX-2 Impmon on June 1st, 2023. From there the deck was still a contender for rogue, but got worse and worse as the formats have drawn on.
So where does that leave Beelzemon now? While still undoubtedly a competent deck, it struggles into almost any meta deck without extreme high-rolling, and even has a rough time against rogue match-ups too. While there is a support wave coming in BT-19, unfortunately it tries to pivot the deck towards defensive options which do not mesh well with the deck as it stands right now, ultimately leading to very little success in the Japanese meta. For a list in the current English and other overseas meta, here's my personal list for EX-08 that I've been iterating on for the last year and a half. For the Japanese meta, here is a winning list from the Cycle 2 Aichi B event (3rd picture in the tweet). Unfortunately for us mill fans, the skies are looking darker than Blast Mode's wings for the future of this deck. This has been Training Tuesdays, and I hope to see you again for next weeks Meta Mondays, covering Lordknightmon X (Purple Base)!
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