Beamtown Bullies (EDH / Commander)

The basics of this deck

This deck wants to take advantage of Enter the Battlefield effects, as The Beamtown Bullies can reanimate any creature in our yard to someone else's battlefield. It's pretty sweet that the bullies have haste so it can all happen right away. The majority interpretation of this ability has been to abuse cards like Leveler, which upon an opponents upkeep would kill them on their draw step, or if you want to be greedy let the leveler be reanimated on one's main phase and goaded towards someone else for 10 damage towards them. On their next draw, that player will lose the game. There are other combos which with a little setup can also basically kill an opponent like the "Gorger Bros", Soulgorger Orgg or Worldgorger Dragon. If you were to Terminate one of these creatures with their first trigger on the stack after reanimating them to an opponent, their death triggers would go on top of the stack and resolve first, doing nothing, leaving them with the really bad trigger resolving and destroying their board state. In the Orgg's case, you have left an opponent with 1 hit point, and with the dragon, left them with no permanents. A rather cruel way to bully someone.

Destroying what you reanimate for people also does another important thing for the bullies; dodging the "exile at the next end step" clause of the activated ability. This returns the Leveler to our graveyard, where it can be given again to the next opponent. Synergizing with this, the deck can include creatures who tap to destroy like the killsquad of the Royal Assassin, Avatar of Woe, and Visara the Dreadful. This strategy can be greatly supported by cards like Awakening so that every turn the bullies can reanimate a threat which is then returned to our graveyard.

The dream is to reanimate the leveler, tap to destroy it with another creature, untap all creatures on the next opponents upkeep, and repeat. Or use the Thornbite Staff to untap the bullies with a Bronze Bombshell ready to go.

The perspective that this kind of strategy gets old quick is valid if you are not a 100% Spike personality type looking to tutor your consistent turn 5 win every game. (Which I think is slow contextually, I don't play competitive Magic, it sickens me.)

For a more FUN approach, think politically. When I first saw this card, my first thought was Reclamation Sage. I could cast it, destroy something no one likes, attack someone strategically (or have them attack me strategically) for a trade to put the sage back to the yard, where I would then reanimate it for the good of the kingdom against the archenemy. Do you trust your opponents word not to target you when you reanimate Ravenous Chupacabra for them? Will their deceit inspire the other players, or disgust them? There are FUN builds of this card that people have yet to create, where the bullies are used as a value engine / political tool. Having haste and vigilance are really dang nice keywords, you could make a battlecruiser build out of this card as well. I will be working on another build of this deck which is more of a group chaos deck featuring no specific wincon other than getting lucky

One of my other favorite decks is Kelsien, the Plague and having an important tap ability paired with haste and vigilance opens up a lot of versatility for getting the value out of a strong attack while also tapping.

My spin on it and how it's different than what I see:

This deck aims to find a partial balance between the competitive leveler approach and political opportunities with less optimized choices. The vast majority of my other decks kill through commander damage, so I am happy for the primary wincon to be aligned with the "combo" version of this deck that relies on the Bullies ability to totally destroy someone. The main difference between my build and others I see is the method of getting your bad gifts to the graveyard. I don't see a lot of looter style effects in other decks.

To avoid telegraphing our gifts, I have instant speed cards like Thrill of Possibility to discard our "Big Threats" strategically from our hand on the opponents turn who will be bullied while replacing it, instead of trying to mill everything away and then Reclaim key pieces. This strategy means we will have the bullies sitting out and ready to tap, instead of having a full graveyard filled with threats our opponents have to consider without the Bullies on the battlefield. The thinking behind this method over maximum self-milling is that we can retain noncreature pieces of the puzzle that are very helpful more easily. I can mill away my Leveler, but I may mill my Despotic Scepter away as well, which greatly increases our ability to bully the whole board away. We can be more selective in filtering our hand thanks to Red, but not as well as if we were in Blue. Also, as the discard is part of the spell cost, even if we get counterspelled the card goes to the graveyard. If someone cracks a Tormods Crypt, we still activate the bullies in response to that.

We're limited to Deal Broker and Faithless Looting in these colors, but we still get janky Rummaging Goblin effects to work with as well to achieve the same thing.

Because we will be having our Bullies sittin' around, I have included protective cards to give them hexproof, or Kaya's Ghostform to get them back onto the board.

This may be more fragile overall, but it will give our opponents a chance to I N T E R A C T with us.

Spicy Fun:

Thornbite Staff equipped to The Beamtown Bullies who then reanimate the Bronze Bombshell is a full kill to everyone on their upkeep.

Thornbite Staff also kills an opponent if the Soulgorger Orgg is reanimated.

Give anyone a Leveler. Keep a Despotic Scepter around so you can Level the next guy. Keep in mind that none of the untap cards in this deck target artifacts, so it won't be a full clear.

Final Parting goes two ways - Leveler + Despotic Scepter for 6 mana for a quick kill. Bronze Bombshell + Thornbite Staff if you have more time to setup the equip costs.

Jarad's Orders is a funky way to do the same stuff, as it is only two creatures. A big threat, and Goblin Engineer who can then be cast to discard a supplemental artifact or the Leveler.

Don't forget to reanimate a Terastodon for someone. Woe unto them if they choose to target anything you own for such a gracious gift...

Concerns:

Is it true? Will I get tired of this deck? ALL of our "card draw" are "tutor" effects to the graveyard. Will I always choose the same route? Can I wield this power with righteousness? What will become of me?

Will I remake this deck voltron style like all my other ones?

PS:

Cards like Despotic Scepter are the kind of card that makes Magic an incredible game to me. I had no idea how that thing could ever be useful in any context when I first encountered it, and that thrills me. It is on par with One With Nothing for "WTF is going on in this game that this exists?" reactions. Soulgorger Orgg and Leveler have massive Timmy effects that attract me, and this deck plays these otherwise useless cards. I am prepared to say "Time to level the playing field" every time I use the Leveler.

My first thought upon seeing this card was to use Reclamation Sage politically, which is quite innocent but I could imagine the table talking it would produce. My second thought was Phage the Untouchable, who is a legendary and thus cannot be targeted by the bullies. Alas, I will have to build a Phage EDH deck to scratch the itch of using her.

Why 102 cards?

Because dragon shield sleeves often come with 102 sleeves, and I won't tell my friends I have two extra cards if you don't.