Kenji Watanabe, Digimon's lead designer, designed Beelko (Beelstarmon) as a lady-Beelzemon joke many years ago, but was made an official Digimon when she gained popularity. She caught many by surprise when she was introduced as an SEC card in the BT-06 expansion set, and a minute later I was dead set on building a deck around her.
Beelstarmon
Beelstarmon is meant to be a hard-play Digimon: her play cost is reduced by 1 for each [Three Musketeer] Digimon or 7-cost option card in your trash. Subsequently, she has an [On Play] effect that returns a 7-cost option card to your hand, and then plays a 7-cost option card from your hand without paying its cost.
Therefore at a worst-case scenario when you do not have any [Three Musketeer] or 7-cost option cards in your trash, she becomes a 5-cost to play LV6 Digimon (assuming we paid in full the 7 cost option card we play in tandem).
While a 5-cost to play LV6 Digimon doesnt sound bad at all, pushing so much memory to your opponent is! So we wouldn't want to do that unless it is a game plan, such as running Megazoo or Security Control decks.
Personally, I feel that because she benefits so much from having a trash full of either big [Three Musketeer] Digimons or expensive 7-cost option cards, it does not make a lot of sense to run her in a standard digivolution-based deck, which can easily choke when filled with so many big option cards.
Unless though, she might work in an option-centric promo [P-027] Metalgarurumon deck but that's topic for another day.
Beelko-ntrol
This deck runs 14 option cards, 7 tamers and 4 Zwart Defeats, giving the security a good 50% "bomb-rate". However, this security lacks punch compared to standard Security Control decks due to excluding "proficient" 8-cost option cards such as Gaia Force and Ultimate Flare.
This deck is constructed around [Three Musketeers] Digimons or rather, Beelstarmon. Therefore, these option cards eventually become toolbox (even in trash) for her, using whichever best depending on the situation.
Black Momentum
I feel that the new tamer card [BT6-090] Izzy & Joe is an immensely suitable card for this deck: not only does the [Start of Your Turn] +2 memory condition exceptionally easy to satisfy, but the [Opponent's Turn] effect also improves upon the lack of drawing power most Megazoo and Security Control decks suffer from. In order to benefit from this effect, I play black (particularly blocker) Digimons.
Deputymon is a great searcher, ideally pulling a [Three Musketeer] Digimon and a 7-cost option card to your hand. He can also warp digivolve into Gundramon, which would be the ideal play.
Gundramon meanwhile has a [When Digivolving] effect that allows you to play a 7-cost option card from the top 5 cards of your deck. He is also a blocker therefore would synergize well with our Izzy & Joe (for draw power) if he was targeted for an attack and deleted.
Both Deputymon and Gundramon trashes the searched cards instead of returning them to the bottom of your deck, which in practice does not do any harm since cards returned to the bottom of your deck will probably never see the light of day for such decks with slow drawing power. In addition, both Beelstarmon and Lucemon benefits from a large trash size so this works to their favor.
I also play [BT2-061] Andromon to serve a few roles:
– As a decent blocker Digimon to slow down the opponent, while synergizing with Izzy & Joe.
– As another digivolution base for Gundramon.
– As revival candidates for Omegamon Zwart.
Omegamon Zwart and Defeat
[BT5-087] Omegamon Zwart will ideally digivolve from Beelstarmon in order return her to your hand when attacking. Both Andromon and Deputymon are revival candidates, with Andromon having a slight edge especially during late-game.
[BT5-112] Omegamon Zwart Defeat plays great from security, and can similarly digivolve from either Gundramon or Beelstarmon.
Both Omegamons benefit from [BT5-093] Tai & Matt, becoming very potent security hitters in the mid/late game when you have a couple of these tamers in play.
Baseline Recovery
Being largely a Megazoo cum Security Control deck, recovery Digimons [BT2-039] Magnadramon and [BT4-115] Lucemon offer the classical recovery routes. I have opted out of [BT1-060] MagnaAngemon as I feel that his cost-per-recovery is insufficient to garner a spot in this deck.
Options - Single Target
Being 7-cost options, both [BT2-110] Trump Sword and [BT6-109] Fly Bullet are conditional plays. Fly Bullet allows you to delete anything LV6 and below, while Trump Sword goes for the unsuspended Digimon, including LV7s.
Options - Multi Target
[BT6-095] Happy Bullet Showering is a very situational card, which can be either extremely useless or extremely useful. Similarly for [BT6-105] Gewalt Schwarmer which is an absolute hindrance when triggered from security (as it only returns to your hand), but is a great card for this deck which runs a very narrow board of big Digimons.
However, both these cards become great tools for Beelstar. For example, with sufficient memory (from the many tamer cards played) and trash size (to reduce Beelstarmon's play cost), it is reasonable to play a Beelstarmon within your memory budget, casting Gewalt Schwarmer to possibly clear your opponent's LV5 and lower Digimons, followed by Happy Bullet Showering to clear 2 or more of your opponent's LV6 Digimons at the same DP.
These are tool cards are usually left inside your trash, and retrieved/used only by Beelstarmon. Therefore, I only run a minimal 2 copies of each in deck.
I also run [BT5-108] Earth Shaker since I usually have enough blockers to force the opponent to build past rookie level, and enough solutions (tamer Tai & Matt as well as single target option cards) to deter my opponent into fielding a LV6 Digimon. Earth Shaker is an effective card to deal with the opponent attempting to build a wide board, and while it is not 7 cost I feel that it should be played largely for board control.
Final Thoughts
Having tried a few games with this deck, there is definitely room for optimization (as it plays very similar to current meta security control decks). I will continue to optimize this deck, and hope to see and learn from other successful Beelstar decks when BT-06 finally touches down.
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