A few hours after Bandai revealed the first EX-02 Secret Rare card in their FUN Digica! episode, the price of BT-02 Beelzemon almost doubled!
This archetype has suddenly became so hot with many wanting a piece of this EX-02 Beelzemon deck, despite an unestablished meta. However, given their effects and (new) engine we cannot deny the excitement that Beelzemon will bring into DCG, so lets dive into what we know so far!
A New Impmon and Beelzemon
EX-02 introduces a new Impmon and a new Beelzemon, both in which we think should be maxed-out in deck.
[EX2-039] Impmon becomes the de-facto searcher in a Beelzemon deck, and has an inheritable effect that grants a significant +3000 DP buff when he becomes Beelzemon. A LV6 Beelzemon that is digivolved from him will be 14000 DP large, enough to attack most Digimons or swing at security.
Meanwhile, the new [EX2-044] Beelzemon would seem a little lacklustre when compared to the older [BT2-111] Beelzemon since he is not able to warp digivolve from Impmon. However, this new guy has a very good "when trashed from deck" effect, allowing you to play an Impmon from trash for free.
Effect: [When Played] Reveal 4 cards from top of your deck. Add 1 Digimon card with [Beelzebumon] in its name and 1 [Ai & Makoto] from among to your hand. Return the rest to the bottom of your deck.
Inherited Effect: [Your Turn] When this Digimon has [Beelzebumon] in its name, this Digimon gets +3000 DP.
Effect: [When Digivolved][When Attacking] You may trash 2 cards from the top of your deck. Then, delete 1 of your opponent’s LV3 or lower Digimon. For every 10 cards in your trash, this effect’s selectable LV increases by +1.
Enter Blast Mode
The real excitement comes from [EX2-074] Beelzemon: Blast Mode, an almost exclusive LV7 Digimon made for its archetype. Just looking at his effects make him a very desirable card: a deletion effect when trashed from deck, a (potentially board-wiping) deletion effect when digivolved, and is very aggressive in security-checks.
And then, we look at his supporting tamer card [EX2-065] Ai & Makoto, which lets you digivolve your attacking Beelzemon into a Blast Mode at a mere 3 cost, from trash!
So what does these all mean together?
A Beautiful New Archetype
Looking at all these new cards with our older Impmons and Beelzemon, this is how we think the engine will run.
In early game, trash your deck as fast as you can. The original [BT2-068] Impmon and a slew of other cards should help you achieve this. When the EX2 Impmon is trashed as a result, he will waterfall the trashing. We want to trash as quickly as possible, and this includes trashing the original [BT2-111] Beelzemon as well (yes that's right). Our goal is to have 10 or more cards in trash in order to satisfy the warp-digivolution condition of our BT2 Beelzemon.
When the EX2 Beelzemon is trashed, we revive either the EX2 Impmon for searching, or the [BT6-068] Impmon to recover any BT2 Beelzemon that is in the trash. Your Impmon will be able to warp into BT2 Beelzemon for 4 cost, which can be discounted if you happen to have [EX1-071] Win Rate 60% in your hand.
Subsequently, when your Beelzemon attacks, you suspend Ai & Makoto to digivolve your Beelzemon into Blast Mode at 3 cost from trash, so in terms of memory efficiency we would have only spent 7 cost to move from LV3 to LV7, while launching a slew of deletion effects and big security checks at your opponent!
And on top of all these, these is still plenty of room for tech cards!
Tech Cards?
There are a number of cards that accelerates deck-trashing, and a good example being the [BT8-108] Mist Memory Boost!!, and since your trash will be filled pretty quickly, option cards like [BT4-111] Jack Raid should prove quite worthy in your deck.
This upcoming set will also be giving us [EX2-071] Death Slinger, which is a no-brainer in an archetype deck.
If this deck ever becomes option-heavy, then [BT7-015] AvengeKidmon may just hit a sweet spot as a surprise tech card. Since a large number of cheap-to-play option cards might be (accidentally) trashed very quickly, AvengeKidmon may find himself very cheap to play very early, while recycling those option cards back to your deck. This may also help prevent a deck-out against the more defensive decks.
Another surprise tech card would be [BT5-083] Megidramon. While Megidramon would require playing LV5 Digimons in your deck (in order to digivolve), his [When Digivolving] effect has excellent synergy with the Beelzemon archetype, and would be able to revive a Digimon with Dukemon/Gallantmon in name when he is deleted. PS: we should get our Dukemon: Crimson Mode in this set as well!
Weakness?
If anything, this new Beelzemon archetype should be weak against the [BT2-020] Gallantmon due to that thick stack of trash. A Beelzemon player would find Gallantmon lethal, since he could extinguish your remaining securities and deal an ending hit to your game if you're not careful.
