Quintupling the Annual Murder Rate in Pittsburgh

Commander / EDH Aggro BRG (Jund) Creature Cheat Demons Goodstuff Hellion Reanimator Sacrifice Theme/Gimmick Wheels

herpdederp92

Creature (35)

• 1x Anger
• 1x Avenger of Zendikar
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Boldwyr Heavyweights
• 1x Caldera Hellion
• 1x Chainer, Nightmare Adept
• 1x Chaos Maw
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Disciple of Bolas
• 1x Doomed Necromancer
• 1x Dragon Mage
• 1x Eater of Days
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x End-Raze Forerunners
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Hellcarver Demon
• 1x Inverter of Truth
• 1x Leveler
• 1x Magus of the Wheel
• 1x Massacre Girl
• 1x Massacre Wurm
• 1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth
• 1x Ornithopter of Paradise
• 1x Outland Liberator  ^Flip
• 1x Overseer of the Damned
• 1x Port Razer
• 1x Protean Hulk
• 1x Rune-Scarred Demon
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Skullwinder
• 1x Stitcher's Supplier
• 1x Terastodon
• 1x Treeshaker Chimera
• 1x Veteran Explorer

Land (32)

• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Cinder Glade
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Foreboding Ruins
• 5x Forest
• 1x Game Trail
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x High Market
• 1x Homeward Path
• 1x Llanowar Wastes
• 1x Mossfire Valley
• 5x Mountain
• 1x Rootbound Crag
• 1x Savage Lands
• 1x Shadowblood Ridge
• 1x Sheltered Thicket
• 1x Smoldering Marsh
• 4x Swamp
• 1x Temple of Malady
• 1x Ziatora's Proving Ground

Instant (7)

• 1x Abrupt Decay
• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Rakdos Charm
• 1x Rushed Rebirth
• 1x Snuff Out
• 1x Windgrace's Judgment

Artifact (6)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Indulgence
• 1x Thornbite Staff
• 1x Vivien's Arkbow

Commander (1)

Sorcery (17)

• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Culling Ritual
• 1x Dark Deal
• 1x Diregraf Rebirth
• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Dread Summons
• 1x Faithless Looting
• 1x Incarnation Technique
• 1x Life's Legacy
• 1x Nature's Lore
• 1x Persist
• 1x Reforge the Soul
• 1x Scheming Symmetry
• 1x Tempt with Discovery
• 1x Victimize
• 1x Wheel of Misfortune

Enchantment (2)

• 1x Evolutionary Leap
• 1x Greater Good

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Maybeboard

Creature (14)

• 1x Artisan of Kozilek
• 1x Bane of Progress
• 1x Bramble Sovereign
• 1x Burning-Rune Demon
• 1x Craterhoof Behemoth
• 1x Ebonblade Reaper
• 1x Noxious Gearhulk
• 1x Pathbreaker Ibex
• 1x Sangromancer
• 1x Sire Of Insanity
• 1x Tempting Wurm
• 1x World Shaper
• 1x Worldgorger Dragon
• 1x Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Sorcery (7)

• 1x Black Sun's Zenith
• 1x Damnation
• 1x Exhume
• 1x Farseek
• 1x Rampant Growth
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Toxic Deluge

Land (5)

• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Kessig Wolf Run
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Stomping Ground

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Garruk's Uprising
• 1x Industrial Advancement
• 1x Mirror March
• 1x Protection Racket
• 1x Sneak Attack

Artifact (1)

• 1x Key to the City

Instant (1)

• 1x Assassin's Trophy

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Yeah, I know The Beamtown Bullies refers to Beantown (which is Boston, not Pittsburgh.) Shut up, I never went to school.

This deck evolved organically out of our 2022 slow-grow league, where I took the Riveteers Rampage precon and eventually built it into Bullying My Friends. And now it's become this pile of garbage.

YoU'rE wElCoMe. punches face

The Beamtown Philosophy Show

One thing became obvious very quickly as I was playing the base Riveteers preconstructed deck: out of the box, The Beamtown Bullies was a very, very bad commander for the deck.

Why? We can talk about precon things like mana curve and card quality, but ultimately those were not the biggest issue. What WAS the biggest issue is that the deck had almost no focus on card advantage, aside from the singular all-star card Protection Racket. And the Bullies live and die on card advantage.

Think about what the commander wants you to do. It wants you to get a big creature card from another zone into your graveyard, play your commander, and reanimate that big creature under an opponent's control. Forget about Leveler for a second: this chain of operations A) takes a lot of work, B) typically does not kill people and C) cannot win the game by itself. In order for the Bullies' ability to be any good, somewhere on the chain there has to be a decent value engine already operating, working towards some other win condition.

Hence, I built Jund Reanimator. Genuinely not an Aristocrats deck - I crammed the deck full of wheels, self-mill, bursts of card draw, and big creatures that are gonna get discarded and cheated into play way more often than they're actually gonna get cast. And in this context, the Bullies' reanimate-donate ability is icing on the cake: free group-hug value or political plays or forced interaction.

Or occasionally, an opponent gets a creature that straight-up kills them. You never know.

The Terastodon in the Room Show

All right, all right. It's the Bullies. We gotta play a few absolutely disgusting nonlegendary creatures that essentially kill their controller as they hit the field.

Leveler Goodbye your whole deck.

Inverter of Truth Goodbye most of your deck, hope you don't die to a Wheel of Fortune.

Eater of Days Go ahead and go grab a bite to eat, we'll let you know if you're still alive in an hour when it's your turn again.

Hellcarver Demon Goaded? Yeah sure I'll take 6, go sacrifice all your lands.

Boldwyr Heavyweights Good luck winning after your opponents all tutor out their favorite Eldrazi.

Out of these 5 creatures, the only one that should ever hit the field under our control is the Hellcarver, and only if we need the chumpblocker or want to sacrifice it immediately. Our Heavyweights tutor is typically Massacre Wurm, Terastodon or Meren, but there are plenty of other creatures that are situationally correct - it's a toolbox play.

Thornbite Staff is notable here, since it lets us force-untap our commander by sacrificing a creature to get a surprise activation for one of these bad boys.

Homeward Path can amp up this plan by taking back a creature, sacrificing it, and then giving to a second opponent later in the game.

In my experience, the deck simply cannot only focus on this Zedruu-esque strategy. It's often correct to entomb one of these cards, then simply never give it to anyone - the threat of getting Leveled makes opponents leave our board alone. We NEVER play like this against another reanimator deck though, as a tapped/killed Bullies followed by a Living Death equals a death sentence.

The Part Where He Kills You Show

Sniping down individual players with Leveler is all well and good, and it works great in a 1v1. But how do we win outright?

Turns out there's a pretty good way to kill people in Magic: You reduce their life total to zero. And oh wait, this deck is full of big overcosted creatures, and they have a power and toughness and they deal combat damage and stuff. But on a more serious note:

End-Raze Forerunners pumps our field up for a lethal swing

Port Razer gives us up to 3 extra combat steps if we can connect with it

Treeshaker Chimera eats an entire field of blockers while the rest of our field punches face

Avenger of Zendikar is an army in a box

Dread Summons is an army in a box

Overseer of the Damned plus any boardwipe is an army in a box

Anger in the graveyard hastes our big armies so that they can swing in immediately

And hey, every one of these creatures is nonlegendary, so in a pinch we can Bullies-donate them to an opponent, giving that player tons of damage to throw at other opponents. Pretty nifty how that works. I especially like the interaction of handing a player an Avenger, letting them swing out with plant tokens, then tossing down a Massacre Wurm to melt their life total.

Wheely Good Card Draw Show

Now for the meat of the deck: To summarize the intro, the best way to get value out of the Bullies is to just draw and discard a lot of cards. And this deck does that, a LOT.

We play a ton of wheels and draw-discard stuff:

Reforge the Soul

Dark Deal

Wheel of Misfortune

Magus of the Wheel Friendly opponents sometimes crack a donated Magus for us

Dragon Mage Here, have this goaded dragon

Faithless Looting

Geier Reach Sanitarium

Rather than focusing on the generic "free repeatable sac outlets" that get used in combo decks, e.g. Viscera Seer and Ashnod's Altar, we're making sure that our creatures sacrifice for card advantage:

Greater Good Absolutely the best card in the whole deck. Tutor this thing every game!

Disciple of Bolas Insanely good target to loop in and out of the yard with Victimize etc.

Life's Legacy

Treeshaker Chimera Like three Sad Robots stapled together

Evolutionary Leap

And, we've got plans to just discard them for value, or straight-up mill them:

Vivien's Arkbow Cheats big bois

Fauna Shaman Tutors big bois

Chainer, Nightmare Adept Best instant-speed discard outlet in the deck, and can be used to reanimate

Dread Summons

Stitcher's Supplier

Incarnation Technique Also a reanimator spell

And a couple of straight-up tutors:

Scheming Symmetry

Rune-Scarred Demon Probably the second-best card in the deck to donate with Bullies and generate goodwill. Best is Veteran Explorer.

Buried Alive 3 creatures rather than just 1 makes this very playable

After all of this churning and milling and discarding to hand size, we should have tons of card selection, plus a graveyard full of dorks to throw at people with the Bullies, or reanimate directly. Basically, if there's an Anger in our hand, we should have at least 3 options to get it into the graveyard.

Cheating Out Dummy Thick Big Bois Show

Big overcosted creatures like Rune-Scarred Demon and Treeshaker Chimera don't just appear on the battlefield. Unless we cheat them into play from our graveyard:

Meren of Clan Nel Toth Secret commander 1: Slow chugging value engine that reanimates stuff every turn

Chainer, Nightmare Adept Secret commander 2: Discard, targeted reanimation, and a haste enabler for big dudes

Doomed Necromancer good donate card too

Incarnation Technique

Victimize

Dread Return

Diregraf Rebirth

Persist

Or we cheat them into play from our deck:

Protean Hulk A fun, non-instakill use of the Hulk. Slams down a big 6-drop, or one of the Secret Commanders and some random dorks.

Rushed Rebirth Veteran Explorer, Fauna Shaman, Magus of the Wheel, and Disciple of Bolas are good 1-4 MV picks.

Vivien's Arkbow

Boldwyr Heavyweights Admittedly this has to be donated, but we usually get something spooky like Terastodon out of the deal.

And since we're looking to get creatures into and out of the graveyard, sacrifice outlets are worth listing in full:

Greater Good

Evolutionary Leap

High Market

Disciple of Bolas

Life's Legacy

Victimize

The deck runs a LOT of instants and sorceries, especially as far as Reanimation goes, so EWit-style recursion is great for value plays:

Eternal Witness

Skullwinder Great card to donate too

Interaction On a Stick Show

Does this deck play interactively? Hell yes! Jund is great at breaking opponents' stuff. And since we actually have a plan to get a creature on an opponent's board at instant speed, it's totally fine for a lot of this interaction to be on-a-stick, as it goes. Even really big sticks.

If we need a ton of creatures or creature tokens gone:

Blasphemous Act

Massacre Girl Unfortunately legendary, so we cannot donate her

Massacre Wurm Also a good wincon via the death triggers

Chaos Maw

Caldera Hellion LOOK AT ME AND MY HELLION TRIBAL DECK!

Culling Ritual

If we need specific creatures gone:

Overseer of the Damned

Snuff Out

Beast Within

Abrupt Decay

Chaos Warp

Windgrace's Judgment

If we need individual artifacts or enchantments gone:

Outland Liberator  

Terastodon

Beast Within etc, I'm not repeating them all

And if we need cards out of graveyards:

Deathrite Shaman Good for dodging Living Death into Leveler problems

Rakdos Charm

Bojuka Bog

I'm not going to go over the ramp package in any detail, but I'll note Veteran Explorer, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and Tempt with Discovery as being good ways to get group-hug ramp going.

Date added	2 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	6 - 0 Mythic Rares 52 - 0 Rares 18 - 0 Uncommons 10 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.68
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Day, Elephant 3/3 G, Experience Token, Night, Plant 0/1 G, Zombie 2/2 B