Format: Chaos
Tonight, an evening of pure Chaos. The way this format works, you roll a d20 before each turn. Based on the results of the roll, you resolve a specific gameplay effect. There are a couple of variants floating around, and the one we used can be found here. (it’s the first one listed)
Now, I just wanted to make something weird, messy and fun. I knew whatever strategy I’d come up with would just be wrecked to pieces by the d20, so to heck with it, let’s take out the…
Chaotic Copycats
The Team: What the heck am I even doing?
This team is a Hodge-podge of New Modern cards that I wanted to mess around with. Note: I threw this together in 20 minutes (worked alright with my Absorbing Man team!)…which, as you’ll find later, led to a dumb mistake.
The core strategy was going to be Collector with Mimic. Since Mimic worked so well as a win condition in my Exiles team, I wanted to try it with a bigger target and by using Collector to bring it in. And until he can be a win condition, he makes for fantastic ramp.
So I need a huge body to copy with Mimic. Enter Thanos. He’s a nasty piece of control with humongous stats. He burns opponents down, stops their win condition, and can deal some serious damage. Especially with Haymaker, which I put in specifically to give Thanos Overcrush for the final big swing when possible.
Doppelganger serves some key functions: he destroys sidekicks, which often get fielded in Chaos, hurts my opponents for having sidekicks, and he thus encourages my opponent to clog his bag. With Collector allowing me to field him at will for 2 energy, he’s a shoe-in.
As for the rest, before anyone asks: yes, I used that Punisher. I wanted to copy his stats with Mimic and go nuts, but he never rolled together with Mimic. Which also made Knowhere less useful, because Knowhere was meant to get Punisher out (though I also intended to swap out Doppelganger for Collector with it).
Shriek serves for blanking, and Resurrection for ramp (hey, I’m relying on a 7-cost and a What-If; I need tons of ramp)
Now, on Chwinga, embarrassing story time: this was originally the D&D Doppelganger. I honestly never realized that I put the two Doppelgangers on the same team (guess that happens when throwing a team together too fast). Someone made me realize my mistake after we started playing, and with everyone’s approval, I made an emergency swap, hence Chwinga. Many thanks to the other players for their patience and understanding.
With that said, on to the games!
Game 1:
This game was up against a Ring of Winter Dragons team…and it exemplified how everything can go wrong in Chaos. My characters would just never roll. On top of that, I kept taking damage from the D20 (rolled a 13 twice, losing 7 life each time) until I was down to 2 life, at which point he just fielded dragons and won. Not much I could’ve done better here; it just happens.
0-1
Game 2:
Looking to bounce back, this time against an Overcrushing Wolverine. This time, the d20 only mildly messed up my game. It did stop me from winning once; my opponent had 7 sidekicks fielded and couldn’t attack, I had Doppelganger in Prep…and I rolled a 1, sending everyone’s dice back into the bag and ruining my setup. Ah well. We ended up rolling a 10 at some point, allowing both of us to get our biggest guy on the field. He gets Wolverine, I get Thanos. A turn later, I rolled his Upgrade – Proton Cannon, had fists to use his own Cone of Cold global, and I attacked with a 9/9 Thanos. His Wolverine’s paltry defense was his downfall. Not what I was expecting, but it was quite effective.
1-1
Game 3:
My final game of the night was against an Ally team. She had hard choices to make: we rolled a 19, so she had to choose between bringing us both to 10 life, or ruin the globals on all BACs (either by flipping them face down or stopping globals all game). She needed the BAC globals, so we both went to 10. She Shrieked Collector to stop the shenanigans (fielding Doppelganger would just wreck her team). I then Shrieked her Shriek and used Collector to bring in Doppelganger on her turn, mostly clearing her board. I then fielded Mimic with Collector (already had one on the field), copied the biggest die around, and swung in for lethal.
2-1
Post-Mortem:
-Collector with Mimic is really cool. With Doppelganger (the D&D one, this time), I could see some fun Collector shenanigans as well.
-I didn’t foresee how much sidekicks would matter tonight, but Doppelganger: Six Arms was an all-star. Great burn damage, fun removal, and decent stats. Makes me wonder how much damage he will do post-rotation. He’s a natural fit in Collector Control.
-The d20 really messed up some parts of the strategy. Every game, we rolled an 18 at some point, making everything Max 2 and Chwinga became functionally useless. Note to self; never bring Swarm to Chaos events.
Overall, this is not a team I’d revisit. Some pieces could be fun (a variant on Collector with Mimic and Thanos, in a more…normal format, could genuinely hurt), but this was way too janky for anything serious. It was fun though!