Hey everyone, with us being back to weekly events for a second week, we’re back to a sort of regular groove. Last week I went for something much more control-oriented, so I figured: this week, why not experiment with a crazy combo? Something that’s just off of competitive…but could definitely surprise people.
Let’s Get Wild
The Team: Dr. Strange dabbles in some Wild Magic.
Format: Casual Golden Age (Modern recommended)
Ok, this one will take some explaining. The core strategy involves using Doctor Strange’s ability to use extra copies of actions alongside Wild Magic. I also included Raised Shields to have an action with a single-burst effect on my side to use Wild Magic with.
Now, I obtained an advance ruling from a different judge on this one (to avoid ruling on my own stuff), and here is how we agreed it would work:
Doctor Strange creates a second copy of Wild Magic’s effect. Because of the Ultraman ruling, Doctor Strange also creates an extra copy of any action copied by Wild Magic.
Concretely, what this means, is that if I use Wild Magic with Doctor Strange active, the following actions trigger:
- Wild Magic
- Copy of Raised Shields
- Strange’s copy of Raised Shields
- Copy of burst action #2 (if the opponent has one)
- Strange’s copy of burst action #2 (if applicable)
*original Wild Magic has now finished resolving - Strange’s copy of Wild Magic
- Copy of Raised Shields
- Strange’s copy of Raised Shields
- Copy of burst action #2 (if the opponent has one)
- Strange’s copy of burst action #2 (if applicable)
What this means is that I get to trigger 6 or 10 actions (depending on whether my opponent has a single burst action) by using a single Wild Magic.
Now, let’s take advantage of this and make it workable. Attune is the obvious pick here. After all, if I have two different Attune characters, I could deal anywhere from 12 to 20(!) Attune damage out of a single Wild Magic. Wasp and Volo were my two picks here. Wasp in particular is huge in this: not only can I wreck my opponent with Attune, but Wasp gets buffed, and Raised Shields will give her Overcrush. Even if I have an OP Widow on the other side to negate Attune’s damage, her Overcrush damage will make for a strong secondary win condition. And Volo, well, he’s the only 2-cost with Attune in Modern.
This leads me to a couple of pretty obvious picks. Now, Dr. Strange is an Avenger. And there is no way I want to pay 7 for him if I can avoid it. Enter Moon Knight. He can copy Strange’s text and is cheaper. Plus, if my opponent brings Drax or Typhoid Mary, if they stop Strange, I still have Moon Knight (and vice versa). And with both Strange and Wasp being Avengers, there was another obvious pick: Avengers ID Card. A solid 2-cost action that can buff my characters, give me ramp, and trigger Attune. What’s not to like?
With the core established, the rest of the team is pretty much utility. I included Angela to stop “When fielded” effects (like the aforementioned Drax and Typhoid Mary). Black Widow is there to hurt burn teams (plus, some games I thought it might be fun to copy Widow with Moon Knight instead and stop Iceman completely, but decided against it eventually). And for the last slot, I figured I’d try the Iron Lad global. That ramp intrigues me, and I wanted to see if I could make good use of it in a tournament setting.
And with all of that said, on to the games!
Game 1:
To start things off, went up against an Iceman team. Sadly, he doesn’t have SR Turk Barrett yet, so his team’s not optimized for Modern. Still has some fun tech though. He has the Lita that deals damage when fielding sidekicks, which he can use with Collector’s global trigger Iceman while attacking. He also has an aggro secondary win con with Kree Captain and Dreadnaught. He went with Iceman early, I countered with Widow. From there, I built my strategy piece by piece. His dice wouldn’t roll reliably for him, and I got the opening I needed to get Moon Knight and my Attune characters. Widow slowed him down enough that I got my characters on the field and used Wild Magic. With my opponent at 2 life and staring down a 19A Overcrushing Wasp, I won.
1-0
Game 2:
I followed that up by going up against a SR Thanos/discount/Parasite team. That brought me Investigation. I went first, meaning I bought two Investigations. I then bought Moon Knight quickly, hoping to get some Investigation doubling shenanigans…but Moon Knight took a while to show up. It gave me the time to get the other pieces of my combo. By the time my opponent bought her Thanos, she never got to field him, because the combo was active and ready to fire. I used Investigation for ramp and burned down almost half of my opponent’s life over a couple of turns…and then Wild Magic happened. 12 Attune damage, 18A Overcrushing wasp, game over. I won.
2-0
Game 3:
My last game of the evening was against a 4-cost Becky team with…Investigation again? With me going first again? Oh, don’t mind if I do. Yep, bought two Investigations early, and Moon Knight hit the field, doubling those actions and making my ramp ridiculous. I ran wild with that and got Volo and Wasp on the board quickly. And then I bought Wild Magic, rolled it with Investigation…and missed it. In fact, with the amount of energy I had, I just decided, to heck with it, and bought the other two Wild Magics and an Avengers ID Card. The next turn, I got Investigation, Wild Magic, and Avengers ID Card. We didn’t play through everything, but just with Wild Magic, Investigation, and Avengers ID Card, all doubled by Moon Knight, my opponent was already dead and staring down a 31A Wasp with Overcrush. Not counting what I was going to roll with Investigation. So we called it a day. I won.
3-0
Post-Mortem:
-This team is slow-ish to set up. But once it’s ready, it just kills. Completely and utterly. Even though none of my opponents brought a single-burst action, just with Raised Shields and the good doctor’s doubling, I had more than enough damage to win thanks to Wasp being way too huge to stop.
-Moon Knight was really handy here. Putting Strange’s ability on a 5-cost made it much easier to use seeing as I didn’t have to dedicate heavy ramp just to get to him. I can see that Moon Knight seeing play not just for shenanigans, but for genuine usefulness. We’ll see.
-Originally, I was going to run Thrown Brick in this instead of Wild Magic. The idea was: hey, if you’re going to use Thrown Brick, I get a copy of it, and I get to Attune off of it (since Doctor Strange isn’t restricted to your own actions). If you play this Doctor Strange and your opponent brings Thrown Brick, don’t forget to trigger Strange’s effect off of those bricks!
-Putting Avengers ID Card in this was really interesting; each ID card essentially boosted Wasp’s A and D by 4 instead of 2 (because of the 2 Attune triggers, hers and Volo’s). So doubling ID Card with Strange buffed Wasp by 8 while dealing 4 Attune damage to my opponent and potentially prepping up to 2 dice. For a 2-cost action. It’s just unreal.
-Iron Lad…was meh in this one. I don’t see myself wanting to use this on most of my teams. Which means that if it finds the right team, it’ll be a one-sided benefit. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out where this guy fits. I have a few ideas.
-No, I didn’t get Moon Knight and Doctor Strange on the field at the same time. I don’t want to imagine how nuts that could’ve gotten with Wild Magic, and you’re evil for even thinking about it.
So overall, sure this build is not competitively optimized by any stretch, but it was incredibly satisfying to get this combo to fire off…even though I should’ve brought a flowchart to explain how it works. Loved it. By the way, next week, assuming our store gets more IG stock, we might run a Sealed event (no way we can live draft in the current environment). I might skip the WHYP article for that one and focus on finalizing the Essentials List update. In the meantime, keep on rolling!