Welcome To The Warp Zone III: The Revenge

This week, I decided I was going to build something simple from the new Campaign Box and Team Packs.  Something that new players could pick up out of the box and find some enjoyment out of.

*DING*

What’s that?  It looks like DM Armada has a new video…

Hmmm….

Well… This kind of changes things.  Domino and Chaos Warp is just too good to pass up on.  Sorry to the new players, but we are going back to the Warp Zone one more time.

We’ve played this combo a couple of times before.  Once with not much success (you can read the original article here), and another where it actually worked pretty good (check that one out here).  Neither one of these options were Modern legal though.  With this trip to The Warp Zone, I decided to make that change.

What Did You Play?

The Team:  Warp Zone 3 Point Oh.

Obviously, Domino was the big addition here.  The whole point of the combo (as in the video) was to use her Energize ability to make Chaos Warp just that much more effective.

The other core parts of a Chaos Warp Team were the two BAC’s and Bishop.  You obviously need Chaos Warp to make a Chaos Warp Team work, and Create Food and Water is still the best way to manipulate the Bag and Used Pile easily.  Bishop is really the only way you are not going to kill yourself with this Team.

The other piece, while not 100% “necessary” sure makes it work better.  Uncommon Morph is my personal “go to” tool to make this Team work.  He attacks and you use the Chaos Warp action when needed.  No need to actually buy one of those pesky BAC dice.  If Morph is how I make this work, I need a way to keep him around for future turns.  Again, Kate Bishop makes her return (although this time in Promo form) to the Chaos Warp Team.  Lots of familiar faces on the Team.

With only four slots remaining, I decided to continue with my original plan of using the newer toys.  I put Professor X on the Team as a limited form of Ramp (I am still not a huge fan of this Global).  If it was good enough for DM Armada, it would be good enough for me.

Hope Summers made the cut because… X-men.  Many of the pieces here are from that Affiliation, so why not.  Instead of going the Kitty Pryde route, I decided to go with the easier discount:  Cyclops.  With him active, I would get both a discount and a buff (back-up win condition yo!).  This is where Hope came in.  I would buy Hope immediately, and copy Cyclops.  Buy a cheap(er) Cyclops and get him out to really stack the discounts.  Once they are both in the Field, I am getting a constant 2 energy discount for all of my other X-men.  That means Bishop drops to a 3 cost, and more importantly Domino drops to a 1 cost.

This is the key to the Team.  Set up the pieces in the Field:  Hope, Cyclops, Morph, and Bishop.  Then buy up all of the Domino dice for 1 each.  Once they are all purchased, switch Hope over to Domino.  Now I have 8 dice that will do what I want them to do.

The final piece was really my only source of removal… Mimic: Flying, Blasting, Slashing.  We’ve talked about him many times before.  He is excellent removal, and at a 2 cost (with the discounts) you cannot go wrong.

This actually looks like a decent shot at some shenanigans here.  Let’s see how it ran!

Game 1:

Up against an old school Justice League Team.  Retaliation was a big source of potential damage, as well as beefy Justice Leaguers like Superman and Shazam.  He also had Superhero Registration Act as one of the BAC’s.  Bishop would help keep Retaliation at bay, so he would be an early buy.  I missed out on ALL of the SRA’s because I was constantly rolling Sidekicks when I needed that 4th energy.  It was fascinating actually.

Anyway, the plan came together as I outlined it.  Hope to Cyclops to cheap Bishop to Morph.  Once I was set with that I bought all of the Domino’s in one turn and then made the swap of Hope to Domino.  Thanks to his SRA, I was able to get my Hope dice out of the Field fairly easily.

Then it was attack with Morph, trigger Chaos Warp (for at least 6 damage), and Bishtract him back to do it all over again the next turn.  Mix in a little natural Energize burn damage and a swing for the final points of combat damage, and you have a victory.

The machine ran flawlessly, and it was just as entertaining as you would expect.

1-0

Game 2:

Our resident youngster was back tonight.  I was not going to go for the shenanigans in this one.  I still did the Hope/Cyclops thing though.  This time, I bought all of my Domino dice and fielded them.  With Hope and Cyclops, Domino was a 7/4 on her top face (which she seemed to like when she rolled a character face).  I just kept attacking with giant Dominos until she had nothing left in the Field and they went through for lethal.

2-0

Game 3:

Bye!

3-0

Game 4:

The official night was over, but I got to play a “for fun” game against a maurading monkey.  Having watched what he did during my Bye Round, I knew I would not really have time for Chaos Warp.  I decided to go the combat route and see if I could survive long enough.  Same plan as before with the Hope and Cyclops duo.  I took a few punches to the face from Grodd when I refused to block (which was the lesser of two evils at the time).  I managed to stabilize though by getting masks when I needed them to bounce Grodd back, and Mimic to KO the monkey when needed.  The highlight of the game for me was triggering Energize on a Domino die 4 times (I think) in a row.  Things came to a bit of a standstill once his Wonder Woman hit the Field as Bishtraction was no longer an option.  I made my last stand by swinging in and bringing him down to 1 life, but emptying his Field at the same time.  High risk/reward here.  Unfortunately for me, he rerolled a Grodd on the next turn and I was maskless to stop him.

I never had the spare energy to buy Morph in this one (who unfortunately did not get the benefit of the discount).  I was always saving something back to protect me from Grodd while I could.

3-1

Post-Mortem:

This Team was ridiculous and fun as hell.  I only got to fire the pure combo once, but that was more than enough for me.  This may have been the most effective Chaos Warp Team yet.  Domino was a brilliant addition (thank you DM Armada for that one).  I also loved turning Hope into more Domino dice.  If they were all in my bag at one time, that is a lot of damage potential (8 damage if things roll well and I miss the single energy face on those dice).

I’ve talked about Morph in my previous Chaos Warp builds, but I firmly believe he is the best way to trigger this action.  You can control when you want this to happen so much better.  There were times I held back as my bag was not full enough, and I could not have done that if I was depending on drawing an action at a specific time.  Also… Switch sucks.  Morph avoids both of those problems.

Cyclops/Hope is a powerful duo on any X-men Team, but super powerful on this one.  You need to buy a lot of things to get the best bang for your buck, and the discount is hard to ignore here.  I think it is better than Kitty because, you again have control of the the situation.  You have the bodies active in the Field freeing up energy for actual purchases.  You also do not need to worry about recycling Kitty.

It was also nice that Hope and Cyclops gave me a back-up plan that I never had in a previous version of this Team.  Potentially giant bodies to use as attackers.  Domino on her own was a pretty powerful attacker with a stat buff from the Dynamic Duo.

Professor X was really the odd man out on the Team.  I benefited from the Ramp a few times, but overall it was not that good.  Maybe I still need the practice with it, but I am not loving it.

The rest of the Team worked as you would expect it to.  Bishop is really the only way you do not die playing this Team.  Mimic is fantastic removal.  The BAC pair is 100% essential for this to work.  There are really no other choices than Chaos Warp (duh) and Create Food and Water.

I said it before, but for real this time… I think this ends my Chaos Warp experimentation.  Of the ones I have run though, this one has been my favorite.  Domino actually adds some stability to a goofy trick Team like this.

Thanks again to DM Armada for bringing this one back into the spotlight.  If you are not already following this fine gentleman, check him out on the YouTubes right here.

Have you taken a trip into The Warp Zone?  Have you dabbled with Domino?  Is this the best combination since peanut butter and chocolate?  Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!

– jourdo