WHYP: Cosmic Pizza

So if you read comments from last week’s article, you’ll notice Reg challenged me to bring a Pooping Pizza team to my Legacy League.

Challenge accepted, Reg. But you never said what I COULDN’T put on the team. So say hello to…

Cosmic Pizza

The Team:  Let’s get cookin’

So the basic damage engine is pretty simple. Buy a Pizza, field Corvus Glaive, send a die back to its card, deal 2 damage to my opponent. What I did to make this Golden is add…the worst damage enabler in the game. Oh hi Cosmic Cube. All of a sudden, depending on how many Cubes I activate, Corvus doesn’t deal just 2, it’s 4, 6, 8…that gets out of control in a hurry.

But to make it work, I put in Human Torch. The goal is that the character I damage with Human Torch will be Corvus, to KO and refield him. Now, his damage is increased by Cosmic Cube as well. All of a sudden, with 1 Cube active, I deal 7 damage to my opponent by fielding Corvus (4 with his ability, 3 with Torch’s), with 2 Cubes that goes to 11 damage (6 from Corvus, 5 from Torch)…wait what? Ok, that’s ridiculous. I also put in Harley Quinn to have another option to purchase if my opponent grabs all of my Pizzas. 

But I need some ramp to make this work. Enter Clayface and Supreme Intelligence. I can use Clayface on my opponent’s turn, and pay the 2 energy from the Clayface’d die to Prep a die for some strong, one-sided ramp. All of a sudden Harley isn’t just a backup option, she’s key to the ramp working. Oh, and guess what costs 2 energy and can be Prep’d with Supreme Intelligence? Cosmic Cube. Oh goodness what have I done…

The last 3 cards are various types of utility. Blue-Eyes is there for ramp + as a way to KO Corvus if my opponent blanks or neutralizes Human Torch. Dreadnaught is there for removal (that is enhanced by Cosmic Cube!), and Blink-Transmutation is there to counter aggressive teams. It’s helped by the fact that with Harley + Clayface, I should be able to generate masks pretty handily.

So there’s the team. In retrospect, I should’ve seen how nasty that was.

Game 1:

I first went up against SR Ultraman. That should’ve been a tougher matchup, but weird early rolls meant that while she bought Ultraman, she couldn’t get Kryptonites early. Meanwhile, my own Clayface + Supreme Intelligence worked like a charm. By T4, I had multiple Cubes, Harleys, Torch and Corvus. Then on T5, multiple Corvus dice hit the field with Cube active, and the damage racked up way too quick. I won.

1-0

Game 2:

I followed this up by going up against a Range-focused team. His goal is simple: thin out my field and win with combat damage. However, I had the speed advantage here and I made full use of it. He was dealing some combat damage, and I just chose to let it through instead of using Blink-Transmutation. After all, I was buying Cube and Corvus dice by the truckload. And on the final turn, it all came together: 2 Cubes rolled alongside multiple Corvus dice. Altogether, between Corvus + Torch and combat damage, I dealt 41 damage (!). Yeah, I won.

2-0

Game 3:

My third game was against an Awaken team with Atom, Nebula, all that fun stuff. I was lucky that she didn’t have a low-cost mask character to use Clayface + Supreme Intelligence with. As it is, I had the edge in ramp. So while she got some Awaken damage in, my added ramp gave me the edge to simply outpace her. You know the drill by now: have Human Torch active, activate Cube, field Corvus, pain. Since her win condition was more expensive, she only got minimal damage in before the onslaught happened . I won.

3-0

Game 4: 

For my last game, I went up against a well-optimized Warriors Three team. This one turned into a race. He had Clayface + 1-cost Poxwalker + Kree Captain, so buying his Warriors was very easy for him. He actually had all three purchased before I could fire off, and he needed a lucky draw from his bag to win…which didn’t happen. He dashed in for 14 damage with what he had. The following turn, I rolled 2 Cosmic Cubes (missed a third!) and dealt 39 damage overall. That was a close one, but I won.

4-0

Post-Mortem:

-Using Clayface + Supreme Intelligence to Prep a Cosmic Cube is just…dirty. Mean. A complete abomination of a combo. I am glad this was never Modern-legal.

-One defining factor tonight was that my ramp was pretty one-sided. Most teams just didn’t bring much ramp, so when I can reliably Prep a key part of my win condition each turn, that will make a big difference. Especially since my win condition is very inexpensive.

-One trick I did a couple of times: Prep a Cube on my turn with Supreme Intelligence, and another on their turn. So 2 Cubes guaranteed, plus whatever I draw. It’s as bad as it sounds (and a big reason why I had 2 Cubes active when I won some of my games).

-It never became necessary to use Cube with Dreadnaught, so no clue how well it would’ve worked…but I’m sure it would’ve been nasty. It just wasn’t nasty enough to justify using ahead of Torch + Corvus.

-Speaking of Torch + Corvus, that damage output is gross. Especially since it was quite easy to use multiple Cubes. Dealing 11 damage by fielding a single Corvus (with 2 Cubes) is just gross. I know “Cube + Anything = broken”, but it just rings especially true here.

So there you go, Reg. Pooping Pizza is now banned, along with Cosmic Cube and all sorts of nasties. Pretty sure that’s the nastiest Poopin’ Pizza team I’ve seen. Have you seen worse?

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