Chaos On The Rise: Part 2

Chaos On The Rise, Part 2: Or, getting off a shaky foundation - looking at the foundation tactics and characters of Chaos.

By: Edward Shelton, AKA darklogos

Chaos does something that no other symbol does right now. It makes character cards useful. Many people have complained the only thing Character cards are good for are blocks and 6 checks. Chaos says “It sucks to be you” when a character card hits their hand. Kazuya has a lot to do with this change. A lot of cards mentioned do go with him. But the synergy with the other cards mentioned should be noted as well.

Merciless Fighter: Why are you playing Chaos without this card? It gives you +4 damage for discarding a character card. It does not commit unless you use the +2 damage option. You can get 6 damage a turn off this card if played right. This card does more damage pumping then fire damage pumps and eclipses the damage pumps given to earth’s throws. Only Ragnar’s and Hilde’s support come close to beating this but they have strong disadvantages tied to those cards. Play this card. Hug this card. Love this card. Have children with this card.

Covenant Elder: Any character R against you is always a bad character R. This is more meta situational but as more R characters are revealed the stronger this card will play. This is more of an up and up card.

Dread Pirate & Beyond Humanity: You will be checking 2’s so you better pack this. The best attacks for Chaos right now have 2 checks. You need these cards so they don’t slow you down. You can re-check and you get that strong 2 check attack in your hand.

Controller of Souls: Better then freaking scroll of the abyss. Shuts down POTM crazy bullcrap. At the same time you can exchange out a bad card in your hand for a draw. It’s a great card that helps chaos a lot.

Boxing is Life: This card in 2 more sets will be a meta defining card. Right now it is a strong card that just needs more support to flesh it out. This card gives speed pumps and that is not a popular thing in chaos. While this doesn’t help your spinning demons this does make your blazing fists monsters.

Chasing After the Power: Yes more check hacking your favor!

Driven by Fear: This card can be a colon cleanser for you or an oh shit play for your opponent. Stoppng the dreaded combo or launcher/breaker bull that dominates the meta or just making it so you can block with a cheaper check. This card gives you a lot of control. Remember flush attack cards, even if they hit, can’t go into momentum if they are in the discard.

Her Own Agenda: This card is a little secret to most players. Most people only think of ZD with this card. It has a lot of advanatages. The first is that it makes people think twice about Maniacal laughter or any other card that adds to momentum. A +1 to anything can be a problem. The next is momentum draining. There are some decks that can’t run without momentum. Decks that depend on multiple and discarding momentum for effects are almost crippled by this card. Also this kills Zi Mei because she can’t react to refuel momentum since she did not loose 2 or more momentum.

Intolerant of Failure: If you are in the blowing up mood play this card.

Maniacal Laughter: Stun 1 and momentum gain for blowing up a card. Yeah I’ll take that.

Mishima Family Bloodline: This is why you play character cards. Every time you block with a character card you draw. This makes it so you have a strong defensive position on your opponents turn. Do not under estimate this card.

Mishima Zaibatsu Leader: If you combine Maniacal Laughter and Her Own Agenda you get this gem of a card. The momentum gain is the key element more so then the momentum drain.

Need to Destroy: Great card for your male characters. It has the ability to reduce ratings of keywords by 1. This is going to matter as the game progresses. The added blank foundation after it is destroyed is a nice touch.

Respected and Feared: This card is one of those cards on the rise. This is a Yun-Sung stopper.

Vengeance: This card slows down your opponent and puts you in a position to gain staging area advantage. Early game this can be a killer card.

Some might say, "where is Communing with the Ancients?" I see that card as a generic fit card that works in any symbol it is played in. It doesn’t touch the core of chaos. The same can be said for For the Money. It has a lot of generic use. With Chaos ability to CC Hax in its own favor I don’t see the value of it “if” the chaos deck is built strong on CC Hax.

Cry HAVOK and release the dogs of War! - Looking at Chaos characters and their overall viability.

Algol*: He has been beaten bruised and underrated for so long people don’t see him as a threat. Chaos can power up this guy a lot. He has 4 unique strengths that make him an unseen contender. The first is he can make an opponent go through their deck. Since most players religiously stay around 60 cards, constant discard and draw will take its toll faster then some think. There are cards in chaos to accent that through ZD’s support. The second advantage is Pseudo-Soul Calibur and Pseudo-Soul Edge. He can stop draw or draw with his opponent. This is tempo changing. If Chaos had more reversals he could literally lay a heavy counter attack and just build on his turn. The third advantage is Alshain Najm. This card makes Heichi blush. He can pump his damage to crazy numbers with this combo card. Good thing this is Algol combo only because it would be a staple card for all chaos decks if it wasn’t. The last advantage Algol has is what I like to call the Jubilee effect. Jubilee could hurt people but she couldn’t do tons of damage. She is the most underrated person on the x-men/generation x. Villains laugh at Jubilee. Your opponent will do the same thing. Since Algol isn’t top tier people will laugh and underestimate the character. This gives you the mental edge. If your opponent takes you lightly then they won’t see the knife you are palming in your hand.

Cervantes.: He likes to CC hax. This is becoming more risky but the funny thing is that Chaos holds all the stuff that messes with his CC Hax. Cervantes is a hard card to recommend but if you have his asset then he will surprise a few people. The one thing he needs to get over is the ability to scout what is on the top of his deck before he uses his second ability. That would put him in a place to start jacking with decks.

Heihachi Mishima: He has proven why he is a staple character in the Tekken series. Now he does the same thing in UFS. The thing that is nice about him is that he takes weak damage attacks and turns them into monsters. He can get a lot of mileage out of character cards and attacks with his abilities. He is a spinning demon machine. The more cheap multiples we get in the game the better he will be. I will say that he is a great candidate for playing the Rites.

Jin Kazama*: He can boost his checks by committing and damage pump while commited. He is a great character who makes playing cards easy. He is a top character for a good reason. One thing to remember with him is not to over extend because its easy to get cocky in the pluses to your checks. Jinsis another character that makes character cards useful.

Kazuya Mishima*: His blow up the world tactics were thought to be the end of NEWFS. But it seems that he is more a quite storm then anything else. He has a built in speed and damage pump and he can stack on even more damage by using his support. To much focus has been put on his nuke and not so much on the fact he can drop cards from his hand and boost damage. Add in card draw tricks and Kazuya will kill you in a blink of an eye. Don’t get distracted by the nuke option! Play it as needed and only when needed.

Omar Chavez: By far one of the best chaos characters, and one of the best characters in the game. The meta is glad that chaos doesn’t have more throws or he would be a straight monster. When we look at him closely we see that he doesn’t commit for anything he does. This is a 100% gold. He can tutor once per turn and damage pump by committing foundations. That is really good. A good mix of character cards is 4 Algol’s and 2 Jin’s. Why Jin you may ask. So you can tutor a 3 difficulity character card without having to discard 2 or more cards to get a character card. Being able to get anything from the discard pile lets him setup how he wants to setup. He has the ability to have 3-4 Merciless Fighters on the field consistently. The only problem is playing him off chaos he can mill himself really quickly. Once an Omar player gets going there is almost no way to shut him down. When a solution to reversal pummel smash comes to chaos Astrid will have to pass the consistency crown to Omar.

Padma: She requires the following cards Ruthless, Determined to be the Best, Driven by Fear, and Long standing rivalry. Ruthless makes it so that people have to block your weak attacks. This adds more sting onto your hits. Determined to be the best works out if you have played spinning demon and multiple then play a low damage attack. Driven by Fear and Longstanding rivalry work hand in hand. First you play out normal attacks chain. Then play a weenie attack. After that use Driven by fear and follow up with a long standing rivalry pumped attack. If you did your job they will be able to block but it will be a partial at best. Padma is a thinking deck that is several steps ahead and has to calculate a lot. Do not get dependent on the small attacks but see them as killing with a thousand paper cuts. You can’t just slice once.

Steve Fox*: He is a mini tank. Sadly he benefits the least from Chaos. Spinning demon is the core of chaos attack wise and it doesn’t help him. But he does benefit a ton from blazing fist. I think that in 2-3 sets he will be a card that will be S teir. Again an answer to reverse pummel smash needs to be in place.

White Crane*: I’ve asked so many questions about this character its not funny. She has been one of the most quirky characters to come along in NEWFS. She plays mother may I with your opponents cards if they have 2 or more keywords on the card. Off of Chaos she can do something that many have not considered. She can play chaos support and attacks and play Faithful bodyguard. Use faithful bodyguard to save her when the big monster attacks are coming. Other then that her better symbol is life. Chaos gives her the punch she needs but she doesn’t synch up well where chaos is now. But in the future she just might give a few characters a run. She is a character to watch.

Zhao Daiyu**: Yes I played her. I she is a tough cookie even when she is playing Nina support off of death. But we are looking at Chaos. ZD gains very little from chaos. Thing is that she overcomes her biggest complaint about doing damage with all the nice tricks chaos has. Sadly she doesn’t do it as good many other chaos characters. The control tricks she gains is few and far between. In the end she is not chaos material right now.

Zi Mei**: Why aren’t you playing her off of fire? Sad to say is that she is a better fire character then chaos character. She can take the Padma advice I gave and actually make it work consistently. The sad thing is that she has cards off of fire that do all of that and more. She doesn’t benefit from spinning demon. The only card that could be added to her arsenal is Demon Slayer.

If you read this far thank you for reading. Remember innovation does not come without risk.