With Gen Con happening this weekend, Doomsday is finally seeing release. This monstrosity has shown us what a true STOP click piece is, and I’m sure plenty of people are wondering how to build around this guy. I think I can help you take a shot at it!

Convention LE’s have almost always been highly sought-after as they tend to be pretty strong for their low cost of purchase, and because of their exclusivity, they also tend to be high in cost on the secondary market for a good year. Doomsday is an exciting LE because WizKids made a borderline impossible-to-kill brick that’s going to be a total force to be reckoned with. Usually with high-cost pieces, they aren’t worth how much you have to pay to get them on your force, but Doomsday here breaks that mold (more like shatters it).

There’s been a decent amount of talk concerning how strong his dial is and just how hard it is to burn through this monster. As long as your opponent doesn’t have a Green Arrow from Elseworlds or a Nick Fury Super Rare on an ID card, you should be pretty well off once you set this guy loose. However, Doomsday comes with a very large cost, as I’ll get into. Let’s take a look at the piece and break down what you get for his points before digging into the team build.

Doomsday has three different point values at 100, 200, and 300, so you can play him in really any match that you want. The amount of clicks he has for those points varies (much like anything with multiple starting lines); at 300 you get 7 clicks, 200 gets you 5 clicks, and 100 buys you just 3 clicks of health. Doomsday also works differently in that he doesn’t start on a different line; instead, based on his point value, he’s KO’d when he crosses a certain line on his dial, so you’re always starting out with him at his weakest point.

As you can see, the blue line represents his 100 point KO line, the red represents his 200 point KO line, and his actual KO click on 8 is his 300 point KO line. His values start off relatively low (especially for 200/300 points), but he gets disgusting later in his dial.

Doomsday has three traits and a Special Defense Power, so let’s go over those in detail and what they mean.

YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE: If Doomsday is 100 points, he is KO’d if he crosses the blue KO line. If Doomsday is 200 points, he is KO’d if he crosses the red KO line.

Okay, easy. I’ve already explained this portion, so there’s no new information here. Next!

THE ULTIMATE SURVIVOR: When attacked, modify Doomsday’s defense value by +1 for each Adapted token on the attacker. When Doomsday is hit by an attack, you may place Doomsday in an adjacent square that is closer to the attacker.

Somehow, Doomsday puts out Adapted tokens which will increase his somewhat pitiful defense during the early stages and can make him nearly impossible to hit in the late game. The second portion of this trait is a big deal because Doomsday being a giant means that we can’t TK him making him very immobile. It gives him a pseudo-Sidestep, but it can activate multiple times a turn, penalizing players for poking him with their pointy sticks. Let’s see his last trait.

UNTIL HE KILLED EVERY LIVING THING ON THE SURFACE: Doomsday can use Plasticity and can’t be the target of Perplex. When Doomsday KO’s an opposing character, after actions resolve remove all action tokens from him and heal him 1 click. Doomsday can’t be healed in any other way.

Traited Plasticity is always good, and even though the new Outwit rules will allow people to take this away, it’s still a strong tool in his arsenal and will keep people next to him while he takes them apart. The second portion of this trait is a little bit of a 50/50 good-bad deal. On the good side of things, he’s handsomely rewarded for KO’ing figures as he gets to totally clear and heal 1 click. On the bad side of things, there’s no other way to heal Doomsday and he can’t be targeted by Perplex (even your own). That means those of you looking to throw the amazing new Dr. Frankenstein on here for 30 points are out of luck, and you can’t help those starting values.

Finally, let’s look at his Special Defense Power that’s present on the entire dial:

HIDEOUS EVOLUTION EXPERIMENT: STOP. Doomsday can use Invulnerability. When this click is revealed due to damage taken from an attack, after actions resolve put an Adapted token on the attacker.

STOP clicks on every. Click. Yep, you read that right. Pulse Wave? Nope. Penetrating damage? No thanks. Outwit? Fat chance, Mr. Buff-pants! Having all of his clicks be STOP clicks is huge and helps to alleviate that gigantic cost as you know that Doomsday isn’t going to go down in one lucky shot (well… that’s not entirely true). Giving him Invulnerability on his whole dial is fantastic too as it will completely negate small damage and poison. If for some reason he is actually damaged into another click, he puts an Adapted token on the attacker making it that much harder for them to hit him again later on.

These traits and Special Power turn a somewhat mediocre tank dial into atomic levels as there are only a handful of pieces out there than can deal with this guy. While his keywords aren’t the greatest for building around, Monster is getting considerably better and strong as an overall generic team.

Before we dig into the build for Doomsday, let’s do a Positive vs. Negative analysis of him so we can easily see how he measures up.

Positives: STOP clicks on every click. Ramps very hard. Rewarded for KO’ing characters. Makes himself harder to hit if you actually hurt him. Can potentially attack every single turn. Self-healing based on what you want him to do. Indomitable. Giant Reach. Traited Plasticity.

Negatives: Lower point dials don’t have quite the pay-off. 100 point dial is almost not worth it. Giant Size makes him hard to position and easy to hit. Low damage output to start. Slow. Heavily countered by two of the most prominent ID figures. Can’t be healed. Can’t use Perplex on him.

The biggest negative aspect in my eyes is the fact that Doomsday is a giant, which really hinders getting him into the fight, and also prevents equipment from being assigned to him. Since he has a low movement value and no Sidestep, there’s a decent chance that he can get hit by multiple attackers before dealing damage. However, once he does get into the fight, you’re going to have a near-impossible time taking him down before he eats your entire team.

So with all this information, what does Doomsday need in order to succeed in his task of KILLING EVERYTHING? Mobility is a huge problem for him, and unfortunately we really don’t have the points to do anything about this. The only real options in Modern to change his size are the Ant-Man and Atom ID card inspirations, which can absolutely be used, but they’re only going to help us one time so it’s not really worth the effort. That means giants or colossals are going to be our best bet to help him get around. Probability Control and Outwit would be very strong tools to run with him so that pesky Shape Changes don’t stop him from doing work, or helping out his rather low attack so that he actually lands his punches. It really depends on how many points you want to dedicate to your primary attacker to decide on what else you play with him.

For today’s build, I’m going to use the same setup as the last article of 300 points, Modern, with no Resources. While the Teleporter could be useful to grant Doomsday some inspirations (and both The Atom and Ant-Man ID cards could be played to shrink him multiple times), I have a very neat team idea that I want to use instead. If you’re looking to play Doomsday in a somewhat competitive event, I would recommend going that route with those two ID’s, along with things that buff his attack values.

300 Point Modern Doomsday LE Build | No Resources

I opted for Doomsday at 200 points because you get 5 clicks rather than just 3, and you actually get to his heavy damage clicks rather than being stuck with a 10 attack the entire dial. This also gives us room to build around and add other pieces to our force so that we aren’t just running a one man army at exactly 300 points as that’s probably the worst way to play Doomsday in a 300 point game. 100 points is still playable, but I think his 200 point line is the strongest.

The first thing I looked for was a way to move Doomsday around, and War Wheel was going to be my pick. Then I realized that Carnage is coming out in just two short weeks, has the Monster Keyword, only costs 10 points, has Sidestep, and can add other very good pieces to your force at just 10 points a pop. The value here is astounding, and you really can’t beat a taxi service for our main guy at just 10 points. The great thing about utilizing a colossal for a taxi is that if there’s a strong range presence on the enemy team, you can drop Doomsday behind Carnage and keep him safe for a turn, although you probably wouldn’t want to do that since Carnage has just 1 click of health and is actually very strong at just that click (as Aaron and I went on about quite a bit on the last show).

Before I decided on how many Symbiotes I wanted, I figured it would be best to look into other Monsters to add to the team. Naturally, I thought about Goblin King, but he really wouldn’t do much on this build as all his support powers would be somewhat of a waste. Instead, I opted for Jacob Marley from the new Undead set. While there’s no team abilities on this team for him to Wildcard off of, he’s very good at completely destroying opposing character’s attack values (and potentially dealing damage to them), and tokening them down which will help Doomsday not get out-actioned. Jacob acts as a pseudo-support piece in that he’ll crowd control while Doomsday gets into position.

While I had an idea for a fourth slot, my mind ran to Proteus and I thought about the tech and immediately added him onto the force. With Proteus on Jacob, you get a 12 attack for his Incap and a 19 defense making him very tough to deal with. However, the more important aspect is when Proteus eventually burns out Jacob’s very short 3-click dial. Doomsday is a giant. Carnage is a colossal. That means Proteus has nowhere to go but on the map, and you pick up an 11 attack Pulse Wave piece with 4 damage and Prob, and can’t be damaged except by close attacks (which Doomsday will help with thanks to his Plasticity). Now you’ve got two 200 point pieces on the board. That’s what I like to see!

With 20 points remaining, I opted to include two Symbiotes from Carnage’s trait as they also have Plasticity and are supremely good lockdown pieces that do a surprising amount of damage. While we don’t have any real way to move them into position aside from regular move actions, we aren’t really going to be giving Doomsday tokens until he can Charge in himself. Some of you may be thinking “can’t Proteus jump into the Symbiotes since they’re under 100 points which kind of screws up the tech?” Actually, he can’t as equipment can only be assigned to standard, non-bystander characters, and the Symbiotes are bystanders. Once Jacob Marley pops, Proteus drops onto the board and now your opponent is in for an even worse time.

For map choice, I recommend something indoors to help negate the giant-size of both Doomsday and Carnage. I also recommend something with lots of walls to protect your team from range (and stop Nick Fury/Green Arrow shenanigans), and doorways that your Symbiotes can clog up. Something like the WizKids offices premium map would be a great option.

This team uses a lot of tie-up and if it can close the gap, it will be very difficult to take down. While it won’t do that well in a competitive setting thanks to the two dumb characters I keep mentioning being absolute silver bullets to Doomsday, there’s very little else that will be able to handle the onslaught this team puts out. I’m actually very pumped about this build and I can’t wait to try it once Undead and Thor are released.

That about does it for the second Team Build on Two Clicks From KO. What are your thoughts on this team? Do you like the setup I have, or is there something else out there that you would have liked to see/would play with Doomsday? Are you looking to get one of these bad boys? Let me know in the comments section!

Next week might be a skip for me as my birthday is this weekend and I have a lot of writing to do on the side for personal projects. I’ll try and put something together, or maybe I’ll share my build for the ROC Cup at Majestix that takes place in just a couple weeks.

Until then, remember, the real fun beings when you’re Two Clicks From KO!