No theme team today; this time we’re just taking a good/fun piece and building around him! Let’s take a bite out of the Champion piece, Devil Dinosaur!

Okay, I admit; for a Marvel fan, I really don’t know that much about DD. I briefly read about him during Secret Wars when Cap was a borderline hunter and partnered up with him, but he was a lot more aggressive than the form we got in Superior Foes of Spider-Man. I do know that this incarnation is not the original DD, but a clone. I also know that he was featured in the title Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. The only exposure I have to that book was during the first Civil War, and I don’t remember much about it as I was just getting into comics. All I remember was that it was extremely silly and fun.

Anyway, DD is one of three Champion pieces we got in SFoSM (the other two being Mephisto and Chameleon) and he was designed by the 2015 team champions. Before we get into the build, we need to break down what he does so that we can compliment it, as you would with any ‘tentpole’ piece.

Devil comes in at 100 points, so he’s pretty cheap for your main click. He has one trait which gives him Sidestep, but he can’t carry (He’s a Giant) which is kind of funny, although it would have been cool if he could carry only tiny characters; I really wanted to have Ant-Man ridding him into battle! Rather than get into everything he has and take up space, feel free to take a look at what he does on your own.

As you can see, or may already know, the main reason for playing DD is for his special movement power, which lets him spawn three separate groups of bystander tokens. These tokens aren’t any slouches either. The Drop Bears have Charge and Blades, the Rockabilly Modocks have Flight, Running Shot, and Pen/Psy, and the Homicide Crabs have Leap/Climb, Pulse Wave, and Super Senses. The trick with DD is that you can’t spawn more bystanders until he has none on the map, and you can only spawn each set once per game. Still, that’s a really nasty piece. Taking into account that only a handful of pieces like Balls of Fury can deal with his stop clicks, he’s going to be a nasty mess for your opponents to deal with. Let’s get into the build and I’ll explain the choices after.

300 Point Modern Devil Dinosaur Build, Figures Only

SFoSM Devil Dinosaur 054

CWSLOP SpeedFreek 037

SFoSM Stilt-Man 013 with 4 Leg Extensions

SFoSM Mephisto 046v (lower dial)

SFoSM Betty Brant 007

AVAS S100 Pym Particles

As I mentioned before, Devil Dinosaur is a token factory. I’ve seen a lot of people eager to use NFAoS Dr. Demonicus 047 with him, and I was really tempted as I think he’s seriously underrated and under-costed. However, with 300 points, lots of characters means you aren’t able to do much on your turn, so I kept the team with just Devil as the token generator. I thought about what his tokens really need to perform well, and mainly, it’s being able to get to their target without exhausting actions. We want them to die, but not before they get a chance to deal damage, or push to death on their first attack. That’s where SpeedFreek comes in. Rather than using DD’s TK to throw tokens out, giving SpeedFreek an 8 movement boost ensures that he can grab practically anyone and bring them back to your killbox. This is especially effective with the Homicide Crabs which have Pulse Wave.

The issue with Speedfreek is his 10 attack, and no way to re-roll if (and when) he misses. Betty Brant is a dream come true, rekindling the days of Con-Artist when the game first started. Having Perplex on second click for 15 points, nerfing your opponents flying pieces, and pushing into Support with 14 Defend is about as good of a support piece as you can get, and you do have another Perplex on Mephisto, so we can bump him up to a 12 attack which gives him a much better chance at hitting and making our combo go off. If you need to do this, I recommend spawning the Drop Bears first so you can save the Perplex’s for the Crabs damage value and really get some nice Pulse Waves off.

Stilt-Man is just awesome and I’m glad to finally find a place for him. When one of your pogs gets hit and killed, which you want them to do, Stilt-Man can Colossal Retaliate, causing knockback to his target, and then take an action to Quake everything around him, or simply attack another piece. Unlike the other retaliators, Stilt-Man has survivability built into him with his trait that let’s him remove leg extensions rather take damage, and can actually attack other pieces via action tokens. I really like him here and think he fits with our silly theme.

Alright, so I’ve talked about everything but the crème de la crème; Mephisto. I’m just gonna share his trait first:

LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD: When a character would miss and doesn’t have a Contract token on its card, that character’s player may place one on that character’s card and that character can use Probability Control to target that attack roll. Characters with a Contract token on their card modify their defense value by -1 and when they are KO’d, Mephisto may heal 1 click.

A big problem I have with building teams is figuring out where to fit Prob into the mix. Well, Mephisto grants board-wide, single use Prob for 45 points. The downfall of course, is that you have to take a -1 to defense to use it which most people won’t want to do. However, remember that we’re completely okay with our low-defense-to-start pogs dying, so for 45 points, Mephisto grants all of Devil’s tokens prob. He gives SpeedFreek a single-prob to hit that all-important first target to rope them into your kill box. Re-roll your 10 attack Pulse Waves, or your 10 attack Pen/Psy’s; you want it, you got it. I seriously was blown away by how good this interaction is, and once I tested it, the utter chaos he brought had me laughing throughout the game.

Are there better builds for Devil? I’m sure there are! Resources will probably help quite a bit (in fact, an inspiration-filled round table would probably be nasty with the pogs), and possession would be amazing on SpeedFreek, but I try and keep my builds figure-only as that’s what my venue does a lot to help players with less cash compete. However, if you have a better idea for Devil and how to make him work, PLEASE SHARE IT! I would love to see what you come up with for the big red dino! Comment below!