***** Shang-Chi (Origin) *****

HoundofShadow

He's definitely a 5/3/5 for me. That extra tile destroyed can determine the fate of your winfinite. 

Bad

Wanda is cruzial for him for to survive. The third wheel can be perfectly anyone. 
I recorded a match using karnak vs They came from outher space, with a unchamped SC(I finally champed him now).
In loving SC boosted thread. 

BlackBoltRocks

@Bad thanks, I watched your Shang/Karnak/Wanda video. Yes Wanda was crucial; she prevented Shang getting downed by Hela's Green and Doom's Black. Plus it's scary (in a good way) that one usage of Shang's Purple downed a 93k health Captain Marvel.

He'll be a great go-to for me in the challenge node when Iceman/Thor/Okoye have trouble, since I don't have Beta Ray Bill champed.

HoundofShadow

If you are pairing him with 5torm (3/5/5), she can create charged tiles and cascades with her yellow and green. 

If one of the opponent's strongest colours is red, Rogue will be excellent because she will multiply his red damage by 3. I have not tried it with blue/purple before. 3* Cyclops will be good. If winfinite works for my team of Karnak/3* Cyclops/Rogue, it will work for Shang Chi. For strongest colour that is blue, Karnak or Riri should be good.

entrailbucket

I've been messing around with him in that awful PvP and the current PvE and he's just a ton of fun to use. 

You don't necessarily need SW or another defensive character to keep him alive.  One important thing is being strategic with his combo points/match damage until you're ready to go off.  Sometimes it's better to purposely break the combo to reset his match damage, so he doesn't tank the entire board and die before you can start chaining.  You can easily build the combo back up when you go infinite.

I try to save up two casts of red and at least one cast of purple before I use any of his stuff.  This is a lot easier/faster if you boost. 

I also tried using Thor to generate red for him, and...it works?  The thirds I tried were 5* Storm and 5* Cyclops and both those teams are pretty crazy.  You need someone who can add reds back to the board when you start comboing off, because Thor will remove them all.

Bad

I love to play loki 4* with him, his yellow creates charged tiles on red, his black shuffles, and even he bites when matching charged tiles!
Karnak unloading his blue is devastating as SC will damage on the sudden 3 balls in whatever color matched.
Of course valkyrie is a good option too.
Odin is great as he will take the hits until SC could restore, and he will set all SC powers at level 5 for amazing effects.
Heimdall is one of the best partners for SC too on his blue and yellow.

Sekilicious

I cannot wait for the store that has Shang-Chi, Thor, and Cyclops. Hopefully next year’s anniversary 

entrailbucket

Sekilicious said:

I cannot wait for the store that has Shang-Chi, Thor, and Cyclops. Hopefully next year’s anniversary 

I really don't know if anyone will vote for him! 

The characters people like are the autopilot/strong passive types and that's exactly the opposite of what he is.

Sekilicious

entrailbucket said:

Sekilicious said:

I cannot wait for the store that has Shang-Chi, Thor, and Cyclops. Hopefully next year’s anniversary 

I really don't know if anyone will vote for him! 

The characters people like are the autopilot/strong passive types and that's exactly the opposite of what he is.

Honestly I would just to see the meltdown if Cyclops was in the anniversary store.

entrailbucket

Bad said:

I love to play loki 4* with him, his yellow creates charged tiles on red, his black shuffles, and even he bites when matching charged tiles!
Karnak unloading his blue is devastating as SC will damage on the sudden 3 balls in whatever color matched.
Of course valkyrie is a good option too.
Odin is great as he will take the hits until SC could restore, and he will set all SC powers at level 5 for amazing effects.
Heimdall is one of the best partners for SC too on his blue and yellow.

Alligator Loki was the key for me to crack this. 

The team I'm using is Cyclops, Alligator Loki and Shang-Chi.  What often happens when you're comboing off is you'll stall out -- there are no red or purple matches to make. 

I was using Cyclops yellow and green as boardshake to keep it going, but with Alligator Loki black on the team as well, you almost never stall out.

I'm full-boosting into matches, but it's FAST against the 5e and challenge node.  I think this is the best/fastest possible team for Shang-Chi, and with some more practice I think it'll be equal to the fastest challenge node teams.  (Yes, Shang-Chi is currently boosted, but mine is only boosted to 450ish).



I can't think of another blue or black boardshake ability (red/purple go to Shang-Chi and yellow/green to Cyclops, so those are the only open colors).  You need Cyclops for his multiplicative, stacking match damage boost and his green power to add reds back in. 

If there's a blue/black character where both abilities do boardshake that'd be the best team, otherwise it's this one.

dianetics

Have you tried Quake's blue?

entrailbucket

dianetics said:

Have you tried Quake's blue?

No, but she might work too.  I guess you'd always cast it on black?

ThaRoadWarrior

I've been running my 1/3/1 Shang-Chi with Onslaught and a max-champ Chavez on the 5e node in this past run of Operation Spider Silk, and that team works really well. It's the kind of pick-3 I enjoy, where you flank a very technical character with a pair of synergistic auto-pilot characters so that i can largely just focus on managing Shang-Chi. You have a ton of crit and cascade opportunity on this team, and Onslaught's active blue can really make a difference in a pinch without really getting in the way of what SC is doing (@entrailbucket this is your blue boardshaker perhaps). I'm really looking forward to getting him all the way up to champ at some point.

Bad

I already said how good of a partner heimdall is.
With his blue he can multiply SC powers. 
One thing hurts SC so much is to be stunned for 3 turns.
The tricky move is to fire Heimdall yellow, and if running loki 4 or SW, then SC will be unstunned and with 3AP gained in each power. 
It's clobbering time again!

dianetics

entrailbucket said:

No, but she might work too.  I guess you'd always cast it on black?

Cast it on an abundant color on the board you don't need. Potentially to force a red or pink match.

ThaRoadWarrior

Bad said:

I already said how good of a partner heimdall is.
With his blue he can multiply SC powers. 
One thing hurts SC so much is to be stunned for 3 turns.
The tricky move is to fire Heimdall yellow, and if running loki 4 or SW, then SC will be unstunned and with 3AP gained in each power. 
It's clobbering time again!

I'm interested in that combo. I play Heimdall maybe more than some, and he does have some limitations - the bigger ones being that he can't fortify charged tiles or enemy special tiles, so it seems like he might be valuable to get shang-chi going by reducing AP cost/doubling up a match 3 for you, but once moving it seems like you'll be all-in on just using Shang-Chi's moves to be self sustaining for the most part.

entrailbucket

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I've been running my 1/3/1 Shang-Chi with Onslaught and a max-champ Chavez on the 5e node in this past run of Operation Spider Silk, and that team works really well. It's the kind of pick-3 I enjoy, where you flank a very technical character with a pair of synergistic auto-pilot characters so that i can largely just focus on managing Shang-Chi. You have a ton of crit and cascade opportunity on this team, and Onslaught's active blue can really make a difference in a pinch without really getting in the way of what SC is doing (@entrailbucket this is your blue boardshaker perhaps). I'm really looking forward to getting him all the way up to champ at some point.

No, I need a guy that has both blue *and* black powers, where both of them do boardshake/manipulation/etc.  Alligator Loki works with Shang-Chi/Cyclops, and it's a good team, but I don't have a blue outlet so it feels suboptimal.

ThaRoadWarrior

I see. Seems like we have more options for that at the 4* tier:

Hulkbuster Converts 7 basic greens to red on blue, and then on black just creates 9 red AP out of thin air

MODOK has an active blue though it isn't a tile manipulator, but his black will create 6 red tiles on the board. 

Taskmaster: you can equip Twin Pistols on blue which does huge board shake, but unfortunately hard-ends your turn. He can also equip Quack-Fu One Two on black which will blast out all the greens on the board. Sniper Rifle may be another useful black to equip if it weren't so expensive

entrailbucket

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I see. Seems like we have more options for that at the 4* tier:

Hulkbuster Converts 7 basic greens to red on blue, and then on black just creates 9 red AP out of thin air

MODOK has an active blue though it isn't a tile manipulator, but his black will create 6 red tiles on the board. 

Taskmaster: you can equip Twin Pistols on blue which does huge board shake, but unfortunately hard-ends your turn. He can also equip Quack-Fu One Two on black which will blast out all the greens on the board. Sniper Rifle may be another useful black to equip if it weren't so expensive

Hulkbuster sounds like a possible winner, although the special tiles he creates could eventually cause a problem.  Shang-Chi really wants the board to be as pty as possible.

Modok might be fun...his blue synergizes because it wants you to cast a ton of powers, but it probably only does decent damage when he's boosted.  He also creates special tiles that you don't want.

I thought about Taskmaster, but, yeah, can't be ending the turn.  (It is really extremely stupid that Hood ends turn on his yellow.  There was a good reason for that back in the day but I forgot what it is.)


Alligator Loki/Cyclops is really fun though.  Any time you can't find a good Shang-Chi play, you just cast Cyclops green or yellow, or Loki black, watch the board spin around and cascade, then get back to business.


I didn't try Heimdall at all because his tile fortification is just going to make everything way more complicated.  I'm trying to go really really fast to see if it's viable for high end play (I really think it might be!), and adding fortification into the mix is like playing 5D chess vs 4D.  If your spatial calculation ability is off the charts, or you don't care about speed, then it might work for you.

ThaRoadWarrior

That's what I like about Onslaught - he in fact may be good with Sighclops as well, though they are obviously at odds when it comes to team up tiles. But the amount of additional cascade generation you get just for playing like you play with that team adds a lot I think.

As for Hood - I would bet that at the time, that power had to be one of the highest damage attacks in the 3* tier, plus it has two huge targeted areas of board destruction which the devs have always seemed to value, but I have never run the numbers. As the only reliable tile destruction yellow power in the game (XFW has one, but you have to match away his countdown to get a random tile break), you could have a lot of fun with Polaris/Danver5 if it didn't hard-stop the turn. But I digress.