After a long wait, MTG Spider Man is finally available online. Despite the set getting a rather poor reputation in terms of power level, there are a surprising amount of cards seeing lots of day one success. While most of these cards are functioning as powerful additions to existing decks, one mediocre-looking Spider Man card is wreaking havoc on MTG Arena.
Despite Carnage, Crimson Chaos largely disappointed players during spoiler season; it didn’t take long for multiple people to quickly discover the hidden power of this overlooked card. It’s rather easy to create an infinite loop with this card that, with the right support, can end the game.
Infinite Carnage!
Carnage, Crimson Chaos isn’t a very exciting card on its own. For four mana, you get a 4/3 with Trample that temporarily resurrects a second body. If you can enable Mayhem for cheap, this becomes a very good deal, but as a four-drop, Carnage is just ok.
That said, in a very specific shell, Carnage can end the game as soon as it enters the battlefield. If Carnage resurrects Mirror Image, it can enter as a copy of Carnage. The Legend Rule will apply, putting your Mirror Image back into the graveyard. Despite this, Mirror Image will still trigger Carnage’s enters effect, allowing it to reanimate itself. This can be done with any number of three-mana copy creatures like Glasspool Mimic. You can also use cheaper options like Deceptive Frostkite and Flesh Duplicate in Commander.
This will, essentially, put infinite enters and death effects on the stack, which makes winning the game trivial. A wide variety of different cards, like Impact Tremors, Tinybones Joins Up, and Sephiroth, FABLED Soldier, will deal damage to your opponent when Carnage enters or dies.
Thanks to the other pieces of this combo being flexible, it’s easier to pull off than you might expect. There’s a total of five different copy effects that go infinite with Carnage, and a majority of them are just two mana. Sadly, all of these creatures are in blue, which means pulling off this combo with Carnage as the Commander is not possible.
Still, the combo is consistent enough to appear in other Commander decks that care about copying creatures. It could even be good enough to show up in competitive formats.
Carnage in Action
Due to Carnage’s inability to combo in Standard, the combo’s best chance of seeing play is in the 99 of synergistic Commander and Brawl decks. Carnage’s best Commanders will be Grixis colored ones that want to get copied, for their Enters effects, since copies that work with Carnage cannot ignore the Legend Rule.
The Rani can abuse this to Goad a ton of creatures quickly, while Be’Lakor, the Dark Master can continually draw cards. The best Commander, however, might be Sedris, the Traitor King. Unearth can reanimate Carnage and perform the entire combo from your graveyard. This could also be an interesting addition to Kefka, Court Mage decks, thanks to Kefka’s enters effect being extraordinarily powerful.
On top of Commander, Carnage, Crimson Chaos could have a chance in Pioneer thanks to powerful discard outlets like Fable of the Mirror-Breaker. That said, it ultimately seems like a more fragile version of a Greasefang, Okiba Boss deck. Add on the fact that a simple piece of well-timed removal breaks up the entire combo, and this Carnage, Crimson Chaos combo will likely be relegated to Commander and Brawl.
Regardless, if you’re looking for a new infinite combo to surprise your playgroup, Carnage, Crimson Chaos can catch anyone off guard.