Simple enough - love him or hate him? What are YOUR thoughts on what is by far the most maligned of our starter characters?

Personally, I think he's pretty badass, but that's me. Cervy is actually my only functioning deck at the moment, and he can get really gross with all his bullcrap (and this is played off of Chaos, at that).

Your own mileage may vary. Discuss!

I think for the most part he has been made obsolete by chaos jin if you are going for the curse of the ancient mariner combo. I'm sure there is a reason to play him over Jin I'm not seeing though.

For a Chaos deck, I can't really see a reason to play him over Jin, other than not-having-a-set-of-Jin

He might still be serviceable off of Void, though. He gets some good stuff from Nina, most of his own moves are really solid (and good for his PotM), King's redux is ok-to-good

Splashing Chaos in for momentum foundations (Offspring, Laughter) and Need to Destroy (for Dark Geodude) might be worthwhile, depending on how much you actually use from Algol/Cervy support

Megageese thanks for adding another discussion topic on tech. But sadly most people see the situation as, if you can't do x don't waste your time. I would say at the same time what are you yourself contributing to the tech formation. In other word lets see some of your initial thoughts and some odd ideas. I think by trying to getting the ball rolling then asking people to chime in works a bit better.

Trying to play off of Evil you have the potential to remove cards using Zhao's cards. This could be useful for you to get key cards removed from the game. There are more cards that fish so RFG abilities are nice. Considering you can check hack you don't have to be really concerned about the check value of your cards.

Hmm...

Cervantes isn't entirely overshadowed by Chaos Jin, though he does have his work cut-out for him. Cervantes, IMO, has a tad bit more control over how he raises his checks, versus Jin whom relies on stacking. That, and Cervantes has plenty of character-specific abilities, versus Jin whom has none.

I'm not sure which Cervantes I like best, but both Chaos and Void have their uses. No Mercy and Cervantes' ability to balance-hax the opponent is awesome, and brings back CCHax in a fun way. My favorite thing about Chaos Cervantes is simply using Dark Geo with Need to Destroy, and Treacherous Offspring and Maniacal Laughter to provide momentum.

I'm personally a fan of Cervy in chaos.

In chaos he gets attacks that manipulate control checks directly, just by being played. Couple this with static check plussage from his two assets and Zi mei's communing with the ancients, and you're looking at a chance for a continuous plus 3 from three cards on the field, before you've played wild storm or shadow flare.

The chaos build loves highs. This of course is a given, considering curse of the ancient powerful. however, the nice property of the highs is that a lot of them are 5 difficulty and weapon type. i.e. if you run a copies of First rite and Third rite, you can do the combo pretty easy. Granted you may not get the added benifet of second rite, but then again, half of that benifit (lowering the difficulty of third rite) can be easily assauged by your ability to statically increase your checks at a moments notice.

Other notable cards in the chaos set.

For the Money: essentially plus two to everything unless your opponent decides he prefers to be two foundations down. using tech like Zi mei's wheel kick, first rite, and bad breath (Evil Mist) will make that decision harder for them. Even if they do decide to destroy it, your built in plussage can handle the loss of one set piece.

Shadow Flare: because of the mutual nature of most of cervantes' plussage Shadow Flare's ability to cancel said check increases for the opposing player is a must for any build of the deck

Cervy's main problem comes from lack of reliable draw. All of it comes from Algol support when working off of Chaos. This means low combo into Aleraph for three cards, Body of souls to loop back past offenders, Controller of souls (if you can afford it), Fatherly Love (when you have no more useful cards in hand), and Theemin Menkar. Because the discard affects of these cards are not costs, a smart player can still get a net gain off of them.

Also of note is tower of rememberance, but this increases both players' handsize and would take the place of sailor's rest as your terrain. Considering that you are already being a gracious pirate and allowing the other player to mooch off your checks, any more philanthropic additions would be somewhat ill advised.

All in all what I really love about the Chaos focused build is the ability to get plus seven turn two and go to town on the opponent with combo mania (or random pokes if that be your fancy)