Awesome Music: Chaotic has a surprisingly good soundtrack that really fits the mood during the battle scenes. Songs like thisreally make the scenes they're played in much more intense. Special mention goes to the Mugic, which sound really good despite being seven notes each. There used to be a game that allowed you to play Mugic notes, allowing you to hear the music not used in the show. Sadly, the shutdown of Chaotic means it and all the missing songs are seemingly lost forever.
Broken Base: The switch from the unique Adobe Flash animation to generic Anime style animation didn't go over well with some fans. The base is still split between people that like the first animation style better and ones that think both have their merits.
Season 2 (M'arrillian Invasion): Aa'une the Oligarch is supreme leader of the M'arrillian tribe and mastermind of their invasion of Perim. After Phelphor opens the Door of the Deepmines and frees the M'arrillians from their imprisonment, Aa'une sends his soldiers to take control of Perim's creatures and flood the land with the water in which only M'arrillians can live. In the season finale, Aa'une lures Maxxor into his domain and manipulates him into bringing Aa'une to Lake Bakker, where he becomes invincible. Aa'une tortures and tries to kill Maxxor and Chaor while giving his soldiers the power to brainwash all people of Kiru City, planning to melt the Glacier Planes and flood the whole of Perim.
"Son of the Spiritlands" series finale: Vitog is a cruel Spirit Creature of War who terrorised the Spiritlands until he was defeated and reduced to a non-corporeal form by Tangath Toborn. Vitog comes to Perim and spreads destruction across the land, at one point attacking an innocent village, threatening to completely destroy Perim unless Tangath Toborn fights him. When Tangath Toborn faces him, Vitog uses Mugic to gain the upper hand, intent on completely destroying both him and Perim.
Designated Villain: In Earth to Kaz we’re supposed to see the school psychologist, Dr. Tanner, as the bad guy for basically assuming Kaz is, in a polite term, "unable to distinguish reality from fantasy." The risk being Kaz might never be able to go to or play Chaotic ever again. But concerning the reason why Kaz was sent to him (writing about a Perim adventure as a school report, among other things) and how hard it is for people to believe Chaotic is a real place? Dr. Tanner is right to doubt Kaz at every turn and his frustrations become more and more reasonable.
While lots of Creatures in the show have their fans, Tiaane is by far one of the most fondly remembered despite only really having a role in one episode (and even then, only for a few minutes) due to his hospitality to Tom and Peyton and his awesome Heroic Sacrifice establishing him as a cool and likeable character.
It's hard to find any fans that dislike Lulu from "An Easy Win", due to her cute design and self-esteem issues, being surprisingly competent when she gets over them, and being one of the few human side characters that isn't a jerk. Quite a few fans wished that she would've shown up more than once.
Fanfic Fuel: Since the show didn't give us that much in the way of Worldbuilding in Perim, fans have used that as an opportunity to fill in the blanks.
Fanon: Crown Prince Iflar barely gets any screentime in the show itself despite being the Mipedians' de-facto tribal leader in the card game, so we know very little about him as a character. However, fanwork usually portrays him as a level-headed Nice Guy to contrast with his cousin Mudeenu.
Fridge Brilliance: Wonder why the Vlaric Diamond and the Vlaric Shard are named that? Because Vlar is the first one to discover the attack amplifying properties of these crystals. Interestingly, this was a case of Fridge Brilliance in the universe and out of it.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Only the previous game, "Dracco Heads", was a minor hit in Denmark back around 2000-2001 after the Pokémon hype. And hasn't, other than that, surfaced enough for the vast majority of the gaming population to notice at all.
Just Here for Godzilla: While fans enjoyed the matches, many are interested in the show more for the world of Perim and its residents.
Lord Van Bloot crossed the line when he cast the Decomposition mugic on Maxxor, knowing fully well what it would do to the Overworld leader, effectively a fate crueler than death, just to gain more power so he could overthrow Chaor.
Klay and Krystella more than cross it when they sabotage Tom and Kaz's attempt to scan the brand new Battlegear named the Phobia Mask, not only destroying it after scanning it, but also actively try to get Tom and Kaz coded and H'earring killed in the process by trying to dump them into hot-as-lava molten steel, and they showcase absolutely zero remorse about it.
One-Scene Wonder: The sassy robot that greets Tom in the first episode is quite memorable, largely because no other serving robot in Chaotic shows the same tendencies.
Popular with Furries: The more humanoid creatures tend to be the most popular when it comes to furries, especially Intress, Takinom, and Chaor (the last of which more so applies to the bara crowd).
The Problem with Licensed Games: Chaotic: Shadow Warriors was a train-wreck compared to the actual online card game. Taking a page from the show, you only played as Tom (never seeing any of the other main humans mind you, outside of cutscenes in the DS version at least), your selection of creatures compared to the card game is a measly 40 or so, and it heavily favors using Overworlders over any other tribe — essentially defeating the purpose of the main game. The gameplay also went for a similar RPG-esque approach as Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom, but unlike that game the overall gameplay was very clunky.
Ron the Death Eater: Though she's an indisputably heroic character and true friend, despite her flaws, Sarah's brash and hotheaded moments often cause fans of the show to see her in a rather undesirable light. Even her own page on the Chaotic Wiki exaggerates her negative traits.
Several creatures in the show are given some seriously good plot lines in Perim, but after their one appearance in Perim, the only other time they appear is in the Battledrome. Stelgar and Tianne are excellent examples of this.
The M'arrillians in general were horribly underutilized. They were played up as the main threat of the second season, being a fifth Tribe and having their name on the subtitle and all, but they only show up halfway through and appear in less than a third of the episodes in the already truncated season, with most of the rest being taken up by drome-based filler. What's especially damning is that even in their few actual appearances, they get no real characterization beyond "Generic Doomsday Villain with brainwashing powers", only a handful of actual M'arrillian characters appear, and their lore is never explored. Furthermore, a full two-thirds of their creatures get sidelined; all of the M'arrillians bar Phelphor that get any degree of screentime in Perim are Chieftains, while Kha'ralls and Fluidmorphers never really show up at all, nor are they even so much as acknowledged. And after the season ends, they're pretty much just forgotten about.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: "Earth to Kaz" had the potential to be about the concept of imagination vs. obsession and how one’s passion can sometimes get out of hand. Like how Kaz is super obsessed with Chaotic and it impacts his schoolwork. Instead the episode is about him futilely trying to prove to a school psychologist that Chaotic and Perim are real; or risk being put in “special classes” due to his obsession over what most people see as just a card game. Not helped by how he keeps digging himself into a deeper and deeper hole...
Unintentional Period Piece: The show is clearly set in the early to mid 2000s, as shown by the complete lack of cell phones, the use of MP3 players in the real world, and the portrayal of the Internet as an exciting toy, without any concerns over privacy, which was the prevailing attitude towards the Internet in the 2000s.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: As covered under The Woobie, Stelgar is portrayed in his titular episode as a nightmarish monster who has to be killed for the safety of Perim, but Stelgar never once attacks any creature unless they attack him first, and his stealing of Owis's food is precisely because he is hungry. Furthermore, the real motive Stelgar is ordered to be killed is because Mommark is afraid that Maxxor will kill him if he learns about him as he did create Stelgar that way.
In-Universe is Peyton's clear attempt to save Stelgar's life. Although the episode tries to paint Peyton's attempt to keep Stelgar alive as well meaning, everybody in the episode, including Tom and Kaz, do believe that Stelgar does have to die for the safety of Perim, and see Peyton's attempt to save his life as him grabbing a tiger by the tail. Nowhere is this more obvious than when Staluk and the others are about to kill a now back to normal size Stelgar, where Peyton's attempt to beg for Stelgar to be spared merely allows Stelgar to grow again.
Out of universe, Mommark's motive for having Stelgar killed is that he is far too dangerous, and the episode repeatedly shows Stelgar as so dangerous that four creatures are only barely able to subdue him. But the revelation of Mommark's real motive, primarily to save his own hide from Maxxor's wrath, as Maxxor apparently warned him about making dangerous mutations, along with the fact Stelgar never hurts anyone unless provoked, makes it look less like protecting Perim from a monster, and more like killing an innocent victim.
The titular creature in "Stelgar Strikes!" is portrayed as an ultimate threat, but Stelgar himself is shown to be a genuinely nice character never harms anybody except in self-defense, and the reason why he is ordered to be killed is the way Mommark created him. He almost gets killed, and he never appears again in the show.
The TCG:
Game-Breaker: Quite a few. While the game had no official banlist, the remaining players have their own unofficial banlist to lock out cards that either generate excessive amounts of resources or just prevent the opponent from playing the game.
One of the most infamous cards in the game is Zamool, Lord Von Bloot's Enforcer. When he battles, your opponent can't use any activated abilities or Mugic, basically making him a one-sided Dranakis Threshold on legs. Not only is this crippling on its own, but since Zamool is an Underworlder, decks using him also have access to Drakness and Kopond, High Muge of the Hearth, giving them the ability to nuke your oppponents unengaged creatures with the Underworld Tribe's many, many damaging mugic with almost no way to stop them. Think you can try to avoid Zamool by taking out it's supporting muges before fighting it? Meet Agitos, Eloquent Motivator◊, which can and will force you to attack Zamool first, ensuring that all of your best creatures can be wiped from the board before they can even battle. And god help you if the person using Zamool goes first. Zamool is so infamous that almost every remaining player of the game won't use him due to how unfair he is.
Aer'Dak◊. At first, she seems like another M'arrilian "Anti-Swift" card, dealing damage to creatures with it, and having a seeminglyAwesome, but Impractical final ability to destroy all creatures with range. After all, why and how would an entire enemy army have range? However, people quickly found a vareity of cards that grant swift and range, who were supposed to be used only on your creatures, not only weren't limited to only your army, but also weren't loyal. Thus the "Range Rover Game Over" deck was born, which used Bi-Mowercycle◊ and Xelfe to give the entire enemy board range. Then using cards like Afjak and Mipedian Balladeer Flute◊ to get Aer'dak to 10 counters quickly. This results in a deck that can end the game before any battles even start. Aer'dak and Bi-Mowercycle both ended up on the unofficial banlist because of this patently broken combo (and, in Bi-Mowercycle's case, crippling a lot of decks even without Aer'dak by letting you trample the enemy's backrow with impunity unless they had Defenders).
Tartarek, Psi Oveloader can be one of the most lethal threats to any M'arillian Chieftain in the game thanks to his ability. By discarding one Overworld Mugic he can destroy any Chieftain with 100 or more Intelligence, up to and including Aa'une's Avatar form. What's that? The Chieftain your facing doesn't have that much? Simply sacrifice one of Tartarek's Mugician's and he can give any creature a 35 Intelligence boost! His ability's basically the exact opposite of the M'arillain Fal'Makin's. Oh, and Tartarek can do all of this before a battle has even been engaged, leaving your opponent down up to two creatures right from the get-go. It doesn't help that Tartarek also has very good stats and two elements to work with, making him a decent fighter, and his 2 Mugic counters can easily be used to cast Mugic against opponents that aren't running M'arrillians. And the real kicker? He's neither Unique nor Loyal, meaning you can throw two of him into any mixed or Overworld deck.
Cadence Clash and Primal Smash both deserve mention for being two of the most powerful Generic cards in the game. Primal Smash is, hands down, the most efficient attack card ever printed, dealing an unconditional 20 damage for a measly build cost of 1 with no downsides attached. Meanwhile, Cadence Clash counters any one Mugic for only a single Mugic counter and puts that Mugic back into the caster's hand, which locks it out of the current Burst and also makes the opponent waste precious Mugic counters, making Mugic in general nigh-unplayable unless you're loaded with counters. The Chaotic community decided to ban both of these cards because otherwise literally every single deck in the game would run two of Cadence Clash and one Primal Smash.
Ramarhvir, the Danian Hivebringer can expend 2 Mugic counters to resurrect a Mandiblor from your discard pile. Also, every time Hive is activated, he can steal a Mugic counter from one of your other Danians. Danians are very good at generating Mugic counters, with cards like Strain of Infection and Illexia (which generates counters when Danians die, effectively halving Ramarhvir's cost), not to mention Elna for easy Hive activation and Hive Unsung to toggle it off so you can activate Hive again in the same turn. Ramarhvir manages to embody the Zerg Rush in a game where both sides start with equal army sizes: if an opposing creature dies, it's another step toward victory, but if one of your Mandiblors dies, Ramarhvir will have it back up in short order. All the Danian player has to do is endure until they can get enough good combats to clean house. Needless to say, nobody's thrilled to deal with him.
Najarin, Fluidmorphers' Foe lives up to his name by gaining a Mugic counter each time an opponent gains one, which he can also spend to give allies Energy or dispel M'arrillian Mugic. Unfortunately, he proved to be a little too good at his job, making M'arrillians nigh-unplayable alongside Tartarek, Psi Overloader; in environments where he's legal, running too many Fluidmorphers is an instant death sentence since Najarin's ability can easily heal Creatures faster than you can deal damage. Even outside of countering M'arrillians, Najarin's ability can be abused with cards that give the opponent Mugic counters, like Rao'pa Sahkk Chimegrid, Mipedian Balladeers' Flute, or even Heptagon Hail, generating an insane amount of resources for your side and making your creatures nigh-unkillable.
Twister of Elements is a 1-cost Attack that deals 5 Air, 5 Earth, and 0 Water, and if your attacker has both Air and Water, you get to send 3 Attack cards straight from your deck to the discard pile. Powerful, high-cost attacks are counterbalanced by unreliability, since you need to include weak, 0-cost attacks to accommodate them and thus do damage less consistently, but Twister of Elements throws that second part out the window by getting rid of your weak attacks so you can get to the good stuff faster. This can easily let you deal far more damage than your opponent by consistently throwing out big attacks. Not to mention, milling 6 cards from your deck means you'll run out of attacks and reshuffle more quickly than your opponent, letting you reuse those massive haymakers.
There are a lot of good fighting Creatures in the game, but Neekwin hit the absolute jackpot. He's got decent stats all around (including a good 65 Energy), a winning element combination of Air and Water (which, yes, allows him to use Twister of Elements and Supercooled Rain among other nasty things), and the ability to become Untargetable and gain Water 5 while he has no Battlegear - a condition that is trivially easy to fulfill by slapping a sacrifical gear on him or reviving him with Talisman of the Mandiblor if he somehow dies. Furthermore, his element combination happens to be the exact same as that of Ulmquad, who can support him by nuking opponents to within an inch of their lives and serve as a decent backup fighter.
Hune Paltanin is an otherwise unassuming Overworld Creature with the obscene ability of healing 10 damage to a Creature each time a Mugic counter is removed from a non-Overworld opponent. This makes her nearly on-par with Zamool as a lockdown card, since the opponent essentially cannot play Mugic or abilities without triggering Paltanin's healing (which, by the way, is one of the few healing abilities with no cost), and unlike Zamool, she doesn't even have to be engaged. And that's not even getting into ways to forcibly remove the opponent's Mugic counters; Supercooled Rain is one of the most infamous, since in addition to instantly running the opponent's resources dry it also gives a massive 40 point heal with Paltanin's ability. And that's not getting into what happens when you play her with Najarin, Fluidmorphers' Foe, in which case your opponent really might as well not even try to play the game.
Element removal cards are often a good candidate for this, since they can instantly stop elemental decks from dealing damage altogether. This is usually counterbalanced by them being completely worthless against non-elemental decks, but a few stand out above the rest:
Lord Van Bloot, Servant of Aa'une is a terrifying force for any elemental deck to deal with. Not only does he have great combat stats (thus making him useful even if your opponent doesn't use elements), any creature with less than 65 Courage that he's fighting will instantly lose all their elements and be unable to get any back. This generally results in a Curb-Stomp Battle in Van Bloot's favor. Oh, and he has 2 Mugic counters and isn't Loyal, just as the cherry on top.
Element-removing Locations. The opportunity cost of running a Location intended to specifically counter certain strategies is much less than using a Creature or Mugic that does the same, Location abilities tend to be much harder to counter, and running a lot of them vastly reduces the RNG associated with Locations, letting you more reliably deprive the opponent of elements. AZAIA Mindscrying Chamber is one of the biggest, instantly wiping all elements from all Creatures upon being flipped with no real counterplay, and the Unique restriction doesn't mean much since one flip of the Chamber is often enough. Numin Voidland only wipes elements from engaged Creatures, but the effect is still enough to win combat the moment it begins, and the trade-off of giving element-deprived Creatures extra Energy is irrelevant since having all the Energy in the world means nothing if you can't deal damage. Illusionary Lake only affects one element, but that element (Water) happens to be the best-supported element in the game, and like Servant of Aa'une it prevents gaining Water, making it completely impossible for a Water-dependent deck to win a combat here.
No Fluidmorpher (and few Creatures in general) is as terrifying as Dror'niq. For 1 Mugic counter, Dror'niq deals 10 damage to the opponent when he takes attack damage, or for 4 Mugic counters, he causes an opposing engaged Creature to take 10 damage every time they deal attack damage for the rest of the combat, even if they're not engaged with Dror'niq himself. There is no limit on the number of times these abilities can be used.note This doesn't sound very terrifying until you consider that Dror'niq gains a Mugic counter each time any of your Creatures deals Water damage... which usually translates into a lot of counters. This means that just by keeping Dror'niq in the back row to build up counters for a few turns, he can then indiscriminately one-shot opposing Creatures in combat by stacking his 1-counter ability several times. Even at its very worst, Dror'niq's ability basically gives him 10 extra damage on his Water attacks or slaps Recklessness 10 on an enemy, making most combats an utter cakewalk.
Enre-hep, High Muge of the Desert can spend a Mugic counter to copy a Mugic you just played. While most Mipedian Mugic aren't the sort of thing worth copying unless you're trying to dodge a Refrain of Denial, the real problem starts when another of your Creatures is given Heptadd's Crown. Give Enre-hep some extra counters, and you can now spam the hell out of any Mugic in the game, naturally leading to all sorts of ridiculous potential combos like nuking the entire enemy team with Unheard Melody (or, if you want something more readily accessible at the start of the game, just using things like Canon of Casualty for massive burn damage).
Strain of Infection, a 0-cost Danian Mugic that uninfects up to three Creatures to give a Danian a Mugic counter for each one. In addition to being a massive resource generator, the release of far more efficient ways of Infecting things and Danians with much more devastating abilities made Strain exponentially stronger over time. Even in its debut, giving a Lore or Lobanne three more counters was already enough to make most opponents cry; with the release of things like Ambolx (which infects things for free) and Lore, High Muge of the Hive (which can re-cast this from the discard pile), its power went through the roof. By far the most degenerate combo involving Strain of Infection was - unsurprisingly - abusing it with the aforementioned Enre-Hep, High Muge; by exploiting an otherwise obtuse rule involving how abilities/Mugic generated in the middle of a Burst resolve, there exists a loop to give Enre-hep infinite Mugic counters by repeatedly copying Strain of Infection (which, mercifully, nobody figured out until the game went defunct).
Bodal, Flamedrill Researcher has the ability to expend Earth to recover a Battlegear from your discard pile and equip it to any of your Creatures. Sounds inoffensive enough, especially since you need to give him Earth in order to even use this ability... until you consider that there's a combo (involving Lam'inkal, Olkiex, and Scout's Monocular to repeatedly flip a Destructozooka on Bodal) that lets you infinitely do just that, allowing for infinite uses of any Battlegear. The most infamous combo with this is Droskin (which can be sacrificed to negate any attack, effectively making your opponent's attacks entirely useless much like Crellan's Droskin did in the animated series), which is only kept in check in real-life play by the extreme rarity of the aforementioned Droskin, but even failing that, infinitely reusing something like Girgeth Tar is almost as powerful.
Many cards just didn't work properly on the original site due to the dev team being heavily downsized over the game's lifespan, but out of all of the bugged cards, Gintanai, the Forgotten was likely the most infamous. Gintanai is supposed to be a Creature with monstrous damage output and a Necessary Drawback that makes you sacrifice one of your own Creatures each time it wins combat; however, on the online client, the card was able to sacrifice the opponent's Creatures instead. This bug turned Gintanai from an Awesome, but Impractical gimmick into an absolute monster capable of carving through entire armies two Creatures at a time.
The Gigantroper under the proper circumstances can be a game changing piece of Battlegear. What it does is, at the cost of losing the equipped creatures abilities, is set their disciplines and energy to 70; the greatest potential stat gain of any card in the game. This can basically turn creatures with incredibly low stat lines such as Dawn of Perim's Tangath Toborn, H'Earring and Fivarth into far more formidable combatants at the cost of losing relatively minor abilities. This also gives any creature the best access to Megaroar; which if it has 70 in every stat deals a whopping 40 damage!
When used properly, Stone Mail provides not only an extra 50 energy to a creature, but removes any abilities, even those that would be cumbersome such as Recklessness. This makes Warbeasts such as Blazvatan or Khorror much easier to use without needing to clog up your deck with Conjurers to mitigate their Recklessness. The only downside being they take 5 extra damage from attacks and cannot move on the Battle Board, but those aren't even drawbacks with the right creature.
Genius Bonus: The glyphs written on the right side of Mugic cards form a code corresponding to actual musical notation◊, meaning that you can read the melody of a Mugic right off the card. Note, however, that the system doesn't have a way of denoting octaves.
Low-Tier Letdown: While the four main Tribes all had their day in the spotlight and are generally quite playable, M'arrillians have languished in the bottom tier for much of their existence. They have lots of flashy, gimmicky effects, but very few have actual synergy with each other. Their designated fighters, the Kha'ralls, have dedicated Battlegear that gives them incredibly powerful buffs, but Kha'ralls universally have awful Energy and Battlegear disposal isn't exactly in short supply, making them easy to dismantle. Fluidmorphers give them the potential to generate a chunk of Mugic counters, but start with none and need time to ramp up, rendering them fodder to both faster decks and anything that can remove elements, not to mention that said Mugic counters were used to fuel some of the most underwhelming effects and Mugic in the game to the point where M'arrillian decks usually prefer Generic Mugic (in which case you often don't even need Fluidmorphers). They need to rely on Minions to fill in roles on teams and provide starting Mugic Counters, but Minion output was flat-out cut short after the M'arrillian Invasion block, rendering their options severely limited. And to top it off, Chaotic also has a bunch of cards tailor-made to counter them, as if they weren't underpowered enough. Even the few good strategies they do have tend to draw ire for being excessively obnoxious to play against, such as endlessly healing with Mock'adyn◊ or spamming element removal with Chaac◊ and Jaidwarl◊.
Maxxor's Torch◊, a battlegear that allows you to sacrifice it to inflict 25 damage to a creature your opponent controls... except said creature has to be either a M'arrillian or minion, and your oppponent gets to choose which creature gets damaged. Combined with it's surprisingly high Super Rare rarity and the fact that it just seems to be a normal torch Maxxor happened to throw, it's commonly mocked as the worst card in the whole game.
Kiru also draws scorn from the community because of both how his tendency to draw new players into playing him because of his card's ability... and how bad said ability is when you examine it more closely. He's a bad support trying to masquerade as a snowballing attacker (namely, he gives a stacking Energy buff whenever he wins combat, but only to your other Creatures and not himself) that needs to win a fight just to perform a basic function that other Creatures do for free and has a breathtaking tendency to die before he can actually do anything useful. It wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't for him being such a big deal in lore and ending up getting such an underwhelming card.
The card game was, to say the least, not very well balanced on release. UnderWorld had strong cards up the wazoo while it was hard to even build cohesive decks around the other three tribes, and cards tended to have downright puzzling attributes with little overall cohesion in the first few sets. This was best exemplified by the Dawn of Perim starter decks, which not only featured numerous creatures with poor synergy (even when the creatures themselves weren't just nigh-unplayable), but also didn't even hit the 20 build point limit for their attack decks. It wasn't until Silent Sands and especially the M'arrillian Invasion block that tribal identities finally started to settle down and card designs became more reasonable (read: not unplayably bad in most cases).
The online client was also poorly polished, with loads and loads of bugs revolving around even simple scenarios like two engaged creatures dying at the same time. Notably, most cards interacting with the discard pile (among others) didn't even work properly, numerous card interactions contradicted the official rules, and while the site hosted a banlist, it had little to do with game balance and everything to do with the cards in question not being properly implemented; a particularly notorious example was Gintanai, the Forgottennote a Creature intended to have the drawback of forcing you to sacrifice a creature every time it wins combat... except the client didn't properly restrict you to sacrificing your own Creatures. Many cards, like Siril'ean, the Songthief, never even became playable online before the website went down simply due to them never being coded in correctly.
Variable stats on Creatures. While innovative and somewhat interesting for flavor, it's an absolute mess when it comes to collecting and playing the game, resulting in most cards being sub-optimal since you want the best stats possible in every stat barring very specific Min-Maxing for builds like Melody of the Meek and artificially adding a layer of rarity. This also results in 4-max and 5-max cards going for obscenely high costs. Unsurprisingly, online play on unofficial platforms after the official site went defunct eliminates the variable stats entirely and just uses the average stats.
Unlike most TCGs, Chaotic has no mechanic to counteract the advantage of going first. The first-turn advantage is also much bigger than most other games since you get to dictate who fights during the first combat and have Home Field Advantage during it. This can utterly make or break a game to the point where certain matchups can be determined by whoever gets the first turn, especially since having all your resources available at the start means it's common to see them being completely spent on the first couple of turns.
Before the Storm, the bane of anyone playing against Mipedians. 15 base and 15 Air for a build cost of 4 isn't great on its own, but then you get to the effect: it counts as your first attack in combat if your Creature has Air. Which means it gets bonus damage from Strike abilities, which in a well-built deck can easily add 30 or more damage on top of the 30 it's already doing. Even if you survived their massive start-of-turn backstab damage and healed all the way back up, you're not safe from being one-shotted out of nowhere. Oh, and those decks tend to be really good at drawing through their attack deck with cards like Synaptic Acceleration.
Supercooled Rain deals 15 base damage and 25 Water damage, which is pretty modest for a 5-cost attack. However, here's the part that lives up to the cost: if it goes off, Supercooled Rain instantly removes 4 of the opponent's Mugic counters. Unless the opponent has a buttload of Fluidmorphers, a single Supercooled Rain will instantly neuter their capacity to use Mugic and abilities, and there's no way to stop this except with one of the very few cards that can negate attacks outright. Even though most players still around don't even use Supercooled Rain due to how busted this ability is, there's still its little brother Deadwater Devastation, which removes all counters from a single Creature and thus still has the potential to cause a catastrophic amount of resource depletion.
The "end of turn" rule, which states that all effects applied by a Mugic, triggered ability, or activated ability (basically anything that isn't passive) only lasts until the end of the turn unless otherwise stated. The rule allowed them to omit the words "until the end of the turn" on cards printed after the first block... and backfired spectacularly since questions about whether changes in a card's state are permanent or only last one turn are quite possibly the most common ones among rookies because the cards don't say so.
Elementproof. In addition to having something of a counterintuitive name (it gives additional energy to your creature if it fights an opponent with a certain element, but only if the opponent had that element at the start of combat, rather than blocking elemental damage), the very specific timing of the ability also gives newer players fits when using cards that grant Elementproof and/or when element-gaining cards and Elementproof cards come into contact with each other.
Infection, partly due to its counterintuitive nature and partly due to the way it was handled by the rules in the first place. What Infecting a Creature does is put a Parasite Token on it, and the token would count as a Mandiblor for effects the player has that count Mandiblors (without doing anything to the Creature it's on). This is frequently misinterpreted by players as turning the infected Creature into a Mandiblor or a Danian, not helped by the show's version of infection doing just that to Raznus. It got so bad that the creators of the game straight-up reworked the whole mechanic to make it so that the Parasite Token did nothing whatsoever and gave errata to every single card in the game that counts Mandiblors the player controls to make them count both Infected Creatures and allied Mandiblors. Unfortunately, this was poorly communicated to the player base and the affected cards were never reprinted with the updated text, so the confusion remains to this day.
really make the scenes they're played in much more intense. Special mention goes to the Mugic, which sound really good despite being seven notes each. There used to be a game that allowed you to play Mugic notes, allowing you to hear the music not used in the show. Sadly, the shutdown of Chaotic means it and all the missing songs are seemingly lost forever.
