Momo is seen pretty much everywhere in the Arena these days in Axie Origins. I am sure many of you are like me, wanting to know how to beat Momo and/or how to play with Momo. While I am by no means an expert, I did manage to use Momo to climb to Top 100 in the first few days of the Season, and here I just want to share my experience playing with and playing against Momo.

tldr:

• Play Leafy if you want to beat Momo

• Have at least 1 Axie with 4-turn Taunt to support your Momo

• Cottontail could help with matchup against Leafy to match their tempo

How to play with Momo?

If you played Triple Owl teams before, you probably see some resemblance. Momo is one of the new Starter Axies with the potential to deal massive damage as the damage scales up over the course of the game.

Building a Momo team

One of the most common way to get the most out of Momo is to pair Momo with two defensive support Axies to keep Momo alive for as long as possible. Having at least 1 Axie with a 4-turn Taunt (Cattail or Ant) that has a Innocent Lamb (to get another copy for consistency) is pretty much essential to divert damage away from Momo. A Mech with Steelskin is the common choice for that 4-turn Taunt Axie. You would want to have a few more defensive cards, e.g. Shield cards, to keep the 4-turn Taunt Axie alive for as long as possible (while disrupting opponent with Secrets like Scaly Spoon).

For the other support Axie, some choose to go with another 4-turn Taunt, while others go with Cottontail. Given the current meta with so many Leafy around, it would make sense to have a Cottontail to match the tempo of Leafy teams as Leafy often have one Cottontail as well. Having some way to Taunt is always good, e.g. Cactus or Pogona, to play around Shrimp and opposing Momo.

Many tech a Silence Whisper in their team to protect Momo from Poison. This will depend on where you are on the leaderboard and how much Poison you get matched against.

Card Draw is something good to have for consistency. Clear or Nerdy for generic card draw. Lucas to get specific Bird card.

Other tech cards that are good to have include Garish Worm and Neo for discard, Pocky for targetting your Lil Bro, Arco for removing Secrets, Shoal Star for finishing weaken opponents etc.

It is still a very early stage of optimising Momo builds. Check out axieboo.com where you can filter teams by archetypes to see what the top players are using in their Momo teams.

How to pilot Momo teams

I am no expert on how to pilot Momo teams and it is very matchup-dependent, so here I am only trying to make some general points on how to play Momo teams, but do remember there are always exceptions depending on the situation and matchup.

• Focus down 1 Axie first so that they will get worse draws (revenge cards). Which Axie to target will depend on the matchup. If opponent does not have Taunt, it may be a good idea to go for the Axie that can deal the most damage. If the opponent has Taunt, you may want to target that down first.

• Be careful with managing Feather stacks. I often make the mistake of using Feather Dagger for no good reason, wasting 1 Feather, and end up losing my Feather Stacks and losing the game.

• Do not Taunt too early. Let your front tank some damage first. This way you can keep all your Axies alive for longer, making the quality of your draw better in the second rotation (as opposed to drawing revenge cards).

How to beat Momo

If you want to beat Momo, play Leafy! Leafy consistently beats Momo across Top 1000. I have most to a lot of Leafy teams while I was playing Momo so I know it is a tough matchup for Momo as Leafy has so much damage on all 3 Axies, meaning targetting down 1 does not help too much.

In particular, you would want to play a very Aggro build of Leafy to aggro down the Momo team down before Momo has the time to ramp up its damage. It is effectively a race. I personally play a more midrange build of Leafy and it is nowhere fast enough to fight against Momo (and have lost a lot of games to Momo becuase of that). You want to apply Vulnerable (and Fragile) and deal as much damage as you can to out race Momo.

Depending on your ranks, Jinx could be a good option to fight against Momo at Top 1000 (except Top 100). At Top 100, many teams have Card Draws which makes them a bit more consistant, but still Jinx can be a good pick against Momo, especially if you can discard their Power Turn 1! In general, being able to discard Momo’s Attack cards help with slowing down the damage from Momo.

Near the Top, you do not see Poison much, and so Momo players at the Top may not tech as hard against Poison, which gives Poison a chance to beat Momo. Having said that, it is largely dependent on the opponent’s team which is not a great way to consistently beat a certain archetype.

Conclusion

Momo is certainly a very strong Axie that is capable of getting to the Top. It does have its weaknesses, especially against Leafy. I am happy to see that there is another archetype that can reach the top of the meta but I do think that Momo (together with Triple Owl) is currently limiting the potential of some slower (more midrange) builds in this Rare Era. Hopefully Momo will be adjusted to a level where it will allow slower teams to have a chance in the coming meta (similar to how adjusting Topaz this season allows other archetypes to be more viable).

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Additional Data Dump

Seems like Frail Egg can be pretty good against Momo (though sample size is small at Top 100).