Stats: Well, looking at this part of the card, it seems kinda depressing.  While being a Dark/Fiend is fantastic in terms of support, and being a Level 1 is technically not bad (since this game rarely follows level/stat restrictions for long), but its ATK and DEF are both big fat zeros!  Well, at least this means that he is searchable by the effects of Witch of the Black Forest, Sangan, and Mystic Tomato, and can it can attack under Gravity Bind.   

Card Text (Effects): Here’s where we find out why I like this card.  Like the old Shadow Ghoul, it draws strength from the number of monsters in your Graveyard.  Unlike Shadow Ghoul, it was released now, when there is some support for this type of effect.  Also different is the amount of the bonus and how it is figured:  Shadow Ghoul got a somewhat puny +100 per monster in the Graveyard added to its ATK, where as Chaos Necromancer’s ATK is equal to 300 multiplied by the number of monsters.  This matters due to certain card effects (chief amongst them the rarely played Reverse Trap) that would hit an “adder” but not a “multiplier”.  Still, is this enough?  After all, it takes five monsters to pass the “adequate” 1400 ATK of a specialized support monster. 

Uses/Combinations:  Well, at first this seems like a real specialized monster, and it is.  Now, it can be useful in general, timing it to come out from a seemingly pointless late game Mystic Tomato (which at least still sees play locally ;-P ) when just about all of your other monsters have hit the Graveyard.  Most sound decks I see still run about 15 monsters, and as long as you can wait for seven monsters to hit the Graveyard first, you got a great attacker.  There is also an inherent advantage to this card-it’s hard to properly “swipe”.  Obviously, I don’t mean physically stealing it, but using Change of Heart, Monster Reborn, or their ilk on it.  Chances are, they don’t have the same amount of monsters, and several decks are dropping below the 15 monster mark.  I had an opponent swipe mine once, then cringe when he realized he now had a 900 ATK monster instead of the 2700 ATK I had. 

The true calling of this card, however, is in its own deck, loaded up with plenty of monsters and ways to get them into the discard, and that’s what the rest of the week is (more or less) about.  Some tricks are obvious: Painful Choice to dump up to four monsters into your Graveyard, Troop Dragons, and so fourth, but we will be covering others.  Since I should have thought the order out better, I won’t comment on them.  Sorry, when I suggested these, I named them off the top of my head… forgetting that they all tied in together, and thus it mattered how they were reviewed. :-P I will leave you with a loose statistic: I have been playing a version of this deck for my last two tournaments.  I won neither (surprise), but both times got taken out by a Necrofear deck.  The first lacked this card, and I lost mainly due to Necrofear stealing my Shadow Ghouls, allowing Giant Orcs to club me to death.  The second time he added Dark Ruler Ha Des, and I negated the wrong card (I was low on LP so I used a Solemn Judgment as a Trap Hole, then he ringed his other Giant Orc for the game -_- ).  Outside of those tournaments, the deck I built around this and Shadow Ghoul wins about half of the time.  This includes some of the people who made it past me in the tournaments (I hate single elimination).  What’s really weird is how fast I burn through the deck: before I bulked it up, the deck tended to come close to decking out.  Many duels I ended with roughly five cards left.  When I bulked the deck up even more, it started performing better, and only gets that low a third as often.  Most matches I got it out at over 3000 ATK+… 

Ratings 

Casual: 4/5-This is a great card for this environment: after all, it makes for a sick Gravity Bind deck. 

Constructed: 3.5/5-The deck is still good here, and it can be useful in any deck that runs 15 or more monsters (including Mystic Tomatoes).  Remember, I am still perfecting my deck for it, so it looks very promising. 

Limited: 4.5/5-The only way this would be better is if it were a level three with base a 1500 ATK/DEF!  Decks are heavier in monsters here, and the biggest monster can often win the match for its controller. 

Summary

A great card-it won’t dominate the game and be the only viable deck, but it may very well have added a viable deck and changed some of the old “rules” of deck building.