Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
15: Rainbow is Just Assumed Best
0 Plays3 seconds ago
Lauren, Ben, & Rie are still thankful for Snap in what is somehow their longest episode ever. 💁♀️
For our esteemed listeners' consideration:
- It’s been a Deadpool’s Diner Week in Snap 🍽️ 🍗
- Gorrrrrrrrrrrrr 👽
- 🏚️ We have Series Drops at home
- From Galacta to… Groot 🌳 the hosts talk next season’s cards
- Secret Homework is Marvel characters we want in Snap
- A listener 💖 comment discussed
Follow us:
Check out the other great shows in the Snap Judgments Network:
- How Can She SNAP?
- Snap Decisions
- Snap Judgments
Join us on Discord! 👾
- Join the server
- Head into the channel "welcome-rules-and-tickets"
- Find the "SJPN Podcast Fans" message, and press the button for Snap On This!!
Featured decks:
- Ben - Kith and Vinegar
- Lauren (unknown creator) - .oC & egaS
- Rie - It's a Gundam!!!
- Rie - Love Me Dead
Credits:
- Cover art by Lauren
- Snap On This!! Theme by Ben
- YouTube thumbnail by Lauren’s kid, Reggi
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Hosts Introduction
00:00:02
Speaker
It's episode 15 of Snap on This, previously self-proclaimed the best of the Marvel Snap podcast. I did not go into that plan to ever say that again, but here we are two weeks in a row. I'm Lauren Whatevs here with like some of my best Snap friends and usual co-hosts. It's an odd numbered week. So first up, it's Ree.
Ree's Weekly Snap Adventures
00:00:27
Speaker
How is your weekend Snap? And keep it snappy.
00:00:31
Speaker
Okay, pretty snappy for months. I won't lie, it was one of those weeks for me um where I was check listing my game more than enjoying it. ah So I got in to get my daily missions done. but i ah And I did get Fenris Wolf. I had grand plans of brewing a new moon night.
00:00:56
Speaker
Fenris Wolf deck. It didn't happen. I didn't auto to get the weekend missions. I did not even finish Surtur weekend mission. like I got halfway through every mean time. Maybe if I built my own Surtur deck, but auto Surtur is like so boring for some reason, I hate it.
00:01:16
Speaker
um like yeah um
00:01:20
Speaker
ah so um I guess what I'll cover for my Week in Snap is I did actually achieve some split-miss goals. Snap at least gave me a break there, finally for Moon Night. I think I was complaining last week that I couldn't get anything good. I finally finished Moon Night. Moon Night's done.
00:01:46
Speaker
Ink with rainbow crackle. Beautiful. Do you have the option of ink with rainbow crackle or just the rainbow crackle? But yeah, moon nights done. I thought you were looking for blue or white. Was rainbow on the list?
00:02:00
Speaker
I mean, rainbow is just assumed best. It's best in swap. It's biz. Yeah, right. you no Rainbow crackle, right? like yeah Wait, wait. You going to pick white crackle over that? I mean, get out of here. Wait, some kind of pretentious schmuck. All right. So ah speaking of my diggers, some white crackle for Cosmo. And green crackle for meek. I might have preferred blue, but I'll take the green. It's cute. OK. So yeah, you know, we can, it's funny how how how much getting to have the best usually backgrounds on the card led to like the rise of crackle. Were you like, I just want crackle. Yeah.
Ben's Deck Innovations and Challenges
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, so that I I've been doing some – I have a week ahead because it's like I just saw that like my infinite tickets were like, oh hey, those are in locked. Oh hey, because what? It's the last week. We have Deadpool's Diner. I've not gotten King E tree yet. I'm like four levels down from them I think. so yeah like a week ahead to like finish some stuff up, I guess. um So that that was that's me and so I'm up to running behind,
00:03:19
Speaker
i you know trying to get ahead. Oh, I think you're right on time. There's still a whole week. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, I'll get it done. I'm not worried about like finishing Deadpool's Diner and that stuff. I'll get it done.
00:03:38
Speaker
Okay. Well, nice on your crackles. I'm and with you though. My new main or favorite split type is base are with like base finish with crackle flare. It's the best. ah Generally speaking. Ben? Other comost? How was your week? Awesome. I had a weekend snap. It was pretty good. i um I also have been playing some Deadpool's Diner. I did take a break yesterday from Deadpool's Diner stuff. I mean, I i did do some Diner yesterday, but yesterday I had an idea for a deck I wanted to try, and the thing about Deadpool's Diner is that it confuses the hell out of the Marvel Snap Zone track, or at least it did last time around, because pubs are not huge. So you get some bananas cube rates.
00:04:35
Speaker
But anyway, I had a new deck. I had a new idea for a deck and I was like, well, I want to see some stats for it, which means I have to play on the PC. Can't do it on the phone if you want to really get the stats going.
00:04:49
Speaker
And so that meant that I could also not play Deadpool's Diner, um because it would confuse the tracker and defeat the purpose. But my new deck turned out to kind of kick a lot of butts. My first thing with it, I finished up a gold conquest that I had won the first game of. And that worked pretty well. And the deck was feeling very strong.
00:05:12
Speaker
And so then I took it into infinite conquest and just like kind of wrecked that whole thing there. And if you're wondering what kind of deck it was... I'll tell you! We are indeed murdering them! Alright, it's kind of a move surfer-y deck. I'm shocked! I built that one last week for the bounty thing with Polaris and Vulture. And this deck doesn't have either of those cards in it. But I was i was already thinking in this space.
00:05:41
Speaker
So this deck, it's a Zabu joint. This is a Zabu surfer. No Scarlet Spider, sadly. Because sometimes Zabu surfer means that you're putting Scarlet Spider in there.
00:05:53
Speaker
at least for me. That's just, that's what's in my heart. That's what's important to me. That's how I live. I don't know about you all and the choices you've been making in your own lives. But this deck has Zabu, Hydra Bob, Grand Master, Craven, the Hunter.
00:06:12
Speaker
Brood, Silver Surfer, Hope, Summer, Seabass, Chinshaw, and Spider-Man, Absorbing Man, Gwenpool, and to top it all off, Malekith. So I realized these cards sound a little weird and like maybe they don't super duper go together, but you're wrong and they super do. And Spider-Man.
00:06:37
Speaker
Those two cards, they just love hanging out. Spider-Man into Craven is just such a huge s swing. It's very cool. Also, Malekith just like reaching deeper into that deck, making sure you get your Silver Surfer in like most Most games, you know, um just ah it, it all really works. It's in agreement with itself. ah When I played, I played a few games on my phone later in the evening and it did like lose some, but as far as track coaches on my PC go, it's, it's still undefeated and that's nice. um
00:07:19
Speaker
yeah What kind of game count are we talking about here? i think i again yeah ah very few i think I think I haven't played it since I shared that screenshot of 9. I could double check, but I'd have to open the Marvel Snapzone tracker. It doesn't like my preferred browser, and I have an alternate browser I use just to check my stats on one of the three sites. um But i'm I'm not going to dig it out right now. But yeah, point is, the deck is crushing. It's going super well. Sorry if I'm not as high energy as I would like to be. I'm not super high up on sleep. Let's see. Yeah, I crushed it with the new deck. Very excited. I'm probably going to throw it up in the square, skip the square last week.
00:08:05
Speaker
It was a stressful week, a lot going on. you know i I don't know how much anybody cares about the squares. I think maybe they are primarily for my own amusement. but I care about the square. All right. Well, there'll be one this week and it'll probably have that deck in it. i'm goingnna try to study I feel like this game, it just it moves plenty fast for my taste. I only got around to trying Malekith in Surfer last night.
00:08:30
Speaker
So like, I just, I never have time to do all the ideas that seem like good ideas. That's ah yeah the real but a vibe. but Anywho, I have been continuing my experiments with Fenris Wolf in Discard. i just ah I'm about ready to put that card aside for a minute. I'm not super excited about it anymore, if in fact I ever was. and Honestly, I i wasn't. i was just like I was excited that it seemed like an okay card to me, and I was
00:09:04
Speaker
I was sure it wasn't going to be like, you know, ridiculous or anything. And I've seen that it's just fine. And I'm not, yeah, as I said, just not all that excited to play it. So, uh, I'm probably going to clear out some deck slots. Oh my gosh. I really have been chafing under the, the, the 20. Uh, it just, it gets harder every month. is Yeah. Yeah.
Deadpool's Diner Mode Critique
00:09:32
Speaker
More ducks not a good way to store them in and don't make me pay for them and they're gonna they'll They'll see what happens there I i would be pretty upset I Write them a sternly written tweet i that That would be a real blow to my ah I would I would not feel I would not feel very welcome or invited by by the game if they if they were trying to get me to spend more than my ten dollars a month just to have some basic quality of life stuff like how dare you want a deck build I'm just like that would be gross they haven't done it yet so they still have the opportunity to change their minds and do the right thing and not be monsters so I hope they do that
00:10:29
Speaker
It's kind of a dividing line of like free to play MMOs. Like, are they charging you for like inventory space for like bags? You know, do I have him to put on my junk? And it's like, yeah, I agree. It gets greedy when they're just like, you can have five things at one time unless you pay extra. Yeah.
00:10:51
Speaker
Yeah, it was heavily implied that they were going to include them in the super premium Season Pass. Which is like, okay, so they're not going to be super expensive, but I'm with you. I think that's a silly thing to monetize. i ah i I thought about when they launched the Gold Pass, I thought about being a Season Pass and Gold Pass person, but I feel very much Yeah, I feel validated for skipping on the gold pass because they immediately stopped offering anything worthwhile for your gold as soon as they lost the gold pass, which seems like a real bad look to me and a little bit little bit greasy and or scummy, depending on your preferred adjectives for that type of behavior. But it's ah one or both. That's that's my opinion.
00:11:46
Speaker
So yeah, i I did not upgrade to Season Pass plus Gold Pass and I'm not going to upgrade to Season Pass Super Duper. Just like, put out more variants. Just give give people something to be excited about and don't like hide super basic quality of life stuff.
00:12:05
Speaker
behind that extra vacant extra high paywall. I think they could use the wins of quality of life stuff that affects every player. like They could really use those, especially right now, seems like a critical point, which we'll talk about a little more later. But you know obviously, the ah things have already been kind of in a, I don't know, ah overall negative vibes. And then things get even worse with things like,
00:12:33
Speaker
and having to fight for a month for proper compensation for the split bug or disappointing series drops. And it's just like, oh, I hope something's going to turn around soon. Like i I genuinely believe that they care about these issues and that they are working on solutions and that, hey, maybe in a year things are going to be better.
00:12:53
Speaker
But year is too long. So I really hope some fixes and exciting things are coming very soon and not summer 2025. Like it's just it's too long.
00:13:12
Speaker
yeah know what i genuinely believe years for a mobile game I genuinely believe that Havoc is not series dropping because they have more variants that they would like to put in spotlight caches in the future. That's what I believe. He could be series four though, right?
00:13:30
Speaker
I think he is serious. Maybe he's already serious. for I don't know. But point is, Supergiant was not series four. We were wondering about that recently. i know None of us seemed particularly certain about what series Supergiant was living in. But now we know five going on four. ah But yeah, clearly they have more pretty pictures of Havoc. They're going to stuff in spotlight caches because that dude is not dropping anywhere. Okay, you're right. He's already series four. So bad. you like He exists in a world with Hydra Bob. like Why would you ever play havoc over Hydra? You know what I mean? he's like a Well, Hydra Bob is overtuned. Let's be real. Yeah, no, for real. It's very true. I know. Poor Martyr. who She is losing people games, and like she's sharing stats with Hydra Bob. And titanium.
00:14:18
Speaker
Silk? No. So justice for silk, 2-6 silk. No. but Why are you busy scheming on how to charge me for extra deck slots when you could just be making things right for silk? I know, it's... Priorities.
00:14:32
Speaker
oh All right, my week snap in Snap. Are you ready? I am ready, Lauren. I also picked up Fenris. I was not expecting to. I two-keyed him, so you know it's not too bad. um What basically convinced me was was two things. One, I saw a deck that I really wanted to play.
00:14:55
Speaker
Two, I realized he's a prio card and I like prio cards. I might have talked about that last week. um So that kind of like sold me on him. Yeah, he's fine.
00:15:11
Speaker
Uh, the deck that I used was pretty fun. It was what I used for the first third of Diner. It was a buddy deck. And then for the second third of Diner, okay, it was really like the first quarter and then the second quarter of Diner I used a safety blade, like mid-range thing that was also very fun.
00:15:27
Speaker
And then I was like, you know what? Let's just play Diner right. like We have a huge gap between our big wins and our small losses, right? It's a 32 times difference. So let's play something really swingy that has early signals. And I played one of my favorites, old Mr. Negative decks. I mean, this thing is many months old. um Maybe not too many months because it has Cassandra Nova in it. but ah Something that I dusted off. I think I used it to get a an Infinity Avatar a few months ago. And I took it all the rest of the way through the second half of Diner. um I got Eitri. I got ere haven't played him yet. I got Jane. ah did ah Did a, you know, spent 20 minutes donating Bubs, but boy, that takes forever. And people kept playing Magic, which was just irritating me. I'm like, I i am donating. Please don't extend this game.
00:16:21
Speaker
no I know of all things to be upset about. One extra turn ah is not... it's a It's, I don't know, small, but... ah Anyway, Diner went fine. I have seen very negative responses to Diner.
00:16:39
Speaker
I think it's a fine game mode. i I think it is probably too grindy. And I think it's a little user hostile that like the best way to play it is very counterintuitive. ay The secret sauce, everybody. I mean, I posted a guide. It was like one of the best things. What am I trying to say? It was a very well performing thing I posted last year. So I posted it again on both Blue Sky and and Twitter with you know a a new coat of paint and some new thoughts. i But basically the trick is don't play a table unless you have three or four times the cost of the table. And then also retreat a lot. but that's like
00:17:18
Speaker
I did those things. I like I put it into practice. I'm pretty sure my win rate in diner is below 50%. But I retreated when I didn't have Mr. Negative or Ravonna. And I snapped like crazy when I did. It's a little bit more nuanced than that, right? Like your hand is stronger if it doesn't have Iron Man and if it does have Jane.
00:17:38
Speaker
but basically that. And ah yeah, my win rate is below 50% and I finished Diner and it didn't take me too long. It's just a slow and steady thing. And I don't know, it it feels bad when you rush a table and you burn out on your bubs and you can't play for a few hours. Like there are problems with Diner. um I don't know, like how do you feel about like,
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah, some of the problems with Diner are people playing it wrong, right? Yeah, that's some of it. I kind of think that's on second dinner that they made a mode that is so counterintuitive. There is that. Also, even when you're playing it right, is it more fun than ladder or any other things? I actually think it's worse.
00:18:26
Speaker
because I don't think it is more fun, yeah. I'm i'm not saying it's like actively like terrible or anything, but like it's certainly not ultra appealing. I won't be sad when it disappears, and I'm like, oh no, but I can't i can't compete for the whimsical food items anymore. you know like I'll ah probably get over it, you know? But yeah, before it- I think, oh, sorry, go ahead, Lloyd.
Game Mode Comparisons and Suggestions
00:18:56
Speaker
I was gonna say before this show started, Rhea and I were talking a little bit about it and it was like, why don't they just make the bottom table free? Like who cares if you're giving out eight pubs for free or 120 pubs for free? like yeah Like the mode is exponential. And so letting people play the bottom table for free would probably feel better, but it really doesn't give them any significant progress towards Eitri.
00:19:24
Speaker
Also, so speaking of things that don't feel great about it, I don't like how I have to totally tank my bulbs to collect the free bulbs that replenish and stuff. That feels bad because then I feel like I'm leaving money on the table, even though the efficient thing is to never run out of bulbs and correct the like keep doing smart never refresh any. Yeah, but like I hate losing out on the free stuff, you know, like it just like it bothers me like conceptually. i I just don't I don't like that. I yeah, it makes me want to do the stupid thing of running out of Bubs, but like I don't really want to do the stupid thing of running out of Bubs. It just like
00:20:06
Speaker
i would like to collect my free bubs please i don't know the inbetween thing is at the end of your session go all in but then's like when you say there's my then it's like and it can't be the end of your session because now i've got this big mountain of bubs that i have to you know do risky things with in order to feel like i'm really like Max in that I might be relaxed and you know and the record you should end if you're above your refill max you should you shouldn't go and you should just smart to like walk away and have more than your refill max above next you want to do the thing but it doesn't feel great even though it is the smart thing
00:20:47
Speaker
um So yeah, I think people would hate it a lot less if they weren't locked out. Like you said, if they just kept the very bottom tier always in triple like conquest, right? and What I like best about Deadpool's Diner is the rewards track. I like getting Um, I just like, right? I just like getting rewards. It's kind of the whole point of it. And then that's the way I tend to play it is like, I'm there. I'm doing my missions. Hey, I don't have that much more time to play. I don't want to sit here over my limit when my bubs aren't regenerating. So let me just spam all out until I lose them all. You know what I mean? Just start playing more carelessly till I run out. So then I'm like regenerating while I'm not playing, which
00:21:36
Speaker
Doesn't it feel good? The goal of it was to give you this feeling of super high stakes and maximum cube gains and stuff, and it just becomes this weird economy management thing. As compared to this- Yeah, it just feels like there's so much spillage. I don't know. Yeah.
00:21:53
Speaker
so voltage so good in comparison to Deadpool's Diner because it was the one extra mode we'd had this far and we got to high voltage. It's like, oh, it's just kind of like do a couple missions that aren't that hard that are just playing it to do and like maybe screw around with some like weird wonky deck because you're going to have like a bunch more energy than you usually do. So like do some silly Wong stuff or like, you know what I mean?
00:22:22
Speaker
and and so While we had high voltage, you know, probably all of us had a ha high voltage deck or maybe a couple just go in. And it just felt easy and fun. And you just did your missions and you got the rewards, you know, and with Deadpool's Diner, it feels this like, oh, I got to grind it till it's done because you see it's so exponential feeling. You know what I mean? So it's like they they want it to have this epic feeling, but instead it's like also this exponential feeling of bad for players. of Like I'm so far behind because look how low I am. You don't get that sense of you're going to rise and it's going to be okay. It's just like, well, I got to get this free card. I got to get these rewards. And I'm like locked out now and I got to wait. And it's just like,
00:23:05
Speaker
You know, you can see what they wanted with it and it's just, I don't know, it's just lessening game design of like how, like, how you can, how all these things can lead up to a bad experience, you know, missing part. Yeah. I think it's it's really interesting to compare.
00:23:22
Speaker
the different game modes like ranked in conquest and also high voltage in diner and and to look at the different responses to them and all that I saw our friend Jason on blue sky be moaning being only halfway to E tree or maybe he was celebrating I don't I don't know, but he's like, I'm only halfway there. And I was like, actually, you're 13 fourteenths of the way there. Like, you're almost done. um But you couldn't tell because it's exponential. and And those numbers are just so hard for humans to grok. Yeah. What's so exciting about, like, winning? I won 1.467 million Bubs last game. Like, just... tell me I want eight cubes or something, like that it eight cubes feels better. Yeah, numbers that are so large as to be meaningless that it's just not like that's not what fun's made of. Sorry, re continue.
00:24:13
Speaker
No, I just think what you're paying attention to, or at least me when I'm playing, is that reward track. What's my next reward that I get, and how far am I toward it? And it's like, ooh, a premium mystery variant or whatever. And like, oh, some like, bub stuff, okay, fine, then I'll help me finish this faster. You know what I mean? Like, it is so. Funny, even I who had, I think I had a very, relatively, I should say, a relatively positive experience in Diner.
00:24:40
Speaker
i I knocked it out in like five days, maybe. um I just played like a robot. I'm gonna play at the highest table where I have three to four times the buy-in. That's it. That's the only time I even thought about numbers. It's like, okay, what's the highest table I can afford? Okay, let's go down one table, maybe. It depends on the tables. After that, I'm playing the exact same way, whether I'm playing at you know table one or table 10.
00:25:05
Speaker
keep calling them tables, they're plates, but you know whatever. oh We talked before about it. That would be a very silly thing to feel bad about. I think one thing Diner could do well, I don't think it actually does, but I think one thing it could do well, but the just the way that the mode is different with the automatic snaps, it could teach people how to play better, which is to retreat earlier.
00:25:27
Speaker
you know um and to leave when your opponent snaps, those sorts of things. Like, I think that those skills are even more important in Diner, and so they could theoretically teach you how to do that better for ranked. Like, if you can do well in Diner, you can do well in ranked. um But I don't think it actually succeeds in that goal. And then once you do have that skill, I think it's more boring to encourage retreating on three instead of retreating on six, like... Yes, absolutely. A zillion times more boring, yeah.
00:25:57
Speaker
just yeah So I think it's just it's kind of just a bad mode. um Yeah. Voltage, there was some interesting, if you get into like the dev answers on the official Discord, um Glenn was having some interesting you know answering questions about voltage and all that. And he talked about how like he just thinks it went a little bit too far in the direction of winning, not matter not mattering. And I actually agree. I think that voltage was too much in that direction. And if voltage lasted much longer, it would have been extremely boring.
00:26:26
Speaker
But it didn't. But it didn't. And I think there's so many players who wanted a mode. Who wanted a mode where it didn't matter, where they could just play and it felt free. And it was so fast to finish the missions, right? It proved the demand for a casual mode. A truly casual mode that is fast, not not like proving grounds which is too slow and not like ranked which there's always something on the line like i think people want a truly unranked mode and and i want that too you know i do enough silly things in snap that i would love to have a different place to do that um
00:27:07
Speaker
Where I think that high voltage may have failed there is that like winning kind of did matter, and it kind of did get solved by the end. And like in the final days of high voltage, I did not find it to be very enjoyable to play, even if I was playing goofy decks that didn't expect to be winning all the time or anything.
00:27:28
Speaker
I still found that most people were trying to win, and they were trying to win with the same kinds of decks. But I don't know, that's just my own experience with it. But you would have, well if it lasted longer and if winning was all that matter, you would have a shifting meta. I don't think it would just stay solved forever.
00:27:46
Speaker
um You're right, that winning mattered somewhat, but it mattered very little. You could get away with never winning. You could get done with it without winning. Almost all of your vaults came from... Lost a lot. Almost all of your vaults came from doing the missions. They were worth way more than winning, and the missions weren't dependent on winning. It was like, play five cost cards. Although some of the missions were not super fun, if you got particular ones, is my opinion.
00:28:13
Speaker
Sure, but those are things that can be modified. I think overall, every mode doesn't have to appeal to every player, right? We can have a more casual mode, like high voltage or something you know that's more groundy, like Deadpool's saying. or But the goals of it should be, right? It should at least appeal to one one type of player that's a significant base. And getting whatever the rewards for the mode are,
00:28:39
Speaker
shouldn't be too annoying for everyone that's just there to get the rewards, right? I think those should be the two goals for a mode. And I think high voltage, that's the thing. All the things are like, well, if it's stuck around longer, but like that's the whole point of high voltage, it's in, it's out. Probably a mode needs to be around a week, considering casual players give everyone like a reasonable chance, you know, where it's not like they have to log in on three busy days to try and get it done. Like a week seems good. They just need to make it casual enough that like, people can finish early if they want and be done, you know, everybody has time to get it. And I really like that the that the cards you get is like,
00:29:19
Speaker
two thirds of the way up the track. And then the top of the track, there's more prizes to get, but they're not the new card, right? Yeah, I haven't even paid that much attention. Is it just like silly cosmetics that I won't care about? It's a few frames. Oh, for diner, it's a few frames and then a Jane Foster variant, which is bizarre because Jane Foster is also the conquest. Also the conquest. Yeah, it's weird.
00:29:41
Speaker
Also, the thing about these game modes, it's true that they aren't for everyone, and maybe it's cool that they don't have to be for everyone, except it's also apparently the only thing that the developers
Temporary Modes and Player Engagement
00:29:54
Speaker
ever work on. or like like the These are the new modes that we get. like We don't get real new game modes, so like maybe these limited time modes should be for everyone if it's like the only thing they have the attention to work on.
00:30:08
Speaker
I don't know know draft is coming and maybe one other permanent mis draft coming. We do also know one more temporary game mode is coming and then they'll cycle through the three voltage diner and whatever number three is. um But like things don't things don't come out of... like they don't New stuff doesn't happen very often, so if the new things that happen only last for a week and a half and are only for a certain subset of the player base, or like only like really for a certain subset of the player base, then like I don't know. I think they need to... They're not big enough wins. Yeah, they need to work on something that's going to make more people happy for longer, is what I think.
00:30:56
Speaker
Rhea, I thought your summary was very lovely. I basically agree. I think voltage is like it has good bones and it just take a few tweaks to make it a great mode that will be fun once a quarter.
00:31:09
Speaker
um as stated previously, I think it does justify a full blown dedicated unranked mode that's always available. I think that would be very helpful to a large portion of the player base just mentally. um And then I kind of think Diner is for nobody. Like it's it's ranked mode but worse.
00:31:28
Speaker
like ah So, i yeah I kind of hope eventually they can Diner, quite frankly. um And I'm like, I'm the kind of player who Diner is sort of for. Like, I enjoy taking an obscure game system and optimizing it. Like, min-maxing a game system is something that I really enjoy doing. I'm an analytical person, but I've solved it, and it wasn't even that complicated. So, what's left for me in Diner? i Yeah, I saw a thing where someone was like, oh, well, we're seeing the same problem before where it just feels at the very beginning. And it's like, news flash. How can it feel? is the whole thing. That's everything. Yeah. and It's always sunny there. OK, so that was my weekend step.
00:32:19
Speaker
um Do we want to talk about Atrey? I haven't used him at all. Reed doesn't have him then. I don't have him yet. I think maybe we'll hold off. Maybe we'll talk about him next week, or maybe I don't know. I have been very impressed by the Atrey's I've run into. um okay so One of us wrote the show notes and didn't put Can't Retreat.
00:32:41
Speaker
Okay, I'll take a hint. ah Gore came out this week, the the final week of this season, which did catch me off guard. I'm not ready for Infinity Conquest. Maybe I'm skipping it. ah Gore, 6-1, ongoing, plus 2 power for each on-reveal card in play. I have not picked him up yet, you two.
00:33:01
Speaker
I have not picked him up. I did end up playing against several after I had stopped playing on PC, so i I was not tracking these matches, which is good because I lost to a lot of gores while I was playing on my phone later in the evening.
00:33:15
Speaker
I will say like i was I was losing to some Gore decks, also playing a zillion on reveals as I am want to do. yeah yeah I think i'm going to have I'm going to have trouble with this card perhaps even more than the average player just because of my preferences. Yeah, seems solid. It's kind of blobby like I thought it might be.
00:33:40
Speaker
My first score was from a a location gave them to me. So I and that's never happened to me to a card in my hand. um And ah and ah so this was a... Sinister London, you know, where we'll replicate your card to another location. so And that's where everyone plays their angry feels. So my first gore was enormous. And your second gore. Enormous? Enormous.
00:34:23
Speaker
Yeah. And then I think like the second time I saw him, he also beat me. He was in a negative deck and they copied him with their zero three Mystique to the other. Yeah. I was seeing some of that, the, the Gorinda Mystique thing.
00:34:41
Speaker
Seems like a pretty potent sequence. You could do Gorr into Taskmaster too. I also saw that. It also works. Yeah, I've seen it. Seemingly every time. yeah Almost every Gorr I've seen was a negative. I've also been playing negative.
00:34:59
Speaker
and my negative is beating their negative. So I'm like, do I really need this Gore? Maybe, maybe my deck would be stronger if I also had Gore on top of the Taskmaster, but I don't know. ah That was the reason I was tempted is because he's a negative card and my current version of negative is working better. So... I might just stay past because outside of Negative, he's just Blob and Red Hulk for different decks. Like, we're just gonna have a giant big boy for, you know, five different flavors of decks or whatever. I assume we're gonna get more of them. ah It's just that's not my thing. I don't want single lane, ah uneventful big card.
00:35:42
Speaker
I mean, I know power is how you win games. I get that. But like, I want to do it in a cool way, not in a way where it's just like, bam, I have a gigantic card. Yep. Yep. yeah yeah
00:35:57
Speaker
Like, some people just get that real joy from, like, slamming down an Ajax or Gore or, you know, some big last time, like, finisher. Yeah. And it's like, oh, but it's more fun to, like, see a bunch of things happen, you know, for me. Yeah. know I want to catch you off guard, man. I don't know. Yeah. OK. Is there a chance either of you are going to pick up Gore or are you just not?
00:36:24
Speaker
No, because I'm too interested in tuning cards next season. Yeah, I kind of think. i'm I have to leave myself something to open from the fourth ah the fourth thing in the row for the spotlight cash. Yes, with your endless luck. Okay. I mean, from that particular like little corner of the spotlight system, I do have pretty wild luck. i Yeah, I was just thinking to myself as I was playing Speed, I'm like, yep, there's another one that I opened from the Mystery Prize. Scroll past Erisham at the top of my collection, because it's not upgraded yet. Man, so many goodies they've given me. Anywho, sorry, just just reveling in my- Just bragging. Yeah.
00:37:11
Speaker
Okay, ah next week's cards. this is This is the last week of the season, so we will be talking about next season's cards in a second. We are not going to talk about Galacta and Luna Snow much here. um Luna's spotlight friends are Lady Deathstrike and X-23. X-23 being one of the cards dropping to series four. um Thoughts on those cards? The spotlight friends?
00:37:39
Speaker
i mean Yeah, these these are both very cool cards. ah X-23 is like really essential, I think. It's a destroyed X, yeah, for sure. Also, if you want to make cool, interesting discard decks, you also want to create. I haven't played her in a discard deck, like... Also, you know what? Even if you don't end up putting her in the discard deck, at least you had the opportunity to think about putting her in the discard deck.
00:38:11
Speaker
Don't listen to Ben! Okay, she's amazing in this story. She's a fun- Sure, sure. She's not that important. Also, she's pretty cool. Sometimes she makes things at like those late turns with the the Dracula's and things like sometimes having one extra energy like lets you do a cool play. Of course. Maybe it lets you get out Swarm and then Modoc on turn six so that you don't have a Swarm in your hand to get discarded to make two false hits for Dracula. like This really does happen. It's very niche. No, but it's a very important
00:38:55
Speaker
thing. what Yeah, meek exists. I think I'm going to put meek in instead of X23 in a discard deck. Yeah, but meek doesn't solve the Dracula swarm problem the way that an X23 dropped on turn five does. Okay, so if you want to play like droids, it's a niche thing, but it's like kind of a big niche thing. It is important. If you are running Dracula and swarm in the same deck, it is important that you don't get shafted by swarm. You know how I feel about Dracula and swarm in the same deck?
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah, you just don't, right? Yeah, I do think that is the right answer, but like, you know, if you're doing it, you know, maybe X23 joins the... pop Well, I'm not saying never play X23 and discard. No one's saying never play meek. I'm not saying never play X23 and discard. I'm just saying it's not meta. It's not a reason to get this card unless you are like ah obsessed with this card, in which case you already have this card. um But she's critical and destroy. If you like destroy and you don't have her, she's critical. Get her.
00:39:52
Speaker
Although, maybe for 3,000 tokens in another week. Keep in mind, she's friends with Swordmaster. I'm just saying. There are a lot of ways to discard this card. A lot of places you could like, you know... I've been looking for more ways to play Swordmaster. Maybe I'll find it. X23 is in 100 Bad Guys with Swords, a deck that I have played just a couple days ago and it's still pretty good.
00:40:18
Speaker
It's uh... Alright, fair enough. I gotta try it. I still haven't tried that. Um... Lady Dust Strike Yeah, actually maybe played the most I've most likely generated Lady Dust Strikes.
00:40:36
Speaker
I have played her in decks on purpose many times. She's very cool. I have a bit of experience with her. She's very fun. She is very nice. Here's the thing, though. she she's She's a great surprise card, obviously. like People aren't expecting you to play that in their're patriot um there's cererows on their on their Dratavas. Iron Man. Yeah, all of that stuff.
00:40:59
Speaker
But she often in Destroyed X, she often ends up being my first cut, if I'm like making like, there's so much fun to be had with her. I think there's just a joy to playing her if you're into mostly destroy type things with her. um But like, and she's very fun, but she is not um essential, you know,
00:41:25
Speaker
And that's what I think about her. And I think that's how I would've summarized her too, as a mostly observer. um yeah she can She can ruin some fun, for sure. Yeah. I do like to put her in a Destroy Deck if I'm doing bounties. like she is yeah like you can she She can be like the sort of the flex card thing in a relatively boring Destroy Deck.
00:41:52
Speaker
Like, if you want to spice up a boring destroy deck, swap something out for Lady Deathstrike, that's my feeling. But what she's competing with often is like Zola, or Knoll, or Atuma, cards that just end up being way more flexible often and useful for you. I feel like Atuma probably changed the ecosystem in such a way that maybe Lady Deathstrike never shows up anymore. I don't think I've... Yeah, I haven't been taking care of destroyed bounties recently, but...
00:42:20
Speaker
Last time I did, I was i was using Lady Deathstrike. I don't know, maybe... She hits Bucky! She sure does! I haven't played Bucky, so Those stats are enticing. i I will probably play Bucky right before they change him to 2-8 or something.
00:42:40
Speaker
you know the ah The other thing she does that's kind of cool, and i i I feel like this is an underexplored area of Snap partially because players aren't exploring it and partially because we still don't really have the right cards for it, but it's cool that she's like semi-targeted, right? Like you can play her in a lane and you can keep your giant venom alive, but take out everything else that's there. um Your X-23 or your Bucky or whatever, I don't know. I don't know why they'd be there, but you know. um It reminds me of misery who's that way to where you can yes you can take out part of your lane but keep some of your lane there and I've done cool things with that.
00:43:15
Speaker
Also um like misery. She solves she saw problems like the void and stuff which is yeah. That's true. So there are there are like non pure destroyed like things you can do with Lady Deathstrike. And, you know, she evolves real nice if you see her.
00:43:39
Speaker
I'm playing near her in a deck right now. She's in one of my two Destroy decks with ah Electro. She's in my Destroyer deck because Electro is a great target very fun line. So I am actively actually playing her right now in one of my two Destroy decks that I switch between.
00:44:00
Speaker
Yeah, so we like these cards, I think, is the general consensus. These these are cards that we're rooting for. Yeah, and we'll talk about Luna Snow in a little bit. ah We had series drops announced. ah They're coming with the December 10th patch. It should be a big patch. Like ah that week, we're getting a Tuesday patch and a Thursday OTA, and then that's it for December.
00:44:24
Speaker
um Anyway, I saw some, just a few people being like, oh, are they announcing these early to try to like get ahead of it? Or maybe like to have a play where they see our responses and then like fake coming out with an even better patch. And it was because of our feedback. And no, they've just they've committed, they've committed to to announcing series drops two weeks in advance. And that's that you don't buy.
00:44:48
Speaker
And that's which is kind. I don't know if kind is necessarily the right word, but it's it is um consumer friendly because it tells you hey, don't spend 6000 tokens on fastos because he's about to cost 3000 tokens. um So yeah, they're committed to at least two weeks of heads up. That's what this is. It's the two weeks of heads up. ah Only nine cards dropping from five to four.
00:45:10
Speaker
which is ah not honestly just five to four is not super important because spotlights are the main ways to get these cards and they cost the same in spotlights. Obviously series four is half price in tokens. It is significant because tokens are in In my experience, as a person who, I don't know, I think somehow, despite spending the least amount of money on the game, I have the most complete collection on this particular call. That's true. And I'm telling you, tokens are what's up. Buying things with tokens is... It's because Ria and I can't resist the allure of certain cosmetics.
Community Reactions and Trust Issues
00:45:47
Speaker
Yeah, but the thing is...
00:45:50
Speaker
the That gold, it turns into so many tokens and like 3,000 tokens. That's a whole super giant right there. Okay. and Alternatively, just wait till she shows up in keys. Without actually saying what any of the series drops say. and Are we going to say that? I mean, isn't that hard to just- Nah, go ahead and say that. All right, the ones going from five to four are Fastos, Grandmaster, Pixie, Beta Ray, Bill, X23, Supergiant, Sasquatch, Valentina, and Iron Lad.
00:46:21
Speaker
Also, you know what? I'll say it. Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. Okay. Series four to series three. Snow Guard. Kitty Fried. Jean Grey. So we gave three cards for free. The oldest card from Spotlight Caches and Snow Guard. Who's fine? Okay. Who predates Spotlights? Yeah. yeah to be imin Like this is like, when I saw this, I mean, I get in and we'll get into why everyone's mad, but it's like, this is what I expected. Like to look at this and oh, Jean Grey, not a surprise.
00:47:05
Speaker
And um a couple others, like, oh, Iron Man was still Series from a Series drop. And also, the other thing I expected is that none of this changes anything for me, even though I still don't have, like, I don't know, like seven to 10 cards. Like, all of these are cards that I have for sure. Those were, of course, the only ones that were gonna drop. And I did see someone mention that they're annoying, that Valentina dropped.
00:47:35
Speaker
um before Baron Zemo even shows up in the spotlight for the first time. That's so wild. Well, I think it all depends on how many pictures they've got of you. So let's all keep our eyes peeled for these new Jean Grey variants that they definitely have. They definitely didn't series drop her because they ran out of pictures to sell you.
00:47:57
Speaker
I don't have Fastos. I'm not going to spend 3,000 tokens on Fastos, but no. Well, you're missing out because he's fine. I don't think so. A lot of fun. I've never once felt bad about skipping in. Really? That's my fun because it's like, ooh, will it be plus two or minus one to play? Like, what will it be? Hey, maybe I'm wrong. Yeah.
00:48:25
Speaker
And think about him on a comertage. You're like, mmm, delish. Okay. you That is ah very niche, but but yes, that would be nice. He's got a big hamlet, Lauren. What do you, what's your point of the guide? This has triggered a massive negative response, at least in the like community that is actively discussing this on Reddit and Twitter, et cetera. Loud vocal minority.
00:48:53
Speaker
yeah casual players those places so i don't know very in but I'm very doubtful yeah very doubtful casual players care. Oh, I think they care. I just don't think they're aware on this like level. I think they do want more cards. They probably don't know about series drops because they weren't paying attention to the announcements.
00:49:12
Speaker
I think there are a lot of players who find out about the series drops when they happen in the app like you know yeah yeah and they see it. They're not like actively resisting like new information or anything. It's just they're not seeking it out the way the highly engaged like extracurricular players are. you know You're right. As far as I know, these were only announced in the like Twitter and Discord type places. These aren't announced in-game, and I don't think they will be until they actually happen.
00:49:41
Speaker
I mean, I got it off the marvelsnap.com. that's That's where I found this information. I did have to go looking for it, though, because I heard there were series drops, and then I had to look it up. But yeah.
00:49:56
Speaker
ah Anyway, you know there's a lot of talk. this I think, if anything, this is the straw that broke the camel's back rather than actually being the core issue. um and it's It's really not a surprising series drop to me. If anything, I'm surprised at the quality of the cards in the drop. like There's actually some decent ones in here. It seems very business as usual, neither like yeah egregious nor amazing.
00:50:27
Speaker
alongside Alongside this announcement, they said, like, hey, we acknowledge there's a there is a card acquisition problem and we're working on it. Yeah, they've been acknowledging it for a long time. It's been a long time coming, yeah, which is, you know, I think is part of why this is a tipping point, like or like, you know, the straw that broke the camel's back moment.
00:50:46
Speaker
i is because it's just like, okay, but when, and are we gonna go through this every time there's new series drops and and the economy hasn't been reworked yet? Yeah, probably. and They also mentioned, they mentioned that in the beginning of next quarter, there's going to be an even bigger series drop, which I think is kind of a weird thing to announce, but. It's not going to be big enough to fix the problem, certainly. Like, it's definitely going to be another,
00:51:18
Speaker
too little, too late kind of thing. like I just, yeah, i don't I don't see that going well for them. I think they need something better than a larger series drop.
00:51:31
Speaker
I think that's what they're working towards. But i like I said earlier, I really hope that's soon. Yeah, I don't know how much longer we can last. And like how how many times can we give them credit for being so communicative when like all they communicate is that like, yeah, we're aware that we're fucking up hard and ah we haven't fixed it yet. And also we can't tell you when we're going to fix it because we're not going to fix it.
00:51:58
Speaker
like that's I mean A plus for communication but like that's uh not you know that's kind of a bummer here's like what I what I see it as so probably maybe even this next series drops they like to wait to do that kind of stuff till they have whatever new system they have in place right so that's one thing two Two, they don't like to talk about their new stuff that much in advance. One, they found if they talk about it too far in advance, people get annoyed when it doesn't happen fast enough. Two, if they say something and then it changes, everyone has clipped that and we're right. So it's like they don't like to talk about it too. They just are saying, and you know from our end, it's like, well, we have no idea when that is. Another aspect of this is, right? like therere
00:52:47
Speaker
a game stew that once it once it like blew up, right they need to expand out. They need to get more variance. that They need to have all of this stuff, and it's hard to grow smaller teams in a way that's stable. All of this is is fringed by the fact that they're making a ton of money, and and a lot of that isn't like going back into the game. you know so and and I'm not not like saying there isn't a capitalist component. I'm just saying the dev team often isn't like kind of you know the kind of victims of the capitalism as well because they can only deliver on a certain timeline. They have to try and grow you know on a certain thing and they have these dreams. That's not to say that
00:53:31
Speaker
We shouldn't hold second dinner, the company accountable. I'm just saying, I don't think individual developers, you know, have this, but like, I think that's right. Yeah. But like from the outside, when people that are invested in the game, you know, obviously, I didn't think that.
00:53:49
Speaker
We shouldn't be like angry at anybody like personally or anything, but I also think that maybe sometimes, more than is useful, we have a tendency or a history of compartmentalizing all of the different parties involved in bringing us this game of Marvel Snap that we play.
00:54:08
Speaker
like you know because we do get you know communication from specific team members and like these people are saying like we get this and nugget of information from this person or that person or like but like mostly like the players have a relationship with the game and like the game whoever made which decision or whatever like we're all playing just the one game of marvel snap and it's going like it's going is uh kind of i don't know i think Oh, for sure. that Sometimes when we zoom in, like, well, I trust this developer. And so I can't say mean things about Marvel Snap because I believe this one person is doing a good job. And like, that's very nice that that one person is doing a good job. But we're all playing this one game. And it's not going great sometimes.
00:54:58
Speaker
I don't know. Totally. didn't concoct great like notes on that thought. It's just like something that's been bouncing around in my head where, yeah, I don't know. Maybe maybe we've made it too personal with too many too many parties when really it's just like the party of you, the player, and the party of the game that's being sold to you that you're paying for. Yeah, I don't know.
00:55:24
Speaker
Sure. And like that's like you, the player, you know, as a player, so that's all that matters is right. This is the game. That's all they care about. I just have always been like super interested in the games industry. the It's a mess. Oh, no, we all have a station with things. Looking at it and looking at all the mechanics at play, right. And very often it seems externally, at least. The second is pretty a lot more friendly to their employees than a lot of game companies are. But oftentimes,
00:55:58
Speaker
in many and many companies, the developers are victims of the company as much as the players or anyone else, people who are over her passionate. and for an industry. So oftentimes they're overworked and underpaid and then just laid off and lose their health insurance for job. They usually moved somewhere to join in a state like you hear about layoffs in the game suits all the time. So I just, so that's on point. But I see from like, when you're just a player and it's like, I want the game to be good. It's like, are you are you interested in this whole
00:56:29
Speaker
Like, let's study the moving parts of the game industry. You're like, no, I just want the game to be good and be able to play it without paying like 100 bucks every month or whatever. So it's like, you know, yeah, just competing perspectives. You're right. If it's a small team and they are being treated correctly, you know, paid well, not overworked, might be part of the reason why things go slower. Still,
00:56:52
Speaker
It's a year and a half later from spotlights. We've known these problems have existed for a while. ah The art pipeline thing that they addressed when spotlights were announced is still clearly a problem. I think it's gotten better, but it's clearly still a problem.
00:57:09
Speaker
ah And, you know, so maybe there are some things that need to change, like maybe maybe they don't do special art with every single spotlight. Like, that's probably what brings in a lot of the money, but also we need new cards. um You know, you need access to cards. Players need to access to... It isn't one less good art, but I agree with Ben. I mean, it seems so obvious to so many of us that, like, the art they have dictates a lot of dictating decisions in the game.
00:57:37
Speaker
Well, and even even some of the spotlights, I think is common feedback I've seen is like, this isn't spotlight worthy art. And it's like, I think it kind where thing is like it's such a subjective thing. Like, but still, you know, like variants that typically go for 700, like a Dan hip or a baby. Those shouldn't be spotlights. Yeah. Yeah. No.
00:57:57
Speaker
um Even if they're great art, I love the Dan hips, but yeah I don't think it should ever be a spotlight card. Whereas a spotlight is worth 2400 gold, I mean they took them out of the shop. but If you play board game, auction games about art, um the best ones never assign any value and to any artist, you know what I mean? Or to any style of art and the auction, the market dictates and then it start things start because people talk all the time about how how pixels used to be the most rare and prized of Marvel snap variants.
00:58:33
Speaker
right? So it's just it's just funny how it's like, you know, quality of art versus rarity. Yeah. All right, I digress. I've always wondered, I mean like inks and golds are related to that, right? Where it's like, are they the most desirable split because they're the best looking or because they're the hardest to get? They're the hardest to get. So many golds. It's definitely because they're the hardest to get. It's just like novel, you know, you don't see as many of them. And it's like, wow, someone put in the time.
00:59:06
Speaker
This is one thing that I'll say about the new splits. I know everyone's worried about how all the new splits are going to dilute it, but I think a real joy is having a very unique split and there's just fewer options, but now it's like you have to have the God crackle split, which is crackle with an anchor goal. You know what I mean? And it's like, I like this one to have a really cool, unique split, but like there's more options for that. Oh, mastery character mastery is going to be one of those big wins that we were talking about where not every player, not every player is into cosmetics, but it's going to be the kind of thing where whales can really get into it and you know get tons of, they can banana their whole collection. It's coming in two weeks. And i can have I can have my stunning Valkyrie that is better than anybody else's Valkyrie in the game, or at least more obscure. And that is within reach for me because all I care about is Valkyrie, for example.
01:00:04
Speaker
um Yeah. Anyway, i I think some of this conversation is about this game bleeding players. And I think it is bleeding players probably mostly from the vocal minority that we talked about earlier. But that has a trickle down effect, right? Like you have your content creators that are looking at other games or even leaving snap, you have your vocal bass that is like it hurts the entire community if the most invested players are leaving and eventually that will mean casual players are leaving too. Well, and also money. I think some casual players already have left. Sure. Right. And not even over the money. It's like Pokemon Packet was a casual game. You know what I mean? So it's like, a lot of people are like, I won't go there because it's too casual for me and Marble Snap is a more fun card game. But if you're more into like very casual stuff, yeah.
01:00:57
Speaker
Yeah. And there's always going to be new games that pull people away, and then people will come back to snap. But it's a lot easier to retain a player than it is to win them back. Also, as a player, it's a lot easier to be retained than it is to claw your way back to relevance if you decide to take a break.
01:01:20
Speaker
Yeah, so there's always- I'm definitely if friends take breaks, come back, and then quit again because they get it. They're into the meta. They know enough about the game. They want to play with these new cards or these new desks. They understand how screwed they are.
01:01:34
Speaker
Exactly. and then they're And then so they just leave again. And it's like, you how many times do you get that chance to get someone back into your game? you know So it comes up often in these conversations, including from second dinner themselves, they've addressed like, we need to work on new and returning players. I'm glad they're aware of so many problems. It needs to happen. Right. and Um, okay. So I'm just going to bring up Cam Best did an incredible video on the split drop on or the series drop, honestly. um If you're interested in this conversation at all in the economy in the future of snap, I would highly recommend you watch it. I will put it in the show notes. It's long, but it is so good. And I
01:02:15
Speaker
I almost entirely agree with him. One thing he said is that the game doesn't monetize series 3 cards and I actually disagree with that. I think they must monetize series 3 cards or else they would have already accelerated series 3. Like the only reason for them to keep series 3 slow is because people are paying to get through series 3.
01:02:31
Speaker
um yeah But one of his key points is like, okay, we're at this point where ah if they if they fix the or if they rework the economy like they did with Spotlights, and it goes over like Spotlights did, that is one of the worst possible things that could happen for s Snap. And I kind of agree, but also, the longer it takes for the good rework to come, that's also bad for Snap. And they're just like really at this ah this painful point right now. Yes, they really need to make a good move.
01:03:01
Speaker
They need to do something right. And that's like, if they're not ready for it, that's very hard to force. yeah like im like It needs to happen soon and it needs to be good. And it's got to be like something better than like, you know, an acknowledgement that there is a problem.
01:03:19
Speaker
Like we we keep giving them credit for acknowledging that there is a problem and it just like keeps happening for years and years and like just solve one. The rubber needs to meet the road. Yeah. yo Um, yes, I do trust this team, but trust is eroding. And I think it's entirely warranted that trust is eroding. You can earn trust back, but it's a slow process.
01:03:44
Speaker
i Well, and it's like the way they all talk about it. It's like actors, you know? They can't go around and be like, yeah, the movie I just started was bad. Let me tell you about that on my press tour. This is their livelihood. I mean, like, you can do it, but it's like very novel.
01:04:02
Speaker
Like, didn't Dakota Johnson lean into the the craftness of Madam Web? I think I think I read a story about that, but I did not even catch these these interviews where where she was apparently trash in the movie. But still, I imagine if that happens, then other studios are less inclined to work with you. Like, probably no so yes, you're right. You have to take the things that they say with a grain of salt.
01:04:27
Speaker
um But i don I still take like You know, Griffin is the community manager. A lot of what he's doing is communications and PR. Glenn, on the other hand, feels extremely candid most of the time. um And I think mostly when when he doesn't have nice things to say, he just doesn't say them instead of twisting them into something nice.
01:04:54
Speaker
i Yeah, any other thoughts? I hope. now we have serious turnss around We all love the game. All the players who are ticked about it, love the game. Like this is why we're here and talking about it still is because we don't want to see it die. Also, this is all really great set up for the secret homework for next week. This is exciting. I wasn't sure how which turns this conversation would take, but we're We're primed for good things in the second part. It's also very relevant to a listener comment we received that we'll be talking about later. OK? Oh, yeah.
01:05:35
Speaker
It's in the show notes. We are going to move on to ah rating next season's cards.
Upcoming Cards Analysis
01:05:44
Speaker
What's the name of it? Rivals? Marvel Rivals season? Marvel Rivals. Yeah. yeah ah ah We're going to try something slightly new instead of stack ranking them. ah We're just going to rate them on their own. ah Slightly inspired by Ben secretly rating last last month's cards as pass-fail. um of We're going to do it a little more granularly than that. We used a four-point scale, basically ah a thumbs system. ah
01:06:11
Speaker
But in our heads, we're calling it boo. Meh. And the boo is Princess Bride. It's like the dream sequence when it's the super old lady. And she's like, boo. Boo. It's so aggressive. Yeah. yes she She puts a lot of English on it. Yeah. It's very important, you know, the right boo that goes with it. OK. Yes, please. Yes, thank you. i My bad. Meh.
01:06:38
Speaker
like it and love it with ah two snap on this exclamation points. Okay, so first up, our season pass card Galacta 4-6. It's Gwenpool in a different package. Each turn, the first card you play at another location reveals with plus three power. Thoughts? I have a few thoughts. One thought is, are we sure that it's one card per turn?
01:07:03
Speaker
or is it at each of the other locations? Because if it's two cards per turn, this card is even more busted. oh Yeah, I read it, the first card at another location, just the wording. Yeah, I want to believe like as a fan of the English language and things making sense, I want it to be the first card at either of the other locations, just one one first card that you play at another location.
01:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, and generally Snapp's templating is pretty good, but they have disappointed me before. But you never know, do you? Yeah. yeah um I think we should rate it like it's once per turn. I think that they would have said the first card you play at each other location.
01:07:50
Speaker
huh Yeah, I don't know, it's rough. um yeah If she can get to the plus six power turn, it'd be worth it. Some of it is just she would be busted if she could do it twice per turn, right? But also, maybe that's what they're into. An easy four 18. Maybe they love that. I don't know. It's not the choice I would make. I gave her a love it.
01:08:16
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I gave her a four, which is that I'm like, maybe that's a love it. Honestly, ah the thing I put in parentheses ah is too good. I've said that after a lot of things, actually. um Yeah, but maybe maybe it's not love it because this isn't how excited I am about the card. It's it's busting. That's why it's a like it for me.
01:08:45
Speaker
Okay, so are you ranking them based on how much you like Thumbree? or based on power. It's called like it. Okay. I know, that's why I'm having concerns about our rankings so already. Okay, but to be fair, that also sometimes comes into play in stack rankings as well. so Absolutely. Yeah, um I will definitely give some extra points to a card I'm excited about. um i'm I'm ranking these on power. ah I think Galacta's too strong. She's reliably- How's the strata also?
01:09:18
Speaker
Like, how? Or Gwenpool? Poor Elsa. I mean, I think Gwenpool can still hang. Gwenpool's still bedding. This is just such just such a cruel thing to do to Elsa. That's what I think. ah this is You this on Brood? It's really big.
01:09:45
Speaker
And the fact that it reveals with plus three power like they even like yeah they it's it's like answering the question right there for you. They're like, he's a 15 pound brood. ah And then your abs man on the other lane, the next turn is what? 21.
01:10:05
Speaker
Wait, how much power does he have? Does he have four power, five power? Yeah, he's got four power. Four power, so there's seven power Broods. Yeah. Only time for some moon girl shadow king. I mean, we're talking about Galacta being, broken we were talking, she'd be broken if she could do multiple lanes, but Brood is kind of the way to do that. Yeah.
01:10:28
Speaker
It gives Galacta essentially three procs in a turn, which is just ridiculous. um That alone. also I think that her main point is to enable Galactas, right? Yeah. And like you know what seems like a really slow, like inefficient way to like get good use out of Galacta, at least compared to the brood and absorbing man thing?
01:10:51
Speaker
You know, sometimes if you're really just like cobbling your existence together from spare parts, you'll find yourself playing Sebastian Shaw as a 3-9 and you'll be kicking yourself for wasting this golden opportunity. Like, how is the most disappointing thing you can do 3-9 Sebastian Shaw? Like, what?
01:11:14
Speaker
This card's too good. Stupid. It's really, really good. It's more targeted than Gwenpool. That's part of the reason. Also, this is gonna be nuts with Gladiator, 311, like guilt-free, like, ah you'd, like...
01:11:27
Speaker
You'd better be playing folks or something. Like, it's just too... This card's stupid. I don't like it. And it's not even the only one on that level. So unseasoned. It's the season pass. The season pass cards have been strong and have been needing nerfed. But I like... So I agree. I think I'm not as excited to play her as Gwenpool. I like that she goes with Zabu. I like that I can... I love buff cards that buff cards. So I put i want to put her... Should go into any of my Gwen pool decks, but like...
01:12:00
Speaker
to like yawn on her ability. It's not like exciting as like a deck builder. It's not like, so that's why she's a like it for me, not based on power, but it's like, it's like, come on, Esty, this is what you got. Like, this is what you asked me to wake up for in the morning. Like, okay. That's how I feel about her anyway. But she'll be fun. I like, I like the thing cards. She has some fun variants.
01:12:29
Speaker
They've just been hitting it so hard in recent months though, the the buffing things and getting rewarded for buffing things and giving you even more ways to buff things. Like, Forage used to have sort of a distinct mechanical identity.
01:12:44
Speaker
Like, now there are, like, silly ways to forge things. You could make a whole deck dedicated to it. Well, yeah, but like, you couldn't even play all the cards if you wanted to make that deck. Like, you'd have to be choosy about it. I mean, like, that's sort of exciting. Like, being choosy about it is the point. You could make your own flavor of buff deck. I don't know. It's a little too paint by numbersy. I don't know.
01:13:10
Speaker
they just little spoilers Maybe it's a little spoilersy, but how it feels about this card is basically how I feel about the whole season. and Strong, but not super interesting. ah That's not every card, but that's like generally how I think the January cards are a lot more exciting, just interesting. Maybe that's just they're more my style, but I think they they look more fun. No, I just wish we could skip this one and move right into Dark Avengers. Yeah. Do you think these are cool characters? Hish. Luna Snow, a 3-5. She is the first spotlight, like, same day as Galacta. This is next week's card. ah On reveal, add an ice cube to each side of this location.
01:14:00
Speaker
an ice cube is a 1-0 at the start of each turn, get plus 1 energy, then destroy this if your side is full here. um
01:14:12
Speaker
Yeah, this is like, it doesn't even clog if you use it right, because you could fill the lane on 5, and then on 6 you still get the energy before it blows up. I think that that and ordering is interesting.
01:14:27
Speaker
I, she got another like it for me for kind of like the same reason. Cause I realized at first I was like, delicious surfer card. Um, I love extra energy. I'll play a Wiccan. I'll play an Irish, um, give me that energy. You can't like, you can't enchantress me out of, you know, like, and, uh, so I thought I would love a little snow, but here's the thing. I don't know if you remember last week when we had a discussion about how very much I hate to give an opponent an advantage.
01:14:57
Speaker
And I realized if she was in my hand, a lot of times I'd want to hold her. I'd want to hold her and not play her on three or four. But until I knew that when I played her, it was going to fill in their card and they wouldn't get the cube and just me would get the cube. And I just want to do that every time to make sure only I got the advantage. And it would just it would be annoying. It wouldn't be fun for me. So um but I understand that very much.
01:15:23
Speaker
You would be wrong to hold it, though. I know, but it would hurt me, though. It would hurt me. Yes, I totally get that. And that's why I wouldn't play this. I avoid playing cards all the time because they would exploit things in my personality that, yeah, you know, we all play the cards we're capable of playing, you know? And yeah, I totally get that. I think she's good. Remember when, like, 3-5? I think she's great.
01:15:53
Speaker
Like, yeah, it's like, remember when to be a three five, you'd have to have something like be a lady sif and be like discarding one of your own cards that you needed to build around. I am intrigued with the ice cube coming out because now you can play with like Marvel Boy and some like a Dazzler surfer kind of deal. So like I'm torn. I don't know if I'm going to get it right now, to be honest. If you fill the lane on six, it never destroys. It never blows up. Yep.
01:16:20
Speaker
That's interesting. OK. All right. There's some cute things you can do with this. Right. It feels like just straight power creep on Electro to me. Like no this downside feels a lot like an electro downside. Giving your opponent an extra energy is obviously, you know, ah that's a that's a big thing to be giving your opponent. But yeah, but they didn't know they were going to have that. You knew you were going to have that. In theory, your deck is built to ramp. Right. But I would love that if someone when people give me that with Luna Snow, I'd be like, thank you.
01:16:51
Speaker
for this gift you've given me. I mean, maybe, but it's also taking up space in a spot where you weren't expecting to have space taken. Like, you did kind of get wet widowed there, you know? Okay. It's... Also, to be fair, when someone plays... Yeah.
01:17:08
Speaker
This is a very soft wave or something like that. That's a mutual benefit. And it's like, oh, I don't have something good I can do with this wave. It's very worrying to me. I'm like, but what do they have? You know, so I get it. You know, play it on turn five. She's not that different from Old White Widow. No. Like.
01:17:33
Speaker
She's a 3-5 instead of a 2-6. Oh yeah, I never said my rating. ah This card is also 4 out of 4, too good. No, boo, worry so I'm not a fan. The two thumbs up is two thumbs down. I gave this one one. ah One up arrow is how I wrote it. i I think it's good, but I don't think it is among the top this season.
01:17:58
Speaker
I think it might be even better than Galacta. I'm so glad we didn't have to rank these, because like so many of them are right mares. Yeah, just a lot better. You're technically a plate destroy, you know? You kill might eat up that cube, get yourself some carnage juice, blow up theirs with the killmonger, get that extra energy for your gnomes and your zillas. That'll be the counter that week. It'll be fun.
01:18:24
Speaker
maybe and I feel like all the ways to counter this, are I don't know. but the I had two bullet points about this card. The first one is you know painless acceleration. why should Why should the acceleration be so painless? you know The precedent of Corvus or Electro like is ridiculous. And also, why is this card a 3-5?
01:18:47
Speaker
Oh, great. um Meanwhile, Electra's a barely brand new 3-3. And like that they were pretending like that was going to make some big difference in the patch notes or whatever. like what's Is Corvus 3-5?
01:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, yep. This is not the, like, these two things are not the same. a Granted, you're playing Corvus in a discard deck where the discard is actually a benefit. No, it's true. But like, ah yeah, Corvus is a niche card and this is like just a too good card. Yeah, I think she, maybe she deserves two up arrows because she might just be the best ramp card in the game. and Yeah, yep.
01:19:36
Speaker
Gross. That's what I think. Yeah, when her competition is like Corvus Glaive, and yeah, Electro, it's just like... Let's also talk about Hope and Wiccan. But Wiccan, you don't get out until turn... Hope and Wiccan are very fair cards. Yeah, they have they have more delay to them. They're powerful, but nothing offensive. At least in my opinion. I mean, Beauty is in the Eye of the Pillholder and all that.
01:20:06
Speaker
maybe Maybe you have different pearls that you're looking to clutch in in your game evaluation. I don't know. Is there something specific you're worried about with the ramp though? cause like I mean traditional ramp deck. My brain doesn't work like I don't yeah know what to do with ramp stuff. I don't know what stuff happens to me, and not from me.
01:20:28
Speaker
Black Panther Zola? oh you Why not? i I mean like I can pretend to be a ramp player a little bit. Let's see. What do you want to do on five? Maybe maybe you just... ah I don't know. I've been... A lot of these cards make me think of... I don't know why all these cards are making me think of Blue Marvel, but I'm just like...
01:20:53
Speaker
Maybe Blue Marvel's the card you play now. Maybe you are doing a Dazzler thing. I actually think that's pretty sick. I love me so much. You could play Blue Marvel and- And like Ultron or something. And Ultron and Gilgamesh. You could play all three of them. Yeah, you can do all kinds of stuff. Like there are two Marvel snap players, those who pick up the Philo location bounties. Hey, that's me. I do those.
01:21:22
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Can we talk about next card? Finally. I'm so much more excited about it. yeah You go ahead. Oh, what a ray of sunshine. this way Okay, this is my first Love It, which once again, um this is ah this is somewhat a feelings-based system. What, Peggy Parker is a 2-3 with on-reveal Ed Spider, you know, written in in robot or DDTC. To your hand.
01:21:53
Speaker
um When this merges, you get plus one energy next turn, and Spider is a 3-3 with On Reveal merged with one of your cards here. You can move that card next turn. And I think this has to be the card I'm most excited about I think next season, because it's like, if I were a giant baby and this was like one of those toys that was just like, here's some buttons and like some like,
01:22:19
Speaker
you know shiny stuff and she does four different things yeah stuff it's like oh she's unrevealed so like where does she go with werewolf like she merges with stuff and then you can move a car there's so many little like toys here like yeah she's she's a whole boffin extreme No. Yeah, exactly. Usually when you get like ah a a doll, like they can do one thing. It's like, oh, she pretends to eat food or something. And it's like, there's so many things to play with with Penny Parker. So and um so many activities.
01:22:59
Speaker
Yeah. like Somebody's loving it. OK. I want to see like a commercial, like Penny Park, you know, in Spider, like the toy commercial. OK. Absolutely. so Anyway, what what other, what what what amazing thoughts do you have? I think we were both nodding along that this is the most exciting card of the season, yeah we at least yeah personally. Yeah, everybody here loves this card, right? Mm-hmm. i gave her I'd give her a love it in my heart. But um for Power, I only gave her a one up arrow.
01:23:27
Speaker
um Cause I just, I don't think she's, I don't think she, I don't think she's busted. See, here's the thing. Ben's gonna tell me how to break her. Here's the thing. I gave Penny Parker a three.
01:23:43
Speaker
But it's a high three, okay? I'm a little worried that we're all all being charmed by this awesome and seemingly fair card. And like, maybe she's still a little too good, even though she seems like the normal one of the bunch, right?
01:23:58
Speaker
like I mean, it's pretty scary on Human Torch. like like we it's It's like, wow, this is cute. We've got like a a tribal thing for merge cards. That's so neat. But like it's got to be silly, right? Because like it's just merge cards. What are we so worried about? But the thing is, like with extra energy, it's really helpful to have some extra space. And the thing that we already like about merge cards is that they give you extra space
01:24:29
Speaker
oh look at this brain and like this one can even move itself providing yeah more flexible so space ahhu yeah so like i kind of think this like This card seems real good, right? like i I'm not certain because I can't ah can't and i don't play a lot of the merge cards. like My favorite merge card is Symbiote Spider-Man, the bad one. That's because Agony's not that great. This is Agony's stonks going up. No, but like Agony is going to be that great is the thing.
01:25:06
Speaker
This is, uh, yeah. thing that's sp you had were also silo And like, yeah, I just, I think you throw this in a deck with hope and you play all the merge cards and then you play, I don't know, some big cards that I don't like. And you've probably got a stew going. If I were to guess.
01:25:28
Speaker
she's She's a ah Swiss army knife, like Nikko, kind of. It's a different different take on that. um And I think there will be times when you're sitting there deciding with Spider if the one extra energy is more valuable or the move. um And obviously, Penny gets both. by No, there will definitely be times you get to feel clever when you put Spider on, not Penny. Yep.
01:25:52
Speaker
a Yeah. I mean, it's usually going to be correct to put it on Penny, but sometimes it won't be. And that will be exciting. We all like to feel smart.
01:26:03
Speaker
It's good. A very exciting card. She looks fun. I'm looking forward to this one. Yeah. Honestly, if she does live long enough to see herself become the villain, I'm into it. It's fine.
01:26:18
Speaker
if If this card is going to be like too good, it's it's okay. The one thing holding her back is her stats are 5-6, right? Kinda. I mean, you have the option. I'd rather have a card that gens me another card that has the option. yeah And it's 5-6 over two turns, which is different than 5-6 up front.
01:26:39
Speaker
um
01:26:42
Speaker
I mean, like is Kitty Pryde a good deal? because like We spend a lot of energy playing. No, by herself, she's not. right you know you have to have You have to build a rounder. You have to have an angel or a hope or something, yeah. But like, hey, Angela and Hope, they love merge cards. Merge cards get along fine with them. you know you know where You know what I like to do? I like to throw Chimichanga on Hope Summers and call it a day.
01:27:11
Speaker
That's Elsa. Let us play Elsa again. Ah, for real. Oh, would you please? It's not as urgent as the silk thing, but just get on and do the right thing. Have a conscience. All right. Doom 2099. A 4-2. After each turn, add a Doombot 2099 to a random location if you played exactly one card.
01:27:37
Speaker
But 20.99, a 4.2. Ongoing, your other Doom bots and Doom have plus one power. Did you all rank it like it's going to work with Doom proper? I did. I did too. Correct. Which is why I gave it a man. most of my thoughts about it are not the power level, but about my feelings about that choice. Because I'm not a fan of it.
01:28:03
Speaker
Does anyone like this card? Does anyone have positive things to say about Dr. Food in 2099? I think it'll but it's so boring because it's so like all in on the deuce. I don't know. I'm just not interested to deck build with it. Can you build a deck or can you play the cards they told you to play?
01:28:26
Speaker
like Right, exactly. And then it's like, you know, it's like, okay, you know, if you want to have fun with a goblin tribal deck, you got to have enough goblins that you actually have the options and you're still deck building within a goblin tribal thing. And it's like, this is just doom, you know?
01:28:42
Speaker
but um Here's the weird thing too. Compared to Penny Parker, the last one and Luna Snow, it's like just as complex, right? It's got an ability that leads to another card with another ability. It's multifaceted. And yeah, this is like the the photo negative level of interesting to me, where it's just like, it's so specific in in what it does and probably how you're going to play it. that i'm and Unlike Penny Parker, which has a million things and it feels like you can want to do with her,
01:29:13
Speaker
Doom 29 is just like, I'm Doom. And it's like, well, you know. He tells you the one other card you're allowed to combine with. OK. He's a three-card combo that can win the game, like Wong Panther Zola. there There are a few of those in the game. But it it is it has more to it has more flexibility than Wong Panther Zola. That you have to do it all in one lane.
01:29:40
Speaker
um That also has randomness introduced. i But yes, I agree. It's it's way too specific. um Not a lot of cute things you can do with it. I think that there is a variety of things you can do with it, but. Just let us be cute second dinner. Yeah. Right. I mean, OK, so some of the things, limbo, cerebral, doom, obviously. um Zola.
01:30:08
Speaker
like ah There's plenty of ways that you can play one card and make it do a lot of work here. um Onslaught is okay. Maybe you can get him on two Doom Bots. Yeah, it gets big. Really, really big. i What did we calculate it as before? like Just by itself, it's a 420, I think. Spread across three lanes, but that's still ah big.
01:30:37
Speaker
yeah Compare it to like a Galacta or a Gwenpool where you play all the power, which is a 4-12. Unless you do silly things. Not a fan. Yes. no i gave it oh yeah whats what's your right I gave it two up arrows. but Again, I'm ranking on power. If I'm ranking on like, ah ah do I think it's good for the game? ah One down arrow. Yep.
01:31:03
Speaker
i I give this a 4 rating, which is to say I find it worrisome on multiple levels. I really don't like this precedent of an ability that references a specific other card already in the game, in this case Doom Classic and his classic Doom Bots.
01:31:23
Speaker
i I understand the rule of cool and I think it's really great and awesome and a good reason to do things. ah Just kidding. ah No, I understand the rule of cool and I respect it. I still think this is a bad road to start down. It's reminiscent of the original Cull Obsidian that they wisely decided not to pull the trigger on.
01:31:44
Speaker
like referencing infinity stones that was so stupid and i was like oh good there's hard they're not going to do that and now we're back at it again uh because it's gonna make people feel bad for playing dr doom people at the lower levels you know what i mean who have dr doom i'm not playing dr doom right i need i need the second dr doom to play dr doom correctly
01:32:07
Speaker
No way. Gross. Gross. Remember when we were always like, Dr. Doom is like the perfect like six card. Yeah, Dr. Doom is a well-designed card. Doom and Magneto, yeah. Yeah. Last week, I couldn't explain where I got this. And now the Doom.
01:32:23
Speaker
I had this creeping suspicion from somewhere in my mind that I couldn't trace that Doom 2099 was the same character as Doom Classic and this was in fact a symbiote Spider-Man situation again or an Iron Patriot or whatever. and ah It turns out I was super right. Yeah, of course. I must have like remembered it from somewhere in my brain from Spider-Man the Ultimate Guide by Tom DeFalco, AKA the very tome that serves as the Bible for a little game called Spider-Lore from 2004. So yeah yeah think so maybe maybe that's changed. Maybe Doom 2099 is no longer the same as mainline Doom, but at least ah altering the that ninety nine at at least Doom thought he was Doom classic. It didn't didn't seem to be like super certain. like Maybe he was delusional, but yeah, Doom 2099 thinks he's regular Dr. Doom.
01:33:21
Speaker
so Those are my thoughts on Dr. Doom 2099. Not a fan. Do better. ah maybe Maybe his ability doesn't count doing classic and classic Doom bots. Maybe it doesn't. In which case I just think it's written poorly. Yeah, i I bet they're going for the rule of cool here. and um
01:33:44
Speaker
god bless i suppose hey if it's true that he is the exact same guy then i think it's at least a thematic win no i mean sure <unk> it's very thematically cool but uh yeah not a fan did we get rankings from yeah i think we did uh yep i gave him a four too good
01:34:08
Speaker
2-1. When you end a turn with unspent energy, 25% chance to HULK OUT! Speaking of good templating, I love this card. I love the use of theme words as keywords when they're clear <unk> great like us they want even steel or a recruit actually, a Cassandra Steele. I think those are great, the words that are not necessarily keywords, but like, you know what it does. This guy turns into Hulk. That's the only thing I like about this card.
01:34:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's why I gave him a map, because I'll probably skip him, to be honest, because I'm more excited about next season's cards and resources are limited. Because he's like a 2, so he could be a 2-12, maybe, but he's the perfect target for Red Guardian. He's, ah he's you know, if he pumps, he can get shamed later. There's so many ways to, like,
01:35:08
Speaker
you know you that's go to hit him Also, you know, I was just talking about the rule of cool and like two costs shouldn't be two 12s or whatever, but like it is cool that he can turn into like I approve of this use of the rule of cool for like a gameplay thing that shouldn't happen being allowed to happen like Yeah, it's fine because this card is god-awful. We can do as much rule of cool fudging of like norms or whatever as long as the card is unplayably bad like this. ah you know I think it's really interesting.
01:35:46
Speaker
ah You know, there are these basic ass pieces of comic book trivia that we all get beaten into us when we play these sorts of games. And like, I i read like one volume of Young Avengers once when I was like 14 and I don't remember anything about it except for this thing that I've learned 50 times from Marvel games.
01:36:06
Speaker
because they love to remind you that Hulkling is not a real Hulk. He's actually a Skrull. Did you know that? Yes, I know that. Okay. Okay. So, Hulkling is not a real Hulk, sweet but Bruce Banner is a real Emperor Hulkling, if you know what I mean.
01:36:33
Speaker
what are we so Sorry I took you on that long walk it
01:36:43
Speaker
um one oh my god a real pointofal system ah art' part so bad ah ah i I also gave him two down arrows for two reasons. One, I think he's bad, and two, I think he's bad for the game. ah he's He's a 2-1 or a 2-12, but actually you you didn't get to use that energy on something else.
01:37:10
Speaker
right yeah So maybe he's a 612 after four turns of skipping energy. So bad. So bad. Are you playing a lot of Vanilla Hook? um Do you know what the average number of turns is that this is going to take? Four.
01:37:27
Speaker
ah And it doesn't really give you snap or retreat equity because absolutely i not you it's a surprise factor. You have no information advantage. Equally surprising you, um we snap on, we or we stay on 50-50s. You don't stay on a 25-75. There's no math that justifies that. But like, that's why he got a meh for me instead of a boo is cause like, but it's fun though.
01:37:54
Speaker
Yeah. That's the only thing that can be said about it, right? No, no it's very cool and fun. play Everyone should play him except me. Are you going to think he's fun when your opponent wins because of this card on the last turn? Oh, no, that'll be very frustrating.
01:38:11
Speaker
Yeah, but it's like, okay, but it's like, think about it. I won't pick him up or play him because I want to save my cards, my keys for better cards. But if my opponent is playing, we're both watching him like, will he pop? Will he pop? Will he want to? And then he does, and then I immediately, like, gambit him or shank him, and it's a good time for all. I know. We're Bruce Banner. He loses all the time, to be honest.
01:38:38
Speaker
A central mechanic of snap is is to snap and retreat. That's like what makes this. That's one of the things that makes this game special. Three locations, I would argue, is also one of those things. Six. train night yeah There are other things that make Marvel Snap special, but snapping and retreating is a huge part of it, especially at like competitive levels. And I just think he is extremely contrary to that mechanic. Yep.
01:39:03
Speaker
yeah that's and And as frustrating as it will be so to lose to this card, and that's fine. i'm I'm fine with the amount of losing to this card that is going to happen. Because of the amount of winning to it? Yeah, there's going to be a lot of winning against this card. and Ooh, baby. If it's poker, it's like occasionally they did just get that royal flush and you're just like, good job. This was a win for you. There's nothing I can do about this.
01:39:29
Speaker
you know and
01:39:33
Speaker
Yeah. Do you play him in, in high evo? No. There's already so much competition. I don't even think he fits in. ah She not or the high evo energy skip like the two decks that are trying to skip energy. I don't think he goes in those decks. This is like what if sunspot was really bad at his job.
01:39:59
Speaker
The deck I have sunspot in though has White My Spider Bay deck. I've not yet replaced White Widow in that deck, which she clearly needs to be. It's hard to do, right? I yeah it yeah i had a cool hand-all list with White Widow that I just couldn't figure out how to make work without her. It's a bummer. She was too good, but it's sad.
01:40:21
Speaker
Well, she was too good. I'm not sad that I can't play this deck anymore. I mean, I am sad that I can't play the deck anymore, but it's for the greater good. They killed her. Not a healthy card. Not a healthy card. Yeah, I agree. I can't disagree. Okay. Rocket and Groot. I think it's Rocket, Raccoon and Groot. 3-3. You can move this once. Always a good ability on its own. After your opponent plays a card here, steal one power from it.
01:40:50
Speaker
ah which I'm reading like Angela, this could happen multiple times. And then when your opponent fills the lane, you can move it and do it again. um Yeah, also two thumbs up for a fun card and two thumbs up for this cards really strong. Yeah, why wouldn't you play this in like every server deck? No, no, for real. i I had difficulty rating this one, my My first thought was, it's too good. And I do think it is too good, but like, I decided to rate it only three out of four, just because it's not the most too good. I don't think it's a Luna Snow level. It's not, you know, maybe I, yeah. This is the same thing I gave Penny Parker, who might also be too good. There's not a lot you can do with this to make it,
01:41:43
Speaker
ah to take it to an absolutely broken level. I do think it's probably the best three costs, just like in general, for power. So in that sense, the power creep is like not cool. Yeah. It is important to remember, however, that Nocturne's ability is a really big deal. like the The Scarlet Witching thing, that's like worth some points of power, you know what I mean?
01:42:13
Speaker
Sure. Like probably volumes more than one point of power, I would say on average is at least how much that's worth. So like she's a three six. She used to be a three five that did this thing. And that was like, you know, three seven ish, I would say like if we're. Trying to flatten things into numbers when they're more complicated than that, you know, but like.
01:42:42
Speaker
I don't know. I think that Rocket and Groot is too good and is like kind of a best in slot like killer app coming to make you play this three cost, baby. like that you're we We're all going to be surfing when Rocket and Groot I don't know maybe we won't all be surfing doesn't even need to be in surfer. He's just a good card No, like this is gonna be like everywhere and i I do like that You know these these self-moving cards they do incentivize you to play some cards that I do really like like your Angela's and your hopes and You know if they change something this this will be good for Elsa um in fact if
01:43:24
Speaker
ah If Elsa got good, this would be good for Rocket and Groot against an Elsa player because Elsa plays are kind of predictable because they're filling lanes and stuff and you could move your Rocket and Groot to where you know they're going to want to be filling lanes. So I guess, yeah, if Elsa gets better, Rocket and Groot gets better no matter who's playing Elsa. If you put Rocket and Groot on Nebula.
01:43:46
Speaker
Or on Jean Grey. Yeah, there are like a lot of like lock down type little tricks you can do to incentivize your opponent to play in a certain spot or whatever. Like you you can force things. Yeah, i it's it's a really good card. I just don't know if it's I don't think it's Doctor Doom 2099 broken. I don't think it's Luna Snow broken. I don't think it's Galacta broken.
01:44:11
Speaker
But it's it's a very good card, too good. To me, this card feels like Jeff like early. Not Jeff now. um He's kind of been nerfed by the arrival of many other cards. But Jeff then, where it's just not quite as good, because honestly, just a two drop is always going to be slot into decks easier and stuff. But it's kind of along those lines where it's like, when are you ever going to be mad if you have an open slot to put this in? Because I'm always looking to put Reach in my deck, something that will let me move to like a Sanctum Sanctorum. Because that just wins you so many games, I just always try to put one card that'll do that, even if it's just a Nico or whatever. and um And this feels kind of along those lines, because it doesn't just move once. you know um But the thing is, of all the cards that can reach into, say, a Sanctum Sanctorum,
01:45:02
Speaker
This one really doesn't want to, because you're not going to steal any power from those things. You're really hoping they play in just there. You could move it on the last turn. No, no, that is what you do. I'm just saying it does defeat the dream of this card. And half of its built power stays behind. That's true. I do like that it hits multiple lanes and that you steal some power on the original lane, then you move.
01:45:28
Speaker
than you've impacted. And you're splitting the power of that. Yeah. It's just generally good. It's not like anti-synergistic with like a lot of cards you're going to be playing in, you know, just kind of dicks.
01:45:40
Speaker
um
01:45:42
Speaker
Sorry, you're saying something. I don't know. its It's between good and and busted. I think it's probably too strong. It yeah it is it will be the premier three drop. You can't beat it unless you're doing something highly synergistic, but also I'm not worried about it having some crazy synergy that's going to make it get out of control.
01:46:05
Speaker
Um, sometimes something that's just generically good is a problem on its own because every deck can run it. And it just swings a little harder than I think is healthy. Like, just a hair. And, uh, yeah, it's not really picky, but it's not like a major synergy. Like, I mean, all kinds of cards appreciate a little bit of synergy. You know, Harmony makes the, makes the chorus fuller and stuff, but like.
01:46:34
Speaker
I don't know. ah It seems. Yeah, it is definitely bigger than it should be. I agree that ah it's too good, but it's not too, too good, I think. Okay. In a month with so many busted cards, i it's hard to be angry at this one, the way I feel about some of the others. Do you think it needs to proc twice to beat Nocturne? Yeah. I think if it procs once, no.
01:47:02
Speaker
But the thing is, I think it'll be easy to get it to proc twice because you can move it. yeah but There's something that the Guardian powers have, and this has it even better because it's ongoing, in quotes. I know it's not literally ongoing. The Guardian's ability is interesting in that you don't need the extra power if your opponent doesn't play there. That's not strictly true because they can just play there later. But you know on a lane that's closing down or something like that.
01:47:30
Speaker
on the last turn of the game Gamora being seven might be fine if they don't play anything there like you don't need the extra four power to challenge their power um so he kind of has that ability like on a game where your opponent's never proccing him okay that means they're never playing there like you don't need that extra power and another thing i means like it's It's crazy that this card was made to go with like to make Guardians better and go with their synergies, and it's like people will do that for funsies for a little bit, but it's still like, that card isn't going to make... That's the most serious thing to do. yeah Also, like if you compare it to the Guardians ability classic, I do think that this sort of...
01:48:16
Speaker
This play on the traditional Guardians thing is interesting because, gosh, it sure does reward having priority like the other Guardians really don't care. yeah They just want to know that there's a card revealed or unrevealed that was played here on the other side. But like if you don't have Prio, you're not stealing that power on the last turn or whatever.
01:48:40
Speaker
bray ah Not on the turn you play them. I mean like if you're playing it on turn 6. to soak up like a predictable lane. it It only soaks up if you flip first. They're a weak last turn play. That's true. That's a downside. But that's true of most of the move cards, right? Like the move yourself cards. You don't get to move yourself if you're playing. I was comparing specifically to the other, the rest of the Guardians roster. You're right. Groot Classic is better on the last turn. In in one tiny edge case. Rocket Classic is better on the last turn. I think Rocket Classic might be a better card than this, actually.
01:49:21
Speaker
In general, or specifically, it's highest in bounds. In the deck where you play Rocket Raccoon, I think Rocket Raccoon is maybe a more premium card than Rocket and Crew. Yeah, he might be right. Definitely in that deck, but like i mean like maybe even... Yeah, I don't know. Not in general. It is not in general a better card.
Top Marvel Characters Wishlist
01:49:42
Speaker
A card that I don't like, but that I have to respect.
01:49:48
Speaker
Okay. that's That's next season's cards. ah were there oh well We all ranked slightly differently, um but Bruce is basically the only one that I think is ah is a bad card. Just a real stinker. Not the only one I think is bad for the game. Doom 2099 will be.
01:50:11
Speaker
Yeah. well Frankly, I'm not even sure Bruce Banner is all that bad for the game. I mean, like, I don't like seeing more of these ridiculous, weird, swingy things, but I mean, like, you're going to put them somewhere, put them on a real bad card, right? ah Okay. ah Side quests.
01:50:28
Speaker
ah First up, Secret Homework. The Secret Homework was a leftover homework from Joe's podcast, Snap Decisions, that we didn't get to on there. It was to bring the five characters you want to see added to Snap the most. You only get five. The extra credit was to not go beyond five.
01:50:54
Speaker
I had my child help me ah pair this list down today. um I mean, I made all the decisions. It's just, I was driving. So she was operating the notes out. um Okay. ah Do we want to do like five around and then four around or just go through my whole list or what? I think the whole list. Your whole list. Okay. Okay. I'm going to do my list backwards though.
01:51:18
Speaker
ah okay yeah yes I'm going to do my list really fast when I do mine. yeah yeah do my list was more My list is more exciting going descending actually. That's what I'm saying, go with how you feel. My number one, the card I absolutely want most in the game, absolutely easy choice, has always been number one, Singularity. She's just my favorite Marvel character. She's adorable.
01:51:43
Speaker
And I got Teen Titans cartoon Starfire vibes where she's just like innocent and quirky and just wants to be friends with everybody. um She's adorable. And I love A-Force, which is where she's from. And I wish there was more singularity to read. ah um Number two. She looks like a galaxy in the shape of a girl. Yeah. She's like a living pocket dimension. She's very cool. And I think they could do some cool things with that. I'm so jealous you said of Singularity and I forget.
01:52:13
Speaker
I'll never forget her. I don't know if she's ever going to make it in the game. Maybe if they reboot A4 sometime in the next five years. um Anyway, number two, Hallows' Eve. I just think she's cool. She has a cool ability and she looks cool. She's a Halloween themed. Yeah, she's been mentioned on the podcast before. She kind of seems cooler than like, you should hang it out, with to be honest. Yeah, just from vibes. Cooler than Chasm.
01:52:40
Speaker
Yeah, it cast him, which is what Ben Riley is up to now, and scribes spy, if you're wondering. Yeah. um Number three, a character I only recently learned about, Necroko, but she's ah she's an alternate universe, Venom pairing, where he presents as a magical girl on on his host. um And she just looks so funny and cool. And I love magical girls, plus she has a crush on her on her universes. ah Peter Parker, who is also a girl. So, you know, of course, I'm i'm into that ah queer magical girl who who doesn't want that.
01:53:16
Speaker
um Everybody wants it. I see this concept. I would like to speak on behalf of all humanity. Yes, please. But look her up. She looks cool. Venom hangs out on her hair bow. And then when she's ready to transform, she has a magical girl sequence. And she gives a big like chain chomp for Mario. She has that that head. And she has big, huge pink pigtails. Oh, that's so good. She's adorable.
01:53:40
Speaker
um And she's like really violent when she when she fights the monsters at her school and she freaks the other kids out. And then and then her I can't remember what the Peter Parker's name is because it's not Peter, it's a girl. um But she's like, wait, no, that that ah thing was awesome. She saved my life. And so then they have vibes because it's like, oh, I'm not scary. I'm saving lives um in a scary way.
01:54:07
Speaker
um Number four, Carolina Dean, also representing the rest of the Runaways. I cheated a little bit. um Alien, Nico's girlfriend for a time. I don't know that they still are together, but she's super cool. Yeah. And I just, I love the Runaways and I decided Carolina Dean, well, she would be my number two choice, but Nico's already in the game.
01:54:29
Speaker
And then my number five choice, is a little off the wall, Honey Lemon representing Big Hero 6 because I just think that would be an absolutely nutty, very cool season. ah I don't even know if they count as Marvel anymore because I don't think they've been in the comics since the Disney movie, but um and i think I think another Japan season using Big Hero 6 would be super fun.
01:54:52
Speaker
Is that the big, like, white marshmallowy? That's Baymax, yeah. That's Baymax. Honey Lemon is a girl, she has a purse that has, like, it's like a pocket dimension, I think, is she can do, like, she can mix molecules and stuff together and make potions. Yeah, you're holding. Yeah, basically. She's a science girl with a back holding. I don't think she is anything at a mystery level, so I don't know about her. Oh, tech girls? I'm always into the tech girls. Yeah. I love tech girls.
01:55:18
Speaker
Also, does Earth and Dean have a new codename, or is it still Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds? Sorry, I haven't checked in a minute. What do I do when you call for her? That's a great name for her, because, you know, Kaleidus goodbyes, and she's all, like, colorful, but you're right, it's a very long codename. So people just call her Caroline. She suppresses her powers with a bracelet.
01:55:42
Speaker
At least she did when I read Runaways. I don't know what they're up to in the past 20 years. Yeah, I don't think I've read the latest either, even though it's some of my favorite Marvel. Okay, next up is Rhee, because Ben is bringing next week's assignment. Rhee, you're top five. Okay, so I also, I think like...
01:56:05
Speaker
I don't know. I put these in order of interesting. First, it just obviously Hellcat, right? I've talked about her a couple of times. I like her as a Marvel character. I won her in the game. She's like really Jessica Jones that I like, all of that stuff. I'm not going to talk longer about her since I already have. Hellcat, Patsy Walker, she should be in. Okay.
01:56:28
Speaker
Next, I also went to the runaways because so many runaways aren't in the game, and I thought about picking Carolina or Molly. And here's where I broke extra credit. I get no extra credit because of an honorable mention. You did your truth in the yep, uh-huh, yep. No, that's not even it. My honorable mention is Doombot.
01:56:55
Speaker
who is a self-aware, he's in the Rainbow Roal run. um And it's this a Doombot who is now like self-aware. He just hangs out with the runaways and the mansions. He's so hilarious and so much fun. So... ah Honorable mention to that, but I did go with Old Lace, and I didn't pair it with Gertrude. I just said Old Lace because I'm like, and I'm like, yeah, but like dinosaurs, right? We can make these more dinosaurs in the game. There are not enough raptors and staff already. I would argue there are too many.
01:57:29
Speaker
Apparently, so Old Lace is is a dinosaur um who was bred by the evil genetic scientist parents of Gertrude. And it's it's a program to respond to her. They're psychically linked. So it'll um respond to her commands and, ah you know,
01:57:53
Speaker
dinosaurs. I could go on at length, but we've already had a long podcast, so I won't get into the whole history of Old Lace. But it comes from Arsenic and Old Lace, which is a movie, an old movie I've seen multiple times. I kind of want to watch it again, to be honest. And ah because Gertrude went by Arsenic, so it was Arsenic and then the dino was Old Lace. Okay, next to not belabor it, we have Honey Badger. So this is an X-23, a clone of X-23, from a storyline by Tom Taylor in which she runs into three clones of herself. Honey Badger, who is Gabrielle, is her name, is the youngest. She's just a little kid, X-23. And her sidekick is promised in the Badger. Do they all have names like that? What? Do they all like animals? I'm assuming Honey Badger is to be a counterpart to Wolverine.
01:58:50
Speaker
Oh, okay. Well, um, now she's going by, I guess, is her actual new moniker, but it's like when X 23 became talent, it's like, no, like everyone liked Honey Badger. Why does she need to be Scout now? Anyway, but, uh, yeah, she's very cute and like tiny and she hangs out with X 23 and she's a good foil for X 23.
01:59:12
Speaker
um gro I do things solo and she's the good little like, I'm cute and a fun time, you know, like companion to X-23 in the comics. So, um, so, you know, should be cute in the game and I'll probably play, I should probably do something fun like X-23 does, right? Yeah, probably a discard card. Okay, next up, second place, the only inhuman and the best in human. But I found interesting. So we've kind of briefly said, okay, okay, yes, also Karnek, but no, I didn't pick Karnek. I think it debated Karnek, but then it's mostly based on this run that we're in Ellis Row. And what else is like,
01:59:54
Speaker
Yeah, you know, kind of in a downswing. So I went instead, um this was created, this Inhuman was created by Charles Soule. And it was, when, we've kind of mentioned this before, when they they lost the movie rights to X-Men and they're like, well, make Inhumans a thing, because we don't have movie rights to X-Men. They did this big push in the comics to go with it. And I try, I tried so hard to get into the Inhumans. I was just like,
02:00:25
Speaker
So, there was one bright, bright shining light in the darkness that was like all of the boring inhumans. And his name is Reader, okay? Because his power comes from when he when he reads a thing, like it happens. So if he reads fire, he can create a fire. But that's exactly what happened. He actually burned down and killed both of his parents. So he got both of his eyes gouged out.
02:00:51
Speaker
So now he's just got like this visor, right? Because he's got no eyes. So he has to read in Braille. So that's how he reads now. um And he can do so many reads before he has to like sleep and recharge. like And each read gets weaker. And he like doesn't give a shit about anything but his dog, Forey, who's like an adorable little terrier who runs around with him. Does it have a tuning fork on its head?
02:01:19
Speaker
Like Lockjaw? No, it's not Lockjaw. It's just a regular dog that you wouldn't die for. I was just asking him if it had a tuning fork. I know it's not Lockjaw. I just thought maybe all the Inhumans dogs had tuning forks. No, he's just like the John Wick of Inhumans. He's like just this real cool character. He comes in and you're like, who is this? And he's interesting. And anyway, so reader. Has the dog died at some point triggering a John Wick style rampage?
02:01:46
Speaker
Not yet, which makes it better. Because like the dog should live always. So this is a John Wick waiting to happen. Well, he had a lot of spoons of his eyes. How much more traffic does Reader have to go through? I'm thinking I'm back. OK, full disclosure, never actually seen John Wick. So I just know. You're not missing that much in my opinion. Amber, they're so fun. They're fine. reader Reader sounds like a cool character. That that ability vaguely reminds me of Nico Staff of One.
02:02:15
Speaker
yeah Right? Willing things to be using words. Cool character. So much room to grow. Anyway, so that was my number two. My number one is a bit of an in joke with Lauren as well. It is Shark Girl. Yay! The only just learned was a character that exists rather recently from the Dazzler comic. Shark Girl is in fact the head of a shark.
02:02:41
Speaker
on the body of a woman. It does what it says on the tin, yeah. Yeah. She looks cool, though. Yeah. She's an X-Men. You know how they're always just making mutants left and right, just throwing them out willy-nilly, seeing what sticks. Showgirl is one of those she got created. She is currently the drummer, the drummer for Dazzler's band. Dazzler's manager was like, mutant, mutant, you know, hate is on the rise. And Shark Girl, you look too different with your shark head. People won't accept you. I need you to wear this bracelet that will make you look like a normal human. And she does. And then, like, in the middle of the song, Dazzler's like, no, be proud of who you are. Be out and proud. And she takes off her brace and is like, friend is who you are, Shark Girl. Anyway. Heck yeah. That's the story of Shark Girl.
02:03:35
Speaker
And those are my five. Good five. Some strong picks. All right. I'm going to try to go through mine pretty quickly because as I assign next week's secret homework,
02:03:52
Speaker
I'm gonna take a minute. um So let's do this real quick. At number five, for my most desired cards to see, ah this is a more interesting, actually, you know what? I'll start with number one, the boring one that they're definitely going to put in the game soon. Okay. The boring one they're gonna put in the game at some point in the foreseeable future, Toad. But it's also the one that I wanna see the most. I love Toad.
02:04:20
Speaker
Mortimer Toynbee. Real good egg, yeah. I think he's in the data mines. It had the same ability as Ghost Spider and in fact it had the same stats as original Ghost Spider. But like yeah, we'll we'll definitely see the Toad, you know, and they'll definitely do some sort of...
02:04:39
Speaker
Aranya or ghost spider type Yankaroo on another card, I think. And that'll be real fun. But like, I love Toad. I i always love Toad in all the video games, the films, the comics. I love his little Jester outfit. I love his Ultimate outfit. I love all his silly outfits and looks. Toad's great.
02:04:59
Speaker
Big fan. Also in X-Men Legends 2, one of the best characters. Also one of the only characters that allows you to get extra credits from the game's finite enemies. Toad's got a move that makes him drop extra money, which is very rare in those Activision, ah that series of games your X-Men Legends is and your Marvel Ultimate Alliances. So I have extra positive associations with Toad. Maybe his ability will give you extra credits and snap.
02:05:29
Speaker
I doubt it. Number two, The Gibbon. This is a character that I encountered in those old ass amazing Spider-Mans. The Gibbon is really hapless, at least in those appearances. I think they've done things in recent years with the Gibbon that probably would turn my hair white like Silver Sable or Prometheus from DC Comics. um I'd be so shocked at what whatever they've done with the Gibbon, but like it really struck me that Spider-Man pities this fool, even though he's like doing some like crimes and stuff.
02:06:08
Speaker
he like it You feel bad for the gibbon cuz he's such a loser um And like spider-man feels bad for him too but like the gibbon is like easily manipulated by like smarter villains and stuff and you know, he's just like Yeah, you just feel bad for the gibbon. I I think okay um He's endearing to you Yeah a little bit. Also. He's ridiculous. His name's the gibbon for Christ's sake yeah Let's let's see ah
02:06:40
Speaker
what What does the the Marvel Wiki say about him? ah Martin Blank has a gibbon-like His powers are, you know, general leaping and climbing. To be a gibbon? Yeah. yeah yeah yeah if Just look up, what he's he's like a monkey man. you know yeah he that's yeah i see like He's got nothing going for him, basically. But you want him as your number two character in Snap. Yeah, he's cool. Okay, great. um Number three, Deathbird.
02:07:17
Speaker
ah the sister of Lilandra, Charles Xavier's bird alien GF. um But she's way cooler than Lilandra. She's angry that, you know,
02:07:33
Speaker
She never gets to be in charge of the Shi'ar empire or whatever. I mean, I'm sure she has been like 50 different times at brief moments and different stories, because, you know, there've been a lot of comic books. So I'm sure she gets her way sometimes. But like, she's always like, yeah. you And why do we why are we hanging out with? Why is my sister hanging out with this bald piece of shit? um I enjoyed her in X-Men 97. Yeah, she was great in X-Men 97, just dropping the sassiest barbs, just like,
02:08:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Deathbird's great. Great look, great style. Also, she always shows up in the video games and and the card games and the miniatures games before Lilandra does because nice bird ladies finish last and they never get to be in the games because they're not as interesting as their bad girl sisters. um As the classics Angus. Deathbird is the original bad sisters on Apple TV+. plus um And then number four, we got Spiral. um You know, I'm sure there's a lot of lore to know about Spiral, but mostly she's got a great look. um We all know Spiral, right? Mojo's, uh, hench person. He's at the Google. The six arms. numbers i learned I learned about her because she's one of Snapdex's most wanted characters.
02:08:58
Speaker
Yeah, she's great. like and And it's a hell of a look. like It's a really great look. like maha a Brilliant character design. Also, she just seems to be like more competent than Mojo. it's like she Spiral's never the one dropping the ball, and like it seems like other people are usually dropping the ball, and Spiral's like, well,
02:09:23
Speaker
You know, so it's spiral has appeared in many X-Men comics, but I still don't know very much about her personality despite having met her several times because I'm not sure she really has all that much personality. Maybe she does. I'm sure she's had like her own limited theory and you know, but she's got enough arms that she doesn't need a personality. And then at number five, closing out the list, Eunice the Untouchable, because He's great. ah He's in X-Men number eight. That's his first appearance. ah yeah that's That's mostly where I know him from. I think they've used Eunice several times throughout the years, but mostly I know him from the very, very early X-Men's. He projects a force field around himself. He's he's a mutant.
02:10:11
Speaker
ah He's kind of a, he's kind of a shithead. I don't think he's like, he's not like brotherhood. Like, I think he hung out with the blob once in one of those early X-Men's, but he's not himself a member of the, the brotherhood of evil mutants. Bring back the evil, put it back in the name folks. They used to be the brotherhood of evil mutants until somebody decided that no one would actually call themselves that. But, um,
02:10:37
Speaker
He's got like high-waisted speedos. Yeah, no, he's he's also got a bit of a look going on. I don't know. They have ribs drawn on them. Yeah. I guess maybe he has been in the in the brotherhood. I don't know. Everyone's been in the brotherhood sometimes, but you know. and I wouldn't describe him as a core member of the group, but yeah. he's is's He's a lot of fun, and he boasts a lot, and you can't touch him. I mean, it's right there in his name. He's Eunice the Untouchable, and you can't touch him, and I'm sure there's a great way to give him an interesting ability.
02:11:13
Speaker
Unsurprisingly, we all brought quite a few obscure characters. I tried to like hit some mainstream ones I thought about. Oh, I can't tell you what I thought about putting on the list. That's that's for big. Well, I mean, if you want to break the extra credit and be on the bottom of the curve. All right. I surrender all my extra credit. And I do tell I do admit that I thought about putting other Brotherhood members like Destiny or Pyro on the list. Oh, Destiny, yes, please. Destiny's in my 12. But I kind of thought somebody else might bring Destiny. So I was like, well, I'll just leave that to Rhea or Lauren or something. but i had it I had a top 12 that I pared down. Destiny was in it. And ah each of you had one person. um I won't say, because i I don't want to lose too much extra credit. But each of you had one person on your list that was on my extended list. But hey, we have a unique top 15. Yeah. That's cool.
02:12:12
Speaker
Did
Cross-Promo Assignments and Community Interaction
02:12:13
Speaker
it. All right. Thanks for doing my homework. That was fun. Yeah. that Next week's assignment. What are we doing? All right. Now I tried to save myself a little bit of time. I know, I know this has already been a long episode, but, um, so I realized that we've said a lot of critical things today, but I want any and all corporate entities,
02:12:46
Speaker
companies, brands, everyone to know that we're real friendly to capitalism and commerce and promotion and synergy and vertical integration. And we love making money, hand over fists.
02:13:05
Speaker
um I know we've said a lot of mean things about the role that maybe Greed has played in um hobbling this game that we love, but I want everyone who may or may not be listening to know that all three of the hosts of Snap on this are at heart very open to being ah corporate friendly. ah we're we're not We're not so much, it's not that we're eager to sell out, but I just want everyone to know that we're willing. We think about going out. So now that I've gotten that out of the way, a little more content. This information comes from Wikipedia.
02:13:53
Speaker
Chex Quest is a non-violent first-person shooter video game created in 1996 by Digital Cafe, originally intended as a Chex cereal promotion aimed at children aged 6 to 9 and up. It is a total conversion of the more explicitly violent video game Doom, specifically the Ultimate Doom version of the game.
02:14:12
Speaker
ChexQuest won both the Golden Effie Award for Advertising Effectiveness in 1996 and the Golden Reggie Award for Promotional Achievement in 1998, and it is known today for having been the first video game ever to be included in cereal boxes as a prize. The game's cult following has been described by the press as being composed of unusually devoted fans of an advertising vehicle from a bygone age.
02:14:36
Speaker
in 2019, General Mills re-released Chex Quest in its previously unofficial 2008 sequel and presented a mini-documentary on YouTube. This next excerpt comes from fandom dot.com's Halo Wiki. Mountain Dew Game Fuel is a limited edition Mountain Dew soft drink flavor produced by Pepsi-Cola Incorporated that has been used to promote the releases of multiple video games including Halo 3 in 2007 and Halo 4 in 2012.
02:15:03
Speaker
Originally, the citrus cherry soda was released on August 13, 2007, for a 12-week limited edition run to promote the release of Halo 3, with packaging featuring John 117. I guess that's Master Chief, the Halo man. Yes. Also known as Mysterio 3099.
02:15:23
Speaker
because he looks like him as, okay. yeah if If you know the variant, you know. Anyway, and the Halo 3 logo. This flavor returned in 2009 to promote World of Warcraft and in 2011 to promote Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. On October 1st, 2012, it was officially announced that Game Fuel would be returning once again on October 15th to promote Halo 4 as part of the DUXP promotion, which allows fans to go online and enter codes found on specially marked Mountain Dew and Doritos packaging. These codes unlock extra in-game experience for their career in Halo 4 when it was released on November 6, 2012. This promotion was active in the United States and Canada, although Canada did not see a game fuel release for it.
02:16:02
Speaker
um So you could actually get like some experience points or whatever in your game. um Also, I could tell you about the flavor of Game Fuel. i'm not goingnna I'm not going to bore you with the details of the citrus cherry flavor or the bright red-orange color or you know what other Mountain Dew flavors it tastes kind of like.
02:16:23
Speaker
But I will mention that this variant of the drink was designed specifically to target gamers with a higher caffeine content to provide them with the provide them with the boost they need to play for several hours. Okay, that's that's a quote from the marketing materials, I believe. Each bottle of game fuel contained 120 milligrams of caffeine and each 20 fluid ounces of Irving.
02:16:43
Speaker
um and 48 milligrams many it is fluid out serving ah that's more caffeine than fast like rich i use a mountain do yeah and that's why it happyy that's why it was marketed as fuel for gamers all right i wanted though and to eat my not to tell you sorry worked on me This information that I'm about to drop comes from a press release issued by Hot Pockets on March 1st, 2023. This is from prnewswire dot.com. Solon, Ohio, March 1st, 2023. In celebration of Magic the Gathering's 30th anniversary, Hot Pockets is teaming up with the legendary card game to fill fans' virtual
02:17:32
Speaker
Hot Pockets with custom in-game content. Fans of Hot Pockets and Magic the Gathering alike are encouraged to snap pictures of their receipts and submit them to HotPockets.com slash MTG for special codes which can be redeemed for exclusive content on Magic the Gathering Arena, the digital version of the game. Stackable in-game content. That's stackable in-game content.
02:17:58
Speaker
includes a themed deck featuring Vivienne on the hunt, a new Vivienne planeswalker avatar, new Vivienne planeswalker card sleeves, and 2,000 experience bonus for your mastery pass, as well as the IRL reward of the delicious flavor of Hot Pockets, US 16 plus term supply. For more information and a full look at the available custom content, check out HotPockets.com slash MTG.
02:18:23
Speaker
In honor of Magic the Gathering's 30th anniversary, your Hot Pockets is offering several different colors of its packaging. Keep an eye out for the white, blue, red, and green packaging when shopping, as each limited edition Hot Pockets box features an iconic mana color and planeswalker from the game. But not black?
02:18:39
Speaker
Very good, very good critical eye there, Lauren. um Critical ear, rather. Here's a breakdown of every available pairing. White manna slash Gideon. Hot Pockets Italian style meatballs and mozzarella. Blue manna slash Jace is Hot Pockets Philly Steak and Cheese. Red manna slash Chandra is Hot Pockets premium pepperoni pizza flavor. not it's not It's not a Hot Pockets pizza. It's the pepperoni pizza flavor of Hot Pockets. You all know what's up.
02:19:08
Speaker
Alright, and then, last but not least, we've got Green Mana slash Vivienne, Hot Pockets Hickory, Ham and Cheddar. So, Savic Magic the Gathering fans will notice one color is missing, but have no fear. Unless you've been playing since 10th edition, then you might have fear lying around.
02:19:24
Speaker
ah
02:19:26
Speaker
cannot be blocked by artifact or or except except by artifact or black creatures, ah you know, the razor-toothed rad stability, the text, okay, in the true fans know. Anyway, Black Man and Hot Pockets are coming soon to complete the set. Fans are encouraged to stay vigilant for when this mysterious new box veiled in secrecy drops in May exclusively at participating Walmart locations across the country. So that's what that's where the black one is. It's only at Walmart.
02:19:51
Speaker
Hot Pockets and gaming have gone hand in hand for generations, which is why it was a no-brainer to reward fans of both Magic the Gathering and Hot Pockets, said Brian Waddell, Brand Marketing Manager for Hot Pockets. We hope fans new and old enjoy the stackable in-game content that comes with this celebration, with more to come from us in May.
02:20:10
Speaker
The custom Hot Pockets and Magic the Gathering packaging and the opportunity for exclusive in-game content will run until June 30th, 2023, with more 30th anniversary celebrations between the two brands coming throughout the year. Gaming in Hot Pockets is an iconic pairing, said Elaine Chase, VP of Marketing and Commercial for Magic the Gathering. We're thrilled to celebrate Magic the Gathering's 30th anniversary together with custom in-game content available with every box of limited edition Hot Pockets.
02:20:39
Speaker
so Now that you've heard about the rich history of products such as these, I would like my co-hosts to propose a sweet cross-promotional collab tie-in with a food or beverage brand, perhaps featuring an exclusive variant of a Series 3 card. I think that would be a smart idea because you know You get a variant of a Series 3 card. that's like That's a reason to seek out this product if you're just starting playing the game. It's like, wow, that's a new thing for me. I'll get the variant and you know I'll open the card eventually later, whatever. But like I can play it now. that's That's real cool. So bonus points if your idea is more thematically appropriate than the Magic the Gathering Hot Pockets. Because what kind of one is that?
02:21:28
Speaker
If you could make it make a little more sense I am going to prohibit you from using any pizza brands because this was a little bit ah one of the inspirations was the Deadpool and Wolverine DiGiorno's pizzas that I told you guys about this must have been months ago but I remember that you were also you ah You all expressed some interest in like what was going on with that, because I did have a chimichanga flavored pizza that did have a cutout mask of Deadpool's face that I could have worn around afterwards. um Why didn't you?
02:22:01
Speaker
You know, I did regret it after I threw away the box. I was like, it would have been fucking podcast or something. But anywho, anywho, we're not doing pizza because I specifically have some ideas about pizza and which Marvel character eats pizza where. And it's Magneto. Magneto eats nothing but frozen pizza while he surveys the Earth from the cold distance of space on an asteroid M.
02:22:27
Speaker
um I think Magneto eats a ton of pizza and I would love to tell you all about it at a later date, but no pizza, any other food or beverage brand. I also know which brand of pizza he eats. It's not DiGiorno. I'll tell you another time, but no pizza.
02:22:45
Speaker
and no Magneto, but I recommend picking a Series 3 card, but if you have a different idea about what would be appropriate, ah you know maybe a different Series of card or whatever, um you know make it a recognized...
02:23:03
Speaker
I don't know. Follow the rule of cool for this one. So if there's if there's a cool idea you have that, you know, bends time and space or whatever, you know, just do the thing. Like if if you want to make like Avengers brand.
02:23:17
Speaker
Chorma, even though there's not like, I don't know, you can you can get all kinds of weird things in the freezer aisle. It doesn't have to be in the freezer aisle. It could be a cereal tie-in if you got a really really funny one or so or a smart one, a cool one. I don't know, just like follow follow your heart. um that's That's what I say. Thank you for listening to my very lengthy, yes, it is very much squad.
02:23:48
Speaker
that's That's of course fun i it's a podcast with within a podcast. ah But we're not here to promote other podcasts or podcasts within podcasts. But yes, there may have been some much squad influence. Also, perhaps another little boy's influence. um But yeah, but that's my secret homework. I'm sorry. It took so dang long. I i really tried to speak quickly. I enjoyed the history.
02:24:12
Speaker
That's content's wonderful and fun. And the press releases are always wild. OK. We have one more thing in the bag. It is a listener comment that we are going to ah read off maybe half of it and talk about. It's from Dicker Problem Bear. What platform? Is this Spotify?
02:24:35
Speaker
This is YouTube. It's YouTube. YouTube. OK. Starts off still here every week and loving every second of it. Your podcast rocks. Thanks. Thanks. yeah You rock.
02:24:49
Speaker
ah Should I just read the whole thing? Maybe I'll skip halfway. It's basically about card acquisition and the pool three drop-off. um For me personally, the season pass and gold pass is the max amount of money I'm willing to spend on this game. That's 15 a month. It's more like a nice little distraction I'm hooked on than a full-blown hobby for me. I was wondering how you dealt with the sharp drop-off in card acquisition once you reached pool three complete. I have a decent amount of series four and five cards, so spotlights that have two new cards have become very rare for me. Hey, same.
02:25:20
Speaker
And I'm sticking to my no real money card purchases conviction. How is it for you as content creators? Do you regularly spend money on the game? And if yes, do you track your overall spend on the game? Mobile game design always feels a little predatory on that front to me, and I haven't heard any content creators actually talk about how much money they have to put in to just keep up with the new card releases. I know it's a difficult topic, but I would really appreciate to hear your thoughts about it.
02:25:48
Speaker
um first off i'll say telling us content creators yeah It's technically true. um I'll point you to ... Maybe I'll put another creator's YouTube video in the comments, just like K.M. Best. ah Jeff Hoogland has talked about this. Hoogland has talked about this. ah The price of Snap and how much money he spends personally as a content creator, but he's a whale on a level far above ... I don't know that any of us are whales, but he's he's far above us, and a far bigger content creator. but He also has done the math to kind of talk about like what's the price of Snap.
02:26:22
Speaker
um Obviously I've done a lot of that too, ah writing at Marvel Snap Zone. i If you like min-max the game, you should end up around, ah with Season Pass and Gold Pass, you should end up around 90% of series four and five, which is right around where I am right now. And I mostly only buy the Season Pass and Gold Pass, and sometimes an odd bundle here and there if it has a cute variant. Not super often, but like I just picked up the ah the the new stature that is really cute.
02:26:52
Speaker
um I would say less than once a month I do that. what's Instead of me just hogging this whole thing, what's what is what's your spend like? Let's be transparent. Let's um be very transparent. Rea, would you like to go first? Sure. I give the season pass.
02:27:10
Speaker
Um, and the gold pins. And I get bundles even more rarely than Lauren does. Um, I think, and I'm very picky. They have to be very kind of low cost, uh, for me to get them. I have a, like, I really don't want to spend above $10 for a bundle and I only do that rarely. Um, and yeah, and here's the thing. I actually, when I was looking at this comment, I thought,
02:27:37
Speaker
um I thought about how there was a point, you know, because I was optimistic when spotlights came out, and there's a point afterwards, like, no, I think this will do well, and I'm excited about for art, and I think I can get very, I think I can get the collection complete. That's my goal, and I kind of thought I would be by now, to be honest, because I got real close to some real, I used to obsessively plan my spotlights instead.
02:28:03
Speaker
But here's the thing, I am actually now further away as time has gotten away from collection. There are now more and more cards I don't have where I used to be much closer to collection complete and that's because cards aren't dropping. I am not getting many cards. like When I open for a card, I'm not often getting two cards that week. I'm never getting three pretty much. you know so it's just like Um, and it, you know, if cards dropped down to series three or something, you know, and now by the time they do, I definitely already have them because they've been kicking around so long. So overall, the system has been getting worse for me. I'm farther and farther from collection complete complete as, as time goes on. And no, I don't spend more money to stay caught up. We're just, uh, you know, we just do, we just pick and choose. What about you Ben?
02:28:57
Speaker
All right, well, I figured it out. It's pretty easy, actually, to figure out how much money I've spent on Marble Snap, because I started playing on, I think, the 2nd of November in 2022. And that was right at the end of the October season. And I did actually end up getting the October season pass, the Miles Morales one. um So Now, with this one this month, ah this November season, that means I've been playing for 25 seasons, and I've purchased every season pass since I started. So that's $250 right there. Also, on the first day that I started playing Marvel Snap, or at least like within the first 48 hours, I got the $3 Captain America welcome bundle that was like a super good deal for like what you got for it.
02:29:52
Speaker
um It had a Captain America variant and a bunch of gold, and it costs $3. I don't see a lot of $3 bundles anymore, or any. A bit of a bummer. But yeah, this one seemed like a great deal, and I really liked the game, and it seemed like a reasonable... like I could tell I was gonna play it for a while, so it seemed like a reasonable expenditure. I think I actually got that bundle before I committed to the Season Pass.
02:30:20
Speaker
I think I was just like, well, let's let's see what this this does for me. Me too. I think that was the first thing I bought. So I did that. I held out in that welcome bundle for like months. It never goes away. And then other than that.
02:30:40
Speaker
I bought a $5 thing. Actually, I didn't buy a $5 thing of gold. I won a $5 gold infusion from ah winning a tournament. And so I think i think Gunny T logged into my Marvel Snap thing on the Newverse store and bought me some gold. It was actually double gold because this was during double gold time. So I actually got 600 gold that i that someone paid $5 for.
02:31:09
Speaker
Um, so I didn't spend that money myself, but I'll still count it towards the thing. Also, I won $10 in a different Marvel snap tournament that I guess I could consider, you know, removing from this total spent, but, um, yeah, so I got a $5 thing of gold and I got a $20 thing of gold in January of this year after.
02:31:35
Speaker
i had I had come right up to being collection complete. I could have bought Echo. I had the tokens to buy Echo, but I was like, I'm just going to wait for it to series drop. And so it's like not worth it to just overextend on resources just to say that I was complete when like I know I could be complete in this moment. So like yeah, I just decided not to.
02:31:56
Speaker
So I basically got complete there for a moment until they added the extra card a month. And I was like out of resources. I'd had a very bad run of spotlight luck at this time. So I i asked my friend Lauren, I was like, what kind of money do I need to throw at the game to like get back on track? And Lauren was like, I don't know, Ben. And and you know like that was about what you said, basically. like You told me a bunch of stuff I already knew that I figured you knew that I already knew about like what the smart things to do with money were. Oh, it sounds so mean. No, no, no. But I can tell you knew that I probably knew this stuff. And like, so what I decided to do then in January of this year, this was my biggest.
02:32:36
Speaker
slash kind of only time I spent outside of season passes or that $3 Captain America bundle or the $5 of gold that I won from that tournament. I made a $20 gold purchase and this was still during double gold. So I got almost 3000 gold for $20 layers, which I don't know how great a deal that, I mean, they're all bad deals compared to the season pass. That's that's the moral of my story is that the season pass is the only thing you should buy.
02:33:04
Speaker
um So I kind of regret spending those $20 on that random chunk of gold. I probably, if I'd just like done smarter things, I could have, I've min maxed pretty hard, but if I'd min maxed harder, I think I, I don't know, things could have been going better for me. But yeah, I spent $20 on gold and I bought a $10 bundle with Dazzler.
02:33:26
Speaker
that was out in January. And that's it. There was $25 of paid gold, one $10 bundle, one $3 bundle, and 25 season passes, bringing my total spend to $288.
02:33:44
Speaker
doll hairs That's what I've spent on Marvel Snap. If you don't count the $10 that I won, from a tournament or the $5, yeah. If you don't count the the ways that I could defray these costs, yeah. I've spent less than $300 since global release on mobile.
02:34:08
Speaker
And I have the most complete collection of any of us. so Yeah, I think it's going to be an interesting comparison because I was a proper whale for my first few months playing this game. I did the math once when both asked me and I spent like $3,000 in my first few ah first, I don't know, six months of playing something like that. Yeah, it kind of blew my mind when I saw that. yeah You could finance 10 Ben Rollers with like 10 Ben Roller Snap careers with that money.
02:34:37
Speaker
Part of it was that I loved the game, and it kind of caught me, and i i I have fallen for this once before with a different mobile game, and so like and I had been very good about it for a while, but Snap just got its hooks in the right way. um I caught it after that, and I wanted to get through Series 3. That's basically what i wied what I wailed my way through, was get was completing Series 3. And that that's what I got for it. I finished Series 3 earlier than than a player who started when I did, which was also December 2022.
02:35:05
Speaker
um
02:35:08
Speaker
i I think that was about my first six months. um I hit collection complete shortly after that, like right before the first spotlight started is when I hit i collection complete and I held it for about six months. I had done the math at the time that season pass and min maxing was all you needed to get every card. um and needed It's super wise. right I made so many mistakes up like
02:35:35
Speaker
Yeah, even even by only doing things mostly smart, I really did like get right up there to see or to collection complete like right at the end of 2023. Yeah, so I held it for about six months. It enough. I know like so many people were like doubting you, Lauren, being like, there's no way this season passes enough. You've always been the proof for my math. It was more than enough. I was like i was throwing away.
02:36:00
Speaker
i rolled extra spotlights just to get a silk spotlight variant I wanted because it looked like I could afford to Like y'all know how penny-pension and frugal I am and it seemed like I had wiggle room to stop and smell the roses That's how good the season pass was when only stras would happen So many new cards ah four or five new cards and yes, yeah were Yeah, there were some things that there are some things that changed I smelled them coming around October I was like hmm Yeah, direct direct to series four cards. Those aren't gonna keep like this is too generous. There's so those are going away So October is the first time I skipped a card. It was black night and then I skipped gladiator the next month and remember both of them with tokens after they got but
02:36:49
Speaker
but I remember the first time I was on Snap judgments, you were also there, Lauren, and I called the No More Series 4 cards thing, and Glazer was like, we don't know that. I'm like, we know that. Come on. You know. And then it was just a couple months later that we had the first date of mine. It was originally Firestar coming in December, and it was going to be the first month that had the extra card, I think.
02:37:18
Speaker
Yep, that's correct. And it ended up being January instead, because Firestar didn't come out. But still, like there were changes coming in around that time I wrote an article. They announced their intention. Yeah. Yeah. And I wrote an article about things that were changing in Snap. the Extra card every month really adds up. No more series four cards really adds up. Reduced series drops really adds up. All these things have made the system much worse. That's it. Let's focus on the core question of how do you deal with the sharp drop off in card acquisition.
Card Acquisition Strategies and Spending Habits
02:37:45
Speaker
i Honestly, I don't really remember it that much, but I can tell you, if I skip the new release card two weeks in a row, I really feel it. One week I can handle, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna play, I'm gonna goof off with something that I've got, or one of my favorite decks, or I'm gonna give myself a little challenge. Two weeks in a row, I really feel like, oh, I...
02:38:11
Speaker
I'm lacking a new toy to play with and it hurts. But I've done it a couple of times. Is that because of the power level of the new cards or really just like that you don't have the cards? I just like having toys to play with. And you don't think you have enough? Yeah, let's get to where I'm at.
02:38:29
Speaker
yeah It's hard though when you're in series three and you're just getting like two new cards a week and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, like, you know, so I get the job off, but I also have so many toy, like there's so many cards that I still haven't, you know, um, really explored.
02:38:49
Speaker
I think some of it's a FOMO thing or some of it's like, if they let me demo cards, which this is why I don't think they ever will, if they let me demo cards, I'd be satisfied with like 10 games with some cards. I just wanna do something silly with them or I just wanna try them out and then I'll be good.
02:39:03
Speaker
um But yeah, i think I think how do you deal with the sharp drop-off is kind of just like, how do you deal with a boring week in Snap? Or like, you know, when when Snap is just checking the boxes, or when you're frustrated with leagues, or... um I think you just find something fun to do, some challenge some challenge to pursue, whether that's climbing in ranked mode, or trying to build up tickets so you can chase an infinity ticket, or... Building a deck around a variant you love? Deck building is extremely rewarding.
02:39:34
Speaker
I kind of miss having an incomplete collection just because it's fun to build decks with the limitation. There's another snapper in my household and I love building decks on that person's account.
02:39:51
Speaker
Easy to say when you're coming from from that, because here's where it feels the most bad to me. When I want to play with certain ducks, but it's like, that duck just doesn't really feel good without Ajax. You know what I mean? That's true. Man, so it was such a bother in series three. like i I started playing surfer before I had like brood and stuff.
02:40:12
Speaker
Yeah. Sorry. Continue, but yeah. Yeah, no, I'm just saying how I deal with that is I try to keep enough tokens on hand to like when a card like that happens to me and I really want it, I have the tokens to get it. So I try to be, I mean, I do end up spending a lot, but I'm almost at like, I'm almost at 6,000 again, even though I got Fenris Wolf, which is where I try to always be. Almost always have one, so when I like this. Same. And maybe I'll spend the money, Jackson.
02:40:43
Speaker
I usually ah hover closer to 12,000, but my like minimum is I want 6,000 in case there's a card that gets buffed out of the blue or a card that I totally read wrong. That's like an Ajax is the one I've got Ajax pinned because I'm like, I thought he was going to be a dumb stat steak, but he really is kind of like it's a it's a deck type that I like. And he's not in spotlights for the foreseeable future, right?
02:41:06
Speaker
Right. um So yes, I think that that you you have to skip spotlights in order to afford the cards you want. You have to. I always just figure out which kind of cards you don't like, and then skip those cards. like and My rule has been to skip discard cards, and I even kind of like discard, but it's just like, it's easier for me. There's fewer decks that I miss out on because I'm just like, oh, I i just can't play discard. I don't have Proxima, I don't have Corvus, I don't have Scorn.
02:41:34
Speaker
um But, I don't know, like I feel like getting a clump of similar cards missing i keeps more decks open to me. I don't know if that's true. No, no, but exactly. Makes for some easy decisions. You really need silver s sable and you're just playing lesser cards. That's where it feels bad, where you really want that for your decks.
02:41:58
Speaker
Yeah, that kind of planning, and just it's like the generic advice, probably anyone listening already knows it. It's like, don't open. I plan that I will have to spend four your keys to get any card I want. That's how I plan my spotlights. I'm sure our listeners have heard this, but don't open if you don't have four keys.
02:42:16
Speaker
again um Also, bring it bring it all around. Go ahead. I think some element of the question was about how do we do this as content creators? I don't know to what extent that informs any of y'all's spending habits. I know Lauren's in the creator program, but Rhi and I are to my knowledge and not in the creator program. And that is just fine with me. I think if they want to buy my loyalty and my voice, they can give me a salaried position like, ah you know, grown up or whatever.
02:42:51
Speaker
Um, but, uh, no, not, not that I think there's anything wrong with accepting their allowance and you know like it's, it's free stuff. I love free stuff. I very much get it. It's just, uh, it's not, not for me.
02:43:06
Speaker
That's a good point to be transparent. I'm in the creator program. I get 2,000 gold a month for free, on top of the season pass and gold pass that I pay for. um Not that 2,000 gold goes a ah long way. Honestly, I probably spend my gold more recklessly because of that free gold. Oh, then you should. Like, then it's worth it for sure. Yeah, because I'm like, oh, I'll get 2,000 more next month to save for a bundle. Yeah. um Yeah, it probably makes me a worse a spender.
02:43:35
Speaker
um But yeah, to bring it all around, yeah I wailed for six months, and it didn't like I don't have anything to show for it. Like Ben was saying, he has the most full collection here, and he's paid the least. So a lot of it has to do with how much you're min-maxing. And also, i I know it sounds like I have like the best spotlight luck in the world, just because like I do some of these random fourth ones. But towards the end of 2023, I had a month's long streak of exclusively four four keys to get the desired card every time.
02:44:06
Speaker
It was like it was like ridiculous. It's got to be so disheartening. as As my good luck has been, it was it was just the inverse of that. so like it it things Things were going pretty well just by doing smart things, even with very bad luck. So if you're having bad luck, try to compensate by only making good choices. Yeah.
02:44:31
Speaker
I don't think we're very typical content creators, right? None of us feel the need to have every single card. And then also, we're a team of three. We're not making money from our content creators. There's that, too. Not yet. Not unless someone takes our invitation to at least ask us to sell out. Come on.
02:44:52
Speaker
But also, we're a team of three, so there are very few cards that none of us have. Right? Like, even Emperor Hulkling, Rhee gets pulled into. um Yeah, except for the the the big, dumb guys. It's for Red Hulk and Gorn. Yeah, Red Hulk and Gorn. Right. got him now yeah yeah I think Gorn is the only one through the run of our podcast that all three of us have skipped. Yeah.
02:45:20
Speaker
so Sounds better. And I don't think he's very hard to analyze. I think he watched some gameplay beyond the receiving end of Gores. Yeah, I can confirm from a distance. Gores a real card. Definitely not. It seems sufficient to get an idea of how big he is. That's all that really matters for Gores. How big does he get? Yeah.
02:45:44
Speaker
I don't know how directly we answered your question, but I hope that has some fun and interesting discussion slash insight. ah If you like what you heard, do all the things. Follow us on ah Twitter, Blue Sky. Subscribe on YouTube, et cetera. Leave reviews, leave comments. We have set up a Discord, sort of. It's the stat judgments lead league Discord. ah And if you get in there and select a role, you can you can get access to our two channels. We have one that's just a general discussion and one that's for feedback and also submitting your own secret homework if you want to play along. ah Some of you have been doing that and it's always a delight to see. ah You can email us suggestions as well. Snap on this pod at gmail dot.com.
02:46:29
Speaker
I'll say I put a lot of my Snap community time into Discord us as Twitter has gotten grimmer and grimmer. And I am going to try to be good about being active in our little podcast corner of Discord. I don't want to make promises for my co-hosts. We are part of the Snap judgments network.
02:46:49
Speaker
i where you can listen to other shows like How Can She Snap, Snap Decisions, and Snap Judgments, our grand pod the ah where all of our ah channels are hosted. um They also got ah How Can She Snap and Snap Decisions, the other podcasts, also got new channels created on that Discord. So if you want to go chat with those people, you should do that also.
02:47:11
Speaker
ah Anyway, catch us next week in the middle of Rival's season. Well, at the very beginning of Rival's season. It's going to be so long. Ben is excited. Same snap time, same snap channel. I think that's our longest one
02:48:32
Speaker
is why we have, you know, we're missing the second half of November, the second