Transcript
Speaker: Hi, and welcome to episode 22 of Snap on This, a Marvel Snap podcast. I'm Lauren Whatevs, here with my co -hosts as usual to talk about this game that we all love. ah It's an even numbered week, so we're, well, an even numbered episode anyway, and we're going to throw it over to Ben first. Ben, how was your week in Snap and keep it snappy?
Speaker: Well, endeavoring to keep it snappy, as we always do around here. It's been a pretty good week, oh perhaps a little bit light. I have played a fair amount. Things have gone well. I hit infinite, I think probably shortly after we recorded last week. And they spat me out with a good number of snap points, because I i think a lot of it, I don't know. If you just get like a clear run through the 73 to 100,
Speaker: I think they spit you out with more snap points than if you, if you spend more time farting around and doing silly things. um So I don't, I don't know that it's all a conjecture.
Speaker: It's hard to hard to ascertain. Anywho, I was mostly playing Codependence Day, the deck I described last week, ah the one with Wiccan where it just tops out at Wiccan. I did try some variations on it. I tried putting Illyeth in there in two different spots. I did get to come up with more I don't know names for those alternate versions of the deck names that I liked better. But you know what I named it co -dependence day and I set it on the air. So that's what it's called. ah My favorite of the alternate names for the the tweaks was ah Jingoism in space. But you know, I didn't have that idea when I had the idea for the deck. So that's just a good name that
Speaker: was attached to an inferior a sequence of 12 cards. So what are you going to do? Anywho, other than that, ah in the post -Infinite landscape, I've been playing a lot of discard. I also played some of that on the way to Infinite. But yeah, I'm still playing Cool Dog's Guard, another deck that I just named on a whim real quick. And if I'd known how much I was going to play it, I would have thought better and you know harder and given it you know a snappier, pithier,
Speaker: Namda cards. Maybe you need to start, you know, you need to stick with deck 21 a little bit longer or something dumb like, I'm gonna move. Maybe, maybe. I don't know. I don't know. But anywho, that that those 12 discard cards are real good. They seem to win a lot of games, ah except when the hot location is something stupid like the peak. Oh, my gosh, that was so frustrating.
Speaker: I did not enjoy that that hot location knew the peak worse than old the peak. I can't help but think that like any player of the game but or most players of the game will agree with me on that. I don't know why like why get rid of a location for being unfun and then invent a less fun location to replace it with. I just I still haven't played it. It's really not fun. I just avoid it ranked.
Speaker: The rarity must be high because I never ran into it in conquest. Yeah. Well, you will at some point. And I have a feeling you will not be left with a positive impression. Call it a hunt. So you're right. um Anywho, so i I I feel they kind of.
Speaker: They pooched it with that one, or I don't know, some some more tasteful descriptor of ah just a real mishandling. um You know, yeah, I wasn't impressed. Wasn't impressed with New Peak. And if you love New Peak, please write in and tell me why. Please tell me why. um Yeah, that ah man, that's just not a good location. OK.
Speaker: um Other than that, been playing some other games, you know how I do. Playing some Marvel's Midnight Suns. I played a little bit of Marvel Rivals. ah They added two of the fantastic four to the game. I think the other two are coming soon. Really enjoying Invisible Woman. This is ah probably the most fun I've had playing her in a Marvel video game and play some Marvel video games. She was no fun in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1 or 2.
Speaker: But she's a lot of fun in Marvel Rivals. She's got a cool little double jump. She does, in fact, turn invisible. It is relevant. She's got got some fun moves. I played one game with her, and I was left with a very positive impression. She's basically the opposite of the peak. um Yeah. And I'm trying to think if I played anything else super crucial. I started playing some more Hades II. I hadn't played in a month, according to my my save files. But um yeah.
Speaker: oh Just because? Still a great game. Still a great game. Yep. I wanted to, I haven't gotten any 32 surface clears since the Olympic update with Prometheus. So I need to beat Prometheus at 32 fear. Um, cause I'd gotten 32 clears on the surface, but that was back when Eris was the final boss of the surface. That is mind blowing to me. I want to like get this all figured out before the next patch, which could be coming.
Speaker: Anytime now, they they said 2025. So if if i want if I want to claim the this current personal achievement for myself, I've got to do it before the game changes. Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know. So, uh, other than that though, yeah, snap. Pretty cool game. Still love cards. Still love superheroes and putting them on cards and making them win games and stuff. Okay, great. yeah I'm calling it. That's your, that's your weekend snap and your weekend snap. Could've kept it snappier, but what are you going to do? Hey, it was only seven minutes. It wasn't that bad. Oh, hey, Remy. Uh, up next is Ree. How was your weekend snap and keep it snappy?
Speaker: You can talk about your week out of snap too, that's fine. of So, my Week in Snap, I played like ah the larger percentage of the playerbase. I was a casual this week. I was mostly, you know, for missions. I played mostly the Wombat combat deck I talked about last week, the Swarm Helicarrier deck, although me and Wombat had a ah meeting of the generals in the battle map room.
Speaker: um I didn't make the stack, but I was there as the patron saint of all things, random bullshit girl. And we were like, okay, we gotta talk about Strangay. You know, he's not like super pulling his weight, you know, sometimes with some helicarrier shenanigans, you know, and it's real sad when you have a little, someone who's called Strangay, they're just a little 3 -3 out there.
Speaker: um So we did, we did replace the outdated circus strongman with the updated battle angel tech girl, Scorn, who is racking in the deck, to be honest. When you're doing some silly, like, I don't know, like double modox stuff, it's fun. Well, it is fun with Scorn, but also with Scorn.
Speaker: So that's what I was playing. um i It did have me thinking a little bit more about um burnout and escapism in games that we obsess over.
Speaker: Um, because you know, I've noticed that it's like, it's like all the most passionate people, you know, casuals would just kind of fade out. It's usually not a conscious decision, you know, to turn their backs on the game. um They just think about it less every day. And um the most passionate players are the ones most likely to be like, I'm leaving and I'm not coming back.
Speaker: you know and um you know and i have not gotten there that much myself in in snap and i think it's because i've had these um kind of forced lighter times where i kind of just have to play as a casual um because that is how it goes so i don't i don't get super burned out and it's like is it even I don't know, when we get really obsessed with games, when they become escape for us, is it even like always a bad thing? I think we always look at the bad side, like the really addicts to like an MMO, which, you know, I've been there.
Speaker: but um There's another side of it too where a lot of games have gotten people through like and like cancer treatments. Sometimes, honestly, we all just deserve a mental break to escape deep into the realm of Eorzea where we are the strongest, literally the most powerful Amazonian bunny girl that could ever exist.
Speaker: Anyway, so, you know, and, um, but it does burn out. Like, me and FF14, there's a time when it's like, that was, it was, I was spending more time there than in reality. And at night, it was just, it was just, you know, researching the game, knowing all the things.
Speaker: And I did, like, it did eventually burn out for me, and I think that happens with so many people in Snap, too, where it's just like, and did I quit? No, but I had to take it way lighter for a long time. And I don't know, it's not necessarily a bad thing if you got to take a break.
Speaker: um You know, hopefully we fix a catch -up mechanic, so it's okay when people do, but it's fun to be lighter sometimes and and let yourself regain that joy of snap because you're like, I wish I had more time and to play, to try decks, to make my own decks. And that's, you know.
Speaker: That's I did. Okay. I did download um onto my switch inscription. Thank you Lauren for looking up that one time. It was on sale, as you said. Um, but I i didn't get a chance to play yet. Cause that was my time to do my snap missions. My daily credits. I got to play the same game instead of trying a new one because I've been trying to keep the treadmill anyways. So yes. Um, and I'm also, I've been playing a little bit of.
Speaker: I won't talk about it, but ah metaphoria refantasio. he yeah think I think maybe I said that right. I think so. It's a made up word, you can say it however you want. But yeah, partially based on Ben's recommendation of watching his spouse and some other friends and stuff. um Which I did pick over Dragon Age Vhaleguard, which I'm sure that would get unclear soon. I've now watched my spouse play that game. Not as good as Metaphor Refuntazio.
Speaker: What I really think of when I want to say that is vindication see um you know from the Spider -Man 2 soundtrack. Yeah, Ben has to sing it.
Speaker: and
Speaker: Anyway, yes, that was my week in and I mean, somewhat out of snap game wise. Lauren, may I introduce our third host? Amazing. Our hostess, I don't, you know, are we are we picking gender? Is there a gender neutral that we use? Okay, sorry, I'm thinking about.
Speaker: Yeah, there we go. A wonderful co -host, the Saint of Splitsmas, the lovely Lauren Whittes. Please give me a kiss. The co -hostess with the co -mostess. Yeah, very smooth. um I loved your discussion on burnout in a game or just anything that you're obsessed with. like and That's I don't know, neurodivergent ADHD, whatever it is, I have moved from obsession to obsession since I was like, you know, ah five, something like that, you know, used to be bionicle, you know, at a time and, you know, so many things that I moved through. Zoids, you know, just to name a couple. So I remember those ways. Um,
Speaker: And, yeah, it almost like made me feel better about like, you know, I don't, I love cooking and snack, but there are entire weeks I go where I haven't really done much cooking at all. And, you know, maybe that's okay. Maybe that's what keeps it alive for me because I'm not pushing myself, not pushing myself so hard into into burnout. Even though, you know, some weeks it takes up an unreasonable amount of my time.
Speaker: But hey, maybe we can have healthier attitudes about that too. Like you were saying, like it's okay to love a game or to you know whatever. this is This is our community. you know and that's That's something that brings a lot of that causes Snap to bring a lot of value to my life is how these friends and like you know people that talk about the thing I care about with, and that makes it more fun all around anyway. I did do some cooking this week. I made a killer clip with Moonstone.
Speaker: um i and This is a beautiful Heimdall move thing. Maybe I should link it in the show notes, because I use Heimdall in a very clever way, where up until the very last turn, Onslaught is boosting Sarah. And then at the very last turn, Onslaught is suddenly boosting Mr. Fantastic and Mystique and Moonstone. All of a sudden, Mr. Fantastic's doing like 78 power or something like that. It's a lot, anyway.
Speaker: um Yeah, i was proud I was proud of that one because I learned from going to the lab, I learned that Skrull and Moonstone, don't they will not copy each other. No matter what, even if one of them is a mistake, they will not copy each other. They do not care for each other. And so I was like, how the heck am I going to do something cool with Moonstone?
Speaker: Anyway, and the other thing I did was play an amazing safety blade deck with Victoria Hand and Iron Patriot. I've been playing it since like, I don't know, Saturday, something like that. And it was kind of secret, but I asked him if I could talk about it on the podcast and he said I could. ah This easily won me two infinity tickets. So it's a great deck. I'm not going to read the whole thing out, but um highlights include Iron Patriot, Valentina,
Speaker: Victoria Hand, I already said that one. Frigga, and Luke Cage, and Anti -Venom, like something that got the Iron Patriot discount or the Anti -Venom discount getting frigged. You're doubling your energy savings, like eight energy discount, that's huge. It's a very, very cool day. It's called Playing It Safe. um Check it out.
Speaker: and Okay, but we need to workshop that name though. That's not how we do on Snap on this. We never play it safe. Okay, sorry. Well, but it's a safety blade deck. yeah I used just his name, you know? If I wanted to rename it, then maybe I would come up with something. Yeah, yeah. No, it's fine.
Speaker: Yeah, it's, i you know, as so many safety blade decks are, it's very good. And blade to black up the safety, you know, you need the the contrast. This one is more blade. Yeah. Or maybe it is. My goodness, it is just it can I haven't found a bad matchup. It just it's just good. It has tech and just those discounts.
Speaker: gives you so much power. Anyway. I love a good discount. Yeah. And then Frigga to double discounts is cool. Oh, Frigga also on Victoria Hand is great because then your next Victoria Hand is a 2 -7 by the time you play her. Have fun. Just piling up Victoria Hands is fun too.
Speaker: I've also really been enjoying that with Nico using the clone spell on on a Victoria Hand. She's a great card to double, turns out. I haven't tried doubling her with Moonstone yet, but I'm sure that's good too. um yeah Speaking of Moonstone, I've already revealed that I picked up Moonstone. I got her with tokens, um and now I'm out of tokens.
Speaker: She's a 4 -6. Ongoing has the ongoing effects of your 1 -2 and 3 cost cards here. Apologies for my dog. Did you two get her and what do you think about her? I got her. yes um What I think about her is that I did not have any urgent plans for this card.
Speaker: um This is just a card that I wanted to own because I like it and I am sure I'll think of something to do with it eventually. But yeah, I haven't played it. I've run into a few. Seems fine. um I don't know. ah I'm sure I'll have more to say about it six months from now when I have built a deck with it. Sometimes I just like to acquire the card and figure out what to do with it later.
Speaker: if I can tell it's like my kind of card. You just want it in the tool belt. Yeah, it was frustrating a bit for me because I only, normally she's the one I'd want to build a kooky little deck for. I didn't have time. So for the weekend missions for tokens, um I got, I just, I took the auto deck, which was like a Patriot, Mystique, Ultron, Captain America.
Speaker: Um, which was like, it was kind of a cool idea, but like into what I was running into, maybe it's just because it was moonstone week. Everyone was like, my thing it was just like hard to pull off.
Speaker: And um like it wasn't a good time. So I do think it's just one where I need to be um out of the meta where people aren't running counters. Or I just needed to make my own decks. I was going to enjoy that.
Speaker: You probably had the most fun, Lorian, I'm guessing. Yeah, but I was mostly just doing and mostly just doing silly stuff with her. my first So like my first silly that I was doing was it was still Mr. Fantastic, Moonstone, Onslaught, Mystique, which is awesome, but I was getting it so regularly that It didn't seem like clip clip material. I needed to take it up to the next level and that's when I came up with the Heimdall thing.
Speaker: um I'm not saying I'm doing it often enough that that it's worth running. like It probably doesn't have a positive cube rate, although if this thing can still eight cubes for sure. um But you know like it was probably like a one in 10 success rate. And that's that's too high for for a killer clip. um I think she's OK, kind of what I expected. There are a handful of really good hits. you know Your Ant -Man, Victoria Hand,
Speaker: i Mystique situationally and Quinjet. Quinjet is a good one that I don't know if we talked about before. um But still just a four six is just expensive.
Speaker: um who kind of i like I wonder is like is is it too good if she's a three cost? or no is it too good i think she get there yeah Or is it too good if she could copy from all your lanes? That's that's very good. maybe it's I think it probably is too good, yes.
Speaker: yeah Because then it would just make her so flexible, she'd go and discard for sure. It's a huge space saver. wait Was that a was that a joke? Is she going to discard? Yeah, if if she could copy across other lanes, you'd have Morbius on one lane and then she'd be a Morbius. She could also be a strong guy at the same time ah while a strong guy himself is anchoring a third lane. Like that deck would be nuts. And Skrull can do that, but he's not like he's out of your control. You don't get to choose what your opponent's doing. Skrull can't do that.
Speaker: right Well, I'm saying Skrull can copy from multiple lanes. Yeah, but Skrull can't have a plan. Right. That's exactly what I'm saying. like That's why it's okay. Moonstone, maybe that needs to be a six cost, or maybe that's just just too good. um It would be fun though, that's all. um i I only think she's worth getting if you're like swimming in resources. I think she's a very skippable card.
Speaker: yeah yeah things good coji co She's fun, but i don't yeah I don't think she's anything close to critical. I mean, inevitably when there are more cards, there will be something that won't be cute and it won't be gimmicky and it will be scary. So like, if you yeah got Moonstone, don't feel silly about it.
Speaker: unless they series drop her before she becomes relevant and then you can feel silly about it. You know, and that's a really good point. I have seen some people enjoying her with Captain America and next month Cap's shield is an ongoing card. Is the ongoing just that it can't be destroyed? I think so. So actually that's not even worth doubling. I don't. Yeah, but you know what else is next month? Joaquin Torres, Falcon baby.
Speaker: Animorphsfalcon. Oh, is he the Wong for one cost? Yeah, he's Baby Wong, Lil Wong, and these side boys. What's his cost, though? That's great. OK, you could do that into four. I mean, that's getting very combo -y, but you know. Stay, that's a mighty big silver sable, real quick. Maybe you could do some cool things with that, yeah. Or even a big Hawkeye. Hawkeye classic. OK.
Speaker: So yeah, maybe maybe she's some future -proofing for other one, two, and three ongoing cards. I don't know, I feel like we don't get a ton of those. um Next week's spotlight, Olesai, a three -three, activate, discard all cards that cost one or less from your hand, afflict that many different enemy cards with minus two power. Thoughts? I realize I'm - You're more excited.
Speaker: I've said this thought before, but let's keep in mind that the ceiling on this card is two haz mats.
Speaker: Like the most it can do is hit each of your opponent's cards once if you somehow have more cheap cards in your hand than they have cards at all on the board. it's still only doing two hazmat's. That's the affliction ceiling, but in theory, discarding cards is good for you. No, you are hopefully doing yourself some other favors on that transaction. Like I expect both of you are psyched for this card. It looks like a discard card. Absolutely, yes, yes, yes. I don't want us to start getting machine gun gambit dreams in our eyes.
Speaker: yeah let's Let's be real about what the card does or does not do. I mean, but like, a card's meta power usually has very little, oh wait, it's not determined how excited I am about it. I thought Moonstone was going to be the card I was going to be really excited to play with, but, um, and I was kind of down on bullseye that one of me talked about in the series ranking, but I'm excited. I want to do like, decan, x23, and discard, you know, that's some shenanigans we haven't gotten to mess around with for a while because
Speaker: They don't make more sense than like grandmastering gandets and everything. So like, um, so yeah, it'll be fun. I'm getting him with tokens. He's grown a lot on me. Uh, in, you know, since we've seen his a ability, since he got his powered or his cost adjustment to be a three, three, but then even after we talked about him in our season preview, um, I just.
Speaker: And and after my rankings in Twitter, which is usually like I'm committing, but I just kept thinking about it. And there's actually quite there's there's things you can do with him. It's not just shenanigans like like we were saying we can do dock and things now. And that's like because he's an activate, you can Zola the dock and and then trigger bullseye. And that's not bad. That's something that is that is that is a real that's something I like that.
Speaker: That's, I mean, what is that? Four that gets doubled three times, twice? That's confusing to see. I just forget that upside to activate. I'm always so down on the downside of activate, but the positive is getting to pull off stuff like that. Then you get two Dawkins that are 32 power, and it's a three -card combo. That's not so bad. That's my kind of deck. I like it. That's Mike Panther stuff, which, yes, is stoppable,
Speaker: I mean, this one at least is a little bit less transparent. like It is also a specific three card combo that does need its pieces to show up at certain times. And that is a bit of a tall order. But yeah, you're kind of limited. and You're kind of limited on how many targets bullseye. I mean, like not how many other things to do with Arnim Zola in that deck. Hmm.
Speaker: I do enjoy these crossover cards though that have like, it's like a little bit of discard, a little bit of affliction. I know for X 23 that hasn't worked out thus far, but maybe this is the card that helps. Not that she's those two, she's destroying discard obviously, but she's pretty much just destroying. I
Speaker: as in ah facing elephanting hors forgot it was hundred thousand just one was the of the I saying It was insane. You dick.
Speaker: So like, obviously, Scorn's a good hit. The only thing I thought of, and I think I've probably mentioned it here before, is like a Dracula dump deck. You can clear out all the ones from your hand, you can ensure Strong Guy gets buffed, you can ensure Dracula hits the infinite or Giganto. Like, it's something. I don't know if it's good, but yeah. Is it fun now? I don't know. I do think this card is gonna be good. I like, I just...
Speaker: I think that there's like a certain kind of player who's going to get excited about this card and is going to be disappointed. But I think in general it's a good and exciting card. And I'm i'm excited to play it. i I'm eager to be activating for discards of multiple cards because, as I've often whined about, I thought that Hellcow looked like fun when it activated to discard two cards, but it just didn't look like fun for any of the decks I was playing and I was very upset about it. But like this this is my chance.
Speaker: I don't know. Yeah. So yeah, I agree. Very strong card. There's some cool things you can do with it. I think Swarm Nanigans is the part I'm most excited for, but probably not his best thing, right? Like his best thing is going to be something practical, not something explosive. What is practical sometimes? Like Discord is very good right now. I mean, yeah, you have like Victoria hand use a modok in here and you're dropping like what four zero fives at the end. You're not upset about that. Can I admit something? I was so low when night I put together I was just like, duck builder, build me whatever. Like I just opened an empty deck and I clicked that plus button.
Speaker: and I let it fill. And it gave me a discard deck that was almost exactly my meek -ocalypse deck. It just um it took out moon night, which I have known in my heart is right for so long and I haven't been able to. But um for Grandmaster. And it didn't have meek. It had swarm with Dracula. But I was like, maybe maybe it is I who have been wrong.
Speaker: all this time. and And I tried playing it because I was like, you know, like maybe that maybe maybe we're so low in life that we'll play Dracula with Swarm. And no, was terrible. There were so many times because here's the thing. When I play my discard decks and I drop that track, I know I am getting value for it.
Speaker: Because I mean, you know, unless I'm taking the gamble and drawing a card, I don't have, but mostly I'm spending that energy, four energy on a one drop on one turn, because I am assured, assured of future, future glory.
Speaker: like all those monks told all those peasants in the middle age, you know? give us money Okay. Anyway, so, but like when you have swarms in your fucking hand. It is an opportunity for Jackson to go wrong. Yes. And then you invested all the energy and that's where it was so off for me because I'm so used to when I play a drag, I know I'm probably just going to fucking win that lane.
Speaker: and tricking them in some way. So like, um you know, and and it was wrong, it was bad. And I replaced it with meek. Immediately better. You know, your beautiful one, one eights, one nine meeks just flying around in the board, giving you reach. I liked it better than swim. Anyway, okay. You need to choose where he goes is great. They were so glad they gave him that change. Wasn't it random before?
Speaker: Uh, yes. Yes, it was. Which was fine because you could like do smart stuff and be better. yeah You know, it was very cool. Also, so new great at the end there, like, as I recall, Meek moved at the end of the turn.
Speaker: So like now you're giving Meek the ability to move next turn. But like if you want to like be tricky on turn six, there were cool things you could do with Meek's classic that you can't do with Modern Make. Yeah, steal certain locations or whatever, for sure. um Joining Bullseye in the spotlight, his friends, fellow three costs, Kaira and Marvel Boy, ah cool zoo cards. Are they trying to tell us something? Is Bullseye a zoo card?
Speaker: They're just like, hey, they all say one. Come on, let's get it. I think what this tells me is that they think Bullseye might be a zoo card, and that... ah I think that tells me more about them than it does about Bullseye.
Speaker: Do you get these? I think you just get these cards if you like zoo. Sometimes the themes are pretty loose. I think Marvel Boy... It's a marvel. I love marvel boy. Like anytime I'm playing enough one drops, it's like, oh, please. And there's so many times you get that marvel boy on three after a squirrel girl or whatever, and they just fucking retreat. They're just like, no, let's see. That's a good combo. I want to see some big juicy squirrels.
Speaker: For sure. Yeah. Watch this. Marvel Boy is a really cool card. like Nobody else does that like effortless scaling for plus three every turn. That's a Marvel Boy exclusive. It's pretty free if you did the setup right. OK. I'm glad we said something else about Marvel Boy or Adam would be disappointed in us. Oh, ah Novar. We know his name is Novar.
Speaker: there that's just for did write up about a run that i read that was amazing and made me want to read it but i'm just like but behind on stuff um he's ah interesting he said some interesting stories and I want, okay, but while we're also on the spotlight, friends, I wanted to say about Kaira is um what I've enjoyed most about her. Is the little tricks you forget you can do because you're mostly just like whenever I look at her immediately, just like protection from Killmonger. Awesome. That's what kept me from playing Zoo for a long time. I hated that one card could
Speaker: uh take me out and i've noticed i actually ran into some killmonger hiding behind invis woman this week as everyone was like scoping for like patriot ultra and moon knight stuff there's lots of killmonger But the fun stuff with Kaira is when you're like, oh, I can play in a desk domain, which is the location that destroys a card as soon as you play it there. You know, with my one drops now and stuff, and that's a free win. That's like reach, you know, in a deck, basically. um hot And finally started playing her, it was like discovering all those little tricks that, i you know,
Speaker: You're right. I love her on Rickety Bridge because they always do the face off after every turn and your cat just survives and it's like, yeah, this is fine. Keep throwing stuff at it, please. Our people forget they will and you just throw it down on the last turn because they won't remember that she's going to do that. No, I lose to Kairas. That's usually how it happens. All right. I was dismissive of both of them, I admit.
Speaker: Oh, how dare it, Lauren? I feel like you would love Marvel Boy, right? I never play either one, but I respect them both immensely. I'm like, I'm a big head of both of these cards. Yeah, well, that's it, where I was like, they're both zoo cards. They are more than that.
Speaker: And Kaira Q6 is alive. No, I played me some Marvel Boy. Marvel Boy's a lot of fun. I need to play Marvel Boy more. I think the last two times I played him were both in Adam decks. OK. Shame on you both for your lack of respect for Marvel Boy. I like the little cockroach guy. He's just so little and Killmonger and yeah. He's vulnerable to our bad guardian.
Speaker: I have not played him enough with Valkyrie, even though I was excited for that because all she needs is a one cost in her lane and and and he breaks the parity. As long as you don't have other one costs. Sometimes you get disappointed when he, you're like, no, no, no, no. You can't control it.
Speaker: no
Speaker: Part of playing Marvel Boy is limiting how many ones you put on the board, absolutely. No, he the all you put them all out there. No, you actually don't want to limit your ones too much, usually if you're playing Mark, because you want to get ones out there. You want to get your, you know, so you have to put enough in the deck. I don't know. And then what, you're just not going to play? You're not you know, cute. I need guarantee power. I'm going to go into another lane.
Speaker: Yeah, the correct thing is not to play.
Speaker: Honestly, just adding that fourth one -cause to the board, like, I don't know. Yeah. You're just asking for it. I'm sure it's - It's usually worth it. Okay, but only one -cause. But like, if you have - Dude, here's how it happens, though.
Speaker: You play the squirrel girl on turn one because you had her on turn one. You had Marvel Boy. You weren't sure you were going to get other one drops to put in there. And it's like, you got to set up because you want that three, you know, because you want him to hit. If you already have ones on the board, then when you play him on three, right, that's the maximum you get. So that's what happens. And then later you draw your spider hand.
Speaker: And you're like, well, that's parf. You know, let's, let's, let's hit up that apocalypse. Let's get rid of it. Let's get rid of that Thanos that they have all their little, like, stones out for, you know? So what, you're telling me you're not going to play, you're not going to play a spider ham against a discard deck so you can only have three squirrels out? Okay. Anyway, I might do it, but I will be aware that it has, uh, introduced an element of uncertainty and, uh, what was otherwise operating like clockwork. No. But yeah. But no, I'll probably play it. I just won't be happy about it, and I will be aware of what was in the process. When your slash hours played Marvel Boy compared to mine, and then come back to me, and tell me you only played three one -drabs in the book. Okay, anyway. No, I'm telling you, I'll play the Spider -Ham, I'll just, like, I'll feel unpleasant about it, because, like, I'll know that I am eventually harming my prospect.
Speaker: Look away from the screen when he saw it. When you hit it, it's like it doesn't tell you what you missed. It's like, tell me what he hit. I deserve to know. Okay, that's always I always miss the cardi box. I hate it. All right.
Speaker: Okay, I'm sorry. ah This week we had a patch on Tuesday. It did not add a lot and it did not add a lot or even more so it didn't add a lot that we didn't already know about because the main changes were economy changes. The duplicate in the spotlight is now worth 2 ,000 tokens and ah CL track, if you're not series three complete, gives out twice as many series three cards, which both of those are great changes. Yes, they're huge, and important changes. um They are stop gaps until the economy rework happens sometime soon, hopefully. um But they're great stop gaps. It's still not enough that I could recommend this game to a friend.
Speaker: ah Right. Did you indeed hold out for the patch before picking up Victoria? Yeah, I did. I did hold before picking up Victoria Hand. I did not get the... I got Victoria Hand. You're right. It's a Victoria Hand right before Moonstone dropped. But no tokens there. But then Moonstone, of course, I did get the fourth prize and it did roll a duplicate. It was Agony, by the way. You have a second Agony. I became 2 ,000 tokens.
Speaker: Okay. I really should have waited to get Moonstone with tokens though, because I wasn't crazy about the variants in the spotlight this week. So I was silly. I was 100 tokens away. I should have just waited. So if if you're ever going to think about it and wait and get those tokens and don't get a spotlight variant you aren't excited about. Yeah. Okay. It's never a good feeling.
Speaker: isn't this coming Tuesday a ah big a strong token Tuesday in theory in theory it's an unnaturally strong token Tuesday also I saw there were ah in the like answers or whatever on the discord like there was some kind of question about the Unusually strong token Tuesday we had earlier this month. And I think the official second dinner company line was, no, we definitely did that on purpose. It wasn't a spreadsheet fuck up, but it totally was. um We're messing with values all the time. Yeah. I think, I think we're probably in for another 1200 tokens for 700 gold because they can't be bothered to fix it. And yeah.
Speaker: that's That's fine. ah Collect yeah your free tokens is my feeling. Here's your token Tuesday watch in the wrong spot of the podcast. Oh, yep. Attention on Tuesday. If you don't normally get token Tuesday, you should get it if it's 1200 tokens for 700 gold.
Speaker: That's a banger. Okay, back to the patch. A few cards got text changes. They just changed to game start that Arsham already picked up. it I think it helps a lot with clarity. I'm really glad they added this keyword, um but none of them had their power had their abilities changed. It's just strictly like cosmetic. It makes the text easier. Agatha, Thanos, Uatu, High Evolutionary, and Emperor Hulkling all got game start text.
Speaker: woo Are you also fans of this change? I like it because I think that Super Smash Brothers used to have some stages that began with the words game start. oh and That's a good reason. It's fewer words that get across the same thing and as we get longer text.
Speaker: good Some of them, I just think Agatha and Thanos were just clunky. Anyway, ah Lasher got VFX added. ah They were held back because of QA reasons. I only learned that when I put together today's show notes because I didn't know that I haven't seen a Lasher in the wild um do his thing or I haven't been paying attention anyway. Have i have either of you seen Lasher animation, whatever it is? I haven't seen it yet. No, and I've played i played Decent Lasher before.
Speaker: yeah I'm going to go check it out at some point. A bunch of bug fixes as usual, but once in specific I wanted to highlight Kate Bishop, ah adding only one arrow to your hand and then having a max size hand no longer stalls the game.
Speaker: That's huge. That was a really annoying bug. Oh, that is huge. Yeah, that's physical a cool deal. Super annoying bug. i If you didn't know, yeah. All the long hangs are. i didn't I never know what causes them. I assume this was a source of frustration in me and one of my games. right now Now I know. yeah it Kate. If Kate fills your hand with a single arrow, she would hang the game for like 30 seconds. um And you just had to wait?
Speaker: I guess you could probably quit and relaunch the game and reconnect, but that's always risky. Don't do that. um Okay, and now we're gonna go into data mines. So are you ready? Did you get something to say? Oh, no. i'm I'm very excited about it. Also, I was just I was checking. I can't figure out which N64 game i'm I'm hearing the game start from. It's not. Yeah. But Lauren knows how it's said. Yep. It's like a Mario Party or something. I think it might have been Mario Party or Mario Tennis. I don't know. It was just bugging me. Oh, it might be Mario Tennis. I like that one.
Speaker: But I'm not as much as I like these cards. Whoo, baby. Let's talk about it. Hey, February Red Wing used to bounce one -cost cards, but now is totally different. A 3 -3. The first time this moves, add a card from your hand to the old location. I think this one's very hard to evaluate. Like, it's a strong ability, but...
Speaker: You have to use something that moves him. It's sort of like ah like move Ghost Rider. I guess you might. Yeah. You know, like you're cheating at something big. It's from your hand. And the trigger is movement and like those two things don't necessarily go together, I would say. Movement movement wants to sequence things carefully and all of a sudden what you're going to drop your hand all early or like? I don't like something getting grabbed out of my hand. Like I don't like this is a very powerful effect. So like there must be like a way to like harness it in a controlled fashion.
Speaker: yeah Or yeah if if there is a way to harness it in a controlled fashion, it'll be good. But if there isn't, then it's not. yeah I can see that, but that's going to be in a move fashion. This card will probably just not because I really hate it, but because there's so many other cards to want would probably be a skip for me because it's like, okay, I would play this with like Penny Parker maybe to like, you know, get the, you know, spider on it and move it that way. But other than that, to me, it looks like a move card. Like it needs to go in a move deck and do move things. And I'm like, I'm not so much a move player.
Speaker: You know who I kind of like it with? I kind of like it with Spider -Man 2099. like can Can you like imagine, you know, you' you've got like, it's, you want, you want a big thing that's worth cheating out, but not something that like as a huge on reveal that you didn't want to let out of the bag, like Heimdall or whatever. So like, I feel like, you know, iron fist over your red wing, then Spider -Man 2099 pops out, then I don't know, you doctor strange it.
Speaker: ah Turn later or something or whenever is appropriate five energy is huge But what about when Red Wing accidentally pulls out dr. Strange first instead of the thing? I don't I don't know. I don't know. It does seem just like Yeah, I don't know. I also hope there's something there It puts the card in the old location and I I think that's probably weaker than putting it in the new location. Oh I think I disagree Really? Okay. Yeah. I think you want to be, you don't want to be like putting two cards in the same spot. Like you're just limiting your your future. Well, that'll come up later for another card, which does put it in the new location. um Okay.
Speaker: Bonus card, Cobra, I have him listed as a bonus card because he's not in the spotlight schedule. He's like a game mode card or something. Who knows if we're even getting him next month, but he dropped with the other February cards in the data mines in the first place. um he He was like, what, 3 -6? You could only play him if your opponent had a single card there. And I said, there is no way the card ships like this. It is pure trash. Yeah, just complete garbage. This is so much better. widely banned it.
Speaker: ah It's a 2 -3, anything would be better. yeah It's a 2 -3, activate, switch an enemy card here that didn't start in your opponent's deck to your side. Strong ability when it works. Yes, but how do you make it work? How do you force it to work? I agree.
Speaker: ah snow
Speaker: That's basically the only one. Yeah. You don't want to bring back a ah goblin. you Like, Titania is too little to do this with. I mean, like, it's fun on Monster Island. Very cool on Monster Island, yes. End of list.
Speaker: It feels like a tech card. It's only a two, three. I totally see you swapping this in. If you're facing a ton of, look, Victoria Hand, Thanos, Kate's everywhere, Kate Bishop, like, you know, and what? You're just going to steal someone's, like, pin marrow, you know, that they put next to their ant man? Like, it's going to be too... Iron Patriot?
Speaker: I don't, I'm not saying it's like super amazing, but I think it's better than what I'm hearing. There's so many cards now. There's so many like that are out of, you know, card gen decks. Like I said, like Kate Bishop is played a lot. There's so many other cards that do this that like, you know, I can see putting in his check against the meta the way you would in the movie. I guess it's a two that you can't play on two though.
Speaker: Of course you can. you think because then ah tell to play any of their in that line it has It has to be in the same lane as Cobra. Look at other ah tech cards in this area, right? You got Mobius, Luke Cage, Armor even, where they're all Like Ben was saying, you can use them to your advantage too, right? In Pixie, you can use Mobius. There are plenty of affliction decks and stuff that can use Luke. Cobra, there are very few things that you can proactively do to ensure that he's helping the game plan.
Speaker: and So that's where I'm like, yeah, he's a cool tech card against the right matchup. So there's that factor. But also, like, really, you shouldn't play him on two because it's like the U .S. agent thing. You're like letting them know where they are and are not allowed to play like the relevant cards. Like you're they're not going to play any viable targets on your cobra lane. Oh, yeah, it's an activate, too. I also like.
Speaker: I kind of missed that part. That does make it way rough. If it were an unreveal, I would be a lot more excited. That's a good point. It does prevent your... But it prevents it if they have something big. It's very specific. No, they just play it somewhere else and win a different lane. But that's what I'm saying. You've prevented them from playing it in that lane, their game -winning card, you know, into another lane. We're playing a 2 -3 as a deterrent against yeah generated cards.
Speaker: I'm just saying, it's tech against generated cards and there's a lot more of those splashed, a lot more. And you know, Thanos will reign again eventually. like You want to steal an Infinity Stone?
Speaker: um
Speaker: But usually then they're also playing... I guess you couldn't steal. Because usually they want to play Mockingbird in that deck, which sometimes means they're playing other nonsense. I mean, there's plenty of hoods out there. You can steal maybe. But once again, it's an activate, so you'd want to play it after. It's a tough one. Wait for them to drop the demon. Yeah. This is why it's a bonus card. It'll be great on turn five when the circumstances are perfect.
Speaker: Right. It will definitely win some games. So it's bad, but not as bad as old Cobra. Not nearly as bad, no. Yeah. And way more intriguing, right? You want to puzzle out this card a bit. Whereas the last one was just like, nope. Throw it back.
Speaker: Okay, i March season cards were leaked, or were in the data mines. We know now for sure we cut it was already suspected because of like text that was in in the game. But now we have pictures and we're like, okay, it's it's 1 billion. What is it 1 million BC?
Speaker: Almost said billion, but I think it's one million. I believe the name of the season is Prehistoric Avengers. Oh, thank you. Prehistoric Avengers. And it's adapted from the Avengers one million BC. I believe those are the numbers. The original Avengers. And our season pass card is Agamotto.
Speaker: 612 with the text at the start of the game, shuffle some amount of spells into your deck. We don't know what that amount is yet. And then he comes with five different spells ah that are like tokens.
Speaker: i
Speaker: And we don't know what they do, and we don't know how many of them go in. Three of them cost five, one of them costs three, one of them costs two. And they all do have fun Dr. Strange ass names. Like, Winds of What -Whom, Flames of the Faltine, Boats of Balthack. You know, I've got all of these in Marvel's Midnett's Honces cards. I know! That's where you think of them.
Speaker: ah does not have a cool name. I mean, it's a cool name, but it's not like it doesn't sound like it's a magical spell in the same way. Temporal manipulation or temporal manipulation. Yeah. Wait, does it have a. Oh, they have different names in the. In the text that they do in the artwork, I see tendrils of Iqalon. Yeah. OK. Well, yeah, I don't think the listeners can see this, but it is a little confusing.
Speaker: But yeah, we don't know what this card is. I like this card. I like it, though. I love Niko. Oh, I love it. I love Niko. You don't know him yet. I love that it gives me a bunch of other cards. It's going to be the more fun Thanos. I like this person's hat. I should leave my child with them at the grocery store.
Speaker: Okay. On what basis are you liking this card? We don't know anything. It's just a preview. Okay, but quinjet. You can actually use it with these cards, unlike Thanos. Agmodos doesn't necessarily start in your hand, and they're each gonna have a different effect that'll probably be fun, like in Nikko, and situationally useful.
Speaker: earlys still on I'm glad this is a season pass card. I want it and I want to play with it. And I'm glad it's going to be one that I can just get. The fact that it's a season pass card, I mean, Nico wasn't. But the fact that this is a season pass card makes me think it's going to be very fun. It looks like a fun card. Am I going to play a 612? Probably not. But if he does cool shit, I might.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean like, that is the Magneto stat line. I do, I do like, ah I like Magneto, but. Let me be a wizard. like I can't have an opinion about this card until I know what it does, even a little bit. You can, I do. We're all gonna be wizards, it'll be fun. I mean like, I like twins of watching them in Midnight Suns. It's got that get quick keyword, let's you refund your action.
Speaker: Just take your good feelings about one thing like Nico or Midnight Suns and just, you know, put them into your potential hopes for the future.
Speaker: yeah Like, half the half the cards in March we don't have text for yet, and we're just gonna do the best we can. Next one, the first week of March, he's on another Celestial, like Arisham, with the text legendary. At the start of the game, if all your cards have different powers, give them plus two power. And he's ah he's a 613.
Speaker: um
Speaker: They can't release it like this. So fun. I do not want this in the game. Let's get the legendary part out of the way first. We're assuming that legendary means one legendary card per deck. yeah Yes, that is the assumption. Do you think they're going to retcon and make High Evo a legendary and stuff? Or RSM, I would think. Only if they want well people to not play High Evo ever again.
Speaker: Yeah. RSM seems the strongest to me. Maybe Galactus, Thanos, like I could see those maybe. They need to be really careful with it, right? Because every every legendary card really like it.
Speaker: it takes away from design space or ah like that building space. and That's what I'm concerned about. I don't like this idea that like now every deck you have to be playing at least one of your well exactly one of these overpowered legendary cards. And it's like which legendary are you playing? Oh, that's true. no Now every every archetype is just the legendary card and it's yeah plus 11 cards. I don't even know what else it could mean besides that you're limited to one.
Speaker: No other ideas. Your opening hand is only Ison. Nothing else. whoa I think it has to be one per deck. like If it was anything else, if it was anything more complicated, it wouldn't be a keyword, right? It has to be some keyword that they're going to reuse.
Speaker: ye Certainly. Power creep be creeping. Like that does seem so good. I think if this, if it came out like this, it would be the strongest card. But like, like that's like what they're doing. Your deck needs to have a leader card. And yeah it's like, ah give us some freedom. Let us make choices and like, let all the cards be equal. but Like, yeah, ridiculous. I don't know.
Speaker: The cards are already not equaled. At least they're all like. I don't know. ah It's true that they're not all equally good, but like they're all equally cards. you know they're all They're all competing for the same text plots and things. If there's a tier, and now you feel more pressured to get the Legendaries, because you need to always probably have one if they're that powerful. If if they're as powerful as this card is, then every deck needs to have one. Yeah, I know. I didn't think about this aspect enough.
Speaker: Right? Like, I think that's why they're making another Celestial. Arish I'm good. If we print another Celestial, that's a banger. Then every time we print a Celestial, everybody's going to get it. Like, that's our way to, you know, print cards that are like guaranteed purchases. No, it's the text on this card. It's exciting. It's like, hell yeah. Do I want to put a deck of different power cards together and they're all plus two? Thank you. It's a really cool deck building challenge.
Speaker: but plus two everything's so much better at plus two it's way too strong yeah way too strong spider ham like yeah are you kidding me yes please Your zero four yellow jacket, that's a card I'd play. I mean, zero three wasp is great too. um It's just, it literally they can't print this. Like I'm more sure Yisan will change than I was sure Cobra would change. It's way, way, way too strong. Unless legendary is a huge downside that we haven't thought of. I doubt it. yeah I think it's exactly what we think it is. Yep, me too.
Speaker: Okay. Starbrand. So many big cards right at the start of the season. Starbrand 6 card. At the start of the game, plus 2 power for each card in your deck with 10 or more power. This is a very easy skip for me, yes? Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just like, where else does it go besides Skarset or that, you know? It's just like, that deck's just more and more shaping into, it's like, this is exactly what the deck has to be, you know? And because it's like, these cards are just too good, you can't not put them together in this deck, and then that means, you know, you must put in the other cards, you're gonna be like, armor or whatever, you know? So it's gonna be one of us pick 16 in Skaar. That seems about right to me, yeah.
Speaker: cool great it's not it's excitinging because it's goes of course it just automatically goes with stuff right now enough big power card decks that we but I have such mixed feelings about this season because I think the theme is really cool. but Yeah, Star Brand is boring as hell. And three big cards right off the start is hard. Now, given Ison is a big card, that's the type of Arashim big card. Yeah, but it's the kind you don't play. You're not necessarily playing him. Given 6 .15 is a good card. It's the card when you're bummed, when they're like, get the highest cost card in your opponent's hand. And you're like, whoo, what did I get? And you're like, Arashim? No. Yeah. OK.
Speaker: Okay, next up, Firehair, the original Phoenix Force, or at least maybe the first one on Earth. um you can She's a 2 -2. You can move this once. Good. When this moves, revive one of your destroyed cards here. This card is so cool. This is an extremely cool card. Very Phoenix Forcey, appropriate.
Speaker: Also very nocturney in that ah you can move this once, but you should probably be pretty cool to move it again, wouldn't it? Oh. Oh. Hello. Yes? Yeah, I don't limit it. Yeah. The first one for me. That's why she's called fire here. OK, so it's it's random. It's random which card gets revived. Yeah, so give her a few targets and bring them all back. Very cool stuff you can do with this, for sure.
Speaker: Yeah, way cooler than Starbrand. Less okay than Aeson. Yeah, I like this one for sure. who
Speaker: Here's my hair with fire. I mean, it's the adjective fire. I think your hair is fire. oh yeah you little and Konshu. Very excited for this card. I think Konshu's a cool character. 2 -1. We don't know what he does. He doesn't have text. But there are also token cards, if you do want to scroll up to Agamotto. There are token cards, Konshu Waxing and Konshu Full.
Speaker: And then, like, we're we're putting the pieces together, because there's also a card that is a bonus card, Fanfae, who was the first Iron Fist. ah When you discard this, put it back, waxing, and get plus one energy next turn. That sounds like Konshu's text to me.
Speaker: um
Speaker: So and what I'm trying to say is you discard Konshu. He comes back to your hand in a stronger form. You get the waxing form first, and you get plus one energy next turn. And then if you discard the waxing form, I assume, you come back with the full form. That's cool. You know, you got to the moon. one with moon night The waxing and full have like text about hulking out, which is clearly not like a place that's some kind of placeholder. So I would categorize Khonshu and any associated generated cards in the same sort of bucket as um
Speaker: What's his name? Agamotto. Yeah. with this wills We don't know enough. I don't know what this card actually does. I'm not going to tell you I am or am not excited about a card that I don't know. I am so excited about it. Yes, just conceptually. I'm definitely going to work with Moon Knight. Moon Knight has been ruined for me to be honest. Like, right? He's not even in my comfort discard anymore. I took him out because it's honestly just better.
Speaker: with grand master for him and still blade in and this will definitely work with moon. He'll bring it back. I'm interested in this like, this like quest. It's really cool. Greater, you know, cards. I mean like to know all the details.
Speaker: Nah. I'm hype. I'm excited about more discard things, but I would love to actually know what he does. Maybe. Sorry, just like saying - I don't think anything about this card looks very permanent or like certain. No. How does that base art work?
Speaker: I'd say it's ah it's certain that he'll be even costed so that he works with Moon Knight. I would suspect waxing is a 4 cost and full is a 6 cost. Could be wrong. That'd be kind of interesting, I don't know. Do you even want to play Konshu? Maybe you don't want to play him, I don't know.
Speaker: um
Speaker: Oh yeah, you're right. I was like, Ramona of it, like, no. Probably, yeah. It's going to get stronger when you discard him, right? ah Maybe. I mean, we don't know. and Or maybe he'll just get a plus 10 chance to hulk out. I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, it's plus 10. Oh, plus 10%. Yeah, 10 % very strong. Imagine what a tilt card would be if it was like 10, whatever percent chance to discard your opponent's entire hand. So are we excited that like there's a little knob we can change now or like plus 10 % like, oh, you've got a 30 % chance to Hulk out now. Like, is that exciting gameplay moving from 20 % chance to Hulk out to 30 % chance to Hulk out? Because like, I kind of think it ain't.
Speaker: Oh no it's not! It's just a placeholder. i get a quatfo okay Fanfei as previously mentioned, first Iron Fist, oh her text is, we have no stats, we have no image just just that she exists. Nice stats, no stats.
Speaker: Right? Ghost, the first rider, an early ghost rider, who I will at least say looks very cool. He's riding a mammoth. ah That's fiery. Oh, that's so cool. Ghost rider vehicles are wants to be. 2 -4, but we have no abilities. so We also got a preview of a new game mode. Is it going to be a permanent game mode or a temporary one? I would guess temporary, but... um Sanctum Showdown seems very Doctor Strange themed based on the one picture and the name that we got. This is what Snapfan says about it. There are 15 turns and every turn a location is selected to be contested.
Speaker: The winner scores points at the end of each turn. A card from each player's board on that contested location is removed from the game and placed back in the deck. Sounds very chaotic. 15 turns sounds way too long, so I wonder if that's like a max rather than an always. Yeah.
Speaker: unless this mode goes really fast and there's like 10 second timers or something. Yeah, I feel like there's something missing from this explanation. like Absolutely. Or the detail that is going to make it add up. Yeah. Well, anyway.
Speaker: ah could be promising. I like to see something that that sounds significantly different, right? Like, like high voltage is significantly different versus diner, which is just, which is not. All those move cards like super valuable. Yeah, right. You're gonna want all those cards that can move once, you know,
Speaker: It's true so that you know which location is the... It might be good. if the nexted Like now you know this one's contested, so you move it there, maybe it gets kicked back for your deck for you to play again, you know? oh Yeah. Maybe sometimes you want it to be kicked back. Constrained deck building too much, you know?
Speaker: Uh, we have an OTA on Thursday today. Uh, Dave recording anyway, probably not the day you're listening to this. Uh, I have not read the OTA yet. Me either.
Speaker: Ben. It's up now. It's out. Okay. Oh, I know it's out. I'm wondering if you've already read it. I skimmed it. Okay. I've got it up in front of me. recording You get some open like it opened up. It opens up when you open the client, you know, like I i see I have an open to the client since the OTA. OK, here we go. First OTA of 2025. First up, scream. Hell yeah. Two three to two two. But has now been fixed so that Luke Cage interacts with scream the same way that Rocket at Raccoon and Groot do, which is to say Luke Cage completely stop scream from working.
Speaker: Oh, that makes me happy. I don't have Scream. I find Scream decks annoying often, depending on what I'm playing. so Yes, and yes. I like Scream. I'm rooting for Scream, but like as like a good, like balanced, fun card that makes sense. you know like The Luke Cage thing didn't make sense before, and that bothered me. I just want to live in a world that makes sense. She's so good.
Speaker: I have feelings about the Luke Cage thing. I think it's kind of annoying that steel is different from affliction, but I'm at least glad it's consistent with Rocket Raccoon and Groot. That made no sense. That scream in Rocket Raccoon and Groot work differently. Oh, wow. Spider -Man 3 .5 to 2 .4. Hell yeah.
Speaker: That's nutty! Yeah, I'll miss him in Surfer. Oh, bye bye. Yeah, I thought of that and like Ben Surfing moves. But the thing is, I play him everywhere else and this is better. Oh man, Spiderman does whatever a 2 -4 can. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I'm supposed to do this card.
Speaker: ah Right? This makes them way better than... This is a nerf to Juggernaut, because he'll do a lot of the same ways I would use Juggernaut. I'll use him to pull a Wong out of the lane or something before they stick their card down there. like Yeah. this He's not a turn... This isn't in the same way. Good for Spider -Man, but like Juggernaut is still Juggernaut, and this is not taking anything away from what he's good at.
Speaker: For me, for my one little tech card that I'll throw in a deck, you know, I will sometimes think about, because like he's only two cost. You know, I'm not talking like surfer decks and stuff for me. And he has good stats. It's a decision point between the two, because I'm not playing big move decks. I'm throwing him in as my one, what's the Red Guardian slot now, generally? and Generally, Red Guardian takes that. It's like, hey, Spidey will disrupt a lot of stuff.
Speaker: and you know It's a very powerful event. People don't yeah give it enough credit. Agreed. um Also, I think it's interesting that in their justification, they admit that as one of our most popular characters, we also want to keep Spidey positioned at an exciting rate for gameplay. ah Where's that logic for Steve Rogers? huh ah yeah He's getting special synergy next month.
Speaker: And it's only been like three years. so
Speaker: um yeah ah yeah there's this There's this new character, Captain America, and people really have, ah they've grown fond of him since we launched Marvel Snap. And we're finally gonna give you something to do with him.
Speaker: Okay, Luke Cage, 3 -3 to 3 -2. Yeah, fine. He's really, really good and flexible right now. doesn't i Yeah, this doesn't change anything to me. I think probably still too good, but I'm glad that there's at least this for now. Make him weaker. this is So interesting though I was just reading what they said and they're like they want to split up the rules that Luke Cage serves into different cards so it sounds like at some point he's gonna look at this so they said.
Speaker: um
Speaker: and just sound like the Luke is in an interesting spot serving as a release valve against cards like Hazmat, a precaution for decks like Cerebro and a combo piece for cards like Anti -Venom. That's a lot of hats and Luke's frankly very good at wearing all of them. This has the added side effect of making decks that want to play with afflicted powers, stealing abilities weaker because Luke Cage just happens to be in some decks using the effect for their own reasons.
Speaker: We're gonna work to find a better division of labor for some of these roles in the future. But until then we like to week them a bit. Love it. That's a perfect explanation. And the right direction to take Luke. Interesting to make it more of a defense card that can't really be good for you. yeah Just to divide him up.
Speaker: Right. You have one of them that protects you from your own affliction, one of them that protects you. You know, maybe they bring back Luke Cage as a single lane. The current version that he is, but only single lane. Yeah. Well, they could give him a good stat line if they did that. Like they can make him three five or something. All right. I think he was three four with that ability. He has been three four before. Yeah. OK. U .S. agent.
Speaker: ongoing four, five and six cost cards here have minus three power instead of minus four. That's unsurprising because USA Gen has been very, very strong. Yeah.
Speaker: I'm a little surprised like. ah this This was US agent's original text and and he was received as weak. but Well, he wasn't. He was just fine, but people are... ah Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I think I agree with that. He was fine. He needed the minus four for everybody to realize he was fine and and he'll still be fine. Okay. I feel like it is reaching the point now where you you might be hoping more to double that effect. I mean...
Speaker: Yeah. Which you can do with moves. this is a big difference against a certain deck, you know?
Speaker: I still makes Hobgoblin minus 11. That seems plenty to me. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. Kazar gets a power 4, 4 to 4, 5. Fine. You have nothing else to say about that. I had a secret prediction that I didn't tell anyone.
Speaker: in in In my mind, not even in private, did I confide to my my friends and my colleagues. My prediction for this OTA was that either Kesar or Ms. Marvel, or perhaps Omega Red, somebody was going to three to make Moonstone look a little shinier. That was my guess. And it didn't happen.
Speaker: but they did bump Kesar, so I was sorta in the neighborhood. I thought they might take him down to three to make him double -able. Hey, but as they say in the notes, it is a buff to an early card that a lot of players have, which is thumbs up for me. I think they could take him all the way to four, six, and it'd be fine. I feel like so many of the old cards are power crept at this point, and I'm always happy to see a buff on an old card. Absolutely, this is a positive change.
Speaker: but Very early on, Khazar is like the strongest deck you can be playing. It doesn't last very long, but I think it's true for a while.
Speaker: Hydra Bob loses a power. This is this is just like US s Agent, where he was probably fine at 1 -4, but then needed to be 1 -5 to get people to buy in. Now he's at 1 -4 again. um Yeah. I think it's a little silly to be, you know,
Speaker: vacillating like that, but whatever, whatever, whatever. I do think that 1 .5 was too good. I think maybe they could have just kept him at 1 .4 and people would have figured it out eventually, but um whatever. Fine.
Speaker: I mean, at least you can sometimes think about playing martyr instead, but like there's still the 1 -4 is still like without that auto -lose condition. Yeah. and you know You know who else is a 1 -4 without an auto -lose condition? America Chavez, great card.
Speaker: ah You're right though, Ben. I don't play her enough. I should play her more. I don't think anybody plays her enough. I mostly play her in my Aquinas. Well, SafetySnapBot agrees with me. It's a good card.
Speaker: agree with you refer to you and me i have a grave I don't want to be on the same side as the AI tool. Like, does that seem like something Ben Roller wants to like that? These bedfellows could not get much stranger.
Speaker: Okay, Sentry and Void. Sentry is going to 4 -9 from 4 -8, and Void is going from negative 8 to negative 9. Good. Yeah, good change. They changed directly from 10 to 8, right? like They skipped over 9? They did. This is the smart place. to yeah This seems like a good sweet spot.
Speaker: um I like it. 4 .9 is pretty good. You still dodge the Shang -Chi. um But as we've learned, dodging Shang -Chi is never better than being 10 power. Right, absolutely. And you still have to, but this is still a card you're building for, you know, usually not just... Gotta deal with that void. Yeah. Okay. Wow. On slot 6 .7 to 6 .8.
Speaker: fine I like it. The tribunal tribunal's happy. Yeah. I've always wanted to play more on slot, but I do have a lot of difficulty like getting excited about playing a six, seven. Yeah. like This has stood in my way the entire time I've been playing Snap, because onslaught's been six, seven the whole time. Oh, yeah. He hasn't really changed. And and it it well it wasn't big enough for me to play when I started playing. And like they things have only crept bigger, you know? Right.
Speaker: Ooh, Mr. Fantastic. Three, two, to three, one. But his ability goes adjacent locations have plus three power instead of plus two power. That's a good change. He's a three, seven, yeah and, and, and.
Speaker: from following a card. Oh, I got to play with this now. This is my most exciting change now, because like this took him from I didn't want to play him at all to like, oh, you know, no, no, maybe we can have some fun. But if you do have to play him on one of the sides, he's still only good for four, which is true. The ties of Jeffery's now. Sorry that I said Jeffery's. Sorry. Sorry, Jeff.
Speaker: the shake i mean i'm i'm glad this friend I think could have done a little more for him
Speaker: Yeah. This is still better. Plus three to a location, that's something you want to double up way more than a plus two, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. That's something you want to copy with a mistake way more than a plus two or a moonstone, you know? It's just... Okay. I like it. Now we compare more. Now you think more about like, but maybe we put it with the Omega Red instead of one or the other, you know, with an onslaught on there.
Speaker: It's a more interesting card. I think they still could have done something nicer for him, like maybe made him a two cost. Three zero plus four. Oh, okay. That would be hard. A two even at plus two would be like, even a two zero at plus two. No, I think a two or two at plus two, that would be just fine.
Speaker: That's too big. It's a 2 -6 if you get to play in the middle. Which you often do. People play Medusa plenty. Usually you get to play in the middle. For some reason it was enough to keep us from playing a 3 -6 back when a 3 -6 should have been good enough to get played. so like but i mean like there's yeah There's 3 -6 Ironheart, there's 1 -5 Squirrel Girl, 1 -4 Squirrel Girl.
Speaker: given she takes up space, which, yeah. Anyway, or or like 615 Doom, like we're okay with cards being higher power when they're spread out more.
Speaker: Yeah, it pairs better with a Miss Marvel than Omega Red now, you know, on the curve, if you're trying to get it on flat in that lane. Mm -hmm, mm -hmm. Okay, hello.
Speaker: Interesting. Six, seven. Oh, it's an ability change. case Her old ability, we all know. Resurrect all cards you discarded to random locations with minus three power. Now she's a six, nine on reveal. For each different cost among them, resurrect a card you discarded to a random location. So one res per cost. She can only resurrect one six cost.
Speaker: This is cool. This might make hella cool. Like now I'm like, oh, we can put instead of just like, oh, you're just trying to dump the biggest cards and then bring them back, hopefully with a loot cage. Oh, this makes it more interesting. I.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know if it's better or worse. It's better because I want to do it. They don't have the minus three power anymore. Yeah, if it is worse, it's not significantly worse, I think. Because like that that minus three power is like a big deal. And like you can find some quality five costs and four costs to to pitch. you know like think Come on, come on. I'm i'm excited to resurrect a claw or an Iron Man or a, I don't know. like whatever else people, I don't know about big cards. Fill in the blanks. She doesn't have to play Luke anymore. Yep. Being unburdened from playing Luke Cage is a huge like boost for the whole deck is my thing. Yeah. I think it makes ah makes Black Cat a great card, for at least for Hello. Yay! Oh yeah. Wow. Gotta run Hun. Come on!
Speaker: deck build with the old one. I found it annoying to where, you know, I was either annoyed or dismissive whenever I played against it. And now, sorry, that's mean because like, you know, a lot of people have a...
Speaker: No, but like, I, you know, I, I liked Irish and I know that annoyed people anyway, I shouldn't be me. So, um, but I didn't want to deck build with you old hell. And this one, like, I kind of do. It seems fun. Yeah. much more address And yeah, like, uh,
Speaker: Okay. Uh, this is interesting. I'm just, I'm just a little worried like we're hell excited about the, you know, the texture of the gameplay, but like we might not like how good she still is. That's what I was going to say. I don't like hella and I don't want this to revive hella. I want to be seeing a lot of hella out there. She's dropping a ton of power on random locations. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: I wonder if we're like celebrating... We're diverging from this. ...our impending demise or whatever, you know?
Speaker: I wonder if Ghost Rider is actually a good card now for her. Because she can revive Ghost Rider. I love Ghost Rider in black. There will be things in your discard pool for Ghost Rider to revive because Hela won't be you know emptying the whole thing out. She doesn't just she doesn't just make him pointless. You don't understand. This brings so many cards that I love. I'm so hyped. I'm happy for you. Good.
Speaker: This is the winner of the OTA. That's a big OTA. Yeah. I'm Liv Heller. My winner is Spider -Man. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Most definitely. I'm sorry, I just forgot. No, Spider -Man is the best. That's the most powerful card to come out of this OTA. It's very cool anyway. Very fun. OK. Cloak that doesn't help them. Yes. Well, it depends on what it does. But yeah, probably. Probably doesn't help. OK. On to our side quests.
Speaker: This week, it's just the secret homework. I assigned it, but it was like kind of from our um from our Discord. ah you know ah I think Ruka was the one who suggested it, and several of you voted it, so I picked it. It was to design a card of one of your co -hosts. And we decided on a rotation. i I'll go, I don't know if I should go first or last.
Speaker: ah because I'm also assigning next week's homework. No, okay, the person who assigns the new homework goes last. Okay. Is, you know, tradition. Alright. In which case, um Ben goes first. I've i i've arbitrarily decided. Well.
Speaker: I don't know how y 'all are feeling about yours. I am feeling pretty good about mine. I went through some ideas. I will ah tell you about one of them. One of the ideas was to buff cards on your side that did not that that were not duplicates of cards in your opponent's starting deck. So like you would be rewarded for playing cards that nobody else would ever play, like an Emperor Hulkling or a group classic. Moon Knight. Or maybe Moon Knight, but people play Moon Knight. But you know like yeah but like I realized that would just be too many cards too much of the time. It just like it wasn't going to be exciting. So then I decided, like let's let's get Let's zoom in. Let's get specific. let's Let's get down into the details. What is Rii like to play? And I thought back to, you know, I know what Rii likes to play. And frankly, like when I even know that i even know what Rii's following likes to play, because I matched up with Rii and I saw that the name of her alliance was The Moon Knights of Meek.
Speaker: is Is that correct? Do I remember correctly? Yeah, I think if I remember correctly, I think it was Wanda Kama who came up with that name, but she's not even in my life. That does not shock me even a little bit. So I decided I wanted something that would go well with those cards, but like i wanted it to I wanted it to not just be a generically good discard card. I wanted it to be like a very, very restyled discard card.
Speaker: So it's just re. Three, four. Whenever you discard an even -costed card, give each of your odd -cost cards plus one power.
Speaker: Ooh. That's very cool. Do you know how difficult it was to keep this very good idea under my gosh dang hat while we were talking about all these discard things throughout the entire in every previous topic? I just wanted to be like, oh, well, you're saying something that really ties into the card I designed for you. Oh, I love it, though. So now you just know I was thinking about it. I started using to play Swordmaster with Moon Knight again.
Speaker: a I love it, and practice all the cards. It kind of isn't because Swordmaster wouldn't trigger, it's just Re, because he's discarding odd -cost cards, and you want to put the odd -cost cards on the board, and you want to discard the even -cost cards. That's so cool to turn it into a quest. I know, it's the order that you put it into. Oh, and the swarms. It's pretty tasty.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, I do. I do want to play. I play too much track. There's the blood. You can play them both ah in the same like in my current discard deck. i I just assume that you're going to draw a swarm on turn six. So like just always do the modok early. You know, like don't chance it. That's that's my theory. Anywho, that was the card. I thought it was pretty good. I would play it. I hope you would play it. I would definitely play.
Speaker: You're usually playing Apoc with your Draculas, right? Yeah, of course. Yeah, so that's another even discard. Yeah. There are a lot of even cards along discard. Yeah. Yeah. Proxima Vennae. A lot of arc odd cards that need a little love. Yes. That is more true. Perfection. Okay. And then I made Frill Lauren.
Speaker: Okay, this is, oh, and I should preface this. I have actually made previously to us forming a podcast together custom cards for both of them in Unity that they didn't get to see the full glory of, because then I had to try and like video capture it and like put it into other formats. Then um ah game modes, but I have in fact already made custom cards for both of them with effects and everything.
Speaker: um for Okay, for Lauren's card though, um okay, I utilized the new text, game start, choose mean, median, or mode.
Speaker: And then the text of the card and the reveal, it's going to flash and each one of them in honor of Splitsmas will be, it'll fly like, you know, mean as like gold or ink, meaning as crackle and the card will change splits because we have to honor, you know, the Splitsmas that Lauren gave us.
Speaker: And then the text of the card is, this card's power is always equal to the main, medium, or mode that gets filled in at the beginning of the game and the game start animation um of all the cards on the board. Ooh, that's very cool. Oh, and it says, sorry, it's like it it's like a three cast.
Speaker: We're all three costs. I'm sure that's not a big spoiler. That's so fun. Okay. So wait, the choosing at the beginning, that's random, right? It's random. Yeah. Sorry. If I didn't say random, I meant to, it's too exciting to get to the other. That's super fun. I know. Think about all the math you'd have to do with that card. It's just retreat. I'd be like, I median on the fly.
Speaker: It's interesting to think about like how you would maximize all three of those. So you've certainly - I thought about making it the greatest of those. I decided the other one was better. Yeah. It's very fun. I love it. And and thematic. It's mathy. Okay. Everybody say it together. What are Ben's stats? Three, five. Three, five.
Speaker: yeah Obviously, like and I had no other choice. yeah um Okay. I mean, there were many options, but I thought a move card, a surfer card, those seems like like Ben's sweet spot. um And then i think i think I think Ben has secret affection for merge. um Maybe not so secret, but anyway. That's true. i I like merge okay. Yeah, you like how it helps you with spaces? I do. Okay.
Speaker: Merge this with the last card to get here when your side of this location is full. Oh, like the the one location that I borrowed from Ishida base. Yeah. And then I also assume that like.
Speaker: Doctor Strange, it couldn't target itself. Like, it couldn't count as the last card there. So it's fine if you make it the last one there. But yeah, if you move something in, you fill up the location through movement, it's like, oh hey Vulture, and it just gloms onto that. Oh wow, that's very cool. Okay. That's my bend card. I like it. I would play me. I would play it too. I love having little cards and then clearing them up. Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, I'm assigning next week's homework. This one is not from a ah listener. This is a lore and invention. I want you to bring one quality of life change you would like to see in Snap. Ooh, that's a good one. Could be a little thing, but just something you'd love to see in the patch notes. You know? Okay. Yes, I like it.
Speaker: ah color right in fact it probably should be a little thing but you know there's there's a I think there's some quality of life updates that can have a ah big impact anyway undoubtedly you I don't know what my answer is yet that just seemed like something that I certainly would have answers to If you liked what you heard, interact, like, subscribe, follow, do one of the interactions you haven't done before, review us on iTunes, I don't know. Everything you could possibly want to know is available in the show notes or the video description.
Speaker: I promised last week that I would plug this two weeks in a row, so I'm going to bring up The Sun Apprentice season two. It is a very cool reality show. Fourteen content creators are put onto two teams and given all kinds of challenges. I won the first season and I have worked with Devilish, who runs the show, to set up the entire challenge list for the second season. And mostly because I wanted to add rules that wouldn't make it um too easy to break the game. ah Because while 2 .1 billion power of cards is very cool, it's less exciting when both teams are consistently hitting 2 .1 billion power, which is the highest power a card can be, by the way. um Thank you for this trivia.
Speaker: Yes, it's because it's the length of a 32 -bit integer that can be negative. It's a computer programming limitation.
Speaker: um
Speaker: It airs on devilish's twitch, that's at devilish underscore play. Uh, on Friday, January 17th at 6 PM Eastern or 11 PM GMT, uh, you know, figure out where it is from where you are from there, but I will be there, uh, in the chat. I recorded a little video that's going to be part of the opening promo. It's just, I just think it's ah an extremely cool thing that happens in the world of snap devilish puts in.
Speaker: ungodly amount of time into it and ah You get to see some really creative Marvel snap stuff, which I would think that anybody who's listening to this appreciates creative Marvel snap stuff yeah Okay, we're part of the snap judgments network where you can listen to other great shows like snap judgments our grand pod or pulse Glazer and Roy on Saturdays talked to various ah people in the snap community and you know, that's it's ah It's a great podcast, and we are grateful for our connection to it. You know, I would say that Glazer is sort of the Prince
Speaker: Sorry, this is one of the episodes where I squeeze in an Animorphs reference. Where you force out an Animorphs reference. ah
Speaker: Well, ah find out what Animorphs reference Ben's gonna drop next week. Same
Speaker: have never been a slipper slipper wearer before, but I got them from my - How'd your feet stay warm? Yeah, socks.
