Speaker #0Hello! Can you understand me? Hello everyone, Kira here, and welcome to the Infinite Podcast. I'm focused on the casual nature of the game, and each week I discuss the new patch, the new card, and my feelings on the game. I am also a part of the Snap Judgments Podcasting Network. From now on, I'm going to shout out one of our shows and talk a little bit about it before the show begins. I just want to say, Snap Judgments with the original OG. Glazer and Roy is a super, super fun watch, especially if you enjoy the YouTube version. I think that the slides and the show notes that they do are extremely in-depth, and they always have great guests, so I was really inspired by them. Definitely check them out. Alright, let's hop into it. This week is pretty huge, and it's not just because of the OTA that came out, although that is pretty big, and it's not because of Khonshu, although I really like that card. It's because we just got told what the next monetization system is going to be for Marvel Snap. And obviously, when you're talking about a video game, you don't want the most exciting thing to be the monetization system. But we're playing a card game, and so it has to come up, right? In this case, I think when we get into it, I'm pretty optimistic, which isn't usually how I feel about these things. But let's start with the basics of this week and talk about Khonshu. Khonshu is a 6-5 that says, when discarded, returns in its next phase. On reveal, resurrect your card you discarded to another location with its power set to 5. And this affects scale, so if you discard it one more time, it becomes a 6-8, and it has the same text, where if you revive it, it goes to 8 power. And then it stops at a 6-12 that says, resurrect a card you discarded to another location. with his power set to 12. Important to note, it's not like Apocalypse. It doesn't come back after the third time, because the card doesn't say when discarded returns in its next phase. That part isn't a part of the 12 power, can't you? So, you discard this twice, you discard another card, like an Iron Man, and then you get a 612, another 12 power card, and if it's something like Iron Man, that becomes 24 power, right? Because it's being doubled. So, the... like, ceiling on this card is quite high. And I'll just say right now, I love this card. It's really, really cool. It offers a different kind of discard deck, one that isn't afraid to discard something that they might need later. Honestly, I think it's also brought a revival of Corvus Glaive, because, like, random discards with Khonshu aren't as scary, even with Ghost Rider, right? Like, some of the worst... experiences I've had playing discard is trying to get Ghost Rider to work and then him being discarded by a random location or you know, having Moon Knight in your deck is really scary with Ghost Rider because he might just disappear. But, in this case, if he does get discarded, Khonshu can bring him back. You have to put a little bit of work into it, but honestly, I think it's perfectly natural. It slides into a lot of lists. I will say his win rate is not that high. On Snapfan, his percent of one win played is at 42, which is just incredibly low to me. The one win drawn is at 51%, so I don't, I have no idea what the heck is going on with this card. I guess part of the problem with Khonshu in, you know, his entirety is You do have a little bit of control where the card goes, because it says, you know, resurrect a card you discarded to another location. So, when you play Khonshu down on the right, the card that's revived has a chance of going in the middle or the left. So, like, the randomness there is limited, but it might be impacting games. I don't know. I have to say, though, I really like this card. I think it's really unique. It offers a new playstyle. So, for me, it's a... it's a five out of five. But I understand maybe in terms of power level, we have yet to see it. I know that the statistics aren't that great on it. So I don't know. I'd be interested to see maybe if people start refining the lists if it gets a little bit better. Okay, let's talk about the meat and potatoes of the patch. Although I will say this is a very small OTA balance update. And they sort of mention in their notes, the developers, that... They feel like the metagame is in a pretty good spot, and they don't want to mess it mess it up too badly. I have to say, I was getting pretty frustrated with the amount of Discord going around, just because it's hard to interact with. I'm sure you've heard this parroted before, but, I mean, truthfully, you have to run quite a few counters in order to effectively stop a discard list. It's not like you can throw armor and Cosmo and go to town. That's why Destroy always feels like it has plenty of counters, right, Shane? Chi, Armor, Cosmo, the list goes on. But for discard, you have to get lucky in the lanes you play Cosmo, and you have to get lucky with, like, them playing Morbius. Some lists don't have that. Other times, if you have Shadow King, you have to make them take priority, which is pretty difficult when they're playing, like, a Bullseye deck, right? That scales at the end of the game. So, like, there are counters to discard, but I certainly feel like it's... slowing down right now in terms of play rate uh and i'm i actually made it to the 90s uh so i'm i'm pretty happy so far um but let's talk about the actual changes here so we've got iron patriot he's a still two three he still gives you a random four five or six cost card but uh now it is minus three cost if you win the lane instead of minus four this is a pretty tame change honestly and i still think that the card's gonna be bonkers When you talk about the rate of cards that he's giving you, the worst case scenario is you get something like, I don't know, like a Typhoid Mary and your list isn't built for it. And it's just OK. But like even then, you're still getting a 110 that could effectively scale down to like a 16, right? If you put it into a lane with two other cards. So, like, even in that scenario, it's like, yeah, the stats are still really, really, really good. There are certainly some low rolls, but a lot of the time you're just getting, like, a really cheap 2-7 or something, which is insane. It's crazy. I do think that it's going to reduce the effectiveness of this card, but it's still just, like, everywhere, and it's still doing super well. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm not super impressed with this, but I suppose I don't want to kill the card too soon. And the rest of the changes in here are mostly just numbers changes. So Galacta is going from a 4-6 to a 4-5, and yeah, I think this is warranted, right? I would even argue that her stat line should go to what is like a 4-10, right? Because the power that she's giving to other cards is really why you're playing her. You often don't care about the power in her own lane, and so I think that they should double down on that. I think that if she's going to give such a powerful boost to other cards, she shouldn't be, you know... big in her own lane. I think 4-5 certainly accomplishes that, but I think 5-power is like the breakpoint in Marvel Snap, right? 5-power can go up against a Dr. Doom, it's half of a 4-10, which isn't great, but it's still playable. It's when you get to that 4-4 range that you really feel like there's a detriment, and I think that should be where this card is, but until then, I'm still gonna keep playing her. I think she's great, and I also... I also want to point out her effect isn't random, so I do feel like there should be a little bit of a downside, but 4-5 is fine. I think that'll certainly impact some things, and it'll make it even easier to win the Galacta lane. Pixie is up next, and I actually got Pixie recently, so this is kind of a win for me. They were really soft on it, though. They're only changing her from a 2-1 to a 2-2, and yeah, that feels better, but it's not great. I would much- prefer to see her at like a 2-3 because she shuffles the base cards of your deck. Sometimes her effect does nothing anyway. It really is just a complete gamble on whether or not you're getting something out of her. Or, I've seen other people recommend that she gets moved to a 1-1, and with the recent change to Loki, I tend to agree. I think effects like hers can be strong, but it's random. It's completely random. You're just giving up to the whims of ... whatever draws you get. So I feel like having her pair into the curve easier would make her feel better. But until then, this is okay. It's, you know, I've explained before, I like that a 2-2 can still compete with a 1-2 in a lane. That feels a lot better than not even competing against a Misty Knight, right? So 2-2 is fine. I think this should be the minimum. I would like to see it increase, though. Sauron is getting moved from a 3-4. to a 2-2, and yeah, this is big. I've seen a couple of Soran lists, and they're doing fairly well right now. I think part of that is that they have Enchantress in the list, and she can just decimate some lanes against, like, a Doom 2099 list, or, like, an... a living tribunal list, or, I mean, you name it, right? Even negative sometimes, right? Now, that depends on if you somehow manage to drop priority, but you get what I mean. Like, there are opportunities where the cards that go into a Soran list are pretty good, and then the stats you're getting are obviously insane. So, I like this change. I think that it'll make the Soran deck a little bit better. Um, and it should fit into the curve easier now that Starbrand is the new three cost. You can go straight from Sauron into Starbrand into Typhoid Mary into, uh, Red Skull, right? And then you could do something like, I don't know, Lizard, Ebony Maw, Zero on the last turn. I don't know. You get my point though, right? I think this is a pretty good change. And last but not least, it's ya boy, Ghost Rider, going from a 4-4 to a 4-5. And this is what I was talking about earlier, right? 4-5 actually feels impactful. When you bring back an Infinaut after you've discarded them, now that's 25 in a lane. That is insane. And that 5 power breakpoint I think will make this card feel a lot better. I'm already excited to keep playing it with first Ghost Rider. I really like the combination of getting an Iron Man in that lane. And now, instead of being an 8 power lane with Iron Man, it's a 10 power lane with Iron Man. So, that's awesome. Um, and I, I do think that this card is going to see a little bit more play. I think, again, Khonshu has made it possible to play Ghost Rider and not be scared about it. Because now you can be like, oh, okay, well, I discarded Ghost Rider. Let me just discard a bunch of random stuff in my hand. And it's, it's going to be fine. Um, because if I get Ghost Rider through Khonshu, that's going to be even more power. Uh, so yeah, this is dope. I like it. And, uh, I can't wait to play more Ghost Rider. I'm, I'm super hyped. Oh, I should also mention, um... Quick aside before we move on. I did get the ultimate variant for Ghost Rider, and now he is my number three on the mastery track, which makes me feel so much better. It was investment, and I wouldn't recommend that. But with the new changes coming up, I actually think it's okay. They might actually have to change how ultimate variants work. So let's actually get into it. I'm all over the place on this episode, so I appreciate you sticking with me. Let's talk about the changes that they're making to the monetization. Snap packs are a new way to unlock cards, and they're going to be done in a couple of different ways. So, to begin with, there are going to be different kinds of snap packs. There's going to be snap packs for Series 5 cards, snap packs for Series 4 cards, and collector's packs for Series 3, 4, and 5. So, there's going to be a total of five different snap packs, with... more to come that are going to be like themed and actually i'm really excited about that uh but but let's talk about what they've explained here so first thing to consider is spotlight caches are gone they're scrapped they're toast and the current spotlight caches that you have will be converted into collector's tokens at a rate of 3 000 per key which is really important to note you Because they're not changing the price of Series 5 cards for collector's tokens. They're still going to be 6,000. What does this mean? Well, now when you get to the point where you would get a spotlight cash in this new system, you're going to get 3,000 tokens. Guys, this is huge. This is huge. This means the days of spending three or four keys on a spotlight week are gone. You can almost consider it as them cutting. the percent chance of getting that card in half, or excuse me, doubling it. You get what I mean. Now you always, always can guarantee yourself a Series 5 card by making it up two steps of the collection track, which is awesome. That's really great. I think somebody did the math, and typically the price of a card using spotlight keys is something like 2.5 something. Don't quote me on that, but it's just because of the percentage chance. You know, getting a one in four with your your spotlight keys on the first try is really difficult. Typically, you're going to have to spend two, three or four in order to get it. So the fact that it's going to be essentially two spotlight keys every week is awesome. And it's important to note, like, again, the shop isn't changing that. So. If a new card comes out and you don't want to roll with the packs, you can just buy the card and you're going to have the collector's tokens to do it. They also mentioned here that every day they're going to give you more tokens. I don't think they've talked about. If they're going to change the amount of tokens you get in the collector's track already. I think you get like 100 every once in a while. But there's going to be like a section sort of like how you can collect credits to collect tokens as well. So like all of these are going to make cards cheaper. Just flat out, it is going to be cheaper to buy cards because you're getting more collector's tokens by the by. And so let's talk about what each of these packs do. The speculation right now is that they're going to be cheaper than just buying. the card outright but we don't know by how much so keep that in mind uh these series five packs are going to include all series five cards from the current and one previous season and the card pool updates each week with each spotlight card so the the the pace of cards that are going to be released aren't changing uh but the pool is now going to be a little bit wider uh if you want to buy one of these series five packs you are giving a chance on it You could get something like, I guess if you consider right now, you would get anything from Khonshu all the way back to the previous season. And that means that there's going to be like different amounts of cards in the pool depending on when this releases. So like in Khonshu week, like right now, you would be getting quite a few cards, right? All the way back to like Hakim Torres to Khonshu. But at the beginning of the season, that pool is probably going to be smaller. Um, because the cards haven't released yet. At least that's the way that I'm interpreting it. It should also be mentioned that all of these packs are probably going to have extra goodies, like, you know, uh, currency or boosters or something, so that they're a, you know, a little bit more enticing for the fact that you're, you know, skipping on randomness. Um, another thing to note is that each pack is going to have one card that you can pull, but there is also a very small chance, um, that you could get another card instead of, like, bonus currency. So... like there is legitimate value to it there is randomness but it is going to be probably cheaper than buying a card outright and i like that it's it's focused in on like the new stuff and it's still allowing you to get stuff from the previous season so if you're a returning player let's say you skipped um you know a month or something you still have a chance of getting those cards for cheaper than just buying them in your token shop uh which is really awesome that's you know one of the biggest things that I've complained about is you can't really take a break from this game without feeling like you're missing out a ton. Will it feel bad to get some random stuff? Yeah, probably. But again, if you really don't want to do that, you can buy the cards outright. You'll just have to wait for them to rotate in your token shop. So, I mean, I think this is a net positive. The Series 4 packs are a little bit different. They include all Series 4 cards from the current and two previous seasons. And this card pool updates each season, so it's not on a week-to-week basis, which means I think at the beginning of the season, if there are Series 4 cards that release, they'll be in this pool for that month, which is great. Again, this is really, really cool. It's probably going to be cheaper than buying them for 3,000 collector's tokens, and you get a little bit of extra goodies. So this is awesome. This is really, really cool. Especially those, like, limited event time cards. Like, maybe I missed out on Cassandra Nova. I could get her, potentially, from this pack, which is really awesome. And then, finally, there are collector's packs for Series 3, 4, and 5. These contain all cards not included in the new series card packs. So, these are cards from older months, and you could just get a random awesome card with some extra goodies. Like... I'm trying to think off the top of my head what cards I don't own. Like a good example for me is I'm missing Ajax. And I'm also missing Beta Ray Bill. And I'm missing Cannonball. All of which released quite a while ago. I have a pretty decent shot of getting these cards, whether they're Series 4 or Series 5, because I can buy them through these collector's packs. So that's really awesome. I like that. It means that... You know, if you're not vibing with the current season, which happens to me sometimes, like I wasn't a huge fan of the Symbiote season, I don't have to worry about using my tokens for that. I can use my tokens to get cards that I don't own already and try to complete my collection backwards, which is really cool. And they are going back on something that they said a while ago, which is they're going to offer token packs. So if you really want to advance your collection, you can buy tokens directly. uh in the same way that you might purchase gold um which is that that's a big step forward i don't know what the conversion rate is going to be it's probably going to be expensive uh but You know, if you have the dough and you want to catch up really quickly, you could do that. The last important note here is that they plan on releasing even more cards every season, which is a little daunting. It's a little scary. But I think, again, the fact that you can, in a similar way to the Sanctum Shop, you might not be able to get everything, but the choice of getting stuff is much, much better. And for those people who are already whales and spend a lot on the game, this is going to be cheaper overall. So, I mean, that's kind of crazy to me. They talk about, like, making, again, custom packs where you have, like, an X-Men pack or a discard pack or a creator's deck of the week, which is really cool. That sounds, like, exciting. Could you imagine, like, them releasing a Pulse Glazer pack or a, you know... an Alex Kocha pack, that would be kind of fun. So, like, that's really neat that you could just, like, get cards that you don't already own in these, like, super creative packs. So, that's pretty much everything. I have to say, I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm like, unless they really, really fudge up the prices on all of these things, it seems like all of this is going to be cheaper. It's going to be a little more random. But because we're getting collector's tokens at a fixed rate, depending on how much you play, I think it's fair. Like, this feels more fair to me. And, like, if you're really frustrated, you can just buy the tokens. Like, you could just buy enough to get a new card, which, I mean, I've talked about it before. I think that's fine. If you're going to spend money on this game, I would rather it be to get something I want than it being completely random. And there's still randomness involved, right? Because it has to show up in your shop. But as soon as it does, you can pin it, buy the tokens whenever you please, and then get the card. Like, that seems better to me than the random spotlight cash system. So, like, overall, I'm really stoked about this, guys. Like, I really hope that they land this well. I'm really, really, really excited to dive in with all of these new cards they're going to be releasing. Like... This is a slam dunk for me. It should be said, they said that this patch is going to be implemented sometime between April 29th and June 3rd. And it sucks that they don't have, like, a really good range to go off of there. You know, that's a pretty big gap. That's, you know, almost two months. So, like, I hope that they nail it. But... Honestly, I'm just excited. My strategy right now is I'm going to go ham in the What If season. I absolutely love What If. And the new cards that are coming out are really exciting. And then after that, I'm just going to start saving. Because I feel like this is going to be really, really cool. This is going to be a really cool system to play around with. That's everything for this week. Pretty chunky one. I'm going to have to edit this down a bit. I yapped a ton. So remember, you can check out the Snap Judges League Discord. We can chat to me and a bunch of the other podcasts in the network. And if there's one thing that you can remember, it's that I'm infinite. Thanks for listening.
