Description
Kiernimbus talks about the newest card, Strange Supreme, as well as the latest OTA balance update.
Please rate this podcast so I know how I'm doing!
You can find me here: https://linktr.ee/kiernimbus
This podcast is a part of the Snap Judgments Podcasting Network! You can show us some support by checking out the Snap Judgments Youtube channel (@snapjudgments) or the Patreon (patreon.com/SnapJudgments).
Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
Hello! Can you understand me? Hello everyone, kier here, and welcome to the InfiNOT 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'm also a part of the Snap Judgements podcasting network, and I'm going to talk about Snap Decisions today. If you don't know, it's hosted by Joe, and he's your Snap DJ. He's a really cool guy. I love talking to him. I've been on his podcast several times now, and if you haven't watched his show yet, it's pretty unique. He goes over a couple of different segments in which he talks about comics, the new cards, goes over what's new that a shop, talks about some of the economics, and, I mean, most importantly, he's really entertaining to listen to. So if you haven't checked it out, I would definitely do that, and let's hop on to the show. So this week, we've got a new card in Strange Supreme, and we have an OTA balance update. That was a little surprising, but we'll talk about it once we get into it. So let's start with the basics here with Strange Supreme. Strange is a 2-2 that says, gains plus 2 power from merging. End of turn, merge one of your created cards into this. So when this card was being previewed, I think mostly everyone thought it would be good. Right, the idea of clearing your board space from even just random real- locations that give you rocks or raptors or whatever, right? Even that would make this card decent on its own. But the main appeal here is that if you play it in a clogged deck, you would get a huge benefit. What I don't think a lot of people were expecting is that this card might just be good almost everywhere, right? You throw it in Thanos, he gets huge. You throw it in like a Mockingbird deck with Mysterio, he gets huge. You throw it in Arishem, and he gets huge. Like, it's just, it's big. There is something to be said, right, about the idea that he himself is not getting that big. You're sort of transferring the power to him. It's very in flavor, right? Strain Supreme from the What If series consumes a bunch of powerful beings in order to get more powerful. So in that respect, I think they nailed the flavor of this card. But in terms of gameplay, it sort of means that... You know, he's not exactly like a 219 at the end of the game. He's more like a 2-7 who shifted over, or excuse me, like a 2-6 who shifted over some power from like some big cards. Because the plus two that he gains from merging is sort of his power. Now, that changes when you're talking about like debris, right? Because on her own, she's a 3-3 and then she throws two rocks on your side of the board. both of those get merged into Strange Supreme, and then that adds four power. So, like, in that respect, you know, it's a little more reasonable to think about Strange as a 2-6, maybe with some conditional things. But I think we can all agree, this card definitely earns its own spot in a deck. It definitely makes a huge difference to have this card, especially against Clog or against a number of other. lists so in that respect i think that this card is going to see a ton of play it's very fun the animation is cool i mean it's a slam dunk this is a five out of five release in terms of power i still don't know exactly where it lands yet uh at least on snap fan it's running a 53 and some change percent win rate which is good i mean that's solid that's what you want to see in a card but But yeah, I mean... I think they really nailed the design of this. It feels really good. I've been playing it in a list with Sentinels, and I've been having a lot of fun with that just because you can throw the Sentinel on something like Angela, and then the Sentinel disappears, and then Strange gets five power, which is like, it's nuts. So yeah, I'm having a lot of fun with this card. I think they really nailed the design. Okay, let's get on to the meat and potatoes. You know what it is. It is the OTA. And they addressed a couple of things that I think I've spoken about before. More specifically, they took a really old card that nobody's using and completely reworked it. I've talked about this before. So let's get into the details here. First up is Captain Carter going from a 4-3 to a 3-2. And I think when talking about this card, you have to be cognizant. of how much power she can add at a three cost. Right now, if you were to play her at her base and you put two cards behind her, she would be a 3-6, which would already be decent, right? But Surfer changes the conversation, right? Being able to boost this with Surfer and Gwenpool and a bunch of other stuff, right, makes this card extremely strong, especially when paired with things like US Agent, which makes the other side even weaker, right? Like, I think that this is going to make this card much, much better. I know that on her release, she wasn't doing that hot, but right now... Um, she's running a 55% win rate, which is nuts. That is an insanely good card. So yeah, I mean, it's a season pass card, so I think we should want it to be strong, but I'm a little scared. I'll admit, right? Even with one spectrum buff, you're talking about like a 312 without even trying. Um, so yeah, I mean, this is, this is incredible. And her synergy with Captain America and, um, you know, that sort of package gets even stronger because of the lower cost. I do think that three is the right cost for her, right? There's more of a chance that you're going to be able to put her in the front row as a three cost card. But I think, you know, that two power might be too much. I don't know. It's pretty easy to buffer. I think we'll have to see how things shake out. I do think this card is extremely strong, though. I'm glad that they made the change. Infinity Ultron is up next, and he's going from a 5-6 to a 5-8. And I actually, I think this is awesome. I was telling you guys that I really think that the best way to utilize Infinity Ultron is to buff his power. And so they're sort of doing that for me, right? They're sort of already adding two points, and that makes the base abilities of some of his stones particularly good. You know, like the Infinity Power Stone and Reality Stone. Those really matter to have those extra points. And so for that reason, I'm really, really happy that they changed this. You know, even doing the math on something like the Reality Stone, now at a base, when you play the Reality Stone, you're getting a 3-1 that puts down a 8-power drone, right? So you've functionally played a 3-9. And that feels a lot better than playing... a 3-7, which it was before. The same goes for the Infinity Power Stone, right? It's a 3-2 that doubled Infinity Ultron's power. So it added 6 to that. So it was essentially a 3-8. But now, since it's going to change Infinity Ultron's power to 16, it's now functionally a 3-10 by itself, right? So that's really good. Those are numbers that you want to see on something that you're... investing your turn six into the other stones do they're slightly more relevant to this right but like the infinity time stone and the infinity soul stone i i think have proven to be mediocre at best um the space stone has value now that he's bigger but it's not that noticeable right like it's it's the chances of the that winning you games is going to be a lot smaller so overall i i do think that this does improve the card but there are still some stones in here that obviously make him weaker than a lot of other options. So we'll have to see how it shakes out. He's still running, you know, a fairly low win rate, but I think it's a little bit higher than I've seen it. In my experience, I enjoy this deck, but I've talked about how right now on the ladder, it just feels like nothing's happening. Like I win some, I lose a bunch. I win some, I lose a bunch. and I just, I can't get any progress where I'm at. So, like, for me, I can't even tell the strength of this card because the lists that I play just aren't meta-relevant. I can't get past the wall that I'm up against. So, we'll have to see how this shakes out. Fastos is going from a 3-3 to a 3-4. Sam Wilson is going from a 2-3 to a 2-2. Scream is going from a 2-2 to a 2-1. SPDR is going from a 3-3 to a 3-4. That's from Penny Parker. And Toxin is going from a 2-1 to a 2-2. So these are just flat number changes, which is why I'm sort of stringing them all together. But I'm going to go through them individually, of course. So starting with Fastos here. Does 3-4 make Fastos good? In a sense, right? Yeah. Like if... you do just the flat math and remember it's a 50 50 on whether you're reducing the cost or adding power but if you were to add power to three cards and you were to you know play those three cards you'd be looking at a 310, right? That's pretty good. The problem is, it doesn't always happen that way. And also, if you don't get Vastos earlier in the game, he's significantly worse. I don't know where they want this card to be. If they want him to be more impactful at his higher cost than something like an Okoye, his effect should feel that way, right? It should feel more impactful, but sometimes you just don't get something valuable. Um, which is, you know, I've talked about reliability on certain cards. Like, Infinity Ultron isn't reliable, and I think Fast Dose is the same way. It isn't reliable, and so a lot of people just don't run it. I don't think this point of power is going to change that. Uh, these next two that I'm going to talk about are more relevant, right? Sam Wilson, Captain America, going to a 2-2 does change the math. It makes him feel worse to play later on. Because 2-3 is just, it's fine. It's like a Jeff. Right? You're not mad to play Jeff. And so he could oftentimes, you know, get that three power in a lane to close something off, even if you didn't get him down early. I think now it's more important to. In order to get that value, you need to probably move the shield twice on him to get, you know, that impactful feeling. Getting him to a 2-6 is sort of the ideal. So, I mean... Don't get me wrong, you're not mad about a 2-4, but it does not feel as good. So I think in that respect, I think they nailed it, right? I'm pretty happy with this. I think if they were to make this card any worse, it sort of makes the identity of this card go away. You'll probably never see it again. So I think this is the right call. I think 2-2 is where he should be. Scream is going from... a uh a two power card to two one and i think i think this is more than warranted i mean she is i think the only card in the game that scales by a factor of four so having her start at a low stat line makes sense she doesn't need to start at any honestly she could be a two zero and i think she'd still be fantastic um i think part of the the psychological effect people forget about is like every time scream moves a card she is gaining four power she if she started at zero and she were to move two cards she'd be a two eight that's insane that's nuts that's that's like beyond crazy so i like two one fine makes sense to me i think she should be two zero frankly her deck has proven to be a staple in the meta and one that does not have a problem with power. Okay, so moving on to SPDR from Penny Parker. Going to a 3-4 does matter for this card for a number of reasons, right? Merging it to something with more power can sometimes scale it up to higher numbers. Like doing it on Penny herself makes this a 3-4 plus a 2-3. So you're effectively getting a 5-7. That's like a vision, almost, right? Like it's almost as good as vision. And of course you get that extra power from merging with Penny, right? So in that respect, I think this card is is much much better Will it see more play? I don't know. You know, it's like a heart. It's a hard ask like where does this fit in? In your deck like why are you using penny? For a lot of people that was because of Wiccan But I don't I don't know where else you would you would need this card to exist maybe in a move deck But that's a lot of investment when you could just play down a Vulture and a Ghost Spider, right, and get way bigger numbers. So, like, I don't know. I don't know where this card fits in. It's a cool effect. It's a cool, it's a neat idea. It's just, like, how do we make this relevant? I guess we'll just have to see. Maybe there's somebody more creative than me that can put something together. And lastly, it's Toxin going to two power, which is a little odd to me. I thought he was already, like, a pretty good card. I mean, he was running like, you know, 55% win rate at one point. So they explain in the notes that they explicitly want to make Toxin more relevant. Because there are certain archetypes in the game that they want to go in and out of popularity. That's just odd to me. It's odd. Like, you were already getting a good amount of stats here. And yeah, he wasn't reducing the cost of those cards, but you were already playing a low curve anyway. So. I don't know. I see where they were going with this. I just don't think that the buff was needed. Okay, and this I've been saving for last because it is the coolest. They're moving Rhino. Yeah, you've probably never, never expected to hear that name in 2025. Rhino is moving from a 3-3 to a 3-6, and they're changing his effect to, on reveal, add a rock to your side of this location. So, I mean, part of me misses the old effect. It was one of the only reliable location changes in the game. But the fact is, he wasn't being played. Now, I'm going to argue that's because of his stat line. I think if you even made him a 3-4, people might consider it. But, hey, this is the direction that they want to go, and I think his effect right now is particularly good. A 3-6 is already good, right? Just a flat 3-6 is good value. We have cards like Speed in the game that will exceed that, but the advantage here is you can play this at any time. If you play it as the last card in the lane, You don't care about the rock. And if you do care about the rock, then this is a beneficial effect, right? So if you add the rock to your location and you have Mockingbird in your deck, that's a discount. If you have Viper in your deck, that's a clog card. If you have Killmonger in your deck, that's an extra target. Like all of these things, like that rock being on your side of the location is a downside in the sense that it takes up a space for later. But if you're playing Rhino in your deck, you're probably using it for a specific reason. reason. I think this is a brilliant change. I think that it has a lot of unique synergies, and giving yourself one card isn't as detrimental as something like Debris, right? Where you're putting two rocks on your side of the board and her stat line isn't good. This is like an inverse of that. You're giving yourself a rock on purpose for good stats. I think this is cool. I really like this. I think it's going to... uh, add Rhino into a couple of decks, and in fact, right now, he's actually above a 50% win rate, so, like, that's awesome, you'll love to see it, man, I, I'm excited to play him, I have the Dan Hibb variant, so, um, I'm, I'm, I'm cooking up a deck, and we'll see how that goes, but this is cool, I, I, I really like when they do this. Overall, I do like this OTA, I'm still not jiving with the meta, I've been playing a lot of Conquest just to, like, satisfy my need for games, um, I was on a pretty decent streak with my Loki deck. But again, the problem is, it's not like the game is being an antagonist to me and like putting me up against decks. But it does feel that way sometimes, right? Like I'll be on a pretty decent win streak and then I'll just play Discord for six games in a row. And I'm like, I can't do that. Like at a certain point, you have to cut your losses and go, okay, maybe I'm just not going to rank up this season. I've made it to 90 for a couple of seasons in a row, but I think I'm just going to have to skip this one. I don't know. Sometimes I have to remind myself that, you know, when you're playing on the ladder, only a certain number of people can get to infinite. It's not meant for everybody. And in my case, I can't make myself play a meta deck and have fun with the game. So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, right? I'm such a hipster. I can't make myself... go to the depths of that and i'm also not good enough at the game to make the right decisions 100 of the time uh which means sometimes i'm just not going to climb um i think this game has a a good uh backup plan to that in that you know i there's a lot of things about the game that i enjoy besides winning i think conquest has a pretty good job of making it feel like it could be anybody's game at any time. It's just, it's a slog, right? I think having to do all of those rounds and then having to do multiple rounds of conquests in order to get a ticket is also a slog. So pros and cons overall, but that's enough about me. Thank you for listening. You can rate this podcast and leave me a comment either on YouTube or on your favorite podcasting platform. As a reminder, the Snap Judgments League is still going on and it's a lot of fun. I'm, I'm enjoying it so far. I played against a gentleman who was playing a deck similar to mine, and we had a really good time. I really enjoyed playing with him. So if there's one thing that you can remember, it's that I'm infinite. Thanks for listening.
Description
Kiernimbus talks about the newest card, Strange Supreme, as well as the latest OTA balance update.
Please rate this podcast so I know how I'm doing!
You can find me here: https://linktr.ee/kiernimbus
This podcast is a part of the Snap Judgments Podcasting Network! You can show us some support by checking out the Snap Judgments Youtube channel (@snapjudgments) or the Patreon (patreon.com/SnapJudgments).
Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
Hello! Can you understand me? Hello everyone, kier here, and welcome to the InfiNOT 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'm also a part of the Snap Judgements podcasting network, and I'm going to talk about Snap Decisions today. If you don't know, it's hosted by Joe, and he's your Snap DJ. He's a really cool guy. I love talking to him. I've been on his podcast several times now, and if you haven't watched his show yet, it's pretty unique. He goes over a couple of different segments in which he talks about comics, the new cards, goes over what's new that a shop, talks about some of the economics, and, I mean, most importantly, he's really entertaining to listen to. So if you haven't checked it out, I would definitely do that, and let's hop on to the show. So this week, we've got a new card in Strange Supreme, and we have an OTA balance update. That was a little surprising, but we'll talk about it once we get into it. So let's start with the basics here with Strange Supreme. Strange is a 2-2 that says, gains plus 2 power from merging. End of turn, merge one of your created cards into this. So when this card was being previewed, I think mostly everyone thought it would be good. Right, the idea of clearing your board space from even just random real- locations that give you rocks or raptors or whatever, right? Even that would make this card decent on its own. But the main appeal here is that if you play it in a clogged deck, you would get a huge benefit. What I don't think a lot of people were expecting is that this card might just be good almost everywhere, right? You throw it in Thanos, he gets huge. You throw it in like a Mockingbird deck with Mysterio, he gets huge. You throw it in Arishem, and he gets huge. Like, it's just, it's big. There is something to be said, right, about the idea that he himself is not getting that big. You're sort of transferring the power to him. It's very in flavor, right? Strain Supreme from the What If series consumes a bunch of powerful beings in order to get more powerful. So in that respect, I think they nailed the flavor of this card. But in terms of gameplay, it sort of means that... You know, he's not exactly like a 219 at the end of the game. He's more like a 2-7 who shifted over, or excuse me, like a 2-6 who shifted over some power from like some big cards. Because the plus two that he gains from merging is sort of his power. Now, that changes when you're talking about like debris, right? Because on her own, she's a 3-3 and then she throws two rocks on your side of the board. both of those get merged into Strange Supreme, and then that adds four power. So, like, in that respect, you know, it's a little more reasonable to think about Strange as a 2-6, maybe with some conditional things. But I think we can all agree, this card definitely earns its own spot in a deck. It definitely makes a huge difference to have this card, especially against Clog or against a number of other. lists so in that respect i think that this card is going to see a ton of play it's very fun the animation is cool i mean it's a slam dunk this is a five out of five release in terms of power i still don't know exactly where it lands yet uh at least on snap fan it's running a 53 and some change percent win rate which is good i mean that's solid that's what you want to see in a card but But yeah, I mean... I think they really nailed the design of this. It feels really good. I've been playing it in a list with Sentinels, and I've been having a lot of fun with that just because you can throw the Sentinel on something like Angela, and then the Sentinel disappears, and then Strange gets five power, which is like, it's nuts. So yeah, I'm having a lot of fun with this card. I think they really nailed the design. Okay, let's get on to the meat and potatoes. You know what it is. It is the OTA. And they addressed a couple of things that I think I've spoken about before. More specifically, they took a really old card that nobody's using and completely reworked it. I've talked about this before. So let's get into the details here. First up is Captain Carter going from a 4-3 to a 3-2. And I think when talking about this card, you have to be cognizant. of how much power she can add at a three cost. Right now, if you were to play her at her base and you put two cards behind her, she would be a 3-6, which would already be decent, right? But Surfer changes the conversation, right? Being able to boost this with Surfer and Gwenpool and a bunch of other stuff, right, makes this card extremely strong, especially when paired with things like US Agent, which makes the other side even weaker, right? Like, I think that this is going to make this card much, much better. I know that on her release, she wasn't doing that hot, but right now... Um, she's running a 55% win rate, which is nuts. That is an insanely good card. So yeah, I mean, it's a season pass card, so I think we should want it to be strong, but I'm a little scared. I'll admit, right? Even with one spectrum buff, you're talking about like a 312 without even trying. Um, so yeah, I mean, this is, this is incredible. And her synergy with Captain America and, um, you know, that sort of package gets even stronger because of the lower cost. I do think that three is the right cost for her, right? There's more of a chance that you're going to be able to put her in the front row as a three cost card. But I think, you know, that two power might be too much. I don't know. It's pretty easy to buffer. I think we'll have to see how things shake out. I do think this card is extremely strong, though. I'm glad that they made the change. Infinity Ultron is up next, and he's going from a 5-6 to a 5-8. And I actually, I think this is awesome. I was telling you guys that I really think that the best way to utilize Infinity Ultron is to buff his power. And so they're sort of doing that for me, right? They're sort of already adding two points, and that makes the base abilities of some of his stones particularly good. You know, like the Infinity Power Stone and Reality Stone. Those really matter to have those extra points. And so for that reason, I'm really, really happy that they changed this. You know, even doing the math on something like the Reality Stone, now at a base, when you play the Reality Stone, you're getting a 3-1 that puts down a 8-power drone, right? So you've functionally played a 3-9. And that feels a lot better than playing... a 3-7, which it was before. The same goes for the Infinity Power Stone, right? It's a 3-2 that doubled Infinity Ultron's power. So it added 6 to that. So it was essentially a 3-8. But now, since it's going to change Infinity Ultron's power to 16, it's now functionally a 3-10 by itself, right? So that's really good. Those are numbers that you want to see on something that you're... investing your turn six into the other stones do they're slightly more relevant to this right but like the infinity time stone and the infinity soul stone i i think have proven to be mediocre at best um the space stone has value now that he's bigger but it's not that noticeable right like it's it's the chances of the that winning you games is going to be a lot smaller so overall i i do think that this does improve the card but there are still some stones in here that obviously make him weaker than a lot of other options. So we'll have to see how it shakes out. He's still running, you know, a fairly low win rate, but I think it's a little bit higher than I've seen it. In my experience, I enjoy this deck, but I've talked about how right now on the ladder, it just feels like nothing's happening. Like I win some, I lose a bunch. I win some, I lose a bunch. and I just, I can't get any progress where I'm at. So, like, for me, I can't even tell the strength of this card because the lists that I play just aren't meta-relevant. I can't get past the wall that I'm up against. So, we'll have to see how this shakes out. Fastos is going from a 3-3 to a 3-4. Sam Wilson is going from a 2-3 to a 2-2. Scream is going from a 2-2 to a 2-1. SPDR is going from a 3-3 to a 3-4. That's from Penny Parker. And Toxin is going from a 2-1 to a 2-2. So these are just flat number changes, which is why I'm sort of stringing them all together. But I'm going to go through them individually, of course. So starting with Fastos here. Does 3-4 make Fastos good? In a sense, right? Yeah. Like if... you do just the flat math and remember it's a 50 50 on whether you're reducing the cost or adding power but if you were to add power to three cards and you were to you know play those three cards you'd be looking at a 310, right? That's pretty good. The problem is, it doesn't always happen that way. And also, if you don't get Vastos earlier in the game, he's significantly worse. I don't know where they want this card to be. If they want him to be more impactful at his higher cost than something like an Okoye, his effect should feel that way, right? It should feel more impactful, but sometimes you just don't get something valuable. Um, which is, you know, I've talked about reliability on certain cards. Like, Infinity Ultron isn't reliable, and I think Fast Dose is the same way. It isn't reliable, and so a lot of people just don't run it. I don't think this point of power is going to change that. Uh, these next two that I'm going to talk about are more relevant, right? Sam Wilson, Captain America, going to a 2-2 does change the math. It makes him feel worse to play later on. Because 2-3 is just, it's fine. It's like a Jeff. Right? You're not mad to play Jeff. And so he could oftentimes, you know, get that three power in a lane to close something off, even if you didn't get him down early. I think now it's more important to. In order to get that value, you need to probably move the shield twice on him to get, you know, that impactful feeling. Getting him to a 2-6 is sort of the ideal. So, I mean... Don't get me wrong, you're not mad about a 2-4, but it does not feel as good. So I think in that respect, I think they nailed it, right? I'm pretty happy with this. I think if they were to make this card any worse, it sort of makes the identity of this card go away. You'll probably never see it again. So I think this is the right call. I think 2-2 is where he should be. Scream is going from... a uh a two power card to two one and i think i think this is more than warranted i mean she is i think the only card in the game that scales by a factor of four so having her start at a low stat line makes sense she doesn't need to start at any honestly she could be a two zero and i think she'd still be fantastic um i think part of the the psychological effect people forget about is like every time scream moves a card she is gaining four power she if she started at zero and she were to move two cards she'd be a two eight that's insane that's nuts that's that's like beyond crazy so i like two one fine makes sense to me i think she should be two zero frankly her deck has proven to be a staple in the meta and one that does not have a problem with power. Okay, so moving on to SPDR from Penny Parker. Going to a 3-4 does matter for this card for a number of reasons, right? Merging it to something with more power can sometimes scale it up to higher numbers. Like doing it on Penny herself makes this a 3-4 plus a 2-3. So you're effectively getting a 5-7. That's like a vision, almost, right? Like it's almost as good as vision. And of course you get that extra power from merging with Penny, right? So in that respect, I think this card is is much much better Will it see more play? I don't know. You know, it's like a heart. It's a hard ask like where does this fit in? In your deck like why are you using penny? For a lot of people that was because of Wiccan But I don't I don't know where else you would you would need this card to exist maybe in a move deck But that's a lot of investment when you could just play down a Vulture and a Ghost Spider, right, and get way bigger numbers. So, like, I don't know. I don't know where this card fits in. It's a cool effect. It's a cool, it's a neat idea. It's just, like, how do we make this relevant? I guess we'll just have to see. Maybe there's somebody more creative than me that can put something together. And lastly, it's Toxin going to two power, which is a little odd to me. I thought he was already, like, a pretty good card. I mean, he was running like, you know, 55% win rate at one point. So they explain in the notes that they explicitly want to make Toxin more relevant. Because there are certain archetypes in the game that they want to go in and out of popularity. That's just odd to me. It's odd. Like, you were already getting a good amount of stats here. And yeah, he wasn't reducing the cost of those cards, but you were already playing a low curve anyway. So. I don't know. I see where they were going with this. I just don't think that the buff was needed. Okay, and this I've been saving for last because it is the coolest. They're moving Rhino. Yeah, you've probably never, never expected to hear that name in 2025. Rhino is moving from a 3-3 to a 3-6, and they're changing his effect to, on reveal, add a rock to your side of this location. So, I mean, part of me misses the old effect. It was one of the only reliable location changes in the game. But the fact is, he wasn't being played. Now, I'm going to argue that's because of his stat line. I think if you even made him a 3-4, people might consider it. But, hey, this is the direction that they want to go, and I think his effect right now is particularly good. A 3-6 is already good, right? Just a flat 3-6 is good value. We have cards like Speed in the game that will exceed that, but the advantage here is you can play this at any time. If you play it as the last card in the lane, You don't care about the rock. And if you do care about the rock, then this is a beneficial effect, right? So if you add the rock to your location and you have Mockingbird in your deck, that's a discount. If you have Viper in your deck, that's a clog card. If you have Killmonger in your deck, that's an extra target. Like all of these things, like that rock being on your side of the location is a downside in the sense that it takes up a space for later. But if you're playing Rhino in your deck, you're probably using it for a specific reason. reason. I think this is a brilliant change. I think that it has a lot of unique synergies, and giving yourself one card isn't as detrimental as something like Debris, right? Where you're putting two rocks on your side of the board and her stat line isn't good. This is like an inverse of that. You're giving yourself a rock on purpose for good stats. I think this is cool. I really like this. I think it's going to... uh, add Rhino into a couple of decks, and in fact, right now, he's actually above a 50% win rate, so, like, that's awesome, you'll love to see it, man, I, I'm excited to play him, I have the Dan Hibb variant, so, um, I'm, I'm, I'm cooking up a deck, and we'll see how that goes, but this is cool, I, I, I really like when they do this. Overall, I do like this OTA, I'm still not jiving with the meta, I've been playing a lot of Conquest just to, like, satisfy my need for games, um, I was on a pretty decent streak with my Loki deck. But again, the problem is, it's not like the game is being an antagonist to me and like putting me up against decks. But it does feel that way sometimes, right? Like I'll be on a pretty decent win streak and then I'll just play Discord for six games in a row. And I'm like, I can't do that. Like at a certain point, you have to cut your losses and go, okay, maybe I'm just not going to rank up this season. I've made it to 90 for a couple of seasons in a row, but I think I'm just going to have to skip this one. I don't know. Sometimes I have to remind myself that, you know, when you're playing on the ladder, only a certain number of people can get to infinite. It's not meant for everybody. And in my case, I can't make myself play a meta deck and have fun with the game. So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, right? I'm such a hipster. I can't make myself... go to the depths of that and i'm also not good enough at the game to make the right decisions 100 of the time uh which means sometimes i'm just not going to climb um i think this game has a a good uh backup plan to that in that you know i there's a lot of things about the game that i enjoy besides winning i think conquest has a pretty good job of making it feel like it could be anybody's game at any time. It's just, it's a slog, right? I think having to do all of those rounds and then having to do multiple rounds of conquests in order to get a ticket is also a slog. So pros and cons overall, but that's enough about me. Thank you for listening. You can rate this podcast and leave me a comment either on YouTube or on your favorite podcasting platform. As a reminder, the Snap Judgments League is still going on and it's a lot of fun. I'm, I'm enjoying it so far. I played against a gentleman who was playing a deck similar to mine, and we had a really good time. I really enjoyed playing with him. So if there's one thing that you can remember, it's that I'm infinite. Thanks for listening.
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Kiernimbus talks about the newest card, Strange Supreme, as well as the latest OTA balance update.
Please rate this podcast so I know how I'm doing!
You can find me here: https://linktr.ee/kiernimbus
This podcast is a part of the Snap Judgments Podcasting Network! You can show us some support by checking out the Snap Judgments Youtube channel (@snapjudgments) or the Patreon (patreon.com/SnapJudgments).
Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
Hello! Can you understand me? Hello everyone, kier here, and welcome to the InfiNOT 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'm also a part of the Snap Judgements podcasting network, and I'm going to talk about Snap Decisions today. If you don't know, it's hosted by Joe, and he's your Snap DJ. He's a really cool guy. I love talking to him. I've been on his podcast several times now, and if you haven't watched his show yet, it's pretty unique. He goes over a couple of different segments in which he talks about comics, the new cards, goes over what's new that a shop, talks about some of the economics, and, I mean, most importantly, he's really entertaining to listen to. So if you haven't checked it out, I would definitely do that, and let's hop on to the show. So this week, we've got a new card in Strange Supreme, and we have an OTA balance update. That was a little surprising, but we'll talk about it once we get into it. So let's start with the basics here with Strange Supreme. Strange is a 2-2 that says, gains plus 2 power from merging. End of turn, merge one of your created cards into this. So when this card was being previewed, I think mostly everyone thought it would be good. Right, the idea of clearing your board space from even just random real- locations that give you rocks or raptors or whatever, right? Even that would make this card decent on its own. But the main appeal here is that if you play it in a clogged deck, you would get a huge benefit. What I don't think a lot of people were expecting is that this card might just be good almost everywhere, right? You throw it in Thanos, he gets huge. You throw it in like a Mockingbird deck with Mysterio, he gets huge. You throw it in Arishem, and he gets huge. Like, it's just, it's big. There is something to be said, right, about the idea that he himself is not getting that big. You're sort of transferring the power to him. It's very in flavor, right? Strain Supreme from the What If series consumes a bunch of powerful beings in order to get more powerful. So in that respect, I think they nailed the flavor of this card. But in terms of gameplay, it sort of means that... You know, he's not exactly like a 219 at the end of the game. He's more like a 2-7 who shifted over, or excuse me, like a 2-6 who shifted over some power from like some big cards. Because the plus two that he gains from merging is sort of his power. Now, that changes when you're talking about like debris, right? Because on her own, she's a 3-3 and then she throws two rocks on your side of the board. both of those get merged into Strange Supreme, and then that adds four power. So, like, in that respect, you know, it's a little more reasonable to think about Strange as a 2-6, maybe with some conditional things. But I think we can all agree, this card definitely earns its own spot in a deck. It definitely makes a huge difference to have this card, especially against Clog or against a number of other. lists so in that respect i think that this card is going to see a ton of play it's very fun the animation is cool i mean it's a slam dunk this is a five out of five release in terms of power i still don't know exactly where it lands yet uh at least on snap fan it's running a 53 and some change percent win rate which is good i mean that's solid that's what you want to see in a card but But yeah, I mean... I think they really nailed the design of this. It feels really good. I've been playing it in a list with Sentinels, and I've been having a lot of fun with that just because you can throw the Sentinel on something like Angela, and then the Sentinel disappears, and then Strange gets five power, which is like, it's nuts. So yeah, I'm having a lot of fun with this card. I think they really nailed the design. Okay, let's get on to the meat and potatoes. You know what it is. It is the OTA. And they addressed a couple of things that I think I've spoken about before. More specifically, they took a really old card that nobody's using and completely reworked it. I've talked about this before. So let's get into the details here. First up is Captain Carter going from a 4-3 to a 3-2. And I think when talking about this card, you have to be cognizant. of how much power she can add at a three cost. Right now, if you were to play her at her base and you put two cards behind her, she would be a 3-6, which would already be decent, right? But Surfer changes the conversation, right? Being able to boost this with Surfer and Gwenpool and a bunch of other stuff, right, makes this card extremely strong, especially when paired with things like US Agent, which makes the other side even weaker, right? Like, I think that this is going to make this card much, much better. I know that on her release, she wasn't doing that hot, but right now... Um, she's running a 55% win rate, which is nuts. That is an insanely good card. So yeah, I mean, it's a season pass card, so I think we should want it to be strong, but I'm a little scared. I'll admit, right? Even with one spectrum buff, you're talking about like a 312 without even trying. Um, so yeah, I mean, this is, this is incredible. And her synergy with Captain America and, um, you know, that sort of package gets even stronger because of the lower cost. I do think that three is the right cost for her, right? There's more of a chance that you're going to be able to put her in the front row as a three cost card. But I think, you know, that two power might be too much. I don't know. It's pretty easy to buffer. I think we'll have to see how things shake out. I do think this card is extremely strong, though. I'm glad that they made the change. Infinity Ultron is up next, and he's going from a 5-6 to a 5-8. And I actually, I think this is awesome. I was telling you guys that I really think that the best way to utilize Infinity Ultron is to buff his power. And so they're sort of doing that for me, right? They're sort of already adding two points, and that makes the base abilities of some of his stones particularly good. You know, like the Infinity Power Stone and Reality Stone. Those really matter to have those extra points. And so for that reason, I'm really, really happy that they changed this. You know, even doing the math on something like the Reality Stone, now at a base, when you play the Reality Stone, you're getting a 3-1 that puts down a 8-power drone, right? So you've functionally played a 3-9. And that feels a lot better than playing... a 3-7, which it was before. The same goes for the Infinity Power Stone, right? It's a 3-2 that doubled Infinity Ultron's power. So it added 6 to that. So it was essentially a 3-8. But now, since it's going to change Infinity Ultron's power to 16, it's now functionally a 3-10 by itself, right? So that's really good. Those are numbers that you want to see on something that you're... investing your turn six into the other stones do they're slightly more relevant to this right but like the infinity time stone and the infinity soul stone i i think have proven to be mediocre at best um the space stone has value now that he's bigger but it's not that noticeable right like it's it's the chances of the that winning you games is going to be a lot smaller so overall i i do think that this does improve the card but there are still some stones in here that obviously make him weaker than a lot of other options. So we'll have to see how it shakes out. He's still running, you know, a fairly low win rate, but I think it's a little bit higher than I've seen it. In my experience, I enjoy this deck, but I've talked about how right now on the ladder, it just feels like nothing's happening. Like I win some, I lose a bunch. I win some, I lose a bunch. and I just, I can't get any progress where I'm at. So, like, for me, I can't even tell the strength of this card because the lists that I play just aren't meta-relevant. I can't get past the wall that I'm up against. So, we'll have to see how this shakes out. Fastos is going from a 3-3 to a 3-4. Sam Wilson is going from a 2-3 to a 2-2. Scream is going from a 2-2 to a 2-1. SPDR is going from a 3-3 to a 3-4. That's from Penny Parker. And Toxin is going from a 2-1 to a 2-2. So these are just flat number changes, which is why I'm sort of stringing them all together. But I'm going to go through them individually, of course. So starting with Fastos here. Does 3-4 make Fastos good? In a sense, right? Yeah. Like if... you do just the flat math and remember it's a 50 50 on whether you're reducing the cost or adding power but if you were to add power to three cards and you were to you know play those three cards you'd be looking at a 310, right? That's pretty good. The problem is, it doesn't always happen that way. And also, if you don't get Vastos earlier in the game, he's significantly worse. I don't know where they want this card to be. If they want him to be more impactful at his higher cost than something like an Okoye, his effect should feel that way, right? It should feel more impactful, but sometimes you just don't get something valuable. Um, which is, you know, I've talked about reliability on certain cards. Like, Infinity Ultron isn't reliable, and I think Fast Dose is the same way. It isn't reliable, and so a lot of people just don't run it. I don't think this point of power is going to change that. Uh, these next two that I'm going to talk about are more relevant, right? Sam Wilson, Captain America, going to a 2-2 does change the math. It makes him feel worse to play later on. Because 2-3 is just, it's fine. It's like a Jeff. Right? You're not mad to play Jeff. And so he could oftentimes, you know, get that three power in a lane to close something off, even if you didn't get him down early. I think now it's more important to. In order to get that value, you need to probably move the shield twice on him to get, you know, that impactful feeling. Getting him to a 2-6 is sort of the ideal. So, I mean... Don't get me wrong, you're not mad about a 2-4, but it does not feel as good. So I think in that respect, I think they nailed it, right? I'm pretty happy with this. I think if they were to make this card any worse, it sort of makes the identity of this card go away. You'll probably never see it again. So I think this is the right call. I think 2-2 is where he should be. Scream is going from... a uh a two power card to two one and i think i think this is more than warranted i mean she is i think the only card in the game that scales by a factor of four so having her start at a low stat line makes sense she doesn't need to start at any honestly she could be a two zero and i think she'd still be fantastic um i think part of the the psychological effect people forget about is like every time scream moves a card she is gaining four power she if she started at zero and she were to move two cards she'd be a two eight that's insane that's nuts that's that's like beyond crazy so i like two one fine makes sense to me i think she should be two zero frankly her deck has proven to be a staple in the meta and one that does not have a problem with power. Okay, so moving on to SPDR from Penny Parker. Going to a 3-4 does matter for this card for a number of reasons, right? Merging it to something with more power can sometimes scale it up to higher numbers. Like doing it on Penny herself makes this a 3-4 plus a 2-3. So you're effectively getting a 5-7. That's like a vision, almost, right? Like it's almost as good as vision. And of course you get that extra power from merging with Penny, right? So in that respect, I think this card is is much much better Will it see more play? I don't know. You know, it's like a heart. It's a hard ask like where does this fit in? In your deck like why are you using penny? For a lot of people that was because of Wiccan But I don't I don't know where else you would you would need this card to exist maybe in a move deck But that's a lot of investment when you could just play down a Vulture and a Ghost Spider, right, and get way bigger numbers. So, like, I don't know. I don't know where this card fits in. It's a cool effect. It's a cool, it's a neat idea. It's just, like, how do we make this relevant? I guess we'll just have to see. Maybe there's somebody more creative than me that can put something together. And lastly, it's Toxin going to two power, which is a little odd to me. I thought he was already, like, a pretty good card. I mean, he was running like, you know, 55% win rate at one point. So they explain in the notes that they explicitly want to make Toxin more relevant. Because there are certain archetypes in the game that they want to go in and out of popularity. That's just odd to me. It's odd. Like, you were already getting a good amount of stats here. And yeah, he wasn't reducing the cost of those cards, but you were already playing a low curve anyway. So. I don't know. I see where they were going with this. I just don't think that the buff was needed. Okay, and this I've been saving for last because it is the coolest. They're moving Rhino. Yeah, you've probably never, never expected to hear that name in 2025. Rhino is moving from a 3-3 to a 3-6, and they're changing his effect to, on reveal, add a rock to your side of this location. So, I mean, part of me misses the old effect. It was one of the only reliable location changes in the game. But the fact is, he wasn't being played. Now, I'm going to argue that's because of his stat line. I think if you even made him a 3-4, people might consider it. But, hey, this is the direction that they want to go, and I think his effect right now is particularly good. A 3-6 is already good, right? Just a flat 3-6 is good value. We have cards like Speed in the game that will exceed that, but the advantage here is you can play this at any time. If you play it as the last card in the lane, You don't care about the rock. And if you do care about the rock, then this is a beneficial effect, right? So if you add the rock to your location and you have Mockingbird in your deck, that's a discount. If you have Viper in your deck, that's a clog card. If you have Killmonger in your deck, that's an extra target. Like all of these things, like that rock being on your side of the location is a downside in the sense that it takes up a space for later. But if you're playing Rhino in your deck, you're probably using it for a specific reason. reason. I think this is a brilliant change. I think that it has a lot of unique synergies, and giving yourself one card isn't as detrimental as something like Debris, right? Where you're putting two rocks on your side of the board and her stat line isn't good. This is like an inverse of that. You're giving yourself a rock on purpose for good stats. I think this is cool. I really like this. I think it's going to... uh, add Rhino into a couple of decks, and in fact, right now, he's actually above a 50% win rate, so, like, that's awesome, you'll love to see it, man, I, I'm excited to play him, I have the Dan Hibb variant, so, um, I'm, I'm, I'm cooking up a deck, and we'll see how that goes, but this is cool, I, I, I really like when they do this. Overall, I do like this OTA, I'm still not jiving with the meta, I've been playing a lot of Conquest just to, like, satisfy my need for games, um, I was on a pretty decent streak with my Loki deck. But again, the problem is, it's not like the game is being an antagonist to me and like putting me up against decks. But it does feel that way sometimes, right? Like I'll be on a pretty decent win streak and then I'll just play Discord for six games in a row. And I'm like, I can't do that. Like at a certain point, you have to cut your losses and go, okay, maybe I'm just not going to rank up this season. I've made it to 90 for a couple of seasons in a row, but I think I'm just going to have to skip this one. I don't know. Sometimes I have to remind myself that, you know, when you're playing on the ladder, only a certain number of people can get to infinite. It's not meant for everybody. And in my case, I can't make myself play a meta deck and have fun with the game. So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, right? I'm such a hipster. I can't make myself... go to the depths of that and i'm also not good enough at the game to make the right decisions 100 of the time uh which means sometimes i'm just not going to climb um i think this game has a a good uh backup plan to that in that you know i there's a lot of things about the game that i enjoy besides winning i think conquest has a pretty good job of making it feel like it could be anybody's game at any time. It's just, it's a slog, right? I think having to do all of those rounds and then having to do multiple rounds of conquests in order to get a ticket is also a slog. So pros and cons overall, but that's enough about me. Thank you for listening. You can rate this podcast and leave me a comment either on YouTube or on your favorite podcasting platform. As a reminder, the Snap Judgments League is still going on and it's a lot of fun. I'm, I'm enjoying it so far. I played against a gentleman who was playing a deck similar to mine, and we had a really good time. I really enjoyed playing with him. So if there's one thing that you can remember, it's that I'm infinite. Thanks for listening.
Description
Kiernimbus talks about the newest card, Strange Supreme, as well as the latest OTA balance update.
Please rate this podcast so I know how I'm doing!
You can find me here: https://linktr.ee/kiernimbus
This podcast is a part of the Snap Judgments Podcasting Network! You can show us some support by checking out the Snap Judgments Youtube channel (@snapjudgments) or the Patreon (patreon.com/SnapJudgments).
Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
Hello! Can you understand me? Hello everyone, kier here, and welcome to the InfiNOT 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'm also a part of the Snap Judgements podcasting network, and I'm going to talk about Snap Decisions today. If you don't know, it's hosted by Joe, and he's your Snap DJ. He's a really cool guy. I love talking to him. I've been on his podcast several times now, and if you haven't watched his show yet, it's pretty unique. He goes over a couple of different segments in which he talks about comics, the new cards, goes over what's new that a shop, talks about some of the economics, and, I mean, most importantly, he's really entertaining to listen to. So if you haven't checked it out, I would definitely do that, and let's hop on to the show. So this week, we've got a new card in Strange Supreme, and we have an OTA balance update. That was a little surprising, but we'll talk about it once we get into it. So let's start with the basics here with Strange Supreme. Strange is a 2-2 that says, gains plus 2 power from merging. End of turn, merge one of your created cards into this. So when this card was being previewed, I think mostly everyone thought it would be good. Right, the idea of clearing your board space from even just random real- locations that give you rocks or raptors or whatever, right? Even that would make this card decent on its own. But the main appeal here is that if you play it in a clogged deck, you would get a huge benefit. What I don't think a lot of people were expecting is that this card might just be good almost everywhere, right? You throw it in Thanos, he gets huge. You throw it in like a Mockingbird deck with Mysterio, he gets huge. You throw it in Arishem, and he gets huge. Like, it's just, it's big. There is something to be said, right, about the idea that he himself is not getting that big. You're sort of transferring the power to him. It's very in flavor, right? Strain Supreme from the What If series consumes a bunch of powerful beings in order to get more powerful. So in that respect, I think they nailed the flavor of this card. But in terms of gameplay, it sort of means that... You know, he's not exactly like a 219 at the end of the game. He's more like a 2-7 who shifted over, or excuse me, like a 2-6 who shifted over some power from like some big cards. Because the plus two that he gains from merging is sort of his power. Now, that changes when you're talking about like debris, right? Because on her own, she's a 3-3 and then she throws two rocks on your side of the board. both of those get merged into Strange Supreme, and then that adds four power. So, like, in that respect, you know, it's a little more reasonable to think about Strange as a 2-6, maybe with some conditional things. But I think we can all agree, this card definitely earns its own spot in a deck. It definitely makes a huge difference to have this card, especially against Clog or against a number of other. lists so in that respect i think that this card is going to see a ton of play it's very fun the animation is cool i mean it's a slam dunk this is a five out of five release in terms of power i still don't know exactly where it lands yet uh at least on snap fan it's running a 53 and some change percent win rate which is good i mean that's solid that's what you want to see in a card but But yeah, I mean... I think they really nailed the design of this. It feels really good. I've been playing it in a list with Sentinels, and I've been having a lot of fun with that just because you can throw the Sentinel on something like Angela, and then the Sentinel disappears, and then Strange gets five power, which is like, it's nuts. So yeah, I'm having a lot of fun with this card. I think they really nailed the design. Okay, let's get on to the meat and potatoes. You know what it is. It is the OTA. And they addressed a couple of things that I think I've spoken about before. More specifically, they took a really old card that nobody's using and completely reworked it. I've talked about this before. So let's get into the details here. First up is Captain Carter going from a 4-3 to a 3-2. And I think when talking about this card, you have to be cognizant. of how much power she can add at a three cost. Right now, if you were to play her at her base and you put two cards behind her, she would be a 3-6, which would already be decent, right? But Surfer changes the conversation, right? Being able to boost this with Surfer and Gwenpool and a bunch of other stuff, right, makes this card extremely strong, especially when paired with things like US Agent, which makes the other side even weaker, right? Like, I think that this is going to make this card much, much better. I know that on her release, she wasn't doing that hot, but right now... Um, she's running a 55% win rate, which is nuts. That is an insanely good card. So yeah, I mean, it's a season pass card, so I think we should want it to be strong, but I'm a little scared. I'll admit, right? Even with one spectrum buff, you're talking about like a 312 without even trying. Um, so yeah, I mean, this is, this is incredible. And her synergy with Captain America and, um, you know, that sort of package gets even stronger because of the lower cost. I do think that three is the right cost for her, right? There's more of a chance that you're going to be able to put her in the front row as a three cost card. But I think, you know, that two power might be too much. I don't know. It's pretty easy to buffer. I think we'll have to see how things shake out. I do think this card is extremely strong, though. I'm glad that they made the change. Infinity Ultron is up next, and he's going from a 5-6 to a 5-8. And I actually, I think this is awesome. I was telling you guys that I really think that the best way to utilize Infinity Ultron is to buff his power. And so they're sort of doing that for me, right? They're sort of already adding two points, and that makes the base abilities of some of his stones particularly good. You know, like the Infinity Power Stone and Reality Stone. Those really matter to have those extra points. And so for that reason, I'm really, really happy that they changed this. You know, even doing the math on something like the Reality Stone, now at a base, when you play the Reality Stone, you're getting a 3-1 that puts down a 8-power drone, right? So you've functionally played a 3-9. And that feels a lot better than playing... a 3-7, which it was before. The same goes for the Infinity Power Stone, right? It's a 3-2 that doubled Infinity Ultron's power. So it added 6 to that. So it was essentially a 3-8. But now, since it's going to change Infinity Ultron's power to 16, it's now functionally a 3-10 by itself, right? So that's really good. Those are numbers that you want to see on something that you're... investing your turn six into the other stones do they're slightly more relevant to this right but like the infinity time stone and the infinity soul stone i i think have proven to be mediocre at best um the space stone has value now that he's bigger but it's not that noticeable right like it's it's the chances of the that winning you games is going to be a lot smaller so overall i i do think that this does improve the card but there are still some stones in here that obviously make him weaker than a lot of other options. So we'll have to see how it shakes out. He's still running, you know, a fairly low win rate, but I think it's a little bit higher than I've seen it. In my experience, I enjoy this deck, but I've talked about how right now on the ladder, it just feels like nothing's happening. Like I win some, I lose a bunch. I win some, I lose a bunch. and I just, I can't get any progress where I'm at. So, like, for me, I can't even tell the strength of this card because the lists that I play just aren't meta-relevant. I can't get past the wall that I'm up against. So, we'll have to see how this shakes out. Fastos is going from a 3-3 to a 3-4. Sam Wilson is going from a 2-3 to a 2-2. Scream is going from a 2-2 to a 2-1. SPDR is going from a 3-3 to a 3-4. That's from Penny Parker. And Toxin is going from a 2-1 to a 2-2. So these are just flat number changes, which is why I'm sort of stringing them all together. But I'm going to go through them individually, of course. So starting with Fastos here. Does 3-4 make Fastos good? In a sense, right? Yeah. Like if... you do just the flat math and remember it's a 50 50 on whether you're reducing the cost or adding power but if you were to add power to three cards and you were to you know play those three cards you'd be looking at a 310, right? That's pretty good. The problem is, it doesn't always happen that way. And also, if you don't get Vastos earlier in the game, he's significantly worse. I don't know where they want this card to be. If they want him to be more impactful at his higher cost than something like an Okoye, his effect should feel that way, right? It should feel more impactful, but sometimes you just don't get something valuable. Um, which is, you know, I've talked about reliability on certain cards. Like, Infinity Ultron isn't reliable, and I think Fast Dose is the same way. It isn't reliable, and so a lot of people just don't run it. I don't think this point of power is going to change that. Uh, these next two that I'm going to talk about are more relevant, right? Sam Wilson, Captain America, going to a 2-2 does change the math. It makes him feel worse to play later on. Because 2-3 is just, it's fine. It's like a Jeff. Right? You're not mad to play Jeff. And so he could oftentimes, you know, get that three power in a lane to close something off, even if you didn't get him down early. I think now it's more important to. In order to get that value, you need to probably move the shield twice on him to get, you know, that impactful feeling. Getting him to a 2-6 is sort of the ideal. So, I mean... Don't get me wrong, you're not mad about a 2-4, but it does not feel as good. So I think in that respect, I think they nailed it, right? I'm pretty happy with this. I think if they were to make this card any worse, it sort of makes the identity of this card go away. You'll probably never see it again. So I think this is the right call. I think 2-2 is where he should be. Scream is going from... a uh a two power card to two one and i think i think this is more than warranted i mean she is i think the only card in the game that scales by a factor of four so having her start at a low stat line makes sense she doesn't need to start at any honestly she could be a two zero and i think she'd still be fantastic um i think part of the the psychological effect people forget about is like every time scream moves a card she is gaining four power she if she started at zero and she were to move two cards she'd be a two eight that's insane that's nuts that's that's like beyond crazy so i like two one fine makes sense to me i think she should be two zero frankly her deck has proven to be a staple in the meta and one that does not have a problem with power. Okay, so moving on to SPDR from Penny Parker. Going to a 3-4 does matter for this card for a number of reasons, right? Merging it to something with more power can sometimes scale it up to higher numbers. Like doing it on Penny herself makes this a 3-4 plus a 2-3. So you're effectively getting a 5-7. That's like a vision, almost, right? Like it's almost as good as vision. And of course you get that extra power from merging with Penny, right? So in that respect, I think this card is is much much better Will it see more play? I don't know. You know, it's like a heart. It's a hard ask like where does this fit in? In your deck like why are you using penny? For a lot of people that was because of Wiccan But I don't I don't know where else you would you would need this card to exist maybe in a move deck But that's a lot of investment when you could just play down a Vulture and a Ghost Spider, right, and get way bigger numbers. So, like, I don't know. I don't know where this card fits in. It's a cool effect. It's a cool, it's a neat idea. It's just, like, how do we make this relevant? I guess we'll just have to see. Maybe there's somebody more creative than me that can put something together. And lastly, it's Toxin going to two power, which is a little odd to me. I thought he was already, like, a pretty good card. I mean, he was running like, you know, 55% win rate at one point. So they explain in the notes that they explicitly want to make Toxin more relevant. Because there are certain archetypes in the game that they want to go in and out of popularity. That's just odd to me. It's odd. Like, you were already getting a good amount of stats here. And yeah, he wasn't reducing the cost of those cards, but you were already playing a low curve anyway. So. I don't know. I see where they were going with this. I just don't think that the buff was needed. Okay, and this I've been saving for last because it is the coolest. They're moving Rhino. Yeah, you've probably never, never expected to hear that name in 2025. Rhino is moving from a 3-3 to a 3-6, and they're changing his effect to, on reveal, add a rock to your side of this location. So, I mean, part of me misses the old effect. It was one of the only reliable location changes in the game. But the fact is, he wasn't being played. Now, I'm going to argue that's because of his stat line. I think if you even made him a 3-4, people might consider it. But, hey, this is the direction that they want to go, and I think his effect right now is particularly good. A 3-6 is already good, right? Just a flat 3-6 is good value. We have cards like Speed in the game that will exceed that, but the advantage here is you can play this at any time. If you play it as the last card in the lane, You don't care about the rock. And if you do care about the rock, then this is a beneficial effect, right? So if you add the rock to your location and you have Mockingbird in your deck, that's a discount. If you have Viper in your deck, that's a clog card. If you have Killmonger in your deck, that's an extra target. Like all of these things, like that rock being on your side of the location is a downside in the sense that it takes up a space for later. But if you're playing Rhino in your deck, you're probably using it for a specific reason. reason. I think this is a brilliant change. I think that it has a lot of unique synergies, and giving yourself one card isn't as detrimental as something like Debris, right? Where you're putting two rocks on your side of the board and her stat line isn't good. This is like an inverse of that. You're giving yourself a rock on purpose for good stats. I think this is cool. I really like this. I think it's going to... uh, add Rhino into a couple of decks, and in fact, right now, he's actually above a 50% win rate, so, like, that's awesome, you'll love to see it, man, I, I'm excited to play him, I have the Dan Hibb variant, so, um, I'm, I'm, I'm cooking up a deck, and we'll see how that goes, but this is cool, I, I, I really like when they do this. Overall, I do like this OTA, I'm still not jiving with the meta, I've been playing a lot of Conquest just to, like, satisfy my need for games, um, I was on a pretty decent streak with my Loki deck. But again, the problem is, it's not like the game is being an antagonist to me and like putting me up against decks. But it does feel that way sometimes, right? Like I'll be on a pretty decent win streak and then I'll just play Discord for six games in a row. And I'm like, I can't do that. Like at a certain point, you have to cut your losses and go, okay, maybe I'm just not going to rank up this season. I've made it to 90 for a couple of seasons in a row, but I think I'm just going to have to skip this one. I don't know. Sometimes I have to remind myself that, you know, when you're playing on the ladder, only a certain number of people can get to infinite. It's not meant for everybody. And in my case, I can't make myself play a meta deck and have fun with the game. So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, right? I'm such a hipster. I can't make myself... go to the depths of that and i'm also not good enough at the game to make the right decisions 100 of the time uh which means sometimes i'm just not going to climb um i think this game has a a good uh backup plan to that in that you know i there's a lot of things about the game that i enjoy besides winning i think conquest has a pretty good job of making it feel like it could be anybody's game at any time. It's just, it's a slog, right? I think having to do all of those rounds and then having to do multiple rounds of conquests in order to get a ticket is also a slog. So pros and cons overall, but that's enough about me. Thank you for listening. You can rate this podcast and leave me a comment either on YouTube or on your favorite podcasting platform. As a reminder, the Snap Judgments League is still going on and it's a lot of fun. I'm, I'm enjoying it so far. I played against a gentleman who was playing a deck similar to mine, and we had a really good time. I really enjoyed playing with him. So if there's one thing that you can remember, it's that I'm infinite. Thanks for listening.
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