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Kiernimbus talks about the newest card Xorn and the most recent OTA update.

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Transcription

• Speaker #0

  That has spanned multiple podcasts and has led to the creation of some pretty amazing stuff. If you have not checked out that podcast, it is pretty incredible. Pulse Glazer and Roy are the usual hosts, and they usually bring a ton of very talented and creative people. And I'm not just saying that because I'm biased, but I am kind of biased. This is going to turn into a plug here. If you didn't know, I actually just was featured on an episode of Snap Judgments. So if you want to check me out on a longer form kind of podcast scenario, that is a place to do it. They also talked about the Golden Gauntlet there. And we had Super Tech God, Nick Degree Geek, and Gunny T there to sort of give their perspective on the whole thing. So if you have not checked it out, definitely do. Those guys are great. Now, let's hop into it. So, we're back to OTAs, everybody. We have survived the long, arduous drought of changes, and I'm like, I'm relieved, but when we get into the actual changes, I feel like they could have gone a little harder, but they did target the things that I think needed targeted. So, we'll definitely talk about the OTA, and then of course we did have a new card release with Zor. So, let's discuss those, shall we? Zorn is a 2-3 that says, after any 3 or 4 cost card is played here, move it to another location. Now I'll be, you know, the first to admit, I was expecting this card to be really bad. Like, maybe worst of the month. And I think part of that was, I just didn't see the utility of his movement as a bonus for most cards, right? The only two cards in the game that really interact with this are Vulture and Redwing, and I thought that that would be too limiting for him to really see play, but I think this card is niche, it's interesting, and it's probably secretly good. I think that Zorn actually falls into a very similar place as Quake, where Quake is a card that has... consistently shown itself to be very useful it can win you games but it doesn't win you every game and there are other cards that are just much more appealing to play in your deck right like if you're including quake in your deck you're sort of sacrificing something that might be more synergistic um in order to make that happen but there's still a ton of value to be had so i think i'd come around on this card i think it's sneaky good I'm not personally going to get it. I've been saving my tokens this month. I feel like, given the cards that are coming up soon, I should probably save my resources, and the movement sort of archetype is not my deal. But I would say, if you are trying to be collection complete or semi-collection complete, this is a decent card to grab. On SnapFan, it's running just over a 50% win rate, but it's also only been seen in 0.78 games. That is a horrendously small sample size, and I think it could get better if more people were experimenting with the card. So I think that there's much more to be seen with this, and I'm definitely excited to see where this card goes. I think the defensive capabilities of this to move certain cards out of the lane, like, I think all of us probably underestimate just how many... threes and fours you want to play at the end of the game this card completely denies that in certain locations too it can be really really powerful um the first one that comes to mind for me is like madripoor right because that rewards the highest cost card but for two turns you're denying them a three and four cost card there uh so it's it's like even in that instance it can be proven to be very useful so i'm personally going to give this a 3.5 out of 5 i don't always do the like 0.5s. I think there's some improvement to this card. I think it needs some more synergies, but it feels really, really cool. I think this is a great design for a card. So yeah, that's how I feel about Zorn. Okay. This patch was... It a lot hinged on this. Okay. I think a lot of us were anticipating some big changes And I think they did Just enough to be impactful Could they have done more? I definitely think so I think they could have gone harder with some of these but i'll take what I can get Let's go through the changes. Shall we? I want to start with the meta tyrants first Uh, so let's talk about these three Strange supreme is going from a 2-2 to a 2-1. I don't understand why they couldn't have just gone 2-0. I genuinely feel like this card at 2-0 is still insane. I mean, you play a Mysterio and a Strange Supreme, and you're getting a bunch of stats out of that on top of whatever other benefits you're getting because of those clones. If you play a Squirrel Girl, right, and this down, I mean, at its current stat line, you've effectively played a 3-7, right? Because 1 plus 3 for each squirrel, that's good, and it only gets better the more you invest into this card. So, I mean, I don't know. I think you could have gone 2-0, and this card would still see plenty of play, but, you know, every power point matters in Marvel Snap. I think this does matter, especially in combination with some of the other cards I'm going to talk about in just a second. I'm glad that they're addressing this. He's a very strong card. Timestone is up next, and it's getting its draw a card removed from its on reveal. This is notable. The biggest reason that this is a major detriment to the Thanos deck is now there are only three out of the six stones that can draw you cards. The Mind Stone is obviously... amazing because it draws two stones from the deck. But now there's a higher chance that those stones are not going to help you cycle. One of the things that I was complaining about on a previous podcast was I felt like the stones just aren't really that much of a downside because they draw you more cards. Like, Agamotto doesn't have that luxury and the stones synergize so well with a ton of different cards. So, having less consistency is a great way to mitigate some of the power of this deck in combination with one of the things we just talked about, which is Strange Supreme. Now, this next change only really affects the ongoing variety of Thanos. I think it might affect the tech Thanos too, but not significantly. Sam Wilson, Captain America, his shield is getting nerfed from a 0-1 to a 0-0. So, I mean, this is... An important change for a lot of reasons. My eyes were opened on the Snap Judgments podcast where we talked about Priority Surfer, which is a great example of how this card was getting abused, right? Having Priority turn one allows you to do a lot of things throughout the game that are just progressively unfair, like playing Negasonic early or doing Juggernaut things or you name it. It allowed for a really unhealthy kind of gameplay where you always had the advantage, right? Especially with things like Cosmo, and the list could go on. In Thanos, specifically, this is going to make it a lot weaker when Strange Supreme meets it. I mean, Strange also just lost a power. And then, you know, in order for this to have any power, Spectrum has to buff it, or Blue Marvel has to buff it, which is impactful. And I don't think that this really hurts Sam Wilson. I think it does prevent him from winning games that he probably shouldn't win, like games with Rickety Bridge as location or Death's Domain or whatever, right? Like these locations that you would have an advantage on if you were playing Jeff. I think that Sam Wilson's shield should exist in a different niche than Jeff. I think this gives a little bit more of a choice. Now, more often than not, if you're playing Sam in a deck, you're going to be doing something that will benefit the shield in some way. So I don't necessarily think that it's all encompassing here. But I do think that this is a great way to tone down the power of Sam without actually making him notably worse, right? Sam is still a fantastic scaler, and there are going to be instances where the shield can still win you those rickety bridge games, right? So I think that this is a fine change. It helps in a... those Thanos lists and altogether this list lost two power and a draw which is big is it big enough? I don't know yet, right? The meta's still shaking out. There are still a ton of unfair things that the Thanos deck can do, especially with Mockingbird, right? That's kind of nuts. So we'll have to see on how that shakes out. Continuing on with the nerfs here, we're going to be talking about Makkari, who is going from a 3-4 to a 3-3. I was just talking about that priority surfer list, and that's... Kind of the list that she was crushing it in, the developers mentioned that she had a higher win rate than Silver, not higher, but I think the same win rate as Silver Server himself. Which is nuts, right? But it's not so crazy when you think about what this card does. Kind of like Sam's Shield, sometimes she can just win a location, like Sanctum Sanctorum. But she also is functionally just free power on the board. Yes, you are spending one of your draws to do it, and yes, she can sometimes take up a board slot you don't want her to, but in the decks that she's played, she is always a net benefit for almost no risk. So, she's getting toned down a bit to a 3-3, which I think is fine. I think she's still going to be played in all the decks that she's played in, it's just she's not going to inherently overpower some situations. And again, to bring up Jeff, I think this sort of. makes it contend with Jeff, but not beat Jeff on those certain locations, right? So I do like that. Okay, next up is Hazmat going from a 2-2 to a 3-3. Now, I don't like Affliction decks. If you like playing it, I totally get it. I like some of the Affliction cards individually. I think they're neat. But Affliction as an archetype is just so, so polarizing. It's either you have the Luke Cage or you don't. And that's sort of the whole matchup. There is some more complexities in that, but that's basically the whole thing, right? And maybe there needs to be a broader discussion on, like, how do we handle Luke Cage? Is there something we need to do where he can't retroactively affect things, or maybe he can only fix things after they've been afflicted, or I don't know. Like, there has to be something here that we can do to the card that'll make it a little bit more interactive and not so polarizing, because then we could really look into the nitty-gritty of the balancing of these cards. As it stands, though, this is important for two reasons. So they mentioned that other than Thanos, the Affliction archetype has been crushing it in terms of win rate, which makes sense, especially in this meta where Affliction does extremely well against Thanos, who isn't typically running Luke Cage. I think that this doesn't kill the archetype right there. now that you have diamond back um in the deck For Affliction, it's like, that extra energy could matter. It does matter in certain games. But you can do something as simple as doing Hazmat Diamondback or Hazmat Luke Cage. I suggested on the Snap Judgments pod that you could also maybe start playing Mystique again. I know that's not exactly the most meta version of the deck, but I just mean you can do stuff like going Ajax into Mystique into Hazmat. as a final play or, you know, doing some variation of that. I think that this has to impact the deck in some way. I do think that this does make Toxic Surfer a little bit stronger. That deck has been, you know, in and out of the meta occasionally, but now that you have Diamondback and Hazmat at three cost, that Surfer is going to matter a lot more. So yeah, I think that this is a fair change. I think You know, it doesn't necessarily kill the archetype, it just makes those lines a little tougher to squeeze in. Okay, the last nerf of the patch is to Sauron, who is going to a 1-3 that says remove the abilities from ongoing cards in your deck. It used to be that he removed all ongoing abilities from your hand and deck. So now that he only affects the deck, it's really bad for the deck. I think it's still playable. But clearly, Sauron has been one of those decks that have just been, you know, underneath the radar, not really making waves, but has been crushing it. So they feel like they have to adjust it. There's also a card that's upcoming in next season that is going to synergize so well with Sauron decks that, you know, it's not that big of a deal in the long run. I think for these, like, you know, week or two or a couple weeks, it's going to be rough for Sauron, but I believe that he can bounce back. There is a small benefit to right a 1-3 body is pretty good And if you get it on turn one, that's also pretty good It's not amazing as the other one was it's not quite as good, but it's still pretty good And if this is what has to be done in order to make the deck more fair, then so be it. I'm not too pressed about it. Okay, this one is just a text change. Kahori has been specified to say that she gives each card in your hand, gives one of your other cards in play plus one power. Because her text didn't necessarily imply that she couldn't buff herself, but that is what happens, right? She uses the cards in your hand to buff other cards on the board. So. Good that they specified that. Next up are buffs. I'll save the juiciest one for last. Let's start with Hercules. He's being changed to specify that the first time another one of your cards moves here each turn, move it to another location, instead of his previous text where any other card could activate this effect, right? So sometimes when you were playing Hercules, they would move a Jeff or they would move their Sam Wilson shield, and he would move that instead of your cards, which really, really sucked. So they just removed it. Now he's a super strong piece in the decks that want to use him. It was suggested on the Snap Judges pod that you could now reliably play this with Sam Wilson. So you play Sam Wilson in a lane, you play Hercules in the same lane, and then you bounce the shield back and forth. And it's pushing out the shield every single turn, which is... super beneficial and that's just one of the few examples where this change really matters uh so yeah good change hercules has been lamenting for a while uh the only thing that that makes me think this is incredible is topaz just released and i think that her effect is so easy to work into a deck especially if you have madam webb in that middle location you can constantly ping cards in and out of that um and i think that it takes less work to set up than hercules but there are other cards that really appreciate Hercules that wouldn't necessarily benefit from that sort of setup. So yeah, this is a good change. Okay, next up, Electro is going from a 3-3 to a 3-4, and I don't know if I love this. It's not like Electro was being played a bunch, and every point of power matters in a game, but this does remove his synergy with Lady Deathstrike, which was one of his strongest abilities. I think, you know... There are other cards now in the game that synergize with this, like Circe or Blink, so you don't need the Deathstrike in order to do that, but it's still a little bit of a bummer. Removing a synergy does hurt this in some decks. I'd be interested to see if 3-4 is enough to make this card worth it. When he first came out, his effect was sort of unique, having an extra max energy. allowed you to do some crazy things, but now we have a bunch of cards that do that, and more cards coming out that are going to make that easy too, so I don't know. I don't know if this does it for the card, but, you know, a bigger body is always good. I'd be interested to see maybe what would happen if this card became a 3-5, because its restriction is so restrictive, if you don't get rid of it, you're just actively hurting yourself most times, so I don't know. Interesting, but we'll see what happens. Okay, next up is Annihilus, who is going from a 5.7 to a 5.8. And yeah, this is warranted. It's becoming much, much easier in Marvel Snap to fill your locations. And in the case of Annihilus, it's so choreographed and so slow compared to, you know, the Viper Titania sort of builds. He's become kind of obsolete. So making him a 5.8, making him have a very solid body sort of incentivizes you to try it again. And yeah, I'm fine with that. Okay, next up is Storm, who is going from a 4-5 to a 3-2, and the developers have clarified here they have changed the way that Legion interacts with Storm to make it less consistent. So before, the way it worked is if you played Storm and then played Legion on the Storm lane, on the end of that Legion turn, all the locations would flood and the game would essentially be over. Now they've made it so in that same scenario, you play Storm and then Legion, the location that Storm was originally played in will become flooded, but the other two locations will remain flooding until the last turn. right so in order to make that combo happen you need very specifically storm war machine and then legion because legion will then copy the flood dead location to the other locations and that will close down the game is that unhealthy yeah but also it's not something that's going to win a ton of cubes and the uh very nature of it means You need a three card combo on curve to make it happen, which isn't going to happen very frequently. If you're going for that combo, you're going to win some games inevitably. But it's probably going to be fine for the meta. I think we've we've adapted. We have way more cards now. And I just bought Nocturne not that long ago. I'm having a blast with her. If that means that we play more location changers as tech cards, I think that's fine. This is a good change. I think this brings Storm back to a reasonable level, and I'll be excited to see what people cook with it. Speaking of cooks, Toxie Doxie is going from a 2-1 to a 2-3, and finally her numbers make sense. This is a 2-3 that is adding 4 power to your hand, making her a 2-7. Her restriction is very clunky to work around in most decks, so if you're going to build for her, she needs to be powerful. I think that this is a great change. You're going to see her in more decks. On the Snap Judges pod, it was brought up, you know, a low-curve hand buff deck is probably the best place for this. Another good place for it is a She-Hulk. If not deck, because you're skipping turns anyway. So yeah, this is a great change. Love to see it. Good on them. I think this is going to make the card a lot more exciting to play. Last but not least, it is Cerebro, who's going from a 2-0 that gave your highest cost... or excuse me, your highest power cards plus two power to a three zero that says your highest power cards have plus three power. And I think that this is justified, right? There are so many things that can go wrong for Cerebro, including locations and tech. I mean, there's just so many things that can go wrong for Cerebro. It needs to be powerful in order to justify running it. Like if you get the combo of Cerebro, you should be able to win a lot of games. Uh, so, I think that it's fine that it has this plus three power tag. If I get beat by it, it's because I didn't retreat when I probably should have, or they just, they got the nuts. And that's sort of, like, the, uh, the paradigm with this. So, yeah, I, I think this is a fantastic change for the Cerebro players that have been dedicated to this deck. I think it's going to pay off. Uh, I don't think that this necessarily fixes all the problems of Cerebro, it just makes it stronger in the games where it pops off. So kudos. This is a great. great change what do i think overall i think this this whole patch is decent i i do think you know they could have gone a little harder i think strange supreme could probably be a 2-0 and be fine i think uh you know like electro going to a 3-5 would have been cool there there are certainly things here that i would have loved to see a little bit further on but it's important to note that they have moved up the next ota to next week That does mean that we'll have a missed week the week after that, but we're going to get two OTAs two weeks in a row in order to spice things up. I think they understand just how detrimental the lack of OTAs has been to the metagame. They're going to try to switch it up. They're probably looking very closely at the data right now to see if these changes are making a difference. So I'm okay with this. We'll wait to see it next week if they get some more impactful changes. Personally, I'd love to see some more old cards get reworked. That's one of my favorite things. So, yeah. Overall, I think that this is a pretty good OTA. Zorn has, you know, sort of reintroduced a fun sort of disruption to the meta. And the Golden Gauntlet 2 has just been announced, and I've signed up. I am ready to go. I'm feeling fired up about Marvel Snap again. I'm feeling pretty good about it. So, yeah, let me know what you think. As a reminder, I'm posting on Twitch and YouTube again, so please check me out there. Please leave a like and comment. Rate this podcast. It does help me out. And if there's one thing that you can remember, it's that I'm Infidon. Thanks for listening.