Description
Kiernimbus talks about the two newest cards, Merlin and Morgan Le Fay, as well as the latest OTA.
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
It's a fantastic show. I think he speaks to the every man who is playing this game, and as somebody who is also a huge fan of comics, it is a delight to listen to. Especially when it covers characters that you might not have heard of before, it's a really great way to connect with those. And yeah, definitely check it out if you have not already. Now, let's hop into it. So, for the record, I was in heavy debate on this episode on what I was going to do. Because frankly, there was just not enough time. in 25 minutes to discuss everything that just happened this week. So instead, what I'm going to do is this week we will cover the two new Series 5 cards that just came out, we'll talk about the OTA, and then next week we'll talk about the Series 4 cards, the card that'll come out that week, and the Golden Gauntlet 2 once we have more information since this is only the first day, the second day is happening tomorrow. We'll keep it- nice and breezy this week and then next week we'll we'll get into some more nitty-gritty okay starting with the first masters of arcane season pass card it is merlin merlin is a 2-3 that says at the start of each turn add an incantation to your hand i will quickly read those out omniversal presence is a one cost skill that says on reveal replace this location with a new one and give Merlin plus two power. Once in Future is a one-cost skill that says, on reveal, shuffle your lowest power card here into your deck to get plus two energy next turn. And Polymorph is a one-cost skill that says, on reveal, transform your lowest power card here into one that costs one more. Okay, so when I saw this card previewed, I thought it was gigabusted. Like, this 2-3 is generating a card every turn. which by itself is something that is pretty unique, right? By itself, you're adding a power to collector each turn, you're making your hand bigger for Devil Dino each turn. Like, the level of investment to keep your hand big is actually fairly low. So for cards like Kahori and Devil Dinosaur, this is a very, very good card. But then beyond that, right, this introduces a lot of uncertainty in Marvel Snap. A ton. of uncertainly like it like this feels like hockey hawkeye kate bishop on crack you you the the skills that you have here sure you know it can go wrong for you an omniversal presence and polymorph are both random right they might not always pan out for you and truth be told um in the tournament i actually won a game because of somebody's poor polymorph choice but On the whole, this card is very, very strong, especially if you have cards that you want to get rid of, which is why Once in Future and Polymorph are so strong. Playing something like the Hood into either of those cards feels extremely good, and Omniversal Presence means that, like, location variation is not as scary to you, and you get a bonus. It's like the Reality Stone in Thanos All Over Again. Everybody now has access to a one-cost Reality Stone. Which I think is pretty scary. If you, I mean, you shouldn't be surprised, right? His stats right now on Snapfan are a 57% win rate, which is nuts. And it's not really surprising when you look at why. You have a ton of versatility. You have a ton of randomness. You have energy cheating, location disruption. I mean, it's nuts. This card is maybe a little too good. I'm... Um... A little scared that this is going to become the default in like every deck. I don't think it's as ubiquitous as Hawkeye Kate Bishop, right? She does provide something a little bit different. And the same goes for a lot of the other two threes, right? Like you're putting them in your deck for a reason. But I don't know, man. The ability to transform like a Rock or a Raptor on your side of the board into... you know a random two five like medusa or like you know it's just it's really strong um i don't i don't know what to think frankly i i do like the the card design i think it's very flavorful the spells are look extremely cool um i'm just i'm scared to face this card at playing it feels fun too um I just, I don't know. I'm looking at his stats right now. He just seems so powerful that I don't know if he crushes the, or, you know, goes past the threshold of fun into broken. I just, I hope that he's not. Right now, I'm going to give him a five out of five. I think if you buy the season pass every month, you are not going to be disappointed. This seems, you know, extremely crazy. And, uh, I mean, we're just at the tip of the iceberg for Merlin, frankly. I mean, the... The ability for this card to get even better is wild to me. It is crazy. Okay, next up is Morgan Le Fay, who is a 4 or 7 that says, on reveal, return all your discarded and destroyed cards to hand with plus 3 power. I was almost certain that this card was going to feel a little clunky. And I have not bought this card. And I don't think I'm not mad about that. I don't think this card fits my play style. I will say, though, for the point seven one percent on Snap fan that are playing this, the one when played percent is fifty seven again, which is nuts. That's crazy. And when you look at the numbers that she's giving, right, it's almost like a pseudo destroy bounce variation. Like, you run Firehair, you run... you know, your hoods, your, uh, rock and raccoons, your ice mans, whatever. Um, and then you reprock those good on reveals, and then you play down Morgan, and those all come back. I've also, you know, seen a list going around that has, uh, bullseye in it. Since you're running a bunch of those cheap, uh, discard cards as a backup, right, you can uh, keep those in hand, discard them with bullseye, flick your opponent's board, and then play down Morgan to get all of them back. I don't know yet. I don't think that people are really opened. They haven't opened their eyes to what this card can do. So for me right now, I'm going to give it a 4 out of 5. I think it's extremely good. I think that the people who are playing it are making a new archetype before our very eyes. And I think that it's a very surprising card. But. It has to prove itself still. It's not ubiquitous, and it's not the most powerful thing you can do. I do think that it's very unique, though. I think it has a niche that it wants to go into. Okay, moving on to the June 5th OTA. So the developers here note, Hey folks, we're back a little sooner than normal. We've got some exciting stuff in the works to announce to you soon, but in the meantime, our OTA dates have been slightly affected. Instead of skipping an update, Next week, we decided to patch a week early. Our next OTA date will be June 26th, and from there, we will be resuming as normal with our every other week cadence. It's going to be a fairly short and sweet one, but only buffs today. Our highlight this week is an adjustment to Infinity Ultron. We also ran a tournament, the Golden Gauntlet. Our first one was Awesome Watch, and also a cool opportunity to see what snap cards aren't getting love in a competitive setting. we're taking the opportunity to give some of those cards some help. And they have a little note here that says, competitors don't get any bright ideas to boycott cards in hope of the buff. So, I mean, first of all, the reason I'm reading these developer notes is because it sets an interesting precedent, which is they are looking at tournament data to see if cards need help. Now, it's not a guarantee that if a card is doing bad in the tournament, it will receive a buff, but it's something to think about. Like, they're taking these tournaments seriously, which is something that I really, really appreciate, right? Like, especially if you guys haven't seen, every tournament, they have a spreadsheet available where you can see every card that was ever used in the tournament, what the win rate of that card was in the tournament, how frequently decks appear in that tournament. It's very good data, and the people who are running that tournament are doing a fantastic job organizing that, so kudos to them. I think it's really, really interesting that this is sort of becoming a thing. I'm like, I'm really happy about it. So anywho, all buffs today, let's go through it. It's ya boy, Infinity Ultron, and look, I brought an Infinity Ultron to the Golden Gauntlet tournament. I love this guy. I thought that he was already decent in a Wiccan deck, right? Because that extra energy that you get from Wiccan can allow you to play a stone and a 5 cost on the last turn of the game, right? They are making sweeping changes to Infinity Ultron to make sure that the stones feel better to play. And I have to say, it did help me significantly in the tournament when I low rolled and I had to work with only the stones and my other cards. I'll get into that into more detail on the next podcast, but let's go through it. So Infinity Ultron used to be a 5-8. It is now a 5-6. So back to its original stat line. But now all the stones are 2 cost. So I'm just going to go through each of these stones. The Infinity Power Stone is going to a 2-1. The Infinity Reality Stone is going to a 2-1. The Infinity Time Stone is going to a 2-3. The Infinity Space Stone is going from a 3-4 to a 2-5. The Infinity Soul Stone is going from a 3-3 to a 2-3. And the Infinity Mind Stone is going from a 3-2 to a 2-2. In the notes here, they basically talk about... making this card have a bigger swing than just the increase in power right they they thought that buffing it might have been significant but it didn't really change the win rate um so their hope is that this will allow you to be more flexible with those stones and i think i think this really really works because you have cards like enchantress and shang chi that are for cost right having all of these stones at two costs means you don't have to fully invest in that game plan to still get a pretty big benefit and uh i'll go through each of these uh individually uh because i know i just ran out on a bunch of stones and then you know on audio can be confusing especially if you don't know this card very well um but i i do think that this in general is a very very good change um i'm i'm so happy that they did this but let's go through it so The Infinity Power Stone going from a 3-2 to a 2-1, and I'm also going to bundle in the Infinity Reality Stone here going from a 3-1 to a 2-1, both of these stones directly depend on Ultron's power to be good. And so, I think it's fair that they are some of the weakest, right? Their abilities are so strong in a majority of games, you want these two almost all the time. So, for that reason, and making them a 2-1 is fine. I think that's fine. The Infinity Power Stone, by the way, is still a good deal in terms of power ratio, right? So because it's one power and it's effectively adding six to Ultron, that's a two seven. That's nuts. That's great. That is really good stats. And the same goes for the Infinity Reality Stone, right? It's adding a drone and setting it to six power. Because that's the default for Ultron. So by default, that's a 2-7. Now it's taking up two spots in a lane, but it's like it already buffed Mr. Sinister, which is really good. I think that both of these changes are great. They make more sense to me as like a huge benefit to playing this card rather than an okay benefit. And it should be said too, these stones work with Victoria Hand, which is adding power to them as well. So... Suddenly they turn into two threes with Victoria Hand, which is very, very good. And all of these stones obviously benefit from that, but I think that this is a great change. These feel even better than they did before, and they're not really losing out on that much, right? So great changes there. The Infinity Time Stone puts a card from your hand to the location, and it felt really bad. It was a 3-1, and oftentimes, like... It happens with Red Wing, where if you're not playing a dedicated, like, ramp deck, it's gonna pull something dumb, and, like, trying to get it above a three-cost stat line is tough. For, like, the previous Infinity Timestone to make a difference, you're playing it at three, and it has one power, so in order for it to get to a 3-7, you needed a six-power card from your hand, which is a tall order when you have, like, two threes and other cards like that in your hand, right? So, making it a 2-3 makes it way better. It is now going to be overstatted. And again, note, it's still taking up two board spots, so there is a downside here that you have to work around. And I think that that's fair. So, now, if you get, like, that 2-3 example I was telling you, like, maybe you pull down a Jeff, you are still getting 2-6 in terms of stats. And you can still high roll, right, and get something even bigger. So. That's a great change there. Infinity Space Stone, this is the biggest one that I think really makes the low rolls on Ultron feel so much better. So... It moves the lowest power enemy card here to the location of Infinity Ultron. The disruption effect really doesn't feel that impactful in most games. There are certain exceptions that can win you the game, but if you don't get, like, the Power Stone to buff Infinity Ultron's power, you're sort of just moving a card to lose the Infinity Ultron lane most of the time. So... if that's going to be the case, I think having this card at a good stat line makes sense, right? Like, you're trying to swing the lane that you play the Space Stone in, it should be pretty big. So, moving it to a 2-5 feels great. I think this is exactly what this card needed to feel good, even if it's not an effect that you like. And honestly, most of the time, this isn't going to proc anyway there are so many decks that fill the board by the last turn that like Getting this to proc can sometimes just be difficult in the first place. So having it at a 2-5 stat line is good. It's just a good card. This is a great change. Moving on to Infinity Soulstone. This one also sucked. Just straight out, it was bad. It gave plus 2 power to a card in each of your full locations. So, like, if you filled your entire board and then played this down... You would get 6 power distributed across the board, 2 power in each lane. And since this was a 3-3, you just played a 3-9 that required you to completely fill your board. It was really bad, guys. Most of the time, you weren't filling your entire board, so you were effectively getting plus 4 in stats. So this was really like a 3-7. And again, since it's distributing the power, like, is plus two really going to put you over the edge? Probably not. I mean, again, you were investing three cost into it, so it felt even worse. It was like an Ironheart, just a plain old Ironheart with a much harder condition to meet. I think having it go to a two three makes sense. It's now going to be, again, overstated for its cost rather than like... decent for its cost now if you fill two lanes and this procs twice it is now a 2-7 and a 2-7 is way better than a 3-7 so i think this is fair i still think this is one of the weakest cards you don't want infinity soul stone most of the time but uh with this next stone that we're about to talk about it's okay like it's it's fine it's not the worst thing in the world So, speaking of the next card, it's Infinity Mind Stone. This was Wong. On reveal, abilities happen twice here. It used to be a 3-2, and now it's a 2-2. I think not changing the power is fair, right? This is a powerful effect with a majority of the stones. I do think that this is probably one of the strongest stones you can get. I mean, if you get a double proc on... The Reality Stone, the Time Stone, or the Power Stone, that is a very powerful turn that you just spent. And you only used four energy, so you still have two left over to do something like a Shadow King. Or in the case of the decks that I play, you can play down like a Sentinel that's buffed by a Victoria Hand. Or you get the gist, right? So this is a really great effect. And like, You can still use this with other 4-cost cards that are really powerful, like Kahori, right? Like, if you play this down in Kahori, you are buffing your board twice, which is great, and you're getting a decent stat line for that. So yeah, I think this is good. This is by far one of the biggest reworks that we've seen for a card. Like, this feels like when Thanos gets changed, right? All of these stones getting sweeping changes. And I think the reduction to his power is fine, given that these stones are much, you know, better. And again, I have to bring a Victoria Hand. I really think that you should be playing Victoria Hand with your Infinity Ultron build, whatever it is. Because it's just so good. It's such an easy combo. You're getting a great value off of Victoria, even if you just play those two stones. Like, it's a great deal. So yeah, I love these changes. I think they did a great job. It's going to make this card much, much better. And yeah, really excited about it. Okay, Giganto is going from a 614 to a 616. Yeah, baby! This is what I'm talking about. I have been asking for Giganto to get better for... The majority of this podcast's life, this guy is finally, finally playable in a good chunk of decks. Yes, it's not as good as the Infinite and Discard decks, but you're not mad about it now. And especially in War Machine decks, like, a lot of them were already sort of playing this to begin with, but now, this is distinctly better than some of those other six costs. I think this is great, man. I am so excited about this. Like, it- I want to make a deck with Giganto, like, now. Like, this is really cool to me. And especially with Nightmare coming out, which is one of the new cards, this is going to be just, like, so, so, so cool to be able to play down. And, of course, you just got that animation change. Like, this is great. Great change. Okay, Omega Red is going from a 4-5 to a 4-6. and Since his whole shtick is winning the location, I understand that they were very tentative with increasing his power. Because in a lot of decks, you're using Iron Man, you're using Onslaught, and you're trying to get the most value out of this. But the fact is, he was changed to be more of a middling card, with an easier condition to work around but with less reward. Plus 3 to the other locations is impactful. right it's like a a nerfed version of Baxter building. But you, like, investing more than three cards in that lane to make it happen makes this card not worth running. And there are other cards that have similar effects, like Ms. Marvel, that can take better advantage of that. So this going to a 4-6 makes sense to me, right? If you double this with Iron Man, that's way better than 10 power. Now it's 12 power, and that is enough to, I think, swing a lane. So I like this change. Very good. Alright, last but not least, it is Supergiant who says, on reveal, all cards played next turn don't reveal until the game ends. I'm reading this out just in case you haven't seen this card because, let's be frank, she has not been played. She is now going to a 4-7. This just makes sense, right? Like, her effect is on both sides, and in order to fully take advantage of her, you have to be sacrificing some sort of combo in your deck, right? You're sort of using her effect to disrupt your opponent and then maybe get an advantage. Like playing a Tuma, right? Like if you play an Tuma, you're getting a 410, but it doesn't reveal until the game ends, so his effect doesn't proc. There's a couple of other cards that have that sort of benefit. But I do think that this card should have a place in the meta as like a, hey, stop it combo. And I think that this... helps achieve that and we've seen a lot of cards go to that four seven stat line that have these sort of tricky effects to work around so yeah that's the ota those are the two new cards uh very rambly uh for me but i i just wanted to go through everything uh in detail this week again uh stay tuned for next week we'll be covering more of the tournament and more of the new cards i'll have more stuff to talk about then and check out my youtube channel i'm going to release a video talking about my tournament experience and everything that's in there But yeah, if there's one thing that you can remember, it's that I'm infinite. Thanks for listening.
Description
Kiernimbus talks about the two newest cards, Merlin and Morgan Le Fay, as well as the latest OTA.
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
It's a fantastic show. I think he speaks to the every man who is playing this game, and as somebody who is also a huge fan of comics, it is a delight to listen to. Especially when it covers characters that you might not have heard of before, it's a really great way to connect with those. And yeah, definitely check it out if you have not already. Now, let's hop into it. So, for the record, I was in heavy debate on this episode on what I was going to do. Because frankly, there was just not enough time. in 25 minutes to discuss everything that just happened this week. So instead, what I'm going to do is this week we will cover the two new Series 5 cards that just came out, we'll talk about the OTA, and then next week we'll talk about the Series 4 cards, the card that'll come out that week, and the Golden Gauntlet 2 once we have more information since this is only the first day, the second day is happening tomorrow. We'll keep it- nice and breezy this week and then next week we'll we'll get into some more nitty-gritty okay starting with the first masters of arcane season pass card it is merlin merlin is a 2-3 that says at the start of each turn add an incantation to your hand i will quickly read those out omniversal presence is a one cost skill that says on reveal replace this location with a new one and give Merlin plus two power. Once in Future is a one-cost skill that says, on reveal, shuffle your lowest power card here into your deck to get plus two energy next turn. And Polymorph is a one-cost skill that says, on reveal, transform your lowest power card here into one that costs one more. Okay, so when I saw this card previewed, I thought it was gigabusted. Like, this 2-3 is generating a card every turn. which by itself is something that is pretty unique, right? By itself, you're adding a power to collector each turn, you're making your hand bigger for Devil Dino each turn. Like, the level of investment to keep your hand big is actually fairly low. So for cards like Kahori and Devil Dinosaur, this is a very, very good card. But then beyond that, right, this introduces a lot of uncertainty in Marvel Snap. A ton. of uncertainly like it like this feels like hockey hawkeye kate bishop on crack you you the the skills that you have here sure you know it can go wrong for you an omniversal presence and polymorph are both random right they might not always pan out for you and truth be told um in the tournament i actually won a game because of somebody's poor polymorph choice but On the whole, this card is very, very strong, especially if you have cards that you want to get rid of, which is why Once in Future and Polymorph are so strong. Playing something like the Hood into either of those cards feels extremely good, and Omniversal Presence means that, like, location variation is not as scary to you, and you get a bonus. It's like the Reality Stone in Thanos All Over Again. Everybody now has access to a one-cost Reality Stone. Which I think is pretty scary. If you, I mean, you shouldn't be surprised, right? His stats right now on Snapfan are a 57% win rate, which is nuts. And it's not really surprising when you look at why. You have a ton of versatility. You have a ton of randomness. You have energy cheating, location disruption. I mean, it's nuts. This card is maybe a little too good. I'm... Um... A little scared that this is going to become the default in like every deck. I don't think it's as ubiquitous as Hawkeye Kate Bishop, right? She does provide something a little bit different. And the same goes for a lot of the other two threes, right? Like you're putting them in your deck for a reason. But I don't know, man. The ability to transform like a Rock or a Raptor on your side of the board into... you know a random two five like medusa or like you know it's just it's really strong um i don't i don't know what to think frankly i i do like the the card design i think it's very flavorful the spells are look extremely cool um i'm just i'm scared to face this card at playing it feels fun too um I just, I don't know. I'm looking at his stats right now. He just seems so powerful that I don't know if he crushes the, or, you know, goes past the threshold of fun into broken. I just, I hope that he's not. Right now, I'm going to give him a five out of five. I think if you buy the season pass every month, you are not going to be disappointed. This seems, you know, extremely crazy. And, uh, I mean, we're just at the tip of the iceberg for Merlin, frankly. I mean, the... The ability for this card to get even better is wild to me. It is crazy. Okay, next up is Morgan Le Fay, who is a 4 or 7 that says, on reveal, return all your discarded and destroyed cards to hand with plus 3 power. I was almost certain that this card was going to feel a little clunky. And I have not bought this card. And I don't think I'm not mad about that. I don't think this card fits my play style. I will say, though, for the point seven one percent on Snap fan that are playing this, the one when played percent is fifty seven again, which is nuts. That's crazy. And when you look at the numbers that she's giving, right, it's almost like a pseudo destroy bounce variation. Like, you run Firehair, you run... you know, your hoods, your, uh, rock and raccoons, your ice mans, whatever. Um, and then you reprock those good on reveals, and then you play down Morgan, and those all come back. I've also, you know, seen a list going around that has, uh, bullseye in it. Since you're running a bunch of those cheap, uh, discard cards as a backup, right, you can uh, keep those in hand, discard them with bullseye, flick your opponent's board, and then play down Morgan to get all of them back. I don't know yet. I don't think that people are really opened. They haven't opened their eyes to what this card can do. So for me right now, I'm going to give it a 4 out of 5. I think it's extremely good. I think that the people who are playing it are making a new archetype before our very eyes. And I think that it's a very surprising card. But. It has to prove itself still. It's not ubiquitous, and it's not the most powerful thing you can do. I do think that it's very unique, though. I think it has a niche that it wants to go into. Okay, moving on to the June 5th OTA. So the developers here note, Hey folks, we're back a little sooner than normal. We've got some exciting stuff in the works to announce to you soon, but in the meantime, our OTA dates have been slightly affected. Instead of skipping an update, Next week, we decided to patch a week early. Our next OTA date will be June 26th, and from there, we will be resuming as normal with our every other week cadence. It's going to be a fairly short and sweet one, but only buffs today. Our highlight this week is an adjustment to Infinity Ultron. We also ran a tournament, the Golden Gauntlet. Our first one was Awesome Watch, and also a cool opportunity to see what snap cards aren't getting love in a competitive setting. we're taking the opportunity to give some of those cards some help. And they have a little note here that says, competitors don't get any bright ideas to boycott cards in hope of the buff. So, I mean, first of all, the reason I'm reading these developer notes is because it sets an interesting precedent, which is they are looking at tournament data to see if cards need help. Now, it's not a guarantee that if a card is doing bad in the tournament, it will receive a buff, but it's something to think about. Like, they're taking these tournaments seriously, which is something that I really, really appreciate, right? Like, especially if you guys haven't seen, every tournament, they have a spreadsheet available where you can see every card that was ever used in the tournament, what the win rate of that card was in the tournament, how frequently decks appear in that tournament. It's very good data, and the people who are running that tournament are doing a fantastic job organizing that, so kudos to them. I think it's really, really interesting that this is sort of becoming a thing. I'm like, I'm really happy about it. So anywho, all buffs today, let's go through it. It's ya boy, Infinity Ultron, and look, I brought an Infinity Ultron to the Golden Gauntlet tournament. I love this guy. I thought that he was already decent in a Wiccan deck, right? Because that extra energy that you get from Wiccan can allow you to play a stone and a 5 cost on the last turn of the game, right? They are making sweeping changes to Infinity Ultron to make sure that the stones feel better to play. And I have to say, it did help me significantly in the tournament when I low rolled and I had to work with only the stones and my other cards. I'll get into that into more detail on the next podcast, but let's go through it. So Infinity Ultron used to be a 5-8. It is now a 5-6. So back to its original stat line. But now all the stones are 2 cost. So I'm just going to go through each of these stones. The Infinity Power Stone is going to a 2-1. The Infinity Reality Stone is going to a 2-1. The Infinity Time Stone is going to a 2-3. The Infinity Space Stone is going from a 3-4 to a 2-5. The Infinity Soul Stone is going from a 3-3 to a 2-3. And the Infinity Mind Stone is going from a 3-2 to a 2-2. In the notes here, they basically talk about... making this card have a bigger swing than just the increase in power right they they thought that buffing it might have been significant but it didn't really change the win rate um so their hope is that this will allow you to be more flexible with those stones and i think i think this really really works because you have cards like enchantress and shang chi that are for cost right having all of these stones at two costs means you don't have to fully invest in that game plan to still get a pretty big benefit and uh i'll go through each of these uh individually uh because i know i just ran out on a bunch of stones and then you know on audio can be confusing especially if you don't know this card very well um but i i do think that this in general is a very very good change um i'm i'm so happy that they did this but let's go through it so The Infinity Power Stone going from a 3-2 to a 2-1, and I'm also going to bundle in the Infinity Reality Stone here going from a 3-1 to a 2-1, both of these stones directly depend on Ultron's power to be good. And so, I think it's fair that they are some of the weakest, right? Their abilities are so strong in a majority of games, you want these two almost all the time. So, for that reason, and making them a 2-1 is fine. I think that's fine. The Infinity Power Stone, by the way, is still a good deal in terms of power ratio, right? So because it's one power and it's effectively adding six to Ultron, that's a two seven. That's nuts. That's great. That is really good stats. And the same goes for the Infinity Reality Stone, right? It's adding a drone and setting it to six power. Because that's the default for Ultron. So by default, that's a 2-7. Now it's taking up two spots in a lane, but it's like it already buffed Mr. Sinister, which is really good. I think that both of these changes are great. They make more sense to me as like a huge benefit to playing this card rather than an okay benefit. And it should be said too, these stones work with Victoria Hand, which is adding power to them as well. So... Suddenly they turn into two threes with Victoria Hand, which is very, very good. And all of these stones obviously benefit from that, but I think that this is a great change. These feel even better than they did before, and they're not really losing out on that much, right? So great changes there. The Infinity Time Stone puts a card from your hand to the location, and it felt really bad. It was a 3-1, and oftentimes, like... It happens with Red Wing, where if you're not playing a dedicated, like, ramp deck, it's gonna pull something dumb, and, like, trying to get it above a three-cost stat line is tough. For, like, the previous Infinity Timestone to make a difference, you're playing it at three, and it has one power, so in order for it to get to a 3-7, you needed a six-power card from your hand, which is a tall order when you have, like, two threes and other cards like that in your hand, right? So, making it a 2-3 makes it way better. It is now going to be overstatted. And again, note, it's still taking up two board spots, so there is a downside here that you have to work around. And I think that that's fair. So, now, if you get, like, that 2-3 example I was telling you, like, maybe you pull down a Jeff, you are still getting 2-6 in terms of stats. And you can still high roll, right, and get something even bigger. So. That's a great change there. Infinity Space Stone, this is the biggest one that I think really makes the low rolls on Ultron feel so much better. So... It moves the lowest power enemy card here to the location of Infinity Ultron. The disruption effect really doesn't feel that impactful in most games. There are certain exceptions that can win you the game, but if you don't get, like, the Power Stone to buff Infinity Ultron's power, you're sort of just moving a card to lose the Infinity Ultron lane most of the time. So... if that's going to be the case, I think having this card at a good stat line makes sense, right? Like, you're trying to swing the lane that you play the Space Stone in, it should be pretty big. So, moving it to a 2-5 feels great. I think this is exactly what this card needed to feel good, even if it's not an effect that you like. And honestly, most of the time, this isn't going to proc anyway there are so many decks that fill the board by the last turn that like Getting this to proc can sometimes just be difficult in the first place. So having it at a 2-5 stat line is good. It's just a good card. This is a great change. Moving on to Infinity Soulstone. This one also sucked. Just straight out, it was bad. It gave plus 2 power to a card in each of your full locations. So, like, if you filled your entire board and then played this down... You would get 6 power distributed across the board, 2 power in each lane. And since this was a 3-3, you just played a 3-9 that required you to completely fill your board. It was really bad, guys. Most of the time, you weren't filling your entire board, so you were effectively getting plus 4 in stats. So this was really like a 3-7. And again, since it's distributing the power, like, is plus two really going to put you over the edge? Probably not. I mean, again, you were investing three cost into it, so it felt even worse. It was like an Ironheart, just a plain old Ironheart with a much harder condition to meet. I think having it go to a two three makes sense. It's now going to be, again, overstated for its cost rather than like... decent for its cost now if you fill two lanes and this procs twice it is now a 2-7 and a 2-7 is way better than a 3-7 so i think this is fair i still think this is one of the weakest cards you don't want infinity soul stone most of the time but uh with this next stone that we're about to talk about it's okay like it's it's fine it's not the worst thing in the world So, speaking of the next card, it's Infinity Mind Stone. This was Wong. On reveal, abilities happen twice here. It used to be a 3-2, and now it's a 2-2. I think not changing the power is fair, right? This is a powerful effect with a majority of the stones. I do think that this is probably one of the strongest stones you can get. I mean, if you get a double proc on... The Reality Stone, the Time Stone, or the Power Stone, that is a very powerful turn that you just spent. And you only used four energy, so you still have two left over to do something like a Shadow King. Or in the case of the decks that I play, you can play down like a Sentinel that's buffed by a Victoria Hand. Or you get the gist, right? So this is a really great effect. And like, You can still use this with other 4-cost cards that are really powerful, like Kahori, right? Like, if you play this down in Kahori, you are buffing your board twice, which is great, and you're getting a decent stat line for that. So yeah, I think this is good. This is by far one of the biggest reworks that we've seen for a card. Like, this feels like when Thanos gets changed, right? All of these stones getting sweeping changes. And I think the reduction to his power is fine, given that these stones are much, you know, better. And again, I have to bring a Victoria Hand. I really think that you should be playing Victoria Hand with your Infinity Ultron build, whatever it is. Because it's just so good. It's such an easy combo. You're getting a great value off of Victoria, even if you just play those two stones. Like, it's a great deal. So yeah, I love these changes. I think they did a great job. It's going to make this card much, much better. And yeah, really excited about it. Okay, Giganto is going from a 614 to a 616. Yeah, baby! This is what I'm talking about. I have been asking for Giganto to get better for... The majority of this podcast's life, this guy is finally, finally playable in a good chunk of decks. Yes, it's not as good as the Infinite and Discard decks, but you're not mad about it now. And especially in War Machine decks, like, a lot of them were already sort of playing this to begin with, but now, this is distinctly better than some of those other six costs. I think this is great, man. I am so excited about this. Like, it- I want to make a deck with Giganto, like, now. Like, this is really cool to me. And especially with Nightmare coming out, which is one of the new cards, this is going to be just, like, so, so, so cool to be able to play down. And, of course, you just got that animation change. Like, this is great. Great change. Okay, Omega Red is going from a 4-5 to a 4-6. and Since his whole shtick is winning the location, I understand that they were very tentative with increasing his power. Because in a lot of decks, you're using Iron Man, you're using Onslaught, and you're trying to get the most value out of this. But the fact is, he was changed to be more of a middling card, with an easier condition to work around but with less reward. Plus 3 to the other locations is impactful. right it's like a a nerfed version of Baxter building. But you, like, investing more than three cards in that lane to make it happen makes this card not worth running. And there are other cards that have similar effects, like Ms. Marvel, that can take better advantage of that. So this going to a 4-6 makes sense to me, right? If you double this with Iron Man, that's way better than 10 power. Now it's 12 power, and that is enough to, I think, swing a lane. So I like this change. Very good. Alright, last but not least, it is Supergiant who says, on reveal, all cards played next turn don't reveal until the game ends. I'm reading this out just in case you haven't seen this card because, let's be frank, she has not been played. She is now going to a 4-7. This just makes sense, right? Like, her effect is on both sides, and in order to fully take advantage of her, you have to be sacrificing some sort of combo in your deck, right? You're sort of using her effect to disrupt your opponent and then maybe get an advantage. Like playing a Tuma, right? Like if you play an Tuma, you're getting a 410, but it doesn't reveal until the game ends, so his effect doesn't proc. There's a couple of other cards that have that sort of benefit. But I do think that this card should have a place in the meta as like a, hey, stop it combo. And I think that this... helps achieve that and we've seen a lot of cards go to that four seven stat line that have these sort of tricky effects to work around so yeah that's the ota those are the two new cards uh very rambly uh for me but i i just wanted to go through everything uh in detail this week again uh stay tuned for next week we'll be covering more of the tournament and more of the new cards i'll have more stuff to talk about then and check out my youtube channel i'm going to release a video talking about my tournament experience and everything that's in there But yeah, 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 two newest cards, Merlin and Morgan Le Fay, as well as the latest OTA.
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
It's a fantastic show. I think he speaks to the every man who is playing this game, and as somebody who is also a huge fan of comics, it is a delight to listen to. Especially when it covers characters that you might not have heard of before, it's a really great way to connect with those. And yeah, definitely check it out if you have not already. Now, let's hop into it. So, for the record, I was in heavy debate on this episode on what I was going to do. Because frankly, there was just not enough time. in 25 minutes to discuss everything that just happened this week. So instead, what I'm going to do is this week we will cover the two new Series 5 cards that just came out, we'll talk about the OTA, and then next week we'll talk about the Series 4 cards, the card that'll come out that week, and the Golden Gauntlet 2 once we have more information since this is only the first day, the second day is happening tomorrow. We'll keep it- nice and breezy this week and then next week we'll we'll get into some more nitty-gritty okay starting with the first masters of arcane season pass card it is merlin merlin is a 2-3 that says at the start of each turn add an incantation to your hand i will quickly read those out omniversal presence is a one cost skill that says on reveal replace this location with a new one and give Merlin plus two power. Once in Future is a one-cost skill that says, on reveal, shuffle your lowest power card here into your deck to get plus two energy next turn. And Polymorph is a one-cost skill that says, on reveal, transform your lowest power card here into one that costs one more. Okay, so when I saw this card previewed, I thought it was gigabusted. Like, this 2-3 is generating a card every turn. which by itself is something that is pretty unique, right? By itself, you're adding a power to collector each turn, you're making your hand bigger for Devil Dino each turn. Like, the level of investment to keep your hand big is actually fairly low. So for cards like Kahori and Devil Dinosaur, this is a very, very good card. But then beyond that, right, this introduces a lot of uncertainty in Marvel Snap. A ton. of uncertainly like it like this feels like hockey hawkeye kate bishop on crack you you the the skills that you have here sure you know it can go wrong for you an omniversal presence and polymorph are both random right they might not always pan out for you and truth be told um in the tournament i actually won a game because of somebody's poor polymorph choice but On the whole, this card is very, very strong, especially if you have cards that you want to get rid of, which is why Once in Future and Polymorph are so strong. Playing something like the Hood into either of those cards feels extremely good, and Omniversal Presence means that, like, location variation is not as scary to you, and you get a bonus. It's like the Reality Stone in Thanos All Over Again. Everybody now has access to a one-cost Reality Stone. Which I think is pretty scary. If you, I mean, you shouldn't be surprised, right? His stats right now on Snapfan are a 57% win rate, which is nuts. And it's not really surprising when you look at why. You have a ton of versatility. You have a ton of randomness. You have energy cheating, location disruption. I mean, it's nuts. This card is maybe a little too good. I'm... Um... A little scared that this is going to become the default in like every deck. I don't think it's as ubiquitous as Hawkeye Kate Bishop, right? She does provide something a little bit different. And the same goes for a lot of the other two threes, right? Like you're putting them in your deck for a reason. But I don't know, man. The ability to transform like a Rock or a Raptor on your side of the board into... you know a random two five like medusa or like you know it's just it's really strong um i don't i don't know what to think frankly i i do like the the card design i think it's very flavorful the spells are look extremely cool um i'm just i'm scared to face this card at playing it feels fun too um I just, I don't know. I'm looking at his stats right now. He just seems so powerful that I don't know if he crushes the, or, you know, goes past the threshold of fun into broken. I just, I hope that he's not. Right now, I'm going to give him a five out of five. I think if you buy the season pass every month, you are not going to be disappointed. This seems, you know, extremely crazy. And, uh, I mean, we're just at the tip of the iceberg for Merlin, frankly. I mean, the... The ability for this card to get even better is wild to me. It is crazy. Okay, next up is Morgan Le Fay, who is a 4 or 7 that says, on reveal, return all your discarded and destroyed cards to hand with plus 3 power. I was almost certain that this card was going to feel a little clunky. And I have not bought this card. And I don't think I'm not mad about that. I don't think this card fits my play style. I will say, though, for the point seven one percent on Snap fan that are playing this, the one when played percent is fifty seven again, which is nuts. That's crazy. And when you look at the numbers that she's giving, right, it's almost like a pseudo destroy bounce variation. Like, you run Firehair, you run... you know, your hoods, your, uh, rock and raccoons, your ice mans, whatever. Um, and then you reprock those good on reveals, and then you play down Morgan, and those all come back. I've also, you know, seen a list going around that has, uh, bullseye in it. Since you're running a bunch of those cheap, uh, discard cards as a backup, right, you can uh, keep those in hand, discard them with bullseye, flick your opponent's board, and then play down Morgan to get all of them back. I don't know yet. I don't think that people are really opened. They haven't opened their eyes to what this card can do. So for me right now, I'm going to give it a 4 out of 5. I think it's extremely good. I think that the people who are playing it are making a new archetype before our very eyes. And I think that it's a very surprising card. But. It has to prove itself still. It's not ubiquitous, and it's not the most powerful thing you can do. I do think that it's very unique, though. I think it has a niche that it wants to go into. Okay, moving on to the June 5th OTA. So the developers here note, Hey folks, we're back a little sooner than normal. We've got some exciting stuff in the works to announce to you soon, but in the meantime, our OTA dates have been slightly affected. Instead of skipping an update, Next week, we decided to patch a week early. Our next OTA date will be June 26th, and from there, we will be resuming as normal with our every other week cadence. It's going to be a fairly short and sweet one, but only buffs today. Our highlight this week is an adjustment to Infinity Ultron. We also ran a tournament, the Golden Gauntlet. Our first one was Awesome Watch, and also a cool opportunity to see what snap cards aren't getting love in a competitive setting. we're taking the opportunity to give some of those cards some help. And they have a little note here that says, competitors don't get any bright ideas to boycott cards in hope of the buff. So, I mean, first of all, the reason I'm reading these developer notes is because it sets an interesting precedent, which is they are looking at tournament data to see if cards need help. Now, it's not a guarantee that if a card is doing bad in the tournament, it will receive a buff, but it's something to think about. Like, they're taking these tournaments seriously, which is something that I really, really appreciate, right? Like, especially if you guys haven't seen, every tournament, they have a spreadsheet available where you can see every card that was ever used in the tournament, what the win rate of that card was in the tournament, how frequently decks appear in that tournament. It's very good data, and the people who are running that tournament are doing a fantastic job organizing that, so kudos to them. I think it's really, really interesting that this is sort of becoming a thing. I'm like, I'm really happy about it. So anywho, all buffs today, let's go through it. It's ya boy, Infinity Ultron, and look, I brought an Infinity Ultron to the Golden Gauntlet tournament. I love this guy. I thought that he was already decent in a Wiccan deck, right? Because that extra energy that you get from Wiccan can allow you to play a stone and a 5 cost on the last turn of the game, right? They are making sweeping changes to Infinity Ultron to make sure that the stones feel better to play. And I have to say, it did help me significantly in the tournament when I low rolled and I had to work with only the stones and my other cards. I'll get into that into more detail on the next podcast, but let's go through it. So Infinity Ultron used to be a 5-8. It is now a 5-6. So back to its original stat line. But now all the stones are 2 cost. So I'm just going to go through each of these stones. The Infinity Power Stone is going to a 2-1. The Infinity Reality Stone is going to a 2-1. The Infinity Time Stone is going to a 2-3. The Infinity Space Stone is going from a 3-4 to a 2-5. The Infinity Soul Stone is going from a 3-3 to a 2-3. And the Infinity Mind Stone is going from a 3-2 to a 2-2. In the notes here, they basically talk about... making this card have a bigger swing than just the increase in power right they they thought that buffing it might have been significant but it didn't really change the win rate um so their hope is that this will allow you to be more flexible with those stones and i think i think this really really works because you have cards like enchantress and shang chi that are for cost right having all of these stones at two costs means you don't have to fully invest in that game plan to still get a pretty big benefit and uh i'll go through each of these uh individually uh because i know i just ran out on a bunch of stones and then you know on audio can be confusing especially if you don't know this card very well um but i i do think that this in general is a very very good change um i'm i'm so happy that they did this but let's go through it so The Infinity Power Stone going from a 3-2 to a 2-1, and I'm also going to bundle in the Infinity Reality Stone here going from a 3-1 to a 2-1, both of these stones directly depend on Ultron's power to be good. And so, I think it's fair that they are some of the weakest, right? Their abilities are so strong in a majority of games, you want these two almost all the time. So, for that reason, and making them a 2-1 is fine. I think that's fine. The Infinity Power Stone, by the way, is still a good deal in terms of power ratio, right? So because it's one power and it's effectively adding six to Ultron, that's a two seven. That's nuts. That's great. That is really good stats. And the same goes for the Infinity Reality Stone, right? It's adding a drone and setting it to six power. Because that's the default for Ultron. So by default, that's a 2-7. Now it's taking up two spots in a lane, but it's like it already buffed Mr. Sinister, which is really good. I think that both of these changes are great. They make more sense to me as like a huge benefit to playing this card rather than an okay benefit. And it should be said too, these stones work with Victoria Hand, which is adding power to them as well. So... Suddenly they turn into two threes with Victoria Hand, which is very, very good. And all of these stones obviously benefit from that, but I think that this is a great change. These feel even better than they did before, and they're not really losing out on that much, right? So great changes there. The Infinity Time Stone puts a card from your hand to the location, and it felt really bad. It was a 3-1, and oftentimes, like... It happens with Red Wing, where if you're not playing a dedicated, like, ramp deck, it's gonna pull something dumb, and, like, trying to get it above a three-cost stat line is tough. For, like, the previous Infinity Timestone to make a difference, you're playing it at three, and it has one power, so in order for it to get to a 3-7, you needed a six-power card from your hand, which is a tall order when you have, like, two threes and other cards like that in your hand, right? So, making it a 2-3 makes it way better. It is now going to be overstatted. And again, note, it's still taking up two board spots, so there is a downside here that you have to work around. And I think that that's fair. So, now, if you get, like, that 2-3 example I was telling you, like, maybe you pull down a Jeff, you are still getting 2-6 in terms of stats. And you can still high roll, right, and get something even bigger. So. That's a great change there. Infinity Space Stone, this is the biggest one that I think really makes the low rolls on Ultron feel so much better. So... It moves the lowest power enemy card here to the location of Infinity Ultron. The disruption effect really doesn't feel that impactful in most games. There are certain exceptions that can win you the game, but if you don't get, like, the Power Stone to buff Infinity Ultron's power, you're sort of just moving a card to lose the Infinity Ultron lane most of the time. So... if that's going to be the case, I think having this card at a good stat line makes sense, right? Like, you're trying to swing the lane that you play the Space Stone in, it should be pretty big. So, moving it to a 2-5 feels great. I think this is exactly what this card needed to feel good, even if it's not an effect that you like. And honestly, most of the time, this isn't going to proc anyway there are so many decks that fill the board by the last turn that like Getting this to proc can sometimes just be difficult in the first place. So having it at a 2-5 stat line is good. It's just a good card. This is a great change. Moving on to Infinity Soulstone. This one also sucked. Just straight out, it was bad. It gave plus 2 power to a card in each of your full locations. So, like, if you filled your entire board and then played this down... You would get 6 power distributed across the board, 2 power in each lane. And since this was a 3-3, you just played a 3-9 that required you to completely fill your board. It was really bad, guys. Most of the time, you weren't filling your entire board, so you were effectively getting plus 4 in stats. So this was really like a 3-7. And again, since it's distributing the power, like, is plus two really going to put you over the edge? Probably not. I mean, again, you were investing three cost into it, so it felt even worse. It was like an Ironheart, just a plain old Ironheart with a much harder condition to meet. I think having it go to a two three makes sense. It's now going to be, again, overstated for its cost rather than like... decent for its cost now if you fill two lanes and this procs twice it is now a 2-7 and a 2-7 is way better than a 3-7 so i think this is fair i still think this is one of the weakest cards you don't want infinity soul stone most of the time but uh with this next stone that we're about to talk about it's okay like it's it's fine it's not the worst thing in the world So, speaking of the next card, it's Infinity Mind Stone. This was Wong. On reveal, abilities happen twice here. It used to be a 3-2, and now it's a 2-2. I think not changing the power is fair, right? This is a powerful effect with a majority of the stones. I do think that this is probably one of the strongest stones you can get. I mean, if you get a double proc on... The Reality Stone, the Time Stone, or the Power Stone, that is a very powerful turn that you just spent. And you only used four energy, so you still have two left over to do something like a Shadow King. Or in the case of the decks that I play, you can play down like a Sentinel that's buffed by a Victoria Hand. Or you get the gist, right? So this is a really great effect. And like, You can still use this with other 4-cost cards that are really powerful, like Kahori, right? Like, if you play this down in Kahori, you are buffing your board twice, which is great, and you're getting a decent stat line for that. So yeah, I think this is good. This is by far one of the biggest reworks that we've seen for a card. Like, this feels like when Thanos gets changed, right? All of these stones getting sweeping changes. And I think the reduction to his power is fine, given that these stones are much, you know, better. And again, I have to bring a Victoria Hand. I really think that you should be playing Victoria Hand with your Infinity Ultron build, whatever it is. Because it's just so good. It's such an easy combo. You're getting a great value off of Victoria, even if you just play those two stones. Like, it's a great deal. So yeah, I love these changes. I think they did a great job. It's going to make this card much, much better. And yeah, really excited about it. Okay, Giganto is going from a 614 to a 616. Yeah, baby! This is what I'm talking about. I have been asking for Giganto to get better for... The majority of this podcast's life, this guy is finally, finally playable in a good chunk of decks. Yes, it's not as good as the Infinite and Discard decks, but you're not mad about it now. And especially in War Machine decks, like, a lot of them were already sort of playing this to begin with, but now, this is distinctly better than some of those other six costs. I think this is great, man. I am so excited about this. Like, it- I want to make a deck with Giganto, like, now. Like, this is really cool to me. And especially with Nightmare coming out, which is one of the new cards, this is going to be just, like, so, so, so cool to be able to play down. And, of course, you just got that animation change. Like, this is great. Great change. Okay, Omega Red is going from a 4-5 to a 4-6. and Since his whole shtick is winning the location, I understand that they were very tentative with increasing his power. Because in a lot of decks, you're using Iron Man, you're using Onslaught, and you're trying to get the most value out of this. But the fact is, he was changed to be more of a middling card, with an easier condition to work around but with less reward. Plus 3 to the other locations is impactful. right it's like a a nerfed version of Baxter building. But you, like, investing more than three cards in that lane to make it happen makes this card not worth running. And there are other cards that have similar effects, like Ms. Marvel, that can take better advantage of that. So this going to a 4-6 makes sense to me, right? If you double this with Iron Man, that's way better than 10 power. Now it's 12 power, and that is enough to, I think, swing a lane. So I like this change. Very good. Alright, last but not least, it is Supergiant who says, on reveal, all cards played next turn don't reveal until the game ends. I'm reading this out just in case you haven't seen this card because, let's be frank, she has not been played. She is now going to a 4-7. This just makes sense, right? Like, her effect is on both sides, and in order to fully take advantage of her, you have to be sacrificing some sort of combo in your deck, right? You're sort of using her effect to disrupt your opponent and then maybe get an advantage. Like playing a Tuma, right? Like if you play an Tuma, you're getting a 410, but it doesn't reveal until the game ends, so his effect doesn't proc. There's a couple of other cards that have that sort of benefit. But I do think that this card should have a place in the meta as like a, hey, stop it combo. And I think that this... helps achieve that and we've seen a lot of cards go to that four seven stat line that have these sort of tricky effects to work around so yeah that's the ota those are the two new cards uh very rambly uh for me but i i just wanted to go through everything uh in detail this week again uh stay tuned for next week we'll be covering more of the tournament and more of the new cards i'll have more stuff to talk about then and check out my youtube channel i'm going to release a video talking about my tournament experience and everything that's in there But yeah, if there's one thing that you can remember, it's that I'm infinite. Thanks for listening.
Description
Kiernimbus talks about the two newest cards, Merlin and Morgan Le Fay, as well as the latest OTA.
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
It's a fantastic show. I think he speaks to the every man who is playing this game, and as somebody who is also a huge fan of comics, it is a delight to listen to. Especially when it covers characters that you might not have heard of before, it's a really great way to connect with those. And yeah, definitely check it out if you have not already. Now, let's hop into it. So, for the record, I was in heavy debate on this episode on what I was going to do. Because frankly, there was just not enough time. in 25 minutes to discuss everything that just happened this week. So instead, what I'm going to do is this week we will cover the two new Series 5 cards that just came out, we'll talk about the OTA, and then next week we'll talk about the Series 4 cards, the card that'll come out that week, and the Golden Gauntlet 2 once we have more information since this is only the first day, the second day is happening tomorrow. We'll keep it- nice and breezy this week and then next week we'll we'll get into some more nitty-gritty okay starting with the first masters of arcane season pass card it is merlin merlin is a 2-3 that says at the start of each turn add an incantation to your hand i will quickly read those out omniversal presence is a one cost skill that says on reveal replace this location with a new one and give Merlin plus two power. Once in Future is a one-cost skill that says, on reveal, shuffle your lowest power card here into your deck to get plus two energy next turn. And Polymorph is a one-cost skill that says, on reveal, transform your lowest power card here into one that costs one more. Okay, so when I saw this card previewed, I thought it was gigabusted. Like, this 2-3 is generating a card every turn. which by itself is something that is pretty unique, right? By itself, you're adding a power to collector each turn, you're making your hand bigger for Devil Dino each turn. Like, the level of investment to keep your hand big is actually fairly low. So for cards like Kahori and Devil Dinosaur, this is a very, very good card. But then beyond that, right, this introduces a lot of uncertainty in Marvel Snap. A ton. of uncertainly like it like this feels like hockey hawkeye kate bishop on crack you you the the skills that you have here sure you know it can go wrong for you an omniversal presence and polymorph are both random right they might not always pan out for you and truth be told um in the tournament i actually won a game because of somebody's poor polymorph choice but On the whole, this card is very, very strong, especially if you have cards that you want to get rid of, which is why Once in Future and Polymorph are so strong. Playing something like the Hood into either of those cards feels extremely good, and Omniversal Presence means that, like, location variation is not as scary to you, and you get a bonus. It's like the Reality Stone in Thanos All Over Again. Everybody now has access to a one-cost Reality Stone. Which I think is pretty scary. If you, I mean, you shouldn't be surprised, right? His stats right now on Snapfan are a 57% win rate, which is nuts. And it's not really surprising when you look at why. You have a ton of versatility. You have a ton of randomness. You have energy cheating, location disruption. I mean, it's nuts. This card is maybe a little too good. I'm... Um... A little scared that this is going to become the default in like every deck. I don't think it's as ubiquitous as Hawkeye Kate Bishop, right? She does provide something a little bit different. And the same goes for a lot of the other two threes, right? Like you're putting them in your deck for a reason. But I don't know, man. The ability to transform like a Rock or a Raptor on your side of the board into... you know a random two five like medusa or like you know it's just it's really strong um i don't i don't know what to think frankly i i do like the the card design i think it's very flavorful the spells are look extremely cool um i'm just i'm scared to face this card at playing it feels fun too um I just, I don't know. I'm looking at his stats right now. He just seems so powerful that I don't know if he crushes the, or, you know, goes past the threshold of fun into broken. I just, I hope that he's not. Right now, I'm going to give him a five out of five. I think if you buy the season pass every month, you are not going to be disappointed. This seems, you know, extremely crazy. And, uh, I mean, we're just at the tip of the iceberg for Merlin, frankly. I mean, the... The ability for this card to get even better is wild to me. It is crazy. Okay, next up is Morgan Le Fay, who is a 4 or 7 that says, on reveal, return all your discarded and destroyed cards to hand with plus 3 power. I was almost certain that this card was going to feel a little clunky. And I have not bought this card. And I don't think I'm not mad about that. I don't think this card fits my play style. I will say, though, for the point seven one percent on Snap fan that are playing this, the one when played percent is fifty seven again, which is nuts. That's crazy. And when you look at the numbers that she's giving, right, it's almost like a pseudo destroy bounce variation. Like, you run Firehair, you run... you know, your hoods, your, uh, rock and raccoons, your ice mans, whatever. Um, and then you reprock those good on reveals, and then you play down Morgan, and those all come back. I've also, you know, seen a list going around that has, uh, bullseye in it. Since you're running a bunch of those cheap, uh, discard cards as a backup, right, you can uh, keep those in hand, discard them with bullseye, flick your opponent's board, and then play down Morgan to get all of them back. I don't know yet. I don't think that people are really opened. They haven't opened their eyes to what this card can do. So for me right now, I'm going to give it a 4 out of 5. I think it's extremely good. I think that the people who are playing it are making a new archetype before our very eyes. And I think that it's a very surprising card. But. It has to prove itself still. It's not ubiquitous, and it's not the most powerful thing you can do. I do think that it's very unique, though. I think it has a niche that it wants to go into. Okay, moving on to the June 5th OTA. So the developers here note, Hey folks, we're back a little sooner than normal. We've got some exciting stuff in the works to announce to you soon, but in the meantime, our OTA dates have been slightly affected. Instead of skipping an update, Next week, we decided to patch a week early. Our next OTA date will be June 26th, and from there, we will be resuming as normal with our every other week cadence. It's going to be a fairly short and sweet one, but only buffs today. Our highlight this week is an adjustment to Infinity Ultron. We also ran a tournament, the Golden Gauntlet. Our first one was Awesome Watch, and also a cool opportunity to see what snap cards aren't getting love in a competitive setting. we're taking the opportunity to give some of those cards some help. And they have a little note here that says, competitors don't get any bright ideas to boycott cards in hope of the buff. So, I mean, first of all, the reason I'm reading these developer notes is because it sets an interesting precedent, which is they are looking at tournament data to see if cards need help. Now, it's not a guarantee that if a card is doing bad in the tournament, it will receive a buff, but it's something to think about. Like, they're taking these tournaments seriously, which is something that I really, really appreciate, right? Like, especially if you guys haven't seen, every tournament, they have a spreadsheet available where you can see every card that was ever used in the tournament, what the win rate of that card was in the tournament, how frequently decks appear in that tournament. It's very good data, and the people who are running that tournament are doing a fantastic job organizing that, so kudos to them. I think it's really, really interesting that this is sort of becoming a thing. I'm like, I'm really happy about it. So anywho, all buffs today, let's go through it. It's ya boy, Infinity Ultron, and look, I brought an Infinity Ultron to the Golden Gauntlet tournament. I love this guy. I thought that he was already decent in a Wiccan deck, right? Because that extra energy that you get from Wiccan can allow you to play a stone and a 5 cost on the last turn of the game, right? They are making sweeping changes to Infinity Ultron to make sure that the stones feel better to play. And I have to say, it did help me significantly in the tournament when I low rolled and I had to work with only the stones and my other cards. I'll get into that into more detail on the next podcast, but let's go through it. So Infinity Ultron used to be a 5-8. It is now a 5-6. So back to its original stat line. But now all the stones are 2 cost. So I'm just going to go through each of these stones. The Infinity Power Stone is going to a 2-1. The Infinity Reality Stone is going to a 2-1. The Infinity Time Stone is going to a 2-3. The Infinity Space Stone is going from a 3-4 to a 2-5. The Infinity Soul Stone is going from a 3-3 to a 2-3. And the Infinity Mind Stone is going from a 3-2 to a 2-2. In the notes here, they basically talk about... making this card have a bigger swing than just the increase in power right they they thought that buffing it might have been significant but it didn't really change the win rate um so their hope is that this will allow you to be more flexible with those stones and i think i think this really really works because you have cards like enchantress and shang chi that are for cost right having all of these stones at two costs means you don't have to fully invest in that game plan to still get a pretty big benefit and uh i'll go through each of these uh individually uh because i know i just ran out on a bunch of stones and then you know on audio can be confusing especially if you don't know this card very well um but i i do think that this in general is a very very good change um i'm i'm so happy that they did this but let's go through it so The Infinity Power Stone going from a 3-2 to a 2-1, and I'm also going to bundle in the Infinity Reality Stone here going from a 3-1 to a 2-1, both of these stones directly depend on Ultron's power to be good. And so, I think it's fair that they are some of the weakest, right? Their abilities are so strong in a majority of games, you want these two almost all the time. So, for that reason, and making them a 2-1 is fine. I think that's fine. The Infinity Power Stone, by the way, is still a good deal in terms of power ratio, right? So because it's one power and it's effectively adding six to Ultron, that's a two seven. That's nuts. That's great. That is really good stats. And the same goes for the Infinity Reality Stone, right? It's adding a drone and setting it to six power. Because that's the default for Ultron. So by default, that's a 2-7. Now it's taking up two spots in a lane, but it's like it already buffed Mr. Sinister, which is really good. I think that both of these changes are great. They make more sense to me as like a huge benefit to playing this card rather than an okay benefit. And it should be said too, these stones work with Victoria Hand, which is adding power to them as well. So... Suddenly they turn into two threes with Victoria Hand, which is very, very good. And all of these stones obviously benefit from that, but I think that this is a great change. These feel even better than they did before, and they're not really losing out on that much, right? So great changes there. The Infinity Time Stone puts a card from your hand to the location, and it felt really bad. It was a 3-1, and oftentimes, like... It happens with Red Wing, where if you're not playing a dedicated, like, ramp deck, it's gonna pull something dumb, and, like, trying to get it above a three-cost stat line is tough. For, like, the previous Infinity Timestone to make a difference, you're playing it at three, and it has one power, so in order for it to get to a 3-7, you needed a six-power card from your hand, which is a tall order when you have, like, two threes and other cards like that in your hand, right? So, making it a 2-3 makes it way better. It is now going to be overstatted. And again, note, it's still taking up two board spots, so there is a downside here that you have to work around. And I think that that's fair. So, now, if you get, like, that 2-3 example I was telling you, like, maybe you pull down a Jeff, you are still getting 2-6 in terms of stats. And you can still high roll, right, and get something even bigger. So. That's a great change there. Infinity Space Stone, this is the biggest one that I think really makes the low rolls on Ultron feel so much better. So... It moves the lowest power enemy card here to the location of Infinity Ultron. The disruption effect really doesn't feel that impactful in most games. There are certain exceptions that can win you the game, but if you don't get, like, the Power Stone to buff Infinity Ultron's power, you're sort of just moving a card to lose the Infinity Ultron lane most of the time. So... if that's going to be the case, I think having this card at a good stat line makes sense, right? Like, you're trying to swing the lane that you play the Space Stone in, it should be pretty big. So, moving it to a 2-5 feels great. I think this is exactly what this card needed to feel good, even if it's not an effect that you like. And honestly, most of the time, this isn't going to proc anyway there are so many decks that fill the board by the last turn that like Getting this to proc can sometimes just be difficult in the first place. So having it at a 2-5 stat line is good. It's just a good card. This is a great change. Moving on to Infinity Soulstone. This one also sucked. Just straight out, it was bad. It gave plus 2 power to a card in each of your full locations. So, like, if you filled your entire board and then played this down... You would get 6 power distributed across the board, 2 power in each lane. And since this was a 3-3, you just played a 3-9 that required you to completely fill your board. It was really bad, guys. Most of the time, you weren't filling your entire board, so you were effectively getting plus 4 in stats. So this was really like a 3-7. And again, since it's distributing the power, like, is plus two really going to put you over the edge? Probably not. I mean, again, you were investing three cost into it, so it felt even worse. It was like an Ironheart, just a plain old Ironheart with a much harder condition to meet. I think having it go to a two three makes sense. It's now going to be, again, overstated for its cost rather than like... decent for its cost now if you fill two lanes and this procs twice it is now a 2-7 and a 2-7 is way better than a 3-7 so i think this is fair i still think this is one of the weakest cards you don't want infinity soul stone most of the time but uh with this next stone that we're about to talk about it's okay like it's it's fine it's not the worst thing in the world So, speaking of the next card, it's Infinity Mind Stone. This was Wong. On reveal, abilities happen twice here. It used to be a 3-2, and now it's a 2-2. I think not changing the power is fair, right? This is a powerful effect with a majority of the stones. I do think that this is probably one of the strongest stones you can get. I mean, if you get a double proc on... The Reality Stone, the Time Stone, or the Power Stone, that is a very powerful turn that you just spent. And you only used four energy, so you still have two left over to do something like a Shadow King. Or in the case of the decks that I play, you can play down like a Sentinel that's buffed by a Victoria Hand. Or you get the gist, right? So this is a really great effect. And like, You can still use this with other 4-cost cards that are really powerful, like Kahori, right? Like, if you play this down in Kahori, you are buffing your board twice, which is great, and you're getting a decent stat line for that. So yeah, I think this is good. This is by far one of the biggest reworks that we've seen for a card. Like, this feels like when Thanos gets changed, right? All of these stones getting sweeping changes. And I think the reduction to his power is fine, given that these stones are much, you know, better. And again, I have to bring a Victoria Hand. I really think that you should be playing Victoria Hand with your Infinity Ultron build, whatever it is. Because it's just so good. It's such an easy combo. You're getting a great value off of Victoria, even if you just play those two stones. Like, it's a great deal. So yeah, I love these changes. I think they did a great job. It's going to make this card much, much better. And yeah, really excited about it. Okay, Giganto is going from a 614 to a 616. Yeah, baby! This is what I'm talking about. I have been asking for Giganto to get better for... The majority of this podcast's life, this guy is finally, finally playable in a good chunk of decks. Yes, it's not as good as the Infinite and Discard decks, but you're not mad about it now. And especially in War Machine decks, like, a lot of them were already sort of playing this to begin with, but now, this is distinctly better than some of those other six costs. I think this is great, man. I am so excited about this. Like, it- I want to make a deck with Giganto, like, now. Like, this is really cool to me. And especially with Nightmare coming out, which is one of the new cards, this is going to be just, like, so, so, so cool to be able to play down. And, of course, you just got that animation change. Like, this is great. Great change. Okay, Omega Red is going from a 4-5 to a 4-6. and Since his whole shtick is winning the location, I understand that they were very tentative with increasing his power. Because in a lot of decks, you're using Iron Man, you're using Onslaught, and you're trying to get the most value out of this. But the fact is, he was changed to be more of a middling card, with an easier condition to work around but with less reward. Plus 3 to the other locations is impactful. right it's like a a nerfed version of Baxter building. But you, like, investing more than three cards in that lane to make it happen makes this card not worth running. And there are other cards that have similar effects, like Ms. Marvel, that can take better advantage of that. So this going to a 4-6 makes sense to me, right? If you double this with Iron Man, that's way better than 10 power. Now it's 12 power, and that is enough to, I think, swing a lane. So I like this change. Very good. Alright, last but not least, it is Supergiant who says, on reveal, all cards played next turn don't reveal until the game ends. I'm reading this out just in case you haven't seen this card because, let's be frank, she has not been played. She is now going to a 4-7. This just makes sense, right? Like, her effect is on both sides, and in order to fully take advantage of her, you have to be sacrificing some sort of combo in your deck, right? You're sort of using her effect to disrupt your opponent and then maybe get an advantage. Like playing a Tuma, right? Like if you play an Tuma, you're getting a 410, but it doesn't reveal until the game ends, so his effect doesn't proc. There's a couple of other cards that have that sort of benefit. But I do think that this card should have a place in the meta as like a, hey, stop it combo. And I think that this... helps achieve that and we've seen a lot of cards go to that four seven stat line that have these sort of tricky effects to work around so yeah that's the ota those are the two new cards uh very rambly uh for me but i i just wanted to go through everything uh in detail this week again uh stay tuned for next week we'll be covering more of the tournament and more of the new cards i'll have more stuff to talk about then and check out my youtube channel i'm going to release a video talking about my tournament experience and everything that's in there But yeah, if there's one thing that you can remember, it's that I'm infinite. Thanks for listening.
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