Speaker #0And he's an amazing guy. I've been on his show a couple of times. If you have not checked out his podcast, it's a bit of a longer form one, but he covers a bunch of stuff, including the comic side of these characters that we see in games. So if that interests you, I would highly recommend checking out his show. I listen to it every week. And yeah, with that out of the way, let's hop into it. So this week is a lot slower. It's just... We have way less to talk about, it's going to be a pretty chill episode, so we're going to take our time. Last week I felt like I was rushing against the clock in order to get everything in, but we're going to take it nice and breezy today. I'm going to be talking about Clea, the new card that just came out, and the two new locations that just came out, since we don't usually get to talk about those. Okay, let's start with Clea, who is a 1-2 that says... After this permanently gains power, add a Flames of the Faultine to your hand, if in hand or in play. And the Flames of the Faultine are a one-cost skill that says, on reveal, afflict an enemy card here with minus three power. So, this card is asking a lot of you. It is asking a ton for you to do in your deck. you know firstly It's permanent power, so you can't do Captain Carter or Blue Marvel or anything like that. It has to be power that you're adding to her. You also can't do stuff in the deck. So cards like Akoye and Fastos and America Chavez do not help this card. And lastly, you have to have hand space in order for the Flames of Voltine to be added to your hand before you get the value. And then you have to spend the energy on the Flames of the Faultine in order to get that negative three power. So already this card is asking a lot, just in terms of deck building and the way that she's played. So that is a huge downside. And the upside is powerful, right? Like getting multiple of these negative three cards could be insane. But again, it's just... it is a huge ask to get that ball rolling and i think her stats reflect that at least on snap fan right now she's running barely over a 50 win rate uh when played and i think again like getting those negative threes are powerful but you know these decks that clear in are not like optimized necessarily and i don't think that there's a really a good way to optimize it um beyond you know the typical stuff that you're you see With like the Surge Gwenpool decks, which have been running around. And in that case, you can get a decent amount of value. I would personally argue that another card would fit that slot better. Now, in those decks, the ones that I'm talking about where you have, you know, the Gwenpool, the Surge, you throw in some other on reveals. Like, that's doing okay. It's at like a 56% win rate, which is good. But, you know, I would, again. I think the good cards deck surrounding Clea are the thing that make her good, not necessarily, you know, the card itself. So right now I'm feeling pretty lukewarm on her. I would say, you know, something around a three star. I want to I'm I'm being optimistic because I think that this card is powerful. If you can get that ball rolling and if you have something like a bishop on the board, right, that's getting value because those skills are disappearing and they're super cheap. You could have something like a Nicholas Scratch if you're trying to proc it multiple times. I think there's some value to that. I'm just not entirely convinced that this is the best thing to do. So yeah, that's where I'm at. Okay, next up, we're going to talk about the new locations in the game, starting with Camelot. This is, of course, the, you know, like, Mystic Magicians and all that stuff. So having a location that, you know, corresponds with Merlin is pretty cool. Camelot says, after turn 5, set all cards here to 5 power. And it should be noted, right, this is different than setting the base power to 5. Like, this is not Quantum Realm. So if you have something... uh that has like a base of eight power it will be reduced down to five and the same goes for um that kind of stuff the only exception uh is ongoing cards right because their power can be added on top of whatever their their base power is so uh this is this is really interesting i i feel like locations like this um are often ripe for disruption because Let's say I'm kind of banking on this power, and I put, like, three cards there ahead of my opponent. My opponent can then throw down a Reality Stone, and suddenly I have a bunch of weak cards there. But, other than that specific circumstance, I think that this card benefits a lot of decks. And it also sort of prevents, you know, your bigger cards being set there, like your big 5-cost or 4-cost cards. Like, you don't want to put a Crossbones there. So, That's kind of interesting. I also think that, you know, it lends itself to ongoing, as I said previously, which given how many counters there are to ongoing, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with ongoing having a couple of locations that really help it. I look at this location, too, with cards like Captain Carter or Iron Man, and obviously those are great. So yeah, that's pretty awesome. I think that this helps a lot of cards. Now, I will say the flavor of this location doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but maybe I'm missing something about Camelot that would lend itself to 5. Maybe there's, like, a thing for that. Because, as far as I know, the Knights of the Round Table had, like, 12 members in most stories, but it can, you know, change depending on whatever. So, not so sure about the flavor, but I do think that it's a cool location nonetheless. Okay, next up is... Astral Plane. Astral Plane is a location that says, after this turn, add a zero power copy of a card from hand here. This is a really cool location. You can almost imagine it as a anti-venom, right? So it takes a card from your hand, makes it zero power, and that can be really, really cool to add to an on-reveal plan or an ongoing plan. And it should be noted, too, if you have Shadow King, you can actually bring that power back. Now, of course, that will bring your opponent's power back. But let's say that you low roll and your Giganto gets put in this location. Having a Shadow King there could actually swing it back. So that's really interesting. And yeah, like I said, it does help some of the game plans, too. Like, you know, that clear list that we were just talking about might actually, you know, benefit from something like this. So I think that's cool. I also think that it's flavorful, right? You know, when you project yourself with astral projection, which, you know, that's a separate card, but just follow me here. When you're in the astral plane, you are sending your spirit out to do things while your body remains the same. And I love that this sort of, you know, leans into that because your card is sending its soul, you know, its text, specifically to the location to do something while the card remains in your hand i think that that is super flavorful i i think this location is super cool uh i'm really glad to see it in the game and since we have some extra time here i do want to just talk about some of the decks that i've been playing recently because i've been cooking uh in the background uh so uh obviously if you're not into this sort of thing feel free to uh end the episode here but for those of you who do want to listen i i have two decks that i've been uh working with The first one is my old Loki deck, the one that I made a while ago. And I think that it's actually a pretty good time to play this deck right now, because there's a lot of ongoing, there's a lot of, like, good cards lists. Like, the meta is actually in a really good spot, which I'm happy to say. Like, it feels so good to say that the meta is in a healthy spot. I'm seeing a wide range of things, and none of them seem unbeatable to me. That might just be my pocket meta, though. I don't know how the top of the ladder is doing, but I'm usually stuck in the 80s. This feels like a pretty good place to be in. So yeah, the Loki deck, of course, has, you know, Loki with a top end of Blob and Mockingbird. And the whole gimmick of this deck is like, I'm playing some good stuff, and then in between, I have a backup plan with Loki, where I can Loki on turn, you know, four or five. And that fills my deck with cards so that Blob can always meet that 13 or more power mark. And then if I want to, and I see an opportunity, I can Loki early and then play some cards down for Mockingbird later. So I love this deck, and I'm glad I get to play it again. It's super fun, and I have to say, sometimes, you know, the best card in this deck is actually just Mirage. I think that this card is so underrated, man. Sometimes you just get, like, a 3-7. And, like, it feels great. It just, it feels awesome. So, shout out to Mirage. I love that card. The other deck that I have here is a deck that I call Flapjacks. And this came to me because I wanted to use Malekith, and I haven't used Jubilee in forever. And so I was sort of thinking, like, what kind of deck wants to have things brought out by Malekith and Jubilee? And so I made this. I'll go ahead and read out the full list before I ramble on. It's Howard the Duck, Hydra Bob, Jeff, Quake, Red Guardian, Nocturne, Jubilee, Malekith, Miles Morales Spider-Man, Agamotto, Emperor Hulkling, and Giganto. This deck seems insane, but I have a positive win rate with it because it just puts out really good stats. It also has a lot of location control in here, which is great, and even some tech, right, with Red Guardian. And the whole idea of this deck is, like, if Malekith pulls a card that's lower than him, he is always going to be overstatted, maybe with the exception of Howard. But it's a really good combo synergy with Jubilee to have Howard in here, which is why I have him. And since Agamotto's in the deck, Unless you specifically roll Bolts of Balthac, Malekith pulling the two other ones are usually pretty good as well, and it thins your deck. The same goes with Jubilee, because if she pulls a skill, that leaves a spot open for a card to be played later, it thins your deck, it gets on reveals going, really, really good. And then obviously, if you have Howard on the board, you can pull something like an Agamotto, an Emperor Hulkling, or a Giganto, which are, you know, extremely good. And like this deck just has so many surprise things in it, like Quake or Emperor Hulkling, which can just swing a game. And then the last couple of cards in here, like Miles Morales, I just found that it had a lot of synergy with Hydra, Bob, Jeff and Nocturne, all of which are good to pull with Jubilee as well. Right, because they can move out of the location so that you can play more cards later. It all just sort of like meshes together. It doesn't have like a central game plan. uh beyond just like putting down good numbers um if i had to make a change in here i might swap morales for like a shang chi the only downside to that though is like if you pull it with jubilee it doesn't feel that great so i don't know right now i'm having a lot of fun with this deck i've been swapping between this uh my magic dino deck which if you haven't seen is the one i used in the uh golden gauntlet tournament and the loki deck so I've been swapping up between those in order to get some missions done. And I've been having a lot of fun in the game. I think that's all that I have for this week. And I apologize for it being shorter, but I hope that you guys have some extra time to enjoy the Fourth of July weekend. I'm not celebrating it this year, but for those of you that are celebrating, I hope you have fun. And yeah, that's all I have. So if there's one thing that you can remember, it's that I'm infinite. Thanks for listening.
