Speaker #1Can you understand me? Hello everyone, Kier here, and welcome to the InfiNOT Podcast. I'm focused on the casual nature of the game, and each week I discuss a new patch, the new card, and my feelings on the game. I'm also a part of the SnapDestined's podcasting network, and I'm going to talk about... SnapDecisions, hosted by your DJ, Joe. If you have not heard, he has recently changed the format of the podcast to feel more like a radio show. And I think it's going a long way. I've actually been really enjoying it. And he's recently spoken about Ozzy Osbourne's passing and he went through some history with that. And it's just really fascinating. I think if you like Snap, but also just sort of like, you know, being nostalgic. I think that this show does a really good job of blending the two. He also talks about comics on the regular. which is great if you're not aware of some of these characters. So if you haven't checked it out, definitely do. Now, let's hop into it. So this week is a little bit slower, and I guess it's a good thing because I am late. If you're listening to this, it's probably either late Monday or on Tuesday, where we're already going to get a new card. But my cat buddy fell sick this weekend, and it was just a whole mess. We had to take care of fleas and clean the house, and it was a huge thing. So I appreciate your guys' patience, and you can expect some regular Saturday uploads pretty soon here. We're going to talk about, obviously, the Thing First Steps. We're also going to talk about the limited time game mode that just came out. And yeah, let's hop into it. So first up, we have the Thing Fantastic Four First Steps. And, uh... Before I launch into this, I have to say I did watch the movie on Friday, and it was really good. It was really, really good. The pacing was lightning fast, which was really hard to get used to, but the movie itself is really, really great. I feel like Marvel is in a really good stride right now. I personally love the Thunderbolts, especially their themes on mental health topics. So I think this movie landed a little less than that for me, but... Still, it was a stellar experience. The visuals were amazing. I think the theme was really strong. So that being said, what I think about the thing now that he's in Marvel Snap and not the 4-7 thing that we now have. This is the 5-6 end of turn plus two power once per game. If your side here is full, destroy an enemy card here with less power. So I'm a listener. of podcasts and uh i'm sorry for going on so many tangents but i i i it had me thinking about this card in a new a new way uh km best has his own podcast with jerry thompson so i'll give a shout out to them um on that podcast they were sort of talking about the power of fives and i think that that's a relevant discussion to have because when i first looked at this card it didn't seem all that crazy to me especially because you have to fill his side of the location before that destroy effect happens. And, you know, you could argue that a lot of other cards require investment for five costs, right? Like Devil Dinosaur, Ronin, Dark Hawk, these big numbers cards also require you to put in a lot of work for that to happen. And that's a weakness, like a significant weakness to these cards that I think prevents them from being very good. In... This case, right, because you have to fill the location, you're not only investing five energy to try to swing this lane, but you have to fill the location with other cards. So you sort of ask yourself, like, what's the best way of doing that? And when you start putting together, like, a server deck because it has Brood or maybe, like, a zoo deck because it has a bunch of cards like Squirrel Girl and Shauna and all these things, you're already investing so much into that game plan. And this seems like a weird. pivot into that um where it's not necessary and then in a regular deck like if you're just playing on curve you'd be investing four of your turns typically in order to make this thing happen which is is kind of weird right you would hope that an effect like this would just sort of do its own thing try to swing a lane by itself um you know that sort of works with cards like ajax where he only requires a two energy investment with hazmat. So, you play Hazmat on the last turn after you've played Ajax, and he can just win a lane, right? Because he's so big. But it's not the case with the thing and a lot of other 5-cost cards, and that's what makes them feel so weak. I think that this card is fun. His animation's great, by the way. He flips over with two big hands, and he just slams the card on the other side of the... of the board and it sort of reminds me of the red guardians animation where he just like flies up and kicks or you know punches them uh with his card so i i like the flavor and obviously the whole idea of having your side here being full sort of fits into that you know we're a family sort of dynamic but in in terms of a card i'm just not that impressed um i was heavily debating getting this card too just because i i've been hoping for a a good five for a while i've been using blink quite a bit i do like blink and i have devil dinosaur and infinity ultron in the same deck because i think that their effects um are powerful enough that you know they pose a thread specifically with infinity ultron right he's sort of his own condition you do have to invest more into him but it's more of a surprise factor at the end turn that gives him that advantage he has like a vision kind of effect where you're you know your opponent has to guess sort of what options you're are going to enact. whereas this is pretty straightforward right the the good thing about the things effect is since he's a five six and he gets two power at the end of the turn um two turns right because you play him on five and he has an effect on six means he is a 510 that also destroys something right so even if he destroys a one two um he goes to 12 power right so it's decent it's just yeah like i said the the level of investment that these five cost cards have is just too much of a cost, I think, for what they're doing. So overall, with that ramble out of the way, I'm going to give him a three out of five. I just don't think that he's as independently useful as a card like Herbie or a card like Human Torch, right? Because Human Torch has a similar level of power, but he doesn't require that five energy. right he's only at three and he can get to a similar level of power right we were talking about that one two example bringing uh the thing to 12 power human torch can already sort of do that right so yeah i don't know i don't know i i hope that this finds a place i was i was thinking in my head maybe someone would come up with like an ultron deck or something like that that might take uh use of this but it's just sort of like if you're gonna do that you might as well play like Blue Marvel. or something to get those drones up some extra power. So I don't know. I don't know. I think that this card is cool. He's, you know, running a 55% win rate right now in SnapFan. So he must be decent, but I'm just not super impressed. So that's why I gave him the score I did. Okay, the next thing to talk about is the Grand Arena. And this is... A really cool departure from what we usually see with limited time game modes. They put a lot more work into this than they usually do. For starters, we got a new game board, which looks awesome. It's sort of like a coliseum. You can see like flags draping down. And the way it works is if you've ever played Commander and Magic, it's sort of similar. You're sort of choosing somebody that has a big focus on the sort of game plan that you're doing. and um in marvel snap right you get those cards in your hand to start the game and they each come with their own skill that is unique to them and i'll go over those in a second but the uh the the two options that you have for this mode is running a pre-constructed deck which is really cool i think that uh that's a really great way to get new players into this you don't have a full collection but still want to try out these uh cool abilities right or you can do a custom deck in which you're required to run that champion. So, who are the champions? Well, let's go through it, shall we? So, your options are Mr. Fantastic, and not the new one. This is the old one, the one that gives plus three to two other locations. You have Invisible Woman, again, the older one, the one that hides your cards behind her. Human Torch First Steps, so this is the one that doubles its power. The Thing First Steps, which we just talked about, Herbie, Dr. Doom, the OG, Mole Man, and Carnage. Now, it's weird to have to talk about the other two cards in here, so I'll probably just go over them when we start talking about the rewards for this game mode, because that just makes it a little bit easier. But just talking about the skills that come with these decks, I'll go through them pretty quickly here. The Council of Reeds comes with Mr. Fantastic, and it says it's two scots skill. Give an ongoing card in your hand, minus one cost and plus one power. After you play it, repeat this. So it's sort of like a surge effect. You have force field for Invisible Woman. On reveal, give your champion plus one power for each unrevealed card at its location. You get that much energy next turn. This is a zero cost skill, so it's very, very good. For Human Torch First Steps, you have Flame On. It's a one-cost skill that says, on reveal, add your champion's power to the top card of your deck. Next up is Fantastic Four First Steps Thing. It's Clobbering Time. It's a six-cost skill that says, costs one less for each of your different costs among your cards in play. On reveal, give your champion plus eight power. Next up is a three-cost skill for Herbie. It's Helpful Assistance. On reveal, execute all four of Herbie's abilities here. Next up is Master Plan for Dr. Doom. It's a two-cost skill that says your six-cost cards cost three next turn. Next up is Subterranean Summons for Mole Man. On reveal, give each created card in your hand minus one cost or plus two power. And then finally, Maximum Carnage for Carnage that says on reveal, banish this to move your champion here. Repeat its on reveal abilities. I hope I mentioned Carnage. For some reason, I think I might not have. He's in here too, if I did not. Okay, so all of these champions start in your hand, and their skills start in your hand. So all of these are amazing, right? I think that there's definitely arguments to be made, like some are better than others. But as for their individual power levels, it's nuts, right? I've been playing mostly with... Dr. Doom's. I haven't played a ton of the mode, by the way. I've only dabbled. But the Master Plan one in particular is awesome just because you always have Dr. Doom. You always have this. So your curve is usually you play a one drop, you play this on two, you play Dr. Doom on three, and then you can play something like Dr. Doom 2099 on four and keep building on that game plan, which is really, really great. The deck that I was running was pretty much your standard Doom 99 deck, I had things like Sandman in there, and, you know, things like Blue Marvel, but then, of course, because I can discount some other 6 costs, I thought to include Onslaught and Emperor Hulkling, because I have other cards in here to sort of help ramp, just in case I want to get some more 6 costs out, right, because Doctor Doom is good early, but he's also still pretty good late, especially after you've played Sandman, so that was sort of the thing I was doing, and while I'm talking about... deck construction, I guess I can jump to the banned cards list, because there are banned cards in this mode. That includes all of the cards that are champions, just because that makes sense, right? But also you have Gorgon, Spider-Ham, Galactus, Mr. Negative, Black Bolt, Nimrod, The Living Tributal, Mobius M. Mobius, Professor X, Wiccan, and Kang, all of which make sense to They don't want this moat to have too many of the meta staples. Uh, you know, that makes them feel similar to ladder. So all of this being said, like, how does the mode play? Like what, how, how does it go? And from my experience, it's, it's fun, but like everything, like every mode that we've done, people find a way to break it. And it's just, there's a whole lot of tech cards just constantly. I mean, especially ongoing tech cards, right? Because a lot of these cards rely on ongoing effects to be good. Um, and I'm not just saying that because of my deck, right? Like, the Invisible Woman deck also sort of relies on it, and the Mr. Fantastic one relies on it, uh, and, you know, some of the other cards use ongoing cards in there too, so there's a lot of ongoing hate, but there's also just, like, a ton of Red Guardian, a ton of these other cards that we've seen a million times, uh, so it-it-it's a shame. I, you know, I-I-I'm not surprised necessarily, but, like, it does hamper the experience a bit. Especially when the sky's the limit on these sorts of decks. As always, I'm just sad that it's a limited time game mode. Because I feel like this sort of idea of having a separate mode just for these champions. Would make for some really cool decks and some really cool metagames. But, anywho. So, I think it plays pretty well. I think that they adapted this idea extremely well. I think this mode might be my favorite. out of the limited time game modes. And my favorite before that was High Voltage, the OG, just because it's low stakes. It doesn't require me to do a bunch of extra stuff. This one does require some extra stuff, but I just think that the flavor is really fun. It offers a really cool deck building challenge if you're interested in that, and it feels thematically way cooler. than a lot of the other ones where you get your own like sort of vibe you get these these champions with their their cool uh variants on and yeah it's just it's really neat um So what about the rewards, right? It's a limited time game mode, so you know there's a shop, and I'll quickly go through some of the highlights in there. So first thing to sort of break down is there's an event pass. It sort of works similar to a lot of like the progress bars that we've seen previously, where the further you go up, the further rewards you get, but now there's a premium pass. And before you assume I'm going to be upset at it, I actually think this is fine. You know, I think Marvel Rivals does something similar with, like, limited chests that have stuff in them. With the idea being there is a free track, but there's also a paid track. So if you want to have, like, a mini Battle Pass experience in this mode, you can. With the idea that you're still getting stuff for free, like, the entire way up the track, it's just not going to be, you know, as juicy as the other rewards. I actually mentioned that as a plus. I think this system works a lot better than most. So what do you get actually in the shop? So there's a portal poll coming back, which I'm not exactly ecstatic about. In this case, I think it's just variants, which are cool. You also have borders, and you can get more arena tickets, which you need in order to play the mode. You get, I think it's eight every couple of hours, so if you run out, it'll recharge. You have some new emotes, some titles, credits. you know, avatars, and then you have the two new cards, which includes Mole Man, who is a 3-3 that says, on reveal, banish the top card of your deck, add two rocks to your hand, and set their power to the banished card's cost, as well as the Mad Thinker, who is a 1-1 that says, at the start of each turn, after drawing, plus two power if your hand is full. So, just talking about Mole Man for a second here. What I find interesting first about this reward is that it's a variant, and if you're not aware, they did change it not too long ago that if you have a variant of a card, you get the base card included, which should have been there originally, but now it's in the game, right? So if you buy this variant in the shop, you also get the base card, which is cool. And his effect is also really interesting. I saw Regis play a deck recently that had the... Whole idea focused around 6-costs, and so he went to Hela. And I think that's a really smart idea, right? You play this in the place of, like, a ramp card or something, and if he hits that 6-cost card, you're getting, you know, a huge amount of value, especially if it's something like Death, right? Where that 8-cost suddenly becomes 1-8, and you're talking about a 2-16 in terms of stats. So I think his effect is niche, but very cool. and Mad Thinker also is niche, but I don't think it's as good, right? Because it says at the start of each turn, after drawing, plus two power if your hand is full. And so, like, you think, okay, if I play this on one, there's no way I'm filling my hand by turn two. Maybe by turn three. So, if you filled your hand every turn, starting from turn three onwards, you'd be looking at, like, a one-seven, right? Because at the tick of the beginning of four, ticks at the beginning of five, and ticks at the beginning of six. So, I mean, a 1-7 in stats sounds pretty good, and you would think that, you know, for every Kahori deck or whatever, there's probably a place for this guy. But it's just really hard to squeeze in. And, like, I just don't love the idea of putting him in here when, like, the collector can get, you know, obviously big or bigger. And it doesn't have this, like, harsh requirement. Still, this is one of the cards that I'm actually looking to getting because I want to experiment with it. It seems niche, which is why a hipster like me would be down to try it. But I just haven't earned enough points yet. It looks like a long shot for me, especially because I'm not as engaged as I used to be. So I'm probably just going to have to wait until it gets into rotation before I get to try it out. But I think it's interesting at the very least. And I'm not going to speak on what I rate these cards yet. I might bring them up. later on once i get a feel of how they're doing in the game um but we'll see for now i think mole man is probably a four out of five i want to say in like specific decks he can be pretty good mad thinker is is gotta be a two or one uh but i'll see if if he fits into those like devil dino decks he might he might be really interesting in there but that's that's sort of the vibe there so that's that's the shop uh in a nutshell Two new cards, a bunch of variants, and a bunch of other goodies. So far, the only thing that I've gotten is, like, some credits, just because I feel like I'm not going to really shoot for the moon here and try to get any of the new cards. They also have some new interesting borders here. I don't know if I've seen them before. There's a rainbow refraction border and a fire border. And I kind of want the fire border for my Ghost Rider variant, but I already used it for the chains, so I don't know. I haven't decided on what I want, but I think that it's decent. The progression feels a little slow to me, but if you played this instead of ladder, you'd probably earn enough rewards to feel satisfied. So, yeah, that's Grand Arena in a nutshell. I'm sure I've missed some details on, you know, what the top of the top is doing in terms of how to game this mode. And I'm probably also missing some details on each of the individual decks. But for this podcast, that is about as comprehensive as you're going to get. So what do I think of the mode? I think it's pretty good. I think that this is their strongest outing of a mode in terms of presentation, in terms of... gameplay. Oh, something I completely forgot to mention was the fact that each round starts with one more energy, so it makes this mode feel faster. So yeah, I mean, the whole thing is just like really intuitive. It encourages some really fun, creative decks. I'm just, as per usual, I ask why it has to be limited, right? Why it has to be this way, but I guess they're testing it. I don't know. They seem really set on these limited time game modes, so I always feel like I can't be too excited about it, because it's gonna go away. I don't know. I don't know. That's my opinion on it. I think it's decent. I would love to see it permanently. I know everybody's asking for a draft mode, but I'd almost take this. Maybe if they add more champions over time, it could be really, really interesting. But, anywho, that is pretty much everything I have to talk about in the game right now. Most of this was rambling because it's been a minute since I've spoken, but I appreciate you sticking with me and let me know what your thoughts are on the grand arena if you're liking it as much as I am. And let me know if you got the new cards and tell me how they are because I'm genuinely curious on how that stuff is doing. As a reminder, you can follow me on socials. I post on Blue Sky fairly often. I'm also posting on threads. I don't mention that too much just because, you know, the following there is really weird with Marvel Snap, but... If you haven't checked me out there, definitely do. I'm going to be trying to stream later this week, but we'll see how that goes. And if there's one thing that you can remember, it's that I'm Infinite. Thanks for listening.
