What's going on guys? And welcome back in just a couple of days, we're celebrating Marvel Snap's one year anniversary. We're gonna recap the best cards to come out to the game, the biggest reworks in everything about year one and Marvel Snap. We're also gonna be breaking down the Black Knight who comes out Tuesday at noon. A new option for the discard archetype. Is he gonna be dud or deadly? Will break him down the best combos and what we think about the new arrival.
And then lastly, we're gonna break down the O T A upcoming balance Patches, forge going down to a one cost. With that, we're going to rank the top 10 best 1 cost cards currently in Marvel Snap. We're going to talk about all that today more on this episode of the Snapchat. And on this 50th episode of the Snapchat, as always, I am joined by Mr. Alex Coccia. 50 episodes, man. In one year. This Wednesday. Of Marvel snap. How are we doing?
I'm doing great. And it's been an absolutely wild year. This has been without question. One of the most wild years of my entire life. And I have a lot to thank snap for. Like, I mean, the community has been overwhelmingly generous with positivity on both of our parts here. And I just looking back, it's been wild how far we've come both as a podcast crew, but just as a game and a gaming community as a whole.
Yeah, dude, it blew by. And it's cool that my son was born right on it. So I kind of have. It's crazy that he's turning one and then I also have Snap turning one and it's these two giant things that changed my life are going together in tandem. But yeah, one year Marvel Snap went quick, I would say massively, you know, twelve different seasons, we've got a lot to talk about today. We're gonna kind of bring up memory lane, right?
Talk about some of those insane times that you can look back and be like, How did this last as long as it did? Between cards, metas, all that jazz. We also have the one year anniversary for Marvel Snap and what they're doing to celebrate. I'm gonna hold you to it. Choose your own variant. Human Torch, Shang Chi, or Ghost Spider? Which one are you picking, Alex?
I am gonna be picking Shang Chi because I'm sitting on, I think, almost 1, 500 Shang Chi boosters because I've never liked a variant I have.
Dude, I think Shang Chi is gonna... Blow it out of the water. I think that shang chi is gonna win by by quite a I could be wrong But it looks early that shang chi is gonna have a pretty easy win.
Yeah, one thing I will say though is I bet you animated the ghost rider and the human torch will look way better Yeah, they probably do nicer variants.
Oh, yeah. No 100 percent Well Alex and I are both gonna be streaming and so you can get your twitch drops there. We can see you guys on Wednesday and dude, I'm excited to get back to live stream. It's almost like I've been off the horse for so long I forgot how it's like.
I know it's crazy. I mean, we met with you live streaming. That's how we kind of first interacted because so during the launch phase of the game, I was I was watching content and stuff and I'm like, man, this cozy guy, this stuff is so good. I thought your stuff was so good. And then when I saw you streaming on Twitch, I was like, I got to raid him. I like, I think this guy's the best snap creator right now. And I raided into ya and then that's how we kind of hit it off, right?
And then that was your last stream. It was the launch day and then you never streamed again.
Dude, I know. I was like, I'll be back in a week. And then I had my kid and I was gone. I was like, dude, I underestimated this hard. You know, I used to treat it like it was literally a television show. And that's what was so fun to do. And it's going to be interesting on trying to balance that and YouTube. And, and, and, you know, obviously my son.
But I'm excited to be back even for the twitch drops here and excited to see you guys and do stuff with you man We've got a couple of announcements that we can say maybe later at the end of this podcast Anyway, man, let's go ahead and hop in. What are we breaking down on your side? We already know what we're talking about here.
We'll be talking about man thing. Now, man thing did come out last week. We'll be doing our little review and catch up on what our thoughts were on man thing. We'll also be talking about a year of Marvel snap and talk about the client and game improvements here. We're going to be talking about you know, the, the cards and some of our favorite memories of snap in general, we're gonna be talking about how the game has improved on my side there. And then finally. Our snaps, big bads, bad.
Okay. This is a conversation cozy and I've wanted to have for some time and we're going to have it today.
So one year of Marvel snap, as I bring up the Arnim Zola Game Boy variant, this one is a winner by the way do just so many metas cards, things that I couldn't believe happened. Happens. And I'm excited to talk the best improvements on your side and just look at things that we take for granted. I think now. Let's kind of take it all the way back. The first question I want to ask you, right, before we get too deep into this anniversary, looking back at, at 2022, 2023.
Tell me a card in your early novice days that you were convinced was good, but was trash.
That's so it's a lot to, it's a lot to man. I had a lot to in so many decks, even in my first beginners guides. Right. When I played hundreds of hours of the game, I was putting a lot to into the beginner's guides because I was, I was saying like, Hey, you're new. You're like, you're going to want to work around the locations and the stuff that you're learning how to play. And I like, I made it in my head and I made it make sense. I sold myself on a lot to not being complete trash.
It's complete trash, I did it.
I, for me, it was crossbones. I don't know why, but I was like, all I have to do is win a location. And I get this card, like, he's great, this is gonna be a stud. Him, or like, I think everybody falls into this. I thought Wong was the ticket to everlasting happiness. I thought Wong, like, I'm unbeatable. Nobody can beat me, as long as I've got the circle on my side. And do the, the on reveals, but that was definitely mistaken. It was a weird time for us, because we played the beta.
And then, we had a, a slew, and when I mean a slew, millions of new players coming in, you know, 10 million plus. And we had to kind of like, forget about pool 3. We had to like, erase all these cards that we got in our head, and like, take it, you know what I mean, and like, our content and everything. We had to like, bring it back to pool 1 and 2, which was kind of cool, because we knew some of the stuff to give advice on, and that's kind of, you know, where channels were going for.
But it was a weird time, right? Like, playing pool 1 and 2 decks exclusively to make sure we made content.
Yeah, it was hard, because like, everyone was in pool 1 and 2, and then we were like, way beyond that. And so what ended up happening was like, we were playing pool 1 and 2 decks on ladder, against people that were like, high collection level, high MMR, playing the most sweaty pool 3 and above decks, like, trying to absolutely smash us. Meanwhile, like, I'm making a video, how to win with the starter deck, and I'm literally using the starter deck, right? It's like...
That's it was so funny, but at the same time, it's that was, you know what I just look back. I think about what it was like through the collection system, pool one, pool two, unlocking brand new cards. That was peak Marvel snap.
Yeah, dude, for sure. The early days of the way that you would unlock cards was like back to back to back the pool system. I also love to, because you knew when you were going to finish pool one, going into pool two, why they never told you you were going into pool two blew my mind. You had to like, I got Bucky Barnes. I guess I'm in pool 2 now, right? And then that kind of dictated the way you played, the decks you played. I think that's what was so cool.
And we weren't lost in the competitiveness all the time of it too, right? I think that was something special. Let's talk about the most busted cards to ever make it in Marvel Snap in year 1. We're not talking beta.
We're gonna talk cards that existed post launch some of which I forgot their stat lines like I'm gonna be honest like mr Negative has been through the blender 19 times I've forgotten like where he settled or where he came from and I'll kick us off with the first one I think the essence of somebody that came from launch a true player I could show two cards and they're gonna be known as like, okay Those were obviously the best two obviously the early love for a 5 8 era.
She was still 5 8 but Alex, what did she do for those that didn't play in that time?
She pulled every single card that the opponent played. Basically, she just won the game. Like, that's what she did. She was the original Elioth. Like, oh, I have initiative? I guess you lose now. Like, that's exactly what Arrow did. It was wild.
So ridiculous, man. And like, for whatever reason, you can look back. She just like, wasn't respected too, like, for a little bit. And then finally, like, everybody caught on that she was cracked. And ridiculous. And this is how you win. And then Alex, can you take a guess, what's the other one that I'm going to bring up that's like the token early player broken card?
If you're talking November, like I would say it's Thanos, but... Oh, Thanos. Is that too late?
No, I was, I was going to bring up OG Leader, right? And I think... People forget, he was a 6'4 I was trying to, I was trying, I remembered his ability, but I was like, what was his stat line? And now that I think back of him being a 6'4 that would copy every card that your opponent played that turn. I can't even process. How that was like a ship it decision and it lasted till what, what February?
On launch. I think that leader was slept on people weren't playing leader if I remember correctly. And then it kind of caught on. And then what happened was is like, it's interactions were insane with initiative. Cause like, if you played like, like whatever you played leader would play the exact same thing with the inherent buffs that you had applied on your turn and then redo it. So like if you played silver surfer.
Leader would get the silver surfer buff cards and then play silver surfer again. I was like, who made this? Who designed this? Right? Like, this is completely ridiculous, but like, there's been a couple of examples of this where like we had broken cards that we had not quite identified as broken until like they just completely took over the game. And I think leader was one of them. I think it took us a month or two to kind of really heat up on leader.
I think what it was about him specifically is he got popular when, we can bring up the next card that I'm gonna bring up for sure, is when Wave, when Death Wave became... An unstoppable force. So you guys, this is not that long ago, right? You get Death's number down, if you waved out, Death could be for free, She Hulk could be free.
But even before really that, even just the Death mechanic of it, Leader was becoming an answer to people playing Death Wave and just slamming insane power the last turn, limiting yourself, and then you just Leader them. And it became... But then the Death Wave adapted, they put the leader in their deck, and it became ridiculous. It was... That, to me, I think, those were the cards that defined the early, busted days of Snap.
Yeah, for sure. Like, it was... Borderline unplayable sometimes. Like, it was... There's that old saying, it's always leader. Right? Like, at first, I remember, like, doing math on things and being like, you know, does this beat Doctor Doom? And then that changed to, does this beat leader? Does it be leader? They're gonna leader now. It's are they alive? Does this be a life, right?
Like there's always that turn six play that seems to be hanging over our heads all the time right now It's a life back. Then it was leader.
So give me another card. Talk to me go down memory lane What are some other ones that you like, dude? I remember those days of how good that card was and, and how, how, how long did it last? What one comes to mind?
I think the thing you got to go back to is the arrival of like the first series five cards, right? You had a Bast, Thanos, Galactus in that batch there was Titania. I think as well, I'm missing one. She Hulk. Yes. She Hulk was the other one. I think those were the cards. Talk about excitement in the game.
She Hulk was a six, 10. Which is, I forgot she was a 6'10 but she, she came out as a 6'10 Silly. Right you have Super Scroll, you had a couple in there. Obviously, yeah. Super Scroll 2, yeah. Yep, yep. Shuri. And essentially, again, if you haven't played there, if you guys remember back, this was the only, like, batch release next to, like, High Evo, if you can count that, where all these cards came out.
And like, all of us creators and players were getting these cards at random, different times. Because this was the introduction of the token shop, and kinda like, how this happened with random pulls. This was the beginning of not only some of the coolest deck creation, because people were just doing so many wacky, different things. But we slowly identified cards, and we were like, that's gonna be extremely broken. And it took a while for some of these to come out, or to find their full form.
I think SheHulk610 was identified pretty damn fast, she was gonna be busted.
Yeah, I mean, you just, you just brought me back in time to a really shameful moment where I did that exact assessment and spent 6, 000 tokens on Super Scroll. We've lamented at this before. Was he the first in your shop? Yeah, I spent 6k on Super Scroll and then I believe I bought She Hulk with what was left of my tokens and literally passed on Galactus, Thanos, and everyone at the start.
So I had Shuri as my first, I believe. I had Shuri as my first because I was like... How do I not buy this car? And for whatever reason, I was doing Vision. And back then, like, I was just, like, destroying people. Because no one had Sherry. And also, like, what do you do about this car? But I wasn't playing her enough. I was like, Oh, this is fun. But I, like, I could add months of just, like, domination. But that takes us into December. Now, December season pass was what? Silver Surfer.
This was the beginning of the first busted season pass card. We had Miles Morales, Black Panther, and then we go into Silver Surfer. Do you remember the deck that was like busted?
No, I don't remember actually right off the top of my head, no.
I think it was Serra Surfer negative. I think it was the early adapt. If you had Bast, like you were in a whole new world because people didn't want to unlock her. They thought she was like kind of too niche. The OG Silver Surfer was so so he gave plus three to everybody, right? You had this was like the, the heyday of the Maximus era by far, but that deck was absolutely terrorizing. There was almost nothing that could compete with that deck. You know what though?
It's crazy because to me, Zabu seemed like he was the bigger, like, what's happening. And then Surfer was like, kind of, wasn't that he was under the radar good? I feel like there were a couple decks you could play in the Surfer era, whereas Zabu like, It was Zabu or you lose.
Yeah, 100%. I think the difference between the two was that Silver Surfer played power, but the games felt fair. Whereas with Zabu, the games felt unfair because there were a couple of broken combinations like the Spider Man Absorbing Man, which completely made the game unplayable for people. And so I think that's why so much ire was directed towards Zabu, because like it literally to some degree broke the competitive spirit of the game. Where as like, Silver Surfer was just overpowered as hell.
But still like, but still like a card that like you could kinda do the math on. Where as Zabu was just like, well, I guess I just don't play the video game anymore.
Dude, the Zabu, so like the 4 cost cards locking both the lanes down. The silliness that was in that deck, it was just, I remember it was like, Okay, put Zabu in and then just plug in as many. Four cost cards that you could. Like, that was it. That was the deck. That was the meta.
Yeah, no, it was. And they were at two costs. You could play three, two four drops on turn six. Because Zabu discounted by two. Absolute stupidity. Like, it was so ridiculous. Like... I go back sometimes in my head and I'm like, Why didn't I take advantage of this more? Like, why did I not spam these decks? Because, like, as content creators, like, we, we play a ton of different stuff. Like, a ton of different stuff all the time for, like, content reasons, stuff like that.
And just so we can have, like, engaging conversations on, say, a podcast, where we're well rounded with our knowledge. If I just spammed Zabu decks non stop, my god, I... It's just crazy, eh?
The pre nerf Darkhawk, like, the original form of Darkhawk back then, It was so insane. Like, I can't believe that that just was in the game with the Zabu at the time. But he came in December, and it was like a weird, it was like our first kind of like car per week thing. After that era kind of ended, we then entered Thanos, right? He was kind of the next wave to come in.
Yeah. Thanos was the next wave to come in. And like, it's wild to think that he came out in November and it took all the way into the new year months in to figure out like, wow, this card actually has a 60 percent win rate. If you play with lockjaw, it's, it's one of those, like, obviously guys, like, why did we all not figure this out in November? Like nothing changed, but like literally the best deck in Marvel snap just sat there undiscovered for like four months. No, I know.
Isn't that crazy to think about it?
I know. And I was playing Thanos in any type of deck you could imagine, and I was like, oh, he's good. The stones are really good. We knew Lockjaw was a natural home for him, but it was like, the Quinjet vessel making the stones for free cycling them out to get the effects twice, and then to get these, like, stupid busted cards at the time. With Leech, was somehow involved in all that Deck 2.
That was, in my opinion, if you look back between everything, the Zabu was tough to beat, that's up there. I think that might be one of the best decks of the year. I think Thanos, original Quinjet Thanos, is probably one of the best decks that Snap had.
It definitely felt the most unfair because what happened was when that leader came flying out on turn four It's like or three or whatever the hell happened, right? Like literally if you had a lockjaw on your hand plus a stone and quinjet's on the board like turn three You were cycling cards Which is insane and like it was so unfair like it was so unbelievably unfair like it's turn three and then like a leech comes Out and just zaps your hand you're like, okay, cool turn four same thing.
Just like alright, cool My whole hands useless.
Between Thanos The Zabu, Surfer, we've been through some of those metas, okay? But let's talk about OTAs. If you were to say, the biggest reworks of the year. So, let's limit it to like three cards, okay? Three cards biggest reworks of the year. Give me one of them. Which one do you think was the most impactful that got love that you did it?
Wolverine. Like Wolverine was completely irrelevant for the longest time. Like that's the first one that came to mind. Wolverine for sure was by far one of my favorite changes that they made. Like it just, the reason why is because you took a card that never saw play and then you made it. Fit not only Dex archetypes and like made it actually legit powerful card, but you fit the flavor of what Wolverine is as like a completely iconic X Men.
Like my son, who's four, and my other son, who's two, both have Wolverine toys, and they love Wolverine. They absolutely love Wolverine. And he's so iconic. It was a damn shame that he was a horrible card in Marvel.
He was terrible. Like he had, there was no, you were totally just.
Often all the copium if you had him in your deck at that time like there was no Plausible reason him an angel or like you just don't play in both angel obviously hasn't survived to this day Wolverine was definitely at the top of my list because now he's like irreplaceable in destroyed decks so big time winner, funny enough and this used to be like the ongoing joke that the devs just like Love Destroy, but if you're talking about reworks, let's kind of like zone in on him.
Venom clearly being the second, in my, I don't know, is he the next biggest? He's up there as being a card that was stupid niche, stupid niche, and then just propelled. Being played in every destroyed deck and being one of the best.
It was, there was a couple of things I think happened there. First of all, the two extra power was huge, right? You went from a Bishop stat line to like you know, three, three, basically. But the other thing I think that happened was that Noel dropped a serious four. So I think more people started getting their hands on Noel at that time as well.
So then you had this like influx of like capable destroy decks and then venom just took off, but that extra two power, like if it kind of forced people to be like, Hey, don't ignore venom. Check this card out and sure enough. You're like, wait a minute. This card's amazing. Yeah, thinking back even at 3 1 I still think we were sleeping on it slightly. Yeah, it's not to power that makes venom what it is. It's everything else That's happening around it. Yeah, the to power helps.
The death lowering the autumn Zola the taskmaster There's so many things you can do with venom. He's like such a presence Shadow King was not existent So I destroyed didn't have like any type of lever to keep calm. So like to me those are the two obvious ones I would say Captain Marvel is very close to being on my list to as one of the better OTAs. Is Spider Man the next best?
Spider Man's a huge one. Because like, Spider Man brought so much frustration to the game, and they took a card that was incredibly frustrating, and they made an iconic card fun to play. With a really unique ability that like, fits the flavor, just like Wolverine. Spider Man is swinging. That makes perfect sense, right? It was an excellent change overall. And it took a card that was extremely frustrating and made it fun. So I, at any time you do that, it's a pure win.
It was great to kind of reminisce if you will. Well, let's take it to the presence and that's going to be Tuesday at noon. We've got a brand new card coming out. We saw toxic it some love per se with man thing. And this week. We've got the Black Knight. Not the Dark Knight, but the Black Knight. Now, if you don't know what he is and what he is capable of, Alex, he is a one cuss, two power card.
After you discard a card, you're gonna add the Ebony Blade to your hand once per game with the card's power. And if you don't know what the Ebony Blade does, it's essentially a four drop that has the power. And it says the Black Blade blazes. Alex... I'm going to hit you as always, initial impressions on the Black Knight.
My initial impressions are that it's a hard sell as a series five. It's incredibly niche, obviously, and essentially discard and obviously, right. But one thing I will say is that like, I've been trying to come up with different lines and different decks in advance of the release to see like, okay, how can we make this work? How can this card really make some magic happen? And I think that like. I was originally too low on it perhaps.
And I think that it's going to have the opportunity to put up some interesting lines, but overall, I still think it has challenges from not only a meta perspective, but I think challenges from like a, just like a, like a line and play perspective that might hold it back slightly. I'm still conservative on it. But I see its potential.
What would you say as an early star rating that you would give it? I lean towards like a two. Yeah, no, I think that's honestly, here's the thing. I think if I were to tell my review of this card and I'm excited about him, talk about like a boomer bus, super fun card. Like he's definitely going to have very interesting play lines. The way that he's played out and only being a one cost technically. He works with discard in what it's trying to accomplish, so like, I like that flavoring of him.
I think he's gonna work in the deck more so than something like Silver Samurai. My biggest worry is before we jump into the combos and everything, I just want to get like right to the meat of it. I feel like his biggest weakness is A, he needs a lot of support. Not Spider Man 2099 level support, but kind of he needs you to have the right draw with the right cards and the right things going on, right? I think we can both attest to that.
The thing that worries me, though, is even in a perfect world, Alex, where you get everything you need. You have, like, the crate, you get what is the example? So, guys, if you don't know, you get Black Knight out, you get Lady Sif, it gets rid of Infinite, you play a Ghost Rider, take back the Infinite, and then you play the Ebony Blade. That's, like, you know, chef's kiss of what you could have, the potential you could have.
But at which point, when your opponent just retreat, if they see you have the Black Knight and you played Lady Sif out, at that point, isn't your opponent, like, the boom of this card is super easy to tell what's happening, no?
Yeah, it's, it's very telegraphed. I think the major thing that's, it's, it's tricky because, like, it needs to be out on the board. And what's weird about it is that there are very few one drop cards that have that urgency that are also slightly build around cards. Cause I don't think that Black Knight, it'll have, I think it'll have its own deck. Like, I think like the way I've been looking at it is like, I think this is like a Dracula card to some degree.
And like, there's, you know, there's so many different things at first. We don't know if like the Ebony Blade, when like you Lady Sif in Apocalypse, at which point does the Ebony Blade lock in the stat? Is it before the plus four or after?
It's after. So it's going to be the same as, it's the same as Dracula, which is a huge winning point for it. Right. So it'll gain 12 power of the Apocalypse the first time you get rid of it, which is. We're going to get into the best card. So yes, I fully agree. It's a Dracula card. Like I think the starting conversation with Black Knight is if you want to play this car. First of all, you got to know what you're getting into.
This is not, this card theoretically makes Swarm worse, makes this kind of traditional because you can't really play, you don't want to get rid of your Swarm because you have the Black Knight. Blade has taken that to such a science now that this kind of messes that up. He a hundred percent, if you enjoy or if you haven't played then start playing and testing before he comes out. He's the Ghost Rider. Style of discard deck.
So if you haven't played ghost rider in the way that he plays this allows ghost rider to get a significant boost And now you have ways to combine these discard options that didn't have a home before Into their own version of a new playable deck and I think the deck is gonna be Okay I just don't think it'll be like super meta. I think it'll be pretty good.
I get concerned when decks have like, very specific lines that have to be met for the deck to even work. And like, Black Knight kind of feels that way, like it has to be out there. The change to Blade though is significant because now like, if you pull Black Knight later and you've been holding a Blade, then like, you can kind of like, play your cards in a way because they're both one cost to guarantee hitting a Puck or whatever it is on the other side.
But like when you think about the lines cozy, like Ghost Rider is a huge one. And I think the line with Ghost Rider is going to be turn three Sif, right? Obviously you've played ghost sorry, Black Knight prior. And then you're going to, let's say hit an infinite, right? So you've got that, that four 20 Ebony blade turn four, you can play the Ebony blade down. Right. So you've got a four 20 down.
You could then taskmaster turn five, and then you can ghost rider plus like a Jeff taskmaster might be the slept on piece of a lot of these cards. Like when I was doing my my kind of analysis on this, I'm like, huh, I think taskmaster is the piece here that makes this card really interesting because the ebony blade is going to be a task masterful card. And there's a second line I want to hit you with. Which even makes me more excited.
You could play the you can play lady sift, discard the Finon, turn four, Surey turn five. You play your ebony blade on the surey and then you taskmaster. It's a different style of surey based deck.
Yes, so that's the route that I was kind of going was with this zbu build of Surey and having this zbu forecast kind of build. Funny you say task, because there's two cards that work with that. It's Taskmaster Art Mola. For me, I was thinking, wow, this is the first time I can get a 20 power out. In its own lane, and Arnum's all that with ease. Like, that was my process behind it. But it's kind of, it is, it's the same as Taskmaster. I feel like Arnum is, it's just different, right?
It's five and a six play, and you can do a lot of things, kind of. Again, that's why I think the card has more combo options than people might think. Here's the deal. Let's get to the Zabu deck in a moment. When we're talking best cards with the Black Knight, the ones I think are gonna shine. Number one, probably, in my book, obviously, we'll get to Zabu. I think Apoc and Dracula will be this, that mix of the number one winners. Because...
If your game plan is about just getting this guy huge, getting that card that is the the, the ebony blade, and then you also have Dracula in hand as well, or on the board as well, and you're just building this up with Lady Sif and whatnot, I feel like that's a super strong deck, no?
I think the deck is going to be, I don't want to say tricky to pilot, but I think you're going to have to know your snap lines because you have to snap early because there's nothing more obvious than your opponent watching the apocalypse tick up over and over again, which is what it's going to do in this style of deck. And so I think you got to know like what your hand looks like. And Snap early. Snap early and often. That's kind of going to be the strategy here.
I'm kind of excited too, because I'm going to be honest, man. Hela's fun. I think, to my core, this makes Hela worse. Hela already wins the game she wins. Living Tribunal Hela is already so good, in my opinion. I don't think this adds too much to Hela. And Apocalypse doesn't really belong in true Hela builds. I'm glad to have another APOC focused deck in a sense, right? Cause to me, he's discard. He's like really what it comes down to.
And it's not the same predictable pattern that is the, the MODOK flavor. So like, I think that's what gets me excited, right?
I think it's a little harder to play it in Hela a hundred percent. And I think you're a hundred percent correct that the idea of like having a. Discard style list does not rely on something like a MODOK is huge. Cause MODOK has been the absolute staple, but like, if you think about on reveal, you think about every single other archetype, you have these different closing lines, but discard has always been extremely consistent.
We're like, well, if you're not playing the MODOK version, like what the hell are you doing? Right. And so it does open up a lot of opportunities from that standpoint, which I appreciate, but the one thing that like. Okay. There's two things I want to, two points I want to make that I've been like, I've been really trying to workshop this card because listen, I said two stars. I want to be wrong when I say two stars and cozy is the same way we want to be wrong.
Like we want these cards to do well. Right. Yeah. But we got to also be realistic. My concern is like, what's, what's like this discard deck? Like what, why do you have infinite on it? I don't think you ever really do. Like we talk about like, Oh, it's a four 20, but like, You're more likely always just discarding Apocalypse. Like it's, I don't think you ever actually put Infinite.
I think Infinite is like the, the, the card that people go to, because it's the big power card or like Giganto. I was looking at him like, what the hell is Giganto in this deck? Like it just, there's such a bad play line. Because then you're just hoping to draw the right cards at the right time. And then I think the 20 power, right? So we need to, we need to go away from. What gets us the most power to what is a huge amount of power that we can play consistently with the play line.
And I like where you brought that. So if we go to forecast cards. Zbu is clearly a really good synergy play here because you don't have to do discards every turn. That's not the goal with the deck. It's doing even just one strategic black Knight to zbu to Lady S. You now have your play lines right to where it turns six without Mobius, but it turns six on the board. Could theoretically be a ghost writer pulling whatever you through discarded and the Ebony Blade.
Together or Drek, but the ebony blade at that point would also have that. It's a forecast. It would go down to three as well. It's interesting because I feel like that's the play line that I would go for or the sherry bill, which I'm sure we'll get to in a moment. But does that make sense? Like almost surprising with it. But what card are you using to get that power?
Yeah, that's the thing, right? And I think it is always apocalypse because I think that you're going to want Chavez in the deck because you want a black knight up, pushed up forward by that four or 5% plus discard a pocket is always going to want to have, if you're running Dracula, you always want Chavez anyways. So like the deck starts to build itself. Right. And then when you think about, okay, you want ghost rider, it's like you start to run out of space.
And so like, again, I think that ultimately turn six is exactly what you, you've said, like, you have these multiple options, but it's, it's going to be reliant on having Zabu on the board. This is what gets me nervous too, because that means on one, you've playing the, you're playing the Black Knight, right? On two, you're playing Zabu. What's your plan on three? It has to be Sif, right?
Like. Then what's for like, all of a sudden it's like, wait, all of these turns are occupied and they need these, these draws. And that's what brings my star rating down. Cause I'm like, man, I don't know about you. I play Mr. Negative. Mr. Negative is never, he's always at the bottom of the deck. Black Knight will always be on the bottom of the deck. He, he's going to be underneath Chavez.
Where I think we can see some love here. If we don't do the infinite way, we have obviously the APOC way. I do see death being in this, even though it's not exactly the same because she's so high in the way she costs. It's just different. The interaction of, of trying to get her to work. So I don't mind that, but honestly, the simple plan in my book has got to just be Black Cat.
I think Black Cat, the 9 power, and she's a 4 cost, having the ability to throw, so if you have Ebony Blade at 9 and you played it on Sherry, it's 18, that. That's pretty good.
I didn't consider Black Cat. I think Black Cat might be one of the best. It's kind of cool because you could play the ebony blade and also still play a ghost rider play. Right. You can kind of like have your cake and eat it too, so to speak. Right. But like, do you actually, the crazy part is, is like when you start to build this deck, like, I think it's going to be hard to squeeze black cat in.
I think that's what happens when this, like, I feel like this deck builds itself from six costs down and from one cost up, like it just kind of squeezes itself in. Cause like there's all these required pieces and it's like, I think you end up in a situation like, huh, who do I cut for black cat? I can't cut anybody.
Yeah, I, when she got buffed, she was working pretty good with Ghost Rider because all of a sudden now you have like a really good four cost play with Black Cat, who knows. The, the thing is though, at least she gives you like an out if you don't get Lady Sif and then all of a sudden now you do already have this discard option. What I think people are going to be surprised at is I don't know if Morbius makes the cut. Even though he's a 2 cost, because are you really discarding that much?
I guess you would get your 2 cost of value of a 2. Six with Dracula or something, but you're not aiming to discard all that much.
I don't think you do, because that's not the point of the deck. It's not, it's not really like a traditional discard deck. It's more of like a discard combo deck. Like, that's really what it is, right?
Where, yeah, you know what it is, is where I see it working, is I was experimenting with what I like to call safe Hela. And in theory, I was thinking about this more. This will be the first deck I try out. And we might see this, but Hela, if you look at her stat line as a 6 6, I kind of, I kind of think she's undervalued as just playing her as a dependable option, right? So when you're talking about Hela and Hela decks, that's where I think Black Knight doesn't add value.
Where I think she does is if you can simply just have Hela as a card that you're bringing back one, maybe two cards. Immediately, she's gonna have the value of a six cost, and then whatever that power is that you bring back. So if you have this deck that has Death in there to take the blow from Lady Sif, you have got the Ghost Rider in there, and then you have Ebony Blade, all of a sudden, I think this could be a decent closing play line.
Okay, so you're thinking like, don't be greedy with Hela, just let her do her job, bring a card or two back, and maybe you hit something with that ebony blade and it's just enough value. Targeted discard, yeah. Yeah, it's just the RNG side of it, like, it's always just gonna land where you don't want it to land, right? That's the kind of thing?
Yeah, it, again, I think it could be tough to, to create, but I think Silver Samurai with Iron Man, we're starting to have these targeted ways to get what we want out there. But then you would have to fill that location and ensure it so that, yeah, she doesn't just play whatever, you know, all the cards in the middle. It's not as like Rapid Fire, Living Tribunal, you're just playing her for the value at that point, like a mini Dr. Doom.
Yeah, I hear you, I hear you. It makes, it makes sense, I just, Hela brings back some like, some memories, that's all I'll say. Like, I feel like Hela can do you dirty very often.
I feel like if I'm gonna play him... I also, like, he's a one cost card. That's what's really cool about him. Does Dracula dump style of decks truly win this? Because you have Dracula, you have Red Skull, right? You have Infinite in that deck, and then he actually belongs. And then on top of that, he's a one cost card that now Khazar can boost up. And then you get, you know, there's some synergy outside of just, like, his existence as a discard.
Because that's the only place that he could be feasible. The playlines will look different, but that could be a good deck for him.
100 percent I think it could be, yeah, it definitely could be like, I think that might be one of its most natural places where it won't feel like you're trying to force it too much. Like my concern with these combo centric lists, like we've been talking about primarily is that like, if you don't draw the cards, you're just screwed. But if you're running a Kezar based deck and you're doing the, you know, you're just, you're going to have things in your hand that you just hit.
Like there's always going to be value. Like you're always going to have the Giganto or the Infinite in your hand that you're going to be able to hit with the Dracula and you're generating all this additional value. I agree a hundred percent. I feel like that deck is way less risky to play and probably ultimately more consistent.
And then you just have zero red skull on turn six. Like there's other things that you get to just play if you don't have, like, then you're not hoping for this combo wombo thing. That's just probably not going to happen. So in general, we didn't talk about the specifics of the card. You only get one ebony blade, no matter what you get to, if you moon girl it, but that you're just doing who knows what deck you're running at that point. I mean, that's already doomed for eight cube loss.
So he's kind of very linear, right? Usually we give the advice, if you like this card, go for this card. I would like to think the same here. I think he's a little bit better overall than Silver Samurai, but in a different way. I feel like he's gonna bring a new, different way to play it. And how dependable and how great it is and how refined that list gets. We're gonna have to see. He's a tough one to rank. I'm giving him a very low star rating for now. With the potential to build into a deck.
That's not as bad.
It's always one of those situations where you have to just wait like don't if you're someone it's a series five card Don't drop 6k tokens on day one and be disappointed when the card sucks Like wait a few days. I would wait till like saturday night wait till the weekend. It'd be like, okay Oh 300 tokens. Do I want to spend it? Oh, look these decks actually work.
It's making my favorite archetype better Let's go like that's kind of when you make that decision because other than that like it it is incredibly niche We're in a meta where like, like Elsa Bloodstone can go in pretty much everything and then you have this card, which pretty much only goes one spot. Right. So it's way more focused in. I'm surprised it's not a series four card, honestly.
Yeah. Well, I'm surprised a couple of things are on the card, but like, you know, who knows, next day we could get a Gambit deck and then all of a sudden Gambit has great value and it all works. It there's a lot to be built around with the, with the card in general. I think I feel safe saying you could feel good to skip it. The cool thing is, Alex, is the twist drops, another plug, but we're just going to say it, happens that Wednesday. Card comes out Tuesday.
So like, everybody and their mother is going to be testing the ever living crap out of this card. Like, we're going to find truly if this card is good, because that's going to be a large of it play of it. And we're going to talk about Manthing on your side, but I do think that he's coming out in a better time in meta than Manthing did in his own, right? I think at least he's got a better chance out there with these discard decks. Let's go into our last topic, Alex, and that is the OTA.
We finally got a spicy OTA. I thought it was a pretty good one. We had a good amount of cards get touched up. To bring it on screen here, we had White Tiger get an additional boost to the Spirit Tiger. We had Black Widow get a negative one on her Widow's Bite. And then we had Forge go from a two cost to a one cost. And then we had, obviously, a life and Sherry take a nerf. Let's start with the nerf side of things, man. Alioth. Do you think this solved it?
Did this We said 6 4, I said 6 4 for the psychological effect. They doubled down and went 6 3, and they ended up making the Doctor Doom thing work. We've got a new way to I don't know, dude, I think this was a pretty good change. I'm still seeing them plenty, but I think this was a good change.
It's a good change. It's, it's what had to happen. It needed to get nerfed, but like, it's still a life. It still does exactly what it does. And like, yeah, every single turn six is, does this lose to a life? How do I mitigate a life? Every single turn six, like the way, you know, that a card is really, really probably overpowered. It's when it's finding its way into archetypes that it feels like it makes no sense. And like, when you, when a Patriot deck is running a life, you're like, why?
Yeah, like it's like, because it just wins the game and that's kind of where it's like, okay, maybe this card is op. It's a good change. Is it done? I'm not sure. I'm not sure how I feel about it.
Well, white tiger was a joy to go back to that era. Like just an absolute joy. I was just going nuts. I think legit my stats on untapped was 21 and three with the deck. The first day it came out, it was like, nobody was playing Cosmo.
Cosmos kind of creeping back out now because of this deck that was easy to win with I'm gonna be honest Like it wasn't all that complicated It's like a plus four buff per se and then you also had black widow But the subject is one cost cards and ranking the top 10 and forge and so we bring this on purpose because forge is a one Cost we're gonna rank them together.
And with that we're gonna rank our top tens as always guys We don't know each other's top 10 list I felt like one cost wasn't the hardest we've done, but wasn't easy per se. There was nowhere near as hard as two costs.
I know two costs is really hard, but I'm still interested in this list. I think we're going to have a couple of disagreements, which I'm honestly looking forward to. I want to insult you in some way with my participants. And if, if I don't, then I failed in my task. Hit me with your number 10. Number 10 I'm going to be going with zero because zero is one of the highest win rate cards in Marvel snap. I think it's in one of the absolute best archetypes in Marvel snap.
I think that it's a card that low key quietly is one of the best one drops in the game, but it doesn't get the respect. It just, this was like an honorable mention top 10. Cause like, I didn't have to include this in my top 10. I don't think anybody would have batted a knife if Zero wasn't in my top ten. But this is an extremely high impact card that people don't really think about often. So I wanted to give it a little bit of real estate here in my top ten.
I respect that you did that because he is like, playing him with Lizard, TIE Fort Century Atuma, Destroyer, Red Skull. Man, I just named how many, right? Like... Yep, blat just blatant value. Great value there for one simple cost. I used to love playing on turn five and then like turn six you can start it and then you just go like buck wild. And then obviously the best opener pretty much to the day still is playing Ebony Maw right after him. I mean, just crazy amounts of power.
Sauron maybe hurt him a little bit, but still don't forget Zero. I like that. I'm, I'm, I'm happy that you brought him up. Just as you said, Zero, I have one that I was, I was a little shocked that I included in mine, but I honestly think he's not getting played enough. I think Spider Ham makes my, makes my cut. I think he makes my cut at number 10 as the 10th.
It was sad because I had to leave one off that I enjoyed a bunch, but I still think that the disruption that Spider Ham does alongside Shadow King, is awesome. The only thing I don't like about him and why I almost left him off, and he still arguably doesn't deserve to be on here, is because of Mobius. Mobius allows it to be a free play card, and that is just, it is... It's weird, man. It's a weird interaction that's tough to balance.
Yeah, huge fall from grace, unfortunately, right? This card was one of the most OP cards in Marvel Snap for the longest time. Not the longest time, couple months maybe, then it got nerfed hard.
Hit me with number 9. I think I have a pick. I'll be interested if it makes your personal top 10.
So my number nine is a card that I think is being completely disrespected right now. It's Nova. I feel like as a one drop, like it puts out so much value. It's still not seeing play. I love the idea that like with Nova, like Killmonger, which is just such a natural inclusion, incredible tech piece. People aren't playing armor. Like they're not playing at all. They're playing these Elsa decks. How many else decks have armor? Very few to them. There's like, it's the greediest crap I've ever seen.
And when you play that Nova, you send a message. You say you don't have armor, you're going to get punished. And I'm going to put up like a one eight worth of value on this board on turn six. So get ready.
Yeah, I was playing them a lot in that surfer deck. I talked to her last week. I did end up cutting them because like, it just feels like there are easier else to just give so much power now in the way that you get to abuse that. But man, having that card, if you can play it and line it up, right. It is. I love it for lockdown decks. I love being able to if they have a lockdown deck and they play storm, it's like, okay, I'm going to boost up those cards another way.
It's one of the few ways you can do that. And so for that reason I like Nova. My number nine is none other than blade. I think the new blade dude is legit, like straight up this guy in a, in a deck that has been refined. Always gets his value. You can play him after deck and duck, and you can play a puck swarm. He feels so good with the little bit of targeting they gave him for a one cost drop. He is honestly one of the sleeper best risers with a recent OTA. I think Blade is tremendous.
He didn't make mine, but you are right. In terms of like changes, he has felt very significantly different than the past. Blade was a meme before. A complete meme. Always discarding Hela, right? And now, it's actually like, huh. You can make a plan around how you're gonna play Blade, and it actually is an effective piece, especially since cards discard, and then repopulate right. So, like, it's a very natural inclusion and discard, which was never the case before.
And as a one cost, you can slide it and slot it into turns where you're not as mana efficient.
Number 8, Alex.
Okay, number 8 for me is a product of the current meta it's Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler comes in at 8 for me just because it's just a damn good card. It's doing what you want it to do right now with Elsa Bloodstone. It was, there was a point in time where it was seeing almost no play. Really wasn't. And then now it's come making a bit of a comeback here. It works with Angela, it works with Elsa. It's just a damn good card. I like it a lot.
Some of the best variants that they gave to you. I gotta say, all of his variants are cool. They, they feel great. Killmonger was way too prevalent. And that kind of hurt Nightcrawler a lot. I agree. I actually have him here exact same spot. I think Nightcrawler is in a great spot right now with Elsa. He's in a fantastic spot, but on top of that the Angela, the move deck, the Kraven, he could go even higher right now with where everything's at.
I think we could both put him up higher, but there's kind of more cards that do more per se. And so that's why I have him with you together. I'll kick us off on the next one, man. This is where I've got Snowguard, and it felt a bit weird having her so low after I had her as one of the best cards in the game. After playing her a while now, what she does is great for Loki, Devil Dinosaur, Collector very cheap, very efficient. I still get good use out of the Hawk and or Bear.
Like, I can squeeze my way into winning games, and so I do enjoy that. Do you have her higher on your list?
No, I don't have her on my list. I have her on one of my honorable mentions I wanted to bring up, but I held it back. I was like, I was going to say snow guard, but I think cozy has it. It's, you know what it is. I think Loki got hit so hard with Mobius. It's still good. Like it is still a good deck, but for me, snow guard is still very much a Loki card. I tried to make it work in other decks and it does work, but the changes they made to the two tokens, I feel like actually hit kind of hard.
Like, I feel like the cost increases feel way worse than they should be.
They do. I think what I like about it is like the, the reason I put magic in my Honor of Eel deck the other day was like, people are not respecting locations once again. Right? And so it's like having a way to have a, a hawk.
Ruin limbo or ruin these locations quickly or get the advantage on shuri's lab is still like niche enough And i've used it enough to have that in the toolkit And i'm going to be putting her in decks that you know profit off her in different ways But yes, I think you know discard she can give you more options I think she's good. What is your number seven?
It's Deadpool. This is where I threw Deadpool. Just because I thought it was such a like a key component to like the Taskmaster, Hulkbuster, Shuri based decks, Destroy in general. This is where I put Deadpool for all the reasons why we discussed before. She's a damn good card and a staple in Destroy.
Number six, Alex, and this might be again, I don't know if this is that big of a shock. I think she's definitely worthy of being up here. Number six, I have X23. Definitely one that I think I could have put higher. And this is where it was crazy when I looked at all the decks and like the purpose they serve. Yes, Deadpool is a one cost and I just kind of alluded to that.
But the role X 23 plays in the ramping I've gone against it enough to be like, Damn, okay, this is making an impact and it's something to fear for sure. And getting, even into like getting into these hard to reach locations can be clutch sometimes. I love her. I think she's great.
You know what, this is probably the biggest shock that you're going to be most of this point. I didn't include X 23. Although I respect what she does for destroy the way for me, when I'm playing destroyed, I'm playing venom. She ends up bouncing into my Zola lane. I'm like, use like, I guess it's just like, how dare you? I think that like, it's a meticulously well designed card. I think that it is excellent.
I love the idea of continuously destroying things and you're generating that extra value with the energy, but like, this is just me now. I, for whatever reason, still don't feel as hot as others on X 23. Maybe it just doesn't jive with me. Right? Yeah. And it's, that's a meat problem. Not the car problem. I respect how good the car it is, but in my personal top 10, I couldn't slide it in.
Like I almost put it in at number 10 or nine or eight, but I respect that it should be as high as you're saying, but for me, it just doesn't feel like it.
No, that makes sense. And like, I think for sure it's like, well, Deadpool does so much. Well, I get that for me, they're interchangeable here. And looking back at Deadpool could be here. Cause he does what he does for the archetype. X23 though, like, I felt like it took Destroy just to a much more dependable place. And having a regenerative Destroy card like Wolverine is huge. It's huge for the overall game and how it works. But yeah, I don't, again, I'm not too mad that you don't have her.
I guess I'm a little shocked. But not, not too mad.
So this is where you're gonna be like, Really Alex? These two over x23? I'm gonna hit you with some spicy meatballs now. Hope you're ready, Cozy. Hope you're ready. Hit me. So at number six for me This was a product of the last meta. It's it's Quinjet. I had to throw Quinjet up here just because, like, It single handedly made Loki disgusting. Completely disgusting.
Now, Quinjet suffers from triple M. But I still think it has a very interesting role to play a Marvel snap to the point that it had to get nerfed in advance of Loki season and some others to know again, of course, is it the stones? It was the Thanos stones. This card has been very consistently a powerful card, and it's always going to be a very relevant card to Marvel snap because anytime, anytime a card switches decks or switches hands. We just gonna have something to say about it.
Alright. Yeah. I would never in this meta, in this economy with Mobius, like, just like I know, oh, it's so terrible. But the effect, man effect is fricking nuts Without question number five, I, this is where I got sunspot, which is crazy. He's this low, I guess, but also he doesn't beat the ones that I have ahead of him. Sun spot. Like, dude, what is there to say about him? O over reliable does, does what you need to do still. You know, a car to get in pool too.
And to this day, you're still going to use them.
Yeah. We had situations where sunspot was going through the roof and power. So yeah, the nerf was definitely important but I do have them a little higher than you. And at five for me, I think this is another bit of a shocker, but I swear the stats backs it up. Five is Misty Knight. Now, the reason why I'm bringing up Misty Knight, which I know is a complete shocker to everyone listening right now. Let me explain. This is not quite as weird as Ultra.
So, Misty Knight, I've been playing a lot of High Evolutionary, experimenting with High Evolutionary, even with Man Thing. What I learned while digging deep into stats was that anytime you take Misty Knight out of a High Evolutionary deck, you drop 2 percent win rate just right off the bat. She single handedly increases that deck's win rate by 2 percent in and of itself. And it's consistent across different versions of High Evolutionary. It's wild what this card has done.
And the reason why it goes this high on the list is because this is a car that saw absolutely no play prior high evolutionary completely rejuvenates it, but it's a car that gets no respect. No one actually really appreciates what that one extra power every single turn is doing. It is legit doing a lot of work, even in lockdown situations where it's adding into lockdown locations. I like I'm telling you right now, Missy Knight statistically. Is an excellent one drop.
For sure. I a hundred percent agree here. I did not have high, high EVO cards. Like I didn't have like high Evo missing. I was thinking about her combined as like a whole, she is good, dude. She does her role so damn good in that deck. She has lost me games because of that last tick. Like the, the, the power that she gives out makes up over time. Feels really good. I like it. I think that's a really good pick.
I didn't do high evil cards for whatever reason in my, in my one drop list, or at least included Misty Knight but I don't, I definitely don't doubt her being this high. Next up, number four, is where I've got Bast. Now Bast this is where we enter the territory of like, all these cards gonna go high. I think Bast dude, I mean, the savior of so many decks, the kind of the engine behind how a lot of these competitive decks are working, Bast is irreplaceable.
It's an irreplaceable card at the one drop Iron Man, Hood, do I need to go on, Bast easily is this high.
Yeah, bass is a great card. And actually while you were talking, I was thinking to myself, if I could redo this list, knowing I'd probably put Baston where I have Quinn jet, honestly, cause I don't have it in my top 10. Oh, I have other cards in my top 10. Yeah. So but I do agree. I actually think this is a miss on my part, to be honest, you're not including bass is a definite miss on my part. Cause I do agree with what you said. Like it just, it does something that's irreplaceable and snap.
Like there's no card that does what bass does. And I think that definitely elevates it.
Yeah. A hundred percent. What is then your number three?
We're at number four for me now. My number four is where I have Forge. The newly changed Forge. Because I think that, like, it works as a great combo piece. I think the, yes, you're losing some of the power, but it's ability to be slotted in as a combo piece is actually pretty damn solid in a wide number of decks. And it's not quite doing what it used to do for like brood, but you still get like now combinations with you know, the shuri and the kitty pride.
You're getting combinations with Deadpool and it's much more natural to fit in. It feels like a much more fair card, but I've been having a lot of success with it. I really like, I really like the forge. Yeah, I've got about three.
I've got about three. I think dude, forge wasn't even that bad before his buff. Two, one that gave plus two. He wasn't that bad. He was good. He was like, not that that great. Right? He wasn't insane. We now have that forge as a one drop like that, like to me, I think Forge is fantastic. I think he's so good. This guy, man. Outside of the one deck of the, the like linear brooded and absorbent man. He is working in his role almost better. Like it's almost a buff in different ways.
I think Forge is awesome. He's not like, he's still not in my brain like a traditional one cost card. But like, I love that because I was playing different decks and I was like, oh, like Surfer. I was like, oh, I could throw Forge in for a one drop. Like dude, this is awesome. Lady Deathstrike and Destroy and Bounce decks and I really like what they did with Forge. I think he's arguably one of the best in the game now and he could continue to go higher, man. For sure.
At number three is, is who for you?
Sunspot. This is where sunspot comes in. So three for me, sunspot for all the reasons why we talked before. Incredibly versatile.
So two and one, we got the same two. What order do you have? Is kitty pride number one for you?
You always made me nervous. So I'm like, my number one is going to be Electra or something. And you're like, what? No my it's a, it's, it's a kitty pride one, nebula two.
Exact same thing. Right? Like. Nebula, obviously is getting the respect she deserves. Go look at the meta list, it's everywhere. She's played all over. She is such a pain in the butt. Takes away what you want to do. If you want to play a combo list, you can't, because then she's ticking up. What do you do about that lane? You're not going to win the Arnhem's ult. There's so many things that she messes up. She's a control card through and through.
Kitty Pryde, people already know how good she is, dude. Not a lot I have 1 and 2.
Yeah, I love the control the soft control that Nebula provides. I think that's really really cool. I almost put Nebula above Kitty Pryde, by the way. Yeah, it was close. It wasn't as clear cut as it could be. Without Elsa, Kitty Pryde falls significantly, right? Yeah, Elsa is really elevated, but it's still like there's still decks that like obviously Kitty Pryde's still good. It's still just, it's the best one drop in Marvel Snap, right?
But I really do like Nebula and I feel like people are more likely to complain and like talk about Kitty Pryde in a like a negative context. I don't hear complaints about Nebula. It feels like a very fair good card.
No, I agree, man. I honestly, Forge, I was even considering, I'm like, man, he could be up here too. Like, he, he's just so good. So right now, the one and two costs are probably the, the most perfectly like designed at the moment. There's a lot of options, a lot of ways to play, a lot of synergy, a lot of like good architect cards. And I'm excited to continue to see that as we kind of, you know, go through all the costs throughout the year.
But either way, man, definitely a little bit of a tougher top 10. I think there were some that could, you know, be up there. Echo, I think Maria Hill is interesting now. Yeah, dude, yeah, Imbaku. Golly, dude, that card's terrible. It's always fun doing top 10 lists with your buddy But now let's go ahead and rewind and talk about last week. We had man thing drop into the game What is our review a week later?
Cozy, how has your experience been navigating the swamps of Marvel snap?
Man thing, dude, as you know, he's playing a lot of toxic before he came out. So like, I was naturally excited to like. Plug him into my arsenal. He's everything. I honestly kind of thought he was going to be I thought he was going to be somewhat of a high skill cap card if you really want to get advantage of him in the Worst possible time for him to come out in marvel snap so i'm excited to break him down today like truly If we were to put loop cage small aside Is he good? Is he viable?
There's a lot to break down about him. I thought he was very fun to play and very interesting. What are your initial thoughts on on him after a week of testing?
My initial thought was that this felt like Jean Grey coming out during Bounce, right? Like that was my thought like Jean Grey got destroyed by the meta and I feel like Man Thing is suffering the same fate where it Comes out there is an immediate hard counter to it Like even more so than Jean Grey like Jean Grey obviously gets hard countered by Kitty, Pride and Bounce but Man Thing It's like I just have this one card and it beats Man Thing essentially, right?
Yeah. And it just so happens that Luke Cage was so prevalent in the meta. The timing was awful as we've alluded to already, but like the card itself, I actually like it. I like it a lot. And there's something I want to bring up last week, almost nonchalantly. You mentioned how you thought it would be better potentially later in the game.
I want to just give you props because my experience has been, and I've been experimenting with a couple of different decks, but I've been playing a Zabu based deck. I'm gonna throw up on the screen here. It was like a Zabu Darkhawk based package with the Korg. It had Black Widow, Luke Cage. Of course it had Zabu as well. Shadow King, Rogue, Rockslide, Darkhawk, Shang Chi, Man Thing, Iron Lad, and Doctor Doom. Now the deck is pretty cool, but what I really liked about it was that with Zabu.
I had the option of playing Man Thing on turn six in conjunction with Shang Chi, in conjunction with Darkhawk, Rockslide, whatever. And if I didn't do that, I could play Dr. Doom if they had a Luke Cage on the board. But I love it because you said you can play it on turn six. I'm like, that's a great idea. You know where all their pieces are. You know where all the broods are. You know where...
And it worked, Cozy. And it also gave you time to play the Rogue to counter it and to actually set up your board state. Dude, I think you nailed it.
Thanks, Manny. I feel like I appreciate it. I the two things I discounted with him the most in my head, it was yeah, we're in a very heavy Luke Cage meta, but right now, because of that, Borg, er Rogue is truly a part of so many decks. She doesn't feel like a burden being in your deck, because you typically get that value now. In fact, I'm thrilled when I draw Rogue. I'm like, alright, I've got, like, a, a weapon in the tank. She's massive for Man Thing.
The flips, where I discounted him the most in my head, or, like, didn't give enough credit, Is just playing him in a lane like this guy can hold the fort down in one lane as his own card I think he is still being underrated.
I still think people i've seen people crap on this card and i'm like guys Yeah, he's gonna lose to luke cage just as cosmo counters a wong but last turn play and single lane play is phenomenal, for man thing and I think he definitely He came out, just like you said, arguably next to Jean Grey in the Kitty Bounce era and or Nebula when Kitty got given to everybody for free. Man Thing is probably landing at the worst time he could possibly come out and I still think he's pretty good.
He is good and I like the idea of locking down a location with him like preemptively because like in the prior deck I was talking about before I had kind of put in the the black widow I was actually running goose because you could slide the man thing under the goose with the Zabu and Essentially like it's like what do you even do like what's your point of do they can't play a big card there? They feed small cards in like they just get dismantled by man thing.
It was it was cool It's a little more niche didn't work nearly as well as the like the deck I showed you prior but like it was still a cool application and showcases that like if they don't have Liu cage He is hard to deal with unless you commit a turn five or six play on him. Like you have to commit a bigger piece to deal with man things. So he does hold down the floor quite a bit.
Yeah, dude, I was playing him in like a Lady Deathstrike package. This is a little bit outdated because Forge is now one drop. This was, talk about kind of a high skill cap deck to play. But what I loved about it is this dock and the way that he worked with Forge and Lady Deathstrike. So those three all work together. Debris did not make the final cut in my build I have now. I feel like debris I missed on last week a little bit. It's good to own up to.
I feel like you don't, yeah, giving them those one costs are like, Oh, I'll take that. But it also like felt like a weird curve play when there's other things I kind of wanted to accomplish with the deck. But the thing that really worked out so well is having Hood, Sentry Void both able to have destruction done by Lady Deathstrike or you send it with Viper. Like, Lady Deathstrike in a toxic build would never connect for me. I would have never thought that.
Playing Man Thing down, And getting all those down, negative two, and then playing Lady Deathstrike? Dude, talk about a surefire way, if you don't get your rogue, destroy the blue cage straight up, rip em up! That is better than I thought!
It is, and like, the meta right now too, it's funny you bring up LDS, because I actually have in my notes, LDS, way better than I expected. And like, Manthing works incredibly well against Elsa Bloodstone. Like, Elsa, these Elsa decks, it's like, oh, it's Elsa, it's you know Angela, it's Kitty Pride, and like, Manthing just sits there like, Hey! Like a perfect play into me, play into me. Right. I got you. Right.
And what's great about that is like LDS also like just munches on those cards, like Elsa just dies. Like there's no situation where Elsa survives an LDS play. Right. So it's like, it's pretty cool that you bring that up because I think that it has been pretty synergistic just in and of itself. And also they adjusted the did you notice that they glow red? The cards glow red and stuff. That's new, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I feel like. First of all, I slept on the Variant, too. Can I just say that? This Variant, dude, it's like child nightmares for sure. The hands are, like, ridiculous. But the LDS is coming in. Manthing came in at the worst time. LDS came in at the best time. Like, that's kind of like, summed up, I feel like, for those two cards.
Realistically, Manthing is actually doing pretty well right now. Do you, like, so it's win rate is actually hovering around 57 percent at 9 percent of the meta. Now, when you have a life at like 20 percent of the meta, or whatever it is, like 25%, like, it's obviously not as much of a shaker. I think a lot of people have moved away from Manthing pretty early.
But I think that as the meta shifts, this is gonna be like one of those cards that's going to age like fine wine because like next month we're getting a Nihilus, right. Which I think is going to be huge for Toxic and, and Manthing as a whole. But like, we just need Luke Cage to kind of just whimper away. And as Manthing, listen, it has 10 percent meta share right now in the launch week. That's a third of what most cards are.
Like Elsa, I think was 30. So like, there's going to be chances for you to play Manthing here at a high percent win rate because people aren't going to be as prepared as before.
The problem, too, is like, Shadow King is a must in a lot of decks, and then you have Luke Cage to protect your own side of it, so, like, it's also Shadow King's fault. I saw a tweet about, like, making these tech cards like, 5 cost or 4 cost and, like, Luke Cage, for instance, and I don't love that. I think we might need, like, another answer to, like, 2 cost cards, maybe, or 3 co Like, there's gotta be some other interesting way that isn't Lady Deathstrike at 5 cost, but I don't know.
I think it's fine. Luke Cage is where he's at. If you look forward, man, he's gonna become even more of a staple. It's hard to see Luke Cage not in Dex. For a while, but that's okay. I think, I think he needs to be there. I think Cosmo's there for honor veal. Toxic needs something to obviously go against it. And that's where I thought Lady Deathstrike was interesting because she's not just doing toxic plays, she's killing things and chopping things up.
I think one of the things that limits Man Thing is it has the Spider Man 2099 problem where it can't be played individually. It sucks by itself. It has, it automatically, Oh, I'm playing Man Thing, I have to run Luke Cage. Like, it basically is an auto include in your own deck for the most part. Do you think that the card would be better if it was a 4 3 that only affected the opponent's side? Or a 4 2, or like, these stats were adjusted to not have the reciprocal effect?
Yeah, no, I feel like, I don't know, I feel like you don't have to have Luke Cage down if you know where you're playing him, like, not if you know where you're playing him, but like, you know what I mean? Like, again, solo in a lane, he could just win a lane, like, by himself, he could just, it's over. It can hurt you a ton, and I feel like it fits Toxic just like Black Knight fits Discard.
Toxic is playing with fire, and so like you have a card with tremendous stat value, but if things go wrong, it goes against you. I feel like that's just kind of how it works in the you know what I mean? Like, I feel like he is the definition of the toxic archetype, so sure, it would probably be better, but you know, same as a I don't know, Green Goblin not being able to be Odin to back to me or whatever it is in a sense.
So, it's interesting you say that I think I'd keep him how he is now, but he, it's gonna take some time for people to figure him out, you know.
I just don't see many decks out there where he's not played in combination with Luke Cage. Well, you want Luke in the deck. I feel like a risk.
You want Luke in the deck. For sure. I don't feel he's as detrimental as Hazmat is with Luke Cage.
No, not at all. That's, yeah, it's not even close to the same thing at all. But at the same time, like, should cards be able to stand on their own merit? Like, should, oh, I'm going to play a Man Thing deck and it's Luke Cage, man, like, does it always have to be like that? I mean, it kind of like, it's the Chavez problem with Apocalypse, right? Or Chavez, pretty much just in general, where you just have Chavez in the deck. And so Man Thing's always just going to have Luke Cage.
Yeah. It's like, it just makes me wonder. It's like, oh, you have a 12 card 12 card deck game, it's really only, you know, 11 cards now because it has to be, those two are coming as a package all the time. I just try to see if you can break. It's just a thought I had. Can you break away from that?
Yeah, I totally, yeah, totally hear what you're saying. I feel like to me, it's like Captain Marvel and Kraven or Angela and Kitty. Like, it's just like, kind of like there's cars that go together and to get rid of the risk and have the potential flip, you have location. I get what you mean. And it could certainly. You know I get, it's already a small deck with not so many cards, so it encourages creativity. But there's some, it's just hard to escape that.
I think there's just some cards that are naturally going to want to be together in the deck. But certainly Man Thing is, is, it was a fun card, and I'm excited as, like, the hype dies down. So I can continue to play that archetype.
Yeah, that's where it'll be it's best quick quick star rating, Cozy, what do you think after a week?
We had him, what, at three star, I think, both of us? I honestly still have him at three star for what he does, respectively. Maybe 2. 5. I think three star is, is fair to me, though, in the decks you're supposed to be playing him in.
I think I'd fall closer to two, I'd accept two and a half, right? But like, yeah, I, there'll come a time where he's a three star card for sure. Potentially even a four star four star card with Annihilus. So look at those variants. He has the comic book variant coming too as well.
Oh, I know, dude.
Have you seen that?
Yeah, I saw this one. I was like, I gotta buy that, dude. But yeah, this is he's got some cool variants. Like for a while, it was fun because the gold upgrade wasn't working. And I was like, Just like having to like do a green border to match. But yeah, he's got he's got some he's got some cool stuff For sure, but I'm excited to I'm excited to experiment. I think all the cards in October are like very interesting archetype kind of cards, right? So.
Cozy, let's talk about a year of Marvel snap and review, but mainly about the actual client itself, the game, the big changes that have been made to make this game even better. It's been a wild one, a wild year, and we're gonna go through a little on a bit of a chronological scale here. I want to talk about November, 2022. So Marvel snap just launched and then the first ever massive series drop happened.
Not series drops, sorry, the release, the release of cards, which included Thanos and Galactus series five cards. Now this was a big change to Marvel snap because you had two. Big bad, they established the big bad system, which we'll talk about later, but like, it also represented two major changes to the way Marvel stack can be played two completely different archetypes riding on the back of individual cards. I thought it was a huge moment for Marvel snap.
Yeah. And just the token shop, right? So like the ability to choose the cards that you wanted to unlock. Everybody at that time was in the trenches of Pool 3. And so being able to be like, I want to play a Red Skull deck. So you go after Red Skull. Like, that was such a fun, great time. Obviously, we didn't get the benefit off that because we had the Pool 3 cards from Beta. But like, or had to earn them. We didn't just get them, let me make that clear. But the token shop, rest in peace, man.
Because I actually miss... The original design in some cases, what we have now is way better, but I liked the idea of like having this way to always target cards that you wanted to get and when the pool of cards, no pun intended, was much wider, it just brought that much fun, right? Series four, series five and concept. We were like, Whoa, some of it didn't age all the way. Great. Thanos and Galactus and that whole slew of new cards was still to date. One of my favorite times in snap.
I thought it was so much fun when they all came out. It was a ton of fun.
And what's notable is that like specifically with Thanos and Galactus, like they've been archetyped to finding cards for a very long time. And it's, I just hope we get cards of that impact in the future to cards that are like perennial, like winners, perennial, like exciting cards to be playing, whether or not they get a little OP or not. It's a whole other question, but meta shakers is what we're looking at. And then in early 2023, the date is.
Quite uncertain, a certain someone joined the fray in Marvel Snap. And I thought this was very notable because if you think about what it was like before Glenn Jones, and then after Glenn Jones, I think it's really important to note that when Glenn was hired, and brought onto the Marvel Snap team, I think it actually legitimately solidified Marvel Snap. The balance, the way the game was approached from a balance perspective, the card releases.
All these things kind of fell in line after Glenn became kind of the voice of Second Interior Marvel Snap, like in Discord, on Twitter, Glenn's answering a ton of questions. So I actually think it is a huge change that in 2023, Glenn Jones was added to the team.
Yeah, dude. It's not often that I go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs over just like one individual developer, but you nailed it. The presence that he had to be kind of this bouncing board and having this presence so there wasn't just like the man behind the mask. Like we knew who was bouncing the game. And I think they did an okay job. In beta they were kind of like throwing out like, Well, let's see if this works. I feel like not to knock anybody that was doing the balance then.
When we ha I will never forget when we had two months of the same leader Zabu. It coincided with holiday break. It was at a truss. It was terrible to play during this small window. And after the Zabu surfer nerf, Moving forward, it kind of felt like everything was solved and had a plan in place. And like, that's what Glenn brought card design from what he does. I think High Evo was his first card that says enough to his name. And then moving forward, just the meta and OTA card balance.
They hit it. They hit it a lot. I think Glenn is very, was very important to Marvel snaps competitive and It's still what's bringing back people that want to play, you know a bit more sweaty.
The fact that we have this patch OTA schedule that we can put in a calendar and we know that There's gonna be adjustments to the meta made at given times and that cards that are being completely Disruptive to the meta aren't gonna go ignored for months or months on end the way Silver Surfer Zabu and to some to a major degree sure he did As well, we're kind of forgetting about what Shuri did in the meta for, for several months, like that just doesn't happen now, right?
Alioth, whether you agree with the change or not was dealt with pretty quickly. And that is a direct result to this person being joined, joining the team. Right. And I don't want to sleep on the developer question and answers that, that he does and all those things that community engagement is huge. And I think that it does a lot.
For Marvel snap as a whole, because like I've, I come from other games where like you, you couldn't even name a single developer because no one responds to anything on Twitter, on Reddit, on discord, nothing, there is no communication at all. And Glenn completely goes against that and answers pretty much almost every question that I see thrown his way. So I think it was huge for Marvel snap as a whole truthfully.
And it feels like we're like, just like toning up one guy, but truly like there was a big anchor there. Like, I think there was a reason that the Congress have been Broad was interviewed and then we interviewed Glenn Jones. I think those are. There's a lot of people behind the scenes that work hard on this game, but those two were pillars in the game and are pillars.
The one thing I like about Glynn too, and we can move on, but essentially like, I remember seeing tweets where he's like, Magic's not on our list whatsoever. Starter cards are not on our list. And then it's like, all of a sudden, Medusa, Magic, Gideon, Like, it's like, you know there's stubborn people, especially in game design. Because they see it a certain way. Right. And I feel like that hasn't anchored down Marvel snap. So just, I wanted to shout that out. I feel like that's important.
Yeah. Like he's actually listening and going back to January, 2023, another major change was made to Marvel staff that made the game infinitely better. One might say that was the inclusion of infinite rewards, like proper, actual infinite remorse. It's easy to forget that. Like before you get like a title for getting infinite, I don't even remember what you'd get. Like it's garbage. It's garbage.
Yeah. And then finally Yeah, finally, after the the Silver Surfer season, I think it was the Zabu season was the first one, because of a direct result of feedback from the community, they added the gold card back. And I thought that that was a huge, impressive change that had to be made. It's not, I mean, it's really not that impressive. It makes perfect sense now. It's not like crazy development costs to do the gold car back, but it's such a huge addition to getting to infinite.
And that was something we didn't have for six months prior.
Yeah, fully agree. I kind of forgot that wasn't like staple for a while. It was definitely important to get in there. It's almost easier to get that now than the regular season one, like it's crazy. But even back then it was so hard to get infinite. That like that, that card back truly was like, I made it right. And that, that was really cool. And it's cool. And you know what it is?
It's cool to see retrospective of like the seasons you did good in, like, it's cool to look back and have something to show for it. I thought that's a, that was something nice that they included. So you can see truly like the first season you started making infinite and then, you know, you want to take 70 or less for an answer or whatever, right? Like that, that was a great addition. So that was January. What next?
In February, how can we not talk about the release of battle mode? January battle mode comes out. It also coincided with a lot of tournaments. It basically thrust competitive Marvel snap into the spotlight because without it, like there was no competitive Marvel snap, it really wasn't. And so battle mode comes out in February and it didn't have matchmaking conquest mode has to come later, but we did actually get it, which launched the competitive scene of Marvel snap.
Yeah. Kudos to them. Hearing that is probably like the biggest feedback, getting on top of it, making it work, and then doing it really well. The code system, not a friends list, like that was just good. They did a great job behind the UI of that. Some major props.
And then in March 2023, I want to shout out something that was driving me absolutely nuts that they corrected to make Marvel Snap a better game. And that was the reduction of featured and hot locations. Woah. Do you remember when featured locations used to be 48 hours, and the game would be unplayable for those 48 hours?
Dude. The two ti Oh my god, dude, the two times a week I remember Lockjaw came out and Quantum Tunnel was the location for two days, and I was like, What's happening? Like, what is this? This game was unplayable, like, and then Conquest relieved it even further, but like, and not to skip ahead, but you know what I mean? Massive though, that change to one day Thank god, thank god. And it changed balance too, a little bit.
100 percent and it's one of those things where like I'm trying to bring up things that people might have forgotten about Yeah, like that was huge. Do you think about what the peak was like for two days? Like it was just the game was unplayable. Like it was not playable Marvel snap It was awful.
The peak and to be said to like I don't know if this is on the list But like I know they took back like subterranean a little bit The, the stopping of releases of locations of like, why is this in the game, dude? Like, some of these, some of these locations are gone. Gone. We're never gonna see them again, because they were that bad. Like, remember like, Sandbar on a Patriot meta? And it just...
It was like furthering the, like you have Glynn for this amazing balanced meta design and then you have Krakoa coming in. You're like, what's happening?
And then in June 2023, we have the launch of Conquest, like you alluded to prior. Now that is the full evolution of the battle mode now, automated matchmaking, the reward shop. I still think they're working on some things to like make it more like more rewarding and stuff like that. Cause now with the ranked system in ladder, I think Conquest, the heat of Conquest has kind of come down a little bit. I still enjoy it. It's essentially our unranked mode to some degree, right?
And the proving grounds, but I do think that the release of conquest was important because it gave people that really want to test their metal, another opportunity to play snap in a different way.
For sure. I mean, I might be one of the biggest conquest fans still. I'd love conquest. I have to play ladder. Actually I don't have to. I enjoy playing ladder. I like seeing a number go up. But conquest is a different way to play snap that I, if you have the time for it, almost enjoy more. I do enjoy more. I enjoy the deck philosophy of it. But yeah, dude, conquest was a, was a home run. They need to add some stuff to the reward system of it. But what a home run for the first game mode.
Yeah, I agree on a percent. It definitely was a home run and it just anytime you can get a great game like marvel snap and you could apply it in different styles of gameplay that also adjust the metal. Like I think conquest meta is a little different. I think that the approach to decks, the approach to playing snap conditions, it's all completely different. It's a very different experience. I think that makes marvel snap better. Just like the release of the spotlight cash system in June 2023.
And this actually coincides with a couple other points I'll make we also saw the exclusion of boosters in collector's reserves. But we also had a gold removed. That's a whole other conversation, but we did get the spotlight cash system. I don't rest in peace. Golden reserves, spotlight caches. I got to tell you cozy. It definitely has improved the card acquisition for the average player. That is without question. It still has its challenges.
We see that today with repetitive you know, things and Carter not being quite up to, to what we would have wanted to and et cetera. It still has problems needs to be worked on, but as a whole June, 2023 saw the launch of a system that generally improved the access to cards for most players.
Yeah. And like the, the direct it's funny. Cause we were saying improvements and then people are going to comment and say it like.
No, but kinda series drops as a whole came we, we did skip that in March, like series drops coming was big, and the first week was like She Hulk absorbing man, I remember that being massive at the time, and the reason I brought that up was because, the direct to series 4 came right around this time, and it felt good, it felt different, the first few months of spotlights were awesome, sensational, felt really, really good, You can look at months like October that I think they, or sorry,
September, that they did very good. Save up for it. Great month, everything's a home run hit. You used to not be able to get any of those cards. We've talked about it before. In practice, there's things they gotta change about it. There's things that it's definitely not aged as well because of honestly, in my opinion, failing to deliver on some promises. But, altogether, I think the Spotlight is a much better snap, bro. Like, we can get excited.
Dude, if I made a card about Dazzler as a new card, no one gave a damn because they're not playing with Dazzler for... Six months, right? You had to wait for her to series drop for six months. Now, you can get her if you enjoy that archetype, if you like, but it's HomeGround, man. I love what they've done.
Yeah. I think I literally opened a hundred something like collector's reserves during the, the, the collector, like the series five thing. And I didn't even get a series five card. I unlocked two series four cards. I was like, Oh, great. Cool. I guess this is, this is my life now. Like I just don't get the new cards, right? It's a, it was kind of sad. So it definitely is a better system, but you're right. Improvements need to be made. August 2023 Cozy. What an absolute month.
Now that we're getting into the recent times here, but can you guess what released 1. 0?
A PC drop, which again, they did it right. They did it right. You know, I think they did it so good that like, even for the anniversary, people like, well, at PC launch, cause they did it so good. It was so much at once and what it did for the game. I think the client has aged good too. Like, I think it feels good and there's still improvements there, but like. That's kind of them. They like to get something out there as quick per se as possible and then refine it and continue to find it.
I loved what it did for Across creators to having like not all these different type of cutouts and chaos, you know.
Yeah I know and running like emulators just to get the game to play at all have the emulator crash It just it is a far better experience for pretty much everyone overall and the thing I like about it, too Is there's always room for improvement? But I feel like now that that is out of the way, like that core concept is done. Now they can do the iterative improvements on that client overall.
And finally, the last thing I want to talk about in Marvel snaps, first year cozy, you might have unique insight on this in September, 2023. Okay. You, my friend, were stranded on Mount Vesuvius. Would you like to give us some insight on how that felt?
Oh, yeah. Let me tell ya, it was you know, finally get to do some stuff with Ben Brode, so excited, and then I just get trashed on the entire the entire thing. I'm, I'm still going for my revenge. My goal is to have him on a game show, and then just do the same thing. Like, save it for your... Announcements Ben, yeah.
Dude, that was that was such a cool Honestly, I think that's something that's just an improvement overall, too, is like between Conquerors, I thought that was definitely a highlight.
Not just because, like, I hosted it or whatever, but like, the between that the creators on the channel, which I still don't have a video on there, but the creators on the channel that do, like, one creator thing per The involvement with the community, they, they, they've continued to improve too, which you love to see that in a game and, and yeah, that Mel Vesuvius was definitely one of them.
Yeah, it's, it's, it was awesome to see you and and Dex on there. It's just you know what, like they've really done a great job of kind of engaging with the community. And again, this is something that like most developers don't do, right? It takes effort. It takes time. Like it's, with it. Cozy. Yes, sir. That takes us to our next discussion about Marvel snaps. Big bads. Are they bad?
It's an important question to ask because I think there's only one that we can confidently say is actually good right now. And as a result, we're going to talk about each of the big bads. What we think might have to change and how the system is kind of starting to show its age a little bit. Now we have Galactus on the stream. Cozy Galactus has been by far of all the big bads, the most controversial for obvious reasons. Now running a six, five stat line. This thing has bounced around so often.
It's even hard to keep track of. It was a six, two at one point. But I got to tell you cozy at a 55 percent win rate. It only has a 2 percent meta share since it was patched. I actually don't think that's all that bad. All things considered.
Yeah, it's funny because Marvel's biggest, baddest villains, per se. Even though High Evo is not on that list so much, but you know what I mean, like, They're big bads, and, and the MCU, which was where that was kind of deemed, They wanted to give these cards such a specific, unique ability, Too unique, and then what happened is you have a lot of people fall in love with that, But they're so unique that they take away from the core concept of the game.
So it's such a, it, to me, like, the concept was so great, but also, my god, are they a headache to adjust. Like, Galactus, dude, in all of his iterations yeah, that's not as bad a stats as I thought, though. Definitely, like, I don't pick to play him anymore, but it's definitely done what they probably were, you know, trying to accomplish.
Yeah. Galactus has come down a little bit, which I think it had to, but what's notable here is that it's only 2 percent of the meta, right? Which means that you could take people by surprise with a, with a clever Galactus player. I think that's what it's good at. That's what it's always intended to be. We had a point in time where it was like 12 percent of the meta. It was rising up to 16 percent of the nerf. So it was very prevalent, but here's the thing.
So we have this big, bad system where they're always going to cost 6, 000 tokens, right? And I don't know how well that's aged. Now, obviously these cards have come up in caches. Even Galactus has, right? Claxis was, you have the spotlight cash variant right here on the screen. But like at the same time, I wonder, I wonder about it. Cause I think a lot of people were confident to spend their tokens, knowing that they were going to get that full value is never going to change.
But I wonder if the big, bad system needs to be changed as well.
Well, the problem is they haven't done any other serious drops, right? So it's like. Yeah, they're never gonna go away from series five. Well, guess what? They're kind of right now Nothing is right Jeff could be a big bad in terms of how good he is and and in series five, right?
I think if a life came out five months ago He'd be a big bad to like just the way that he acts and I and works with his unique ability as well But yeah, there definitely needs to be An adjustment in general, with the way, See, like, that is my number one wishlist. We can do this, definitely, going either into the new year, Or going into, like, the The week after the anniversary. Whatever we want to do is, like, our wishlist for year two of Snap.
That's definitely high up on the list, I would say, Is to figure out Seekers drops, big bads, the tokens, all that.
Yeah, it definitely all has to get figured out because I think it's a major source of frustration for the community as is the 62 percent win rate on high Evo. So I think this is the situation where like, okay, this is the, this is the one big bad that truly feels big and bad right now. High Evo running a 62 percent win rate on aggregate at a 10 percent meta share. This card is Absolutely destroying the meta right now.
It's MediShare has actually come down quite a bit since its initial launch, but that comes to be expected, but it's win rate has actually gradually increased. It's gotten more capable. The decks have become more refined. And so high Evo is the one that really stands out here. We're going to talk about all four, but high Evo is the one that really stands out right now as being the number one.
Yeah, I would say him. And then what you would say, Thanos for sure. I think Thanos is in an okay spot. The soul stone hurt him a ton. A ton, but Thanos control is peaking back in, I think. Yeah, because really it's because of the time stone, and like Mobius doesn't affect that, and then you can still like do some control aspect. I think Thanos is an okay spot.
I think that's fascinating that you say that, because I actually, I hate what they did to Thanos. I actually really dislike what Thanos feels like right now. Like I, listen, I don't disagree. It's win rate is hovering around 55 percent right now at 5 Galactus. However, what I will say is that Thanos feels way worse. Now it feels worse to play. And the thing that made Thanos special was that it felt great to play. And it had this consistent, I play a stone. I draw except for the power stone.
We knew that the power stone was different because it had to stay on the board for an ongoing ability, et cetera, et cetera, the soul stone change knocked. Like. Three to 4 percent off its win rate. It was a huge change. Not drawing that card made that whole archetype feel way worse. Made it. It's just, I actually kind of disagree. I don't think Thanos is in the right spot. I think that Thanos should be one of the best cards in Marvel snap. Consistent.
I think it should be one of the best archetypes of Marvel snap. I think they took too much off it.
Well, I mean, dude, I full hand agree here. Like a hundred percent. Do I want Thanos to get back to where he was? I think he's still good is what I'm saying. I still think he's better than people are giving. It, like, I think, after the Soul Stone, it was such a shock, which it should be. And now, it's mainly because these stones have been, like, space stone. I'm pretty sure Time Stone got adjusted, and then this one. Like, we've had multiple stones get an adjustment of some sort, right?
At some point now? So, it's starting to rack up, right? And to take away the draw was just, was so much to the way that we knew how to play Thanos. I agree. I think he should be one of the best decks in the game. I, yeah, he's not where we want them, but getting the draw right back. Like, I hope they do that. Are they going to do that?
But the problem is cozy. And it's kind of like the inspiration for this discussion. Like obviously there's a big bad, it's way behind all the rest, but. Thanos does not compete with the other major archetypes. Like we have Elsa bloodstone lists running 59, 60 percent win rate, high evolutionary running 62 percent win rate. Like when you want to be sure. Running 60%, 59, 50, whatever. How do you justify Thanos, an archetype defining card running five points under Shuri, right.
As an archetype as a whole. Like I think that's, that's a hard sell for me as a big bad.
Yeah. That sucks, man. Like I think Thanos being good is best for snap. I think it's the most fun with Thanos decks are crazy. They're nuts. There's. Ten archetypes that could be attached to him. They're super interesting. He had a lot of reigning as like a meta card, but there are a lot of ways to beat it. There's even more ways to beat it now, with the lockdown and where everything's at at the moment. It just, what it is, is like the Soul Stone came, that nerf came like as a shock.
And so we were like, why did this happen? You know what I mean? Like, it didn't come when Thanos was like, just, he was very good with Thanos control. You know what I mean though? Like, he wasn't just like, dominating. Hell, when my, when Infinity Conquest first hit the first week, nobody was playing, not a soul played Thanos.
And then I made a video, I'm not saying I brought Thanos back, but I remember when I made this Thanos video, I told myself that I wanted him to be the first car that got me an Infinity Border. Because it was so on theme. So he wasn't too cracked, like he wasn't like over the, I don't know. Yeah, that nerf still is so puzzling, bud.
If you think about it though, Man Thing just got released. Man Thing should trade very effectively into the Thanos deck.
Right, there's, well, and not only that, there's so many cards that are yet to be released. The meta where it's at now, I don't know. Truly, I don't, I don't know why we've stripped down the Infinity Gauntlet so low.
Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. And that brings us to Kang, honestly, Kang 54 percent win rate, but it's not a reliable winner because the volume is so low on a 0. 3 percent Metashare Kang feels completely awful. 99. 9 percent of the time I pitched it. Listen, I pitched my buff last week. Comment section loved it for what it's worth. Yeah. The bring, just undo everything that happened in the game. Galactus, bring the locations back. Shanksheed cards, bring them back too.
That was a spicy meatball take I'd say. But so Kang is the one that definitely feels weak. Anybody that bought Kang on launch, cause if it was a big bad, it's probably felt completely ripped off. And this one really is, I think the most awful. What are your, what are your thoughts on Kang?
I honestly think with Kang, they like to do these buffs whenever like movies come out. He's gonna stay the same until, like, Secret Wars comes out, like, the next Kang focused movie. Cause then we're gonna have all these people that wanna play Kang, cause, like, the hype's there, and it's like, oh, he sucks. Yeah, dude, Kang's so awkward, man. And I just don't see him ever having, like, a true meta, ever, the way that he is.
I think that like they actually went on record saying that they held back the Nick fury buff until you can invasion came out. So I think there's actually precedent to what you're suggesting here. But I just don't think that big bads, like should be like this bad. Like, if that makes sense, like, and on aggregate though, like what I'm trying to say is like, Instead of, except for high Evo Galactus really is not a great spot. Thanos is really not a great spot. Kang is really not a great spot.
And the only reason why you would buy them for 6, 000 tokens is the hope that will Galactus gives you like a card that is completely different than everything else. And it has a really unique effect. Thanos will probably eventually be relevant again, but right now you probably don't want to be playing Thanos compared to some of the other decks. Kang is a complete waste of credits. It's high Evo. It's high Evo is the only one that feels like it's worth spending your tokens on.
But like, man, like I don't, but also you don't want to pay for power. So it's like this very delicate balance. Like you don't want the big bads to be like, Oh, you're, you're paying your 6, 000 tokens. Now you get the infinite good job. But at the same time, like, I personally don't like where Thanos is. I don't like where Galactus is. I don't like where Kang is.
Yeah. Hard to agree, bro. We're going to hope for that. And year two.
And guys, that's going to take us to the end of this week's Snapchat. Thank you so much for joining us this week. As always, Cozy, appreciate you. Thank you so much for all your insight that you provided today on the Snapchat. Always wonderful talking to you. And friends, thank you for your support for both Cozy and I's content.
Number 50. This is the 50th episode. We have two more Snapchats left. We have a special guest for one of those. And the other one, Alex and I are going to be doing live on stream. We're gonna be doing the Snapchat live, we're gonna do answering questions and mailbag and just great subjects and doing what we do. Dude on amps, I'm, I could not be more excited to do that next week. So we'll both put announcements out on our, our social medias. We'll talk about it on Twitch.
On Wednesday, which we'll see you guys there as always. Another great episode of the Snapchat. You guys have a good one. Have a great one. And as always, until the next one, happy snapping.