The Snap Chat: Marvel Snap Podcast
The Snap Chat: Marvel Snap Podcast
Bullseye First Impressions | Discussing The US Ban | Moonstone In Review | The Snap Chat Ep. 116
Will Bullseye hit the mark or be a Bull-sigh? What happened with the US ban on Snap? What are Cozy and Alex's final rankings on Moonstone? Join Cozy Snap and Alexander Coccia as they chat about this and more on this episode of The Snap Chat and every week as they discuss all things Marvel Snap.
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You’ve been listening to The Snap Chat. Keep the conversation going on x.com/ACozyGamer and x.com/AlexanderCoccia. Until next time, happy snapping!
What's going on, guys? Happy Wednesday. We just keep going later in the week. I'm just getting over the flu, so we have a little bit of a shorter Snapchat this week, but we had to bring it to you as we have Bullseye and our first impressions of the newest card to hit the discard archetype alongside the OTA. What was a pretty massive update to a lot of cards. Alex, I'm gonna break that down, as I didn't get to because I was sick. We got a lot to talk about today, all and more on this episode of the Snapchat. And as always, guys, of course, I am joined by the one and only Mr. Alex Coccia. Alex Coccia, who is going to be carrying the load this episode so you don't have to hear my raspy voice. Alex, I gotta say, man, I, I, I've been on the earth for a while now and I have never been, have you actually, let me rephrase this, have you ever been down for the count for over four or five days?
Alexander Coccia:You know what? No, I don't think I've ever gotten quite that sick. So I remember like a long time ago, I got COVID, right? I'm pretty sure it was COVID. Like I, it started, I was like sweating a lot. I'm like, what has happened to me? I didn't have a cough. I was like, it was weird, but I definitely had like a fever. I was sweating like crazy. I was showering nonstop. And it was beautiful because like, let me explain, man. I was in bed. I was like watching like documentaries and stuff. My wife was delivering food to the door. Everyone was leaving me alone. That's the
Cozy Snap:good sickness. That's, that's what I wanted to have. Like, so like, there's nothing that stops this train. That's the cozy production machine. I, I got to the point, I got the flu and I guess it was the bird flu. I don't know the, the elephant flu, whatever flu it was. Dude, it took me down to where there was no amount of willpower that was gonna get me out of bed. Like, I couldn't type on my phone. It was that, I was out for the, couldn't edit, couldn't, definitely couldn't watch anything, man. I tried, if I played, like, Rivals, my mind would have just blown up. Like, it would have not, it would have not worked. I, by day four, so it's been seven days now. I've been, seven days, at this point, I've lost a week of my life. To this stupid sickness, and I finally can watch, like, Survivor. I've done, like, two seasons of Survivor. That's, like, the best I've got right now. And you know, guys, we hate that the Snapchat is yet delayed yet again. Definitely not up to us. I mean, this is the longest absence I've ever had in my YouTube career. Been doing this a long time. I've never stepped away this long. Both channels, there's an OTA to talk about. Obviously, we're talking about that here. And then Rivals, I was, you know, To the moon, and things were going great, and then just, pfft, stopped everything, dude. So, it's been tough, it's been rough on the, on the mental state. And also just, you know, not, not, not doing it, but you know, I'm coming around, I'm almost done, almost out of it here, and, and, and we'll be Back ready to go here pretty soon. How are you, man? How was your week while I was gone? What happened in the world?
Alexander Coccia:Well, first of all, I was thinking about this. You mentioned the elephant flu and that makes perfect sense. That's probably like the next evolution of influenza because like their trunk is basically a giant nostril and when they sneeze I'm sure that they, like, project so much, like, just germs, bacteria, and viruses. So I bet you the elephant flu might just be a thing someday. You heard it here first on the Snapchat. Also a apparently like a, I can't think of the word, what, a biology podcast? I
Cozy Snap:was setting you up to, to, to say that, that, you know, The game I play for pretty much a living was banned from the, from the USA, which we're gonna obviously talk about on your side, but we gotta, I mean, listen, TikTok, they can take that away from us, Alex, but Marvel Snap, I mean, how, from Canada, your perspective's hilarious, because you, like, we'll dive into it more, but like, you, everything was just normal to you, right, and then all of a sudden, just boom, everything gone on our side, huh?
Alexander Coccia:Well, yeah, pretty much. And I mean, let me be very clear. It's not like I was like, yo, Canada, you know, for the win, I get to play Marvel Snap. I was like, oh, that sucks, man. Like, this whole situation kind of sucks. But I'm glad we're kind of past that for sure.
Cozy Snap:They set you up to say it's a good day to be a Canadian. I thought for sure that's where you were gonna go instead of Marvel Snap player. Canadian player was, was where I thought Alex was gonna, was gonna take this. I am not a TikToker, so I, I did not get affected. Good. By the TikToking band, but it's back there's like a Spongebob meme of someone Closing the jail door and then like, alright, you're good. It was like a six hour ban. But we're gonna be talking about all the bad over on Alex's side of the Snapchat. But yeah, anything else that I missed while, while I was gone? OTA, Crazy, we'll get into that. Anything other juicy things before you hop into Bullseye?
Alexander Coccia:I mean, realistically, I think that you you just missed a whole bunch of chaos. Like, I think Moonstone was, was a lot of fun, but just like, just, it kind of sucked, like, I gotta tell ya, it was, for people that might not have realized behind the scenes, like, like, Cozy was pretty sad, man, like, it was, it's, it's, I know you were disappointed in not being able to kind of be you know, be creating content and stuff like that, but you know what the amazing thing about being as talented as you are is, you come back just as strong, dude, and so I'm glad you're starting to feel better at the very least, and, you know what, honestly, if you want to be truthful, You didn't miss all that much. We couldn't even play the game for most of last week, so if you're gonna pick a time to move away from Snap and get sick, you did the, you made the right choice.
Cozy Snap:Fair enough, man. Fair enough. With it being so delayed, Alex and I are like, you know, do we, do we move this to next week? Do we? And we're like, no. We gotta at least do something short at the very least. I mean, I'm not gonna be able to talk for like six hours after this, but it's well Alex, you know what we're talking about over here, what are we talking about on your side of the Snapchat?
Alexander Coccia:On my side of the Snapchat, Cozy, we're going to be discussing Moonstone, giving our final rankings, final thoughts, and general impressions. And also we're talking about the fact that Marvel Snap did get banned in America, giving our kind of feedback, our discussion on that, and maybe, I mean, is there compensation coming? What's happening with that? And we'll be discussing that on my side.
Cozy Snap:Well, Alex, a little bit of a different episode. This is going to be fun and different because usually Alex and I are always kind of having to come up with what we think the card is going to be, right? And the card's not out yet, but the card's been out for a couple hours as we're recording this video, and so we got a little taste of first impressions, but very beginning of the life cycle of Bullseye here, and I'm going to give you the floor to start. What are you thinking after dipping your toe into this new Activate card? What does he mean for this card? And what are your first impressions, star ratings?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, so we came in last week, both at approximately 3, right? Had some reservations with him. And so I've had the privilege of being able to play with him for a couple hours, based on the recording time here. Like, I literally just finished streaming, we started recording here. So this is kind of unique in the sense that, you know, we've played the card. What I got to tell you is that the first little bit of the stream, I was actually really unimpressed. I was already running the titles in my head. Like, you know, Mid's Eye, I was like, how do we do this? You know what I mean? I was like, man, he's not performing. The decks weren't performing. Win rates were low. And then something happened, something miraculous happened. And I'll tell you what was happening. I was trying to cook a deck and I was like, okay, we need to make something new. We're talking, I was like, you know, what about Zola? I know people are talking about Zola. And then out of the corner of my eye, And I gotta give, I gotta give Twitch chat credit. Out of the corner of my eye, I just saw something, I don't even know who, it just scrolled. And someone said, what about Frigga? I was like, and I was just like, wait a minute, Frigga! I'm like, Frigga hits Morbius, it hits Collector, it hits Bullseye, it hits Dokken? Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up. So then what happened was, is we started cooking. I'm like, we gotta cook Frigga. We made a deck Cozy with Frigga, that I'm telling you, I ran an 80 percent win rate with, only in like, I think we played 15, 16 games or so, right? We ran such an incredible win rate, and it was absolutely incredible. And it made Bullseye look like an absolute dream come true. It was such a solid double up play. And Bullseye specifically, Because when he discards, like, Swarms, okay, the second Bullseye activates on the first discarded Swarms. So it is like a true double up, because usually it's like, oh, you just play two cards, but no. With Bullseye, you extend the amount of damage he can do, the amount of affliction he can do, because of the discard replicating those Swarms. Dude, I was like, I couldn't believe it. And suddenly, it became clear to me that like, this card has serious potential. And we've said it so many times before, sometimes all you need for a card to be really relevant in the meta is that one deck. That one deck, where it literally carries it. And I'm not saying that Bullseye is five stars or any of that, but I came away from my initial impressions, I was like, wow, that was actually kind of insane.
Cozy Snap:Well, yeah, I am surprised to hear that. I think, for sure, I felt like whatever his cook was going to be was going to be a little bit different. We kept calling him, like, the Gambit, right? Whereas the only difference is his can be used way more than once, right? So, if you friggin Gambit, you don't get the exact same result. And so, it, I thought there would be something cooked up to where you could get the most of his effectiveness. And what's cool is that's day one. People will perfect that even more so. And so, yeah, maybe, maybe Bullseye ends up having a pretty solid build. Because Listen, if a car can excel decently to Your standards of playing that first bit of day one, where there's kind of counters built in, people know what's happening, bunch of mirror matches, you know, just kind of weirdness all around. And it's still doing okay. Don't let me surprise, because I was ready to give him like two and a half, no question. And kind of just like a niche, fun discard card. And I'm still around that, still around that, not having to, not Frigga build myself. And so, yeah, Mid Zai was maybe what I was going to go in there with as well. You know, but again, really just the discard stuff, right? The Swarms, the yeah. There's not a lot of complication to the card, right? Like, even before we got to get some first impressions on him. The synergies aren't all that deep.
Alexander Coccia:No, they're not, and I mean, for the audio viewers and stuff, I should probably read the list I was referring to, because I think there's a lot of inherent synergies there with the discard. So it's Meek, Scorn, Blade, Morbius, The Collector, Swarm, and then you have Colleen Wing, Bullseye, Gambit, we got two card slingers in there, Dokken, Frigga, and Modok. So, no Dracula, no Apoc, it's like, Modok's the highest card, and then it's Frigga. Like, it's kinda crazy, and honestly, like, when we talk about synergies here, like, I wanna start on the bottom end, because I don't think people are gonna be expecting a conversation about Meek. I was getting Meek to, like, 12 power. Like, a 1 12. And that's not a joke. He was consistently, consistently over 8 power. And I was like, you gotta be kidding me. And we kind of forget that Meek got nerfed. Right? He came out, Series 4, not a lot of, like you know, drums to him. People not that excited about Meek, and then all of a sudden he got, I think he got buffed. I think they buffed him up a bit. And then he started clapping cheeks, man. And he was so good in this deck, and so was Scorn. So like, from the one drops perspective, both Meek and Scorn were just chef's kiss.
Cozy Snap:Which is cool to see, because you got cards that are just building up in their power, even though they're not all ongoing, right? You've got Meek, you've got Morbius, as you just said, and then of course, Bullseye's putting down power. So it's this interesting build where you have things kind of firmly planted on locations, and then they go up. Dawk, another example, right? Like, able to just start Cooking up and the difference of power between the power going down on their side versus the power going up on your side is pretty massive. Now, people might be confused a little bit on what he does do. We didn't read it out loud. My bad, guys. He is a 3 3, activate, discard all the cards that cost one or less from your hand and you inflict that many different enemy cards with negative two power. Now, a little confusing on the text there, Alex. You want to clear it up as far as like, does he hit separate cards? Is it all together? He cleared up for peeps.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, so based on my understanding of the way it's working, it hits a unique card and only a unique card once. So if they have like four cards on the board and you have a handful of swarms, from my understanding, he's not replicating, he's not like doing negative four on one particular enemy. Each enemy will get negative two. However, the reason why Frigga in the double up is so impressive, is because then you can double up on the enemy, because it's a second activation of the effect.
Cozy Snap:Which negative two power is a lot. I mean, that's a lot. I mean, if you're getting only four cards, that's eight. You said three eleven. There you go. Things look pretty good. And then, of course, as you said, Frigga, obviously, he's got some pretty serious counters. Luke Cage, always going to be what he is there. And then you know, Red Guardian to shut him down early if people want to go that route. But he's not always easy to target, like Red Guardian, it's like, and Bullseye could be in a lane with a couple other people that kind of absorb that blow for him. Isn't it funny though that we talked about Frigga always being this kind of card we love, and just a lot of fun to play with, and that we could see evolving over time, because as cards come out, there's always going to be ones that are better to copy. And we don't really have a lot of activate cards that are low enough cost that can be used and be used that way, like, you know, let's say, you know, getting more Spider clones out there. Can't do that, right? Doesn't work with Scarlet Spider because by that time, it's too late. And so, it's interesting that this is starting to build, because Discard, not with Discard cards, we've seen those kind of try to work, they never really do. It might be something here.
Alexander Coccia:Oh, absolutely. And like Frigga, I mean, when we reviewed it, I remember we both liked Frigga and she was a 3 3. She gets buffed to a 3 4. I don't think she stays at a 3 4 because you're seeing like the little movers bounce style deck running Frigga. And that's, that's great. That's doing phenomenal. And then when you see stuff like this, and I mean, Frigga is technically off curve when you're playing Bullseye, right? And that's kind of interesting because. Like, you're off curve, you're playing a 3 drop, but you often have, like, Blade, which might be able to hit a Swarm or a Meek that you can play down on that with that extra energy. Or, quite frankly, it doesn't matter, because getting a second Bullseye, or a second Dokken, or another Collector on curve in this case, is just that valuable. There were also games where you would copy Morbius, and we've already joked how often about how high in power Morbius gets. Morbius gets to tremendously high power levels. And so, like, I honestly, I came away impressed, and Frigga It sounds crazy, because like, it almost felt irreplaceable because of the positive impact that it had. Because you could reach so far, and it wasn't just a one trick. It wasn't just like, well, I gotta get the bullseye or this whole thing falls apart. It's like, no. Collector, Morbius, Bullseye you know sorry, Daken. And we gotta talk about Daken. How am I talking about him and not you? This is like, this is a card that you've been wanting to talk about forever. And his shard is such a natural hit. He's a, not only do you double the power of Daken, but you're also debuffing by negative two on the other side, giving a plus two to Morpheus. Like, all of a sudden, Daken is very natural. He doesn't feel forced in. I came away really impressed with him.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, and it's like any type, you know, we always say any type of targeting card is good, and like, the Bolt has got his weird targeting, even though it's, you know, necessarily Only one cost, like you're able to manipulate your hand in a way that's going to be able to make that work. Yeah, no, I, listen, I'm glad Dawkin finally has his chance to, to freaking shine around here. It's been long enough they've been trying to make that guy anywhere close to relevant. For a while there, we were on HotStreak mentioning him all the time. If people re intrigued by Snap, because the ban happened, they're like, I'm gonna check it out, and they're like, hey, I think I remember liking Discard a lot. Does Discard, in your opinion, sit comfortably in the meta with a couple different shells, where someone can kinda go in, dive in, get a couple cards, maybe just bullseye and compete, okay?
Alexander Coccia:Yes, okay, this is gonna be a bit of a hot take. I think Discard might be one of the least talked about competitive deck in Snap right now. Even, like, Reliable Discard is surprisingly powerful. Yes, I think that there are a couple decks that can go a little more vertical. But, In terms of consistent results, there are very few decks that do what this card does generally, honestly. It is a little vulnerable to Red Guardian, as many things are, but very specifically Morbius tends to be a lo a location winner on its own. It's one of the cards that you you play Morbius into a lane, and you expect to win that lane, and you play Dracula in another one. Both of them get pumped by Red Guardian, and Red Guardian is being played in a lot of different decks. You do have to be very cognizant of that, but no, I, I, Cozy, I actually do think, very legitimately, if you're someone who wants to get to Infinite, or you want to climb, Discord is 100 percent an avenue to do that. And I'm not just talking about the fancy pants bullseye one we were just discussing. Just any version of Discard. Not Black Knight, I think Black Knight needs some work still, I think. But like, traditional Discard, and even this Bullseye one, was pretty impressive overall. But you know, 100 percent Discard, and it has a number of shells. It does, it has a number of shells that you can play. And no, I think it's very well rounded.
Cozy Snap:So who pulls from? Do you pull from at all? What's your first impression, recommendation? I want to talk more, I'm trying to save my voice. What is your first recommendation there? Who goes for him? Is it the discard player? Is it everyone? Is it nobody? What do you think?
Alexander Coccia:So as of right now one of my intentions was I wanted to test Ajax. However, I just didn't have enough time. I just didn't have enough time. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a decent Ajax affliction based bullseye deck. However, the reason why I think that might not ultimately be the best way to play him is because that feels very Win Mori. It feels like if you have Ajax and you're popping off your bullseye combo, it's like, all right, bro, like you won already. Like stop kicking him while he's down. And you probably compromise some of the other core pieces that you need. Cause like you need activators to get more swarms in your hand or to pump the the scorn or whatever. Right. Discard is kind of like destroying away. It's, it's gotten to a point where the list is pretty tight and I'm not saying that Ajax might not make it. Yeah. It might. Like, we're on the first day of the card's release, right? So, a lot can change. But he is very niche. Very, very niche. And his application's very tight. So, if you're not a Discard player, you're probably safe you know, not necessarily investing in this card. Definitely wait towards the end of the week to get the idea of, like, what decks are coming out with him. Always resist FOMO. You never, ever benefit from blowing your resources on the first day, unless the game gets banned and you actually can't log in to buy the card. That's a whole other discussion. But if you can afford to wait, like definitely wait, because you will get more perspective on whether or not the card is meta relevant, meta impactful, and you're less likely to blow your resources. And another thing I should mention, I'm sorry, I'm just taking this chance to talk as much as I can, because I know that you probably appreciate it, but We, in terms of Marvel Snap, you've got to bear in mind that we had the ban, we also had a promise of a better series drop. They said it's going to be bigger, it's going to be sooner, and so with that, we know resources are tight. We're getting double the amount of tokens from the spotlight reserves. I would venture to say, or sorry, the spotlight caches, I would venture to say that you're always best being conservative with your resources. Especially since we do know that you know, they do intend to make a bigger series drop here. Now, obviously, Bullseye is not going to be involved there. However, if you can resist the FOMO, you will stretch your resources further. And I think this is a case where you can wait until the weekend to see if Bullseye makes an impact. Because, honestly, I don't, you don't see him having the wide reaching ability like Iron Patriot. Iron Patriot can be in almost any deck in the game. Bullseye is not going to be that.
Cozy Snap:Which we kind of said that in the, in the pre rankings. We said he's probably the lowest card of the month. I believe that's what we both put him at. I mean, I, I would say discard is probably, if you're not a discard player, I would probably avoid him. 12 cards in deck, the tough part about it is you're not able to do what you just said. You kind of, you got to go all in on one type of play. If not, you win more or you're too stretched out and then you get like awkward hands. And so probably, I would say, If you're all in on the Discard, it's like every other Discard card before it, where it's just kind of like, alright, maybe Scorn was one where you probably should get her just about, I don't know, I thought Scorn was really good for what she did for the Argotai Proxima Midnight, though, kind of that category of cards, but if you want to know our final opinions on them, Alex and I, in just a few short days, we'll be talking about that next Monday. And that takes us, guys, to our last subject, shorter Snapchat again, but again, you're going to see us in just a few short days. We've got the OTA recap, and man, for an OTA to miss, this one was, this was a bigger one, man. I'm always, I'm available for the, okay, we changed, yet again, we have changed who, who's someone they, they changed all this, Thanos down one, up one. Who's another card who's been changed like a million times?
Alexander Coccia:Oh, buddy, Luke Cage has been changed a million times. Yeah, he's on here today, to be fair, that's why I pointed at him, man,
Cozy Snap:I'm like, he's up here all the time. But we start off with Scream, Alex and I love the card, and it went from a 2 3 down to a 2 2. And, you know, definitely, in their eyes, which, hey, it did have a high win percentage win rate. That's why they nerfed it. This was one of those, Scream is such a small and narrow application card, that I think she should have been largely left alone. I, I don't, I don't agree with this. It's fun to give my first opinion on these, because I didn't get to do it on the main video. But immediately, I don't even know your opinions. But immediately I was like, why, why are we touching Scream here, it doesn't, didn't fully make sense to me.
Alexander Coccia:I do agree that perhaps Scream was an overperforming card individually, on an individual basis. And in the patch notes they mentioned that it had a Mr. Negative style effect. You draw Scream, you usually win. And so they wanted to rebalance the effect a little bit, take a little bit off Scream, add a little bit more viability to the other cards in the package. And we've discussed that in the past, where if you don't play Scream, everything else feels bad, because you're moving stuff for what? Why? Why are you moving things around? Why, why play Polaris if Scream's not there? You're just, you know, unless there's a, you know, you know, The reason for it, but there isn't a reason for it unless there's like a space throne or something. So yeah, however, what I will say is that, for me, Scream represents the same type of field of play that like, High Evolution High Evo, High Evo's Cyclops does. Yes, Cyclops in High Evo is probably OP. But that archetype needs an OP card to be fun, to be playable, and to give it a competitive advantage that gives it the identity that it needs. And Scream was that for that, that arcade. I don't
Cozy Snap:like the Mr. Negative conversation because I feel like more of like, Dracula for Discard maybe. Like, if you get Dracula and you do a new thing with Drac Like, obviously, like, you have such a better chance to win. If Drac does his lane, you have Apoc and whatever, right? I, you know, I do get it that the Scream decks go down a lot without her being played in. Heck, it didn't even get played before that. But one of those things they did to rectify that was Spider Man taking him from a 3 5 down to a 2 4. This was the one where I was like, whoa! Which I'm on the train for making him just better overall. Spider Man iconic. 2 4. This is a good card now. Like, you know, it was always a good card. I think this has got to be a better card outside of just that package too, which is really neat. And, you know, time's gonna tell if that continues to work. Was it good enough to, you know, obviously this was a big enough thing to change the difference between Scream going from 2. 3 to 2. 2. This getting a whole cost and only one power is a massive change. So I'm all for this. I like this one a lot, bud.
Alexander Coccia:Oh, it's a massive change to Spider Man and it's a massive buff too. And yes, does it offset the change to Scream? Probably, it does. But like Still, to the same degree, I don't think, okay, so with Scream, it's like, you have so many activators in that deck, which you don't have are the, like, the attack pieces, right? So, like, you buffed the Spider Man, I think it would be interesting if, like, maybe Kingpin got some love as well, right? And the other thing worth mentioning is that, When we talk about problematic cards and cards that need nerfs, and this is perhaps where I, I deviate from the balance team, is when I see a deck or a card that's running a 4 percent meta share, according to our untapped public statistics, which obviously is a, not a full representation of the overall player base, because, you know, installation base, et cetera, I understand that, but based on our metrics, when we see a 4 percent play rate card getting nerfed, And it's not even, like, representative of the absolute top of the meta in the zeitgeist of players. I'm like, why? Like, kind of like, why? Like, I understand the goal here, and I hope that future OTAs and future changes kind of round out this deck more. Because if you're going to change Spider Man, then maybe take a look at Kingpin. Take a look at other things, you know what I mean? Because the deck was only running a 4 percent meta share. Right? And this reminds me of when when Darkhawk got nerfed. When Darkhawk was huge, they're like, oh, internally, Darkhawk's pretty high, and it had like a 2 percent play rate. And we're like, but why? Like, it wasn't problematic. I don't think anybody had that on their bingo card, you know what I mean?
Cozy Snap:Yeah, to be fair, I do think Spider Man's gonna be much better universally, which I would just, like, he was single handedly played in that deck. Now it could be combined with like a good three on, you know, turn five. That's where I see me play the most. A turn two card's still a little weird with like what he does, you know? You know, maybe to disrupt some stuff there with like, hope some, whatever, you know, something along the lines of that. But I do like the Spider Man change and I agree with your statement on that style of deck. Next up though, we move to, or down to a one cost in But you would refer as Hydration Robert when he has gotten sleep when he hasn't, it's Hydration Bobbert. And I, listen, again, I don't know your stance on this. Me, personally, 1 5, I thought was too good for this card. I don't think his snap thing was a big enough effect. It's like, we saw over the course of time, everyone's putting this as their one drop because it just wasn't a big enough effect to, to warrant the 1 5 compared to my eyes, like, Martyr. But knowing the Alex Coccia that I know and love, if they were to mess with my Colson or something like that, I'd be pissed off. Now, we're not here to compare the love. I mean, obviously, Colson love is up here. Bob is, you know, it's a new blossoming relationship. Are you mad about this one?
Alexander Coccia:So, my response to the OTA originally was I need to go watch
Cozy Snap:this.
Alexander Coccia:was highly emotional with regards to Hydration Robert. And I, like, a little bit of perspective. I you know, maybe I came in a little too harsh. Because I think you are correct. This change was likely necessary. You can't have a de facto 1 5 card with barely a downside as, like, a go to one drop. You just can't do it, right? Iceman's a 1 2. How can, you know, Martyr is a 1 5. How can Bobber be a 1 5? It's just not, it's not reasonable, right? And also, remember, this is also a card that doesn't have many dials. And so moving it to a 1 4 is probably appropriate, especially since I remember reviewing it and thinking, like, as 1 4, it was fine. And when it got buffed at the right of the last second, like, I was like, okay, this card's insane now. And it took a while for it to actually start really finding its meta spots, but once it did, it never let go. And so they probably had to do something, especially when you look at the comparisons, like, like Martyr. Like, it really makes no sense to play Martyr when you have Hydration Bob, right? So, that's something worth mentioning. One thing that I thought about, though, is I thought that it could be interesting to change the card's text. And someone suggested this, I think it was a great idea to make him like a 1 3, that every time there's a snap, he gains plus one in moves. Like, I thought that would be perhaps an interesting way of, you know, working with his power instead of a flat 1 4 because the snapping part of it I think is fun, and it does have a pretty high skill cap, because you can screw yourself with that snap, and they can screw you with the snap too. So there's more to it than just like he's a 1 5 vanilla card that just gets the dub. If that was the case, you'd be playing a 0 with him. So it's a little more nuanced than just that, But yes, obviously I was a little emotional when they hit Hydration Robert, but at the end of the day I do recognize that this was a necessary change given his prevalence in the meta.
Cozy Snap:Luke Cage is the next card we'll talk about. 3 costs. This guy's been up and down and all around. I mean, they've changed this guy a million times. And to me, it's not that big of a deal. Like, the way I look at it, now when they changed, now when I first saw that Luke Cage was up again, I'm like, I swear to God, we just even said if they change it to be location only, they've killed the card. It's just his power, it's just his power's not important for his overall role. I guess like if they don't have any power, you know, power reduction, that makes sense to me. But I saw him go from a 3 3 to 3 2, I'm like, Ah, he's still doing what he does, right? What's your thought on Cage here, going down?
Alexander Coccia:My thought is that Luke Cage is in a very The reason for this is because of the reciprocating effect, when they, like, you use him offensively, just like you use him defensively. And when you take him from a 3 3 to a 3 2, what you've effectively done is you've made him weaker as a defensive card. For the same reason why playing Rogue feels weird if you don't have an ongoing to target. That 3 2 feels awful, especially when the de facto power line now at 3 cost is a 3 5. So, it's very hard to use him as a release valve. Right? You can't, because he's too weak. He's too much of a liability in your deck as a release valve. And so therefore, the decks that use him are the decks that are using him offensively in the Affliction Ajax style decks. Which are gonna have him anyways. Which, ironically, you need to counter in order to prevent the Affliction from destroying you. And so, it's, it's very awkward for the development team and the balance team because If you take power off of Luke Cage, you weaken his ability to be a release valve, if you add power to him, yes, he becomes less feel bad to include as a defensive thing, but he becomes even better to include offensively. So I'm actually not sure how you're supposed to balance this card.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, I get that for sure. I think in my eyes, the way I saw it, was like, there's so many new power reduction cards coming to the game, like, all the time, and Bullseye's today's thing is a power reduction card. And so, to me, it's like, he's already, he's stopping so much as a defensive card because of that, but to your point, what you're saying, yeah, like, the offensive decks, you use them, too, so it is a weird Case in point for, for how, and they've tried to tackle this by like making Ajax better with more cards that have, like, you know, they try to be like, okay, you want a Flickshot on your side, like, try to make it happen, like, don't use Luke Cage if you're trying to go for the attack style deck. That just doesn't happen. We've seen that time. And time again. So your points make a lot of sense here. Now listen. Kezar went up 4 5. Hooray. You know, he's gotten a lot of buffs over the, over the course of time. And so we'll, we'll gently go past that. Onslaught going up to 6 8 as well. Another, you know, hooray. Kind of happy about that one. But we have some bigger changes to talk about. We'll quickly say U. S. Agent. And I was pretty sad to see this one. This was one where I was like, damn. Now, he's pretty strong for a two cost, I'll say that. Very strong for a two cost, but you know what else is strong is people that play these big four, fives, and six cost cards, and I, I liked what he did, and taking off a a PowerPoint on his abilities, that's tough, that's a rough one, that, that to me was a a rough change.
Alexander Coccia:I actually, this is the one I really didn't like from a balance perspective. Emotionally I didn't like the Hydration Robber change. However, with US Agent, I feel like when he was at this negative three stat line on release, he was very underwhelming. However, the meta has shifted quite a bit. We're getting a lot, like, different style of decks he can be kind of played in. And that, that happens over time, right? The meta matures, people learn how to play the cards better, they get, they find their niches, right? And US Agent found his niche. But this is a very strong nerf, especially when you consider Doom 2099, which honestly, people have kind of forgotten about, but still is a very high performing deck. And the reason why US Agent was so effective against that deck was because the opponent could not control where those Doom bots ended up, and US Agent feasted on them. And so he was a very natural inclusion in a lot of those cheaper decks. So, I was not a fan of this change. I would have rather had the power of USAgent go down, and it been left at a negative 4 power effect. Because I think that, like, I like the higher ceiling side of a card like this. Now, it is a 2 drop, and it can still have tremendous power potential, but realistically, like, I was not a huge fan of this change either.
Cozy Snap:Now, we have some more massive changes. One, We, we thought we'd never see. In fact, we had the last snapshot based around making Iconic Heroes great again. It was kind of cool to see that following Thursday, bring exactly that. Mr. Fantastic. I mean, how cool is that? The timing of that? Because guys, we don't know anything over here. And so, for that to line up is, is, is pretty hysterical. We've called that a couple times now. It's like when something feels off. Long enough, it should come. MrFantastic, 3 1 now. Going down in power, but up in overall power. His ongoing effect giving plus 3 to adjacent locations now. Effectively making him a 3 7. Alex, this is a big change for MrFantastic.
Alexander Coccia:It's a big big change. It's a good one. I do like it. I, the reason why I like this change is because it has multiple conditions. First of all, very susceptible to Red Guardian, very susceptible to Enchantress because of the turn order. But also, the key thing about him is the plus three power is significant, especially when you consider Moonstone that just came out, so you do have some synergy there. But more importantly, you got the buff to Onslaught, right? And when you have ongoing cards, the base power is helpful, but what you're really chasing are those effects. When they nerfed Klaue, they didn't go after Klaue's base power, they went after his effect, because of the reach that Onslaught can have, right? What this made me realize, though, is that what Ongoing, I think, is really missing right now is probably a playable Miss Marvel, and Unfortunately for Ms. Marvel, Mr. Fantastic into Moonstone is essentially that, right? And so Ms. Marvel's kind of place in the game has seemed to have just disappeared. So like, honestly, it's a good change. Lean into the ongoing potential of the ongoing cards. I think it kind of shapes their identity better. And I can't believe we called it. Next, next one. Next OTA. I'm gonna call White Queen. Let's see White Queen.
Cozy Snap:I'm gonna go Adam Warlock. My guess is they're following their rival's train. They're like, shoot, Mr. Fantastic's all over everywhere now. We need to make him better. Maybe we should do that. And I gotta ask dude, Hela. Hela went down in Marvel Rivals kind of. Nerfed, somewhat, and kind of a buff here. Very interesting one at that on reveal. Not kind of, definitely. For each different cost among them, resurrect a card you discarded to a random location. Have you had time I have not. Obviously, I've been sick. Have you had time to play with the new Hela? I was Working through it, I was like, this is a fascinating change, a very flavor It kinda works, I think so, but in practicality, how does it play?
Alexander Coccia:So, I only have limited experience with it basically I was doing some testing and I got a, I saw a a deck on untapped, I thought this looks pretty cool, it wasn't of my design, I gave it a shot it was pretty good, and I think the 6 9 power kinda stood out on Hela as a significant buff. I don't think the decks are there yet, I think it needs more testing, I think it needs more refinement, But what I will say is I think I like the general design principle of this redesign, because what we had before in Hela was you could effectively put Invisible Woman, MODOK, Hela, and every chunk in the game and just be fine. Like the, the thought process behind It was an ideal bot deck for, for players that want to play like bots. Yeah. And this here makes much more deliberate deck building required in order to maximize the effect, and therefore requiring players playing Hela to be a little more mentally engaged, which, I mean, that comes off as me saying, like, stop being a bot, but what I mean is, is like, it's actually more fun to play Hela. You're more engaged in the outcomes of the game. And I think that was one of the challenges with Hela. People were frustrated because you couldn't impact the board, you didn't have a control over what was happening. Even as the opponent, it felt like a very non interactive deck. And this change increases the interactivity of the list. I don't think it's there from a performance perspective yet. But we're still in the very early onset of it, and I think, listen, it can change fast. It can change really fast.
Cozy Snap:It's only a matter of time, and plus, obviously, more cars come out. She gets better, technically. I mean, kinda that's how it was happening with, like, Red Hulk and stuff, but now it's even more interesting because you have, like, Way more variants there that can kind of help out and work with Helidex. So, you know, we are going to have to see how that works over the course of time. Guys, it is a short Oh, Sentry got buffed up too, by the way. We'll see if Annihilus Dex comes back. He's what, positive 9, negative 9? Is that what he is now?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, that was the change there.
Cozy Snap:Well, whoop dee doo. No, I mean, you know, maybe Annihilus finds Do you think Annihilus ever finds his way back to be dominant? I don't know.
Alexander Coccia:You know what? I'm not sure. I had some thoughts about Annihilus, and I think that for, in order for Annihilus to feel playable again, I think they might need to do something about Selene. Or they need to they need, we need one more card. There's a card missing. I feel like we're short a card. Because instead of playing Annihilus, you're almost better off playing the, the Viper package. Like, Viper's almost a better Annihilus right now.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Viper's kind of ever since that buff, she's just been too good.
Alexander Coccia:Cozy, I want to ask you how you're feeling today, but I know how you're feeling today. You feel absolutely awful, and by asking you how you feel today, I'm forcing you to speak, which also makes me a little sad, because I know it makes you a little sad. But my man, I know it's been a long week, but why don't you bring us up to date? How you feeling,
Cozy Snap:buddy? Doing, doing good, not great. Good, not great, I think is the best way to to say it. And so much so, you could tell. Because I still have a PNG of Moonstone here in between us. 4 5, not a 4 6. This is the first card I've ever missed in Snap, ever. And it pains me. Which is, I'm excited though to talk about it, because I saw a play on her. And, and I know you have a lot to, to say on Moonstone as well. And just a super interesting card to talk about in general. Gonna be, I'm gonna be getting her immediately, because just of, I don't know, it's right up my alley, and kind of some of the fun, quirky stuff that you could do with it. We just had the Mr. Fantastic buff up. But yeah, man, I'm excited to, excited to hear how Moonstone lives up to it. We both gave her what, like a three and a half at first?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, we were reserved. We gave her a three and a half and we ranked her slightly above Bullseye in terms of overall potential. And so it's also interesting to note here that the podcast is coming out after Moonstone has left the Spotlight cast. So this is like a token discussion now, right? Which is, which is interesting in and of itself. But, with regards to Moonstone my play impressions of her was that this, this is a card we have not yet quite figured out. There are so many decks floating around, some of them are absolutely awful, some of them have potential. And as you mentioned prior, the change to not only Mr. Fantastic, but to The Onslaught, who then buffs Moonstone as well is not insignificant. And so we got those a little later, because obviously you had Moonstone, then the OTA, and then a little bit of experimentation there. There was definitely a change. Moonstone on the onset felt pretty mid, but then when you got a buff to the activation card of something like a Mr. Fantastic. Remember, Mr. Fantastic is now giving 3 to the adjacent locations. Moonstone gives 3 now. Before, it would have been 4 power overall, now it's 6 power. And that's pure power. It doesn't care if Negative Zone's there or Alter of Death. It doesn't matter what's there. So Moonstone already felt better. Onslaught, that additional power makes a difference. It felt better to play. And where would you play it? You'd play it on top of Moonstone and you'd play it on top of someone like a Mr. Fantastic. So you were seeing decks utilizing those cards. And you even saw Dex using Speed that could get that double up power, right? So ultimately, I think that you know, Moonstone, we're just starting to brew. And if you missed out on Moonstone, I think it's okay, because I think that this card is going to, as we always say, age like fine wine. Because every single you know, ongoing that comes out at one, two, or three cost is going to be relevant to Moonstone. Just like every three cost that comes out, you automatically say, well, this is a surfer card. I mean, that's what I do. I mean, I sent that to Galacta at a four cost, right? I'm always looking for surfer cards, damn it. But yeah, I think that Moonstone is it's going to be one that ages particularly well.
Cozy Snap:And I mean, even with a small change like Mr. Fantastic, having that one small change made him way better with Moonstone. I mean, effectively making that the old Ms. Marvel with like relative ease. So, like, that's, it's super easy to have Moonstone stay relevant, be relevant with cars that come in, come out. That's why I agree on it. I actually think she's gonna be pretty good. I would get her much before Bullseye, in my opinion. Just because of the way, you, you said it well, too. I mean, it's just not figured out yet, right? Like, I know 20 decks that I'm going to want to try with her right off the bat, and it's ones that go all in on the concept, ones that just kind of use her a little bit as a as a card to, you know, amplify it. Gotta ask, because this would be the first thing I was going to try. How did Patriot land in all this?
Alexander Coccia:It's so funny you said that, because while you were speaking about how we need to figure things out, in my head I'm like, the next point I'm going to make is I felt that Patriot went under explored. I think there was some testing with Patriot, but like, some initial decks with Patriot, but then people kind of fell off Moonstone kind of fast. And what you were seeing was like, much more focus on the Mr. Fantastic, kind of centralized style decks, and less on the Patriot side. And honestly, that's a shame, because I think that, like, when you have Patriot, you have Mystique, and you have Moonstone, the reach capability is insane. Admittedly, when you have Victoria Hand. Right? As well. And you have Iron Patriot. It can be very easy to get drawn into those deck archetypes. And those deck archetypes will also run Quinjets. They'll also run Kate Bishop, who has the Pym Arrow, right? So all of a sudden, like, Moonstone has like, it's not just like a one trick, where like you're looking for the one card, oh I'm looking for Mystique to get my combo off. It's like, no, I get the Hawkeye Pym Arrow, I got Victoria Hand, I got Mr. Fantastic, I got Speed, I got Whatever Agent Coulson drops, I can magnify it with the onslaught. And so, there's a lot happening there, and again, there's a chance. There's a chance that this card becomes incredibly relevant when a new, ongoing card comes out, that when you double, like, you double anything, it's crazy. Like, think about what Wong is. This feels like Wong for the ongoing effect. You know what I mean? Like, it feels like that. And then, you almost double dip with the Onslaught. Like, it's the Moonstone Onslaught interaction that really caught my attention. Because you can put up stupid numbers in surprising ways.
Cozy Snap:I mean, we saw that, like, they, they helped Moonstone as much as they could. 4 5 to a 4 6, Onslaught got up, Onslaught got a buff too. But we've always said it, Ongoing has always just had this weird thing about it in comparison on Reveal as this kind of master finisher, like, you know, Spectrum and Onslaught, they do their role, but, like, I mean, look at, we even get, obviously Odin's been around forever, but even Gore is like this, like, New way to make this stuff happen. So I do think Ongoing as a whole still needs a piece. It's, it's tricky because of how powerful some of these can get. Where you not just feel like you're relying on the, you know, the one thing to happen. Like, I want something like a gore for Ongoing that can act in its own light and in its own way. But what's like the goofiest thing you saw with Moonstone? Anything, anything crazy?
Alexander Coccia:Well first of all gore is ongoing. So you, you could make your dreams a reality. Gore
Cozy Snap:on reveal though, he's on going forever. I know, I know what you meant, I was just
Alexander Coccia:poking fun. But but like, yeah, like in terms of like the wacky stuff, it had to go with so I was working on a deck where I was playing Mega Red. And honestly, it was ruined by the fact that I was testing it too early, and I was getting Rogued, I was getting, like, Enchantress, people were just poo pooing on the card. I bet you if I tried it again this week, it would probably work better. And the reason why is because I was trying to do something with with Speed, Onslaught, and Omega Red and and Iron Man. The idea of making it so that, like, they couldn't actually compete with that lane unless they had a tech piece. Did the
Cozy Snap:Mystique thing work?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, dude, Mystique was crushing it. Like, actually, it's crazy to me to think that, like, I'm looking at some of the top decks right now. Ironically, Mystique's not there. Like, she's not making those decks right now. Like, Speed is. Mr. Fantastic is. It always throws me off when you call him Fanta, by the way. Isn't that some sort of, like, soda pop in the United States of America? Mr. Fanta,
Cozy Snap:Fanta, Fanta, don't you want to? You didn't see those commercials? It was like a childhood awakening as a kid. No, I did not see that. Bunch of women in bikinis yelling, Fanta, Fanta, don't you want to? Yeah. I'd sing it better. This is a
Alexander Coccia:commercial for Mr. Fantastic?
Cozy Snap:No, dude, that'd be great. I wish that should be their next ad for Marvel Snap instead of the AI stuff. No, for the, for the soda.
Alexander Coccia:Instead of the AI stuff, they could have done anything else. That's like, we're setting the bar pretty low. Just Alex
Cozy Snap:in front of the camera. Hey, play Marvel Snap.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, that's right. Me just jogging on the beach with my phone, playing Marvel Snap. That's something I really would like to see, but but yeah, no, honestly, like there's, there's a potential for a lot of crazy stuff. And when you talk about ongoing as a whole remember one thing that I think holds on going back is we don't have good, cheap ongoing cards. Like Pimero's and Pimero's good. You know, then we have very niche ones, right? You have the Ant Man, which is still good, but then you have, like, Goose. You have Howard the Duck. You have Mojo, right? You have, like, these Colossus. Very niche and difficult to apply to decks. And Spectrum wants cheap cards. That she can give plus two to. Every card on the field of play that you give plus two to. I was just about to say you said
Cozy Snap:two two. I was just cracking up over here in my sixth
Alexander Coccia:state. So I think that, I think that ironically ongoing needs cheaper ongoing cards.
Cozy Snap:Yeah. And it wasn't a problem before because there's like cool spectrum. Like that's the whole point. Like, I don't care if it's Howard the Duck. He's a one cost, he gets the plus two. It works. I feel like 3 costs is where they can really experiment with Moonstone. We saw that with Patriot and his global effect that he does. And so like, you know, they can't make a 1 or a 2 too strong. Man, 2 2 is funny, huh? 3 is where you can start to dabble with the, with the good effects. I mean, we see that with Fallout 2, we see that with Patriot.
Alexander Coccia:There's no question about it. And ultimately, in terms of the actual statistics, we didn't read these out. Moonstone is currently running a negative cube rate, she's currently running a 47 percent win rate, at a 23 percent popularity as of recording, and that's the last 7 days, so the last week. Not impressive numbers. However, with every synergistic card that comes out, we're gonna see better numbers. And right now the top performing decks for her are running positive cube rates in like the 20 to 30 cube rate range, at 53 and 54 percent win rates. We have one outlier running a 56 percent win rate at 700 games played. So, there was a lot of experimentation. Those win rates looked bad on aggregate. But we're starting to see some decks come out which are going to be performing well. Especially with those buffs to Onslaught and Mr. Fantastic, which are making some of those decks. But, we'll close Moonstone on this. The most consistent card in Moonstone decks currently, that's in all the highest performers, is Speed. Speed is the one that's performing the highest right now. And it's funny because you're also seeing Wicked in those decks. You're seeing Quinjet in those decks, you're seeing Maria Hill in those decks, Hawkeye, so you're seeing this Wiccan style play that's utilizing speed, his brother, and Moonstone just loves it, it's free real estate, and she gets very high with those speed effects.
Cozy Snap:It was funny, we talked about like a million cards last week with Moonstone and we skipped right on past speed because He's just what he is. He's boring, but good. And he maintains that here with Moonstone. We see boring, but good. Does his job well. Obviously, you know, to get for Moonstone to get that effect is just huge for just being able to be a now a colossally big forecast card. And Ongoing has the luxury of being able to play your cost throughout the turn. So that's always good there. Excited to see how she evolves, man. We're gonna have to see over time.
Alexander Coccia:You know what else we need to see over time and how they evolve? Our servers, Marvel Snap servers, in fact and the location of said servers. I was
Cozy Snap:like, I don't know if
Alexander Coccia:it's a server problem. As we discuss, I was trying to figure out, like, the you know, the, the segue there. I, I didn't, I didn't quite nail that. But you know, it's okay, because you can still watch the Snapchat. It didn't get banned, yet, anyways. What I gotta tell you, Cozy, is something did get banned. In the land of the free! Marvel Snap was locked up, baby. It's so, my man, that was crazy.
Cozy Snap:It's funny. I mean, it's crazy to see that by far and not even by a little bit. In fact, you can go look by a lot of bit. That's a word I'm going to say. Snap was talked about more than when it was launched, when it was launched ever. So the peak of Google traction ever to the game was when it got banned in America, which I think is so. Funny, Marvel Snap and the Ben Brode team over their second dinner, they could not pay for that kind of advertising, even close to it, to be honest. Who knows how much that would co millions upon millions to get that much buzz of the name. Now, I don't think it's the buzz they it's not gonna be like, yeah, it got banned, I gotta go play that game. But it does that all important thing. You know, it's kinda like those celebrities like Paris Hilton, a name you haven't heard in who knows how long. And they, their, their popularity is based on just somehow being mentioned again in the, a good, good or bad, just like get it in front of people's face. So good or bad here, Marvel Snap and the name of it and the app itself reminding people, whatever, as a mobile game. Did get mentioned a lot this week with the ban and obviously if you guys didn't know, well yeah, Snap. Was not playable here in America. You got a nice little screen that said, unfortunately, that we, you can't play the game right now in the United States. That's because their connection to ByteDance and as a publisher, Nuverse, and kind of how all that interaction works, people saying that they knew about it. They're, they're, man, you guys are special, kind of special, as I like to say, because they would never want to lose the money on that. I think Ben Brode, he he didn't tweet out. What is that? A thread? He threaded That he was ensured that they would not go down, and that was not the case. And I think it rings true, Alex, because even with TikTok restored, Snap took almost another year. 36 plus hours. Crazy though, to see a game app banned to my way, like first time I've ever seen anything banned like that in the States.
Alexander Coccia:So there's a couple of things worth mentioning, and I liked that you kind of went where you went. So first of all it's kind of unfortunate that peak like YouTube trends and Google trends for Marvel Snap. Was about the band, like it was getting like national coverage, and so I was like, oh yeah, Marvel Snap, I forgot about the game, I loved it, I'm actually going to install it again, oh wait, it's not even in the store anymore, you know what I mean, like it's like, you gotta be kidding me, it gets all this exposure, and it's literally the exposure of Oh, you can't actually play it or find it or install it. It's like gone from your country. It's like, Oh, really? Like that had to be how you did it. Right. So it's truly remarkable. And I just need to say as well, like, listen, I like getting angry just as much as the next guy, but the amount of like straight up, like cope. That I saw about like, oh, it was like, it's this conspiracy that like, the second dinner took out their servers and like, they're doing it because people already bought the season passes and they're screwing everyone over. I'm like, dude, what the hell are you talking about, man? How could this possibly benefit them? Like, I understand being mad because you're mad, but like, bro, you cannot possibly actually believe that this was part of their plan. Like, what are we doing out there?
Cozy Snap:I have a hard time believing people like that exist. Like, you know, it's like the internet is such a fun place to work because like, I see people, I'm like, how is it possible that this is all you think about and care about and, and, and it, and just like. The I can't, bro, I just can't. And it's not like Snap is on the level of anything super big of a game where this would benefit them that much. It is shocking, dude. It is shocking. I mean, what I did not like from it all, and I liked but I didn't, is I guess they're trying to take some of their publishing in house now after everything happened. Which, like, Newverse already got rid of their gaming division, ByteDance did, like, Years ago, like a year plus ago. So I don't know why they stayed on that. I, none of that makes sense, but what I can say is, I just, they were like, it's a new era for Snap. We're gonna change things around here, and it's like, I, to me, and like, I think they backed up creators, like, check out the creators, even though like, 80 percent of them were banned from even playing the game. To me though, man, I, I just wish that these messages would come out when things were fine, when things are going good, like, hey. We want a new Aerosnap. These are the differences we want to make. Like them being a new publisher company, what that could mean and what they might mean from that is that because Nuverse no longer pulls the strings, could have controlled a lot of the microtransactions. I'm not fully convinced on that, but I do think that that is a large part of it. I do also know that Newverse and Second Dinner largely operate differently in a lot of ways. The marketing team is almost all Newverse, which their team is obviously I love some like, there's one guy in particular who has worked on some of the Conqueror stuff. Cory, love that guy. Awesome human being. Awesome guy. But we saw the AI ads. And just some of the downright, like, I don't know about you, but YouTube, if you go to like, some commercials, it'd be like, The Loki season has just launched, and it is gonna be a banger! Like, it's like, old ads, too. Like, there's just some weird stuff there. And so, for Second Dinner to take a lot of that in house is exciting in that light. Because I do think there was some Puppet Master stuff going on from Newverse.
Alexander Coccia:There's no way of us actually knowing. But I think it's very clear that there is no scenario where Marvel Snap benefited. From not being accessible in the United States of America. It's large as audience base. Like there's no, there's no way it profits from that. Right. And you know, I, in some part of me, I actually felt bad because like, listen, I know that there's, there's issues with snap and there's things that second dinner, they've made mistakes. They need to improve on. However, I'd like to see them catch a break eventually because they're an incredibly talented development studio that produced an absolutely fantastic game. And the only reason why you're here, even if you're upset with card acquisition, which is rightful. It's because the game is so damn good. Like, let's be honest. We're here because the game is so damn good. And you know, you have the you know, they, they missed the mark completely with serious drops. And that was absolutely earned and they needed to take that hit. But then this, this is like, this is crossfire, and this, this sucks. And does it, and listen, because like, they're gonna, I believe they have plans for compensation, and full disclosure, we don't know what that looks like, we really don't. So they have plans for compensation and stuff like that. Obviously the service was offline, and there are gonna be people who said, oh, the app's banned? Oh, I can't play this anymore. And they just uninstalled it and never come back. That's a loss for me. It's a loss for you. It's a loss for them. It's a loss for everyone playing because you don't like playing bots and another player just left.
Cozy Snap:It hats off to the team to all, you know, case in purpose. I don't know what they had to go through to try to get this back online. Clearly it was a lot of hoops. Good on them, good job for them getting this going. I don't even know who you would begin to contact, and I don't think they knew either, you know, like, what do you do a second day, like, oh, let's hit up the US government? Like, it's such a weird, crazy thing that they are not trained for, so hats off to the team working day and night. Probably to get that working and from what I saw from that but something I, I, again, I, I touched on that I want to make sure we talk about is the difference between NUVERSE and Second Internet. There's a massive difference there. They do control massively different things. All of the events are NUVERSE ran, all of them. And like I said, the marketing is. There's more than that, and so, I do think that Second Dinner getting their reins on this could be huge. I don't think the competitive, them not wanting to go all in on tournaments, I think that's more Second Dinner than it is Newverse, but it is exciting to see kind of what that looks like you know, I know content managing wise, or what are they what do you call those people? Content managers, community managers, I know Newverse had one, and then they went and got this guy I can't remember his name, but they got that guy who's now for Second Dinner, like, they're wanting to bring a lot in house. Which is definitely good, I think, for the overall game. Because the game's tremendous. We love the game. But, it is on life support in a small sense of the word. 1%. And, and we, we don't want it to get even higher than that at all. And I think this is a good way to get things going again. A weird way for it to happen. I think people are going to take that life support line a little weird. It's not like the game's dying by any metric. But it does need some extra boost and I'm hoping that this could give it it.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, and ultimately I think that like, we're in a situation where they have a chance to kind of reset a little bit. They have an opportunity to say, Okay, what else could possibly go wrong? Right? We potentially have a patch coming with Character Master, which I think is going to be huge. But what I really think they need to focus on is re engaging with the community. Second Inter needs to score some dubs. They need to score some dubs with the community. I think that they need to tell the suits at Newverse like, Hey, you guys messed up hard. Let us do our thing. We need to get our people back. We don't care about the bottom lines and the suits and this and that, wherever they happen to be. We need to get our players back. We're going to be doing, you know, login events, we're going to be doing login rewards, we're going to be doing new events, we're going to be doing a proper series drop, we're going to be releasing character mastery, we got a new game mode we're working on, we're going to be doing monthly you know, game modes like high voltage or whatever. They need to re engage the audience, they need to start scoring wins. They have to, or else, that life support you were talking about, it's not just one, it starts to kind of grow a little bit, because honestly, they've been kicked when they're down, and it's unfortunate. Because as I said before, we're here because we love the game, they need to start scoring some dubs.
Cozy Snap:Listen, there's games like Marvel Strike Force and other there's a game called, like I bring up all the time, Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes. I was playing that game in, like, college, man, that thing's been around for 15 years. Marketing, if NUVERSE was in charge of that, I can't express people who don't know much about marketing to understand that the world is about marketing. From YouTubers to people, to businesses, everything's about how much can you get in front of somebody's face to remind them it's a good thing, good product, good, whatever, that's why YouTubers post all the time and why me not being on for seven days hurts because I'm not posting. And so second dinner can take marketing back. And take probably what I would imagine a large piece of their allocated funds from the game goes to Newverse to market. If they get those funds now, that's huge man. Like, they, imagine being able to do something super cool and unique with that. That's exciting, because we've seen it. What I believe is Second Dinner's marketing in their trailers, and that is obviously second to none.
Alexander Coccia:Oh, of course. Actually, still my favorite ones are with you and Dexter in them, right? Long time ago. And yeah, Dexter as the in the the court of law was just chef's kiss. I know, what a guy man. Something worth noting though is it did take, like you mentioned it in passing, but it did take like way longer for second dinner servers to come online as opposed to the TikTok one. I don't think we have an answer for that. No,
Cozy Snap:it was a straight bullet. And I think somebody asked him the community manager. Why did it take so long? And he goes, I don't even know. And even if I did know, I probably wouldn't be able to divulge it, but like, that's cool to know. That it, not even cool to know, but it was nice to know, like, oh, they don't even know. Like, If it was tied to ByteDance alone, then it would have came back with TikTok. Like, my guess is, right, But the government turned off, okay, let's say, like, all the ByteDance apps, okay? And then TikTok, being the superpower that it is, got approval. So whoever was just like, boop, and turned the TikTok going off, and all of these ones stayed off. Like, that's my guess on how it happened. I don't know.
Alexander Coccia:I have no idea. I'm Canadian. I got to keep playing, so.
Cozy Snap:I
Alexander Coccia:know.
Cozy Snap:I know. He was like, it's, Alex would be like, okay, should we, cause one of the reasons the recording's so late is, yeah, I'm sick, but also, like, I had a screen that just said, you can't play Marvel Snap. If you guys don't know, this is my screen over here in the middle. So, like, it was funny, because we couldn't even do, really, the pop. We would've found a way. We would've found a way. In fact, a full week of it being banned across the world would just be a fun Snapchat. Be talking about who knows what over here. But definitely a good time.
Alexander Coccia:Actually, I come to think of it, I think we'll end on this. I think it would have been better if it was banned across the world. If they just shut the whole thing down, let everyone go outside, touch some grass, smell the roses, you know what I mean? And just be like, you know what? We're all in this together. And you know what they say? Perhaps just maybe, perhaps. Fondness, Cozy, makes the heart grow stronger.
Cozy Snap:Compensation. I think people are going to be blown away with compensation really quick. I do think they're going to go above and beyond on this. I think that they, a game, shut the F down, bro. Like, I think they might give 6k tokens. Like, I don't know. I'm calling this being our best compensation we've gotten.
Alexander Coccia:What if you're Canadian? Dude, I
Cozy Snap:think everybody gets it.
Alexander Coccia:I thought about getting a VPN and trying to VPN into the States to log in, so I couldn't, just so like, my name was on the record. I was like, I had that thought. I saw somebody, when TikTok went
Cozy Snap:down, when TikTok went down, some celebrity, I forgot who it was, was like, I found this, this VPN for Hawaiian internet that you can use now to, to get into TikTok. I'm going to get this VPN for Hawaiian internet and I'm like, how, how are people this dumb? I, I don't understand. Hawaii is part of the 50 states if you don't know over there, Alex Coccia, it's okay though.
Alexander Coccia:I do know that. I do know that. As is Alaska, which might surprise some people.
Cozy Snap:Well, look at you, naming your 50 states.
Alexander Coccia:That's right. Look at that. Everyone in the United States is like, that is not surprising, Alex. What's a state
Cozy Snap:you know nothing about? Iowa.
Alexander Coccia:Iowa. Iowa? Yeah,
Cozy Snap:me neither,
Alexander Coccia:bro. Idaho is another one. There's some states that like I've heard of, and I'm just like, I'm not sure where Washington is? Are there multiple Washingtons? There's Washington DC, then there's another Washington state?
Cozy Snap:Yeah, you are correct. I'm proud of you. Okay, thank you. They're very different. I find
Alexander Coccia:it weird that New York, New York is the name of the city and the state at the same time.
Cozy Snap:That's a fair statement. What's like another, what's another state? What's the state you don't even know exists? You
Alexander Coccia:How am I supposed to name it? I don't know what exists. What's, okay, there's, there's, there's like basically the entire middle. I wonder what Montana's like. I just picture Montana just people like cow tipping and stuff. What about Wyoming? Never I've heard of that one. Is that, I don't know anything about it though.
Cozy Snap:What about Wisconsin?
Alexander Coccia:I only know Wisconsin because of that 70s show.
Cozy Snap:Okay, so just like pop culture. Nebraska?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, essentially, yeah. We, my knowledge of the United States is essentially Florida. Myrtle Beach when I was a kid. Myrtle Beach was really popular. My dad loved Myrtle Beach. And I, I recently got to go to San Diego. That was cool. And what I'll tell you, you might not realize this, Cozy, because you take it for granted. First of all, the weather is beautiful. It is, okay, right now, where I am, it is negative seven Fahrenheit or something like that. That's how cold it is.
Cozy Snap:Bro, it was snowing in Texas with my family. Right now, in San Diego, current weather, 68
Alexander Coccia:Fahrenheit. That's disgusting. That's not even fair, man. It's not fair. But what I'll tell you is when we were flying into San Diego, I was looking out the window and you guys have like all the battleships. Yeah, that was so cool, man.
Cozy Snap:Canada doesn't have battleships. Alex Lanny's like, why is San Diego like ready for war? It's like, it's a, it's like a half the seals under control. I guess the Navy seals, that's what they call that. Anyway, I'm, I'm talking too much. My voice is gone.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah. You know what? Thank you guys so much for watching. We genuinely appreciate each and every one of you. Thanks for sticking with us this week. We know we're coming a little later, but guess what? That just means the next Snapchat is coming even sooner and we'll see you on that next one.
Cozy Snap:Guys, a little bit of a shorter episode, but my voice is barely hanging on. Hopefully by next Monday, it'll be there. Have a good one. Have a great one. Till the next one, guys. Happy snapping.
