The Snap Chat: Marvel Snap Podcast
The Snap Chat: Marvel Snap Podcast
Deadpool's Diner Revamp: A Win or Miss? | New Card Discussions | The Snap Chat Ep. 150
Will danger be a meta-shifting card? How has the bot behavior changed in Marvel Snap? What are Alex and Binx's thoughts on the revamped Deadpool's Diner mode? Join Alex Coccia and special guest Bynx as they chat about this and more on this episode of The Snap Chat and catch Cozy and Alex 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!
Hey y'all, Alex here and we're joined by a very special guest today. We're joined by Binks. If you had not noticed by my snazzy introduction, Binks, I had to steal it. It was a special occasion today. Welcome to the Snapshot, my man. How you doing today?
Bynx:I am doing so well, man. Thank you so much for inviting me on. I've been excited to, uh, come join you on the Snapchat and dude, I'm feeling good. I'm loving Marvel Snap right now. There's a lot of really, really cool things happening. I'm happy to just sit down and chat with you, my dude.
Alex:Damn called me the Snap, uh, Snap catch, right off the rip. I'm gonna get sued by Super Tech and guest gaming. Now what have you done? Binks, but no, I'm just joking. But yeah, it's great to have you, man. And honestly, you're, you look like you're on Cloud nine. You're wearing a Bears jersey, and you know what? We're recording just after the Bears played. And is, is that part of the reason why you're so happy today?
Bynx:Oh, yeah, but, well, we were, we were talking a little bit before, but, uh, you know, jumping on and doing a podcast right after a Bears game, we, we were one in 12 in the last 13 games, taking a lot of really bad really hard hitting defeat. So getting a big win today, feeling, feeling on Cloud nine, man, feeling good, loving Caleb Williams. Uh, being a Bears fan is one of the hardest things to do in America, but every once in a while it pays off and makes you feel good, man.
Alex:I know there's a lot of people out there thinking, why are they talking about football and NFL and the Bears? But here's the thing. If you think about it, the Bears are the perfect analogy to Marvel Snap, because the Bears take a whole bunch of Ls. Then when there's the one dub, it feels so damn good. Right? Feels so sweet, man. It feels so sweet. There's been a lot of dubs recently. There have been a lot of dubs. Listen, there's a lot of Ls, just like the bears have been. A lot of Ls true. But there have been some dubs lately and we're actually gonna be talking about a couple of them today, including Deadpools Diner and stuff, which I think is a massive win. Second dinner does need a lot of credit. For what they've been pulling off the last couple weeks, uh, especially with the new game mode being as well designed as it is, as as generous as it is, perhaps even maybe too generous and we'll discuss that stuff too. But long story short, man, I'm just so excited to be here with you because, uh, you're someone who has been creating content ever since the start of Snap. You're like an OG beta gamer. I remember before I got in, I was watching your videos. I remember watching Binks videos. I remember watching TLSG. I remember watching you guys like through the window, hoping, man, I hope I get to play this game one day. And here we are on a podcast talking to each other. Why don't you let us know about like what got you into Marvel Snap in the first place, and, uh, kinda like what inspired you to start making content for him.
Bynx:Yeah, so I had been following Ben Broad after Ben Broad left Hearthstone. I'd kind of been following what he was doing. I know he'd been gone for a while. Uh, I used to really, really love Hearthstone. I made like wild legend like nine times. So I used to grind that game a lot. And then he left and I, and I always kind of been, you know, keeping an eye on him. And then when I saw that Marvel Snap was coming, I saw the, the initial push with it, uh, Trump, the, the Hearthstone streamer not the other Trump, the Hearthstone streamer was doing a, a lot of really, really cool things with it. And I was lucky enough to just jump in and, and do the beta. And I had been honestly, consistently streaming and doing YouTube videos for two and a half years. Up until that point, I had like 50 subs on YouTube. I had like 50 followers on Twitch, no following whatsoever, just kind of doing everything. And then. You, you know, I was the very first person who just started hammering Marvel Snap and, and making content on it and trying to just kind of show off this game that not a lot of people had access to. And then, things just kind of started accelerating, accelerating. I was, you know, a hundred xing my numbers on, on videos and different things like that. And then I just kept that momentum going into launch. And then, I mean, you were around during Launch, man during the, the full launch of Marvel Snap, there's a huge boom in content and, and so many views and everything like that. And so many, uh, eyes on it. So, you know, I just jumped in because it seemed like the card game that was like perfectly designed for me. I've always liked like bite-sized games. So the fact that it's a card game, it's only six turns, it only takes a few minutes. And then the snapping mechanic was like this really interesting way because I was someone who never retreated in hard stone, even when like everything was against the wall. If I had like a 0.01 chance of winning, I would, I would go all in against it. But having this like retreat and Snap mechanic making retreats an actual like tactical choice, not just always losing was really, really exciting for me. And I think it just was a perfect pairing of me being in the right place it being a game that, uh, I really loved and I still love a ton to the day. No matter how much Flack gets for Marvel sap, I'll be one of the first people to say it's like my favorite game ever made. It's just the mechanics are just so awesome. Uh, just worked out to, to be able to, uh, give me, you know, a rise and being able to do content and stuff like this full time. So just kind of the, the perfect setup of a, a perfect game for me that I really enjoyed and, and showing it to people. And you know, here I am, uh, a while later here on the Snapchat with you.
Alex:Yeah. That's awesome. And, uh, it's, it's, again, it's crazy to think about how, like, I remember watching your content and, uh, thinking about like how well like you presented and how good like your deck highlights were. Right? I think you were the one of the first ones to like really do like these consistent deck highlights too, and not just like, here's what's happening in the meta type thing, but like actual legitimate, like heavy cooking. You were one of the first chefs of Marvel Snap, which I've certainly appreciated. Right. And, um, I, I just, uh, I wanna mirror what you've said that I, I too love the game. And I think that's something that we both share. And, uh, despite its ups and downs at times and some of the directions that it's gone in here and there very consistently, it's been a game that, uh, when I turn on my, my stream, I'm excited to stream. I'm excited to play. Like, and that's so rare. Like, I remember when I was doing Doda content, you'd be stuck in these 45 minute grind fest that like within the first three minutes you knew you were gonna lose, but you weren't able to leave.'cause like of like lever punishment, all this stuff. One of the things I love about Snap was the, the fact that like. The solution to tilting is just queuing your next one. You know what I mean? Just go next and just move on and, and even like, it's just so good and the, it's just such a unique game from that standpoint. One thing I will take issue with though, and this is something that has grinded my gears only over the last maybe six months, was I've started, and this might be a really hot take, but I don't think I like retreating. Like I like as an actual mechanic. Like I understand why it's like a high skill cap thing and in like competitive Snap. I think that's really cool. Like in tournaments and stuff, I think that's totally different. But for like ranked ladder and stuff like that, I find retreating to be somewhat detrimental to the experience at times because I'm setting up all my pieces. I'm having fun. And so often I feel like I don't get to see the things happen. And I think that one of the most brilliant things about card games is winning that 1% chance that you mentioned. Right? You said, I, I don't concede in hear stone, even if I had one chance.'cause it's that 1% chance those make the best clips, hits those make the best moments. Those make the greatest kind of like just incredible things that keep you coming back to a game. Right. And I feel like Marvel snaps retreats often. Like just swipe at the knees, like kind of kick out or low kick like a fighting game. Low kick the energy of a game when like. They just leave. Right. I understand the tactics of it and maybe it's part of it.'cause I'm a content creator and I feel like I don't like including many retreat games in my, my mm-hmm. Content.'cause it feels like for that exact reason, it's like. It's like, imagine shooting a fire, like a huge firecracker. You're at the 4th of July and they just keep going. Boom. You, you see them fly up and they never explode
Bynx:and it doesn't do the explosion and they never
Alex:pop off. And like that's, that's what retreating feels like to me. It feels like you're just taking the most interesting part of the game and removing it from the experience. That's just me. Over the last couple months, I've grown increasingly frustrated with. Retreats.'cause I'm like, I wanna see this stuff happen. I wanna see some stuff pop off. But I do obviously respect why it exists. It's just maybe, three years into playing Snap, I, I like to see some games close out for a change.
Bynx:Yeah. Yeah. I, dude, I absolutely feel that, uh, I, you know what's really funny? I did like I, this must be almost. It is probably over three years ago now at this point, I did a five things that I wanna see in Marvel Snap, and one of them was, when you retreat, you can choose to show your hand or not show your hand. Kinda like in poker, right? Like if you fold, you don't have to flip your cards you can put them face down, but you can flip your cards, you like, be like, I bluffed get wrecked. Or something like that. Right? So like, having that option for when you retreat to say like, show your hand and then it plays out the turn and then like at the very end it's like, it's like, but they escaped. But, but it does show like what would've happened. I thought that that would be something that could be like, kind of interesting that they're, they're getting in. But I also do think that we have content brain, and that's probably a big part of it that we just wanna see the, the, we wanna see our cards do the thing.
Alex:Yeah, I think that's actually like, probably over half of it, to be honest with you. Mm-hmm. Because like so often I'm like, I got this really cool board, it's gonna make it, and then it's just retreat. I'm like sad. This is very sad, but actually from an educational content perspective, like knowing when to retreat and when to, like, those are actually incredibly valuable skills, to be honest with you. And maybe that's something we don't focus on. Maybe we need to focus more on like, I'm gonna retreat and this is why. And that might be helpful for players getting in actually. And even though if it doesn't make like the highlight reel of content, I think it's still actually useful. Did you just change my mind on some things? Hmm.
Bynx:I've tried, man. I'm trying. I just give, uh, different perspectives and things like that. I do think that if we did do that, we'd look at the YouTube analytics and see people, everyone leaving after that game and it'd be like, gotta get a,
Alex:yeah. The new Alex videos are just me retreating for seven years in a row and everyone was like, this sucks
Bynx:explaining why there's such smart retreats you like, don't plan anything. It's like, I think I've got a retreat here. I think we're behind
Alex:now when we're talking about like being behind. Do you know what was behind in Medisure? Ken, what's happening? The conqueror. How'd you like that transition there? That was a good one. Hey, I love Conquer. I saw Ox absolutely no play man. Literally no play. He was only ever seeing play in the Twitch Rivals tournament in the deck that I carried to the semifinals and then to the finals to suffer a bitter defeat, just like Kang ultimately did at the hands of the meta. But you know what? Kang, the conqueror saw a massive rework, one of the most significant reworks that they've done in the longest time in Marvel Snap. And it was a card that needed a rework. And I did say something and you could verify if necessary, but in the, uh, kind of like in our like creator discord, when they provided the notes, when they showed us this, I was excited, but I did this. I was like, I think the old Kang might be better. And my comment was, Kang Nerf sag. Right man. Which I think some people were like, what's this guy Todd about? But I would like to say that I do think that the original OG Kang, while having its problems in a competitive scenario, had its moments and had its advantages. And I think that this one doesn't have that. But by gosh, is this a better card? I'll tell you right now for a card game where you play cards and you have fun, this new Kang, the conqueror is such a fun design. I'm all for it. Even if I don't think, and I'm not convinced it's actually that quote unquote good. But I'd like to hear your opinion on it. Do you think Kang is good? And what do you think of the reword.
Bynx:I definitely think it is good. Is it like a competitively s tier card? I think that's kind of yet to be seen. Anytime something like this happens, you really have to look at like the long form of how, like your average result, right? Like,'cause you get some games where you're like, Kang is the best card in the world.'cause you get like Ironman ser or something like that and you just blow your opponent out. But then you're sitting there with like a modoc and a destroyer and you're like, well, I just wasted two draws for, for nothing and I'm getting outta here for one. So it, it really is all gonna come down to the, like, long term. I do think it's a really good cube equity card because you have no idea what your opponent's ever gonna have. Like, that's kind of why, um, in, in a similar way, Huling has seen some competitive success, like through like the, the golden gauntlet tournaments. People are running it because it's that just, you know, in a conquest game when your opponent's. Figures out your entire 12 cards, having these surprise cards that they just cannot play around no matter what they want to do, feels really, really good. And with Kang, you're basically just stuffing four hulings into your deck. The way it works with, um, with Quinjet that you can just play Quin shot on one into one of your kangs on two fields, really, really nasty. Uh, it does make Surfer less consistent. So I obviously Surfer is good with it, but you have to kind of build your Surfer to be able to win without Surfer, which is really important. Or get a Kang Surfer, let's be honest. But, uh, I do think the cards like really, really solid. It might even be overt tuned. I, I. Think we'll have to see again over the long term because it is gonna be a, a, a card that takes just averages of a lot of different games to really understand what it is. But very solid rework. A very fun, interesting card. I love Aish. I know some of you guys out there probably hate Aisha. I love Aisha. This is an aish like lovers dream card because you get like a lot of the cool things of airship getting all these like random tools to be able to try and work into your game plan with less consistency issues because you're only shuffling three additional cards instead of 12.
Alex:And I think you're touching on like all the things I love about the card. Like obviously it provides like that like surprise gameplay factor where like your opponent cannot anticipate your turn three Sarah, for instance. Right. And I think that's actually super huge. And I think first of all, I think it's okay to like Airam. I think Airam is okay to enjoy now. When Ahe was like, thanks for being
Bynx:okay with it,
Alex:meta breaking, I felt like I couldn't play it'cause it was too cringey to play it. You know what I mean? I always feel that way. I don't know if you feel that way. Like us showing up to like streams and just playing the most meta aggressive, like agro is like, it's just, I don't know, it's not a good feeling. I never do that. So I always try to like do some other stuff. And now that Airstreams not as cool. I feel like I'm, I'm allowed to play Arum now. Just like when Surey was super popular and like destroying the meta, like I can never play surey. And then when it got nerfed and everything I was like, Surey sucks. I'm like, I get to play surey now. What I will say though is like what, you bring up a great point. Like your opponent cannot anticipate what you're doing in those types of decks. And it's one of the reasons why even ATRI tends to be a popular conquest. Conquest deck. You can't anticipate what these snaps are all about. I was in a conquest match and I don't play a lot of conquest, but I do remember one of my prior, uh, infinite, uh, infinite infinity conquest runs. I had someone turn five lyth me into turn six lyth. I was, you cannot anticipate that. And no, there was no Moon Girl hurts. No. It was legit. Aisha generated lyth into their actual lyth or the other way around.'cause it would've been more surprising the other way around. Mm-hmm. But it's like you, you can't get ready for that. You just get destroyed. Right. You get your cheeks clock. Something played around you could do about it. One thing that we'll say about the new Kang design, there's a couple things they absolutely nailed. First of all, they nailed the fact that it's creating different variants, even if you don't have them, that is such a great touch. That is such a beautiful touch. But like, why am I seeing my opponent's animation? Could we get rid of that? Please? Like, it's like totally unnecessary for me to see their Kang animation. That's gotta be a bug, right?
Bynx:Uh, I don't think so. Like a lot of decks will ha I guess maybe you're right. Maybe it is like barely any decks. Do both. I don't mind seeing both. I mean,'cause otherwise you have to what? Check the deck and that kind of sucks. I, I would love if like Thanos and Erim and Agatha have much clearer things. So like,'cause right now, basically you should be checking your opponent's deck on term one every time. And there's like a calculation you get like, do they have dormammu? Do they have Agatha, do they have Thanos? Do they have all these different cards? You can figure it out based on the information that's there. But I don't wanna do math and stuff like that, man. Just show me. So I, I'm on the other side of that. I like that it does it. I think that they should do that a little bit more. See,
um,
Alex:really I'm thinking that like if my opponent's playing arum, I don't need to see that animation. And we don't right now, like I don't wanna see their thano stones get shuffled into the deck. Or if you're gonna do that, maybe make it like less, like right in your face. I don't want my entire screen being occupied by my opponent's deck animation and then my Kang animation after. Right. Uh, it's just too much. And sometimes
Bynx:they rhyme, sometimes the two of them rhyme. Like, uh, it's like something your fate and something that I actually really like the double kangs, like sometimes the combinations of them actually kind of hit the little like words that they say.
Alex:That's funny. I, I never actually paid attention to that, but I will now. Um, but yeah, I think this card's really well designed. I think that the design team really stepped it up. It reminds me of Moira X, like these are just really well thoughtfully designed cards. Now in terms of the early statistics we have, according to untap based statistics, now because of the recency of the patch, I'm using stats from rank 80 to 100. So there is some bot inflation there just so we can get a larger sample size. But at a 7% popularity for Kang, it's running a 48.8% win rate and a barely positive cube rate. So statistically, even with bots who might be more savage than they used to be. It's not performing that great. It's not necessarily a huge standout from a perform, uh, performance perspective. What you said is true though we need a much larger sample size because Kang being what it is, an RNG centric card, it's hard to determine what its true power level is until we get that large sample size.'cause it is like it's gonna run off the law of averages. Absolutely. There's no question about that. And currently performing as expected really. Well, in Alioth, in fact, Alioth Loki is going to be its highest performing shell, followed by a Alioth Thanos stack. Actually, I stand corrected. Chu Thanos has a 56% win rate over 590 games. And then at 620 games, eight A from low key versions running approximately 53%. So some good stats overall for Kang the conqueror. Now we are gonna be moving on to our. Prior card that released last week, and that is going to be Jim Hammond. Jim Hammond did release last week and, uh, little ho hum reception, uh, turns of overall stats and stuff like that. Cozy and I came in at approximately one and a half to two star range. We were not Jim Hammond, human Torch Believers, Binks. Where did you stand on Jim Hammond going into the week. And where do you stand now? Now that you've had a chance to actually play with him?
Bynx:For me, Jim Hammond works with only one card. Really? And that's fall in one. It's, that's where you're trying to get a huge fall in one to get a bunch of additional energy. I don't really see almost any one drop just being worth it to get one point a turn with electro or one point a turn with Aish. I just don't see that being something that's worthwhile for an inclusion in the deck. But in that fall, in one deck, you know, if you get like a 13 power fall in one, this gains seven energy or it's seven power. And then if it's magic it, it doubles that. Right? So I think that's pretty much the only deck that it goes in. So realistically, how good is Jim Hammond? It's How good is that fall in one deck? And I don't really think it's that solid. Uh, it can feel really nice when you get like a won surey set up. You get like a 20 power one, you get a massive Jim Hammond, you're gonna win those games.'cause you have like infinite energy, right. But building those decks to like have enough big cards to actually take advantage of it and have the setup cards to get it, ha hasn't felt good for me. I don't know if you've found like too many really, really good shells that it works out for you and but yeah, I just think overall it kind of just only fits in with Fallen one. I hope that there's more flexibility in the future if other cards come that can augment, like how much energy that you have on a turn. Maybe some combination of them can make Jim Hammond work. But yeah, I think this card just lives or dies on how good that fall in one deck is. And it's kind of just in meme deck tier, in my opinion.
Alex:No, I absolutely agree a hundred percent. And uh, I did test it in Hope Summers. It felt. Largely unnecessary, right? I was running Hope Summers, I was running the Luna Snows surges and stuff like that to try to reduce the mani cost and stuff like that. There was options and like opportunities to generate that extra energy, but he was never worth it. It just wasn't worth it, especially as a card that had to be out early to take advantage of it. It's not an ongoing card. It's not like Mobius where you can just throw it down, sorry, Moria. So you can just throw it down after you've discarded a bunch of stuff and get the value from it. It has to be all in the field of play, so it has to be played out on turn one, two or whatever. And the other thing is, is that like it's not just a one or two card combo, like you mentioned the fall one. And I agree it's best in the fall in one deck, but it's not just the fall in one you need. Like if you think about that combo, it's like, it's like at least a three card combo for Jim Hammond.'cause you need Jim Hammond one, you need either Surey or Symbio Spider-Man two. And then you need following one three. It's a three card combo to get the po. It's just too much. It's too much for a one, two, it's just not worth it. And it feels like those decks are like one tricks where it's like if you don't get the exact line that you're seeking, everything just falls apart. Now thankfully that deck usually runs like the Nimrod shells and stuff like that, which can be cool. I do like that as well. And I do like that fall in one list specifically because it does allot you at least 11 energy for turn six, where you can play a Zola Black Panther combination, which I think that most people aren't prepared for.'cause the deck is just not popular, right? So people aren't gonna anticipate, oh, it's turned six and they literally pull off a Zola BP combo. Like they're not gonna anticipate that. So there is some cube equity there, just'cause the deck's not popular. But Jim Hammond. Feels so cuttable there and when he pops off, he pops off. He gets to big power. And you're right, having magic there is pretty awesome. But I think that one of the powers in of that deck is that you can do so much on turn six with that fall in one energy. And if you're running magic just to make Jim Hammond pop off more, it's like, you know what I mean? It's like, it feels kind of rough. Right? So for me, Jim Hammond has definitely unimpressed, despite the fact that he can put up some decent numbers. He has a really high ceiling, but a floor that's like, like a trench in the ocean, you know what I mean? The floor is way too low on Jim Hammond.
Bynx:And the crazy thing is too, this is a one drop and it got released in the probably only time we're not gonna have Killmonger, because I'm pretty sure Killmonger is gonna go back to what it was. I think it's fine if it does. Like the world with no Killmonger is kind of weird. Maybe they, they don't want that to happen, but it's underperforming now in a world where the single biggest and most important, like one cost counter card basically doesn't exist outside of destroy, that's using it offensively. So I really don't see, unless there's a lot of different support or maybe that fall in one deck, it's a couple other pieces that can make it more consistent. Maybe like a third enabler of a, a powerful turn five fallen one outside of just the sure. Or the symbiote maybe that ends up like causing this to work. But yeah, I, I definitely think fallen one is a cool, fun, interesting like meme card and that's kind of where it's gonna stick. At least that's what I expect from it.
Alex:Yeah, I would agree. And Jim Hammond, again using statistics from 80 to a hundred according to untapped, based off this latest patch, only seeing 1.5% meta popularity. So seeing almost no play, no one cared about this card. And I think a major part of that too is that I think that once Glen verified that the fallen one was the primary combination and a lot of people skip following one. Were you gonna invest 12,000 tokens to try to test this? No way. Right? There's too much of an, uh, barrier of entry for Jim Hammond. It's almost no play. And even there it had a negative cube rate and a 47% win rate. So definitely not performing particularly good. Uh, Jim Hammond, which is a little unfortunate because maybe the card, one day we'll have an opportunity to shine, but talking about cards that have opportunities to shine, I suspect that we just might be able to get a card this week. That'll have a positive impact on the meta and that just might be warlock. Warlock is a three three that reads, activate for each unspent energy. Give a card in your hand, negative one cost. This is potentially a very exciting card, one that I think has a very high degree of potential. Could it even re uh, replace Sarah in Surfer? I mean, listen, Sarah's already been replaced to some degree, but can this play a very similar role? I wonder, and I ask myself in preview, I came in at four stars, Cozy came in at 4.5. Vince, I pass it on to you from one to five rating. What do you anticipate? Warlock being
Bynx:in the meta. So I'm gonna rate this more on what decks I feel like it's gonna be in, maybe not this Card's power overall. I'm gonna say like a. Like a two and a half, I'm gonna say like a two and a half. So I think this card is very powerful and it's really nice to have another, like, big way to take advantage of unspent energy.'cause right now we, you know, essentially like there's the high evo package and different things like that don't really take advantage of. A lot of unspent energy, like going five or one like missed energy is, is kind of the same, right? So outside of that, we basically are looking at now Sunspot and she Hulk, which have found ways to find these really cool decks of, you know, utilizing both of them either with infant and more of like an all in package to try and get that 30 point final turn, huge bomb play. Or with just kind of like some more shrink eating stuff or even like Moon Girl stuff to, to copy the, the she Hulk and then do a skip. So having another activator for this, I, I really think that can gel the whole deck together. And the deck that I think it's actually gonna be best in, I think she, Hulk Infinite probably gets a boost from this and still wants to play this, but any deck that's running like a She Hulk Moon Girl Quinjet package is gonna absolutely love this card because you already wanna be Moon Girling on four. So you'd play this on three. You'd Moon Girl on four get two. She hulks you'd pass on five. Get a bunch of discounts into your hand, get two one cost. She hus. Then just go crazy on the final turn. Right? And you could do that with, uh, Victoria Hand and Quinjet and all these other ways to get discounts to get some really, really crazy plays. Obviously the, the thing I'm not looking forward to is that the week that this comes out, we're gonna see Mobius everywhere. Everyone knows how I feel about that card. I hate it. So good luck having fun with this the first week.'cause everyone's gonna be playing that dude. But, uh, outside of that, if Mobius isn't super prevalent in the meta, because that is the huge stop gap for that deck because if you skip turn five, you're expecting to get all these discounts. You're playing a good player, they snapped and then they save the Mobius for turn five. Then what are you gonna do? Play a six nine? She hulk like from hand for full cost. Like, then you're just screwed, right? So it's kind of, because that deck is so stopgap by a popular tech card, I don't really see it expanding. Uh, which is why I would, I'll say that like these, she Hulk Moon Girl lists are probably gonna be the best fit for it. That deck might be pretty good, but because it's stopgap that's why I'm getting with the two and a half stars.
Alex:I absolutely feel that, and I was actually gonna mention that this is one of those cards that's probably gonna feel terrible and really sweet because of Triple M. And for what it's worth, you are a known hater of Moby. It's probably highly known, probably the most known
Bynx:hater I would, I would imagine.
Alex:Yeah. And it is, it is a pretty anti fun card. It is. Especially considering how many cards they release that this automatically just deletes. Like it just completely destroys it. Right. And for a while when we saw like the two, two, Mr. Fanta we were seeing a lot of Mobius and Mobius to try to counter that a little bit. And then he kind of quieted down for a bit. But you're right. When Warlock is released, he's gonna be back full force. Everywhere. Everywhere, everywhere. And it's unfortunate because like, I'm, I'm too excited about Evo. Evo is one of my favorite archetypes in Marvel Snap. I love the design of Evo and it's, uh, it's e evolutionized cards, evolved cards. I don't know why I had to make that harder than it needed to be because one of the things I was thinking about, if you play Warlock on turn three in an Evo deck you're able to play Cyclops on turn four full dead energy.'cause Cyclops often is best played on turn four. Even though if you play on three it's fine too. But you're able to kind of position it in a way where you can kind of do maximum damage, stuff like that. And when you skip turn five, you got the sunspot and shield, which you're gonna pop the hell off. Now, one concern I have, and I have not had a chance to test it yet, because she, Hulk happens at the end of the turn, this is gonna activate basically I wonder'cause it's technically active. It's like the end of over. Hit it. Yeah. Is it gonna hit it first and then she hulk like it imagine unnecessary hits. Like that's why I imagine it's gonna happen too. That might. Lower the ceiling a bit. No.
Bynx:A little. I mean, if, if it's two like one hit's, fine, because that'll make it free. Because if you're skipping on, if you're skipping on turn six, then every hit is gonna suck. But if you're skipping turn five and you don't have any way to buff the energy one hit is fine because you're gonna get it for free. But like I, yeah, I, I can see like four hits going into one of your She Holes and you're just like, wow, did I even play this dang card, man, I knew it was gonna happen.
Alex:Yeah. In that case, if you're full skipping five, right? You're floating five energy, it's gonna do five pros across your hand. It doesn't have to just hit She Hulk once. If it hits like the Infin ones, that's still Six Energy, right? Yeah. Like you still play the, the one, the One Nine Shield Hulk, then the five 20 infin. So like that's still kind of works, I guess, but I guess it does blow up some of the synergy and I guess that's like the what, when FAOs hits cards that have already been discounted. And instead of buffing them, it tries to discount them even further. It feels like wasted potential. So yeah, I guess that's one of the things. Or Mobius is
Bynx:there and it tries to discount it and it's like, ha ha ha. Very fun.
Alex:Yeah. But for evil specifically, it does allow you to pull off these fin combos. On turn six, like Finon and she Hulk. Mm-hmm. Generally needed magic to work properly. Like you generally needed to have that turn seven'cause you're floating on turn six, which also made it a little more, more, or ca
Bynx:Ca came in and, and solved that issue a lot with the card that you can play in and then kind of guarantee it. True. But yeah. No, I agree. It really felt like you needed magic.'cause yeah. It, it almost every deck will run magic at least as a backup plan because you want to have two ways to make sure you can do it.
Alex:Yeah. Conversely, you could also play Luna Snow. Luna Snow was a three six that provided that extra energy that would give you enough to play both on, uh, on turn six. Because I think that when you have something like Merlin who I, I'm just gonna go out and say, I think Merlin's probably the most underrated card in Snap right now. I think Merlin is such a damn good card. It's not seeing enough play. I think people know it's good and I think people play it, but I don't think it's getting the respect it deserves. I think Merlin is fantastic and if Merlin is popular, you ain't playing magic because it's just, it's just not worth. And also if, if KRS goes off and Alioth gets popular, those decks run Legion and that could be potentially problematic for magic. So I don't know if we want to completely focus too much on She Hulk now I'm gonna shift this towards Surfer a little bit. It's a three cost card. We'd be damned if we didn't bring up Surfer, but I actually think it might be legit there because for danger, the nice thing about it is that we're starting to move away from Sarah's Surfer. Okay, we're moving away from Sarah Surfer. As a result, we have an increase in opportunity to play like a three drop. Uh, did I say danger? I meant warlock. I think I said danger. When you're playing warlock, you're able warlocks dangerous. Five. Five kind of makes sense. Yeah. And you're able to like discount things. Also still having a very impactful turn six, which is usually what Sarah would seek. The only challenge that I see here is I think that warlock skipping turn five is rough for like the galacto lines.'cause now you're forfeiting a galacto proc. And so it becomes a question of, okay, what if you don't? What if you don't skip turn five? What if you just play another three job and you float two energy and that gets randomly dispersed across your, is
Bynx:that good enough? It might be, I like if you're getting no other discounts, right? Like the, the big thing with surfers, you want to get three that are two is kind of how you like really push out that round. So like if you're only skipping two and you have two, two drops, well you're kind of in the exact same position you were in, right? Because you can't play like a third three drop, which is the whole thing. So you could play two full or two f and then maybe you can fit in a forge or something like that. Uh, I could see like some kind of Surfer shell because, because I do think that you'd wanna go in with multiple ways to take advantage of it. Like maybe in Surfer you can just kind of do playing a three drop and then trying to skip a couple and then maybe have like Mr. F and a couple other ways to find that like additional discount. Or maybe you're playing fast dose is your way to kind of like get those additional discounts to do it. Uh, but I do really think that like you'd wanna use she Hulk sunspot and I'd, I'd be surprised if Dex with Warlock are ever popular that don't have both. She Hulk and sunspot, because I feel like when you have three of a card that can take advantage of something, that's really when you get like crazy consistency in Snap with 12 card decks, right? So like you're pretty much, you have a very good chance of having two of them at the right time. Whereas like if you only have two in, you have a pretty good chance of having one of them, but having two of them is pretty rare. So I feel like you'll wanna have that redundancy of having all these different ways to take advantage of that skip turn five if you're kind of have that into your game plan or, or a little bit less. Uh, but I could see like, like I, I don't mind just skipping like one or two cards if you have a bunch of other kind of like discount cards packaged into it. I would just be surprised to see a competitive warlock deck that wouldn't utilize that redundancy of having those three cards that all get a pretty, even like power boost from the ability of, of skipping, skipping turns. Like you get the discounts from the warlock and then you get the same amount of discounts onto your She Hulk and then you get a little bit of power onto the board so you're not like fully skipping. So I'd be surprised with it but I could see some Surfer cooks, uh, maybe interested in, in trying it out a little bit. Or you can get it on Kang. Of course you can have it on Kang.
Alex:Yeah, you get it on Kang. That's right. And the one thing I wanna bring up here is, so Sarah who's on the screen has been largely cut from Surfer decks. Now I actually still like Sarah Surfer. I play a lot of Surfer. I still like the Sarah variations, but one thing I'll add here, so you have Warlock skipping turn five, right? And providing five energy to the hand randomly dispersed or play a three drop disperse two energy randomly to your hand. Sarah is a five, five body that you're foregoing with warlock, right? When you're skipping that turn five, you're foregoing that. And with Sarah, it's essentially plus three energy for a Surfer deck because you play three cards, right? So it's a, imagine you're getting three extra energy, right? Mm-hmm. So Warlock can in theory, skip the entire turn and provide you with two extra energy. But it's inconsistent in its application. Sarah will consistently provide that energy, provide a five, five body, and still gets cut from the list. And that's where, as a Surfer player, I'm a little concerned with people leaning into the Warlock Surfer side. Now, potentially, and here's my last question with regards to Warlock, because I, I don't think I wanted to compare the two Surfer and, uh, sorry, Sarah and Warlock, so I think it was worth the discussion, but let's say you're on turn three. You play turn three, it's Warlock turn four. Okay. You play a, I don't know, you're gonna be, you're looking at your hand, you're like, okay, I gotta play another three drop. Should I activate Warlock to bring that extra energy going into turn five so I can play two threes, and then turn six, play two threes. You are kind of shifting the way the game is played, and that's what I was thinking about. Is there a chance that Warlock will allow you. To play a three drop on turn four, float that energy into turn five. So you have six energy, three drop, three drop, turn six, three drop, three drop. And that is simply the best way to play warlock as opposed to completely flipping. Turn five.
Bynx:Yeah, I'd be interested to see if that would work. Uh, again, I mean, I'm, I'm still pretty locked in that, I'm pretty sure they're gonna have all of them. So, so in, in my opinion, in a Warlock Surfer, you're also gonna have Sunspot and she hulk in that deck, even if you're not using Moon Girl or anything like that. Just as kind of like a backup, right? So, so that's why I think like, it's not really the same as Sarah because if you're skipping turn five, I would be putting those other resources in. So I'd be getting more out of it. Because I don't think you wanna skip turn five just for Warlock. Like maybe sometimes you do, but the randomness can really mess with you maybe sometimes. And, and maybe it's not as consistent. That's why I feel like you want those redundancy cards, so you can get a lot of power after, after skipping.'cause skipping a whole third of Marvel, you only get six of them, man. So like, skipping a whole turn is, is, uh, it's a big investment of what you're doing. So I would say like, if, you know, in that case where you're getting a one, cause she hu to be able to play, you're, you're getting a bunch of different things. I think that. Absolutely over goes what Sarah can do in that same situation. But it just, I, I think it just kind of depends on deck building and if that shell ends up, I, I guess really working for it. The problem with like, just skipping like one energy to get one energy later, it's like we already have cast that can basically do that, right? Like the you can, or Luna Snow, like we talked about both of these already. Like instead of just playing Warlock, you could just play Luna Snow to get that. Obviously you give it to your opponent as well. So that's something that people don't think about too much with Luna Snow or enough, in my opinion. So there is, it is like a, a, a risk factor to that, but even just playing a cast and then playing like a powerful three drop as opposed to a warlock you're kind of getting that same effect of skipping one turn. So I would be surprised if, warlock that can skip one or sometimes four or sometimes five with no other support will work super well with Surfer because I think there's other options to to, to get that from it. Uh, but I, but I am interested to see if there's some way to, to incorporate more of these strategies into Surfer, to fit Warlock into it. Because he is a three five in Surfer, which is a lot better than a three. Three.
Alex:Yeah. And that makes perfect sense. Right? And, uh, I don't know. I'm interested in seeing the card and it's one of those cards that I think that like. Has a really interesting and cool design. And you bring up like, well, are there other options? Like, well there's like, uh, Jennifer k sees almost no play as a two three that mm-hmm. Essentially floats the one energy on Activate, which is essentially what I just suggested with the, with, uh, with Warlock. However, warlock would get be the benefit of getting hit by a Surfer. Mm-hmm. Whereas, uh, you know, Jennifer Kil does not get that benefit. So maybe there's that.'cause theoretically Warlock is in a 3.5. Yeah. So I will say that while I was excited for Warlock, I think you've brought me down to Earth a little bit. I think you've brought me down to Earth. Whereas like, I still see its potential, but I start to lean more towards like the three range. I wonder if four's high. And maybe I'm just a product of someone who like can be sold on things.'cause if Cozy came on was like, yo, this car's gonna go. I'm like, we're going to the rocket ship, we're going to the Moon. Like, I don't know if I'm like impressionable in that way. Right. You just brought the grounded response of like, this car's probably mid, you know what I
Bynx:mean? Yeah. Maybe. I'm, I'm really excited to play like a she Hulk v like Victoria hand, Quinjet version of Warlock. Being able to like, copy multiple, she hulks and get a bunch of stuff in my hand, get a bunch of discounts onto, and it burst out on the final turn hopefully once Mobius clears up or, or if Mobius isn't seeing that much play. So I think the deck will be really fun and really exciting. It's really just the stop gap of, of a deck like that having such an easy and now. Okay. Tempo counter. If they freaking buff Mobius, dude, I'll never forgive them. Uh, like an okay tempo counter that you could just slot into your deck where if this hits over 10% of, oh, don't Mobius jump scare me. Where if, if this D ever comes like over 10% share of the meta and it's powerful, it's very easy. You're like, okay, well I'll just win 10% of my games by playing this card. And they, they just they will do nothing. I will Snap. They will skip turn five. I will play Mobius and I will win. So it it, it's interesting. But yeah, I, I think that deck is gonna be a very, very fun deck to play like she Hulk, Moon Girl stuff with it. I'm, I'm really, really excited to play with the card, even though I know I'm gonna get my dreams crushed by Mobius.
Alex:Yeah. So Mobius was one of the cars that was not impacted by the tech Nerf, which is kind of funny. Now, it's not part of our official discussion list, but if you'd like the soapbox to put be, uh, put under your feet there, would you like to just pop off and go off as to why you hate Mobius and Mobius so much? I'm gonna turn off my mic and sit back.
Bynx:Sure. I, for me, it's just a design philosophy thing and people who know games more than me disagree with me on this, but, so it's, it's just a, a personal thing on my end, but I just hate that this card that basically nullifies so many different strategies of Marvel Snap exists that you can just like slot into your deck. So like the biggest problem isn't like the. The monster meek, it's usually comes up to stop. The biggest problem is that as someone who likes to play random garbage all the time and random different decks, it's like, I'll be playing Black Bolt stature for the first time in forever, and then I'll run into three Mobius in a row. And I'm just like, you weren't even, you're not even teching against me, dude. Like, you don't care about what I'm doing. You don't care about my deck, but you're just playing this card that says, Hey, your deck doesn't work. I've always really hated that. I, I think that this card in super scroll are two of, like the design to Marvel Snap that I, I think detest the most. Because like, super Scroll is like a, just super degenerate. It will either win you by a billion points or do nothing card. And Mobius is just kind of this, Hey, whatever you're doing, it doesn't matter if you're playing any of these, 60 cards that relies on energy reduction then you don't get to play the game. So I just don't personally like that. I think that it's a, a fun killer card and I find that my personal, fun playing the way that I play. The more Mobius is in the meta, the more it restricts what I feel like I can do as a deck builder to be able to do creative things, because so many decks are just shut down by this whenever it's prevalent in the meta. So that's my like, couple minute rundown of like my, my, my personal bias and hatred towards the design of Mobius and what it does to Snap.
Alex:Wow. Super scroll enjoyers and shambles right now. Taking a stray bullet to the chest, man, that's crazy, right? You even super scroll. Oh my gosh. When you, you refer to it as a complete DGen card, I actually was like trying to hold back my laughter.
Bynx:I've never heard so degenerate dude. Like it does nothing. So many games. And then it's like a thousand points one game and it's just like, alright, alright dude you played that car, that's fine. Or and it's one of those cards that you get off a Kang or like a, an Aish him. Those are the cards that are just like, oh my God, dude. Yeah, this card exists in the game. That's right. That's fair. That's true. That's so
Alex:funny. We gotta talk about Danger Next. Danger is the card. And also let us know in your, in the comment section, what do you think about Bxs take, do you hate super scroll as much as Binks? And do you hate Moby and Mobius as much as Binks? I love to hear your thoughts. I I still gave believe super scroll took us straight. I don't think the card's not bad. I, I, I see what you're saying though. He's either completely garbage or he is the most broken card in your deck.
Bynx:I, I got it was the mode, the grand arena mode is what radicalized me because like everyone was just stuffing super scroll into their decks because you have that extra energy so you can run this hyper DGen card and it's just like, oh, did you wanna play with your sweet, like Mr. Fantastic Deck? Oh, that sucks. I play super scroll, so I do everything that you do with one card. Ha. I just, I just hate that it radicalized
Alex:me. Man, that's so funny. For what it's worth, these variants have some of the best art'cause they do a really good job of like incorporating all the different cards that it's kind of absorbing. But I understand your frustrat, even the base one. Honestly, this is a really nice base card, I think.
Bynx:Look at his face, dude. He knows what he is
Alex:doing. I know, actually, if I could, if I could make a statement for who I think has one of the best bass arts in the game, I'm gonna say, uh, I don't know why you good? I think the gamo bass
Bynx:art is so good. Really good. Yeah. That kind of like looking off to the side, holding the hilt. It's a good one. And, and that's a deep cut because I've never, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that, but I definitely agree with that, man. The, it looks really good there. There, man. There's a couple new cards that have some really, really good base art. Jim Hamm, one of my collection talk you, you mentioned Moreira X. Just'cause I see it there. I just wanna give a shout out now that I have a platform. Whoever designed that animation, second dinner, give them a million dollars. Like that is the cool, that is might be one of the coolest animations in like any card game I've ever seen. Yeah, it's just like a perfect, it shows what it does, it shows the cards, like as you're playing it, it looks so cool. The sound is really satisfying. That happens when it dies and they go into your, they go into your hand like, oh man, dude, they, they cook. They've been cooking really well. Like, omega Sentinel has crazy awesome animations. Like, yeah, Sparky's animation that you're just covering is looks incredible. So, uh, I think that they took like the criticisms that people were saying that a lot of animations would show up and not be there right away. That, that would be disappointing. I, I really feel like they took that to heart man. Well, yeah, like Parents's animation is sick, man. Just p punk, punk.
Alex:The card releases no animation'cause they're too busy doing more Xes at the time, right? Yeah, yeah. It took a lot of time. But anyways, so Danger. I actually unlocked danger rather quickly in, uh, Deadpools Diner and um, I'm actually excited to cook around this card a bit. I haven't had a chance to play much with it. Actually I haven't played at all with it, I'll be honest with you. You, I haven't played at all with it either. Okay. So I've just been
Bynx:buying Borders, man. I'm just spending nachos like crazy dude, and buying 12 black cosmic borders. Gimme all the otes. Oh man. Dude, it's a great time to be a Snap player.
Alex:It, oh yes, it is a great time to be a Marvel Snap player. But, alright, let's talk about danger in a preview sense here.'cause I'm actually super excited for next week because while I'm, I'm gonna rate danger two stars because I think the four six is just not quite good enough. But I almost want to build a deck. That is like ev just destroy everything they do, like gambit danger Cobra Spider-Man 29, like all the, like f you, I'm destroying your stuff. Stack Spiderman 29, 9 Splash. It's gonna be terrible, but I kind of want to try it. And I think the danger and then it's like death
Bynx:by killing all their cards. That's what hits
Alex:Yes. It's unfortunate that they Nerf Killmonger as much as they did.'cause I think that card would've been really good in that deck. But anyways, I think that danger does have potential, especially since, although not particularly meta relevant right now. We do have decks that do perform really well in those buff shells. Like America Chavez is a good card now. I don't, it's a good, it's a better card than it was before America. Chave is playable. FAOs, like those buff style decks, they kind of fell off once Mr. Fanta got nerfed from a two two and he went up to a three cost. But honestly, danger loves that free buffing. The only problem is that it's, you know, it's gonna hit the rock or it's gonna hit some, some piece of garbage on like the orange. Jesus was gonna kill it. It's not doing, it's not destroying the highest power card available to it. It's just gonna destroy anything there, which should be good, but I suspect it's not gonna be,
Bynx:yeah, it's weird. Right? Um, so I brought some notes on this, uh,'cause I also haven't played with the card, but I've, I've kind of assessed it so I. It seems like it's a very just serviceable for drop. Like you play a unturn four or five, you're gonna kill something that's five to zero power and maybe has an effect that's really powerful. Like if there are, if there's a meta where there's a lot of just cards that get thrown out, like Valentina that don't really have other cards over it, and you can even like just target those cards, like, I feel like this might be good at like, sniping out, like, Mobius, uh, would be a pretty nice one to, to get out of the way. Or like some of these other like four, three to five power cards. Trying to, trying to snipe them by like having priority, playing this on that lane by itself with priority and activating before they can do anything about it. But it seems too fair. Like, and Marvel Snap. I feel like you're what you do kind of as power creep goes, and this happens with every card game, you kind of ha you can't really just do fair. Things, you know, like Sentinel three years ago was a really good card because you get a play at two three, it's good rate, and then you get another two, three, and then you could play it. Now the cards like can, does nothing. And then like you never see play outside of CC three where it's a two nine. So like danger, it just feels like this very fair card. I said it's a mini thing. First steps basically, right? Like think first steps is a five, six. It grows and then you have to meet a condition and then it does the exact same thing. Destroy an enemy card here with less power. So that's the card that I'm like I feel like it, like, might be decent because like there's a pretty good flip that you can get, uh, out of it, especially if you can time it right and get it played out. But there's a lot of competition in the four drop slot especially if, you know, the shank Nerf goes back and different things like that. There's a lot of cards that you tend to just wanna play in the for drop slot. So I feel like this is going to fall down to a card that rarely sees play, but sees maybe a little play in some niche decks. But it's one of those cards that like, if draft mode ever comes like bang or draft mode card, if you get it with like Kang or Aish or any of these random things, you're gonna be really, really happy to have it. It just doesn't feel unfair enough to make the cut for the top 12 minute deck.
Alex:No, I absolutely agree. And like, if you think about the kind of decks it wants to even play in, again, there's the buff centric deck, but those types of decks aren't carried by cards like da danger, they're carried by the broods, the Mr. Sinisters, right? They're carried by things that put power on the board and replicate the buffs that they're receiving. And so danger kind of sits at odds with those a little bit. So I absolutely agree there. I don't see it being a key play in like, well, we'll play this danger. Like I thought of like, again, destroy everything on their board, finish it off with null death type thing. But that takes a lot, that's a lot of effort, right? Yeah. Like, and I don't know if the payoff's ever gonna be there. And so like, okay, this might be co, but what if Nadal Valier and like Mojo World are hot locations, is that danger feasting or what?
Bynx:Oh yeah. Well, I mean, uh, Naval ears, I guess it's kind of similar, but you are just killing more power because both of them will be plus five. But Mojo World, this thing would be an absolute monster sliding out. I mean, Mr. Uh, or the thing is already kind of a monster mojo world. Uh, and the cool thing about this, it's not like the thing where you have to commit to fulfilling a lane, right? Like, I feel like that is what pulls back the thing, first steps. Because I feel like at, at its core, the thing First Steps is a crazy, powerful card. Yeah. The fact that you have to fill it and then you're playing a five drop in that lane. Maybe you play like a one drop and two, two drops. It's just a huge energy investment into that lane that you're probably gonna win. But then if your opponent like sees it and then they abandon that lane, then they can. Pretty easily fight you for the other two, right? So this w this kind of gives you a similar effect without the problem. Might be a little bit kind of meta dependent, but, but again, I, I like, just from a, a single, what can this card do? Perspective? I definitely think it's probably a little under luck. I don't even think, at least for me, I, I don't look at this as a card. I wanna buff because like, even if you get it over the hit for some of these other, like, bigger cards, it's like usually there's gonna be other cards in that lane. So you're still up to a coin flip. So I, I don't know if I see, I guess as much as you do the benefit of. Having a deck that tries to buff this power except for like those really big kill shots that maybe you get it on like a single lane to, to flip it against a, a decently sized card. I just more see it as like a card that you can snipe off a Victoria hand or you know, a Hope Summers or one of these cards that your opponent's just gonna play out in the early game. Then you could just trade for it cleanly with a four six clear up that spot, maybe taken away in effect, and then try and like win out on the final game or in the final couple of turns.
Alex:I do agree, like if you're going to buff centric route that I kind of suggested before, you're just setting yourself up for a bit of like sadness. Like you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Like, I got danger to four 10 and then like it hits a rock and you're like sick. Right. It's like, you know what I mean? Like it's gonna happen for sure. Uh, whereas you're like just playing in four six and not worrying about that garbage would've been just fine. I think my major concern here is that like, it's like you mentioned, it's probably a fine card. But it's not good enough to like really push any existing archetype any further. It doesn't slot well into anything that exists currently. And for that reason, I think that it's very unlikely that this card becomes meta relevant. And does it even need a buff Man, I'm just thinking about it like, it's, it's silly to be like, does this card need a buff? Whereas like, we haven't even played it, but it's like, it just doesn't seem like it calls to me as a card that like, is gonna be highly impactful. We'll have to see because I am excited to, to check it out, play it, give it a shot, and uh, you know, I'm still working on some new stuff, but at the end of the day, I am, uh, I'm a little hesitant on danger coming in at two stars. Do you wanna give a star rating? I don't think you actually gave a star rating.
Bynx:Yeah, I think two stars sounds right. I mean, it's one of those cards where it's like, again, if you got this in draft mode, like as a singular just yeah. Vacuum power level car, it's really strong. Like if you're just playing a random set of garbage and you're like, you see this come off air shrimp you're stoked. So, so I think it comes down to that. It's one of those cards where it's like in a vacuum, this is a very powerful singular effect that can do really, really well in the right situations. But it's just finding that deck that needs it and doesn't want to use its deck slots to do some other kind of like combined synergy that gets over top of it because you just don't really see those vacuum cards being super, super relevant unless they're like winning you games consistently. And I don't think this is gonna win you games consistently. I think that it'll help you tempo out and, and be in a better spot. Again, just hard, hard to find, find it, find its way into a final 12.
Alex:No, I would agree. And that's gonna take us to our next topic of conversation, which is the newly revamped dead pools diner. And I gotta tell you, I absolutely love it. I think they nailed the design of Deadpools dying. It took, listen, it took a bunch of iterations. They had to get here eventually with changing some stuff around. I think that this is by far one of the most fun experiences I've had in Snap in a while. I think the way that the, uh, the BS work, how you are betting your own bubs and it's independent from what your opponent is, is a nice deviation from the Snap mechanic while still being familiar. I think that's really cool. And it probably helps to tone down the tilt a little bit. And I gotta tell you, and Binks, you mentioned it before I probably have to get this emo right, like it's a thousand. Buy it
Bynx:right now. Dude. I have 900. That'll take you 15 minutes. Like, it's crazy how, how, how easy it is to get nachos, man. You just spam it like. Everyone's coming together now to do the like you point, and then everyone snaps. Hello? And you both retreat later on. Turn four. Yeah. And it's just like, it's crazy man. It's, it's just like I'm, I was sitting there watching football and I think I got like 1,500 nachos. Like literally not even looking at my phone, just like clicking it, like burning through. So if you, if you are someone, because I, okay, this is something I wrote down, I can guarantee you that there will not be a more generous, limited time mode than this probably ever. And most people will probably look at that and be like, oh, that sucks. It's like, there are just giving everything away right now, man. Like, like I said, like I, I haven't even focused on it too terribly much. And now I've gotten. 10, 10 copper borders 12 cosmic black borderers. I've gotten three emotes. I've basically gotten everything I want from the shop, like all the, the emotes I've filled out all the credits, I got danger, and I, you can just keep playing this and farming this as much as you can. So if you're someone who loves cosmetics and wants to take advantage of what I am pretty sure is gonna be the most generous they will ever be with like your time spent versus consumables and unlockables and cosmetics that you can actually get, uh. Keep on top of it. Build buy all the things that, that come up on the top as much as you can. And, and milk this for as much as you can.'cause this is a free to play player's dream. Like usually you can't have the luxury of buying all these borders when you're free to play, right? Because all of your resources have to go in and get into the new cards. So this is your chance to just go buck wild and get really cool things to, to mess with it. And I do think that they're gonna adjust this and probably look at this and never do something like this again, which you can look at as second thing or bad. That's fine. I just, from a business perspective, there's no way this is going how they thought that it would. So they're probably gonna tighten it up in the future. So take advantage of why you can,
Alex:you're absolutely correct in that this is probably way too generous. Like admittedly, for a free to play game that relies on cosmetics to keep the lights on. This is way too generous. Like, I unlocked this, I unlocked the card, right? Mm-hmm. Like danger in like what, three hours maybe. Of just casually playing the mode, which honestly was so much fun. Anyway, I had so much fun playing the mode as it was because of the changes that they made. And man, I was like, I got that fast. I, you get premium mystery, variant mystery variants, tons of like, progression alongside the credits, the borders. And then like, you're right, these like daily shifts deals. Like, I've clearly bought a bunch of the fire borders. I think I, I think I need this domino emote eventually Blue Cosmics, like my favorite of the borders. Like they're just giving it it away right now. And so, like, honestly, I will say this, I'll preface this by saying when the next Deadpool diner or the next game old comes out, and it's not this, you can't be mad, you can't, it's just they, what do you mean they'll, I, well, they shouldn't, it's just this is probably way too far on the other end. People, people mad at this one, man. I know what They're mad. How are people mad at this? The first
Bynx:day, dude, if you look at the Discord for like the first day, dude, people were so upset about this one. It's just the, the immediate, like just people just finds what's wrong, what's wrong with it.
Alex:Uh, if some, you know what? Second dinner, again, they take Ls and they create their own LS very often, but it can be heartbreaking, where like they throw up a huge dub, like a layup and you know, people still give'em a hard time, right? Mm-hmm. It's like, you gotta accept us for what it is. This is a very generous game mode, which basically gave away a Series four card, and you're not even accounting for the fact that they brought back a very generous login bonus. This is one of the best login bonuses they had, where you're gonna get a series four pack, which I mean, it hasn't been answered yet, but I wonder what happens for people that are series four complete. When they get that pack, they token, you get the tokens, you get the tokens straight up. That's what prefer Yeah. You, when you
Bynx:crack those, when you're done. There, there, there was the, early on there was that series five that everyone got that, that had the same thing where once you're complete, you just get the token value of, of buying it directly. So yeah. Really sick.
Alex:Yeah. But I just think honestly, they did a tremendous job. And I don't know if this was like an intentional, you know. We need a win for the community. Let's get people hyped up about Snap again type of mode. Or if someone, like, if they let the interns work on this and the interns like did horrible math, like I really don't know how we got what we have. But I'm not complaining. I am having a tremendous amount of fun getting all the cosmetics and I already am a collector of like cosmetic. I just love'em. I just think they nailed it, man. I think they nailed it. And, um, this also gives me hope too because they, Deadpool's Diner started in such a rough spot. It really was not great. It started in a really rough spot and the next iteration they had done was like, merely. Just barely better than the first. They fixed some of the pain points. This one here is clearly superior in every single way to the prior ones, and it gives me hope for the other game modes. How can they make high voltage even better?'cause that's probably the weakest one. Now, how can they make sanctum showdown even better? Please bring back. I don't even know how they're gonna make the, uh, the grand arena better, but like, if they do it better, like beautiful. If these new game modes can really, really amp up the rewards and the excitement for Snap, I think they're gonna pay dividends for people. And the last thing I'll say before I pass it off to you, because I know I've been ranting here. One thing I really love about this mode. Is, I love the re the reduction of stakes. I love the fact that there's no retreating and I've built a collection over the years and I want to see my collection do things. I want to play my cards and I want to see stuff happen because one of the things that I love about Snap is just how beautiful the cards are, how great the interactions are, and how fantastic the wins and losses can be. And this mode lets me just experience the collection I've built. It lets me experiment with, you know, the aga the deck and helps me try to cook something with Morgan Lafe. Like I'm able to experiment and not worry about rank and stuff like that. And so for me, this has been an absolute banger of a release. I absolutely love it.
Bynx:So I was, I was debating on holding my tongue at this, but like to see you say how amazing Deadpools Diner is after you had to commentate the, uh, the Deadpools Diner tournament and that whole fiasco happened. I think that, that, I think that that is, speaks really, really highly, uh, past a lot of different things for how good this is with Deadpool's Diner. So, uh, I agree. I love the stakes being gone. Like some people, especially like poker players in the community. Really like the original Deadpools diner like formula of like the crazy high stakes and, you know, things just like expanding like crazy.'cause there's it kind of takes the risk reward of snapping and supercharges it like crazy where you could get, tons and tons of bubs in one direction or the other. So I'm sure that there are people on that side of the fence who are pretty disappointed to see where this has come. I'm sure the, the rewards make them not really care too terribly much about it but yeah, man, once you get up to that like 60 K bub refill, now it's just like every eight hours I jump on, like, I'll see if people wanna do the, uh, the trading back and forth thing. And if they do, I'll do that. Or I just Snap three times. I just play it out. I see what happens, man. Really, really awesome. Huge w to second dinner. Uh, hopefully they find a nice, happy medium for something that still feels generous and exciting for us to do. Because like, like I said, they're definitely gonna bring it down from here. But we're hoping we don't go back to, you know, kid Omega levels. So we have to find somewhere that's, that's somewhere in the medium and hoping that it's, uh, even more positive for the community in, in any way possible. I think that that would be really, really good for continuing to, to grow and build that goodwill that, uh, a lot of people have kind of lost with second dinner over the last couple of years.
Alex:Yeah, this is the polar opposite to the, uh, kid Omega situation. And a good tip by the way is just before bed. You should just go on and like, just, I'm losing hello fist bump and just give away all your BS so that they regenerate while you're sleeping and it'll actually help you progress here as well. So just a little tip for people in case they're wondering. But yeah, this was an absolute win. Kudos to second dinner for absolutely knocking it outta the park Binks. My man that's gonna take us to the Snapchat mailbag. We have three questions here from the community that I would like your input on, my man, so I'm gonna throw it out there. J Bear coming in with a, uh, a good old cold back to the spa light system. The spa light system had its faults, but one big benefit of it was that it was an inherent catch-up mechanic whereby the more cards you were missing, the cheaper the cards were to acquire. They could restore that by having the Snap packs fluidly priced, whereby the more cards you're missing, the cheaper the packs are. Banks, what are your thoughts?
Bynx:I think that's a pretty cool idea. I like the idea of it being flexible. One thing that most people hate whenever I talk about the economy is that I always try and put my, think about this from a business perspective hat that I think a lot of people don't like to do, but thinking about it from a business perspective and second dinner's opinion of that it might warp the value of those packs and have so like it, it would be really nice to see it be cheaper, but then. As it goes up and up, then it's gonna warp the value in like that consumer's mind that it's getting more and more and, and like over time make them less likely to spend. So from a business perspective, I don't see second dinner doing that specifically. I, I could be wrong on that regard. Uh, but I do like the idea of, of just more things to, to help with ketchup, mechanics, you know, they announced the, the big ketchup mechanic where if you've been gone for two months, you get that you, you know, uh, like month long chain of being able to get a lot of things. So they are focusing on building more ketchup mechanics into everything. I also have a hard time with, um. Talking about like Spotlight system versus the new pack system, because me and you are an outlier, right? Like we've had the cards, we've had all the cards forever. So for us, Snap packs is great, right?'cause we just get the packs, you get a little bit extra goodies, you get to pay quite a bit less than you were with the spotlight keys to actually do it. So for, for us, it's a, it's massively better, but, but it's like a tier, right? Like some tiers, like people who are way lower don't get into it. So I always have a hard time answering, like specifically how they can make it on there because I don't, I don't have the experience of going through it from my perspective, it's just really good. So it, it's hard for me to give like a, a clear response to that. But I would say in general more catch mechanics are always good and there is. Signs that second dinner is investing time and resources into making those, uh, in other ways. So I think that that's in general a big positive.
Alex:Yeah. And leaning into like the, the pacs, like the X-Men pacs, the Destroy pacs, and like kind of the themed PACS to help people complete specific archetypes and DAXs, I think is a good idea and in itself a bit of a catch a mechanic if they can price those a little more fairly. Another thing that, like I had this thought of was like that this type of suggestion also makes that the more cards you end up owning, you feel like you're getting punished for having a larger collection. Right? Yeah. Which is gonna be a perspective a lot of people share. And the other thought I had was that like, realistically, I know that we, we spend a lot of time talking about the economy. We want to be better and stuff like that, but at the same time, we really don't know the challenges that second dinner does have. I'm sure the Marvel IP is a factor, I'm pretty sure. Like we just don't know those things, right? And uh, there's a lot of times where I'm like, man, I'm glad I'm not making those decisions because you know, there's a good chance you might see something that looks great on the surface and then you can't. Pay the bills. Right. You know what I mean? And so like, I'm these types of things need to find the middle ground between being very fair for the players, sustaining the game, and of course being profitable for the company. And I just hope that second dinner is making strides to find where that balance is. And I suspect that they are, from what I see in the engagement I've had with, uh, with second dinner, it seems like they care very much about this game and they are trying to make it more accessible to more players. And it's exactly that. The efforts with the catch and mechanics and the new player experiences and the returning player experiences, that stuff is a lot of effort and they're putting that effort in and, uh, you'd love to see it. And I'm sure that if the economy needs more additional tweaking, they're gonna consider it. Mm-hmm. Now, Russ comes in with a statement regarding what I had mentioned last week. We were talking about, uh, Jim Hammond and I brought up Top Gun. Top Gun, top Gear. Top Gear Top Gun are two very different experiences, both about machines, but one flies and one is on the road top gear. And, uh, Russ does State Yes, Alex, Richard the Hamster. Hammond was a top gear presenter. I used to love the program too. My favorite episodes when they purchased a sports car friend, 10 k. I just remember watching them like race cars around their tracks. And like, I remember watching Sebastian Vettel in like the like, uh, affordable Car series or like, what's it called? The reasonably placed priced race car. And he drove like a, like a little car around the racetrack, ended up setting the record that was like old school, just really awesome tv. And then now everyone just binges Netflix and stuff. So, I don't know, man, I, I missed the, I missed the days of like every night, every Thursday night, I'd have to watch the next episode of Dragon Ball Z and like cut out that time. My kids don't get that. They just feel like everything's on demand, you know what I mean? And then they would just talk like during Dragon Ball Z, they would just talk about fighting the entire time. Then you have to wait for the next week for them to actually fight. Explain.
Bynx:Oh yeah, man. Well, for me, my top gear I feel like was MythBusters. I feel like they're the same like genre of show, like, like pretty similar with, with like what they do. But I, I never really watched too much top gear. But, uh, but MythBusters was kind of like that for me, that like random show that was always playing replays. You know, you'd watch one that you've seen like a couple of times before and they're doing cool science stuff and they're doing cool machines and everything like that. So I always, I also think back to simpler times when you just, you know, turn on the, the TV and hit the channel up and channel down until you find something that takes your attention.
Alex:It is kind of crazy. That's, that, that's how it used to work. Like you would just catch shows in the middle of it and be like, let's watch this, whatever. You just like actually flip through channel surfing. It was called channel surfing back in the day. For people that would remember that. And Johnny Blaze comes in with our final question of the day. Johnny Blaze states. I hear a lot of frustrations around going up and down in the rank nineties and not making it to infinite this season. I personally stopped caring about my rank after receiving the most meaningful reward, which is the 500 gold at 90. Sometimes I had infinite, sometimes I don't. But it seems like a huge pain point for others. Uh, Binks. In your, uh, kind of experience, has it been harder getting infinite?
Bynx:For me, I, I haven't felt it as much. I think the biggest change is the bop behavior change because. I feel like as Marvel Snap players on our ladder grind, there was this thing that what a bot is, right? And sometimes there was like the Chee bots, which were a nightmare. But in general, a lot of times there's just been these like loser bots where you basically, you have force and you play in one lane. You try and get'em to Snap, you Snap back to try and take the eight cubes from'em, right? And they've really reworked how the bots act and play. Where I, 90% of the time, I don't like know what's a bot until turn six anymore. I don't know if you've had this change before, but I used to be able to pick up bots in like one turn. You could just like immediately sniff it out. But now they play much more naturally and everything like that. So there's. I feel like people need to relearn how to identify and maybe play around bots a little bit, uh, better would, would probably help a lot with the climb. I think that's probably the, I, to me that's what I can think of is the only change that's happened in the last couple of months, which is what they mentioned. Tell, tell me about your thoughts, because I, I feel like you, uh, when we talked about this a little bit before, you kind of seemed a little bit more on board with that. What kind of changes or why, why have you felt this shift in, uh, the nineties being a little bit more sweatier or harder to get through?
Alex:I just feel that like the climb towards Infinite has been significantly harder, specifically in the last two months. They definitely changed the behavior. I think they, uh, they took out a lot of like. They took out a lot of like the free cube bots, which are happening, right? Like the, the auto lose bots. They're still there, here and there, but what I think they've done is, you're right, they've made the other bots that you do encounter feel much more natural, which in theory is a good thing, but they're much more competitive. However, one of the challenges that I have seen is that like sometimes the decks don't make sense. And while I'm not an engineer, I don't know if this is the case, and this might be one of those like, you know, tinfoil hat things. I feel like I've played bots that have access to cards outside of the, their deck. Like I feel like I've had experiences like even on stream where I'm like. Yeah, that bot just ran a card that is not in that deck and it makes no sense. And it was the exact card they needed to beat me. And it's happened a couple times. And that's what old cheater bots used to do. Like remember those really old school cheater bots where they would just like, they would know the
Bynx:r and g of things and they would like perfectly make the plays based on like the r and g seed and what you would play do those words.
Alex:Yeah. It was awful. And like I I, oh, there was an exam. I, oh man, it was like a recent stream where on turn six, like this deck that would had no right in, in their world ever running Luke Cage. Like I, I can't remember exactly what deck it was, but it, there was no way Luke Cage would've been in that deck. And on turn six, it just laid a Luke cage down. And I was like, bro, why? Why is that in? It was just in the deck and it was, I knew it was a bot, and I was like, and it just, it scam me. It scam me like eight cubes. I was trying to scam the bot eight cubes, right? And I was like, no way. There's no way that pulled it, pulled that Luke cage from like the library of cards. It, it went, it went into the library and pulled that card. Yeah. It literally is like looking at a tent. It's like, no, it took one card and put gimme that Luke cage. You know what I mean? And I was like, so tilted out. But anyways, I do think that for the average player, and this is what I get concerned about, who cares about my experience, right? I, I love Snap all play now I don't whatever, but I get concerned when the average player who is trying to climb and want to have a reasonable fun time doing so is encountering bots that make their experience feel miserable. And I feel that on aggregate across the entire casual player base, which I tend to be more in touch with than others. They are having a much more difficult time ranking up towards infinite. I feel like they're having much less fun on the infinite ladder. And if they're not having fun on the ladder and they don't have things like Deadpool's Diner to turn their attention away, they're gonna turn away from the game. And so I'm concerned about what the ranked experience feels like for the average casual player, who we are as a community, and I hope as second dinner is hoping to retain. It's also worth noting though it is much easier to get to than it ever used to be. Like back in the day we had 10 per level stuff like that, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. So it is still easier to get the infinite than it was like in the launch window. However, I still think that whatever they changed over the last two months has been a, like a massive net negative because generally speaking, I see a lot of anger to towards the ranking process.
Bynx:Yeah. Like I said, I mean, I, I don't see it as much, maybe as, as you do. I ha I've definitely heard it over the last couple of months, like people talking about bots specifically. And I do think that it's changed, uh, like the biggest thing for me is like. In my opinion, the way that they change the bots is so much better because it feels like you're playing Marvel Snap. Because when you used to play bots, you, you didn't play Marvel Snap, you just did whatever. Now the bots are ordering their cards, right? They're not just playing the dumbest thing you've ever seen and playing like Armor on top of their Nova, turn one and turn two and just doing absolute nonsense, right? They're actually like making plays and I feel like that's gonna be better for new people who come in because I feel like new people have this problem where the bots used to be so brain dead. They play all these bots, they'd think they would be so good and they'd like grind the game.'cause they love it. They get the infinite playing all bots and then they just get their face smashed in by some of like the ladder grinders and Infinite who have all these cards that they've never seen. Right. So like I feel like that experience is, to me is what, is what sounds terrible and awful that'cause I feel like there's probably some people who love Marvel Snap so much that that happened to'em and are just like, I don't what is going on? I've never touched this game of gala. This is like an awful experience. Right. So I do think that in the short term it might be frustrating. It might be hard to get through and maybe I'm just like completely wrong and, and I have a a, a perspective that's, that's different. And there, there are other things outside of like, what I'm seeing on my end that's changing it and hopefully that's for the better. But I do think of the majority of it is bots. And I do think that bots playing Marvel Snap more like a human is in general going to be good for new players coming into the game. And just having this, this better experience, uh, in these like bot. Like lineups that you don't really want to get, that you actually feel like you're playing the game or you're not playing this dumb mini game where you're playing all your cards and you're skipping turns and you're, and they don't Snap for some reason. And you're freaking out because why aren't you snapping? You've been up for two lanes for four turns. Like, why aren't you freaking snapping? So like, I like getting rid of those situations. I, I think is a really good thing. So that's my perspective on it. Uh, I think that, um, uh, if you're having trouble with, with, uh, infinite, definitely trying to take a, a step, step back and breathe and not worry about it so much is definitely a, a big thing. Like anytime, like I, I think about this with any game. Anytime. Like a game isn't fun, like you're not having fun doing the thing. I always try and reevaluate what I'm doing in my mindset around it because whenever I play video games, I like to do it for fun. Now we live in a world where a lot of people play games to also hate the game, and they'll play a game for a thousand hours for a year and spend 500 hours complaining about it on the, the subreddit. Like that's the, that's what we live into. But if you wanna have more fun playing games, like just take a step back, take a breath, feel like, what am I having fun doing with this? What am I not like? Should I be caring so much about infant? Should I just be playing fun, stupid decks and losing and being okay with losing? I think figuring out stuff like that is just in general, a good thing to do is, is playing any kinda live service game like this.
Alex:I do agree with you, right? I think that getting rid of the absolute like hardcore robots is probably okay, but I think that there's a middle ground between robot that intentionally plays like Nikia on turn six as their closing line and these ruthless assassins that are coming out and absolutely demolishing your dreams. For eight cubes with like the most ruthless, borderline cheating blaze. And here's the one I did mention, like it felt like when I, I brought up that Luke cage thing, it felt like, you know, the bot was pulling from the entire archive. It's entirely possible. That's like an engineer will listen to this right, right now and be like, bro, I programmed those bots. It doesn't do that. It was probably just in the deck for some reason. That's skillion
Bynx:happened. Or like something you missed. Right. And like I get it. Right. Some other way that it showed up. Yeah, exactly. There is a much simpler solution than like we, we are architects who will create, use God to create any card possible to destroy you and make you stop playing. You know?
Alex:I know. But yeah, you're right. And I think that like it's one of those things where like, yeah, the bot change is definitely huge. I just think they need to be toned down a bit. And I think at the end of the day, yes the bots can be good, but people are gonna want to enjoy their laddering experience. They won't if these bots go absolutely insane, right? So finding that middle ground I think will be particularly valuable. But on that note, my man, I gotta say thank you so much for joining us this week on the podcast. Um, you've been someone who I've wanted to have on as a guest for the longest time. You're someone who I have an immense amount of respect for one of the absolute OGs of Marvel Snap. And, uh, down in the description below, you we're gonna have links to bxs Twitch. Uh, you, you stream at like, sometimes you're stream at like, I'll use your language. Yeah. DGen hours. And other times you're streaming like right in the middle of the day. I can't quite figure out when you're supposed to be streaming or not. And then we have the, obviously your YouTube channel, which is, uh. An awesome one at that. So where can, when can we find you on Twitch?'cause you seem to be moving your schedule around a bit.
Bynx:Uh, a little bit. I, I did a big change. I used to be all DJing hours, but just for like, lifestyle, I, I wanted to try and like really change my habits for what I was doing. So you can generally catch me Monday and then Wednesday through Friday from like 1:00 PM Central to around six. And then Tuesday I record a video off stream for the new card. So I do do DJ hours for all those people who used to watch me all those times so late. So if you're ever up late on a Tuesday, I'm pretty sure I'll be streaming playing some fun decks with the new card. But Alex, man, I, I'm so excited to be here. This was a wonderful conversation the last hour and a half. Absolutely. Flew by. Thank you so much for the invite out here, man. I think that you are such a amazing, um. Peace and part of the Marvel Snap community. You know, you're, uh, I've always just been so like, uh, gravitated towards like your vibe and just how you always like have a smile on your face. It's something that I try and do too, even though sometimes I go crazy and get a little bit tilted. But I think that really trying to like, enjoy this game and, and finding other people who have like a real genuine joy for this game and like to put more of their focus on celebrating the, the good from it than always. Just like finding whatever's wrong with anything that Marvel Snap is happening. Those, those are the people that, that I love being around. I love having conversations with. And, uh, I love being your friend, man. You're, you're an amazing dude, Alex, and I'm super, super excited to see you next time we get to, uh, see you in person and give you a big old hug.
Alex:Man, you make it sound like almost I paid you to say all that, man. I, I appreciate that so much. That was like the nicest outro anyone's ever given me, man. I, I sincerely appreciate it. And you're right, man. I just, uh, I love the game and I wanna share that passion. And, uh, it's something that you and I both share. It shows at the, at the end of the day, you know, we're playing something that we love and I feel grateful that we're in this position at all, that we get to play a game. We have these platforms that we have. And, uh, yeah, being positive, I think is, is a powerful thing in today's world. And, uh, there's a lot of reasons why you can get upset about Marvel Snap, but there's also a lot of reasons to, uh, to be grateful for what we have. And of course, be happy that, that we get to share this, this passion and this pastime with the world. And so, dude, I appreciate you so much. I appreciate those words. That truly means a lot to me. And as I said before, guys, use those links, find banks online, check'em out, and we'll see you on that next one.
