Arachnid Anarchy Season Preview | Golden Gauntlet Tournament Insight | The Snap Chat Ep. 155

How will Spider Punk and Man Spider impact gameplay? What synergies might Superior Spider-Man bring? Why is Prowler so highly anticipated? Join Alex Coccia and special guest ItsGuestGaming 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.

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!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
• 0:28 Marvel Snap Excitement and Upcoming Events
• 1:26 Guest Gaming's Journey with Marvel Snap
• 4:10 The Golden Gauntlet: History and Impact
• 10:43 World Championship and Future Tournaments
• 14:45 New Season Cards Overview
• 15:49 Spider Punk: First Impressions and Analysis
• 28:07 Man Spider: Potential and Synergies
• 35:15 Superior Spider-Man: A Game Changer?
• 43:13 Ezekiel Sims: Hopes and Challenges
• 49:41 Analyzing Ezekiel Sims' Card Mechanics
• 51:32 Spider-Man Noir: Buffs and Deck Strategies
• 58:41 The Prowler: Anticipated Card of the Season
• 1:05:29 Hydro Man: Potential and Synergies
• 1:10:23 Web Sling and Chameleon: New Skills and Strategies
• 1:20:11 Deafening Cord: A Versatile Skill Card
• 1:26:00 Grand Arena and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Alex: 0:00

Hey everyone and welcome to the next edition of the Snapchat. I'm joined today by a very special guest and yes, that pun was intended. It's guest gaming. Good to see you, my man. It has been so long since we've had the opportunity to chat and it's the first time you've been on the podcast. And my man, it's great to see you. You've been a guest that I've been looking forward to having on the, for the longest time. It's great to finally have you here.

Guest: 0:21

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me to say the minimum. I am, uh, I'm honored to be here and I know we have a lot to talk about. I know this is an incredibly exciting week for Marvel Snap, so the fact that I have the opportunity to chat with you about it and just kinda rip into everything going on this week over the next seven days of chaos in Marvel Snap, I'm, I'm, I'm honored to be here and, uh, let's go for it, man. I'm ready.

Alex: 0:46

It's one of those few instances where I feel like I can legitimately once again say it's a great time to be a Marvel Snap player. Especially with this week we have a massive season rollout, which I think is gonna be super exciting. We also have a massive event coming, which we're gonna touch on momentarily, like literally one of the biggest events held for Marvel Snap. And we'll just say that you might know a little bit behind the scenes about how maybe that's happening and how it's going, right? So I can't wait to dive into that. But before that guest, it's the first time you're on the Snapchat podcast. Um, you are one of the hardest working guys behind the scene. Legit. And we're gonna dive into that today. You guys are gonna be blown away with just how much it's guest gaming does for the Marvel Snap community. But first, my man, you have to tell me how did you get started with Marvel Snap in the first place?

Guest: 1:33

I was introduced to it from another creator friend, uh, named default Dan. And I was playing another Disney game at that time, and I wasn't really. I wasn't really feeling the vibe. I had been streaming for about two-ish years at that point. I'm like, I'm looking for something else. And he was like, look, there's this new Marvel game. It's a card game. And I just said, I don't know, to be honest,'cause I haven't played card games since high school. I was a UO player, but I wasn't a up to date, like magic to gathering player or I, it just, it wasn't my scene at first, but I played a lot of digital games, a lot of mobile games for streaming, so I was like, all right, I'll give it a shot. Started it and what is it now? Three years later? Yeah, basically through the

Alex: 2:17

anniversary. Yeah.

Guest: 2:19

Yeah. Like it, it just, it hooked me in. I started the month of global launch, like not day one, but like within that first month. And I've been hooked obviously ever since. And it's become more than a career at this point and opened up so many doors and that just handoff of my buddy Brit saying, Hey, listen. You should try this. We create content. It seems like it's a fun game and I had no idea that it would just lead down this chaos path of both from streaming to videos to working with second dinner and the list goes on over the last couple of years. But, uh, that, that was literally just my buddy going, Hey, you should try this. I was like, all right. It wasn't a sponsored thing, it wasn't a, I was looking for it thing. It just kind of happened.

Alex: 3:06

That's awesome. And actually I had the opportunity to meet Britt in New York, uh, for that first Clash tournament. Right. Which is awesome. He was super cool, dude. Yeah. Uh, super talented as well. Did a lot of cool stuff with Luana as well, uh, later on. Yes. And what I will say is that like. That is the thing that Marvel Snap was doing so well and to this day continues to do it. It has such a great first impression. It sells itself so unbelievably well if you're like, Hey, do you even like card games conceptually, you gotta try this one. And Marvel Snap sucks people in so effectively it's the retaining part that we have to work on a little bit over time, right? Yeah. But I think that they're getting better. I think that they're being very, uh, kind of responsive to community feedback and uh, it's one of those things where like, that is one of Marvel Snap's, superpowers. We talk about all the superpowers for all the heroes in the game, but Snap's superpower is that incredible first impression. It has a great IP and p you, you, it sells itself so effectively. So it's awesome to hear that it's sold you and I mean, the rest is basically history as you've kind of come full circle and now you're one of the key players behind the scenes. And that brings us into our first topic of conversation, which is the golden gauntlet, my man. You have to bring us through the history of the Golden Gauntlet, how it became the, uh, the beast that it is today. And of course what's happening this weekend that is gonna be one of the most exciting things in Marvel Snap in recent memory.

Guest: 4:27

Yeah. Uh, the history of the Golden Gauntlet in a semi abbreviated form is this process started almost a year ago, nearly to the day. Myself and the tournament organizer and director and co-founder of our company you may know Gunny t from the community. He. Was like, Hey, listen, I'm, I'm looking at doing Marvel Snap tournaments. He was working on, uh, Snap Judgments League and wanted to do something, you know, potentially with second dinner. I had the pleasure of meeting him at Snap Con a couple of months prior and we just laid some initial groundwork for doing a community style tournament.'cause I know you've seen behind the scenes his involvement with the creator events in the past, and it was like, how do we take this to the, the next level and make it something that can be internationally received in some way, shape, or form? So after months and months of conversations with second dinner and watching the conversations change because of what will lightly word as January all of that transformed into us finally getting the go ahead for the first ever golden gauntlet over the summer. And it was just a trial. It was literally, let's see if the community even likes this, because there is a small niche, you know, we've seen the community events. I've been a part of them as well. Is this actually something that if we, you know, put it out on just socials, are people gonna be interested in participating? And the first one was immediately rapidly received by the community, and that was just with social advertisement. Then we did the same thing and proved it again. And that led to the official, like, we're gonna do a four-part series, international time zones for different, you know, uh, qualifiers. And it just has been an ongoing conversation with several members of the team from second dinner on how do we build the event, how do we advertise the events, getting us in the game, talking about the event is live, putting it on both YouTube and Twitch. And it, it started with just a, Hey, this would be really good to do for the community. And then it evolved into, now what is one of the, the featured items for Marvel Snap over the last couple of months And something that they're really leaning into to celebrate Marvel Snap with the community.'cause it's not about being a, this is the hardest core player of Marvel Snap. But the no, it, it's really a showcase of what Marvel Snap actually is and does. And now we have the opportunity to bring the best of the best over the last couple of weeks to our world final, this upcoming weekend.

Alex: 7:06

That's amazing. And, uh, there's a couple things I want to touch on first. Uh, gunny Tea is one of those unsung heroes that often doesn't get the praise that they deserve. Yes. Um, I believe they're responsible for like the rule book and like all those types of things that kind of go into actually making the tournament run successfully, which is an incredibly insane endeavor. And, uh, so definite shoutout to them. They're doing, uh, incredible work there. And the other thing I wanna say as well is I do think that the Golden Gauntlet Tournament is incredibly important. I do appreciate the approach as well, that it's not just like a invitational creator thing. This is something that every single person who turns this game on can engage with. Um, yes. And I think that aspirational like content and aspirational opportunities for games is really important. And I thought about this as well when I was kind of thinking about how much I enjoy the Golden of Go. And I was thinking about how, like, when I played Doda, right? I would watch the International, and I was never gonna be on the international, but knowing that there was a chance, I was just joking. I was never gonna make a Pro Dota two team. But the idea is that like there was a path for someone to become a Pro Dota two player, or a pathway to at least competitively be like, you know what? I'm actually really good at this game and I'm gonna see what I can do on a world stage. And I think that's amazing about what we're, uh, what you're doing here because you're allowing anybody from any region to compete and also get a platform to showcase their skills while being professionally casted and professionally produced. Not a lot of games have that. And it was a good chance that Marvel Snap was never going to have this, and you guys made it a reality. And, uh, so for that, I, on behalf of the entire community, I, we have to say thank you.

Guest: 8:48

No it's something that I've absolutely loved being a part of from the, what we'll call the grassroots level of, you know, a 16 person, small whatever it is, tournament on a so-and-so channel to watching it into a league series with, you know, weekend players and then now letting sec second dinner being involved and saying, here's what else we can do with this. You know, here's how we can scale this to such a, a level that more and more people wanna try it out, and then they see the events and they get more interested. And then what wins? One of'em? Oh, it's just a standard, you know, discard list that anybody can acce access like incredibly quick, quickly in this game. Like, it's about accessibility. It's not about who has the shiniest collection. No offense to Ken with Super Tech God. It's all about what can you do with the collection you have. And it's been a, a one heck of an adventure between Gunny tea models, who's the technical whiz of everything in the background with all of the bots, the creation of making the event run smoothly, the integration with the Top deck website, everything that we've done, he's been grinding over the last couple of months. And then Super Tech, God he's there. It's the four of us that make Game On events. And each of us really have put in a lot of work to make sure that everything from administration to organization to everything that you see just feels smooth. So we've put a lot of work in and I'm glad that the community is really enjoying it.

Alex: 10:24

Yeah. And, uh, for my communications with second dinner, it seems like they've been, uh, remarkably, uh, happy with the kind of production and the quality that you guys have been able to do. I know Brady speaks very highly of you guys, and Brady's such an OG man. What a great guy. He's legitimately doing incredible work at second dinner. He's one of the, another unsung hero is, uh, is Brady, a hundred percent. And with that being said, like we literally have this weekend, like the World Championships essentially. Do you want to kind of fill us in as what's going on, where we can catch it? What, uh, you're expecting to see? Yeah, absolutely.

Guest: 10:54

So over the last couple of months, we've had qualifiers, you know, within different regions all across the world where anybody could participate and anybody who qualified from those is now coming to the world showcase the World Championship final. And they're all competing for incredible amounts of prizes. Like the top prize has 75,000 collectors tokens and 25,000 gold. So they're competing some. For some major, major prizes and exclusive, you know, titles and card backs and things that you could only get for not just participating, but also winning and hitting the top 16 for this event that's taking place this Saturday. Uh, it'll be live on Twitch. It'll be live on YouTube. And I have two announcements for you that have not been announced yet, uh, in regards to the tournament scene and the Golden gauntlet. So this is, Alex literally has no idea that this is like being said right here. This is first I got the, the okay to talk about a couple of things. So, uh, first and foremost, the casters have been officially selected. Uh, the casters for this event. It's gonna be an opening pre-show, so we're doing a one hour pre-show as well as the first couple of rounds that'll be hosted by. Not my dance. And a former co-host of this cha of this podcast as well. Regis, Regis Kibin is gonna be joining us to cast for the very first time. Uh, moving on. It's gonna be two more members who have also been on this podcast. It'll be Binks Plays and Super Tech God. They're both gonna be casting. And then the top 16 bracket at the very end will be as we've kept tradition and second dinner agrees, KM Best and myself are gonna cast the final bracket. So we have insane, amazing casters, incredible personalities. I'm very excited to have this lineup going into the world final to showcase, you know, what we've been working towards for the last three months now.

Alex: 12:54

Yeah, that's absolutely amazing. That's a legit, incredible caster line man. And, uh, it's just another reason to want to tune in, not just for the, uh, the amazing plays, the decks and the, the, uh, skill, uh, on display, but also for the amount of talent on the, uh, in the booth as they say.

Guest: 13:08

Yeah, in the, in the booth. And it's gonna be really cool to see what happens when we put, you know, these dynamic duos together and let them just kind of react the entire time and give give one a heck of a show to the community. So that's, that's announcement number one. That announcement number two for you is the fact that if people have just heard about Goldie Gauntlet for the very first time and they're curious about Marvel Snap tournaments, this isn't the last big Marvel Snap tournament. We are happy to announce that there is going to be a, another exclusive tournament event happening in January. It's gonna be called Snowball Showdown, and it's gonna be happening as a part happening as a part of the Marvel Snap Winter verse, uh, celebration, which will be in the second week of January. It's gonna have new rules, new restrictions, new deck building challenges to make it even further approachable. For the community to partake in a Marvel Snap community tournament. So there's more details to come, but just know that the second Saturday in January is going to be a very busy Saturday for Marvel Snap.

Alex: 14:21

That's awesome, man. Absolutely incredible. Uh, so once again guys, you heard it here, um, tons of stuff happening with the Golden Con. You can catch it this Saturday and you can see those finals which have been basically literally months in the making, qualifying and everything. Yeah. You are seeing this is the Super Bowl. Marvel Snap and you guys get to see it this week.

Guest: 14:40

Yeah.

Alex: 14:41

Guys excited. We are going to be jumping into our new season. We have so much to talk about. There are so many cards, so many cards, so much excitement, and some of these cards seem incredibly powerful. Like insanely powerful. Yeah. And uh, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna quickly just run down what you can expect this season from a launch perspective, and then we'll actually go through each individual card, do our previews and things along those lines. First of all, season pass card on the screen, you're gonna have spider punk. You have the super premium season pass in Man Spider. Those will be available on November 4th, on November 4th as well. The third card is going to be superior Spider-Man. And then from the series five packs, you have Ezekiel Sims coming November 11th, November 18th, you have Spider-Man Noir, and the Prowler finally making its appearance in the game on November time. Fifth. I know it's crazy. So right away from a series five perspective, you got a lot of bangers and series four, we have hydro Man coming in the limited tide game mode, sanctum showdown. We have web sling on November 4th, so a lot of cards in the start of the season as per usual chameleon on November 11th. And finally deafening cord on November. 20th. We're gonna break them all down right now and we're gonna start guest with spider punk Spider, uh, spider punk is a three, three. Data of mind is a three two, by the way, but they're like, let's juice the sky a little bit more. It's a three three that reads, you can move this once when this moves to a location. Steal two power from the highest power enemy here. Guest. I'll give you the floor and, uh, you might be new to the way we do things here on the Snapchat. We like to do star ratings from one to five, sometimes admissible. If you wanna do a 0.5 rating, you know, if you wanna do like a 3.5 or something like that if you're, you know, on the fence a little bit, but I'll give you the floor. Spider punk, our season pass card guest, take it away.

Guest: 16:28

I think spider punk is a, is gonna be very surprising to people at three. Three because you look at the total value on the fact that it can move once all by itself, but then the second half of the ability allows you that flexibility of if you wanna keep moving this via other mechanics. Iron fist, aranya, et cetera. Every time it does extra moves, it's going to pro that second half of the ability again. So stealing two more power, stealing two more power. So this goes from being a three, three to a total three, seven, all by himself. Then consider all of these others of 3 11, 3 15 if you get multiple moves. I mean this, this could scale value wise over the board. Honestly really quickly. I am concerned though, and I have been pushed back on this by several members of the community as well, that I am very worried that it's going to underperform week one because everyone sees the word steal and the first week of the season, everyone wants to use the season pass. So I'm expecting the counter of Luke Cage to be everywhere. Yes, and if you don't run into Luke Cage, this card is amazing. If you do run into Luke Cage. Uh, it's just gonna be a worse knock turn.

Alex: 17:47

No, you're absolutely right. Actually, and it gave me a little bit of pause because like, first of all, I think this card is a really good card, right? Yes. However, yes. The couple things I wanna say. First of all, Luke Cage, definitely problematic and we'll talk about Luke Cage, I think with Deafening Cord, which is coming out on November 20th, because I feel like Deafening Cord will specifically target Luke Cage, which kinda made me surprised they didn't release Deafening cord earlier in the season, by the way, because I was like, move players might want this card. I'm just throwing it out there, right? Yeah. But anyways, let's not lose track here. Spider punk Yeah, I think is very strong. I think it's really good. But the problem with spider punk is you're jump through a lot of hoops. There's another three cost in move that regularly gets to like, I don't know, almost a hundred power sometimes. And it's like, yeah, you have human torch, right? And I'm like, okay, you can go the spider punk route, which I think is gonna be way more fun and way more interactive than human Torch is. But from a pure power perspective, I actually don't think spider punk can trade bulls with human torch. You know what I mean? Oh, like is that a valid concern?

Guest: 18:48

It, it is. There's, there's just no way that this would, this is not intended to keep up with human torch. Yeah. This is meant to be treated more like an integrated tech card where you have to look at the additional synergies. This is a card that wants to scale and then take advantage of each of the unique parts of what this card does. It moves all by itself. Okay, so now you're thinking outside of that, you're thinking of cards like Miles Morales that automatically benefit from that. You see the stealing of the two powers, so there's affliction involved. Then you start looking into cards like Ajax and Diamondback and all of these other cards that can affect multiple lanes, and you end up down several different potential paths of where this card may want to go as just a strong stats piece that you drop on turn three, like Zorn, a card that. Not a lot of people play, you're going to see a lot more Zorn, which will automatically move that three cost card just by dropping it down, and then it'll just put it somewhere else, immediately take some power away. I think that there is gonna be some unique deck building that comes from spider punk with a lot of these mid rangey shells. Like scream, like scream decks really are going to enjoy this card. And I think that there's probably a best home for spider punk in some kind of hybrid between affliction scream, something that allows you to run Luke Cage basically.

Alex: 20:12

That's actually kind of hilarious. L Luke Cage offensively and defensively required. So a lot of interesting things there. The concern that I had, like, so going into this podcast, right? I do extensive notes on each of the cards. It helps me plan and prepare for the season. I know you're the same, you're a planner too. And it's like when I was kind of trying to figure out where I want to go with spider punk, one of the challenges I had was like, okay, you bring up affliction. And I agree there is potential synergy with affliction and stuff like that, but the only challenge I have is that again, you have Luke Cage, which will shut that all down immediately. And one thing we see in a lot of cards and archetypes is, well, yeah, technically, for instance, let's take discard for an example. You have the chu kind of, uh, style of like dependable, discard almost with Apoch, with that tournament winner Golden Go Tournament winner. And then you have like, yeah. The Black Knight stuff right now, black Knight technically is a playable version of Discard, but why don't we see it right now? We don't see it because it's not as effective as the con version. And they've changed the eye of the shell enough that people don't play that version either. So what I'm trying to say is if you're gonna be playing move and you're trying to be as impactful as possible, and you're watching videos about top decks of the week and decks that are performing in best deck here, surprise peek at you thumbnail face here, and you're like, I want to gain rank. It's gonna be the human torch move list, right? Yeah. Because it has this very consistent plan, despite the fact that I was thinking about this, I'm like, man, spider punk is such a cool well-designed card. Like how great would this be in like a draft mode? How awesome is this as just an actual playable Marvel Snap card? But my concern is that it won't reach, I'm not convinced it beats what current move does, and they even listen. You know this, and I know this move is by far one of the absolute best decks in Marvel Snap right now. The sees very little play because it's a, a very high committal deck. It's a skill cap deck. It's a deck that honestly, some people just don't find fun to play. I personally don't love playing traditional move. Like I just, I, the human torch stuff miss me with it. Like, I just, it's just not the way I wanna play the game. Even though I respect what it does. Right. Bounce move was the same, just, I just don't wanna play that. But this is a deck that's incredibly effective. You have Mercury that just got nerfed, right? And I keep saying, you know, we gotta go with the, uh, the, uh, what's it called? The tinfoil hat. I wonder why Mercury got nerfed, right? It's like I have to give some, I have no idea here.

Guest: 22:32

I'm gonna grab this. Do I still have it? I do. There we go. I actually have a tin foil hat for you, my friend. There we go. I'll put that on just for you. There you go. I, because I, I, you talk to me about

Alex: 22:43

Mercury then.

Guest: 22:45

I can actually sense Mercury having this hat on here. I think that Mercury might have been nerfed because of the sales of the season pass. It's, it's just, it's just a feeling. I'm getting just a feeling.

Alex: 22:59

Just a feeling that we're just, we're all kind of feeling together,

Guest: 23:02

I think. Yeah. But it might also be I that I'm picking up A, B, C right now. I should probably take this off, but yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's fine.

Alex: 23:09

What I'll say though is I do think spider punk is a good card and I think it's eventually gonna find its place, especially with deafening cord and a lot of the synergies that are here, there's gonna be really good decks running spider punk. And the other thing about the affliction side of it, you can hit some really effectual things. You can hit stuff like Ironman, well, less likely, but you could potentially hit Ironman in a sole location. Things like Cap Carter. Now it does have texts that specifically it will steal from the highest power, which yeah, could be a negative thing, right? Because again, we're trying to target some cars that could be very like impacted, but like what if you're taking things outta Sxi range? What if you're hitting a Typhoid Mary and taking it out of a factual sh chi range? That could be kind of annoying, right? So like there's that side to it as well, which could potentially be problematic. But most importantly, what I was thinking about was the built-in mobility adds flexibility. It's gonna be incredibly synergistic with almost this entire season. Yes. But that Luke Cage turnoff card has me concerned. Yeah. So for me, star Wise, the first week I suspect it's gonna feel like a three star card, and I feel like it's going to age into a four star card. And I wonder if they take a, if they take a hard look at what human Torch is doing and they adjust how those decks play, I'm just curious about that. Because if Spider punk can't compete with human torch, I wonder if that is a design dilemma they have to try to tackle.

Guest: 24:28

I think the reason that spider punk from the data mines, which was originally a three two, which is what most of us thought it was going to be, I think that everybody at second dinner went, Hey, let's take a lesson from what happened with Scarlet Witch and let's apply that to spider punk because I think that three two, spider punk makes sense at the end of November. When you look at all, like you said, the whole season, this card synergizes with all of those cards, and by the end of the season, this card might be too strong at three three, but on release we might be looking at okay, it needed that extra point of power because people will be playing into the counters and they're already trying to take advantage of making the season pass be as attractive as they can make it because they don't want another zombie scarlet witch situation to happen. Again, that would be, me, tin foil adding that. But in regards to will this card age into a four star card, probably if it stays at three three. If it continues at three three, and then you're looking at a total value of three seven, that's even if it just does its ability one time and you put no other synergies to that, that's really good and I think of a very relevant card right now. A very relevant deck, excuse me, right now. Soran. Where you do see a lot of scar and by taking down that typhoid Mary from a four 10 to a four eight, this card helps to combat that and losing that one card on turn six because you can't get the scar for nearly free. That is something to consider as a tech piece for this card. It's not a, it's not a, uh, affliction in the sense of needing to put power down just to remove power. It's a tech piece that you're trying to integrate differently because of the matchup that we are seeing a lot of.

Alex: 26:20

Yeah, that's absolutely fair. And uh, going back to the power, I don't know if this is ever gonna release at three two, because I think it had to come out as three three because of Ezekiel Sims. When we get to Ezekiel Sims, I think that like, that's probably a factor and you'll see why in a second. I don't wanna kind of jump too far ahead, but, uh, guess you haven't given us a star rating. I'm gonna say it's gonna

Guest: 26:40

release. As a I'll do 3.5. I do think it is gonna release. Okay. But I would expect it to get better with time. Just like every affliction card has ever done. The first week it comes out, it's mediocre. It's okay-ish. And then about a week, week and a half later, when people forget about that, they go, oh yeah. This is doing the thing more consistently.

Alex: 27:03

Absolutely. And for the record, I want this car to actually land. Well, yes, I suspect that the play style is gonna be very interactive and very fun and the way that everything's gonna kind of build in together as a deck, I think it, the deck builds itself in a lot of ways. And you're right, there are different avenues you can go. Uh, you can go like kind of scream affliction style stuff and I think that's really cool. And so, and also you just like, no turn was a three five that just moved once and sometimes scammed you with a location. This is a three. Three, yeah. That essentially Effectionately is a three seven that also has the move. Like it's also just a good card. So if you're like a relatively low collection level player and you're like, you know what, yeah, I'll throw 10 bucks to the game this month, you're probably getting something. You'd be like, huh, I don't know what to put in this deck. I'm missing what I'll just fill with spider punk. Right. You know what I mean? Like you probably are able to do that to some effectiveness, which is kind of neat. But yeah, spider punk looking good, especially when you consider how good rock and groove was on release. By the way, this card's looking like it's cut from the same. Cloth, which is gonna take us to our next card, which for some reason, oh, I, I was trying to center the card on the screen and for some reason I almost ruined our whole layout. There we have Man Spider. Now this is gonna be the super premium season pass card available on November 4th. You can ask us this card using your tokens. Conversely, you could get those Benjamins out that you can invest in the super premium version of the season pass. This is a five one that reads on Reveal Merge. The last card you played into this. When this merges double its power, the trailer gave us the opportunity to see that you actually do not have to play it in the same location, which is actually kind of a superpower in my opinion. You can move significant amounts of power across the board thanks to Man Spider. Oh, you're gonna shun Chi my red skull. Nope, it's over here now. Right? So that's kind of interesting. But before I take away too many of these synergies, guest, I'll give you the floor here. Star rating and general first impressions.

Guest: 29:00

I think this card's gonna surprise people because we saw a meta about a month and a half ago, where Ghost Spider was just an incredibly strong card. Everybody wanted to play it into every deck because you had that unpredictability of where's the power going to shift to for good value. This is a heavier investment by a long shot, but the fact that it doubles the power, I mean, just something as simple as Typhoid Mary into this. That's crazy. That's a 22 power play. And then go ahead and just task master it. That's fine. You can do something crazy like that. So I expect this to appear in SAR on deck because it's gonna be very simple as a five cost card to get crazy amounts of power. But outside of that, I really wanna see how the shift of power also works when the merges happen, if there are other effects involved with it. For example, something like electro, you know, we see that electro just got a buff. Okay, it's gonna be a three five electro that you put into this. That's still a turn four 12 power play. And then no downside. I'm gonna consider that pretty good. Or if there are other pros that also happen from this card, I expect it to do better than I think people. Would expect because the only five one we've had at least in recollection is white tiger. And something about looking at the aesthetic of five one, it makes you wanna say, eh, but when you play it, I think it's gonna pleasantly surprise people. I wanna see how they can shift, how you can shift power around from dead on. Reveals also something like Gwenpool.'cause Gwenpool is gonna give you also this great amount of power to your hand, and then afterwards it's just kind of a mediocre body on the board. But if you hit man spider in that same process, then you can play the man spider down, which might be a five five, for example. Absorb that body and then reinforce from it. Like I think there's some unique cheeky plays that are gonna happen from man spider's ability to reallocate power or capitalize on mediocre power at the last second by pulling a ju.

Alex: 31:17

Absolutely. And, uh, do you want to give us a preemptive star rating?

Guest: 31:21

I'm gonna say this is, I'm gonna say it's a four star right off the bat. Honestly, I like it a little bit better than spider punk, but obviously for very different reasons. So I think that man spider's gonna be making a bigger splash than spider punk week one.

Alex: 31:39

So here's the thing, my man. I agree. I'm actually coming 4.5. On man Spider. Wow. And it's a little higher. Now. I do have another five star card of this month. It's not man Spider. I do think Mander is gonna be a very good card, but where it's different is that I think that man spider's gonna be almost an essential component in the decks it's gonna play in. Whereas I think that, uh, you know, these Spider P it's gonna have a little bit more variation, a little bit more variability. I think it's gonna have a wider niche to fill. Whereas man, spi, it's gonna do a specific thing in a specific deck. That deck's gonna be a very good deck and it's gonna be a linchpin card. That's what I expect and something that I've learned in Marvel Snap is if you can make. One deck and that deck is consistently like a top six performer, a top eight performer. Then you're relevant, man. Yep. You are relevant. Look what, look at what, uh, look what Redshift did for Agatha. Look what Redshift did. Oh yeah. You just sometimes need one thing to change and everything changes. And I think that man, uh, man spider might be one of those things. Um, so very effective in the, that's gonna be played in. It's gonna be a little more niche. The text removal I think is a cool tool, but it does limit its range of usability, right? You bear that in mind. The taskmaster plays a really interesting, I like the idea of copying juiced power cards and stuff like that. Uh, you could potentially do, do things where like you magic and then you surey red skull man, spider taskmaster, right? Mm-hmm. Cute. Maybe like a little obvious. Maybe you catch like the first couple days you catch people by surprise that, but then it's gonna be so unbelievably tele telegraphed that they're like, okay, you can't really pull that off. But like electro ramp, you did touch on it, but I wanna go back to that. Remind me, was electro a three, two at one point?

Guest: 33:15

I was just talking about this the other day. Electros been on a wild ride, man. And it was a three, two, and then second dinner. It just keeps going. Me give it another, eh, give it another. Still not good yet. All right. Eh, give it one more, just now we're up to three five. It's awesome.

Alex: 33:31

It is. It's ridiculous. And the last time I think the OG electro three, two even made sense was with the OG Sandman. We used to ramp in the Sandman. Yeah. And then it just shot the whole game down and they're like, oh, wait a minute, this sucks. We may as well change Sandman. Right. So they did that. Yeah. But, um, electro going from a three, two to a three five's crazy and it, it basically it plowed the road for man spider's interaction. Right. Um, especially since like, you can do something honestly as simple as, and I'm gonna make this call out too, because if you want to do electro ramp and you're relatively low collection level, free to play player or whatever. You could seriously probably make the argument for electro three man spider on four and then just like, Odin is probably enough, right? Like that's kind of a cool play. Yeah. Like your classic, electro ramp du moden finish type thing. Uh, it's not great. It's not the greatest thing that's been, you know, power cre nonstop since like, I don't know, release week. But just throwing it out there, like you do have some relatively kind of beginner friendly combos that you can do. But with mans splitter, honestly, being able to move the power from one location to another is a superpower. And I think it's gonna have a major effect on the viability of the card. Just because you're able to dodge shunt cheese, you're able to pull it into interesting locations, which I think could potentially be valuable.'cause remember it doesn't have to be played. On a location here, it'll pull from anywhere. Right, right. Which I think is gonna be very, very interesting. So that is the conversation around Man Spider. We're coming in pretty hot here. I think the man spider's gonna be niche. It's gonna be good. And, uh, as general as it is, we should probably comment on this too. The super premium season pass, obviously it is a much significantly added expense to the standard season pass. You are still able to get the card using your tokens. The baseline season pass though still remains one of the best values you can get in Marvel Snap for your hard earned dollars. So, um, you know, do, uh, consider that if you're, uh, if you're interested in the season pass card this month, the next card guest, this is my five star. This is the banger I got. I, I have to lead with it. Really. I think this is an absolute banger, man. Wow. Superior Spider-Man guest apparently doesn't agree, but this is gonna be spicy. I like this. I like this. As opposed to you just being like, yeah, Alex High five, boom. I want you to be like, no Alex, you're wrong. This cart sucks. Makes for interesting conversation. Superior Spider-Man is a three four that reads at the start of each turn, you get plus one energy if you have any cards with increased power in play. Dude, I think this card is so good. I think it is so, so good. It has great stats at three four. Considering it's a ramp option. It is so non-committal considering like, okay, sometimes yes you're gonna get scammed. You don't get the the activator early on to get the increased power, stuff like that. But usually I bet you you're gonna have it. I bet you you're gonna have it. And I think this is free ramp so often, especially in decks that are gonna want to play that. I don't know that one cost Miles Morales, which now essentially is just free on curve because of the benefit you're getting from this bad boy. I think superior Spider-Man is absolutely gonna collapse some cheeks.

Guest: 36:30

I think it'll be good, but I'm pretty sure my cheeks will not be red in the process. I think that this is a good card. Because I look at this and I go, what deck do I wanna play this in versus what deck do I wanna play? Hope Summers in. When you're playing Hope Summers, you're playing with the flexibility of wanting to have potentially more power on very specific turns and have it pro more than once. You know you're playing things like, you know, spells on there or night crawler or things that you can move off regularly. Then you're looking at a wcan line where it's like, okay, this is specifically dedicated towards turns five and six and I'm curving to know that everything's gonna happen. Turn five and turn six. Then I look at this card and I go, if I get this down on turn three, I could be ahead of curve on turn five, uh, sorry, on turn four with that extra energy and that turn four is the I entire identity. This card, this whole card is based on the idea that you get things to happen on turn one and two, like Silver Sable, for example. Get some green power on the board, play the hunger, get some green power on the board, and then by turn four you're playing a five cost thing that you were trying to make happen beforehand that the other ramp cards could not allocate for. That's the whole identity of this card, which is why I am worried we're about to go back to some Professor X shenanigans because of what this card organically wants to do. Look at Hawkeye. Easy way to do it. You play Hawkeye into a guaranteed two drop domino. Drop this on three and prox on four like that, and that's a lane lockdown all by itself. It's a lot of power in a lane that you couldn't build into the same way earlier. And then you could just play a whole bunch of lockdown shenanigans, do some jugg or nodding, because even if you hit it into that lane, it's already got a lot of power into it. Like I think that this is gonna be introducing some of those five costs shenanigans. That second dinner a couple of months ago specifically said, we want five cost cards to be more relevant. This card single handedly is probably gonna be able to do that.

Alex: 38:50

I absolutely agree. And it's interesting where our minds went because I'm thinking more along the lines of this could potentially go in, the move based shelters are gonna develop with spider punk and some of the others. And I can see this as being like literally I stay on curve and I played Miles Morales effectively for free. You know what I mean? And also, yeah, you could add Professor X to that mix'cause you can move into it and perhaps your opponent can't. Right. If you're short power or whatever. And the other thing is that Ezekiel Sims once again is activated by Superior Spider-Man. If you place Superior Spider on top of Ezekiel Sims, you've satisfied the requirement. He moves and you got green power. You know what I mean?

Guest: 39:28

Yeah. With Ezekiel I, I can see that a hundred percent. I was just a little confused with the Miles Morales call out because I'm like, how does this get you free Miles Morales? But now I see where your brain is going. We put all the synergies together. That's how we're getting to it, because it's a two cost card that'll get green power without even thinking about it because it just automatically sees a three, four. And then we'll do the move. It now has green power. Now you're good to go. Now I see where you're going with that.

Alex: 39:53

Yeah. I should clarify. When I say free Miles, Morales, I'm referring to the fact that you're on now turn four and you're able to play a four costed card. So you have five energy plus the Miles Morales, like the effectively superior Spider-Man effectively makes Miles Morales free with the extra energy you've achieved. That's what I meant by free because of the ramp. Yeah. Right.

Guest: 40:10

Yeah. No, no, I, I get that and that's where I'm, I'm trying to figure out what else does, what other decks besides lockdown, does Superior Spider-Man make a deck more powerful by having a five cost card drop on turn four, and as you deck build and you start, try to mess with the synergies of what this card wants to do with that specific game plan, then you start really deck building without sacrificing, because I think most other scenarios, hope Summers is a better call or. Wcan is a better call more often than not even Merlin nowadays, which is in everything for all the right reasons. Even that could be a better call very often. This is exclusively, how can I benefit turn four, and if you can make an impactful play on turn four, that can more or less win you the game because of superior Spider-Man and the shenanigans that happened beforehand. I think that's how you get the most out of this card, and I'm not a hundred percent sold. It's a five star card, but I am sold. That extra energy is almost always good in some capacity, so I expect it to be a three star card on release.

Alex: 41:27

Nice. Nice. I like that. So we got a bit of a gap here, which means that, uh, you know, um, one of us will have to, uh, buy lunch for the other at the end of the season for either, a little bit of a friendly, friendly wager here. But I, I do agree with what you're saying. The one, the one thing I kind of wanna bring mention to though is that I feel like this card is going to very naturally fall into what these decks are gonna wanna do anyways. Whereas like you bring up hope Summers requires that you have the space you play directly into that location. Superior Spider-Man doesn't require that. Electro has the ongoing effect where you're basically only playing one card per per turn. Luna Snow provides additional energy. Jennifer Kale has the activate. You can't play the game. S Lock provides the energy, but then it's kind of a weak body, but also you have to timer with the prior turn. Like there's all these kind of like, you're getting the ramp, but Right. And I feel like this is one of the easier buts to deal with, especially when you consider what we have this season. Even if you don't play this. On turn three, like if you play Ezekiel Sims two, you play spider punk on turn three. They both move. They, they, you could, well you can move the spider punk steel power then play this. Now you're ramping into a six cost card, right? So like, yeah, I just see this ramp capability being very easy to pull off and like Hope Summers is not a hard one to pull off. And Hope Summers has the advantage of like, I'm playing Kitty Pride, I'm getting two energy per turn or whatever. So cope, don't get me wrong, I love Hope Summers, I call her Cope Summers because I'm constantly coping her in the decks where she doesn't belong. I love Hope Summers, man you're preaching to the converted here. But I do think the superior Spider-Man is, it's gonna have his time, man. I think he's gonna be a very strong card.

Guest: 43:02

I hope you're right and I would love nothing more than to buy you lunch. I'm just pretty sure you're gonna be satisfying a appetite segment on my channel.

Alex: 43:11

That's fair as our next card. We've alluded to a whole bunch of times, we've alluded to Ezekiel Sims several times here, uh, because it's an interesting one. It's an interesting one coming out on November 11th. So this is, uh, after the release of the initial onslaught of cards, we have Ezekiel Sims, a two two that reads, after you play a card with higher power here, give this plus two power and move this to another location. Guest. As is tradition, I will give you the floor. What are your thoughts and star rating on Ezekiel Sims?

Guest: 43:45

I am much lower on this card than many of my cohorts. I think that this card is cool, it is unique and it'll have it a couple of homes where it does some crazy things. And yes, I agree with you that it is 100% one of the biggest reasons that we see a buff to the season pass because you're gonna wanna play big card repeatedly. Big cards repeatedly to get Ezekiel to move over and over and over, including multiple times in the same turn. You know you have a one six with Miles Morales that's gonna help being able to pro this. You know, if you're trying to catch up, I worry that it's going to just become a nuisance to build around because the condition gets more and more difficult. The more moves that it satisfies, where getting one move out of it to turn it into a two four super easy, even to a two six playing anything that's five costs or higher, relatively easy. As you get past that's where I start to say, was it worth it? And if we learned anything from seeing what two cost cards want to do, we have incredibly strong two cost cards of the game. This is never replacing an iron patriot. This is never replacing a. Sam Wilson. This is wanting to create some kind of synergy with maybe like a so on deck where it's always big bodies and you could easily get, four moves if you play it perfectly out on curve. Like there, there's cool things you can do with this in very niche decks, but I don't think this is going to be a plug and play to six to eight that people kind of expect it to be. I think you get much more value from synergy rather than just a little bit of extra power that Ezekiel Sims brings. I think that he releases with a lot of hope and leaves with a lot of cope.

Alex: 45:46

Alright, star rating then.'cause uh, I think we're kind of on the same track. I might be slightly higher than you, but be curious what your star rating. I'm gonna say 2.5. 2.5. So that sounds about right.'cause I have three written down. And I do agree this is, this is one of those cards I think is very easy to ramp a couple times, but has a very hard ceiling, right? Yes. Very hard ceiling. That's hard to get through. Obviously, you know, hellan can get through that. Heim dolls can get through it, but I'm not sure if that's what those decks look like, right? Like currently that's what they kind of look like, but I don't know if this is a key part of that, right? Um, with the Superior Spider-Man and some of the Spider-Man cards we're getting like spider punk, I see some immediate synergy there because of the way their power is stacked, which I think is cool. You also have something like Roc the Leaper, right? You can have roc down, you have Ezekiel Sims down, all of a sudden you got dudes bouncing everywhere, right? I kind of wonder if this can replace something like a silk. Has a bit of a higher ceiling, but silk, you can keep it swinging around feeding that hydros, stuper. I wonder if Ezekiel Sims and Silk compete for that spot. But it wouldn't surprise me if Ezekiel Sims ultimately lost out to Silk.'cause Silk has some advantages too. Right? Also, some disadvantage, let's be honest. But when I think about like, okay, hydros Stopper Craven, this card naturally wants to be in the decks with the cards that are coming out this season. I just, I see that. I see that like they, they kind of were obviously designed together and Ezekiel Sims was very carefully, but like this is where the two two stat line looks terrible, but it's actually a bit of a superpower because if it was higher, it'd be more difficult to proc. You'd be getting less hydro Stomper Pros and Petroc wouldn't be bouncing around. You'd be getting less moves as a whole. Yeah. So you want it to start kind of achievably low, but as it gets higher, you're right. Like what do you do at some point? But then again, is two six enough? Like, let's be honest, it's a two six. Is two eight enough? It probably is.

Guest: 47:33

I would like to think so, but we've had this exact same conversation this past season. We talked about the exact same thing with zombie Mr. Fantastic. Is two eight good enough? And unless, if you're really leaning all into what that card can do to get the maximum two eight out of it, you're still debating, is it the 13th card in the deck? And that's where I think Ezekiel Sims kind of lands simultaneously. I think this ends up being something that you look at like, okay, you wanna have these synergies, you wanna look at these move synergies or these hydro stomp or synergies? Why wouldn't I just play Merlin and werewolf by night?

Alex: 48:11

Yeah, a hundred percent. This,

Guest: 48:12

It just, it doesn't compete in any way. So I, that's why I have it so low because as you said, there's a very hard cap on this and I think the hard cap is probably two eight. But more often than not, because of all of these synergy style based decks. I think that it really is gonna be the two six, and I just don't think two six moves the needle.

Alex: 48:34

Yeah. And, and the other thing, I'm almost talking myself down to 2.52, 2.5 because like I see what you're saying.'cause the other side to this is, is that like there's a good chance that this just does not move enough to work with the hydros stuper. Like you hope Silk will outperform it there. And if you have a relatively accessible card like Silk, Ezekiel Sims suddenly becomes extremely skippable because they feel like they're kind of, they're kind of, uh, they're, they're two peas in a pod, right? Yeah. They're kind of trying to accomplish the same thing to some degree. This card also, I don't see many dials on it. Like if they want a buff it, what do they do? If they buff the numbers, then it doesn't move as much, right. So I'm starting to think. Guess, I think you might be right. I'm gonna, I'm gonna reiterate down to, to 2.5. I'm gonna come with you 2.5 because you've talked me down and I think you are correct. I think there are some more challenges around Ezekiel Sims, despite the fact it's gonna be working with some good cards. I think it's gonna be those good cards that carry Ezekiel Sims in those decks.

Guest: 49:32

I'll give you a a weird situation with this card. I think it actually gets buffed if you make it a two one.

Alex: 49:41

Okay, let's go.

Guest: 49:42

Because if you think of how four cost cards in particular, look, if you're moving the Ezekiel Sims around, let's say you drop a three, A three cost card on turn three, you get it to move once, it's now a two four. Okay, great. Awesome. On turn four, that looks good. Get another movement to happen. It's a lot easier to hit that move. Okay, now you're getting a total value of two six in the old version. But if he's a two five with two moves, that's much more attainable. To get, not only to move one more time, but the value of the card is still considered good. Two five, as we just talked about with the silicon and competing for that spot. I think that this card competes better when you know you can get to two seven more consistently and I think that it's easier to get to two seven than it is in a two one version of Ezekiel Sims than it is to get to two eight. With the two two version of Ezekiel Sims. I think it's oddly above if they were to actually shave a power off of it.

Alex: 50:46

Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I think I agree with you. I think you've sold me on Ezekiel Sims also. I'm just gonna throw this out there. I have no idea who this is. I've watched the movies. I have no idea who Ezekiel Sims is. Do you know who this is? I'm like

Guest: 50:57

the worst, I'm the worst person to ask with Laura on. I I, I will say I might be in Cozy seat, but I do not have that much lore knowledge as that man. So, uh, yeah, no, sorry.

Alex: 51:07

I do know I can't help you there. I know who Spider-Man de Warez because my man that is Nicholas Cage. You tell me. Yeah, yeah. What an absolute God gamer man. And it's funny'cause I always joke, I always call, uh, people always comment to my videos every time I see Luke Cage, I call him Nicholas Cage, uh, or Nick Cage. I always joke like that. And it's funny'cause there is some history there about why Nicholas Cha, uh, Nicholas Cage chose his stage name to be Nicholas Cage. That's a whole other conversation for another day. But we do have Spider-Man noir. Which is a Series five card releasing on November 18th guest. And this card got a massive buff from the data mines. Now I'm not a big data mine, you know, uh, person, but I do know this was at a four four originally. I believe now it's coming out as a four six, a two point power buff coming into the release. I'm just gonna throw it there. I think this card might have, uh, been a little poo poo in testing, but what I will tell you is it's a complicated card, one of the more complicated cards we've had in a while. It's a four six that reads on reveal. If your other cards in play cost exactly eight total. Add the top card of your deck here. Set its power to eight as a zero eight. Dude. Uh, this is a weird one. This is like some magic, the gathering style text. I'll give you the floor. What are your thoughts and star rating? So on initial look

Guest: 52:27

of the card, you go, ha. And then you sit down and you start to really analyze, okay, what can get you to a total of eight costs to work with, right? Especially if you're trying to curve this out. This is not Azabu style card. You're not looking to ramp this thing out. This is a turn four or later card. And more often than not, you're struggling with the mindset that this is a turn for or later card, because the later it goes, the chances are the more cards you have on the board, which means you might not be able to get the effect to potentially happen. But when you surf factoring in cards like Mysterio that are putting down multiple two cost cards or squirrel girl that are putting three one cost cards down, then you start to see the power potential of what Spiderman noir wants to do. I think this card actually is secretly one of the better cards of the month with a little bit of. Finesse. It's gonna take some real deck building challenges to organize it. But I, I throw this to you, right? You throw down a squirrel girl'cause you pull it on the opening hand, great. That's three out of the eight you, you qualify with right off the bat. You have a domino in the deck. So it's a guaranteed two. Awesome. Now you're up to five. Any three cost card. Then afterwards that's gotta feel good because now you're hitting this on curve. So the only thing you're really looking to do is trying to figure out how do you get to a easiest. And I think there are two ways to do that. One of them is squirrel girl into domino. Because if you're building a loaded three cost deck anyway, foreshadowing, I think this card has a lot of value. The other way is still domino in just any style of Surfer deck because then you're going domino into, into three cost card, into three cost card. So by playing this on turn five. You're getting a free card to drop down also outta the boar, uh, outta your deck. And it's increasing its power to eight by setting the power to eight. So it's almost like an alternative version of playing Sarah Surfer because you could play Sarah in the deck and Domino in the deck and then load everything else with three cost cards, and the deck runs itself. Either you get Sarah down on five to get you three, three cost cards, or you play Spider-Man Noir, which plays a free three cost card on turn five, and then you just play two others. So you hit the same goal, just two very different ways, and I think that's kind of the direction you start to want to build into with this card. But is it actually worth all of that investment into a deck? Just to get a free card onto the board and have its power set to eight. That's why I think it got buffed to a four six because now I feel like it could be justified in that space.

Alex: 55:24

We touch on a couple key things together here and I think one of them is gonna be that this is a lot of hoops to jump through. Yes. A lot of hoops to jump through. And one thing that I think that is not being mentioned here is the fact that like you're doing all that with Squirrel Girl and Domino and then your location three is Monster Island and you're cooked. And suddenly that's gonna happen too. The amount of locations that add junk to the board is gonna absolutely just piss you off. If you thought playing Cerebro was annoying. This is also gonna be pretty annoying for that exact reason. Right. There's some cool things you can do. Like I thought about, okay, what are things like, you know, debris technically adds rocks and accounts for five and, but like what happens? You're designing these decks with squirrel girl. Squirrel girl and debris and all this stuff. And then like, oh, you get the zero eight come down and it's just a zero eight debris on turn five or six. You're like, okay, cool. I guess, you know what I mean? It's like, what does the deck look like? You can't control your draws, you can't control the shape of the deck. You can't control what's on the top. So it's like, I don't know, man. It's a lot of hoops to jump through for what could potentially be you. You have zero eight in Ironman. That's sick. You take that all day long, right? But you're probably gonna zero two. I mean actually zero two sinisters pretty good. Hmm. Nevermind.

Guest: 56:32

Okay. Yeah, sin, sin is good. It's one of the good ones. But you also have to look at the card backwards, like what happens when you have too much? That's Monster Island scenario. Then you've got cards like venom, which can actually reduce the total power, uh, sorry, the total costs that are on the board. So you had that monster, and then one cost card here, one cost card here, and now you're sitting at way too much to make the effect work. Go ahead and just venom the whole thing. And you bring that whole lane down to three. So there is a plus and minus effect in here. So maybe there's some kind of destroy synergies. You know, you look at misery decks. Misery decks very often only have two or three cards on the board by the time you get the misery down on four and you've got all of the power in your hand. Then play the Spider-Man noir plus demons and all that kind of fun stuff. And that's where I think we start kind of experimenting with Spider-Man noir, which is why I think it's with a little finesse, probably one of the secretly better cards, but probably the most difficult card of the season simultaneously. So this is a card I do not expect to see good numbers on, on, you know, your favorite tracking service. But I do think that. In higher ELO, somebody's gonna break this card and it's gonna be really difficult to keep up with. So I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give it a three. I think it because it's right in the middle of I-E-E-L-O breaking it being just a straight up, like insanely busted card and then the entire rest of the field with myself included in there going, uh, this is just too much work.

Alex: 58:08

This is a good chance that someone cooks something absolutely disgusting with it. I absolutely agree. Yeah. And it's also the type of card where, you know, over time like as more cards get released and like there's gonna be other cards that add things to the field of play that might make this condition much easier to accomplish. So yeah. Spider-Man tomorrow definitely an interesting one. We're gonna have to keep the eye on that one. It's gonna be an interesting deck building week. Every once in a while we get a deck building week. Mm-hmm. You're just like, what am I gonna do with this thing? And I think the Spider-Man Noir is gonna be one of those for, uh, yeah, for me, the next card is probably one of the most anticipated cards of the season. We have the Prowler coming out on November 25th. You gotta wait all the way to the end of the year end of the season there. But this is an absolute banger guest. The Prowler is a three four that reads on reveal. Add two thief's tools to your hand set their cost to zero. If a card moved last turn, and to answer the question, I'm sure you already have off the top of your head, what are these tools you speak of? One is called Vio Shock Gauntlets, and it is a one costed skill that reads on reveal. Give your highest power card here, plus two power. You get plus one energy. Next turn, you also have Remote Minds, which is a one costed skill that reads on Reveal Afflict the two highest power enemy cards here with negative two power. Finally, you have the flight harness, which reads as a one costed skill on reveal. Give your highest power card here, plus one power and move it to the right guest. What are your thoughts on Prowler?

Guest: 59:46

This is one of the most anticipated cards of the season. Hands down. I think, you know, people are excited for the combination of the character as well as the combination of what it actually does. I think this is probably going to be the best release of the season. Because of what those skills present, which is the ability to be free and the amount of power that organically can come from this single card. With all of these thiefs tools and all of the triggers that can happen because of free skills. This card is going to be ridiculously strong.'cause you look at like what Merlin, we talked about it earlier in me earlier Merlin and uh, werewolf by night right now. Okay. Really good synergy. You're seeing it pop up in a lot of decks. Hoard, for example, wants to take advantage of that. Here, let me just give you some free skills that will organically happen because werewolf is going all over the place. This is just so much power for three potential costs and it's so easy to move things across the board. So let me give you two more skills for free and then really go crazy with that. We're not even looking at doing shenanigans with Hit Monkey, which comes in and outta the meta at different times. But this is another one where you've got free cards to drop on turn six with Hit Monkey, yet alone. If you're also doing that with werewolf by night at the same time, like there's so much power that's gonna come from the, not from the skills themselves, but from what the skills will enable, because they will be free. That's where the power of this card is. This is my, as we, we say it as well, the diamond card of the month, the five star card of the month. This is going to be the top performer of the month by a long shot, in my opinion.

Alex: 1:01:50

I love this card. I'm giving it a 4.5. So you're coming in at a, at a five essentially. This is a fantastic card. Just gonna throw it out there. Another Ezekiel Sims card for the record because Ezekiel Sims will allow it to move immediately and make those skills free. And then on turn four, you could literally just werewolf by night and then start going boom, boom, boom, boom. He's bouncing around. Yeah. He's loving life. Right? Yeah, I absolutely agree. The Merlin werewolf by night shells is where the sky's gonna go. Does, uh, does Ezekiel Sims wanna be in a werewolf by night deck? That's the question. I don't, probably not. That's the problem we got. But anyways, long story short, I absolutely agree this card is fantastic and it is a gonna be a universally awesome card, which I feel like it has moved synergy. But also if you're just a player that's like, I just want a cool card to play because, you know, I'm just collecting stuff willy nilly, you know, I'm free to play whatever. This is something worth getting with tokens. If you're like, I got six K tokens sitting here, they're burning a hole in my pocket. I want something cool. This is not necessarily like a card that has to be in the decks with the spider verse and all this stuff. It does not have to be in a,'cause Horde last season was very much like, you gotta be in, you know what I mean? You gotta be in for the horde. Mm-hmm. With prouder, I think you look at this and be like. I just wanna play the power prowler, you know what I mean? Yeah. And that's absolutely fine. Um, and obviously it's very analogous to, um, you know, uh, not, I was gonna say Hope Summers Kate Bishop. Right. Kate Bishop's adding a lot to that, but there's added consistency here. There's three, three skills and you're getting two of'em, man. So yeah, like there's a little bit more consistency. Like if you're, like, if you're playing affliction, just like Hope Summers not Hope Summers, like, why do I keep doing that? Just like when you're playing Keith Bishop, you'll play her in a clog shell for that chance to get the acid arrow. If you're playing affliction, you could legit consider playing, you know this'cause like, you're gonna be getting stuff like remote minds most of the time, 66% of the time. Yeah. Whatever. That might be bad math, but you know what I mean. Right. You're getting roll lines often. You're on. Yeah, I'm on point. Thank you. I just throw, we don't do math on my channel, right. We just, we just go with the feel sometimes. You know what I mean? Yeah. But anyways, long story short, I I do agree. Dude. This is gonna be a good card.

Guest: 1:03:54

Yeah. I think that we also look at a card like Nico Manure. Which allows a lot of flexibility and we see people plug and play Merlin because of that flexibility. This fills that same void. Yeah, but at free cost. So I expect this to be something that actually makes really good shells, like Wiccan shells right now that are playing speed. I think they play this instead. I think this replaces that because of the total value that you get outta that card. And the only thing you're really trying to integrate at some point is some small move.'cause all you need is one. And Sam Wilson already provides that organically with him being in a billion different decks anyway too. So throw it into a Sam Wilson deck. No problem. I think the werewolf by night you were asking like, does Ezekiel Sims fit with all of this? And the, I don't think it's that. I think this plus Patrick. Is where you end up actually going because you could just drop that down on turn one and then just wait, and then all of the chaos ensues afterwards. I think that this is such a plug and play card that if you only had one place to use your tokens the entire month, this is where you would use your tokens because it will be used, like you said in affliction decks. You'll be able to move it in, move decks. You'll be able to do it in lockdown decks. You'll be able to do it in so many different places. And I really do think that it's just incredibly strong because of that. So do not sleep on this card. It is flexible, it is powerful, and something that you should be targeting towards the end of the month.

Alex: 1:05:29

Alright, guest and now we're on to Hydro Man. The sanctum series four card releasing where you'll be able to kind of unlock it from November 24th to December 1st. I'm gonna come into three stars on Hydro Man. Um, maybe I should read what he does first. I'm kind of jumping the gun here. It's fine. Five eight. He's a five eight hydro man on Reveal. Set the cost of each Dex Top card to one. Now the thing I like about this card and uh, I mean, I don't think this is like an amazing carb by any means. I think it's gonna, it's a series four corrects. I think it's gonna be a little more niche and maybe less exciting. I just wanna throw it out there. Uh, Mobius and Mobius. Pretty decent tech card and it will not allow your opponent's card to get discounted. So there it is. That's probably Wait, wait. Oh, wait. Guess has something he wants to say here? He gave me the, wait a minute, Alex, there's more. Oh yeah.

Guest: 1:06:16

Oh yeah. No, no, no, no, no. You don't have to worry about that. You, Mobius will not even be a problem with this card because there's another card that will actually prevent it from being a problem whatsoever. Black widow.

Alex: 1:06:28

Oh, I never thought of that. You're cooking.

Guest: 1:06:31

Block'em. That's awful.

Alex: 1:06:32

That's so

Guest: 1:06:32

rude. I know it's rude and hate, that's how dare you hate that. I thought of it too, but yeah, it's just awful. When you think of dropping a Hydra man on turn five, then activate your black widow so they don't draw the one cost card only. You do. So Mobius, he can do whatever he's gotta do. That's fine.

Alex: 1:06:53

Damn, that's such a good idea. And if you have Mobius, then Mobius out anyway. You can be like, I. Do I just activate this widow first anyways?'cause there might be cooked regardless, or do you save it for that last turn? Yeah, it's a good call, man. It's a good call. Yeah, because I, I immediately, my head went to Moby Sam. Moby, it's just like making their life miserable, right? Yeah. But also, here's an interesting thing. This could be, is this a ramp card? Could you ramp with this? You know, is this something you wanna ramp to or not really? I'm just, I'm just coping. I think this is a weaker card. I'm coping a bit,

Guest: 1:07:22

not it, it's not a card you wanna necessarily ramp if you don't have to worry about the fact that on the same turn you just go, okay, hydro man on five man spider one cost card on turn six. And now that hydro man just turned into a five 18 essentially and moved to the power to a different lane, which is one of your favorite parts of Man Spider. So I actually like hydro man in that shell. I also like hydro man in Dark Hawk. Because you're already pumping your opponent's deck full of rocks. So what if you turned a rock into a one cost card? Chances are you probably are doing that organically. So if you can mitigate that by not doing the Mobius stuff, there's actually some cool things you can do with hydro man and also what it enables you long term like sunspot because you might be saving energy on the final turn because you got a card for cheap. Okay, so let's turn that reduced power, sorry, reduced cost for you into power for you. Or things like Elsa Bloodstone because now you have more cards you can drop on the final turn, Coline get some extra power. Like there are actually, I think gonna be some surprise surprising members of the community who look at this card and figure out cool things to do with it. But for me, I think the Black Widow synergy and the Manin synergy actually make this card worthwhile in about a three and a half stars in my opinion. Yeah.

Alex: 1:08:43

Ooh, damn. Nice. So I'm glad we're kind of in agreement that the card's probably not terrible or anything like that, which I think a lot of people were kind of thinking it would be. I was trying to figure out, I'm gonna this, okay. The deck that I kinda want to try to figure out is, can I figure out a, a mill deck where I play this with an extra energy? Like you have Superior Spiderman out, so turn five you have six energy. You play Hydro man into du and you just, you just pump the, you banish the card. There you go. Like,'cause it's probably gonna be the cheapest card in their deck, likely, right? Yeah. So you discount it that then you just pump it. It's interesting. No, or if you mill them, they don't, don't even have it. Yeah.

Guest: 1:09:18

I hadn't thought of mill with that as a way to, to mitigate that downside, but I actually really like that.

Alex: 1:09:26

Yeah. I was thinking like, you, you need the extra energy, but like we have literally superior Spider-Man. Like why not play something that gives you extra energy at some point? And then as soon as you have a green card superior, Spider-Man's just giving you energy. Right. You don't have to keep playing. You know, as long as they don't get like Shadow King, he's gonna give you that extra energy. And then oh, discounted card. Boom. See you later bud. And they retreat.

Guest: 1:09:48

Yeah, there's probably some like weird cheeky things too that happen with Pixie because of this card. I think there's some cheeky things that might be able to happen, you know, manipulating some blink things like, I it's a cook card, which is why I'm actually very interested in it.

Alex: 1:10:05

It kind of like reminds me of like Nomura where like there might just be like the one deck, like, oh, this is the hydro man mill deck, or the hydro man whatever deck. Mm-hmm. Where like, it's kind of a bit of a one trick, but it's doing the thing. You know what I mean? So I'm not completely, uh, I'm not completely down on hydro man. I'm, I'm kind of feeling it to be honest with you. Now we get into some actual bangers. Now we're onto the series four section of our conversation. This is Oh yeah. A long pod, my man. Uh, hopefully you got your energy, but, um. Hold on here. Web sling is what we're gonna start with. This is a one costed skill. The the art should be more indicative that it's a skill. I do apologize. It's a one costed skill on reveal. Next turn. You can move one of your cards away from here. Uh, this is also gonna be available on November 4th. I think this is a good card. It's basically like Mme. Webb in skill form. But guess before I kind of pumped through all the synergies I was thinking about. Why don't you gimme your initial star rating on Web Sling.

Guest: 1:11:01

This is just straight up. Good. I think that all of the reasons you like playing Mme. Webb is why you also like playing web slang. Except you only are limiting yourself to one cost. Make it happen one time on one specific turn. And I look at the power of hoard right now, which is really good. And you're wanting to pump up the Zombie Scarlet Witch. This card likes that. It's obvious in move because you could just move cards around as needed. Sure, of course. But outside of that, then you're looking at cards. Even C3 kind of contemplates on these kinds of things, like you saw with the Madame Web piece and people are playing these multiple man C3 style decks. This might be a nice alternative because it's cheaper and it fits the deck better because of it. I think there's, uh, gonna be about a billion different homes for this card. Like you think of how we look at vision and any of these single move or multiple move cards and you think, yeah, this is gonna be strong. So as a one cost, make anything potentially move once. And you could even use it as a ju just like, Hey, yeah, something's gonna move away from here. Nope. That's gotta be good. So this is probably a, uh, I don't know if I'd say a four star skill. I, and I'm, I'm leaning towards it just because it's so flexible,

Alex: 1:12:20

yeah. I was in the three, three and a half, four star range. Um, yeah, the concern I have is that like you, you still only get 12 cards in a deck, right? And Madame Webb still allows like the, I get to just do my thing till you red guardian me, or you cord me or whatever. By chord, I mean deafening chord, which is, we're gonna talk soon. So like, I do think Web Sling has like that limited side to it, but it's very cheap. Again, if you're playing superior spi, uh, superior Spider-Man, you got that extra energy, you can just slide it into the, to the rotation. Right. Which I think is kind of cool. But at the end of the day, something I wanna mention is that move also often struggles with space, right? Like you occupy too much space on the board sometimes with Move and this, it just finishes. So the space is kind of, uh, kind of left available for all your gans you want to do. Now, you, you talked about Juking. I'm gonna reveal something you guys wanna know. Deck I'm working on for this card. Okay, because it's coming out next week. So I was trying to cook with it a little bit. I don't have the whole list ready, but I wanna use Galactus with it. I want to put Symbiote Spider-Man in a location. I wanna web sil the Symbi Spider-Man and move him to one of two other locations and drop G-Man. So they can't predict where G Man's gonna be because this will move the Symbiote. Symbis gonna, a g Man's gonna come down and activate, boom, get wrecked, and no one's gonna see it coming.'cause isn't bro playing a move deck. What is this?

Guest: 1:13:36

I'm gonna help you on that journey because I had a similar thought with Galactus. Let's go. Great Mind's thinking alike. Turn five. You just do this plus Shuri and then slide out the Shuri and play the Galactus right there. So it's an alternate play line.

Alex: 1:13:55

Sure. Simultaneously, sure. He has to go after this though. Or else you could cook yourself.

Guest: 1:13:59

Yeah. You, you know what I meant? Yeah. So this quiet, quiet this. Then Sheri quiet it, it's my first day. But even if you had the, the Symbio Spider-Man play, you could make that double rock happen. Do the Symbiote Spider-Man into those two. Into now a What is that? That's a 20 power Galactus on that turn.

Alex: 1:14:21

I like this. I actually didn't think about Surey because I obviously Surey and Galactus they don't really, they don't go hand in hand. Dude, that's a great idea. Thank you. Boom. Another card in that deck I'm still working on. There you go, buddy. We're cooking. We're cooking here on the Snapchat. I love it. We're seeing a lot. We're just chefs now. We need chef hats. We had our, uh, our tinfoil hats. Now we need the chef's hats, of course. Um, but yeah, I think that webs swing's gonna be a good one. And it, it's thematically makes a lot of sense in the season. Here's another card. I have no idea who the hell chameleon is, but here we are chameleon A three three on reveal, copy the text of another card here. You revealed this turn seems really good, but also like, man, what? Like a lot of restrictions here. You gotta play it here. It has to be played on the same turn. So this is gonna cost three. And then you have a limited amount of range you could play with. I'm feeling like this is a two, maybe three star car. But the thing is, is that like I see some really good plays too. So like I kind of wanna lean on the three sides three star side. Like I wanna cope with Surfer with this.'cause you can like this then Surfer, you know what I mean? You could do some really cool stuff with it and like that's cool because you don't, like, if you wanted to double pro the Surfer, you used to have to have like. Cope Summers, you play into that on turn five, then you do like the absorbing man type thing or you know, obviously you have the uh, the Silver Surfer First Steps, which I mean you could also try to combo this Silver Surfer First Steps into Silver Surfer, into Chameleon and like you're cooking, right. It's kind of interesting, but like, I don't know if that's enough for this card. So I've already talked too much. I say, I always say like, oh, I don't wanna just blow up all the surgeries. I just went through like a whole bunch of No, no, you're good. But yeah, I'm excited. I kind of actually really wanna play Chameleon, but I'm not convinced it's actually great. I'm gonna go three stars simply because like I'm very ho hum about it still. And it's still so, it's actually not that far away. It's actually November 11th, to be honest with you. It's a series four card. So, yeah. What are your thoughts?

Guest: 1:16:04

I think that this card, I think you're on the right track with the Surfer stuff.'cause the synergy that I have with this card is very similar. So I'm looking at Surfer, I'm looking at Silver Surfer First Steps. I'm looking at multiple pros.'cause then you've got chameleon involved and then maybe throw in Prodigy into that deck as well because. If you get the timing and the alternate builds right with this too, you could even do Surfer and then put the prodigy behind it and have chameleon copy something else like brood, on turn six because you've got these delay mechanics.'cause you played something like a super giant and then you're playing the Surfer behind it on turn five. Like there's some crazy cheeky things in there. But the two big ones that jumped out to me outside of Cerebro three, which I think this ends up being a must have and replaces mystique because you're playing it for the exact same reason you're playing it after the cerebro on turn six. More often than not, I like this in Victoria hand because you can play this with the hood on turn four, destroy both and do all of those shenanigans. And, and it's just another free, easy card to create. And you can do it in a different lane with positive power so you don't have to worry about the destructions similar to how you play the Fri like synergies. You kind of look at Chameleon the same way, but then also Machine Gun Gambit really likes this as an alternate play without needing an energy ramp. Because a lot of machine gun gambit decks are contingent on, can I get to Seven Energy also on the final turn, whether it's magic or I have a ramp piece in place like Luna Snow, and then you're looking to do that plus absorbing, man, this just made that so much easier to do. So now you don't even have to worry about the energy ramp. You could just play Chameleon instead and after Gambit, and then just get all of that craziness and just delete the entire board. So those are, I know that one's more of a fun, exotic style build, but I think Victoria Hand actually sees chameleon decks more than anything else.

Alex: 1:18:03

Very interesting. You obviously came very prepared with Chameleon. We're gonna have to check out the, uh, the guest gaming video on Chameleon. Yeah, dude, that's, that's awesome. I was thinking like, I'm not sure what it looks like yet'cause I haven't quite cooked enough with this card. I, I'm all in on the Surfer side and I was trying to figure out other stuff too. I, I never like coming into a week for a new card with one deck. I like coming in that with at least like three or four.'cause if something's not going right, I like being prepared. I'm definitely gonna be playing this in Surfer a hundred percent. But I was trying to think about like, could Chameleon be really effective in something like Affliction because you could copy hazmat if you need to. Yeah, it's pretty cool alongside Agent Venom, right? Because Agent Venom's gonna gonna give you a free card. You can kind of slide into the, a combo with, with Chameleon in some way. So I was trying to figure out like how Affliction could use this card. Haven't quite figured that out yet. Check back on November 11th. Think, but I'm just gonna throw that out there. I think Affliction could have some to place here. Diamond back. Oh yeah, diamond back too. Yeah, exactly. But you're in, but you're in one location. Do you really need to double pump Diamondback? It's like, it might be too much. I wonder if this card underperforms get rid of the, it's here part, or is that just too broken?

Guest: 1:19:08

That's probably too broken considering it's just better absorbing man slash mystique slash everything at that point. Because remember, this is one's not a design This Beyond Reveal. No, no, but it's like, it's copy the text. So this is taking the advantage of Prodigy, copy the text of the card in front of it and it needs to have some kind of restriction if you're taking a full on ability and then replicating it in that moment. If you have a, like I was trying to think of some weird kind of cheeky plays with, you know. Thinking about Lumia and how that works in the game with the delayed release and it's this turn. And I was like, oh, maybe there's something here with Invisible Woman. But then I remembered that's end of game, that's not end of turn. So it's not gonna do the effect the way that you would want it to, but there's gotta be something in that vein that really makes Chameleon broken. But I think right now this is just straight up a Surfer card of all Surfer cards.

Alex: 1:20:04

Yeah. Okay. Another reason they're gonna wanna cook, man, listen, there's a lot of cooking happening this season. I'm excited for it now. A card that's not gonna need much cooking, but honestly I think it's just fantastic. Deafening cord is could, man. It's, this is just a prototypal solid card. I'm coming at 4.5, like, I actually think like this is a very good card. We've got a lot of bangers. Honestly, it's coming out on November 20th into series four. It's just an incredibly good skill. It's red Guardian without the space being occupied. It's great. I should actually read what it's, it's a one cost skill that reads on reveal afflict the enemy character here that costs three or less with negative one power and remove its text. So it's literally cheap red guardian with no body. Yep. But it won't hit Draculas. It has a much more narrow range, but still it, it's got a lot of good things to hit. Bullseye, mors, uh, triple S like we just talked about before. Specifically though, I know I'm steal some thunder here. We taught one before Nicholas Cage and by Nicholas Cage. I mean, Luke Cage gets cooked by a deafening cord. So that might be valuable for all the gamers out there that want to be bouncing spider punks around.

Guest: 1:21:17

Yeah, I mean, yes and no because I think it also depends on if you're aiming to hit the loop cage, because if you can remove the text and have it hit the loop cage, then that's just a win scenario. I think when you're deck building with this card, you have to ask yourself similar to what we were talking about with the superior Spider-Man, there are cases for certain cards. This card has a very similar effect to Red Guardian. And whenever you think Red Guardian, you will also think cosmic ghost writer. So what is the purpose of the one cost skill? What's the benefit of it versus a three, two red guardian versus a five seven cosmic ghost writer?'cause they're all removing text. And I also think that in the future this kind of opens up the door to some kind of card that Reen enables text. But that's a conversation for a different cocktail. I think that this card. Is meant to be a board more than anything else, a board clearer. It's meant to keep that space open and your downside to it is that it's taking a slot in the 12 slots that you get from the deck. So you have to capitalize on it with other mechanisms, whether it's the hoards, whether it's the werewolf by night, whether it's this card has to lean into those synergies to get more value out of it. Otherwise, the other bodies make a lot more sense to play more often than not because of the flexibility of what those cards do. And they hit a wider range of, of cards like you talked about. The Dracula synergy of discard is too apparent. You're gonna wanna play a red guardian over this more often than not. But when you're in a season of moving and needing a bunch of board space regularly, this card has a lot more value to it. So I think it is a great card. I think it's at least a four star card, probably 4.5, but it's always tough to tell because it's a skill. That's the hardest sell for me as to why I think it's stuck at four is because it's taking that slot outta your deck.

Alex: 1:23:15

Yeah, of course. And like we, we mentioned it before and you just mentioned it now, like, but if you're playing this in move, move needs to keep space at a premium, right? Like you don't wanna occupy a, a deck slot and an actual physical slot on the board with a red guardian. This is kind of cool for that. I think this could be potentially very good in the werewolf by nice shells we were talking about before, right? This is another really good piece to have something moving on Reveal as well. Now when you try to answer the question like, well, when do you play this versus, you know, cosmic ghost rider and stuff like that, that's a difficult question to answer. However, when you're playing cosmic ghost rider, you're committing to a turn this year could be snuck in, right? We talked about superior Spider-Man the entire time. That one x energy, you got the miles morales down seemingly for free. You're going at turn six, you have seven energy. You do this. Then you heim doll, and all of a sudden it's like, whoa, you did way more than you expected. Oh, you turned off their bullseye and then heim, dolled. You know what I mean? Like there's chances, yeah. To just slide this in where they don't expect it. Whereas like Red Guardian is a commitment on turn three or four, it's Cosmo ghost Rider's a commitment on five or six. This could just be snuck in. And that's kind of where I think it's powerful. I

Guest: 1:24:17

think it I'm gonna throw a question to you then, because we talked about deafening cord specifically earlier. We talked about web sling and we also talked about prowler. Does that mean with the release of these five extra skills that'll be accessible to any player at any given point, we can finally consider Nicholas scratch as a regular possibility again.

Alex: 1:24:37

Dude, how much have you drank today? That's crazy. The actual answer is to me, well this was fun. Thanks that honestly. Like do you make a deck with like aga, moto Nicholas scratch and just cope right up or what? Like I could see it potentially maybe working. I mean, you're not crazy Merlin in there. Because there's a a

Guest: 1:24:57

lot of one cost skills and that's one of the things that card in particular wants is one cost skills.'cause if you play scratch in a Merlin deck, okay sure that's nice, but you're looking at a lot trying to benefit as much power as possible. So just this plus Nicholas scratch alone might have something in and of itself'cause it's two power you're committing, but you're also getting five plus out of the energy. So that's a good energy to, to power ratio.

Alex: 1:25:25

Nicholas Scratch is the green power for Superior Spider-Man. We're cooking. I don't know. I like the way you think, but if you've done it, if you've made the Nicholas scratch the meta card for November, 2025, kudos to you, sir. Now what we gotta do here before we both block out from talking too long in front of lights that honestly are surprisingly hot today. I don't know what it is. I don't know. I think my wife's running in the heat and like my lights are getting hot and I'm just like wearing a nice woolly shirt and I mean this whole conversation has been spicy. It makes sense. This is true. This is very true. We have a single mailbag statement that I just wanted to read to you because we did have the Grand Arena, which was awesome. Grand Arena with lots of its new pre-made decks, which I'm a huge fan of. Still think that pre-made versus pre-made matchmaking would be cool, even if maybe it gets a little dull at the end of it. But I do think pre-made versus pre-made ISS kind of cool, which is kind of what I've been experiencing to be honest with you. But there's been questions about like hulking, why is hulking being discounted with the Hulk deck, which is by far, I think the best one. Andrew Poirier did. State Hulking is a Cree scroll mix. Son of Captain Marvell and Scroll Princess Anelle. So not even remotely a Hulk Scar is the son of Hulk and Kayra and definitely a Hulk. This makes perfect sense. And also I feel like, we gotta get the lo right if we're gonna do the lo right. We gotta do it right. Damnit, don't be discounting hulking. But I will say, man, hulking Hass actually been lowkey super fun in that mode. Like I'm not a hulking believer. Yes. But I'm actually starting to come around to it. And that's, that's the beautiful thing about the mode too. It's like they'll say you've never played hulking.'cause you're like, I don't wanna spend six K on that. And you play like a, these pre-made decks that give you all the cards and you're like, bro Huling actually like was a G-Man or was a You go out, you spend your tokens. I think it's so valuable. I think they need to bring back Grand Arena and thank you to whoever at second inner chose to make pre-made accessible decks. You're the real MV.

Guest: 1:27:23

I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna continue the train of, maybe I had too much before recording the podcast here, but next time Grand Arena comes on down, do not sleep on Zombie The Lac die in that game mode. It was stupid fun, and the only way I had fun with that card because you had all that extra energy just throwing it out there. Not when you're trying to climb, not when you're trying to be serious, when you're trying to really have fun in Grand Arena. Zombie Galata is a fun card. It's sad that it was really bad, but in that game mode,

Alex: 1:27:56

it was stupid fun. Actually, on that note, like that game mode, one of the things I like most about, first of all, the aesthetic, I think they really nailed. I think that the, like the champion, everything about that mode I think was awesome. I think they really cooked. Um, and I, I suspect that feels like definitely Glen cooked on that. That feels like Glen. Yeah. Put his, uh, put his mind to work on creating that mode. It definitely shows, uh, what I will say is I think the major factor in that game mode is, is the extra energy. That one extra natural energy, it makes the game feel totally different. It really does. It actually kind of advances the speed of the game to some degree. Now, I'm not a huge fan of like one drops feeling borderline irrelevant in it. Not, I don't wanna say irrelevant, you know what I mean? Like, it's kinda, you know, one drop what you do, but like it kind of advances that end of it. What you can do on turn six. It's just way, way different. And so, yeah, I'm a huge fan of it. I love Grand Arena. Just like I loved this podcast and I love guest gaming. And you know what, I think you're gonna love guest gaming too. So what I'm gonna do is in the pin comment, in the description and everywhere I possibly can, I'm gonna leave the socials, the channels, the streams, everything where you can find it's guest gaming. This guy, I'm not just saying it'cause he's here. I'll say it to anyone that asks me one of the hardest working dudes in Marvel Snap. What you see, what you don't see. This guy is an absolute champion. He's doing amazing things for Marvel Snap and this community, whether it's the Golden Gauntlet speaking up for your best interest in the Creator Discord, this guy's got your back. All the links are down in the description. Guest, it was wonderful having you today.

Guest: 1:29:21

Thank you. Thank you so much for the kind words. Thanks for, making this happen. It's been an absolute pleasure to be here. You guys don't realize how much conversation Alex has behind the scenes in the Marvel Snap scene and trying to defend you all just as much and speak up for the community. You hear it on the streams, you hear it in the other end, but I can tell you from behind the scenes just as much. So what is what you get with that man, and it's been an absolute pleasure to be here to chat with you today about all this.

Alex: 1:29:47

Thank you so much, dude. That means a lot to me. And uh, guys, you know where you're gonna be on Saturday, you'll be watching the Golden Gauntlet. Thanks you so much for joining us this week, and we'll see you on that next one.