Man-Spider Madness & Spider-Punk Review | Vision Buffed & Full OTA Breakdown | The Snap Chat Ep. 156

What insights did RegisKillbin get from casting the Golden Gauntlet? Is the new Man-Spider a meta-breaker or just a Shang-Chi magnet? Why did Vision, M'Baku, and Hydro Stomper get major buffs in the latest OTA? Join Alex Coccia and special guest RegisKillbin 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
• 0:50 Regis' First Casting Experience
• 1:57 Golden Gauntlet Highlights
• 4:30 Marvel Snap Community and Content Creation
• 8:16 OTA Updates and Card Changes
• 8:41 Debris and Move Decks Discussion
• 13:50 Vision Buff and Nostalgia
• 20:08 M'Baku Buff and Misery Nerf
• 23:45 Cosmic Ghost Rider and First Ghost Rider
• 26:19 Spider Punk and Move Decks
• 31:46 Man-Spider and Big Numbers
• 38:27 The Subjectivity of Video Games
• 39:02 Game Development Insights
• 39:36 Marvel Snap Ranked Ladder Discussion
• 42:22 Project Sky Shard Shoutout
• 43:16 Superior Spider-Man Card Review
• 49:56 Ezekiel Sims and Madame Web
• 1:03:18 Chameleon Card Analysis
• 1:16:38 Concluding Thoughts and Farewell

Transcript

Alex: 0:00

Hey everyone, and welcome to the next edition of the Snapchat. I'm joined today by one of my absolute favorite content creators in Marvel Snap. Regis I am a legitimate fan of yours, and it is about damn time we had you back on the Snapchat. How are you my man?

Regis: 0:14

Hey, thanks man. I'm, I'm doing good. I'm a fan of yours too. I think you might don't tell anybody else, but you might be my favorite Marvel Snap YouTuber except for myself.

Alex: 0:23

Know what's crazy. You're favorite. I'm

Regis: 0:24

obviously

Alex: 0:24

one. Snap YouTuber.

Regis: 0:27

We, we make a good pair then, I guess. That's nice.

Alex: 0:29

I, I think so. I think so. Listen, man, I think for the longest time you have been producing some of the absolute best content in Marvel Snap. Not just the quality of the decks, the quality of the presentation. I love your commentary. I love the way you incorporate losses, not only just for entertainment, but you, for like the actual educational factor. I like the way you do your content, but you added a new thing to your repertoire this weekend.

Regis: 0:56

Oh.

Alex: 0:57

You casted for the first time you cast, you hosted the opening ceremonies of the Golden Gauntlet, and, uh, I watched you did a fantastic job. How was that, uh, as a first time experience?

Regis: 1:09

Oh, thanks. Yeah. Uh, it was actually really fun. I somehow, I've been doing this, this whole job for like 10 years now. More than 10 years, and I've never actually like casted a eSports event of any kind, like a competitive event. I've done a few random little hosting things here and there, but, so I was like actually legit nervous despite, you know, doing this for a long, long time, or at least I started nervous. But once I got into it, it was actually pretty easy, but it was awesome. I mean, it was like the world finals or whatever, so pretty big. Uh, it felt like a cool moment to join in and, and be a part of the fun. And, uh, I think it went fairly well. It seemed like the reception was, was pretty decent. My co castor, not my dance was awesome. Helped me out a lot. Go check him out on YouTube too. He's got a cool channel, but, uh, yeah, it was, it was great. I think it was a fun event and saw some really cool Marvel Snap action too.

Alex: 1:57

Yeah. Not only was it a fun event, but it was also like a cool event to watch and like you saw like a lot of very interesting decks doing well. Some of the ones that people would've expected to like crush the event didn't necessarily do that. We did get some, some move into the top eight and top four and stuff like that, but the eventual winner might've been something that surprised a lot of people, right? You get a Cerebro deck closing it out as a C3, like that's absolutely nuts. Not even like C four utilizing the likes of like, you know, shadow King or anything. It was C3 that ended up taking it. I spoiled my apologies, but I'm sure you've already seen it posted absolutely everywhere. Yeah. But I love those types of events because like the last prior one you had a cons deck, like literally borderline a budget cons deck was able to kind of achieve victory and it goes to show you what a very talented pilot can do with pretty much any deck. So what I think I'm gonna do is for the next Golden Gauntlet, I'm gonna take the Marvel Snap starter deck. You know the one with like Hulk Abomination and Ironman. I'm gonna take it to number one.

Regis: 2:55

You could do it. I think if anybody could do it, you could stumble your way to victory somehow. Just like good luck. Just location rolls and randomness. Yeah. It's uh, it's funny, you know, I played a Cerebro three deck this week for a video, and I was like, I hate Cerebro three. This is the worst experience I've ever had. I hate this deck. I was just really crapping on it, and then it went on to win the world championship. I was like, oh, I look like an idiot right now. I hate this. And then it just went on to win. It was like a better version than what I played. So I'll blame

Alex: 3:25

that every time I play Cerebro. Here's my experience, right? This is pretty much everyone's experience. It's like, all right, I got Cerebro Cerebral two. Let's do it. Third location after they Snap, it's Monster Island. Cool. Gigi's, I guess you know what I mean's?

Regis: 3:37

Like, it's like Dexter, like seems to love it. He's just like always playing cerebral. I hate it every time. It's never fun. It just never works. I don't, I guess I'm doing something wrong. I don't know. It's just not my

Alex: 3:49

thought. Yeah I'll be talking to like Dexter and we'll be talking about Dexter, whatever, and he'll be like, oh, you should try like C seven. I was like, no, I shouldn't. Like he'll throw something so random. Like he's, oh man, you're right. Like there's, there's connoisseurs of cerebral and I'm not one of them.

Regis: 4:06

Yeah. And the videos do terrible every time I post a cerebral video. It does awful. I have to hide the fact that it's the cerebral video in the thumbnail. Like I used to always put the helmet on characters, you know, but then the views would just tank. So now I don't do that anymore. Like you can kind of get context clues usually, but uh, it has to be a surprise or nobody will click the video. So I don't know if we're alone. I think everybody hates the rebo, except that.

Alex: 4:30

That's kind of funny'cause my view, my views have just tanked all across the board anyway, whether it's cerebral or not. The views are just gone.

Regis: 4:36

Views are just gone. That's, I've done a little better this last month or two. I was like in August or like early September, I was like, oh boy, this is getting bad. But it got a little better. So maybe things are turning around. There's hope.

Alex: 4:47

I feel like the Kid Omega situation, like completely like. Butchered views like so bad and it felt like, I guess with the cadence of the limited time game modes and honestly give second dinner credit, the generosity of the limited time game modes as well. I think that has gone a long way to better the general consensus around Marvel Snap. And um, they also had the opportunity to, uh, they had like the login bonus they gave away like a, you know, a pack for series four or five. I don't remember what it was. I think it was a series four pack, stuff like that. All those small things add up to make people feel more confident in your game and more happy with your game. And at the end of the day, Marvel Snap has a reputation for having a bad economy, an anti player economy and all that stuff. You're not gonna win that with advertisers. You're gonna win that with word of mouth and continuing along this path where you are improving the sediment of all the players and giving them a reason to log in every single day is it's gonna take time, but this is where you start gaining traction back.

Regis: 5:50

That's actually a really good insight. You can't brute force advertise your way back into people's hearts. You know, you have to get a trusted source to kind of verify it. I see that in the YouTube comments all the time. Like, Hey Regis, is it a good time to come back to Marvel Snap? And I'm like, ah, you know, it's probably the best it's been ever, maybe, but it's still not necessarily perfect yet. It's like I kind of hedge the recommendation, but I do think more people are coming back. I have a really weird anecdotal way to know that it's because, um, like I've some people have noticed I've lost a lot of weight in the last, like year and a half or so, and I've got a lot of comments lately that are like, Regis, I haven't watched one of your videos in a while. You look so much skinnier than the last time I was here. And it's like, those are people who used to watch me a year and a half ago or whatever and are now coming back to the game. So I think they're doing an okay job of like re-engaging some of those lapsed Marvel Snap players who gave up long ago, which is a good sign. I guess I, I'm sort of hopeful more than I've been in a long time.

Alex: 6:45

You know, I wasn't gonna do this live on the podcast, but I will say you do look like an absolute stud muffin, I gotta tell you. Oh,

Regis: 6:50

thanks.

Alex: 6:51

You do look phenomenal. So congratulations on all the, uh, all the success you've had doing that.

Regis: 6:56

I, uh, I was trying to keep up with you, man. Like, you look great. Like we got the glasses thing going. Like we're, we're just like the handsome studs now.

Alex: 7:03

That's right. We're just the handsome stud muffins. This is now the, uh, the stud muffin chat cast. I don't know. I can't, I was on the spot, but, uh,

Regis: 7:12

the stud chat. Yeah,

Alex: 7:13

the stud chat. That's right, that's right. So I still got some work to do though. Still some work to do, but, uh, I appreciate that, man. But, uh, listen, all I wanna say though is that it felt great to see you in a casting role. I think that you're absolutely one of the leaders of the Marvel Snap community. I think you're one of the leaders of the content creator community. I think you're one of the leaders of the card gaming community and for Marvel Snap to recognize the value you bring to an event like that by having you kind of be one of the hosts on the onset there. I think it, it. I think it's rightfully deserved, and I'm glad that they recognize that, that Regis was a guy to open that show to showcase how far these events have gone. So my man, I hope to see at another one and hopefully, hopefully maybe one day we can get you, uh, cast in the grand finals or something. Awesome. That'd be cool too.

Regis: 8:01

Yeah. Yeah. I wanna, I wanna do it with you, man. We can team up Alex and Regis, uh, casting the, the, the world champion. Could you imagine? That'd be sick, dude. That'd be

Alex: 8:09

fun. That would be fun. That will be fun. But it is a great time to be a Marvel Snap player because they have done their best. To change a couple cards that have been potentially problematic. So Regis, we're gonna get started here with the OTA that dropped here. And, uh, we're gonna see here, we got a couple tops top up. We're gonna be talking about the latest OTA when you're going through the review of all the cards that released last week. We're talking about Ezekiel Sims. We're gonna talk about Chameleon. Chameleon. Should have been on the topic list. I forgotten. Uh, Regis was kind enough to remind me that that car does actually exist and is coming out tomorrow if you're watching this on Monday. And we're also gonna do these Snapchat Mail Bay, but Regis, in the meantime, we had a pretty juicy OTA starting with debris, debris being changed to a three seven, that odds, uh, on reveal at a rock to each other location. What are your thoughts around the change to debris?

Regis: 8:57

Yeah, notably not for both players anymore. So, killing the clog aspect of this card. But I actually think this is cool. Number one, I did hate playing against, like full on clog decks. I always felt frustrating to lose your spots, you know, but, um. Decent stat, well, not good stat line base, right? Amazing stats. Yeah. But I think the, uh, I think the like Little Rock thing and just like we saw with Rhino as well, I think the rocks are a cool little design space. You got stuff like Merlin cards, you know, you can polymorph the rocks. You got stuff like Patriot where you can buff the rocks. You know, it's a downside that you can kind of spin into an upside in certain decks. I was even thinking about like, zoo decks, kza like, Hey man, there's something here with these rocks. So I actually like both debris and rhino and I want to make what I'm calling a Dwayne Johnson, the rock deck where, uh, we're gonna put all these together, but I haven't gotten around to it just yet. Moleman Mole man's gonna be in the mix too.

Alex: 9:48

Moleman, you know what's funny? So, uh, Disney plus just added. Fantastic Four to it and I've never watched it. And my wife and I, we got through about the first 10 minutes of it before all the kids woke up. And then we had to like, it takes us like four months to watch any movie. Me Too. And right at the start of it, it actually like shouts out like Mo Man and like Mad Thinker. I'm like, I know that. It was like, you know, that meme with like the Leonard DiCaprio where he is like this. That was literally me watching, uh, the intro to that movie. So yeah. But anyways, to, to kind of go off what you said with debris, I agree a hundred percent and Merlin's one of my favorite cards in Snap. I think it's easily one of the absolute best cards in the game. That isn't true. It doesn't get the respect, like it's one of the best cards in the game. Like I think everyone knows it's like really, really good. But the extent of which it is so amazing. I don't think people really vocalize, you know what I mean?

Regis: 10:34

Yeah, no, I'm with you. He is, I think, crazy strong and actually just really fun. Like, I think he's just cool, like every turn being a little different and having different things to do and polymorphous so random and chaotic as well. And the location change is random and chaotic. That's the style of card I freaking love. I'm all in on Merlin too,

Alex: 10:51

and I'm just gonna, once again, I'm just gonna do a little tinfoil hat thing here. I'm just gonna also say that, uh, also removing the clog element of debris leaves a little additional space open for move. Might be incentivized to do that this season, I don't know. But anyways, um,

Regis: 11:07

I feel you. A lot of

Alex: 11:08

move

Regis: 11:08

cards. Uh, we got some move buffs and changes and hey, what do you know? Look at that.

Alex: 11:13

We got another buff. It's fan fee. Uh, now a fourfour with slight decrease on power, but now it says activate, give your other cards here plus one power and move them to the right. A very similar effect, however, now providing additional power. Regis, what are your thoughts on fan Fay?

Regis: 11:31

You know, I haven't played this yet and I really haven't even thought about it yet, and I'll be honest, I kind of forgot about it. So maybe that's

Alex: 11:37

sign. Same here. That's why I pitched it to you right off the rip.

Regis: 11:40

Maybe that's sign. Look

Alex: 11:41

at my green border, bro. I haven't even split this.

Regis: 11:44

It matches though, it matches her outfit. Well, so that's cool. You know, like theoretically that plus one power can like kind of scale up your human torch a little faster or something. But I feel like this is still gonna get left out. It's just like weaving in a forecast, play into move decks feels so hard to do when you're like trying to get all those other moving pieces together.

Alex: 12:04

Yeah. Realistic. I saw what you did there. Realistically, let's get to a much more juicy one. This is kind of funny, I don't know if they felt like they had to do this, but buffing hydro stomper to a three three A card that reads ongoing plus one power for each time one of your cards move this game. I'm gonna suggest there's a lot of movement happening right now and hydro stomper is doing pretty good given what he's, uh, the decks he's in right now. Did he need a power buff?

Regis: 12:27

I don't, I, this one really stunned me'cause it's like, no, I don't think so. Like, already scaled. Well we'd already seen him like competing really well too in tournaments and stuff and like you're getting so many cards that are going to make him naturally better anyway. Like, we're gonna look at Ezekiel Sims later who I think so like crazy good fit for this, uh, even spider punk and stuff too, right? All those little incremental pieces. So this one felt, you know, you kind of did your little conspiracy spiel there, like, and they are, they juicing up all the move cards. This is the one that felt like a little suspicious there for me, where I'm like, this didn't really need the help. This was just like that extra nudge where they're like, let's make sure all the stuff we're selling this month actually gets there.'cause it's like, why else does this need that extra plus one? It's already pretty great

Alex: 13:10

buddy. Just like literally 24 hours after the launch of the first new se, like the new season comes 24 hours in hot location. Ant mace. I'm like, okay bro. Like I see you guys. I see what you're doing there. If you want to fast track to infinite, buy the season pass, buy like, you know, buy in baby and then use mates to get all these free pros. Let's go. You know what I mean? Oh, human, human torch doesn't matter. You just bouncing around everywhere. Oh yeah. Let me just say that, uh, it would appear that they took very good care of the, uh, the move meta going into this particular, uh, season. But hold on, there's a card that has not seen much play. It is a move card and I'm gonna tell you, no conspiracy here. I'm glad this thing got buffed. Vision turns into a five nine. This is a card I've always loved and it's not getting the love of deserves. You remember when we used to even play vision and like Surey Bay acts and stuff like that? Like remember those good old days where that was how you put up power is vision back.

Regis: 14:05

I think so actually, I, uh, I don't even know. It's weird. I, I feel like right before the buff, he was actually already coming back a little bit in those like, uh, Legion storm, uh, war machine decks as like an option for those decks to have a little more flexibility. And then he also got a little buff. So I, I don't know if it's gonna work beyond that exact deck anywhere else, but, uh, I think you can, I think maybe even, I heard Dexter was playing it in that list and seemed to be doing really well. She really, I saw this pop up on. C nine course, he's gonna go to C nine and we're gonna be like, he's gonna make C nine the best deck of the game. We're gonna be miserable forever. We can't have any fun. Anyway, I, I think vision's actually kind of solid at five nine. Yeah. It's intriguing.

Alex: 14:45

It absolutely is. And this is like one of the, those examples of like a borderline vanilla card that like all the combo centric stuff gets lost in the mix. And like, I love this. I love a card like this. It almost reminds me, okay, so here's, this is a little bit of a tangent, but I've been playing a lot of riff bound lately, right? The League of Legends card game, which I actually really enjoy. It's a lot of fun. I love all card games. Riff Bound I think has a lot of potential. And I've even been debating about like, you know, do some content and stuff like that around it. I'm gonna be hosting a bunch of like, local events in the Toronto area. Oh, by the way, people in Toronto stay tuned. I'm gonna be posting some stuff about, uh, some local events for for league. Yeah. Not even like sponsored stuff. I just, there's a game store. I love working with a game store that I like going to and I'm like, Hey, like, I like this game. Could we do some community stuff? Like actual in person view stuff? So I got that stuff coming. That's a whole other conversation. Why I bring it up with vision is because one of my favorite parts about new games is that like they don't become insanely combo centric yet the cards are relatively straightforward. Do you remember Old school Her Stone where like playing a like a, A Yeti was an actual good play, you know what I mean? Like there was something beautiful about like when the game is more simplistic and it's more about like just the, the macro management of your cards and your pieces. And I feel like vision is that whereas like now instead of getting something like vision, we get something like Man Spider, it gets to like 206 power and it's like, what are we even doing anymore? There's something beautiful but a five nine that just moves. You know what I'm saying? And that's kind of what I miss about games.'cause as they go on in time, it's like the designers are like, we gotta add more sauce. We gotta add more sauce. It's like we just kind of want something fun and interesting And uh, I think vision brings me back to the good old days of Marvel Snap.

Regis: 16:20

Yeah, I, I feel you. Number one, don't besmirch my good man, man, spider. Okay. I love man spider. He's, he's immune to your criticisms here, although they're valid. But I do feel you like the purity of it, right? Like it just feels elegant and simple and like still, honestly really interesting simple design as far as like, you know, it's really important to Marvel Snap, be able to move and redistribute power, but it's like so pure and graceful and every card today is like three or four sentences of text. And you're right that it's like, um, design creep almost as much as power creep.'cause you gotta get the new exciting thing to sell to people, right? But I wish there were better ways to recapture those feelings. That's why I think a lot of people crave like a draft mode, because I think you'd have a lower synergy, lower combo kind of meta, and it would be more about just like numbers and simplicity and like good cards, generic stuff like vision would be a star. In a like draft mode, right?'cause he's just like, good. And I was looking too at like five drops. He's like the third biggest five drop. Now it's only Aga Moto and Red Skull. Some like Gamora or Black Panther, you know, can get bigger. Yeah. But like he's actually pretty big for a five drop, which is uh, cool. So yeah. And also the character's just like an iconic Marvel character too. One of the few characters I knew before the Marvel movies or certainly before playing Marvel Snap, right? Like I just knew this character. So always nice when they get a little love.

Alex: 17:39

One of my kids' favorite scenes because I show them like select snippets from like Marvel movies and stuff is the one where vision is born from the that Tron casket. And uh, my kids love it.'cause my kids, they love Ulner. They love Thor. And obviously, and this is a very Minoru spoiler, so earmuffs, if you don't want to hear this, this is very Minoru. But there is a moment in the age of Ultron where vision picks up Ulner. To prove that he's pure of heart, right? Yeah. Yeah. And my kids like, they're like, whoa. Oh, like they love it. They go nuts for it. Right? Which is, which is funny. So, um, but yeah, like I, I'm all for vision. Getting some love here. As There's another card

Regis: 18:18

just real quick. You're giving spoiler alert warnings for like a 12-year-old movie or something. I don't even know when that came out, but it's before ever ago. I think it's still fair. Pure of heart yourself. You could lift Ulner'cause you are pure of heart giving a spoiler alert for a 12-year-old most popular movie in the world.

Alex: 18:34

I do. You know, actually I have a mule.

Regis: 18:37

Oh, really?

Alex: 18:38

I have like a giant mule. It's like it's too far. I would have to get up to go get it, but I have a pretty big mule there and it does like sound effects and everything. That's maybe a toy for another time. But yeah, that you got it, you got the spoilers.

Regis: 18:50

10, 10-year-old Spoiler alert there, dude. That's your you pure of heart.

Alex: 18:54

That's a thank you. I appreciate it. The one thing that's like, okay, so my kids love Marvel movies. I know this is a bit of a tangent, and so like, we've been watching like select parts of him, like when Ironman like finalizes his suit and he flies it for the first time, the kids' eating the ice cream and the Ferris wheel and stuff. That kid, my kids love all those things, but I have to learn like what they can watch and what they can't. So they're, my kids love Deadpool as well and they keep saying like, they keep saying they wanna see the buy, buy, buy part, which is like, they're referring to the end Sing song. I'm like, my wife's like going to put it on YouTube. I'm like, no. I'm like, I'm pretty sure he like. Takes Wolverine's like skeleton and like beats people to death with it or something. Like, it is not a child friendly movie. I'm like, do not pull up YouTube videos on the Deadpool movie. And she's like, okay, I won't do that. Then I'm like, yes, don't do that. I'm

Regis: 19:39

trying to think, I'm trying to think of a single scene in Deadpool that's appropriate for children and nothing's coming to mind, but I don't know.

Alex: 19:45

Yeah, I don't know how I think we're gonna have to pass on that one, unfortunately.

Regis: 19:48

Yeah. Yeah. That's

Alex: 19:49

tough. But, uh, a, a awesome movie and I'm hoping to provide a review of the Fantastic four when I finish it in two months time. But what do, we're pure, we're

Regis: 19:58

the same, by the way.

Alex: 19:59

Really?

Regis: 20:00

Yeah. We haven't watched it yet, but we're planning to, we

Alex: 20:02

talk about Pure of Heart. Regis, I, I'm gonna give you the floor on this one. Read out this card. This absolute beauty

Regis: 20:08

m Baku is now a one three at the end of the game. This jumps from your deck. It's your lowest power location that isn't full. I'm gonna be honest with you. I forgot that he's lowest power location still. They changed that a while ago. I forgot. I just played this card this week. I about that. If you would've asked me, I would've forgot

Alex: 20:26

that too.

Regis: 20:27

Yeah, I totally forgot. I did a whole video and didn't remember, I don't think it came up.'cause I was usually filling locations or whatever, but man yeah, that's why I played C3, right. I tried to play this with lock jaw, which was pretty fun. It was cool, but just didn't do that well for me.

Alex: 20:40

Is

Regis: 20:40

this an ahum

Alex: 20:41

buff?

Regis: 20:42

Yeah, I think, I think somebody played it in ahum in, uh, the golden gauntlet. Like a serious competitive player, I think.

Alex: 20:49

Nice.

Regis: 20:49

Which makes sense. If you dex that deep, like he's, he's free three power, you know, that can add up. So I love, I love

Alex: 20:54

KU and this, this had to happen eventually.

Regis: 20:57

Yeah. Should he ever go to hand or only deck?

Alex: 21:01

You know what? That's a good question. I wonder if, um, Baku would be absolutely cracked if it was from hand. I think it would be, wouldn't it?

Regis: 21:07

Probably as a one three would be a little cracked. Yeah. Maybe it as a one, two. I think you could do it.

Alex: 21:11

But you know what, I'm, I'm at a point in my Marvel Snap career. If you're gonna allow the game to get broken by, um, Baku, I'm here for it. If you guys wanna buff that and, um, Baku breaks the game, that's fine. We'll take that risk. Now I have some additional context about the misery change misery going down to a five eight. I would've surprised a whole lot of people. Regis, were you surprised?

Regis: 21:30

Not surprised necessarily. No. I mean, I, I see her a lot. Uh, it's good with hood. I also like wasn't stressed about misery, I guess, either necessarily though. So I was kind of neutral, I suppose.

Alex: 21:42

Oh, thanks for, uh, you know, ruining my epic moment. You're supposed to be like, yeah, I was surprised Alex. I had no idea that misery. There's no way I would've predicted this. And I'd be like, well, I got news for you'cause I got some inside baseball. So I have a little fun story about how I knew this misery change was coming. So, and this has been like months in the works, I think, and it's been something that's, so when I was at pax, we did the ps PAX West Meetup in Seattle where a whole bunch of people that play Snap and developers were there. And I actually was kind of wandering around and um, Glen was speaking with, I believe Gregor actually, and uh, who's a fellow content creator and streamer. And they were discussing like some cars that they think might be really strong. And Glen off, like just the cuff said, I think misery is probably too strong. We don't get complaints about it, but I think Misery's, like probably a Nerf candidate. And I was like, yo, I'm like, really misery? He's like, yeah, I think that card's really good. And I was thinking to myself like, wow. Glen thinks misery deserves a nerve. And then I remember, like, I didn't say that out loud because I don't wanna like, you know, tip my hand at like having all this insider information, but like, I was out there and I was like playing. I was like, man, misery is really damn good. And then like shortly after the Victoria hand deck started, like really popping off, I was like, Glen's a mastermind. I think he, I think Glen actually low key has like, like, you know how authors have a, like a pen name. He must be out there somewhere like just feeding Medex in. He's like, I want a Nerf misery. And he's like, I'm gonna make a deck that just is so cracked. And he just feeds it in as like some random gamer on like Reddit. And then it's like, now I can Nerf misery. And he does it. That that's my, that's my take.

Regis: 23:14

What if I'm secretly Glenn Jones?

Alex: 23:17

It's possible. Maybe you are. Maybe you are. I

Regis: 23:19

feel like a mission impossible mask I put on, it's

Alex: 23:23

like one of those high tech ones, like those holographic masks.

Regis: 23:26

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah, no, that's, uh, I mean, yeah, misery's good. I, yeah, sorry I ruined your moment. Uh, I mean, I get the, it's, I get the OTA notes early now, so I, I knew I guess a few days in advance, but you knew months in advance. You're really cool.

Alex: 23:39

That's right. I was on top of it, but I had like, legit, like you had to be there to know, yeah. Um, this is me showcasing, I don't know how to spell the word, cosmic. Cosmic ghost rider. Going down to a five six. We're gonna try and get through the OTA notes a little faster. We only have one more card after this anyways, but, uh, res what are your thoughts on the cosmic ghost rider?

Regis: 23:56

Yeah, totally good, good little tiny change to a card that was probably showing up too much, I think, and maybe frustrating people a little too much, so I like it.

Alex: 24:05

That's the appropriate take. I think, you know what? Honestly, it was a good card and it still feels like one of Marvel snaps, like genuine catchalls. For tech. But now that you have vision at five nine that five six stat line does feel particularly weak. However, however, you're

Regis: 24:19

gonna cut every five drop for vision. I love it.

Alex: 24:22

Yeah. Every five drop, like, oh, you're playing mans, but no just vision. Sorry. Um, the first Ghost rider, Todd, about cards I actually forgot, existed in Marvel Snap going a two seven, which I believe was its original stat line and then they nerfed it'cause they thought it was gonna be too strong. Regis, am I right wrong? I don't know. Do you remember this?

Regis: 24:38

Uh, I think in the data mines or something, it was a two seven, I think it got released maybe as a two five. Is that right? I don't remember. I don it's been all over the place. It was some still, I don't think it's any good is what's crazy. Like I, I think some people are playing like a Cerebro seven deck with fire Lord or something. I saw maybe even Dexter was doing that, I forget. But I don't think God gonna play this much.

Alex: 24:59

If, if we were to take a shot every time you brought up Dexter or Cerebral in this podcast, people would be getting their stomach pumped already.

Regis: 25:07

I love Dexter and I hate cerebral. So it's just like, you know, the two extremes. I love Dexter more than anything, and I hate cerebral the, the most. I'm just getting the, I'm getting the clicks, man. This is how you get the clicks.

Alex: 25:18

Yeah, you gotta get the clicks. You gotta get the clicks. But with that being said, it's funny that Cosmo Ghost Rider, or the first ghost writer, I should say, has not been able to make like a cons deck work. Like these are huge stats that naturally synergize with cons. There's gotta be something there, right? Like get rid of a gore, you know what I mean? Or something like that. There's gotta be something.

Regis: 25:37

Yeah, I bet somebody could put together a Good Gore or Iron Man Consu deck. Um, is there anything with like thinking about gala, uh, zombie Galati? Can I do something with zombie Galati now? Probably

Alex: 25:48

not. Oh, now we're really coping.

Regis: 25:49

I like chu and Zombie Galati together, but that's, I don't know. You do it. You make the cool deck.

Alex: 25:55

I I gotta do it now. I mean, even if you just cosmic Ghost Rider Dracula and then bring that back with Concho. That works, doesn't it?

Regis: 26:02

Yeah, something

Alex: 26:03

like that. Yeah. See look, we're already cooking. Boom. We just changed the meta completely. Yeah.

Regis: 26:07

Solved it. Yeah,

Alex: 26:08

solved it. It's done. The meta's over as we are gonna talk about the newest cards to enter Marvel Snap. That's right. We're getting into the new stuff here. We got some stats to talk about, released as the season pass card. Regis, we have spider punk. A three three. You can move this once when this moves to a location. Steal two power from your highest power enemy here, Regis. I'll give you the floor but before I do so, I'll let you guys know that statistically the cart is doing particularly well. Do note though, this is the first week since the new season, so we are using bot inflated stats ranked 72 a hundred on untapped, looking like most decks are hitting that 59 to 60% win rate range for uh, spider punk. Regis, what are your thoughts?

Regis: 26:49

I, I love how you say it. I'm gonna let you, I'm gonna let you give your reaction, but here's the official data that you can't argue with. No, I may, that sounds right that I don't disagree with the data here. I like it. I think he's like good a good move card if you're like supporting him with extra moves, doesn't compete with torch in that world, but also maybe like generically kind of good, just like a three seven basically, that has some flexibility with moves and location. So, um, you know, it lives not like, og NOC turn space for me a little bit, right? Like that three drop that can move a little bit and does a little something extra. I like him fine. Yeah. I think actually I was nervous about his buff, but I think he's okay at a three three, by the way. That's fine.

Alex: 27:25

He's definitely okay at a three three. But you bring up a really important point. First of all, I actually really like spider punk. I think it's a really fun card. I think it's well designed. I think it's flashy. I think what it does is really cool. I think it puts up good power and in every other circumstance, I think this is a fantastic card, but you kind of touched on it and it's, it's the other three costs. It's the problem. It's like, it's so unbelievably overshadowed by what human torch does that, I feel like the comparison's not fair. It's such an apples to orange comparison because you're never, if you're holding both on turn three, you're never playing Spider Punch.

Regis: 27:58

True.

Alex: 27:58

You know what I mean? Every night I

Regis: 27:59

ran set, I ran that recording my video. Yeah. I was always like, I wanna showcase the new card in my video. And it was like, I always had torch in hand and it was like, oh, okay. The new card just gets to sit and watch. I guess that sucked.

Alex: 28:09

Yeah. And I think I even, I had a clip in my video too, where I'm like, no, this is educational. I cannot play spider punk here. And you need to know this. Like, you need to know this. If you're thinking about dropping, you know, 10 buckaroos on, on, uh, I was gonna say human torch, which I still have up here on the, uh, the punk of the spiders because yeah, he gets completely overshadowed by human torch, which I think is really unfortunate.'cause from a design perspective, I think spider punk is cooler. I think it's probably more fun.

Regis: 28:36

Yeah.

Alex: 28:37

And it does something really interesting. But like, I had games where I was moving spider punk a whole ton, and it was like, okay, I could do that. Or I can like get human torch over 50. You know what I mean? It's like, it's kind of stupid.

Regis: 28:50

Yeah. It's, um, yeah, I think you probably are identifying that torch might be too good of an enabler for move deck. I, I, I don't know if you looked at the data. I hadn't really until just now. Is Spider punk getting played in other decks successfully or like only move adjacent stuff? Can he be Oh, like here's a Wiccan deck. He's okay in for instance. No, that's an affliction deck actually. I don't know. Yeah, I, in other words, if he had his own like separate identity, I'd be less stressed about the torch thing. But it seems like most of his decks have torch, which means

Alex: 29:20

Yes, the top four ones that I have that I took just before the podcast, um, they do have torch in it. There is a scream variation that does not use human torch, which is kind of fun. Um, and I actually prefer that. And if anything, given how popular move is, I'm totally happy playing Scream and also just a fantastic bundle right now where for gold, I think it's a pretty good bundle from, uh, from an actual, like progression in credits and whatever token's perspective, good conversion of gold into stuff, but like. Spider punk and scream is good. I think it's cool you Duff and stuff like that. And uh, it's a d it's not even, that's the thing with Scream. You don't even counter play move that much.'cause then they're like, well maybe I won't play. Maybe we'll just carry Dagger and Dagger will just move around and stuff like that. Right. And people forget Dagger's actually really good too. But yeah, that's kind of where I think, I think Spider Punk is a really cool card. I think it puts up good power. It is just in this weird pigeonhole because it's like, well, I can't really do what Human Torch does. Human Torch is just simply the carry card for the archetype. To the point where I wonder if a lot of the stats that we're seeing, like, oh, we can say Spider Punk has a 60% win rate on aggregate, but it's being carried by other cards. It's being played in an archetype that is just being so pumped with so many buffs that realistically, what else could you expect?

Regis: 30:34

I think that's a good, that's a good insight. Yeah. He's also just by the way cool looking like, I think spider punk looks so awesome. Like he just looks like something about a superhero with a guitar. Like I'm just in on that. Like I just wanna see him in my games. So I'm really,

Alex: 30:48

yeah, no, it definitely is a cool card. And so, uh, generally speaking, like are you yay or me on, uh, this season pass purchase?

Regis: 30:56

Oh, that's hard to say. I probably lean a little Yay.'cause I see some potential down the road, but I'm like hesitant with it because, I dunno, it depends on if you value fun or purely like, it doesn't like create a new deck or like really make your decks crazy. But I also think he's like good to have, sort of gay. Is that a fair?

Alex: 31:14

And as content creators, it's always easy for us to spend your hard earned money. Yeah, of course. So of course, of course you gotta know what your collection looks like and what you wanna play.'cause if you don't wanna play move, then you're gonna wanna wait to see exactly what Regit said before. Does it work in affliction? Can it work there? Right? And if that's the type of deck you wanna play in, then sure. But if you're just, I'm never gonna play move, then this card is probably something you do not want to invest in. Uh, regardless though, it's doing pretty well overall. And uh, it looks like it's gonna be a mainstay as long as move is going to remain relevant. Now I'm gonna give you the floor on this one. You said you love it. It's Mans Spider, the five one that reads on reveal Merge. The last card you played into this, when this merges double its power. Regis, why do you love this card?

Regis: 31:56

I, I just like big numbers. I know we talked about the purity of Marvel Snap, which I do also appreciate, but I also like big dumb numbers as long as I don't feel too broken or too powerful, right? And. Man spider with, uh, absorbing man in particular, they have that weird interaction where they both take on this text, which means they both double their power when they merge. So when they merge together it's doubling it twice or four x-ing the power. And you could just get these like absurdly huge, like 200 power man spiders or whatever. And then, you know, you, you task master or uh, you know, AUM Zola or whatever, and you just it's totally absurd. I think it's kind of okay because, you know, shadow King and Sean Key, uh, Sean Chin, all these cards exist same time. It's, I know it's scares some people away and it's, since it's the premium called the premium season pass, the premium, it is

Alex: 32:46

the super premium. Yeah. You gotta

Regis: 32:47

pay big. I never know the names

Alex: 32:48

Big Buck Roonie for this one.

Regis: 32:50

That's always a little frustrating, I think for players when you see a card hit like 200 power or whatever and it's like the only way to get, it's to pay$20, you know? I guess, I guess you could spend tokens now, right? Still to get these, but still, you know. Yeah. It's an expensive commitment either way. You know, you're always like balancing that side of it from, but from a purely like I'm making big stupid numbers standpoint, it's like, oh, I like it. Uh, you know, it's hard for me to resist. It's like, like a YouTuber first and foremost. Maybe you get to make some big dumb numbers, which is cool.

Alex: 33:18

Yeah, and I think that it's very, uh, analogous to like how it felt to play blob early on where you're like, yo, look how dumb I can make blob. And it feels like that kind of, uh, but what I will say is like, again, a little bit tinfoil hat theory here, but your nerve shachi. Nerf Shadow King. We also forgot going into this move season that Mercury got Nerfed.

Regis: 33:38

Yeah, mercury too. Let's, I

Alex: 33:40

forget that either. So like you nerfed a lot of the tech cards and then suddenly it's like, yo, you guys wanna see power check out man Spider. Getting the, I think the problem with this line, honestly, it's when this merges double as power, it should be like once per game. Like it's so dumb that like you, you do this with abs man on top of agony and then you play like, penny Parker spider on it, it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, 600 power. And you're like sick. Like what? Yes. You just answer. Like if, if they Snap on you, they have SHS or you know, shadow, caring, whatever. Right. But like realistically, like that's insane. It's absolutely insane. Like the power levels and it's probably'cause of these, these replicated mergers.

Regis: 34:20

Yeah. Does it have great data? I haven't really kept up much. I climbed really easily with this when I was playing it. I know, but I didn't actually look at the wider. Wider data out there. It looks like it's good with Mr. Negative decks, but maybe not. Yeah, actually there's quite a few positive lists it looks like, huh?

Alex: 34:37

Yeah. Generally speaking, what I pulled from a win rate perspective just prior to the, uh, the podcast here, uh, approximately 59% win rate was the salons based shells with scar. And then we had also the Artem Zola Black Panther kind of merger deck. That's, that's, that's

Regis: 34:50

what I was playing. Yeah.

Alex: 34:52

Yeah. Which is running a 57% win rate. So win rates are good. Still bottom inflated though. I do think that the, um. I bet you there's a lot of situations here where people are like staying in games and getting, they're getting hunky, they're getting shadow King.'cause those cards still exist. They're still valuable. And if anything, I think this card is a really good example of like, if you don't have necessary tech pieces in your deck, you might just get cooked. Like you kind of have to run the tech despite the fact that they've nerfed them so far back. But, um, there's no question about it that man, spider's producing absolutely insane power levels. And I think that it's, it's probably gonna be relevant. Like I, I don't know if the stats early on, early on even indicate that it's in Nerf territory. It feels like it should be, but also like you have these inexpensive answers that completely shut this card down. It's just a matter of running them, you know what I mean? So like what are your thoughts on whether or not this could potentially see a Nerf considering it's getting like over a hundred power on a regular basis?

Regis: 35:50

Yeah, I, I mean, I feel like second dinner. Probably nerfs more on data than sentiment. Is that fair to say? I think that's fair to say. I've never really thought about it before they do. But yeah, it seems like, you know, in other words, cards that are like frustrating or really, uh, this is like a really big moment and like, you know, it creates a lot of like, oh, that dude's insane. 300 power, which is frustrating for players, but if the data is healthy, it may not get nerfed anyway, right? So they may just say, oh, the data's fine. Which it is true. Sometimes cards like that, you know, they get a lot of play when they're hyped and new. But if the data's not there, sometimes they do fall off as people trend towards just playing the better thing. That's it. I, I think it looks pretty good anyway, so it's a potential candidate, I would say. And also anytime a future merge card comes out, you know, there's another way to juice it up even further. So could just keep getting better too.

Alex: 36:42

It's hard to say, like actually when you bring that up, like the data oriented, uh, kind of nerfing, they do, it reminds me of that time, this was a while back where they nerfed Dark Hawk and it had like a 1% play rate on Untapped. They like the skirt's pretty good. People just don't know it. I'm like. Well then like, why not just let people figure it out? Like, I don't know, like why are we ing a card that no one's playing? Like I, I would kind of like, again, I'm not a game dev and a game designer, but like sometimes those types of changes baffle me a bit. It's like, I think you need to improve, like, what people are actually experiencing, right? Like what are, what are people actually experiencing when they boot up Marvel Snap, while they're on the, can improve that experience for people, right? And if man Spider is making their experience feel worse, then maybe you gotta take a look at it. But it has, like, the thing is as a five one, like the potential downswing of like a shadow king is immense. Like, it's not like a, a red skull that still has it's native power. Like this thing turns into a pile of garbage if you hit it with that tech piece, right? So I guess it does have that, that very wide gamut of like potential swing,

Regis: 37:43

yeah. I think sometimes though those like really binary results where it's like either giga busted or giga terrible, that actually is even more frustrating than like a smoother spectrum of results, right?'cause sometimes that feels. A little more approachable or manageable or whatever. So it's like, in that case, it's actually really frustrating for both players. The man spider player has no fun because their card goes back to a five one and you know, the other guy when it, when it's 300 power has zero fun.'cause the card's 300 power. There's not like a lot of range in between. So I do think that like sometimes devs over rely on data or over index on data a little bit when it comes to balance changes because it's like, it's almost like they're trying to seek some objective truth about the, like, reality of the cards or whatever. But video games aren't objective truth. They only exist through the perception of their players, right? You're not trying to achieve some perfect mathematical balance. You're trying to make people have fun. And if you lose sight of that objective, you're not really serving the game or the player anymore, right? You're serving some abstract data. God, that doesn't do anything. Like, I wanna make the game fun for the player first. And you know, obviously there's. Nuance to that and like data can still influence that. I'm not saying ignore data altogether, but like I do think indexing on the player experience is more important. And I am kind of, sort of a game dev now, I guess. So maybe I lend a tiny air of authority, the tiniest little inch of authority to that. But I had a, you

Alex: 39:11

are a game dev, sir. We gotta do an updated video sometime with all this stuff. Yeah, I literally, I'll log into steam and like, it feels like almost every second day. It's like an update. It's an update. Like you constantly, the amount of updates you guys are doing is absolutely insane.

Regis: 39:24

Yeah, we've changed a lot since we played together a lot of new tutorials too, so I think your onboarding experience would be better, but we're still getting better all the time.

Alex: 39:30

That's awesome,

Regis: 39:31

man. We'll, I'll talk to you soon. We're making some big.

Alex: 39:33

Okay, cool. Yeah, definitely keep me in the loop. We'd love to. And uh, what I will say as well is, uh, you brought up the binary experiences of Snap and I felt like the ranked ladder has been very much this, where it's like I've gotten to the point where I don't, I don't like retreating in Snap. Like, I, I, let me clarify that. I understand it's merit, I understand it's competitive merit and I think it's really cool in those circumstances. However, sometimes I feel like games are turning into, if you don't have tech pieces it's, oh, they got their man spider big, I gotta leave, right? Oh, it's like, I feel like games get to like turn five and six and people are like, either like they decide whether they win or lose right there, and the games never see themselves out because of these kind of very binary, like, you either have a thing or you don't, they do the thing or you don't, or like, so I would like to lean away from that because I think that adding the tech cards back into the deck, like having Sean Chi is the thing that keeps you in the game after they Snap. You know what I mean? That's where the cube equity is. Um, and I just would like to see more games get closed out.'cause I feel like, uh, there's so much retreating on the ranked ladder right now and I think part of that's because they've improved the bots to be much more aggressive. They've actually, I think they've made it so that like they've reduced the number of like, kind of like, oh, you lost a couple games. Here's a dirt bot for you to get your four cubes in just to kind of keep you on your way. They've reduced all that, so now the ladder feels sweatier than ever and people are much more hesitant to take any risks in their matches prior to getting to infinite. And so hopefully we can get some of that, uh, that feeling back. Have you felt the laddering experience being slightly different?

Regis: 41:04

I, uh, I'm not the best to answer this'cause my experience has been very different because I have not been playing as much like ever since we've put our game out, which I'm not trying to. Chill my game too much, but just literally this experi and I haven't even said the names, so, you know, I'm not chilling. I've been playing my game so much as a game dev, working with people and like, just constantly trying to experiment and balance and like playing so much. I don't ever play Snap off stream. Like this last season, I had to play five hours on Monday night before the final day of the reset to hit infinite. I had never not hit infinite before, so I stayed up like till 3:00 AM to hit infinite that night just to make sure I got it done, you know? So in other words, I climbed from like 84 to a hundred in like a day and a half all at once. And I, it was like so condensed. I don't even know what my experience was like. I I don't know. It was like the last day of the month too. So like, it was probably a totally different player pool and it didn't feel that bad to me. I just played a Wiccan deck and kind of cruised, to be honest. So I don't know, might have just played a really good deck. I'm, but I hear you and I, I hear a lot of players that do have frustrations. I feel like. Something's in the mix. Part of me thinks if the player population went down, maybe there are just more bots. And that's creating weirdness too. I don't know. It's something going on now.

Alex: 42:20

Yeah, no, for sure. And, uh, we're gonna go out on a whim here and say that, uh, your game absolutely has to get sh uh, shout out. Project Sky Shard is gonna be linked in the description down below. It's free to download during this, uh, this early window of time where you get to experience the love and you and I made a video together. I had a ton of fun. I'm, I was awful at it. I was absolutely awful.

Regis: 42:43

You'll be better now. We made, we made it easier to get good faster. Don't worry. That's what

Alex: 42:46

we're, so that'll be linked down below guys and, uh, yeah. It's honestly a fun game and it's, it's really cool because I, I think that like, it's, uh. It's a really creative approach to like, kind of like auto battling, base building and stuff like that. And I think that, uh, you guys are doing a fantastic job. And I'm not joking when I say that literally there's an update like every second day. Like you guys are doing a tremendous amount of work on it. So yeah. Project Skyr free demo on Steam Link down below. Thank

Regis: 43:10

you. Go check it out. Thank you. I don't wanna shill. It's not why I'm here. We're here to, but thank you.

Alex: 43:13

I'm shilling for you, bud.

Regis: 43:14

Thank you. Thank you.

Alex: 43:16

Do you wanna lead us in into the superior Spider-Man? Who, for the record? Yeah, I chose as my card of the month. This was my five star of the month. What do you mean? Oh.

Regis: 43:26

Oh, well. Okay. Superior Spider-Man. A new three, four series five at the start of each turn. You get plus one energy if you have any cards with increased power in play. Alex why don't you, uh, tell us what you think about this card and why it is for sure the best card of the month and an easy five star review.

Alex: 43:46

So I like what you did there because like going into the first review, I gave you the stats up front that didn't give you any wiggle room and now you've done the same to me. You're like, Hey Alex Clown, wait a call out to this card that was gonna be better than Man Mans Spider. For what it's worth, I gave Mans Spider a 4.5 and I'm like, this card's gonna be insane. I just thought that long term, that Superior Spider-Man was gonna be in such a wide breadth of decks, I felt like Man Spider, which I did call, was gonna be insane, was gonna be very narrow in its focus, very narrow in its niche, and I felt like the superior Spider-Man had such like so many decks it could be played in where it's like ultimately it was gonna be the top. The top cheese now, statistically right now, it's not. The top cheese man thing is definitely a man thing. What the heck am I saying? Man? Spider is definitely gonna be better. And even the move shells are, are overperforming. This, like the decks that you're seeing with Superior Spider-Man are running approximately 59% win rates, 58% win rates in that particular range. And they're cool, they're good. They're just not crazy. Um, what I actually really liked is you have a 57% win rate, uh, deck with high Evo that's kind of doing okay, because those are gonna run things like. Sunspot Nebula, Misty night, Silver Sable even makes those decks. And so as a result, you end up getting like the immediate p proc and like Eva loves the extra energy, it's gonna do so much with it, right? But in this current meta that we have, it's so hard to compete with like that saucy move that gets human torch, insane powers and man spider, which goes absolutely insane. I feel like this is an amazing card any other week, of any other season, but this particular week is being overshadowed by some absolute ridiculous insanity.

Regis: 45:29

Yeah, you might be right. I So for context, I gave this card a three out of four. I do a four star scale. So I, in other words, I didn't think it was gonna be the best, I thought it was gonna be good playable card, but I actually said the opposite. I thought it was gonna be really narrow and only be good in a couple decks max because I, and I think this might still be true even after playing it. Yeah, I think it's harder than people realize to get a green number on board. He's gotta have a green number on board. Basically some buffed number. Right. I think it's hard to get a hi Evo is basically the one deck that pretty reliably gets buffed cards out early. You know, you got sunspot, they run Nebula, um, they're running Silver Sable in, in there for the like, affliction, uh, you know, abomination kind of thing together. A lot of decks don't just naturally do that though. Like other decks are gonna have to change the deck in order to make superior Spider-Man work. Like you're gonna have to add weird stuff in, like, you're gonna have to run a Silver sable and you don't, maybe, maybe don't want to. It's not like a natural fit. I would say even the hi Evo deck, it's not like the most obvious thing. It's kind of a fit. So I was worried that like. Tweaking your deck to support superior Spider-Man. Like you could probably do it. It's not hard to do, but there is like an opportunity cost there. And then you also need to make sure you have like the payoff, which VO again has a really good payoff. They love the extra energy for like she Hulk skips and stuff, and Hulk having extra energy unturned. Six is great for his power going up. So like VO is actually sort of the perfect shell for this, where it does both the condition and the payoff really satisfyingly. But when I go through other decks, there aren't too many or I'd see that. I think like, um, hoard decks are okay'cause like the hunger, it's a big one, green number and like Mr. Fantastic, uh, zombie fantastic gives you a green number. So that makes sense. But it's like, I'm not saying there won't be more in the future.'cause you always get more and more cards that can enable this. And every deck of course can utilize extra energy to some extent. But it's just, I think there has to be a little bit of a crossover between both of those and. I'm worried about the number of decks that are willing to kind of sacrifice their early game in order to achieve this condition. Basically. I don't know how many will, but more probably will over time. So I think you're probably right in some way.

Alex: 47:37

Like the way I think about it, like this feels like some of the freest energy you get in Snap. Like think about what you have to do with electro. Well now electro you just man spiders. So that's another conversation. But you have like Jennifer Kale, right? You have Wicken who you have to play on Curve. You run like Domino Quicksilver, who isn't even that bad anymore. Wicken single handedly made those two cars play well. Domino needed a Bauer buff. You have Luna Snow, which gives the kind of a reciprocated effect. Like this is just every turn boom. As long as that green thing, you play the hunger turn one or Mr. A Fanta turn two and all of a sudden this guy is just allowing you to do whatever you want. It's free real estate. You got seven. Like it's beautiful. And that's kind of what I thought, like of all the ramp cards, this feels like relatively low committal. And I think you're right. I feel like it'll get better over time'cause yes. Are you shoehorning something like a Silver Sable into Evo? Kind of. You kind of are, honestly. But I, I will tell you that the top performing shell right now at a 59% win rate is the Hode deck that you talked about, um, according to Untapped. So yeah, absolutely. I like Spear Spider-Man, but he, I think he is being overshadowed. Of these three cards that were released this week, how would you rank them?

Regis: 48:51

Oh I think I'm putting Man Spider number one actually, just'cause I've personally had so much success with it and like, I think Spider Punk's numbers are there, but I think it's being propped up by its decks almost more than it is. Um, you know, it's, its own inherent strength, whereas I think Man Spider has kind of powered its decks and it's like pulled them up. It's otherwise like spider punk is being pulled up, you know, man, spider is pulling them up. But I'd say, man, spider number one, spider punk number two. And, uh. Superior Spider-Man number three for me. Also, did we talk about Web Sling? That came out this week too, right?

Alex: 49:24

That did come out this week. I, I kind of forgot about that.

Regis: 49:27

I did

Alex: 49:27

too. Yeah. It's pretty good too. Um, yeah, but what I will say though is for me, my rankings are Man Spider one Superior. Spider-Man two

Regis: 49:34

Oh,

Alex: 49:35

spider Punk three. I would say spider. I think Spider Punks being carried.

Regis: 49:39

Yeah. Yeah. I can live with that. I think that's fine.

Alex: 49:41

Okay. Do you wanna say anything about web sling?

Regis: 49:43

Not really. It's good in move. That's,

Alex: 49:45

yeah. I don't wanna say anything either. It's fine. It's fine. It's a card that exists, it does things and it's pretty good. But is that gonna be the case for Ezekiel Sims? Regis, Ezekiel Sims is 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. It took me a while and on the last pod I even said, I'm not sure who Ezekiel Sims is. I'll be honest with you. I'm not like a connoisseur of Marvel, uh, lore. I actually did just buy my first ever kind of collection of comics that I purchased. Oh, cool. I bought, uh, it's, oh man, it's just slightly outta reach. I bought the Kang, only myself left to conquer anthology.'cause I absolutely love it. I think it's, I think it's one of my favorite stories I've read in a very long time. And, uh, actually on that note I'm really interested in getting more like good Marvel stories. Like you can kind of buy in a small collection type thing if anybody has suggestions. I'm here for, because I heard like the mo x stuff is really good. I heard House of X is really good. Um, so I'm kind of interested in, uh, exploring more of those really fantastic stories, but. I had no idea who Ezekiel Sims was. I'd never heard of him. And then someone brought it up, they're like, yo, Alex, Ezekiel Sims is from that absolute garbage movie, Madam Weg. And I was like, wait a minute. That's like the bad Spider-Man dude, who like, and I was like, oh my gosh. So here's a fun story. I had no intention of watching Mme. Webb, but when I was flying somewhere, I think I was flying to one of the pacs. It was on it was like, I had the little monitor on the screen in front of me on the plane, and Mme. Webb was there as like one of the new releases. I'm like, people say this is garbage. How bad is it? So I watched it, it was like watching a movie that Sony was like, all right guys, let's get, uh, let's get a high school like drama club to make a Marvel film. And, uh, this, this is exactly what they got. It was so unbelievably bad that like anybody who even would've tried to like, read the script and been like, yo, this is, this is shit. Like you shouldn't release this. Like, don't even film this. Don't spend the money on anything. Just continue to cook. This is awful. You're not even cooking. You're just like, everything's just going stale on the countertop here. Like, just do not do this. And they did it anyways. And I'm pretty sure that was one of the movies where the director said like, everyone else was wrong and they were dumb and the movie was good. I think there was like some controversy around that. But if you've ever seen Mme. Webb, Ezekiel Simpson in that, and if you don't wanna see Mme. Webb don't, because there's literally no redeeming feature to it. It's, it's one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Regis: 52:18

I haven't seen it. I did though Google Ezekiel Sims five minutes before this phone call.'cause I was like, he's gonna wanna talk about this. I don't know anything about it. And they were like, he's in the Madam Web movie. And I was like, oh, cool. I had no idea. He looks nothing like that in this card. He looks like an old man. He was chilling on a, on a wall. I don't know.

Alex: 52:35

It's like, it's so bad. It's so bad. There's even moments in it where like, you know, when you're watching a movie and like, the villain should be more capable, but like, they do things like, they get the victim like in a spot and instead of just like, yeah, like just, just get her, she's right there. He'll like do like the, like the walk. He'll like give everyone time to catch up and he'll, he'll have to say something. He'll have to delay. Yeah. Like the movie's so bad. But Ezekiel Sims is, Ezekiel Sims bad. That's, that's the question i, I pose to you, Regis Kibin.

Regis: 53:05

I, uh, I don't, I think he's kind of okay, honestly. I saw some people, uh, saying he was gonna be bad though. And I'm like second guessing myself. Like should I, should I believe myself? I kind of think it's okay.'cause like you got the like regular move deck, right? With human torch and ghost spider and all this stuff and they're doing the big torches and the big daggers, right? But then you got this other like hydro stomper, a hydro stomp or mass kind of move deck where it's all about moving a lot of stuff like silk and you know, it's about getting that hydro stomper as big as you can. I kind of think this could juice that like move in tons of stuff deck as opposed to moving the big stuff deck. So, you know, you just throw in silks. Maybe you got a Hercules in there. I don't even know. I think you probably put spider punk in there as a good curve follow after Ezekiel Sims and you got craven, obviously you maybe a miles in there, maybe eventually a prowler dude when he comes out. And I think you're just like bouncing a million cards and Hydro STO is like 20 power and Sims is maybe up to like eight power Craven's up to 12 power. You know, I think you kind of got a deck there. So I think it's gonna happen. It just depends on how consistently you're getting this guy to like two eight or more. If you can't get into two eight, that's, maybe he sucks. I dunno.

Alex: 54:13

The challenge I have with him is that it feels like there's a very hard cap on his ceiling.'cause you have to surpass his power, right? Like if you think about silk, you just gotta play there. Your opponent just has to play there. Like, is Silk simply superior for a hydro stomper style deck versus Ezekiel Sims? Like it would have to be, right?

Regis: 54:30

I think it is. I think you run, I think you can do both. I think silk's actually a pretty good way to get him from four to six maybe. So I don't know. I'm like, I'm also thinking about, uh, Batman the Leaper, you know. A lot people Bat Truck, but bat the Leaper. That's awesome. I call him Batman. Yeah. You know, he's going around every time too. It's like, this is not just his power, but he's an extra way to. Push all the other guys, Batman and Craven and Hydro Stomper. I don't know it, I, I haven't played. It's one of those where I feel like I have to play it to really know, I have a feeling I'm gonna play it and be like, oh, this sucks. He's never going off. Like he's still a two four and I can't, I don't have any way to make him bigger right now, you know? So I'm worried, but I could also be like, I, ah, you know, I played Hydro Stomper and I pushed him up to 10 now.'cause I got him, like, I silked them up to six and then I played, uh, I don't know, actually, uh, vision. Vision pushes him up to eight. And now Hydro Sno takes him to 10. And I'm kind of happy, you know? So, I don't know. I hate playing those decks though, because like, silk's going everywhere. This guy's going everywhere. Batman's going everywhere. I filled a location accidentally and now I'm screwed. You know, like, I hate those because I'm dreading Tuesday.'cause I don't want to have to play it. But I'll,

Alex: 55:32

if Petroc the Leaper is Batman, then Ezekiel Sims is the Joker.'cause I think he's gonna be a clown.

Regis: 55:39

You mean one of the coolest villains in all of the history? The Joker as opposed to the villain in a the, the Madame Webb movie. Huh? Okay.

Alex: 55:47

It's true. They're, they're twist duck cut from the same cloth, I gotta be honest with you. But, so the problem with Ezekiel Sims is, okay, so you get it to move and one of the reasons why I believe that spider punk actually got buffed'cause in data minds. Yeah, for sure. Spider punk was a three two, it wouldn't have been able to move Ezekiel Sims. Yeah. Now as a three, three, he gets to move Ezekiel Sims, as does superior Spider-Man. So Ezekiel Sims will get the buff. So that's another one on curve that you're able to do and get that extra energy for as well. Now, is it enough for those two cars to be moving Ezekiel Sims, especially when you have decks that are already so unbelievably good. And the change to vision makes perfect sense as well, because now at a five nine, if this is a two eight vision can now move it. So there all these things are very like, well, let's not buff Ezekiel Sims'cause we, we know he sucks. Let's buff some of the support pieces around him to get him to actually to move and prosper. I think ultimately, if you can bank on this guy being a two six, is that enough power? Because it, it won't, maybe you get to control it more.'cause like silk can scam you sometimes. Like you, like your opponent can move silk and kind of play around it as well. It can end up where you don't want it to be and stuff like that. But like for me, I'm concerned that while this card naturally wants to be played this season, it naturally will go in decks. It's not gonna go into the human torch deck, which is gonna be the top performing deck for something like a spider punk. It's just. I just like a new version of Silky Smooth. Can this make it? I'm not entirely sure, but Hydro Stomper got buffed. It's now a three three, which I think is gonna be one of the, the linchpin carry cards of this archetype. So honestly, I'm not sure I'm with you. I'm less excited about Ezekiel Sims going into this, uh, this Tuesday. I think many people are, but I have hope. Regis, we do five star ratings here. What star rating are you considering? I revealed mine last week. Let's see. Your yours.

Regis: 57:45

I'm just gonna say three for everybody. It's safe, right? That's why I went to a four star rating. It forces you into a decisive score. You can't cop out with threes. You have to either pick better or worse than the halfway mark. But I'm gonna say three stars. Cop out. I think that's actually legit though. I think he's just kind of solid, if that makes sense. Like I think that mass move deck will be good, but like, tier two or something, or. Like you said, worse than a regular move deck, but probably could climb with it, if that makes sense.

Alex: 58:11

I'm leaning towards the lower end on the two side two to 2.5 range, like on the weaker end. I don't think he's excellent. I don't think he's great, but I don't think he's complete fecal matter either. He's gonna be somewhere in the middle. There's just gonna be better ways to play move.

Regis: 58:28

I was just thinking though, how do you buff this guy? Like of course you could make him like one cost, but if you buff his power, he's harder to activate. Yes. And if you buff his power scaling, like if he gained plus three power again, he's harder to activate again. It's hard to buff. You'd have to set him to one two, I guess to really buff him. So he might get stuck. You buff

Alex: 58:45

him by refunding his tokens.

Regis: 58:47

Yeah, it, it does feel like one of those where it's like, even if he's decent, it's a big commitment for a really niche deck.'cause he is not gonna be good at anything else. Like obviously very focused on this one hydro stomper thing basically. And beyond that, you know, unplayable, I say that I don't know. I, I actually, as I say that, could you just run this in like a tempo deck where he's like a two eight, like you just play regular cards, just, you don't have, he doesn't have to support move technically. Like, is a two eight big enough? You know, you play lizard, you play Maximus. This guy's a two eight sometimes.

Alex: 59:18

Ah,

Regis: 59:19

like I'm, I'm still kind of high. I don't know. I'm like, now I'm thinking about four stars again. I don't know. Three's fine. I like

Alex: 59:25

that's though, that's a lot of coke. That's a lot of cope. That's a lot even for me.

Regis: 59:29

Yeah. Okay.

Alex: 59:31

So basically Kate on Tuesday, Regis, this video, a brand new Ezekiel Sims and Nakia deck play. Akia Alex

Regis: 59:38

was,

Alex: 59:38

get him

Regis: 59:38

to move. Alex was wrong is what it's gonna say.

Alex: 59:41

Alex was wrong. And it's gonna be, yeah. Oh, one of these days though, one of these days you're gonna have to teach me your thumbnail game because it's, it's too good. Like your thumbnail craft is is so incredible.

Regis: 59:52

It's so hard and it takes so long. It would be impossible to teach. It's so, I honestly, it's been very good to me, so I can't complain, but I almost regret it'cause it takes so long. Did you see my absorbing man spider where it's like he's got six arms and like

Alex: 1:00:06

I did.

Regis: 1:00:06

It's

Alex: 1:00:06

so listen I see all your videos and I, um, sometimes I also wanna know, like if I have a bit of a take where I'm like, I think this card's crap, or I think this card's really good and I feel like I'm against consensus. I really want to hear like what you say. I really want to hear, uh, like what Bink says. I really want to hear what people are saying. Yeah. And so like, I, I like especially on those, I'll like watch more stuff. If I'm more confident about my assessment, I watch less. Does that make sense?

Regis: 1:00:32

Uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny'cause like. I was kind of a little down, more down on superior Spider-Man, for instance. But you seem really high on him.

Alex: 1:00:39

I like it. I still think it's good.

Regis: 1:00:41

I'm higher on zombie galati than everybody. Like I actually think zombie Galati is close to being good and everybody else is like, this is the worst card that's ever been made. I hate it. And I'm like, I don't know guys. I think this is, there's a chance. So

Alex: 1:00:54

I made the the official video for it. Oh

Regis: 1:00:56

yeah.

Alex: 1:00:57

And like I was so scared. I was like, I was like, man, this card is, I might be able to cope a little bit, but like, man, the hoops you gotta jump through for this thing. It's just crazy. Like play anything else. It's more straightforward. And one of the concerns I had, I think I even said it on the pod, I said that like I felt like I can make a video where it looked great in highlights, but like. If you actually look at the stats, like you're basically building this one trick that only looks good and highlights, you know what

Regis: 1:01:25

I mean? Dude, I had, dude, I had a positive, I think I had like a negative win rate, but a positive cube rate. I'm actually trying to pull it up right now for my initial video.'cause I played Concho. I was like, I didn't, I was living on, on a high'cause I was like, oh, I had pretty good numbers with this deck. Oh, okay. Yeah. I actually had a terrible win rate. I went six and nine. Oh, well I had two different versions of the deck. I went, but I was up seven cubes and then I went four and four with a second version was up one cube. So I was like up eight cubes. I was like, hey, pretty good. And I, I mean, I said like, you know, solid. I don't think I said good. I was like, it was pretty, it's promising, you know? Then the data comes in on that deck list on untapped the next day and I was like, I thought it was pretty good. Like I didn't play a ton of games, you know, small sample size. It was like 15 games or something. 29% win rate, negative 0.8 cubes or something. The people who played my jack hat, the worst, they ruined my win rate. I was like, oh God, it is really bad. It

Alex: 1:02:23

was their fault.

Regis: 1:02:26

I was like, I didn't even think it was like suspicious.'cause I had a pretty good run, you know? It wasn't like I was trying to force it and like, man, and then I did another zombie galactic attack and had another decent run. So I'm still, I guess I'm coped. I, I don't know. It's, uh. I just guess I'm wrong. I just wanna like it too much. I think it's,

Alex: 1:02:46

they're not even gonna touch that car'cause we're in move season, baby. They don't want anything taken. They want to sell the season fastest, buddy. They're not touching zombie glocky when this zombie Glock tie, sorry they said it wrong in their own video. Zombie ggl tie is gonna get buffed after the season. Hun? P There's no question. That's what I, that's my prediction. That's my hot take there. But uh, and I'm looking forward to it. I think the card's kind of cool. Unlike Ezekiel Sims. Now Regis, that's gonna take us to our next card, which I joked about prior. I actually forgot what that was releasing today. It's not even part of the, uh, the little things we have underneath here. Uh, chameleon, the three three that reads on reveal copy the text of another card here. You revealed this turn. Kind of a bit of a mouthful. One of the more, kind of just difficult things to, to kind of parse out. There's a lot of key activating words there. Like here, for instance. And this turn there, it's not that complicated. Maybe I should just calm myself down a little bit here. But what I will say is I am like I don't wanna say excited with this card. I'm like, I'm have some sort of like excitement to play it in Surfer, but outside of that, like I'm just not feeling it. It's a series four card. I always appreciate a good series four release, even though we just jumped over web sling, like it was absolutely nothing but like chameleon. Could it be good? Regis, I'll give you the floor.

Regis: 1:04:01

I kind of feel like something about this card is so boring to be in. I don't know what it is.'cause it, it's actually not that boring. Like, like you said, surfers I think are really obvious. Just go for like the double Surfer on six or whatever. Or you know, if you got Sarah play something else too. That seems like a really obvious good fit to surfers is awesome. It's perfect from a timing standpoint. I also was thinking about like Ironman on turn five and then Mystique and Chameleon on turn six. So you can get like three Ironmans, you know, the Chameleon becomes an Ironman from Mystique. Uh, like that seemed kind of cool too. But I, this is very rare for me for some reason I just don't feel excited to do either of those things. Something about this card has just completely lost my attention and I don't know why. I don't know if it's instincts and it's gonna be bad, but it does seem promising. You know, Cerebro three, we were just talking about, you know, this could be another like, uh, mystique option in Cerebro three Slam, uh, Cerebro and, and, and then this and like, so I think it can do a surprising amount of things, but I think maybe I don't like it.'cause I know it's only good on turn six and like any other turn it's probably garbage. And that's so linear and boring. I don't really know though. What do you think?

Alex: 1:05:09

What I think is, I kind of regret bringing up the fact that you could make a drinking game of how many times we said cerebral.'cause if anyone's actually doing that, like they're, they're having a really rough time right now. But yeah, cerebral for sure, like cerebral and mystique obvious combination. Uh, C3 is gonna love this, not that C3 needs any, any additional help. Did it not just win a massive tournament? I'm just gonna throw it out there. So it'll definitely see play there. Silver Surfer I think is cool because one of the major things like you touched on was like you can like practice Silver Surfer and you used to have to rely on like Hope Summers and like then playing a Sarah on top of that, then doing like three three and then to Surfer, no, sorry, uh, three drop into Silver Surfer S Man type thing. Or you have to set up the, uh, Silver Surfer First Steps, for instance. But one of the challenges and kind of keeps me away from loving this card is the fact that it has to be played on the same location, which limits things like Sage, for instance. I thought like, okay, Sage could be cool as a closer, but like. You usually just trade the location with Sage. Like do you really need to play it twice? And then like it's so like, I don't know, it is a little awkward in its text, which I think reduces its functionality. But is this kind of what they expect for series four cards? But at the same time, it's like you kind of see the potential here. Right. Another utilization I wanna just throw out there is like, what if you played alongside anti-venom?'cause you can copy the text of theoretically a free card, right? So you can kind of snake it into lines, which you might not be able to traditionally do. Like on turn five.

Regis: 1:06:34

Yeah. That's smart. That's sneaky. Yeah. Yeah. What are even

Alex: 1:06:37

copying?

Regis: 1:06:38

I don't know. Yeah, I think there's ways to figure this out probably. I just don't wanna be the guy that like makes it fun or cool.'cause like Silver Surfer videos at this stage for me are so boring and nobody wants to see them. It's like, oh, a three cost card comes out, make a Silver Surfer video. You know? Like, I don't want to do that.

Alex: 1:06:53

I'm cutting this from a pod. Don't, don't do this, don't do this. Do not trash Silver Surfer. Like you can't. You can do anything you want. Do not

Regis: 1:07:02

I, you,

Alex: 1:07:03

you watch your mouth when you talk about Silver Surfer on this podcast.

Regis: 1:07:06

I love the character. That's like probably one of my favorite Marvel characters. But don't love the card so much. It's come on. We've done a lot and we've done it a lot

Alex: 1:07:12

hard.

Regis: 1:07:13

It's the same recipe every time. It's like, I've made this video 47 times, and I've done the thumbnail where I turn them into Silver Surfer too. I'm gonna put him on a surfboard. What do you wanna bet? He's gonna be all Silver and he is gonna be on a surfboard thumbnail done like Silver bored of doing that. He's already kind of Silver in the face. So like, I think you're right though. That word here is gonna become really important for this card and it's gonna be more awkward than people realize. And the fact that you can't play'em early and the fact that you have to play'em in the same spot, I think those two things are actually gonna make this a lot worse than people realize. It might still make sense in cerebral three as like a, third cerebral potentially or whatever, but, I think beyond that, it's gonna be clunkier than people think and might be, maybe that's why it's in series four instead of series five. It seems like they often give us the kind of nah cards a lot of the time in series four. So that could be it.

Alex: 1:08:09

Yeah, that definitely could be it. Uh, you're just lucky that I have not been actually playing much Silver Surfer lately. My pet deck that I continuously find myself wanting to go to lately actually has been destroyed. I like Moyer X destroyed. Moyer X is just so fun, man. I just, I love that card. If I'm playing anything just for pure fun, I'm playing Moyer XI have found myself like just to get like weekend missions done and stuff like that.'Cause I like you, I've haven't been grinding as many games as I traditionally have in the past. Just. I'm just tired, man. I'm just tired, right? Yeah. And um, I've been playing, uh, I've actually been playing like the Superior Spider-Man Evo, which I do like, but I, I gotta tell you, there's something special about, uh, destroy, I think destroys a pretty good spot even though X 23 got a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a Nerf there, which did hurt the archetype quite a bit because that's, uh, you know, you're not feeding into the nulls effectively. And X 23 is almost like a I didn't pull my Deadpool, so let's just get the stuff going here, type thing. Can't do it quite as effectively, but overall, still a really good archetype. I think that's gonna take us to our Snapchat mailbag, unless I'm forgetting something. I think we're almost, are we almost up the finish line here, sir? Are we almost done the, this Marvel Snapchat podcast? I think we are. There's two things I wanna say. Now we don't actually have a question for this, but I had this thought, this is a little uncharacteristic of me bringing my own question to the podcast here, but had this thought, so I've really been liking the limb tie game modes and what they've been doing with them. And I was thinking to myself, how can they make conquest better? Conquest seems like no one wants to play. Do you play conquest? I don't play conquest. Never. Because it's just

Regis: 1:09:36

No.

Alex: 1:09:36

No one plays conquest.

Regis: 1:09:37

I haven't played it in like two years unless I have to for a video or something.

Alex: 1:09:40

Second dinner. You're allowed to steal this idea. If it's a good one, I'm giving you permission. I think that one of the things that second dinner has not been doing, and they can use these in game modes, they can do it. They need to lean into like the series more. Like imagine if Conquest was like, this month it's only series one. Or this month it's only series one to two or this month. Or like imagine they gated, like, kinda like the types of cards that you could use. I know in some, some ways you're like, you know Alex, that kind of sounds sick. I wanna do, I want to use my cards that I pay money for. Which is probably why they'll never do it.'cause why would you buy Superior Spider-Man if you don't even use it in the, in one of the modes

Regis: 1:10:16

Ev everyone is, you can only use series five cards. That's the only

Alex: 1:10:19

one

Regis: 1:10:19

they

Alex: 1:10:19

have. Yes. You can only use the cards release this month. But no, I just had a thought. Wouldn't it be funny if we had game modes or something like that that was like only series five or not series five? No, that would suck. Only series one or only series two. Kind of like making like deck building challenges around specific kind of moments in time of Marvel Snap. You know what I mean? I thought that would be cool.

Regis: 1:10:41

Yeah, I think what, what's that called? Like Popper format I think in other games sometimes. Like magic gathering or something. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think any way to slice that, that makes. Well, two things, right? Like that would make it more approachable for free to play players and budget players. That'd be cool for them to have a little space to explore. It would actually kind of be more nostalgic probably for a lot of players, like going back to the simple older days of, of Marvel Snap in a lot of ways. But also just like having new ways to deck build and I guess, I don't know how true this is, but I think it's maybe at least a little true in the limited time game modes. They don't really change that building that much. Like they do a little bit'cause like the extra energy and stuff and high voltage, like, you know, I know they shift a little bit and like the guardians were in the, uh, whatever it's called, sanctum or whatever. But it would be cool to like, give you even more ways and reasons to like come up with new decks and new metas that are like more restrictive so that in other words, it, it sort of encourages more creativity than what we have right now, which is I feel like right now it's like we have these. Five or six, seven archetypes or whatever and we like plug in a new piece every once in a while, right? But there's not really that many like totally new things that ever pop up. It's got destroy, you got move, you got ongoing and we just get new variations of those. Maybe honestly this man spider merge deck is kind of a new thing. It's like almost more new than most decks we see anyway. The zombie galactic could have been a new deck but fallen flat, right? So I guess I am always itching for ways to like slice the game in different unique ways. So I think it would probably do that, which would be fun.

Alex: 1:12:11

Yeah, I just think deck building challenges are fun. And even when I kind of said my thing out loud, I was like, yeah, they probably haven't done this'cause it's not actually that great of an idea. But who knows? Maybe someone, someone's like, you know what though, Alex, if you just make a couple of these tweaks and maybe this type of game mode or this type, and all of a sudden it makes more sense. Right. But we do have an actual question and it comes from Kenji and it reads, do you think that they should add three slots for skill cards? So technically it'll be a 15 slot deck. 12 for cards and three for skills. The issue with this, will it take away with the amount of skill cards you want to use, or will they allow you to use your 12 slots for skill cards? And I guess what they're trying to say here is like, what if you had like, uh, game mode or whatever, where like you actually could have like a sideboard of just skills, went alongside your 12 card deck. And we almost have this in grand arena where you start with a skill in hand and that actually does generate a lot of the flavor of what those decks do. So is there the potential for them to kind of be a little more creative with their utilization of skill cards is like almost additions into different formats?

Regis: 1:13:18

Yeah. I guess I, I have like a functionality question on how that's envisioned. Would you, like, would they be drawn from the same deck pool or would they exist separately so you could just like grab one at any given time? You know what I mean? Like, are they, uh. I'm thinking almost like a hero power and horse over. It's just there and you can utilize it or is it like, in other words, I don't think I'd want a 15 card deck because you'd add a lot more inconsistency and randomness and like, you wouldn't be able to do things as readily and like your skills would just make your deck worse. I guess like smaller decks are gonna be better generally, so I would want it to exist in some kind of, if we were gonna do that, I'm not sure I wanna do that, but if we were, I would think I'd want some kind of button or like some separate, maybe you draw a skill every other turn or something, you know, something like that was still introducing a little randomness and not so solved, I dunno if that's the right question, but

Alex: 1:14:04

No, you're asking me questions. I don't have the, uh, the answer to. Uh, you froze for a sec there. I was, I was scared that we lost you, but um,

Regis: 1:14:10

yeah, no, I looked, I was like,

Alex: 1:14:13

yeah, but I mean, yeah, it was just, I thought it was an interesting idea of like, I wonder if they start to experiment with the deck building aspect of Snap and, um, skill cards do represent a very unique. Type of card they've introduced into the game. And they could potentially have it where like maybe they do have a mode where you do have like a, like a champion skill, which is gonna be one of the skill cards.'cause that is something I kind of miss from Oog, Hearthstone. Like the idea of like, I'm playing Face Hunter and this button I hit for two, it goes face baby. Like, it's kind of interesting how, how that used to work. And uh, like even with Commander Cards, like even with like, uh, with Riff Bound you have like a champion card that can be played. It's always available to you to play with, with, uh, with your energy and stuff like that. It kind of adds consistency. I don't know. I guess this is also a good example as to why I'm not a game designer and just someone who, uh, who hosts a podcast for friends to come on and talk about a game I love.

Regis: 1:15:06

I do just wish, like Marvel Step had more new game modes. Like Grand Arena was nice, new, you know, but now we're kind of in this, like the same three, you know, or whatever. Just, I guess it's actually been better lately, but it felt like it took for. To get more game modes coming. You know, I did, you know, like I, we, I'm just like, we we're lagging and we're finally maybe catching up a little. So I'm just still craving more. I will be honest. I don't really play them that much. I guess it's maybe a little hypocritical of me to like request more'cause I'm not, I don't know, it's like hard, it's hard for'em a content creator standpoint.'cause like a lot of people just wanna see like, the normal stuff and like what deck I used to climb or whatever. So I usually do like one deck video in a new game mode, but not much beyond that. So may maybe they're actually catering to me and I'm the culprit. I'm the reason there aren't more, there aren't more game modes. Whoops. I need to support them more perhaps.

Alex: 1:15:56

Yeah. But, uh, what I will say though is I think they've been doing a good job making these new game modes and I feel like it does add a nice pulse to the game, which I do appreciate.'cause like the ranked grind at this point, like, I'm just not interested in it. Especially since they, they removed a lot of like, uh. They just added, they added a lot to the grind. And I feel like, I feel it and I'm like, you know what? I just don't want to engage with the game in this way. Like, I, I love this game and I wanna play it in a way that I love. And grinding against cheater bots is not, or like, constant one, one or two cube or treat games is not the way I want to do it. And when you're in a game like Grand Arena, one of the things benefits of the ticket system is people don't often concede, they don't often leave. You see the games through. Um, which I do appreciate to some extent at this point in my Marvel Snap career. But what I will say is, Regis, it's about that time that we say goodnight to our friends. Good day. Perhaps maybe you're driving to work in the morning. I don't know. But either way, thank you so much for listening to us today, Regis, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast. You're someone who I respect so highly and, um, for me, I'm so grateful that you took time out of your incredibly busy schedule with your family, your work, and everything that you do to be here on this podcast with me and our viewership here. So thank you, Regis, for being here today.

Regis: 1:17:08

Yeah. No man, I, I'm always happy to hop on. I love you. You're mainstay of the Marvel Snap community. You're an icon, you're beloved. Like I, every time I see like, uh, you know, like, isn't there like a channels that other your viewers watch on YouTube? Like, do you see that? Isn't that somewhere, is that on Twitch tube? But

Alex: 1:17:26

that

Regis: 1:17:26

is somewhere. Yeah. Like your up videos

Alex: 1:17:28

also watch.

Regis: 1:17:29

Yeah, you show up all the time. Like, I think people vibe with us in a similar space and you know, like behind the scenes we get along really well. Like, I, we have the same energy or spirit or something. Like we, you know, whether that's sharing trade secrets or uh, just, uh, just talking it out, you know, like we have a good, uh, a good rapport I guess. So anyway, what I'm saying is I love you and I'm happy to be here. So thank you

Alex: 1:17:53

buddy. I love you too. You guys heard you here first. Re just loves me. This is my whole dreams. All my dreams are coming. True. I told you at the start of this podcast, I was your biggest fan and now here we are. But he's right. Actually, this podcast is being recorded so late at night. I'm probably not even gonna go to bed tonight after I'm done editing because we literally started our call with like an hour conversation of us just catching up with one another. And, uh, yeah guys, Regis is an absolute beauty both on and off the camera. And uh, I just hope we have an opportunity to have you back sometime soon, my man.

Regis: 1:18:23

Yeah. Appreciate it man. Thank you.

Alex: 1:18:25

Thank you to everyone who's listening. Thank you to Regis. All his links will be down below. I'm sure he needs no introduction. Download his game, it's gonna be there. It's a fantastic one, and we'll see you on that next one.