5-Star Hype vs. 1-Star Duds: Weapon X Season Ratings ft. LaurenWhatevs | The Snap Chat Ep. 159

This week, Alex welcomes renowned creator LaurenWhatevs to the show to do the math on the 11 new cards coming in the December "Weapon X" season. The two break down every card, from the Season Pass Weapon X to Maverick, Aurora, Fantomex, and the new skills, giving their full ratings and analysis.

Plus, Lauren announces her brand-new Marvel Snap website, Fourth Location, a new project with Scott Denim of Snap.fan. The show wraps with a mailbag question about the rising power and viability of "Skill" cards in the meta.

Join Alex Coccia and special guest LaurenWhatevs Snapper 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 Special Guest Announcement
• 0:35 Lauren's Journey into Marvel Snap
• 3:05 Content Creation and New Projects
• 4:22 Discussing New Marvel Snap Cards
• 4:52 Weapon X: Season Pass Card Analysis
• 13:45 Adamantium Infusion: Premium Season Pass Skill
• 18:30 Chamber: New Card Breakdown
• 24:20 Weapon H: Discard Deck Potential
• 29:24 Maverick: A Boost for Surfer Decks
• 34:38 Aurora: Reviving Thanos Deck
• 35:53 Thanos and Aurora: A Perfect Match?
• 37:16 Aurora's Potential and Deck Building Challenges
• 40:00 Fantomex: A New Contender
• 46:48 Wade Wilson: A Disappointing Addition?
• 52:07 Morrow and the Affliction Archetype
• 54:43 Fastball Special: A Thematic Powerhouse
• 1:00:37 Wild Child: The Hybrid Deck's Key Player
• 1:05:27 Snapchat Mailbag and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Alex: 0:00

Hey everyone, and welcome to the next edition of the Snapchat. Today I'm joined by a very special guest, someone that I had been looking forward to having on the Snapchat for the longest time. Someone who operates completely different than me in the Marvel Snap Space because they do the math. You guys know me? I don't do math, but Lauren Whatevs does. Lauren, it is great to have you on the Snapchat. How are you today?

LaurenWhatevs: 0:20

Oh my gosh, I'm doing great and it is awesome to be on the Snapchat. I've been, uh, watching this since before I started Content Creation.

Alex: 0:29

No way. Okay. That's actually pretty cool. So I like to always ask this for new guests that have been on the Snapchat for the first time. So first of all, what got you into Marvel Snap in the first place? What was that thing that you're like, huh, I'm gonna install this game and I'm gonna play this game. And then all of a sudden you're like, I gotta make cr content for this game. I, I love it. So what was that kind of ins inspirational moment that got you fully into Marvel Snap?

LaurenWhatevs: 0:50

Yeah, there were two things. One was, I, I had seen it in the App store and. Early days, they were talking about all the variants you could collect and they showed pixel art variant and I love pixel art. And I was kinda like, that's cool. I didn't get the game then, but like it was on my radar at that point. And then I was listening to, uh, the Adventure Zone, or my brother, and my brother and me, one of those with the McElroy boys. And they talked about how their dad was really into Marvel Snap lately. And I was like. Huh? Is that, that one game? And I checked it out and fell in love with it instantly.

Alex: 1:23

That's awesome. And uh, that's really interesting to hear because, so there's a bunch of creators that didn't actually start on the onset, right? Like I was in the early beta and so like, I kind of had a bit of a head start with the decks with the. With the cards and kind of getting more familiar with the game. And even me, I felt like I kind of had a late launch.'cause I actually, I joke about this all the time. I had actually applied as a content creator at the very onset of Marvel Snap. And they ghosted me. They're like, nah bro, like we don't need you or we don't want you there. Right. I don't know, they didn't actually respond to me. They didn't say like, y'all, you suck, bro. But they just, I just got ghosted, right. And then I got in and then like everyone else got in, like, as you know, they were kind of invited privately and stuff like that. And I was like, just watching from the window, you know, like that, that SpongeBob meme. Right. That was me. And then I just kind of got in with like, as anyone else in the world would get in. Right. And at the time I was making Dota two content and I just, I fell in love with the game. Like the actual gameplay, like it's kind of ing what draws you in.'cause the art's amazing too. But for me, like I don't actually buy lots of variants and stuff like that. The opening cinematics, I know like Harry Perry got. Fired up about like the cinematics that they were producing and the music video, the Hero music video from Oh yeah. Martin Garrick's and all that stuff. It's so interesting to hear like, what pulls people in because Marvel Snap does so much so well that like, you can get pulled in by any number of fronts. And for me it was like just the gameplay that was so fun. And I remember just telling, uh, telling my wife, I'm like, yeah, like I, I make Dota content, but like, I've never had more fun playing a game than Marvel Snap. Like even if no one watches me, and even if like I only go to like two viewers on Twitch, like I'm gonna play Snap because this is like, it doesn't feel like work to me. And um, and the rest is history, I guess. So that is super fascinating. And talking about that too, it's not just about the con, you actually have some new plans in Marvel, Snap Land. Would you like to fill us in on what you've been working on?

LaurenWhatevs: 3:15

Yeah. Um, I'm okay. I've been, I've teamed up with Scott Denim from Snap dot fan. We are working on a website that is going to be just like our home for wherever all, any kind of content we want without having to have it approved by the site owner or an editor of anything like that. Just have that kind of free reign. I do a lot of free content on Twitter and I would much rather put it in a place that's not a hellscape. So in our goal is two weeks. I think that's ambitious, but Scott thinks it's doable. In a couple weeks, we're gonna launch a new Snap website called Fourth Location. All of my economy guides will be there. Snap. Uh, Scott puts out tons of decks and deck guides. Those will all be there. Be on the lookout. Watch, watch, uh, my socials for the official fourth location debut.

Alex: 4:06

Awesome. And we'll have all of Lauren's socials link down below so you can follow along. And I'm actually looking forward to that'cause I actually think you build some of the best content on the planet right now because as I said, it's polar ops to what I do. Like you do the number crunching and I think that's phenomenal, right? And uh, so I really appreciate that. I'm looking forward to the site and uh, but I mean listen, I think it's both time we talk about some Marvel Snap cards'cause there are a whole lot of Marvel Snap cards that are coming out this month. And it's funny'cause just before we started recording we kinda had like a little banter. I'm like, I think there's some serious hits here. But I also think there might be some misses. It's gonna be a bit of a wild month. I think there's gonna be some wild swings in power. So, well, Laura and I are gonna break'em all down for you right now and uh, we're gonna start with the season pass card. This is weapon X. Weapon X is a two two that reads after one of your other cards is destroyed, plus one power. After every third time, improve this effect by one. A little bit of a typo on the screen there, but, uh, long story short, this is a destroy centric card. Makes sense. It's essentially Wolverine. Uh, okay. Hold on. I haven't read the comics yet about weapon X. So if I, if I'm calling it Wolverine and I'm not like canonically, correct. I do apologize. But

LaurenWhatevs: 5:20

in the data minds he's called Weapon X Wolverine. So I think you're right.

Alex: 5:24

Okay. See, I'm trying to catch up. I'm trying to catch up. I'm actually doing some reading on, uh, on our, uh, alpha Flight member we'll be talking about later. So the, I I'm trying to catch up with the Laura. I promise I am. But Lauren, I'll give you the floor here on Weapon X, which is the premium season pass card. What do you think?

LaurenWhatevs: 5:40

Oh, I think it's such a weird season pass card, like Wolverine makes sense, right? A character that everybody recognizes, like makes sense to sell another one of those. But it's such a niche ability. I think it's supposed to be a new deck type or kind of like that Death Mockingbird thing. Because you have to get a lot of destroys to make this work. And just, I dunno if he's good enough to make that deck to make that deck a real deck. He gets very, very big. And it's even okay that he's vulnerable to Sean and Shadow King.'cause like, okay. They spent their tech card on a, on my two. But yeah, I'm really, I'm, this is a strange card,

Alex: 6:23

so it's funny to hear you say that because I am feeling the exact same way. First of all. I don't think that this is as plug and play into the destroy archetype as others may think it is. I think that you're removing some key things, like who do you actually take out from the destroy decks? Now I know you think well cook something wholly new and I'm gonna try, damn it.'cause I kind of wanna bring back, uh, zombie Captain Marvel this season. I think that she might actually have a chance to do something this season. But with Weapon X, the problem that I see is that you have a card that wants other cards to get destroyed, but not itself and destroy. You have six turns, seven. If you wanna play, magic or they play for you, which is ideal, I guess you have six turns. You have to destroy things and use cars to destroy those things. You're gonna run out of time to actually get this ramped up because like you, if you cut Wolverine. To add this card in. Like it's funny how like they kind of compete in the same segment, then you're just not destroying as many cards.'cause Wolverine wants to get munched on all the time, right? And then like, okay, do you cut something like, you know, the Moyer X that's making some of these decks? I think Moyer X might be better than weapon X because Moyer X gives you the Snap equity of like, I got double death, right? I got an extra Knull or double venom or whatever, right? Weapon X has a very face up ability that your point can just read on. Whereas like, I don't think it's better than Warrior Acts either. The power's there, the potential's there. But when I look at when the deck is kind of built and what I look at like, okay, what am I gonna play day one? I'm like, I think this is just a worse version of destroy. I'm not convinced it's a better version of destroy. I wanna be proven wrong. And if I'm not proven wrong, they're gonna buff the car too. By the way, just so you know, let's get ahead of that. If this card doesn't land, they buff in it. Okay. But you understand what I'm saying, Lauren? Like I feel like it's just not quite serving the purpose of advancing Destroy.

LaurenWhatevs: 8:10

Yeah, I totally get it. And if you've got like X 23 or Wolverine out and they hop over to the weapon X lane and like guess you're just not gonna hit them anymore because you don't want to take out your like scalor. Yeah, I mean he really does get very big if you get nine destroys. And I know that's asking like a lot. That's, that's a ton. You have to have some like Killmonger shenanigans to pull that off. He gets to like two 20, so it seems like he's definitely an upgrade for that deck that's destroy as many things as possible. But I just like, I don't know if he's a good enough upgrade for that deck.

Alex: 8:47

I had this thought of like, okay, so the first day cards come out, a lot of people they really try to fixate on like, how can I make this thing shine? Right? And they go all in on weapon X. I'm not convinced Weapon X is like the carry card. Like it might be a supporting character but at the same time it might be able to carry, and one of the places I wanted to take it from a deck building perspective was I kind of wanted to say, okay, you brought up Killmonger and I think Killmonger's actually like the MVP for this card. Like it's what this card needs and like, can we do like a squirrel girl Moira X Killmonger style thing where you're trying to like Moon Girl the deaths or something like that. Or even Moon Girl. I mean you can't even Moon Girl weapon X'cause it's not an ongoing ability. It has to be on the field of play to be getting the numbers anyways. But I'm trying to figure out like, okay, we used to do like, you know, Killmonger squirrel girl type stuff in order to activate the likes of death. Could a Moon Girl style deck work like that? Or are we just trying too hard to make a card work? You know what I mean?

LaurenWhatevs: 9:44

Yeah. And I think that's totally where we should be exploring. Like this has to be a unique flavor of destroy and something like. Get Shauna going or squirrel girl like that. That does seem like the right way to do this. You could always misery your Killmonger to get it, like another blast of of kills out. So I think it's going to be possible and weapon X will get very big. Sometimes it just goes back to like. If we're doing Moon Girl stuff, like can that, is there any way that that can compete with Standard Destroy?

Alex: 10:15

Yeah, exactly. And the other thing about Standard Destroy too is that you've already had a nerve to X 23. So that, in my opinion, has hurt null quite a bit because that little incremental power increase does impact null, especially if you ever point a Zola or something like that.'cause it double dips on that power. But now if you put weapon X in for wolverine, like say you cut wolverine, now you have a, a Nerf X 23 wolverine's outta the mix. So do you actually cut null from this deck? Because what's null doing if you're not actually generating as many consistent destroys, right? Yes. You might be destroying a bunch of scrolls or something to kind of get that weapon X effect happening, but you're not putting numbers up on destroy the way, like, you know, hitting a Wolverine lane would over time. So that's kind of one of the things I've been thinking about. And I guess the other place that we have to talk about too is like, you could consider like a fire hair, misery style deck too, where you're, you know, you're popping off on hoods or something like that. But again, I don't know if you can destroy quite enough here. To make it worth it because I was thinking, okay, let's say you do like a turn one hood, turn two weapon X, turn three, you do like a Shauna and then turn four, you do like X 23 or something into Killmonger. You know, you're going to, maybe your Shauna brings out ice men's and stuff like that. And you actually do a little bit of disruption while wiping everything out, but you actually don't have much power on the board, you know what I mean? You're kind of like, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot. So I wonder about whether or not this card is in fact good enough as it stands. I think the scaling's interesting, obviously would've been way better as an ongoing'cause, like more, uh, I always get them confused. Morphous is a ongoing, so it doesn't matter what's happening on the board. You don't need morby on the board and then discarding things, you can hold them for turn six if you want. Morby loves that. This card does not do what Morby does. It has to be on the field of play. And for that reason I feel like it might be a little wonkier.

LaurenWhatevs: 12:06

Yeah. And like it's a very weak late draw, right? You don't want this out there if you're only, if it's only gonna see a few kills, it's gonna be two, five or smaller. Um, the other thing I've thought about doing with Weapon X, are you familiar with like the Reddit deck that does like Blink and Galactus? Andron? I can't remember everything that's in that deck, but that's the deck that I'm like, I wonder if you can fit Weapon X in here? You ac you know, you get out Antron early and then Killmonger all the drones. That's actually a pretty good hit. And then you get that is interesting and then you get cheap death.

Alex: 12:40

That is kinda interesting. I'm familiar with the deck you're referring to. I have not actually played it in the longest time. But I can see that potentially working. I just. It turns a star rating. I'm gonna say that I'm in the about to three range and it's not like an optimistic three. If I could say two and a half, I would. I don't think it's a two. I think it's better than that because it's gonna have that scaling ability. It does scale very well and I bet you somebody somewhere is going to crack the code on it. But like, I don't know, I'm just not sold on this particular car the way I'm sold on some of the others. It's a very unoo, unenthusiastic three for me.

LaurenWhatevs: 13:17

Uh, I think I'm at three also, like it's gonna be strong in its deck, but its deck is not very good.

Alex: 13:23

Yeah. And that is the season pass card, which is going to take us to the premium season pass card. Uh, it's actually a skill. The art is, uh, is, isn't, uh, indicative of it being a skill, but it's a forecast skill, which is actually a very expensive skill. It might actually be the most expensive skill. I think images of Iken is also a four. So, and that is an insanely powerful skill. So we have the Adamantium infusion, which is a forecasted skill that reads on Reveal Revive your highest power destroyed card here with its power doubled. Uh, Lauren, I'll give you the floor. What do you think of the new skill Adamantium infusion?

LaurenWhatevs: 14:03

All right. I've seen people hesitant about a forecast skill, and I am not worried about that the same way I'm worried about a forecast activate. It's fine if it leaves the board, if it's doing something big enough. And having targeted revival and doubling of that card is a very strong thing to do. Uh, it is a question of the timing, right? Like, is this gonna be more like. An elixir where it's kind of awkward to find the right timing with it or can it be Phoenix force? And to me it seems more like that. It seems that you're trading off the move of Phoenix force to get double power and there are plenty of decks that will like that. Nimrod comes to mind first. How about you?

Alex: 14:47

Yeah, so it's funny you mentioned Nimrod because the Nimrod fallen one black Panther Zola Deck is I think where I'm gonna kind of bring this, I think it makes the most sense for that particular shell. And I, I actually do really like that I have a low key but an enjoyer fall one. I know this is a bit of a hot take, but I kind of like it and I feel like a lot of people,'cause they don't see it often, they don't expect what you can do with Black Panther Zola on, uh, that final turn if you get the pop off on it. But with Adamantium infusion it's expensive, but. In this game of Marvel Snap, there have been two things that have been so consistent. One, anything that gives plus three power is usually broken. And two, anything that doubles power is usually broken. Those have been like kind of the consistence, right? And this is a card that doubles power. Yes, you're doubling a highest cost, or sorry, highest power destroyed card, but it has a little bit of targetability. You know what you're bringing back and you're getting its power doubled, which is very significant. So ultimately I am of the mindset where like I kind of wanna come in at a three here, but this would not surprise me if it ends up hitting like four or four and a half territory. I like other cards better this season, but this is one of those cards that I think is gonna find a place. I think it'll feel bad for the first couple days and then like three weeks later there's gonna be this one deck that shows up where it like it feels unfair. And Adamantium Infusion is going to be one of the key linchpin cards that makes the interaction unfair. It's just a matter of getting there. I think this is a bit of a deck building challenge. I'm gonna go into, you know, the Black Panther Zola combination style decks to see what I can come up with, but it wouldn't surprise me if something wholly new takes this card to the next level.

LaurenWhatevs: 16:25

Hmm. I am a high four for this one. I can see the hesitation to call it a five, but I'm just like, I'm sure that this is going to find a home. It's okay if you play it on turn six, right? With the, if with the nimrod stuff you can do carnage or another card. We'll be talking about later. Fastball special play, both of them on the same turn. And there's just cool things you could do with that. If you could pull off, like you were talking about Panther Zola. What if you do a Zola atium infusion, like split the card up and then you revive it the next, you know, on the same turn. It's just, there's gonna be for sure big things that you can do with this. Doubling is so strong.

Alex: 17:05

And the key thing about this too, and I believe I read this, like I believe in like um, one of the creator chats we had, someone asked the question, I don't remember where I see it, I read too much stuff, but uh, I believe it will repro on reveals. So it means, so like if you bring back the Black Panther, it'll do, it's on reveal again, which I think is really beneficial. Obviously when your doubling power, right? So you're kind of double dipping. So you're right, you can Zola the Black Panther and then Adamantium Infusion and bring it back because technically the destroyed version of Black Panther is still hovering in limbo while the two replications have occurred. Right? So I do think Zola is gonna be like the card for Adamantium infusion. I'm just not quite sure where it's gonna kind of come into play. And there is a chance, like you did mention Phoenix Force on the onset. Phoenix Force does some interesting stuff too. I think there's a couple like potential Phoenix Force cards this month. I'm not sure if Adamantium Infusion's the one. But still it's a tool. I just don't know. I just don't know. I can see it being probably more played in the Nimrod, black Panther, Zola style stuff, but I wanna be wrong. I want to see some really cool stuff. Uh, this is gonna be the super premium season pass card, by the way. So you have the we, uh, weapon X as the premium. This is a super premium. This is like the extra, it's like the$20 USD you get or whatever. So that's gonna be the upper echelon of the season pass. That's not the only card coming out on that day because on that day we also get chamber. This is December 2nd chamber is a two three. That reads activate plus two power for each five cost or higher card you have here and in hand. So checking both the location and your hand. It's a two three. He has a beard of fire. It's an activate. And Lauren, once again, I'll give you the floor. What do you think about chamber?

LaurenWhatevs: 18:54

Oh, I think this card looks cool. It looks explosive. Both if you look at the art or, or read the text, it makes you dream of, what's this deck where I can play tons of expensive cards, but I just don't think it in that deck, right? Like the sort of decks that we have like that are big ramp decks or like hella, and I don't think this really makes a lot of sense in either. Even if you do get, what if you get him to hit three or four, he's like a 2 9, 2 11. That's big. But we're gonna see other, other two cost cards that are comparable without that huge deck building cost. So I'm not a big fan of Chamber actually.

Alex: 19:38

Okay. So it's kind of funny that you said that because I was thinking about this before we recorded and I was doing all my notes and stuff and like, I'm so ho hum on these cards. I'm ho hum on this one too. Even though I think it's a ramp card, I like Ramp and I, it's a place all that I wish I interacted with more. But like we have a lot of two costed cards this season that like you can make the argument of getting to like almost 10 power and for some reason we're like, ho hum on it. And I can just picture like Glen and the designers be like, what do you want? What do you want from a two drop that gets to like nine power? Like, what is wrong? So it's like kind of funny that we're so ho hum on these cards that could potentially put up some serious power. Right? But I'm kind of with you on chamber. Like I'm at three stars, which I mean, it's been consistent three stars for me, even though I think that like Adamantium uh, infusion is better than Chamber and better than, uh, weapon X. I'm gonna tell you that with Chamber. I like the idea that it's like an easy two seven really. Turn two is often a turn as well that you can just like. You can commit to playing something. You can commit to something like, actually most ramp shells might wanna play something like a Penny Parker, but realistically you can play chamber there. And for me it's like, alright, to get to two nines kind of straightforward here. Like it's really not that hard. And what if, what if, I know this is a little bit of cope, but we've gotta cope. Sometimes I was thinking like, okay, what if I make a deck with like Esan Nick Fury? Because the cool thing about this is that if you Nick Fury, that's a ton of power in the hand that Chamber loves. Yeah. You're also ramping, so you get to play those cards too, even though he's a forecast, which is kind of weird. But what I'll say is that. Eson will pull at the end of the turn, which means that chamber will activate before that, it'll get the plus two for the stuff in the hand. And then Eson is gonna pull stuff down, which could potentially be a pretty interesting play, but you're adding random garbage and it can pull a destroyer down and wipe your board. So it's like, I'm not exactly sure if I wanna play that style deck, even though right now we do have some decks that are running like, you know, the lock jaw Jubilee style stuff with Blink. Like that stuff is really cool. It's unfortunate it's war machine, but if we take that general shell and we put it more into a ramp archetype, could it be potentially good? And could Jaber fit in that?

LaurenWhatevs: 21:48

I can see that. And I think it, it's interesting to think about like, what decks can he upgrade or enable? You know, he, he's a two cost scaler. Like he's, I don't think he's an enabler as much as he is just like a small upgrade to a deck. But I really wonder like, what are you cutting? You talked about Penny. It's like you don't want to cut Penny. He, he reminds me a lot of Weapon X, where it's like, it's, he's got a super niche home. He's super face up. Just, I don't like, he has a place, but it's a, a small place and not a very good one. I, if I give anything a one, I think, I think he's my worst card of this season.

Alex: 22:22

Um, you're giving chamber one. Oh man. I think it's not great, but I don't think it's awful. Awful. I think that like it, if you want to cope, you can play it. I think it'll put numbers that like warrant, its inclusion and decks. But the problem that we have in Snap is that there's 12 card slots. There's 12 card slots, and so if you're gonna be committing to 12 cards this has to be better than one of the 12 and I don't know if it'll consistently be that.

LaurenWhatevs: 22:45

Yeah. One thing I think is worth mentioning, skipping ahead to January, we have a few dragons that like it. If you play small cards and big cards and chamber fits that play style where you've got a mix of small cards and big cards, maybe he gets better then.

Alex: 23:01

Listen, I've had so many conversations with people that are like, Hey, it might get better in the future. And it's true, it just might. But we have like two examples of that. We have Elixir, which is like it is gonna get better in the future. And then it's just like Elixir kind of still sucks, right? But then you get Prodigy, right? Where Prodigy on Release feels totally suss and then all of a sudden prodigy's literally in the best stack in the game and it's breaking everything. And everyone's wondering if pro's interactions are broken, actually legitimately bugs, you know what I mean? Like that invisible woman proje stuff seems like it's a couple extra turns. I don't know if that's supposed to be working that way, but it's kind of funny to think that like, is Chamber that exact car? Like does it make much more sense in January, uh, where you get like those dragons and stuff like that? It's entirely possible. So Chamber not inspiring. A lot of confidence. Three for me. And again, a little a little bit of an unenthusiastic three for me, Lauren, all the way down to a one that's an absolute kick in the pantaloons. But listen, there's gotta be, there's gotta be some love for weapon X. There's no way you're giving weapon XA one.'cause I think this card is really good. Not insane, but potentially very good. It is a seven cost, 14 power card that reads when discarded put this back with negative two cost. So imagine scar for discard. That's what you've got. Lauren, I'll give you the floor. What do you think about weapon H?

LaurenWhatevs: 24:22

Okay, here's another one who is very flashy like chamber, right? If we look at the art, we look at the stats, we look at the text. But I think mostly weapon H can live up to that. I do think it's a little bit of a trap, like, Hey, look at these huge numbers. Don't you wanna play this? And it's like, well, you know, like KA shoe's, comparable. Uh, can't work with hella because you're never like moving it to your discard pile. The first place that I thought of for it was Black Knight. I think that it's a really good hit there. And then you can realistically play the four 14 blade and a five or even cheaper weapon. H what about you? What are you thinking about?

Alex: 25:02

I'm thinking about how I didn't think about Black Knight. Now I feel ashamed of myself.'cause that's genius that Black Knight's perfect. I was thinking about, okay, where my head went was like, can this replace con in dependable discard? Now I was thinking about what like Chavez used to do for discard, but now you got me completely thinking about Black Knight.'cause I think you're right. Even if you don't discount anything further, you have a perfect curve with a 14 power blade, a 14 power weapon age. And then whatever the hell you wanna do on turn six, I think you're cooking here.

LaurenWhatevs: 25:32

All right. Well, I mean, black Knight could use it probably.

Alex: 25:35

Yeah. Black Knight was like, one of those, one of those cards I think took a bit of a stray because it was actually fun. What was it that killed Black Knight? It came back with Hella, it came back for, with Hella Redshift for a while. Right. There was versions of, uh, hella Redshift that ran Black Knight and then something happened. Not a bad hit with

LaurenWhatevs: 25:50

Agatha.

Alex: 25:51

Yes. Oh no, it was, it was Agatha. That's right. It was Agatha.'cause you'd consistently hit Agatha with, with uh, that's right. That's where it was. I'm not sure what happened to the meta where it got completely just taken out, but that was the last time I saw it. Is the time that Black Knight comes back.

LaurenWhatevs: 26:07

Yeah. I mean I maybe part of what happened with Black Knight is people were trying to do cute things with Infin and then you get the four 20 blade and you have to ghost rider or hella to get infin back. This is a trade off, right? You get 14 power instead of 20 power. But this seems easier to pull off to me than getting Infin back to your board.

Alex: 26:25

Yeah. And the other thing I wanna mention here is that like I, I like Concho. I think Concho is good. Obviously Chu is a golden gauntlet winning deck. If you just take cons out and you put weapon H in, seriously, I think the deck still kind of works. Yeah. And I think you can get a little more aggressive too, because you can even, like some of the cons, decks don't run gambit. I think you can run gambit.'cause now you have a very, like, you want to hit this, you wanna discard this while trading something on their board. Right. I think that, uh, this deck alongside like your classic Proxima midnight discard Modoc style list with Dracula and Apocalypse is absolutely fine.'cause one of the things you can do here is if you can discount this enough, right? You might be able to play this alongside, Dracula on turn six or whatever, right? If things don't quite go your way. So I do really like this deck this card specifically. And actually when it's discarded, it'll go to the right.'cause that's what Discard does. It'll compete and step on Apocalypses toes a little bit, but the fact that it's being discounted and it'll always generally be cheaper than Apocalypse given that you're discarding things. I think people just sneak it into the curve. And it might be able to like, give you answers on say turn five, where you're like, damn, I didn't draw my modoc, but I wanna play something legit Here. You can play weapon H, right? And if you're, um, if your Dracula is sitting on board and you top deck your modoc going into turn six with apocalypse in your hand, you're still laughing. You know what I mean? So I do think that this, uh, this card could potentially be very good. I don't know. I just I have a four star rating for it. I see it having a very solid floor, a relatively good ceiling. I think this is a good card. If you're a discard enjoyer, I can absolutely see this being in your, in your deck. I don't feel like you have to do much for this card to be good. It's doing exactly what Discard wants to do. You're discarding cards, so I feel like this is a relatively low risk, solid option this season.

LaurenWhatevs: 28:13

Yeah, he's a four for me too, and I really like your call with, with the Apocalypse Dracula deck. I think he actually can replace ksu. He's the easier version of the deck, right? Like KSU is higher role because there's a possibility that you're getting KSU for 12 plus whatever he revives for 12. But this is like, you're fine if you hit this three times, right? Whereas ksu ISS gone if you hit him three times. So this is like the safer, easier version of the deck.

Alex: 28:39

Yeah. KSU might have higher upside here and there I think, because obviously that that extra power you're bringing back. But, um, it's so funny to think how, like, I still wonder if there's still a better version of Concho out there that's not seeing play. Like you got the, the first Ghost rider, the Gores, the Ironmans. Like we, we try to experiment with that at the start and then we kinda just let it slide. But I still think that like, those are obvious, incredible targets for something like Concho. But it just so happens that bringing back a. Massive Dracula is just fine or bigger back. A massive morbid is just fine or whatever, right? And it's kind of funny how that works sometimes. It actually goes to show that sometimes when you overcook, sometimes the more obvious best things are just sitting right there in front of you on your plate, right? So, weapon H getting good reviews from us overall as we move on to a card. Lauren, I gotta tell you, if there's any card that's gonna get me sweaty this season, it's this one here. There's two cards that really stand out for me. There's actually three. I think we're okay. I think we're kind of past the questionable cards. I think weapon H was the start of like, okay, now we're cooking. Maverick is a three three, so we're already surfing. You guys know that already about me. It's a three three and it reads, activate. Give the next card. You play power equal to this card's power. Yes, I'm in love with Maverick and it's not because he's studly, it's because he is a damn good card. That's gonna go into one of my absolute favorite archetypes in Marvel Snap. I'm playing this in Surfer. I don't even care if, if everyone's like, guys it, it's gonna be better somewhere else. It's gonna be better here or there. I'm playing it in Surfer. None of you can stop me. This is a fantastic card. I'm going to give this a five star because I think it's that good. There's another card that I think is also very good, but this might be the card. I'm most excited for this season because I think it's gonna rejuvenate, Surfer, it's gonna take, what are those things, those clear bomb, what are those called? Defibrillators? The thing you kinda shake. Yeah. Yep. This is the defibrillator for Silver Surfer. But Lauren, what do you think about Maverick?

LaurenWhatevs: 30:38

Okay. I'm allowed to give out one five star, right? That's,

Alex: 30:41

you can give as many as you want.'cause I actually have two written down.

LaurenWhatevs: 30:44

Okay. I don't know if I'm there from Averick, but yes, definitely a Surfer card. And in the kind of Surfer that loves buffing, it's just hitting a critical mass of cards that can give buffs and cards that want buffs, right? Like brood is the obvious hit for this. But also if you hit Shaw or Captain Carter, you are not upset about that at all. I wanna shout out one of my podcast co-host Ben Roller, who took a Surfer buff deck to like. Top 40 something in the, in the final golden gauntlet. And he runs America Chavez in Surfer. And he's a strong believer in that because there's so many good hits in the deck. And I think this adds another good hit, right? Like if you get Maverick, he just passed, he just passes that buff forward. Who doesn't wanna give plus six to your card or, or, or plus six to your brood. So yeah, this is a nasty card with a lot of potential.

Alex: 31:36

It is. And I think that this is one of the examples too, where Activate might be a superpower because you can activate and like you can kind of cue your final turns of, let's say you're still playing Sarah. You can play something like Sebastian Shaw and then activate Maverick brood Surfer or whatever, right? Or if you're like, I need to go more vertical with Sebastian Shaw, you activate Shaw Brooded Surfer. Like it gives you a little bit of like agency as to how you apply that power. But most importantly here, I think there's just so many options. Chavez is a beauty. Again, anytime you doing plus three to something, it's a nice thing, right? Chavez does exactly that. And Chavez traditionally has always been one of my favorite cards in Snap. But like traditional Chavez, I miss her. I miss six nine Chavez, right? It's, I, I get why Glen was like, no, she's gotta go. But Glen, come on man. Bring her back for, bring her back from some, like some game over where it's like the OGs of Snap. Just bring back Broken Shiri, bring back Broken Chavez. But like even something as simple as like you forge into this card, it, that's already huge real estate.'cause usually you're like, well I want a forge brood, or I wanna a Forge Shaw. Well this just locks in Forge. Like if you forge and then you're like, well I didn't top deck Shaw or bro. But I got Maverick. Maverick just like, Hey Forge, don't worry, I got you. I'll pass it on baby. No problem. You know what I mean? He just, he just sends the love forward, which is beautiful. I think this makes Forge way better. And also, you don't have to play this on three. If you gwenpool and then play this on five, that's absolutely fine. If you galata and then play this on five, that's absolutely fine.'cause again, you're paying that power forward. And Sarah has been le less often played in Surfer, but Galacto and Gwenpool are still there. They ain't getting cut. So I just don't see how this underperforms, I think this might be, and again, I'm only fixating on Sulfur Surfer. I know it could go in other decks. There's other buff style decks. I wanna see it. I just, I don't even see those. I see Surfer, you know, I'm gonna be playing Surfer the whole time. I'm only gonna show up one deck this week. I usually come with like five this week. It's one. It's gonna be Surfer. I'm gonna be playing Maverick Surfer. So what is your final star rating? I'm going five here. I'm too excited about it. I love Maverick. It's gonna be niche, but I think it's gonna be really good for surfers. So I'm giving it five. It's one of the ones I'm most excited about, but Lauren, what's your star rating?

LaurenWhatevs: 33:46

Yeah, I think I gotta go four because it is very strong in Surfer, but it's a specific flavor of Surfer. And then I think there's really cute things you can do with it and like combo deck, but cute doesn't win games, it just makes cool clips. So I am very hesitant about Maverick's performance outside of Surfer.

Alex: 34:07

That's absolutely fair. And I like that you kind of stuck to your guns. Like I'm hyping'em up so hard, you know, like you got and you're like, no, no, no, Alex, calm down. Calm down. You still just a four, like relax bro. Because I just, I actually kind of agree with you. Just the four. Just the four, because I have five. I told you I have two fives written down and I was telling myself,'cause we do, you're right, we do traditionally only do one five cost or one five star rating, but I wrote both as five and I was like, you know what, while we're talking I'll decide which one's which. But I haven't yet decided because while. While Maverick stole my heart, because it's a Surfer card, Aurora steals my heart because it is alpha flight. It is the Canadian Avengers, Aurora A six six. That reads on reveal. Give one of your other on reveal cards at each location plus two power repeat for ongoing activate and end of turn, it's a mouthful. It's kind of confusing, but this is gonna be car A card that I think is gonna be very good in one very particular archetype. I don't wanna steal your thunder, Lauren. So I'm going to let you get first dibs on this because I think there's a very obvious archetype where Aurora is going to once again get those defibrillators and it's gonna resurrect someone. Who do you think it is?

LaurenWhatevs: 35:28

Oh gosh, I.

Alex: 35:30

I put you on the spot, no accident. I'm so

LaurenWhatevs: 35:32

interested in which, in which deck you think this is going to revive. Okay. Yeah. I mean some decks I've thought of for her don't need revival, like, like zombies, but I don't think that needs help.

Alex: 35:43

No. Zombies is actually really good. So zombies got revived with a bunch of buffs during the season pass. That's what happened there. It's the Mad Titan. It's Thano. Aos. Yes. I think Thanos is gonna love Aurora because so many of the stones have multiple of these effects and the stones are like often sitting on your board. And we've even gone as far as been like, yo. We gotta, like we've lived a life where we're destroying the stones.'cause we're trying to create space. We've lived, lived a life where we're spectrum, the stones.'cause there's enough ongoings. We've lived so many different versions of Thanos and Thanos is inevitable. He always comes back. If you think Thanos isn't good, you are correct. But it's gonna come back when Aurora comes back because he's also gonna be a variant, from my understanding, he's a variant in the grand arena. So if you don't have him yet, you'll be able to pull him from the grand arena and then you can get Aurora and she is going to elevate that archetype. I think this is a Thanos card completely. 100%. In fact, much like Maverick, I might only show up with one deck this week and it's gonna be a Thanos deck'cause I think that it is. So just bounce, bounce. Baseball swoosh, three point, I don't know, I don't play baseball. Aurora's gonna be in Thanos. That's my personal opinion. Okay.

LaurenWhatevs: 36:54

I love the Thanos call. I should have said it, it was the other deck I was thinking about, but I was like, does it need revival? I called it out on my podcast. If you don't believe me, you can go listen. So I, I Thanos is in mind and those two zombies and Thanos are the ones that have the most common cards that have dual abilities, right? The zombie, Mr. Fantastic being the other one who's on, on reveal and an activate. I think Aurora's really interesting. I think she's very easy to compare to Spectrum, you know, besides her art, her ability is very spectrum, but I think when we're trying to think about her power, it's better to think about doom. Can you beat plus five in the other lanes? And that means that she needs to get three hits. Granted, she only doesn't have the space issue that Doom has. She only needs to take up one space on your board. And that's better for Thanos, right? Thanos doesn't have room for Doom Bots. So I think she's a super fun card. She's a five in my heart. But um, and she's a very interesting deck building puzzle, which is something that's always fun. I worry that people are just going to solve her, and then that's like, that's the aurora deck. But I hope that there are multiple flavors. So I'm gonna give her, I'm gonna give her a four.

Alex: 38:05

You're breaking my heart, you're breaking my heart. All my fives being counteracted with fours. But I totally understand what you're saying.'cause they're gonna be one. It's, I don't wanna say she's a one trick. I don't think she's a one trick. I think she might look like a one trick for the first two weeks. You know what I mean? I think that's exactly what you're saying. Me and everyone else, we're gonna show up with these Thanos stacks and it's gonna be Thanos mere matches like crazy on Aurora week. And then someone somewhere is gonna cook something. That's the hope.'cause I like this card's design, but one of the challenges you have, and one of the reasons why I think that Thanos works really well here is because Aurora is still just a six six. Like she doesn't have the power to stand on her own. She needs a supporting cast. And I, I think that Doom is an apt comparison because Doom is also adding his Doom bots, he's adding value to the board in a way, and he's adding things that weren't there before. Whereas Aurora needs that existing like that, those bodies on the board, she needs those things there. Right? So she can't stand alone the way Doom does. I'm just kinda repeating what you said now I think about it, but, but it's, but I totally understand what you're saying though. And that's kind of what I think might niche down Aurora. But I think she's a really, really good card and I think that Glenn and the design team has have done a really good job, and I've said this before, I think that one of the targets, and I don't know this for a fact, but I believe it to be true, is that they're trying to make more archetypes in Marvel, Snap, playable, and I think that they figure, you know, the more archetypes that are generally playable in Marvel Snap, the more fresh the meta will feel like if toxic has a playable version, if Thanos has a playable version, if move has a playable version and like et cetera, et cetera. Surfer for example, destroy, which got a ton of power infusions move, got a ton of power infusions as well. I think that if Thanos is kind of looking on the outside, is on the outside looking in, I should say, then Aurora might just be what we need to bring it back. I am personally excited for Aurora, but I can see perhaps the hesitation, although this next card. We're talking about beauties, absolute beauties, coming on December 30th, just before the new year, just before we ring in 2026. Phantom X, who I had never heard of before, but he's wearing a, he's wearing an X-Men belt. I'm not entirely sure. I think that's an X-Men belt or is, that's just a belt with an x Exxon. It looks like it, it look, it certainly does look like it. Uh, Phantom X is a four six that reads, activate if you've had cards discarded and destroyed. Afflict front row enemy cards at each location with negative two power the entire front row of the enemy location with negative two power. And this is an activate, which can wait till the end of the game. To do this, your opponents are likely to fill up front rows. I mean, I hate to tell you, you kind of have to, you can't just choose to play the back row. Right. So, Lauren, I'll give you the floor here. What are your initial impressions on Phantom X?

LaurenWhatevs: 40:57

Okay, well this is the first of, I think, three cards this season. We haven't seen the other two yet that are asking you to make this destroyed discard hybrid deck. Something that is technically possible now, right? You have like docking Wolverine X 23, but like, it's just, it's not enough to justify the hybrid. This is a huge ability and maybe huge enough to justify being a forecast activate and maybe huge enough to justify the weird hybrid deck is very exciting ability, but just gets absolutely shut down by loop cage and that's, it's gonna hold him back.

Alex: 41:37

I know, but I don't think Luke Ke is as prevalent across all memoirs as compared to the top. So I feel like the average Marvel Snap player will probably have a relatively positive experience with Phantom X outside of the first week. First week guys don't even if you pull him, you're like, yo, I'm excited, but don't even bother. Like just put him away. Play Maverick because Fantom X is gonna feel awful for the first week'cause everyone in their grandmother is gonna play Luke Cage. And I mean that's consistent with every card that's ever been released in Marvel Snap. That's a toxic card because like a Diamondback looked weird first week and I'm like, yo, this card's amazing. People are like, oh no, no, it kind of feels crap. Well of course it feels crap'cause everyone's playing Luke Cage to the point that you have to play rogue in your decks or else you're cooked. But then they just play Luke Cage on turn six anyways'cause he's still just two damn cheap and is a board wide effect. I don't, I'm not sure if Luke Cage is a problem or not, but I think he's getting close to it. Yes. But I do think that this card is really good and it has a tremendous amount of power. Is it gonna kind of take affliction to the next level though? I think affliction is already really good. I think that like toxic is already really good. Do you need another piece to it? Right. Does this replace the maliki of that archetype?

LaurenWhatevs: 42:45

Oh, I haven't even thought of it as an affliction card. So you're thinking of mixing it with like Ajax and Diamondback stuff?

Alex: 42:52

Yeah. And I'm trying to figure out how. Right.'cause you have to destroy and discard something. So it's kind of tricky, but I think it's entirely possible.

LaurenWhatevs: 43:00

Alright.

Alex: 43:01

Um, but I'm not sure how, I haven't made this deck yet. Full disclosure, that's,

LaurenWhatevs: 43:06

that's asking for a lot of moving parts. That's it. I don't think the get one destroy and get one discard. I don't think that's too hard. Like you can just play a blade or a gambit on the last turn. You can have black cat in your deck and let her discard herself. Like there's ways that you can get one easy discard and then be a destroyed deck after that. Um. I don't know. I don't know if you're gonna pull off making a flick to destroy deck.

Alex: 43:31

It's true. I just had this idea, I'm like maybe I get it out there.'cause even something small, like, you know, like, obviously I don't think this is an Ajax card, but like, something like Diamondback might be able to sneak into a deck like this, right? Like even if only two cards are impacted, like Diamondback still munches on this and it's, yeah. Diamondback I could

LaurenWhatevs: 43:48

see,

Alex: 43:48

right?'cause you play Diamondback on three, it's an ongoing cart, so it doesn't really care. Phantom X on four. Modoc your hand. I don't know. I gotta, I gotta figure it out, right? I gotta still figure it out, but uh, but I think it's actually a really cool cart. I think the condition is kind of fascinating. What I'm describing I think is probably a couple too many hoops, but I think that Phantom X is gonna start to make more sense once we start talking about, like, I'm just gonna, I don't wanna jump ahead too far, but like wild child for instance, right? Yeah. Which is gonna want to kind of double dip in this effect. It's exactly what you discussed. It's entirely possible that with Phantom X and some of the cards we're gonna speak about, we might have a whole new archetype of Marvel Snap born, like this destroy, discard hybrid, which right now doesn't seem like it's particularly playable, but now we're getting some pieces in particular Phantom X, which honestly as a four, six, I mean, you're the math person. Four, six, and then there's what, so there's three locations. Two, so locations four, so that's 12 extra power. 4 18, 5 6. It's huge. Yeah, that's like crazy. It's crazy amounts of power. Right? Thank you for doing the math for me there. But yeah, so for me, I can see Phantom X being like a 4.5. I can see this being like a, like an archetype defining card that's gonna take some cooking and some brewing. But I'm actually excited for this one here and I'm excited for the puzzle. It's going to bring it, it's a December 30th card guys. I don't have a deck prepared right now. The other ones I have more figured out. I figured I needed more time for this one here. Um, and also there's a good chance they actually OTA or patch some things to support it too. We've seen that before where like they have a card late in the season and then like an OTA before they're like, wow, they just positioned this card to help you know it a little bit. So we'll have to see where it goes. But what are you thinking star rating Lauren?

LaurenWhatevs: 45:32

I mean, I'm getting tired of saying the same thing where it's like, it's a four, it's strong in its archetype, but it's not a great archetype. I'm with you that Luke Cage isn't a problem at all. MMRs. So maybe this is, maybe he's irrelevant for the casual player story. I, I do really think they need to figure out how to solve the loot cage problem. It is, it's too strong for how many cards can do affliction now to be just a three cost that is relatively free to throw into a deck. Yeah. I think, I think a four. He is abso, he plus wild child who will talk about in a little bit are like, they're the linchpins of this discard, destroy new archetype. Every single one of those decks is gonna use both of these cards.

Alex: 46:13

Yeah, for sure. And I like how you're pretending like you haven't thrown some spice. Don't forget you gave chamber a one. So you're throwing some spice out here. So I think it's okay that you stick around with the fours, even though since that you've just given fours the whole time. We did start with a three though, with uh, weapon X. But yes, it's very consistent on the four pattern. But honestly I think that's probably by design. I bet you like the team's like, well we don't wanna break the game, but we don't wanna release garbage either. They have to be good. And I bet you they read like fours. I bet you that's their target. They're targeting the four star card. Right. If it hits a five, it might be too much. If it hits a two, they under, they underpowered it. Right. So I think nobody buys it. Probably targeting four. Yeah, exactly. And that is gonna take us to our next topic of conversation, which is the series four cards. Wade Wilson is next up and he is a series four card and he reads two, two when destroyed. Replace this with a one cost card from your hand or deck with plus one power. I should also mention this is coming in Grand Arena, so you should be able to get this for free. That's cool. I like free cards. You should like free cards too. Lauren, I'll give you the floor here. I don't wanna say anything too far'cause I feel like I often like cue your response a little bit. I don't wanna tell you right off the rip. I haven't, this card's kind of poo, but yeah, I think this card might be kind of poo. I'm not sure. I'm not sold on this one here. So if you're sold, I want you to sell me.

LaurenWhatevs: 47:31

I'm sorry, I don't, I do not like this card. Okay, so we're on the same

Alex: 47:35

page. I've

LaurenWhatevs: 47:35

heard, yeah, I've heard a few people be high on it and it does some things that look good on paper, right? Like deck thinning. Very good. Play a card for free that saves you an energy. Plus it's, you know, it's a two three. Once it's done its thing that's like, that's average. But what are you cutting from your deck? This is not better than Wolverine. This is, you know, by the time you get him out and destroyed. He's pulling Deadpool. Right. That that's what he's supposed to be. Right? Like Wade Wilson is Deadpool's identity. He's a Deadpool tutor. He pulls Deadpool outta your deck. That's

Alex: 48:06

massive spoiler territory right there. Yeah.

LaurenWhatevs: 48:09

Um, that's what they want you to think of this card. But Destroy lately has been running so many ones. So it's like, are you building an old school Deadpool deck where he's one of the only ones? Um, I don't know. I just, I really don't see it with this card. He seems too slow to me.

Alex: 48:24

Oh, a hundred percent. He does, like we're talking about Weapon X, which is a better card than Wade Wilson is. Without question, weapon X is a better card than Wade Wilson. And we're talking about whether or not Wade Weapon X can make those decks work. I don't think this card ever makes the shells as they exist because like you'd have to cut Moyer acts. You don't wanna bring Moyer back plus one to destroy it. Like who cares what, yes, if you pull it from the deck, whatever. But like, I don't know if I love, and this sounds crazy'cause I know like it took a long time to get Angel to the point where it did this, but I don't know if I the hand or the deck side of it.'cause it's like, I'd rather just. Get the deck thin. You know what I mean? But like at the same time, it's like if you draw all your ones, then it's doing nothing. I'm not sure if I want to competing with what's in my hand, but with that being said, it is coming down on two, probably destroyed on three or four or whatever. You're probably playing the one drops from your hand, right? If you're holding a moer, right, you play your Moyer. If you're holding Deadpool, you play your Deadpool. Or conversely, if you're holding Deadpool, you play your head pool, play Wade Wilson, and then you destroy it and hope that you pull, right? Like you can kind of control it to some degree, which I think is good. That's a lot of steps. Yeah. And is that simply better than just destroying Deadpool early? You know what I mean? Just get it, carnage it on turn two. Right? Is that just simply better? You know what I mean?

LaurenWhatevs: 49:40

Yes, I do. And that's exactly how I feel. It is just like he, because he is targeting one costs, it is fairly manipulable. You can manipulatable. I'm not sure how that word works. Anyway, I. Pretty easy to make sure that he's pulling from your deck if limit the ones that are in your hand. The other thing you could do is if you destroy Deadpool and then him on the same turn, Deadpool goes back to your hand and then he pulls Deadpool right back out. So like that's something, but like that's asking for a lot of really careful sequencing and all that for a cart that I just, just doesn't seem like it's worth the squeeze.

Alex: 50:16

The thing that gives me pause was that head pool, which looks good. I didn't think that head pool was gonna be as good as it was. Head pool was really good. And also because it, like the way it came back to your hand, the bus and stuff like that. But like head pool was a very legitimate power infusion into dis destroy. Moira was not necessarily a power infusion, but I think a Snap equity in infusion of power.'cause like, oh, you doubled death, that's easy. Snaps all day long. Right. With Wade Wilson, I just don't see it. You are right though. When you sequence them and then the, the, you destroy them'cause you play, uh, Deadpool on one Wade Wilson two, you carnage it or whatever, or you death lock it the way it'll go. Deadpool will go back, get pulled back down and then you can just kind of do the thing again. That is, it is good. It is worth something. But you're talking about drawing the cards in the right order, sequencing them. Right. It's like do the stars have to align a little too much for Wade Wilson to be worth it? It does not stand alone from a power per uh, perspective. And I don't think it competes with weapon XI think Weapon X is strictly a better card. So is it fitting that this is the free card of, of one of the free cards of the month? Probably. I don't know if they felt like we probably can't sell this card, which is also unfortunate for Wade Wilson. He probably could have used a little bit of love there. But, uh, yeah, I'm on the low end. I'm giving this a two star rating.

LaurenWhatevs: 51:32

It's a two for me. Also, I think it's playable, like you're not throwing if it's in your deck, but it's kind of just bad.

Alex: 51:40

Honestly. I like playing cards that look like I'm throwing, you know what I mean? I, that's, uh, yeah, keep my opponents on their toes a little bit. Um, Snap, Snap equity. Yeah, I've been trying to play more, um, uh, snow guard. I'm just like, I like snow guard and like the, it's just, I'm like, nevermind, this card sucks, but I want to like snow guard. But like, you know, a little bit of coping hadn't hurt nobody. The next card we're gonna toggle here is going to be a series four. This is gonna be a CS four traditional release on December 18th in the Snap packs. This is Morrow. Morrow is a two three that reads when discarded or destroyed, randomly split negative six power among enemy cards. Starting to see the affliction, shell destroy affliction. Look, another piece there. I I am just throwing it out there. What do you think about Morrow?

LaurenWhatevs: 52:25

Well, I mean, you're right that she justifies putting diamond back in that deck. If you're, if you're gonna do this in and phantom X I don't think you destroy her ever. That's not the right thing to do with her. Maybe in a pinch in the hybrid deck, if she's the only thing you can destroy, you're like, okay, fine. Um, but discard, it's like, that's decent. It's comparable to proximal midnight, right? You discard it. And she's a free seven, and Marrow is a free six if you discard her. Um. She's playable, but like, I don't know, seems, seems, uh, not big enough. Also

Alex: 53:03

seems like a two for me. That's kind of where I'm at. I'm at a two star as well. It just doesn't inspire much confidence. It's the weaker of these like, kind of like multifaceted cards we're getting this season. I think there are clear bangers and clear kind of, uh, I don't wanna say losers'cause it's not a loser. It's still kind of cool. I like the design and I like this hybrid style card, but it feels like it's just not quite enough. And at first I was thinking about how like, it's randomly split, which means that like, like hazmat is nice.'cause if you're playing Ajax, it just blanket hits everything, right? This is randomly split, so you can't guarantee it's gonna hit everything however. It will, based on what I read here, if there's only one card, it's gonna hit that one card six times. No,

LaurenWhatevs: 53:46

I agree. Yeah. Yeah.

Alex: 53:47

Right. So that's also good. It gives you a little bit of versatility there. It almost reminds me of the original, um, the thing, the evil version of the thing where you could play it in a solo lane, one-on-one and it would just triple hit the card in front of it and now it only hits one card each time. Which, I mean, I know I'm the only one playing Evo the thing right now, but I'm just saying that was a change that happened and this feels, uh, kind of similar to that. Um, star rating wise, as I said, I'm a at a two. I'm not that excited about Morrow. Where are you at Star rating?

LaurenWhatevs: 54:15

It's funny'cause I would've been a two, but now I'm thinking about this destroy, discard, a flick type or deck that you have put out there. And I'm like, um, she goes there. Or previously I didn't think she went into anything.

Alex: 54:28

So yeah, she's got something going for her, I guess.

LaurenWhatevs: 54:30

Right. It's how real can that deck possibly be? A triple hybrid deck? Yeah. I think I gotta go to still, even if she does end up having a home somewhere.

Alex: 54:39

Okay. That's good. I, I like how we're speed running, just agreeing with each other on some of these cards here. Um, the next one is fastball special. This is a skill, once again, the art is not very indicative of it being a skill, but this is a skill. It's a two cost skill and it reads on reveal. Destroy your highest power card here to afflict an enemy card here with that much negative power. Bit wordy sounds a little bit like a magic card. Some of the weighted words, here are the words here, so double dipping on that there. Fastball special. Lauren, what do you think?

LaurenWhatevs: 55:13

This card has such good top down design, which is like the theme first, right? If you know from the comics or the cartoons, it's colossus throwing wolverine at an enemy and it's like that's what's happening here. You are destroying your highest power card to injure the enemy's card. It's so thematic. I kind of wish this was one of the first standalone skills we ever got because it really tells you like what a skill card is. I love it. I think, I'm sure it's strong. I wonder how strong, because it can only destroy one card. Whereas decks that are running like carnage, venom, def lock, they want to destroy every card at the location. But maybe targeting the highest power is a good thing to do, you know, then you start thinking about pairing this with, with revival or, or maybe you're, maybe this is another way to hit Nimrod. I just, there's no way that a two cost destroy card isn't. A two cost card that can do a destroy, there's no way. That's not a good card.

Alex: 56:11

Yeah. So I'm leaning in the four range'cause I do think this is a good card. It's also worth noting this is going to be in Team Clash from my understanding, which is probably gonna be a topic for another day, but a new type of game mode that's kind of exciting. I can reveal that. Right? That's public knowledge.

LaurenWhatevs: 56:25

Uh, it's in the data mines.

Alex: 56:27

So yeah, I think that this will be really good in Nimrod for sure. I think it does exactly what Nimrod wants to do. Destroy propagates the nimrods does it for super cheap too. It's another card that afflicts. You got more affliction here, right? So the Diamondback, it's true. Comes up randomly once again, right? Those pieces are just coming together. This, it's her season, it's her se it's Diamondbacks. You thought it was like a seasonable wolverine? No, it's seasonable Diamondback. But like, I, I, for me this is like, it's Nimrod. I wanna play this in Nimrod. I wanna see what this can do. I like the fact that it kind of double dips on the effect. I still would like to see a Nimrod version of this running. And again, I'm gonna bring it up again. Zombie Captain Marvel. That's one of those cards, which I feel like is probably underappreciated, but probably for good reason too.'cause it's so slow. But once we have a little more tools and the way you can kind of, if a card like this is so fast that I think it might be able to make up for how slow something like a zombie Captain Marvel is where you can chain the activate together with this on reveal to make some magic happen. But, uh, at the end of the day, I do think this is a fantastically thematic card. I think it's a fun one. What was your star rating? I don't think you said it out loud.

LaurenWhatevs: 57:34

I haven't yet. I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead and give out my, my one five to fastball special. I do worry about it not being a mass destroyer, but like, I just, I feel so confident it's gonna have a home. There are tons of cards that you are happy to destroy. There's cool things you can do with this card.

Alex: 57:51

No doubt. Cool. So what takes this from like a four to a five for you? Like what's the thing that like elevates it to the next level?

LaurenWhatevs: 57:57

Um, the biggest thing is it's a two cost, right? Like, that's something that you're just in short supply of, in a destroy deck. You can do Kid Omega we didn't talk about before, but I think is actually fantastic with that Eman infusion.

Alex: 58:08

We don't like to bring our kid, kid Omega around here.

LaurenWhatevs: 58:10

Yeah, right. Those

Alex: 58:11

were dark times.

LaurenWhatevs: 58:13

Uh, so carnage then is the only way in the entire game, the only way to destroy a card with a two cost. Yeah. Getting another one of those is, is huge.

Alex: 58:23

So when you compare this year fastball special to Adamantium Infusion, do you think there's like a, like the cost discrepancy is massive. It's literally half the cost. And with Adamantium Infusion we are both like, this is gonna be good. And you gave it a 4.5 range, you said like you like it like upper fours. Yeah. So how do you think they compare? So one of them is a super premium season pass card. One of them is potentially, I think it's gonna be a free card. I'm not sure. We, we still don't quite know how it's gonna be distributed in the new game mode, but it's entirely possible you're able to like accumulate points or get it somehow. I'm assuming fastball special might be theoretically free. At the very least we know it's a c uh, series four, so it's way cheaper. How do you compare the two Atman team Infusion and Fastball special? Why would you take Fastball special over Atman team infusion?

LaurenWhatevs: 59:07

You could play them both, um, in the same deck even. It's true, but I, yeah, I just think fastball special seems more. Flexible and there'll be more destroyed eggs that want an extra destroy than there are destroyed eggs that want a revival. You know, reviving is, is a two step process in fact. And destroying is, is just one. And there are plenty of cards that like being destroyed. Um, and you get the afflictions like you're not even that upset about the thing being destroyed. And if it's, if it's Wolverine, the, very good synergy with Wolverine, you do the damage and then your wolverine comes right back. Like I just, I feel confident that this card is going to to be good and you know, maybe they're comfortable putting it, putting a good free card there because they want people playing their brand new mode.

Alex: 59:55

They probably do want people playing their brand new mode. I would imagine that being the case, I was just thinking to myself like you could also literally on turn six play the both, which is kind of funny. Yeah. I'm not sure which cards wanted and nasty. Yeah, maybe. But like, I'm not sure. Like what, what do you want to destroy them? Bring right back like you're sure Nimrod. Okay,

LaurenWhatevs: 1:00:13

yeah, sure. And then you're gonna fast all special to do 12 affliction power and create two more nimrods over there. And then at Amanti Infusion can put down a 24 power Nimrod anywhere you want.

Alex: 1:00:24

And then you activate zombie Captain Marvel and get even more of them. Boom, we did it. We're cooking fastball special. Look forward to it'cause it's gonna absolutely dominate. The last card we need to talk about today is The Wild Child, also part of the new game mode. Team Clash series four. It reads well. It is a two, one that reads ongoing plus four power if you've discarded a card plus four of power, if one of your cards has been destroyed. Kind of interesting here. You can double dip on both destroying a card and discarding a card and you get plus four power. Once you've done those, it's also an ongoing card, which is a superpower'cause you can hold it in your hand and then slam it down. Wild child starts as a, uh, as a two, one gets upwards of 8, 2 9. We're getting a lot of cards that approach two nine, like we got a lot of two, almost 10 power cards this season. Lauren, I'll give you the floor. What are your initial impressions on Wild Child?

LaurenWhatevs: 1:01:28

Uh, I mean, I already said when we were talking about Phantom X, that these two are definitely going in every single one of those hybrid decks. Question is how good is that hybrid deck? Right? And you don't play this in a non-hybrid. A two five is fine, but it's not good enough, right? Like you, you're not putting this in a pure destroy deck or a pure discard deck. But I, I think it's better than phantom X maybe. Like, it's obviously not as big, but like a guaranteed two nine that doesn't have the tempo problem of having to get it out in time in order to activate it. I am like so tempted to give it a five. I'm just reticent because of how, because the hybrid deck, I really worry about its reliability, but I think I, no, we only give out one five per season, so I'll give it a four. Um, yeah,

Alex: 1:02:11

just you can go 4.5.

LaurenWhatevs: 1:02:12

Okay. I'll 4.5. Yeah, two nine that you drop on the last turn is just a super strong thing to do.

Alex: 1:02:19

It is. It is a really strong card, but I'm concerned about the hoops you gotta jump through. And as you've talked about a million times, we've literally, the theme of this video has been, is this hybrid deck that no one knows what it looks like yet. Is it actually good? It seems as though they're trying to make it good. It kind of reminds me of like horde, how like we had horde, we had Zombie Scarlet Witch come out, which was underpowered as it was. I was convinced that, uh, giant zombie man was gonna be good or zombie giant man, where the heck it's called was gonna be good. And it got buffed. The hoard got buffed all across the board and it wasn't until the end where we got the hunger where things really started to shape up for that deck. It got buffed, it got the hunger. Even zombie century was making those lists. For the most part. It's kind of been cut lately, but like with war Child, I think that we're gonna see over the course of a season this evolution towards like. Can this deck actually work? We're gonna get Phantom X first. I'm not actually a hundred percent sure of when the timelines for this new mode is gonna be. I wonder how long we'll have to wait before we get Wild Child Alongside. No, no. We should have Phantom X'cause it's on December 30th. I believe the new mode is around like the holidays. So we might actually have Wild Child First and then we're gonna get Phantom X. So to be honest with you, the timing might work perfectly where we get Phantom X and then we have the tools we need to try to see if this deck works. It might actually be true that way. I almost positive it is. We have to double check the dates maybe in a future episode. But I, I believe the intention was that Teen Clash was supposed to be during the holiday season. Which is cool. So I agree with you. I am not as high. I'm gonna go three just'cause I feel like it's a lot of hoops still. Two five is still good, but like if you're playing discard, you're gonna play mors. Morbids doesn't get cut here. You also have the power Zombie man, which is uh, solid and has been pretty good and, and discard. I don't think that could get cut for this maybe, but it is already a two four naturally, so this is one extra power in there unless you're destroying a card. I don't think it replaces wolverine and destroy. I think it's strictly dependent on whether or not that hybrid deck pops off. But you can't deny the power. You really can't. And as you said before here, ongoing is a superpower because it comes down and it has that inherent power. It doesn't have to be on the board, it doesn't have to be face up. It just gives you an option late in the game. So I can see it overperforming three stars, but I'm a little hesitant'cause I think it's a little too dependent on a deck. We have too many question marks about.

LaurenWhatevs: 1:04:42

Yeah. The other synergy I see with it, two cost ongoing moonstone doesn't hate getting an extra plus eight power. It's true. It's true. So, again, that's, if you're playing a moonstone, you are slowing down your ability to get a discard and a destroy. But I really, I think those hybrid decks are not going to be doing a ton of destroying and a ton of discarding. You're just going to, you're just gonna try to get one or two of each.

Alex: 1:05:06

Could this go in an Aurora Thanos stack? Because think about it. You, you could,'cause you could, like, it's ongoing. You, I mean, what are you discarding? You could destroy Thano stones, but I don't think you're discarding them. Like, I don't know what that plan would look like.

LaurenWhatevs: 1:05:19

Yeah. You don't want to be doing dis discarding or destroying if you're trying to get bodies on the board.

Alex: 1:05:24

Hmm. Nevermind. That was a bad idea, but you know, it's a good idea talking about the Snapchat mailbag. And if you have questions, definitely let us know down below. Throw some questions at us. So we got, uh, got some mailbag content to throw at your way'cause we do have a question. It's not really a question, it's more of a statement and I wanted to talk about it'cause I actually found the same thing happening. Fuzzy Otter Paws, which is a great name by the way. Stated speaking of deafening cord. I made a deck myself with all skills minus Clia in ancient one since I don't have them. And Nicholas scratch along with Professor X and Werewolf and Debris and Rhino from Merlin. I win so many games and is just so fun. I love that deck. Now the reason why I bring this up, Lauren, is because I actually was playing some Nicholas scratch last week and I think that skills have come a long way. And I think that overall they're becoming increasingly more playable. And I was regularly getting Nicholas scratch to like eight, nine power because I was playing so many skills and yeah, when you have the Merlins and stuff like that, like there's a lot of options. I'm just kind of thinking about my like whether or not skills have like hit that inflection point where they don't feel like they're compromising what your deck is trying to do. Like deafening cord I think is an excellent skill. And now we're getting more skills. We're getting two of'em. Fastball special, which is your card of the month, and we have Adamantium Infusion, which is a super premium series of pass card. So we have two skills which are occupying very important slots in a month's release. So I guess my question to you is how far have skills come and how much further do you think they can go?

LaurenWhatevs: 1:06:57

How much further can they go? We are. We are not far away from being able to make an entire deck of 12 skills. That deck is going to be terrible, but like that's coming soon. I think there are three skills in January. They are going to keep giving us those. Uh, yeah, the deck is strong. Uh, Nicholas Scratch is the obvious synergy with skills, right? It's right there in the text. But then you have things like zombie, scarlet witch and Werewolf that have such high synergy with cards that don't leave bodies on the board. Cheap skills are here to stay. Yeah, forever. They're always going to be good because of the little things they can do, even if their ability is not super good. Just being a cheap card that doesn't take up space has natural synergy with other parts of the game,

Alex: 1:07:44

especially in a game like Marvel Snap, where you literally only have 12 slots, like there's only 12 spots on the boards. You can play, like ask, move players who are dealing with debris, throwing rocks over and everything like that, right? Did that change the debris? It opened up a lot of options for move players because space is so vital. I'm still looking forward to that, uh, that multiple man deck, a multiple man zoo style move deck. I mean, the only place we see multiple man is in Phoenix Forest. Really. I would like to see Phoenix Forest make a massive comeback. By the way. That's one archetype that I played for so long. I love it so much and it's just, I can't, I kinda feel like it's fallen outta the zeitgeist. You know, like people aren't thinking about Phoenix Force. You should be thinking about Phoenix Force and maybe I'll cook something, maybe I will, who knows? But before then, Lauren, thank you so much for joining us this week. You've been a tremendous asset. I think your analysis was absolutely incredible and you continue to do amazing work in the Marvel Snap community. And I implore you guys out there to find Lauren, follow Lauren, and obviously gotta stay up to date with the new sites you're working on. So why don't you let us know where we can find you and what's coming next.

LaurenWhatevs: 1:08:46

Yeah, uh, thanks again for having me. It's such a treat. You can find me on Twitter or Blue Sky if you want to avoid. The hell fight. Lauren Whatevs. I write every now and then at Marvel Snap Zone. It's been a while and I don't know if I'm going to again. Um, but I'm still technically, a writer there. I could, I could create an article that is where I will announce on, on Twitter or, or Blue Sky is where I will announce when fourth location is live and ready to go. And then after that you can just go to fourth location.com. Uh, and then finally my podcast is on YouTube or on all the pod catchers as Snap on this. And just we have a good time. We, uh, the first half of the show is kind of serious Snap talk where we do things like rating cards and then the back half of the show we have secret homework every episode, which is just challenges that we give to each other.

Alex: 1:09:33

That's awesome. Absolutely. And I'll leave, uh, links in description down below for everything, so be sure to check them out. And again, Lauren, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you guys for joining us. We'll see you on the next one.