Gladiator: Trash or Treasure? | Huge OTA Recap | Snap Economy Breakdown with Special Guest Drewberry | The Snap Chat Ep. 54

Will Gladiator be the new 3 cost powerhouse? How has the latest huge OTA changed Marvel Snap? How good is Ms. Marvel? Join Cozy Snap, Alexander Coccia and special guest Drewberry as they chat about this and more on this episode of The Snap Chat and every week as they discuss all things Marvel Snap. 

Transcript

Cozy Snap: 0:00

What's going on, my friends, and welcome back. Gladiator comes out on Tuesday, and is he going to be a great card, a treasure, or just complete trash? We're going to break down him and everything we love and hate about the card. We're also going to be talking about the biggest OTA that we've probably seen yet. Shang Chi Mobius is back, and how much all that affected the meta. And my friends are going to have to bear with me. My voice is complete garbage. I'm absolutely sick, but we have not missed an episode of the Snapchat. So we're going to talk about all of this today and more on this episode of the Snapchat. And as always, I'm joined by Mr. Alex Coccia hello, hello, my friend. How are you doing this week?

Alexander Coccia: 0:35

I'm doing absolutely fantastic, Cozy. There has been such a meta shakeup this week. There's been so much going on, and Cozy, right off the bat, I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you, I knew this was gonna happen. I shot low on that two stars on Ms. Marvel, buddy. You can give her, you can give her a comment section, come at me, I deserve it. Listen, for the first day or two, everyone's like, damn it, Alex was right on the two stars, looks pretty smart. And then all of a sudden, it's like, wait a minute. This card's actually not as restrictive as we thought it was. Wait a minute, this card's actually pretty good. Wait a minute, these decks are getting spicy! And Ms. Marvel, making a bit of a splash, so listen, I gotta tell ya, I think I was wrong on that two stars quote, you were right, you gave her a little more respect than I did, and ultimately, it's proven true.

Cozy Snap: 1:12

I was shocked that even during like, my livestream, people were saying, ah, she's about a 6, maybe a 6. 5, I was like, has anyone seen the value that she's bringing to the de I mean, She's just a very just good card to plug into just about any deck it feels like she feels I think that's one of my favorite parts about her is she just doesn't need other cards to really work, you know

Alexander Coccia: 1:34

yeah, absolutely, and she so she's been a very pleasant surprise and Yeah that together with like, you know all the OTA changes Look, we've got ourselves a fresh meta. It's a great time to be a Marvel Snap player.

Cozy Snap: 1:45

Absolutely, and as I alluded to in the intro, guys, I am about at the weakest state I've been voice wise, so Alex here is helping us carry the torch, and over here, I'm doing a little bit of a shorter episode to help maintain the voice. But Alex, what are we talking about over on your side of the Snapchat?

Alexander Coccia: 2:00

On my channel, we'll be discussing Ms. Marvel in review. We'll be giving our full feedback on Ms. Marvel, giving it a review of how we felt it has slotted into the meta, the decks, and of course, it's win rate and it's meta share. We'll also be discussing the Snap Economy. We'll be discussing how we can improve the Snap Economy and what we can do to get more... Resources into the hands of more players. And finally, we're going to be discussing our top 10 ongoing cards. It is the month of ongoing Ms. Marvel leading the way, and we're going to give ourselves a top 10.

Cozy Snap: 2:28

So before we kick off the main subject here, I got to ask you, what is your favorite, like Ms. Marvel deck? Where are you using her at the moment?

Alexander Coccia: 2:35

I'm using her in the greediest ongoing deck possible. It's completely ridiculous. I'm playing her in like a deck where I play Mr. Fantastic, Miss Marvel, Iron Man, Onslaught, just because I'm that kind of player right now. With that being said though, with that being said, I've been really enjoying her in a Ravonna Disruption list because listen, I'm all about that discount. And when you're on turn six and you have the option of like, okay, hold on. I could play Mystique and copy my Miss Marvel. I can play Mystique and copy my Iron Man. I can, you have all these options and how you can use Mystique on Miss Marvel, on Iron Man, on whatever. It's just, it's just great. Those have been the two decks I've been playing a lot of.

Cozy Snap: 3:17

Yeah, dude. Ravonna, I think Discount Disrupt is what I had it as before even everything happened. That was my Infinity Conquest deck. Like I was loving that. And then I was like, oh my gosh. Ms. Marvel just naturally fits in here. I had to take out maybe, I think, the Goblins to make it work, like, successfully. Because you had the Iron Man and Mystique in there instead. What I love about her is the her play in Lockdown. It almost feels great that you now have an answer to something like Jeff if you get Lockdown early, right? Like, there's ways to, to really go against Lockdown, but also aid it. And then at the same time, dude, just like, the Force deck, as I always like to call it, right? Like, the, the Darkhawk, it feel is just the synergy there. You really only need her and Darkhawk, right?

Alexander Coccia: 3:59

Yeah, what's going to be notable though is when Annihilus comes out, Annihilus is going to be a very direct counter. So this is kind of like the hottest Ms. Marvel can be, because when you start just shoving over a bunch of one drops and garbage, that naturally impacts Ms. Marvel's ability to kind of obviously throw out its power. So, this is a really cool card right now, but just be very wary of what's going to happen in the next couple weeks, because Ms. Marvel is going to have some challenges to overcome.

Cozy Snap: 4:21

Yeah, and just to end it, I was going to say, I feel like the unique costing is way easier than I thought, right? Like in the long run, it makes it a little more thinking sometimes, right? But like, I obviously Annihilus is going to change that. And like the ebbs and flows of the meta I think will change it too. But at this current moment, it doesn't feel that hard.

Alexander Coccia: 4:39

What I'm going to say is, I feel like Ms. Marvel has made me a better player, and that sounds really weird, but let me just explain something. It's forced me to consider the macro conditions of the game, and the board state, well in advance of me playing cards. I'm not playing reactively, I'm playing proactively. I'm like, okay, Ms. Marvel needs to be here, and if I can't play mid, how am I going to play her right, or how am I going to play her left? And it's making me kind of consider, you know that, like, we joke about five head? Type gameplay. It's literally that it's that's what you're doing, right? And I really like that about the card and there's very few cards that really engage with marvel snap mental game like that So i'm really a big fan of that.

Cozy Snap: 5:12

Absolutely, man Well, let's go to start and talk about the newest card coming out on tuesday and alongside that we also have a Killer spotlight week man. We've got loki mirage and the newest card Gladiator, let's start with the spotlight. What are you thinking of it? I mean, obviously if you don't have loki one of the best decks in the game got to go grab that now And then Mirage is just one of those cards that is just a good card to have in the collection.

Alexander Coccia: 5:38

I like the spotlight cache a lot and honestly the spotlight variants are fantastic as well. You have the Justina Loki, which is fantastic. I think it's a strong one. Loki should be in everyone's collection, so if you didn't get the season pass, like, this is your chance to get an absolutely phenomenal card. As you said before Mirage is just like, it's cuttable in some decks. But it's also really good too. And with Mobius and Mobius getting destroyed, you're going to see more deaths in destroyed based decks. Mirage might actually have some counterplay there, right? And naturally, obviously, Gladiator is our next point of discussion here. And I think that overall, like, I'm kind of high on Gladiator. Like, I think Gladiator looks kind of cool, but it's also kind of complicated. Like, I'm not sure... Like, after, listen, after my call on Ms. Marvel last week, I'm feeling a little sketchy. I believe I gave Gladiator four star.

Cozy Snap: 6:18

Yeah, so this was where we flipped. Immediately, I think we were kind of the same on Annihilus and Martyr. We're not really, you know, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. But the first two, Ms. Marvel and then Gladiator. I wasn't as high on Gladiator. And I'm still, you know, you asked me to convince you last week, right? So, same thing. You're gonna have to convince me because after finding out some new key details... I'm just, I'm not feeling this card so much so that if you have Loki, I don't even know if I would do this spotlight at all at this point for a few different reasons. And I want to talk about it specifically because Alex, one of my favorite things that you do is you talk about not just the card itself, right? But we always talk about, you know, real, in a real match, how are things going to play out? Right? Like against real, it's one thing to look at all the cards in the game and say, what does he beat? What does he doesn't. And it's another thing to look at. What decks are hot? What decks include which cards? And on a normal basis, will he be pulling out those cards, you know what I mean?

Alexander Coccia: 7:12

Absolutely, and that's the most important consideration. And we received some information with regards to how Gladiator is actually played, that we didn't have prior to last week. Namely two things. One, we suspected that the on reveals were going to happen. That's fine. Like I totally understood that. However, the second one, which was really notable that completely kind of drops me down. Ongoing abilities are active before gladiator's destruction is determined. So if you pull a devil dinosaur. He's not a 5 3. He takes on the ongoing effect and does not trade with Gladiator. I did not know that. That, for me, drops it a whole star to a 3. Yeah,

Cozy Snap: 7:50

and that, for me, I was at a 3 star. It goes down almost to a 2 star, which is insane to say about a card. But, people don't know exactly what it does. If you're listening, we'll go ahead and start with that. He is a 3 cost, 7 power card. So, Statline of Maximus. On reveal, add a card from your opponent's deck to their side of this location. If it has less power, Gladiator just destroys it, right? So very interesting ability. The key word here, and it's a big one, is add a card from your opponents. Not play the card, you're adding the card. And that's going to affect things like you know, this was actually my first thought. I was like, Hey, you have Echo on the board. You pull down, you know, a Darkhawk, you're going to win. No, because Echo only works against played cards. So it's a, it's a, it's actually kind of a big deal. That word add instead of play.

Alexander Coccia: 8:39

I actually not considered that. That is actually a very notable thing as well. Like, listen, if the cards interaction is I pull you from the deck and play you or pull you from the, like, whatever, then the way in the mechanics that it interacts on the board become incredibly important. So if you're saying that, that the Echo will not actually take out the ongoing ability, cause that's what I was thinking. Like, Hey, if the ongoing ability is in full effect, at least maybe we have Echo there and you play Gladiator on top of an Echo to negate that effect. I was literally just about to say that, but if you're saying that doesn't work. Then like, man, I think I don't want to drop even further down. Cause I still think there's some potential here, but like I'll say to three, but like that definitely does hurt. And that's new information for me right here, live on the Snapchat.

Cozy Snap: 9:19

It's just kind of shocking that it, that this ongoing ability does hit, right? Like when they, when it comes out on the board, because when you move it sometimes like with Darkhawk and stuff, like his power, does it change until things resolve? So it's interesting that this is the way that it's playing out. So what I wanted to do, first of all, biggest comparison is I think he's a lot like Maximus, right? He's got this big risk behind playing him, but you get insane, just pure raw stats. So what I did, Alex, is I looked at all of like the, the top performing decks at the moment and, or the decks that we know will kind of rise back up. And I thought to myself. Which cards does he destroy that it's gonna be awesome if he gets that destruction and then which cards if you pull them out? it's gonna be a bad day, and I'm not just talking about like a Card that kills or stays on the board, but just a lot of things are gonna be happening from that situation, right? So, you know, you don't want to be pulling out a Falcon for them for free. You don't want to pull Loki out Absolute terrible. You kill Loki all you want, but it's, you know, not gonna be good for them. So there's a couple situations like that. He's gonna be game winnings sometimes, but a lot of the times, especially when I looked at the decks with a closer look, it might be pretty tough to get big value out of Gladiator. Now, Alex, I wanna talk about those cards that I think we're gonna like, but I wanted to go ahead and just say... My favorite spots for him are either A, a lot of decks right now guys are playing cards out fast and loose, right? Playing into a lane that's filled, obviously you're gonna get a little bit of stuff there. Last turn the game plays is gonna be good but you know what I like him for? Is not only disruption combos of destroying cards, But if someone's got three cards in a lane, and they're saving that lane, and you pull down a card, and you don't destroy it, you've forced them to play you know how much a full lane is a liability in Snap.

Alexander Coccia: 11:15

Yeah, you see it very often with a location like the Raft, right? So a lot of people will like, fill into the Raft very quickly, because like, I want to get that free six drop, right? And then like, they leave the Raft at like Seven power, right? It's like, it's so weak. They got the free six drop. They just pulled a tribunal or something. And they're like, wow, great. I lose that location for sure. And I can't make much use of this other card. And so like, you do see that from time to time where like, if a filled location would be detrimental, you only get four slots, right? And again, Annihilus is coming too, so maybe, like you know, do you play Gladiator on turn six after Annihilus has stuffed the board? Who knows, right? But like, it's an interesting point of discussion. Do you really want to try to negate and swim around the effect? Like, you want to, like, you just want the 3 7 power, and you don't want the liability of the on reveal? Or do you want to use the automobile? Well, here's the problem. We're cozy. I was trying to figure out a deck for destroy where I'm like, okay, what if I have like Yondu, Gladiator, Null, but I'm like, wait a minute. Gladiator doesn't really work well in that show because like, how much power are you actually adding? Yondu actually benefits Null more often than Gladiator will because Yondu can hit. A bigger card, it can hit a an Infinite, but Gladiator can't trade an Infinite. Actually, if Gladiator pulls an Infinite, it's GG, right? Like, it's over. Gladiator can only give you up to six power for a null. So that interaction doesn't even happen, really. And I'm thinking, okay, if you pull Mystiques, yeah, that works. There's a ton of things that are very useful to pull, but... The effect is so unreliable that you can't snap on it. You can't snap on having gladiator in your hand. You can't, you just like, Oh, I got my gladiator snap. Like, no, it just can't because you, you cannot reliably predict the effect. So it can be hard to steal those cubes away.

Cozy Snap: 12:57

Yeah. So it's funny you said destroy. Cause that was kind of my early thought. Like, is he a more expensive Yondu? And I was like, well, where I do like them is, you know, if you happen to get things cooking, you can Venom him. And then that's just good stats. Right. The play lines are a little awkward there. I think that's more of kind of just like a cheeky deck. You're never going to see a good win rate. I think on that, there's just other ways and more reliable. And it doesn't have to be better than I think with Yondu, it's a cool play too. Right? Like you have another way to keep building up a gnoll and gnoll can really lack in power sometimes if you do other things to try to get them out. But, what I want to talk about where I think, because you brought up the interesting discussion. Are you trying to avoid his ability? You really don't want to. It's all about the deck you're playing. I think this is a card that rewards you again. More players, kind of like Loki, that know the deck they're up against, right? So, obviously, you don't want to play this against something like a, you know, a Lockjaw deck. Too risky. You don't want to play this against... You know a Tribunal deck, God forbid, for the most part. Probably something you want to avoid too, just big cards, Hella deck, things like that. Alex, what are some of the big time, because I got a list of them, what are some of the big time cards that if Gladiator does destroy though, he's going to win you the game. Let's start on the high note and then we'll go to the low note.

Alexander Coccia: 14:08

I mean, if you hit like a Sarah, like a Sarah, it will disable a lot of decks, right? I was thinking about how like Sarah is instrumental to a lot of like turn six miracle plays. Hitmonkey was one I was thinking about too. Because like, think about the amount of power that Hitmonkey is going to put out if it gets just pulled out. I mean, the, the, a problem is the on reveal is going to come out. But if you're pulling it out on turn three, like how many cards have they played? And it won't trade favourably with a Gladiator. I mean, there's so many cards, any of the goblins, right? Hobgoblin Galactus. Dr. Doom's not great, because obviously, like, the effect will happen, but maybe they're expecting, like, an Odin combination with Dr. Doom. Like, getting re The on reveal is such a tricky thing. Because, like, I don't know how to explain this, but in some ways, disrupting an on reveal, even though it happens, is still important, because usually you play an on reveal at a specific time for a specific purpose.

Cozy Snap: 14:55

I'm glad we brought this up 100 percent because I'm going to show a couple cards that are great cards, right? And like, oh no, they're on reveal goes out, but it's all good. It's all gravy. We start here with Taskmaster. Most of the time, you pull this guy out on three. I'm sorry, they probably didn't play an enormous two drop. What does that even look like, right? So obviously Taskmaster, key piece, key piece in those Shuri decks and in the, in the Destroy decks that they're trying to get value on that topic of Shuri. Shuri, now you might think, well, but they still get the double play, which is true, and she's not the best pull by a large margin. However, you really mess up how they're gonna get things playing. If you pull this down on turn 3, turn 4, it's like, oh, well, that was my task, but do I skip this turn? Right? It's kind of like a weird, awkward play. Yes, you play it down for free, but maybe not the best example. But some of these on reveal effects, you're gonna have to, like, kind of weigh the pros and the cons. I thought that was a good point. Absolutely.

Alexander Coccia: 15:48

Yeah, and the other side to that is, like, if you think about, like, you said it before, the kind of decks that you're, like, look at this, you're able to identify what your player's opponent's playing most often, and you know what the risk is. So, for instance, you're, you're saying, okay, you're gonna hit that Taskmaster, were they able to deck the Taskmasters in? Do you really want to play Gladiator into pulling Red Skull, Typhoid Mary, and, like, everything else Vision, that's in those decks? Right? Even if you pull like Sauron, like what have you done? Like really? Like what have you done? You've done nothing. You've helped them. Now they don't have to play their Sauron. They get the benefit. You pull Ebony Maw, right? Like it doesn't actually trade. Maybe they can't play in that location, but their Maw's down, right? And actually, I don't know if that's good or bad. Anyways, well, time will tell. But what I'm trying to say is, is that like, Even when like hitting Taskmasters, cool, it's like you're gambling across the whole gamut of what that deck actually carries. And is Taskmaster actually the high roll in that scenario?

Cozy Snap: 16:40

So yeah, there's decks where I think it's like, wow, that's going to really work, right? Like these werewolf bounce decks, killing werewolf by night's a huge play. That's fantastic. I think Discard is a major, major Gladiator is gonna kick butt against Discard right? Dracula, you pull that out, it's dead. That's a tough thing for them, right? They don't even want their Apoc out. They're probably hoping to top deck that thing to try to start building up. Eight power on the board for Apoc is not that great in all scheme of things. Or what about Modok? I don't know about you, but a Turn 3 Modok could absolutely ruin them, right? So, I think he's actually probably one of the better cards to counter Discard. I like that a lot. And kind of funny, Discard has been awesome for being reliable and not having a ton of counters. And now this is actually not the worst counter, right?

Alexander Coccia: 17:25

No, you're right. And like even Morbius, like Morbius comes out, like, what have you discarded by turn three? Nothing, basically. Right. Like maybe a couple of things at best. It's funny you say that. Cause like, discard has been on a huge tear lately. It really started with the nerf to Spider Ham. Spider Ham allowed discard to come back. And now it's in full swing. It's legit. One of the best decks in Marvel snap right now. And all of a sudden now you're getting a card like gladiator that will definitely slap his cheeks for sure. There's no question about it. That's a very good call.

Cozy Snap: 17:54

Yeah. So you've got that, right? So he is going to have. Those matchups. So we started this conversation. Are you trying to avoid his effect or are you trying to play it? And I think it's all about, which is why I kind of like him in a surfer build. You play him like a Maximus or you play him for that value. And you get like the best bang for that because you can build him up and things can work, whatever that might be, right? We might see a huge high end surfer build now, right? Like a Maximus Gladiator build. That's some big numbers. A 3 7 on the board, and you can only go up from there? Fantastic, sign me up, right? Here's some of the other cards that I think he not some of them, I've got a big list here. I want to read through some of these that I really like. And you already said Sarah. That shuts down that deck. Altogether, it's over at that point. You've got Leech, right? Leech is at hot right now, but Leech is not a non reveal. You pull him out, great stuff. He's gonna die. It's not gonna be a big deal. That's a good thing to pull out of a deck. What's interesting is the matchup with Destroy. I really thought about this because this is the most gamble RNG. Let's see what happens. Okay, so I'm gonna pull up Destroy, Alex. And the reason why it's such a question mark is because you obviously have giant cards and you have X23, Wolverine, Deadpool. Cards that are happily... Willing to die. And in fact you just help them out even more. You pull a Deadpool outta the deck and they, you kill it the first time. They're gonna be, you know, on top of the world. But you can also save gladiator, pull'em in a lane with a bunch of stuff they were hoping was going well. Maybe a venom play, right? And you carnage a venom. That venom had all this stuff going for it, right? You pull out these destroy cards. Or you pull out a Venom on a lane where they don't, like, you know how bad that messes up a Destroyer's flow. So, think about that and the effect, or Knull early, maybe they didn't destroy enough. So, you really hurt a Destroyer deck, or you can help.

Alexander Coccia: 19:41

I love that. There's two important things to consider with Destroyer as well. The first, is that unlike Yondu, because the cards are being added to the battlefield, like a Wolverine or whatever, will actually just do its thing. Like, it'll just bounce away and get that plus two, right? Deadpool will go back to the hand and double up. What's an interesting thing, though, if you think about how the play pattern for Destroy is, let's say they have a Venom sitting there, and you have Initiative, which is common. You could intentionally play Gladiator to pull something from their deck to 50 50 Zola play. Now, I don't know if you snap on something like that, But like you could theoretically, okay, well, you're going to be playing Zola now. And I'm going to pull your your angel. I am just saying angel. I don't know why I would, but you're pulling your angel. Cause it's in your hand. Cause if you're playing angel, it's always in your hand. And that's going to mess up your Zola play on your Venom. So yeah, like I actually think that's a pretty interesting thing, but again, these are effects you can't rely on. Yep. And, but, and I don't want to say too much here, but like at the same time, we said the same stuff, the same things about Nico. This is unreliable. How do you know this is gonna work? But like, and then it's like, wait a minute, all these effects are actually good. But in this case, I really do think there's bona fide negative effects. Where like, pulling their null is never gonna be good, unless it's turn three. If it's turn six, you pull null, you lose.

Cozy Snap: 20:56

Especially in conjunction now with the Shang Chi change, right? And we'll get to that, but it's like, okay, now you've got these cards that are nine, and they're actually safe from your sh You pull a Chavez out? Good night. That's just a rough pull, man. People are gonna love or hate the card. I think more often than not, they're not gonna like it. You will have like, I just won that game because of Gladiator, right? But there's also gonna be a lot of like, my gosh, what, my RNG is so bad. It's like, well, you pushed it pretty heavily there. And you know, there's a lot of ways you can wait and play him later. And I think that might be his best play, but you are correct. I think there's some obvious negatives, but Alex, let me finish this list here. So a couple other things that I think he'll be just great against to pull out. You said Mystique earlier, I think Patriot decks, for the most part, there's some good pulls you can get out there. You take an Ultron out all day, you know, let them live, let them live, right? Patriot on the board is obviously dead. Mystique's dead. Iron Man is dead, right? A Bass deck is ru you pull out Bass, you ruin their entire hand. I mean, there's some really cool stuff. Where the on reveals need to be played at certain times, and I think Patriot and these kind of like Iron Patriot decks are gonna be hurting a good amount as well. Wong, easy. Easy counter against Wong, obviously we know that as well. But my friend, the other one that I want to talk about, a glaring card, if we look at the meta right now. Is Ms. Marvel. We just talked about Ms. Marvel being insane and working across so many decks and she's obviously in these decks pretty heavily, right buddy? No problem. No problem. You can do a couple things. You can pull unique cost cards into a lane, mess her up, but you can also destroy Ms. Marvel

Alexander Coccia: 22:34

herself. Absolutely. And that's huge. The other side to that is Ms. Marvel is often playing cards that are pretty small. But it is playing a shell with Devil Dinosaur, which we did speak about prior, but, like, it's running Mystiques, it's running Mr. Fantastics. There's a lot of different kind of cards. Like, even the, the shells that are running the Devil Dinosaur are running, like, Snow Guards and other things that are gonna trade very favourably, but at the same time, it's like, okay. If you pull Snowguard, they get the, they get the Hawk and the bear. You kill the Snowguard, but like, you maybe just saved him space really. Like that's, it's trading a Snowguard really a good thing. Like, Oh, well, I didn't pull a big thing out for them. You pulled a small thing. Then again, it's like, well, that's not that valuable either. And this is where like, I stumble with this card because it's like, you don't want to pull the big thing. If you pull a really small thing, it feels like almost a waste. And you, you dodge the negative effect to some degree. Like you really are after the Miss Marvels, the Mystiques, the Patriots. Right? That's really what you're after, but like, there's no reliability to its effect. There's no way you can predict it, but they did feel the need to nerf it from a 3. 7. That's got to be something, right?

Cozy Snap: 23:37

Yeah, absolutely. And maybe that was before the OTA changes. And if it was, then we will see a buff to Gladiator, right? I think they will buff them up if they feel like they need to, but you know, we'll wait for that to happen. You know, and on top of that, we talk about these meta decks, right? Darkhawk is gonna just slay this card. It, and, and to your point, it's like, okay, well, do you play Rock Slide and Korg in your own deck, and then you give rocks over there, maybe you pull a rock out, and you have that chance, right? It's like, can we see a Rock Slide Surfer deck? Maybe Moon Knight in there, Gambit, it's just a mill deck, right? Who knows, but I doubt it, I really doubt it there. I do think that there is gonna be a place in Surfer. for the card, right? And we can get to that, I guess, a bit when we get to some stuff in OTA as well. But outside of that, Alex, again, like Taskmaster, those cards are great. High Evo is another card in the meta, or these meta decks that are out there. Killing a Cyclops is fantastic. I think that's a huge game winning play as well. Especially, like, maybe on the Storm lane. Jeff, baby Landshark, I hate to even think about it, but killing that damn thing is gonna obviously be, you know, pretty, pretty brutal to know. And I want to kind of say a big one here, and probably my favorite thing about them is I love them against every tech card in the game. Every single one of them. This guy's a tech card sniper, right? Shang Chi, Enchantress, Cosmo, No Worries, Rogue, Fantastic. Kind of, depends on the lane you play them. But, you know, you're gonna easily destroy those cards. And I don't know about you, but when I see like a Sokovia... Get rid of Shang Chi on the first turn. I'm like, I'm feeling, I'm a different player from that point on against this guy.

Alexander Coccia: 25:11

Yeah. I mean, Shang Chi doesn't exist, right? That's the way you play Marvel Snap, but you're right. When you see that Shang Chi leave, you're like, okay, now I can actually play Marvel Snap. Now I ain't scared of nothing now, right? It's a, it's a very good point. Even despite the nerf, Shang Chi still has a role to play in Marvel Snap. That's without question. But Gladiator. I mean, I'm excited for it. I think it's going to be a really cool card. Hearing more of the mechanics has dropped me down a little bit off it. Because even in like, as you said, surfer, like you can just play it on the last term, but man, there's still risks. Like you could pull out, who knows what you pulled on that last turn. You might have a victory locked in and you, you play this card and it just pulls out like, oh, they pulled the doom, seriously, they pulled the doom. Unbelievable, right? It can, it can really punch you directly in the pants. I don't know, and here's a good question, here's what I'm, I don't know if you want to end on this, but Gladiator versus Maximus, we come back to it, which is the more negative effect? Would you rather just have them draw two cards? Or would you actually rather gamble with adding a card on their side? Like, which one actually hurts more? Giving them two

Cozy Snap: 26:08

cards, especially right now in this meta, is a tough thing to do. I, obviously, if you play down Gladiator and they pull a good card, great. But Maximus, you're guaranteed giving the opponent an advantage. Guaranteed. Right. The way I truly think Gladiator is gonna play with Maximus together in some sense. I, honestly, if you play Gladiator late in a surfer deck, odds are you can play him in a lane that's full. Odds are. I would say a good chance and then you just go ahead and get that big kick out. If you get Sarah down too. Dude, I'm just Maximus, Gladiator, Surfer finish, it's crazy. That's a huge, that's a 20 point play pretty easily. It

Alexander Coccia: 26:45

is, it's a lot of points, especially when you consider like if you have Brood out early as well, what you're putting across the board is pretty significant.

Cozy Snap: 26:51

It's the same players that like Maximus and like these cards that have a little bit of sizzle behind them as well, right? Like, clog I was thinking about these toxic decks, it just, it doesn't have a lot of space right now to even fit in. Gladiator, it's a tight list as well. It's gonna be interesting. Gut instinct, what are you gonna rate Gladiator? 1 through 5 stars, you were big on him last week, but you didn't know some things, where you at now?

Alexander Coccia: 27:15

Last week I was at a 4. And honestly, I drop it down to a three and it's because of the ongoing interaction, which I did not anticipate. I believed that the ongoing effect would not appear during the trade, but it does, and that changes everything because no longer does devil dinosaur Ronin, not that anyone's playing Ronin, but all those cards completely changes the trade. And so for me, that changes everything.

Cozy Snap: 27:39

Yeah, look, I'll happily be wrong. I'm giving him a 2 star, and I'm going to stay at that. And I think that's even being generous for the time being. Couple reasons why also. If you don't get Gladiator, guys, my friends, just play decks with big cards right now. Go into your ramp deck, go check that deck out for the next few days, because you're going to get nothing but value as people like myself and Alex try to get Gladiator to work. He will be meta dependent. I just see this guy being a candidate, potentially for a buff later on. We'll have to see, maybe. He's fantastic. I'm at the two star now, but you know. Time will tell.

Alexander Coccia: 28:12

Imagine pulling Electro for your opponent on turn three. You said play Rampant, I was like, we didn't talk about Electro. Imagine pulling Electro for them on turn three and their whole hand is stuffed with big cards. Oh my god. That's awful.

Cozy Snap: 28:28

On that note, we didn't even talk about the bad cards here. I'll just list them off, but Electro clearly is on that list. I mean, anything big, not even going to go through all those lists. Devil, Dinosaur, Darkhawk, those kind of cards. Dr. Doom, for the most part, man, like, tough time there. Pro X, yeah, he's kind of getting played everywhere. Nothing's gonna happen to Pro X. He locks the lane down, he probably, maybe, won that lane. But, Pro X players are gonna have a million ways to win that lane as well, right? Jeffs can go in there, Claw, you name it, it's Marvel now, right? Also, Alioth obviously, Alioth comes down, but I think he the on reveal trigger, so the, it's just an even trade at that point, which ACTUALLY isn't terrible, getting rid of their Alioth, but you trade at what cost, you know?

Alexander Coccia: 29:11

Yeah, it's like, you know, I won the battle, but at what cost? Did I really lose the war?

Cozy Snap: 29:15

Mr. Negative, Electro, these are like, Mind, Loki, these cards that the opponent doesn't care what happens to the card. They just want to get it out there, right? The black widows of the world. And then we already talked about the destroyed cards. So, we're going to be excited to see how it does. We'll obviously talk about them next week on Alex's side in review. What our final thoughts are on Gladiator. Let's go ahead and move to our next subject, Alex. And that is the monster OTA, man. I feel like sometimes, you know, we get the title spiced up on YouTube and I feel like I'm typing it every other week, the biggest OTA yet, but truly this was in contingent from a, for a pretty massive OTA.

Alexander Coccia: 29:55

Yeah, this was a massive change that really impacted the meta in a number of different ways. I mean, anytime you're literally announcing OTA changes in advance of the OTA, you know the meta is going to shift. Like, they literally said, hey guys, Mobius on Mobius. It's coming. We heard you. We're doing it. And they even came up with new tech to release an OTA that changes card text, which is very notable here, right? Like, that's... That's what they wanted to do. It's like a mini patch, essentially, right? This OTA was massive, and you're right. I feel like when I type the titles of those, like patch analysis videos that we both do, it's like, The biggest OTA ever! This patch is insane! But they, they have been crazy lately. Like, six cards are being changed at once, and all of them are, are significant changes.

Cozy Snap: 30:37

Yeah, I think that was one of the biggest takeaways, is that we both thought, we're like, Mobius is set for at least a month. I mean, we ended the Snapchat with that, and now they have the ability if something's out of hand. It sounded like they're not gonna always press the button, but if they need to, the tech is out there. It's confirmed. Fantastic. I love that. The potential of having game changing new cards all the time. Sign me up, buddy. Sign me up. Let's go to break down this OTA and talk about some of our favorite stuff that we had in there. As well as some stuff that, you know how this is going to change the meta in somewhat of a big way here. And audio listeners, my voice could not good night. Hopefully it doesn't sound like trash on your car speakers right now. As I continue to decay. Let's talk about Mobius. He's back, in a sense. He's back. And I, I do think the threat of him. First of all, it's good on them because a lot of people got the card. So it's good that he's back to being a decent card. But the threat of him needs to exist. Would you concur?

Alexander Coccia: 31:32

Yeah, I think Mobius does a very important thing to Marvel Snaps Meta. You can't have these cost reduction strategies running completely rampant because it's easy to forget what it was like when you had Zabu in every single deck and turn to drawing Zabu Snap and just like, that was the strategy and that's how you win games in Marvel Snap. Like, get to infinite, how do you do it? You get Zabu and you snap. It was the plan, like these cost reduction strategies are incredibly powerful. Sarah legitimately one of the best cards in the game. We've talked about it many times before it completely changes the landscape of Marvel snap and how turn six works. You get rid of leech, you get rid of Sandman. Well, kind of, that's another point of discussion, but you get rid of these cards that are supposed to negate these turn six miracle plays. Something has to exist to create balance and Mobius and Mobius has to be that threat.

Cozy Snap: 32:20

Yep, absolutely. Totally. I think. People are underestimating how good he will be and slash how bad he is at the 3 cost. Like, it's a very awkward position, because as you can see, there's so many 3 costs in the game. There's so many, and so a lot of decks are pretty tight right at that space, right? And I always bring up the Thanos Control. You, you gotta play Psylocke on that. You're looking to play your 5 drop the next turn. You know, you can't afford to get Mobius out at that point, right? Do you see him being pretty good? Where do you see him? Where do you like him the most?

Alexander Coccia: 32:53

I don't see him being good, no. I played him in a surfer deck, and I mean, if it's not going to make it there, then it's like, hmm, this deck's not great. Like, this card's not great. And I, I will tell you though, there was greedy players that were like, I'm playing whatever the hell they're, they're playing Zabu's and stuff, and I just played, they played, I got, got, someone waved me on turn three. And I happen to play Mobius and Mobius, and they're like, sad emo'd on top of the Mobius and Mobius, cause like, took them by surprise. But, I can't snap into that condition. Like, I take a 1Q from them, I gasp, but like, that's it. Like, it's not, Mobius and Mobius is not gonna have the impact until... A season pass card comes out or we have a weekly release. It's a new cost reduction card that completely slaps everyone's cheeks. And then now Mobius and Mobius makes perfect sense. But the thing that concerns me, Cozy, is that the two costs has become the tech cost to some degree. Shadow King, right? Luke Cage. There's so many excellent two cost cards that play that role. Even Goose to some degree is a really notable tech card. And now Mobius is just not there. So I was kind of interested to see it going to 3 costs and maintaining the same effect. We talked about it before, like why not try like a 2 1 or something like that, but we're just rehashing old memories at this point. But yeah, it's interesting to go to the 3.

Cozy Snap: 34:03

I'd like to talk about Mobius for a second. I do like him and like, he can be a game winner. And what I mean by that is an Infinity Conquest, man. Can you match a match 5? You go in there with the Saradek. You're not expecting Mobius, and if Mobius comes out, it's a rough, you know, it's tough. That's where I think he'll get his best value. If we get a draft mode, I think probably a lot of players will go towards, like, these cost reduction cards. I'm never passing up a She Hulk on a draft, right? So, I think Mobius could be good in that environment. General ladder play. The time's. Not now. The meta's not now. And the card releases aren't now to your point. So Mobius, I do agree. It was cool to see them address that head on though. For sure. Now let's go and talk about probably the, the one that we gotta bring up.'cause this is the biggest one. This has the most change. This is what people reacted to, probably the most, the best card for months on. And Chung Chi finally got himself an adjustment. I even said it was like this guy had the, because he was always mentioned in the past notes. It was like he had plot armor. I thought it would never happen. I thought every card would have been adjusted beforehand. I want to start with this before going to bigger topics. Did the change have significant impact to Shang Chi?

Alexander Coccia: 35:15

I feel like it has. Like, not, like, not in a crazy way. What's interesting is that Shang Chi already felt like it was on its way down. People were getting greedier, the decks were getting tighter. Everyone was like, listen, I'm making a deck that does this thing. I'm not putting Shang Chi in, I want my thing to do the thing better, and Shang Chi doesn't do the thing I want it to do, right? And so people were cutting Shang Chi, because they had all these other lines they wanted to do. You know, on turn four, I want to play that Pro X like you were talking about, with all that Time Stone and Psylocke Mana Ramp. Like, I don't want to play Shang Chi. Even on turn six, I got things locked down. I got Alioth for turn six, and Alioth doesn't care about initiative the way Shang Chi does, right? So, Alioth's eating his lunch on turn six. And on turn 4, he ain't playing Shang Chi anyway. Who the hell's playing Shang Chi on turn 4? So all of a sudden, Zabu has got his, got his cheeks slapped slapped out of the meta. So all of a sudden, you're in a situation where you're like, alright, well, Shang Chi, what happens to Shang Chi? He just gets cut. So I thought this nerf was actually very interestingly timed. But I will say though, Kozy, and I'm interested in your take on this. I don't want, I don't want Shang Chi to disappear. I, people were saying like on, on social media, like, Oh, make Shang Chi destroy all the cards above 9 cost on either location. Okay, I understand that, but like, That completely destroys the card to some degree. Moving it to a 10 power, what it does is it still makes it relevant. Shang Chi, this effect, just like Mobius, is so critical to the game. In a, in a game where you have to win two locations by having more power, You can't just go super vertical, or else Double Dinosaur is invincible.

Cozy Snap: 36:38

Yeah, exactly. You know what I like about this change is even though he was getting played less, if you lined up all the tech cards, which one are you picking more? And it's almost always Shang Chi. I feel like now you look at him and like Rogue isn't always great, right? Like Enchantress, I feel like a lot of them, it's a tougher choice now. Which one is going to age you the most? Is it Shadow King? Is it going to, but he affects your own cards, you have to then put in Luke Cage, that's two spots. Whatever, right? Like there's a lot of intricacies where Shang Chi is still good in his own right. I, I still am going to play plenty of Shang Chi in my own belief. The conversation I want to have about him and what I like, and we saw it to an extent, She Hulk went up to 10, but we also had cards go up to 9. Like Warpath for an example. I love the idea. I was looking at some eight power cards. Okay. And I was like, what are some other cards that next OTA they could easily just get a nice little bump up in their power because at eight, is it going to be earth shattering and can they use it? You know what I mean? Obviously, how long You're bringing him up, for sure. We both Have we talked about Heimdall for how long? How long We've said make him nine, I'm like, okay, he's shun chi able, that's fine. This has got to be the first move.

Alexander Coccia: 37:55

Yeah, I can see it, cause like, hold on. We did talk about how Werewolf by Night did give Heimdall a little love. But, it ultimately has been that Werewolf by Night has not been enough in move to really shake it. Time is still showing whether or not Doctor Strange is gonna do it. But, if it's not enough, moving Heimdall to a 9 is a very natural good play for a card that you want to respect the strength of for its effect, but also the 9 power is significant as well.

Cozy Snap: 38:21

So these are the cards, and there's not a lot of them, but these are the cards that I think, balance wise... They could be a nine. I did. Just balance wise, Hydell was one. I think actually the wave changed. Hurt Heim, Dell two a ton. Because of the way that you could lock your opponent and then you could move cars and get the power. That's how I like to play'em. When I looked at other eight cost cards, first of all, I gotta bring her up obviously, you know, I think Arrow can go up to a five, nine respectively. I, I think she's very situational. I understand. A a and I would think that a nine power arrow plate isn't the wor, am I just copio here or could you see her at nine?

Alexander Coccia: 38:56

Listen, even though you guys dress identically, what I will tell you is that Aero, I don't want, I don't want to give you the, the, like the satisfaction of agreeing with you. As much as I want to roast Aero, she should be a 5'9 When you nerf Wave, you take out one of the key synergistic plays with Aero. Right? Sandman's not quite there yet, so yeah, Arrow can be 5 9 for sure, because without Wave and that, that inexpensive way to lock down turn 6 to 1 card, Arrow's just not, it's just not what it should be.

Cozy Snap: 39:25

And I get, people will say, well, A Bomb is 5 9, and that doesn't make sense, he's the stat able Patriot in high Evo decks, right? Like, if you look at Spider Woman, Gamora, they're at the 12 stat, so that's, that's where 9 feels okay for not the craziest ability in the game anymore. But these ones also made a lot of sense. Ultron. Ultron is always on that bubble, kind of a weird card. And I think just pushing him one over the top at 6 9, to me, that makes a lot of sense. I think it's fine. I think Ultron is not this meta card right now. And I'll finish the last one, and I'll get your thoughts on both of them. So I have Ultron, and then the last one I had, and this one's, this is, in my opinion, the most controversial one. But after the Jessica Jones one, I think it's probably completely fine. And that's crossbones. So crossbones at a 4'9 and Ultron. Is it that big of a deal?

Alexander Coccia: 40:12

No, getting crossboners up to 4'9 is probably absolutely fine. I will tell you, you knew I was gonna do it. But I will tell you that, like, listen. This card here, it sucks. It's always sucked getting into a four, nine, at least cause just some like merit to at least throwing it in a deck. Right. And that at least makes sense. Cause even in a draft mode, you don't want crossbones. Like you just, you'd never want crossbones except now maybe you do. What I will tell you though, is that like, there are so many different cards of marble snap that just that one extra power. is tremendously beneficial, but Ultron, I got to talk to you about Ultron for a sec, okay? I think you're sipping the Kool Aid a little bit. How many times do I have to talk about Ultron being one of the highest win rate cards in Marvel Snap? Are you really talking about buffing one of the highest win rate cards in Marvel Snap, Cozy? Have you not listened to anything I've said over the last couple months? Do we not talk multiple times a week, once a week for like three hours? Good sir! Do I not bring up Ultron mul Have I not put him in the top ten?

Cozy Snap: 41:05

Sir, I can't even yell, but I want to. Surprise, Ultron's my baby. I love Ult I love Ultro I just feel like, Ultron's a winning card because the way he's played. And because of his downside, almost. I feel like... The 6 9 is fine, but because oftentimes I feel like is that enough to win the lane? I get it cuz technically he could be adding what if you're even doing nothing He's adding four to each lane plus, you know, he's doing the nine. So he's be a 17 play. Okay. Yeah, maybe a little bit much I don't know. I feel like it's not a huge impact play here, but is there any other eight power cars or Top of your head that could go to nine.

Alexander Coccia: 41:45

No, I don't think so I think that Jane Foster has shown that like it can be part of a really strong package I don't know if you ever buffed Jane Foster. I don't think you ever buff Odin Yeah, cow just got buff like what you can do a fortnight. Okay. No, I think that like it makes sense I don't think Odin gets moved. I don't think Jane Foster gets moved either

Cozy Snap: 42:04

And Living Tribunal got kind of a big buff from this too, he can't be Shang Chi'd, in fact they buffed him so that he could be Shang Chi'd and now that's just gone and they didn't, you know, speak on it. Alex, the last one I want to tickle you on is Dr. Octopus. I was like, you know what, that's kind of interesting, you nerfed him down to a 9. You take him down to a 9, and ultimately he's a buff, cause then he doesn't die to the always shunk Chi on the other side kinda, right? And I was like, nah, that's just kinda how he plays, you know, I don't wanna go too, too crazy. Let's move on, we have a couple more here She Hulk, obviously, I think was already training up. Yes, Mobius has returned, I'll gladly take 10 power on my She Hulk now, no problem. Last play anyway, a good amount of the time, maybe turn 5. So I'm sure you were stoked about that. But man, it feels good because how long, I mean, listen, we've gone through a lot of the bad ones, a lot of the garbage cards in Marvel Snap, and Strong Guy can finally take off that list. He he finally got something. Now was it a good something? I don't know, but he finally got something. A 3 3. What do you think about him?

Alexander Coccia: 43:08

I think it was kind of funny that you let in with, well, we can scratch it off the garbage list. I'm like, are you sure? Are you sure, bud? Okay. So strong guy, actually, it's interesting. Cause I think it's, it's a few cards short from being a good card. Like discard and having an empty hand is actually kind of a challenging condition. Like it's not the easiest condition to meet. And so like, what kind of deck do you play? That's the question. What kind of discard deck do you play? And like, I think that Strong Eye is similar to Black Knight in the sense where you're not playing it traditionally. Because Strong Eye and Apocalypse is kind of weird. Of course, you can play down your Apocalypse on turn six and Dracula your Chavez, but that already means that you've done everything perfectly that game anyway. And if you didn't have Strong Eye, you'd have been discarding your Apocalypse for four extra power and playing your Chavez. So like, wait a minute, is this actually even better than traditional? No, it's not. I tried doing this meme list. Of course I went to surf for Strong Guy. I played Strong Guy, Sword Master, I played Moon Knight, I was full memeing. And yeah, I dumped my hand, I had Gambit, but you know what Gambit did? It always hit the one drops. You know what Strong Guy did? I mean, he always got the... Nine power, which is not that bad. He actually was pretty good, but like all that effort and he's two off of Maximus like really it's very off of gladiator?

Cozy Snap: 44:25

But I do want to ask I have a question I do and I've been six I've been not able to test these strong guys not been on my list I feel like when I just play traditional Sarah Surfer, if you curve it out, you can play most of your hand without those cards, yeah? Like, what, if you could Sarah down, you, I don't have cards in my hand a good chunk of the time.

Alexander Coccia: 44:45

No, you're right. You usually do dump your hand down, but if there's even one damn card in your hand, man. And you can't get rid of it. Like it's just strong guy is a waste of space. Yep. I do agree. And like, that's kind of the challenge. So you need something. And I, I was leaning to, okay. I was memeing a little bit when I was doing like Gambit and everything. Like that's, that's, that's a whole other conversation, but like, if you think about Swordmaster stat line. Like that is very low risk to activating a strong guy, right? I found myself never wanting to play Moon Knight because it always discarded Sarah or Surfer. So that, that was, that was pure copium. I got to tell you, but someone had to test it, damn it. But honestly, I'm telling you Swordmaster in the strong guy Surfer list actually felt pretty good because you close with it and it's a pretty vertical stat line.

Cozy Snap: 45:26

Agreed, man. I, I think I think he, he might have a potential future there. Maybe, maybe a couple of buff ups here and there, but we're going in the right direction. Just waiting on good ol Steve Rogers and Punisher next up. Jessica Jones, now this was a card I already liked. I already thought Jessica was a fun card to play. She worked in not all the lists, cause there's better cards to play. Card everybody has access to. 49, buddy, sign me! The only con to her is that she can be awkward to play every now and then on turn order and or skipping the lane. But in a control list, buddy? No problem. I think she's great to follow up storm.

Alexander Coccia: 46:03

Yeah, naturally, obviously she can't be played on turn 6 with effectiveness or else she'll get like a 4 or 5, which kind of sucks. But the thing I really like about this change, honestly, is first of all, it's great. JJ completely fell off the meta. But it also gives players in like series 1, 2, like something. It gives them a little something because people are going into conquest. They're getting these golden tickets from the collector's reserves. They go into the golden whatever golden conquest. And they're like, Oh, look at this, a deck I can't play against. Cause it has all these meta things and just completely, you know, getting clapped and that's at least JJ gives you something giving the pool one, two players, a little bit of an extra tool to deal with the meta, I think is really valuable. So seeing JJ get buffed, I think was really nice.

Cozy Snap: 46:44

And to spare our listeners ears from my voice any longer, we're going to end on our last OTA card here, is Doctor Strange. I'm huge on it, man. I, I still stand by, in my opinion, move stats will never be good, if you look at the deck stats, because people want to go back to move, and they haven't been playing move, and move does take a lot of practice reps. To get down efficiently. But whatever we've been saying about move for so long, it just kind of always feels one card short from really working right? The thing I will say though, is he does work in Phoenix force. I kind of like him a ton in Phoenix force deck. I played around with that and it made that deck better in my opinion.

Alexander Coccia: 47:27

I've not actually tested him in Phoenix force yet, but what I will tell you is you are absolutely correct in the sense that this that move has always been that just one card off. And if you actually think on aggregated the last couple of months, how many buffs move has gotten, don't forget ghost spider got buffed. Doctor Strange, right? You're getting more tools, okay? Werewolf by night. Hopefully the impending Heimdall buff that we've kindly requested. This is a huge change for Doctor Strange. And the nice thing about it is Doctor Strange is such an iconic hero. And it's never felt good to play. It's always felt awkward. And in move, you always had this like, do I play Dr. Strange or I play someone like a Juggernaut who's just better, more disruptive and it's quite the same flavor, but it felt like it was always being outclassed, right? Hulkbuster took it over, right? No, you don't play Dr. Strange, play Hulkbuster, right? It's way better with all these other things. And suddenly it's like, okay, well, what do I do with Dr. Strange now? And so seeing it drop to a two, it lets it fit into a lot of more different kinds of natural lines. I like it a lot. This is a huge change for move.

Cozy Snap: 48:30

Absolutely, guys. So, home run OTA. They are skipping a couple. We have a couple coming up to end the year. Which is great because they do go on leave for a while. The devs, they take the much needed time off. But this gets me excited to just see the next OTA. Especially with the new tech abilities they can do. And another major prop that one of our biggest points in the last Snapchat was the Mobius. Issue and you know, they rectified that so it's great to see. Guys, we do have twitch drops this week You can check out mine and alex's twitch channels will both be streaming for probably ridiculous amounts of hours into late Tonight if you guys want to check out the twitch drops and until then you guys can go check out Alex's side of the episode. Now I am not there a little bit under the weather. So Drewberry kind of looks like me. He took over my spot over there. And from what I hear is a fantastic conversation, Alex. And they're going to be talking about Ms. Marvel in review, the snap economy breakdown and top 10 ongoing cards.

Alexander Coccia: 49:23

I'm joined today by none other than Drew Berry. Drew Berry is here joining us instead of Cozy Snap. And now Drew, we love to have you here. In fact, drew, you came up on a pre prior Snapchat. We were discussing Cozy and I our favorite Snap creators. And you unanimously was at the top of both of our lists, my friend. How you doing?

Drewberry: 49:44

Oh my gosh. I'm doing amazing, Alex. Thank you for having me. Everybody watching. I know I'm not Cozy. I got big shoes to fill, but I'm going to try my best. When you guys shouted me out, that absolutely melted my heart. Like I watch you guys all the time. So to just hear, you know, that show of appreciation, that was way too kind of you both. And the unanimous call out was just amazing. So thank you so much. That was, that was incredible.

Alexander Coccia: 50:06

It's well deserved. It's honestly well deserved. I think your content is some of the absolute best out there. The production quality is absolutely phenomenal. It has been since beta! Like, you've been playing for a long time. Like, why don't you tell us a little bit of your journey here as a Marvel Snap content creator? Because you've been around for a while.

Drewberry: 50:20

Yeah, man, well, you know, it actually all started, I think, with a lot of the early content creators was seeing Ben Brode's next project, because I played Hearthstone quite a bit. I loved that game a lot, I played, maybe played for like almost, I think, when that game first came out, so that's like seven plus years, and then I saw Ben Brode's next card game, and it's only going to be three minutes long, and I was like this. Looks really fun and also on Marvel IP, love these characters and sure enough, actually, even though that's what excited me, playing the game is what sold me. Right when I got into it, I was like, this is actually an incredibly fun game and it has all of those layers going for it. So I just thought I'm going to shoot my shot. I've been watching all kinds of Hearthstone content creators for years. I've wanted to dabble in it, give it a shot. And I just went for it in beta and we've been doing it ever since. And it's been a great ride.

Alexander Coccia: 51:08

It has been great. And my story is very similar to that. Like I was excited for Bro's next project and I just threw my name in there like anyone else would have. I didn't take any content creator paths, didn't, you know, go through any official means. It was just a regular dude. He threw his name, got an email saying, Hey, you got in. You know, I was actually a month later than most. But regardless it. Change the course of my video game life forever because you know, it's been an incredible blessing to be able to make content for Marvel snap. And you're right. Like, it's just, it's such a fun game. And sometimes, I don't know if you feel the same way, but like, I can't believe I get to make content for a game that I actually enjoy because when I play Dota, man, I tell you, I was playing Dota. I'm like, yeah, I'm making the content, but damn, this game sometimes just makes you want to tilt right out. And Marvel Snap doesn't have that right. Marvel Snap just continuously fun. And even if the meta sometimes doesn't feel as fresh as it could. I feel like because the games were only like 3 minutes long, even if they're mis marveling you or something like that, yeah, it's hard to tilt in Marvel Snap, cause you just cue the next game and you get yourself the next dub, right?

Drewberry: 52:04

Oh, I absolutely agree. I played all kinds of other different current kind of games and I don't, I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else for content creation. Like you've really got to love the game when you're making content for it or else the viewers are going to notice that they're going to pick up on that. So yeah, I just, Marvel snaps just so easy to love. And actually a point that you just touched on that I think, you know, gets pushed to the wayside is how much love and attention this game gets from the developers. I know there's ups and downs, but there are balance changes, you know, like almost three, four times a week. New cards being released weekly. There's always something around the corner that's exciting. So it's a really easy game to fall in love with and stick with it.

Alexander Coccia: 52:40

Yeah, because I remember, like, playing Hearthstone, like you mentioned prior, and, like, Face Hunter was just a thing for, like, nine months, where you just literally just went face non stop, like, you just did nothing else. The game was completely non interactive, and it took months and months for any change to happen, and here we are in Marvel Snap, getting patches and OTAs twice a month, and all this stuff's happening. One thing I will say, though, and we're gonna, we got a lot of topics to talk about today, we're gonna be talking about Ms. Marvel, we're not... We're going to be talking about the economy of Marvel Snap. We're going to be discussing how we can improve the economy of Marvel Snap. We're also going to be talking about our top 10 best ongoing cards in the game. But for before that Drew, I'd like to talk to you about your content. Now, one thing that you do very, very well is your datamined stuff and your custom card content too is absolutely phenomenal. So like, tell us a little bit about your custom cards and like some of the content you make on your channel. Cause I do think it's some of the best out there.

Drewberry: 53:30

Thanks man, I appreciate that. Yeah, custom cards, what a crazy journey that has been. It started off where I just made a few random custom cards for fun. And I just threw them out there. And we just had the Berryverse going, a Discord channel. And a few early members were like, Hey, you know what would be really fun? Is if you just had like a weekly, you know, maybe not even a challenge, but you just shout out some of our cards that we're making in this channel. And I was like, Oh, that seems like a really fun idea. And sure enough, just started doing that. Then we were coming up with different keyword challenges every single week all kinds of different winners. And then it just grew. And you wouldn't believe the submissions and the cards that people make. The artwork, the dedication, the effort, the creativity that these folks are putting in to creating these custom cards is top notch. I swear, sometimes you could look at them and you'd think it's a real card. It just looks incredible from the art and also the effect and the balance. And we get hundreds of submissions now every week. It's so much fun. I try to review those and we do a challenge every week. And then I announce the winners in the YouTube channel on the video, the weekly video. And that's really the the general idea with the custom cards, but I'm so proud of that with the community that's been built with the Berryverse. It's so much fun to see what the creative ideas that the people who play this game, who love this game come up with that they'd like to see in Snap. It's a lot of fun.

Alexander Coccia: 54:48

Yeah. I love those videos. I think there's a lot of really interesting experimentation and ideas in there that sometimes like, Hey, hope the development team is watching. Cause I think this needs to be in the game too. Right? So let's get into our first discussion, Drew. That's going to be about one of the cards. That's absolutely taking over the meta. We're going to the four cost here. And of course it is Miss Marvel. Miss Marvel has taken the meta by storm. It has a 35 percent meta share currently, which means that, Hey, people got that season pass. Now I was middling on Miss Marvel. I had to be honest. I gave her a two star prediction moving forward. And I'll happily say that I was wrong, but I don't think I was that wrong. I'm going to say she's like a three and a half. Potentially 4 star depending on the situation, but I feel that she is ultimately very restrictive. Her win rate currently sits at about 54 55%, but she does have a very positive cube rate of 0.34 cubes on average per game, which is a very high cube rate. So it seems as though, if you don't get the right locations, if you don't get the right draw, then retreating's fine, but when you get what you need, that 15 power she puts across the board hits pretty damn hard.

Drewberry: 55:51

Oh, absolutely. You know what, Alex, just so you feel a little bit better, I'm in the same boat. I kind of slept on her a little bit. When I first saw the card, I thought this is going to be really strong because like you said, all that amazing power that you can put out just seems incredible. But then also, like you said, all those restrictions started to come into play and we started to learn more about the card and I started to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, like. Maybe she's going to be too difficult to pull off. But hearing you read out those numbers, that's crazy. That is, that is pretty shocking. I wonder, what do you think? Do you think that's an influence because of the quantity of purchases maybe this season? A little bit of hype just to get the new card and maybe those numbers are a little inflated and might come down? What do you think about it?

Alexander Coccia: 56:30

I'm not exactly sure, right? We've had prior season pass cards come up with far higher win rates. Like Elsa Bloodstone was much higher. It was in the 60s. Loki was in the sixties. So Ms. Marvel at 55 is much more fair. It's much more balanced. And I think that's important too, right? There's a discussion of like, well, it's a paid card, right? And we all know how much tokens cost. So if you consider how much you pay for a bundle with 6, 000 tokens in it, the season pass, all of a sudden looks like a tremendous value. And so when you have a card, that's technically a paid card, it's like, well. Do you want to go down the tinfoil hat kind of scenario? Like, well, do they make the cards OP so that more people buy the season pass? And I mean, we have some examples of that not being the case. Nimrod, right, was a good example of that. And to some degree Miss Marvel, but I think that some of the decks that are Coming out are very competitive. You have her in some 60 percent win rate decks and I mean, that's not too shabby, but overall as a card herself, 55%, it's much fairer than most season pass cards are. So I'm curious about what your experience has been thus far with her.

Drewberry: 57:31

I completely agree. Fair is a very good way to put it. I don't think people are screaming out for this card to get nerfed, but at the same time, the numbers are really high and she's doing well. So it just feels like it fell in a really nice spot, kind of where you want season pass cards to end up. My experiences so far have been pretty positive. I think it falls in line with what those numbers are probably projecting because I feel like I'm doing pretty good with the card. I feel like it does help me win a lot of games. I feel like the restrictions haven't been too bad. And my biggest sentiment that I pull away with this card is that it's actually okay. And, and maybe always, sometimes the better way to play the card. To the left or the right to just, you know, be like, okay, 10 power. Let's just go with that. And that's going to be good enough for me. And then maybe we can even boost that up with mystique or onslaught or something like that. Find that has actually brought me more success than trying to force her down the middle and find a way, because there are some counters out there that can really ruin your day. But overall, yeah, it's definitely exceeded my expectations.

Alexander Coccia: 58:31

Yeah. It's exceeded mine as well. It's funny you bring up like playing it on the left or right. And that does seem to be a viable strategy. It's still a 4 10 when you put that into consideration. However, what I will say is if she's in the middle. Something I've noticed, I've had like, people play, like, Super Scroll against me, they've rogued it, and like, there's a tremendous amount of counters, but if their deck is not designed to put a one cost there, a one cost there, and two, all of a sudden, like, they can Super Scroll it, but they have, you know, two, two drops in the left lane, and they, they messed up the other side as well, because there's, whatever, right? They often don't get that far. 415 value because they didn't design their deck and they weren't playing from turn one, considering how they can balance their board for Ms. Marvel. I think that Ms. Marvel, like from that 50 feet view perspective, is a really interesting card. It takes a lot of macro considerations. It's like you gotta think your whole game through. It's like you gotta, okay, how's this board going to look for me to take advantage of Ms. Marvel? And I really liked that about the card. We don't have many cards that do that that really take into consideration the macro side of the game well in advance of them being played themselves.

Drewberry: 59:32

Yeah, which really made me think there was a high skill ceiling to this card. And I thought the win rate was actually going to be lower in the hands of the general population. And then, you know, maybe, I don't know, some tournament decks or some meta competitive, maybe some higher tier players, infinite players like that are going to find more success than maybe someone who's a little bit new to the game, because the amount of questions that I got before this card was released about what does unique costs mean. Made me think, oh no, people are going to mess up this card. They're going to play all kinds of costs at one lane and it's not going to trigger and it's going to be a disaster. But maybe she's not so difficult to pull off. Maybe she's just doing just fine. Maybe, maybe the card is actually one of the stronger ongoing cards right now, possibly?

Alexander Coccia: 1:00:15

We'll find out later in this episode, cause I'm sure she made your top 10. If not, then we have a discussion to have my friend, cause she's in my top 10. You scribbled her in there quick, man. But yeah, so she's been very, very strong. And as I said, pleasantly surprised. Now, one thing that was not made clear prior to her release. Was the requirement that she had to have cards physically in a location for it to get the buff. Now that's not in the text, but it's a very important consideration. I think that drops her power level significantly. And it actually increases the value of cards like Nightcrawler, which I've been including in my decks with Ms. Marvel for that exact reason, I can move Nightcrawler to make, kind of gain access to Sanctorum or you know, Death Altar of Death or whatever it happens to be to get that. Value, right? So I think that was a very important thing and you're right. Sometimes the text can be a little like kind of like confusing. And. It's important that we get clarity in watching those kind of development trailers and etc. To get an idea of, okay, what is the true power level of this card? What are the mechanics that are going to govern it? Because with Ms. Marvel, knowing that in advance, might have actually pulled people off the card a little bit. But, in reality, even with that restriction, it's still performing really well.

Drewberry: 1:01:24

Absolutely. I always tell a lot of people that one of the things that you have to focus on before a card is released, should you buy it, all these sorts of things before it actually drops is we have to know how it exactly works because I find there's just often a lot of misconceptions or maybe a little bit of nuances mechanically in Snap in terms of, you know, like when the on reveal and the ongoing and this happens in the location, whenever those things happen, it's going to play a very big major factor into the card's viability. And sometimes, like you said, there's a very key mechanic, like having a card at a location present for the unique cost to trigger for her ability to trigger for the card to be good. Because if we didn't know that going in, you pick up the card, you're going to start just playing, hoping you're getting that power. And then there's a bunch of Reddit posts or a bunch of questions aimed at Glenn. Why isn't it working? So yeah, yeah. Mechanics are king. It's the best thing to learn about the new cards.

Alexander Coccia: 1:02:19

Absolutely, and one thing I will say is if you're frustrated playing against Ms. Marvel, let's talk a couple counters here because I think there's a few fun ones. My favourite one is at the one cost. It's a card that I've been talking about, I feel like, non stop. And it's Echo. Like, throwing a casual Echo mid, it feels so good. Like, you can play your own Ms. Marvel there and they're just like, you see the little angry emote pop up on the screen. I know that Echo might not be in everyone's collection, but for me, this has been an absolute standout right now. Like, I feel like my win rate... during this current meta has skyrocketed thanks to this card alone.

Drewberry: 1:02:51

Oh yeah. I, you know what, Alex, I got a confession to make. Don't own Echo. So I can't experience that with you, but it sounds a lot of fun.

Alexander Coccia: 1:03:01

It's heartbreaking that you don't have Echo. I actually, is that one of the only cards you don't have?

Drewberry: 1:03:05

Yeah, I'm missing like A two or three at this point in time, and she, unfortunately, is one of them.

Alexander Coccia: 1:03:10

I'm missing just Howard the Duck. Just Howard the Duck. I'm not willing to pay 6, 000 tokens for Howard the Duck, okay? I'm sorry. He's very, he's coming eventually in the spotlight cash, so I'll grab him at that point in time, but yeah, Echo's been a huge counter. Do you want to hit me with one that you've been seeing out there?

Drewberry: 1:03:25

Yeah one that I've also been using is Magneto. I think it's a great counter for Ms. Marvel, because your opponent's, like, focusing on that game plan of aligning those unique costs. And not only can you maybe pull you know, Ms. Marvel over to a location that's going to not only defuse one point of her ability, right, that five points of power, but it also could do both because the, you know, the unique costs don't quite line up. So I think Magneto's a really sneaky turn six play to pull those cards away and shift a lot of your opponent's

Alexander Coccia: 1:03:53

power. Yeah, I was actually working on a Living Tribunal kind of list, and I actually was playing Echo and Magneto in it. Primarily because, like, once you hella, like, MODOK everything, and then, like, Magneto comes out, and you just pull those Miss Marvels and everything else around, suddenly in the middle they have, like, they weren't considering, oh, I can't put unique, I don't have to put unique costs in the middle, because that's where my Miss Marvel is. It just completely destroys their entire board state. So that's a huge call out. for Magneto. One thing I will say is that I actually have not been seeing nearly as much Enchantress as I would have expected. I thought Enchantress would have been a much more kind of a viable play, but I don't know about you. I'm not seeing people playing Enchantress.

Drewberry: 1:04:33

I agree. And I wonder if it's because people don't want to step on their own toes because everybody's playing Ms. Marvel and they're worried about running in. I think

Alexander Coccia: 1:04:41

that's exactly it, man.

Drewberry: 1:04:43

So I'm sure her day will come and it's probably not too far away. Cause she's always just one of those cars that pops up in the meadow when these sorts of decks take off and we're like, we're about a week out, right, or a little bit more maybe. And I think, I think it won't take too much longer for maybe this deck to cool off. And a few of those counters to pop up a little bit more.

Alexander Coccia: 1:05:02

That actually reminds me of this card right here. I kind of laugh, right? But when Alioth was absolutely pissing everyone off. Everyone's like, this Alioth, it's ruining the game! And I'm like, well, you can use Cosmo, you can use Armor. They're like, I can't use Cosmo or Armor, it's gonna screw up my Alioth! Right? It's like... They're upset that they're being Alioth, but they can't put the tech in because it screws up their Alioth themselves. It's like, what evil have we become that, you know, we'd say, like, Alioth is the problem, but also it's in my deck, dammit. But it's like, I mean? So it's funny. You're right. People are playing Ms. Marvel. It's like, I don't have the space for Enchantress. Get out of here. And the other thing is, as we mentioned prior, you do have this Super Skull, which I'm actually seeing a lot of, which is nice because You don't often get to see Super Skrull. Like it's like this really niche card that has to exist in very specific metaconditions, and this is the metacondition, right?

Drewberry: 1:05:51

Yep, absolutely. And you know what? It's fun because I never really used Super Skrull all that much. And then because of this whole meta shift, I was like, okay, let's give this guy a spin and see what happens. And I learned a new mechanic. I didn't even know. A superscroll doesn't copy the other superscrolls and it doesn't create this crazy loop and whatnot because other people just so happen to start playing this card. So, yeah, it's, it's pretty fun when the meta can shift because of a new card release. I think that's something that Snap has captured pretty well that does happen. Not every release. But a card like this, it was managed to do it.

Alexander Coccia: 1:06:25

I agree. Absolutely. And it's really nice to see that as well. One thing I'll ask you, look, can we talk about some counters and stuff like that? What about some cards that have been working really well with Ms. Marvel for you? Are there some that really stand out for you?

Drewberry: 1:06:35

My favorite list that I ended up running was Cerebro 5, which sounds kind of wild. Yeah, let's go, C5 is back. It works great with Ms. Marvel. You just, there's just a bunch of 5 power cards. I even got Wave in there to get the Dooms out early and it actually did wonders and it's what propelled me up the ranks in the last few days. Shout out to Snapster for posting that one and inspiring me to give it a shot because it's been great.

Alexander Coccia: 1:07:01

Good old Dexter, always coming up with those spicy C5 decks yeah, I mean the callout on on Wave is actually pretty important here, because Wave got changed pretty significantly, right but the idea of being able to get out that Doctor Doom early, which of course is going to be those five bots, it's like, it's 15 power across the board, but that Cerebro just salivates from that opportunity, right, and even if you're able to get that That do mode on turn four. That means you can protect your cerebral mystique for turn six. Right. And you can dodge those enchantresses or whatever. Right. So I really liked that call out. Very, very nice. For me, I mean, I've been greedy as hell and this is not fancy at all, but I got to tell you, for me, it's been, it's been onslaught. Like you just, you drop onslaught. How do you not love it? Like, and it's, it's just enough power. Like it's not a lot. Seven power is nothing to be excited about, but it's just enough that they still have to respect that center lane. Right. And you're just. Pumpin power on either periphery. So for me, Onslaught's been an absolute winner. Even if you get greedier, which of course, you know I'm always getting greedier. And I even have like, a deck with like, Mr. Fantastic 2, just to be stupid. But I love it. It's so much power across the periphery, and If I can, if I can go even more psychotic, Mr. Fantastic, Miss Marvel, Iron Man, Onslaught. What are they going to do outside of playing any ongoing counter?

Drewberry: 1:08:17

That echo turn one in the mid. Oh, well try the next one. Yeah, exactly. No, that's pretty wicked. It's nice to play with Onslaught again, because I feel like that's one of those series one cards that. Kind of just fell by the wayside because of a lot of other meta relevant cards. Maybe you see it in that, like, Living Tribunal deck like you were talking about earlier that can work there with the Iron Man, but but it doesn't get a whole lot of use. That's a really fun card to play with. I thought you were going to say Claw though. When you were listening off those cards, I thought you were going to say Klaue with Mr. Fantastic.

Alexander Coccia: 1:08:46

Klaw is the ultimate stealer of cubes, and honestly, I don't play much Klaw. I know that, like, that's sacrilege to someone who actually really likes Thanos, but Klaw for me has, like, always been, like, a really good card, and I respect it, but I just cut it, like, I don't know why. Are there any, that actually is, it's another topic of discussion, but, like, are there any cards that, like, you know are really good, you just don't play, because you just, you just don't like it?

Drewberry: 1:09:07

Cards that I, that are good, but I don't play them. Yeah, that's an interesting one. Yeah. That's, that's tough.

Alexander Coccia: 1:09:12

For me. It's Klaw for sure. Because like, I listen, I even cut it from like the Thanos control decks. Like I'm just, I'm mad crazy. And I know, I know that the percentage goes down like one and a half, 2 percent when I do that, but I just, I just do it anyways.

Drewberry: 1:09:25

It seems like such a good card and then, and then when you do pair it with like something like Onslaught, that's such a burst amount of power. I was kind of giving it a name of phantom power, those cards that can essentially give power without having to be present at the lane that they're sowing the power to, and that's such a strong effect in Marvel Snap when there are counters like Alioth, you know, running rampant in the meta, such a smooth play to play claw to the left and have your opponent think you're going to play to the right and then they throw Alioth there. Only to get, you completely dodge it with that claw and still get the power where you want it. So I, I do really love those cards. It's hard for me to think of the card that, for some reason, Silk kind of comes to mind. I don't play a whole lot of Silk, even though I know it's a very, very good card. I just, I don't know, something about moving around where I don't want her to go. I ended up just not playing with her a whole bunch.

Alexander Coccia: 1:10:15

I think there's a lot of people that aren't Silk Believers, actually. That's been one that I think people have had to kind of slowly kind of warm up to. It's been... I mean, it puts up... I gotta scroll all the way to the bottom. Like, it is legit, one of the highest power 2 cost cards. And it's just on the board. I mean, yeah, there could be Bar with No Name, and it could mess you up with Superflow or whatever, right? But ultimately, it's 5 power putting up points for you, so I like that. The other one for me has been Alioth. I feel bad playing Alioth. I just don't play him because, like... People, like, come to the stream and they're like, Damn you, Alex, look at you, playing Alioth. And I'm like, well, fine, I won't do it then. I always feel like I can't play, like, the most meta Like, when Shuri. Shuri was as popular as possible. I'm like, I can't play Shuri because everyone's so sick of it, right? So, you probably feel that from a content creator perspective, where you're like, you can't play the most popular thing all the time because people just be like, bro, what are you doing? You're just, you're just playing the most popular thing.

Drewberry: 1:11:00

10, 000%. I think it's been months since I've played Shuri Red Skull. Like I just, I don't know. I just have a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to that deck, even when it was kind of phased out of the meta because of a few series of nerfs. I just, I don't know. I don't know if I could ever look back to that deck list. I don't mind the cards on their own. Right. But when you put them together, no, thanks. I'll pass.

Alexander Coccia: 1:11:19

Okay. Now, one thing I want to talk about here, we're going to talk about the economy of Marvel Snap. Now this is an amazing discussion that absolutely has to happen. Okay. And I think that there's. A lot of potential for improvement. Now you actually made a fantastic graphic in advance of this discussion here, it's on the screen. And I gotta tell you really agree with what you have here. Cause the economy of snap, well, not the worst in free to play card games. It's not, it can definitely be improved. So I'm going to pass this to you. Cause I know this is a point of passion for you. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how we can improve Marvel snaps economy.

Drewberry: 1:11:54

Yeah, I think to start off, some folks that might see these or hear these changes might be thinking that that isn't enough. And the point I really want to push home here is that, you know, the economy as it is, isn't great, but it's not terrible. I think we're close, and just a few small nudges that, you know, aren't going to make the team bankrupt or anything like that, give everyone all the cards, because I actually do agree with their idea of that. We don't want every player to have a full collection. We want that little bit of grind to get those new cards to be excited and push for them. But I just feel like these few changes would make a huge difference. And the first one I'm going to start off with is they started doing a very consistent mini bundle, I guess you could call it, called Token Tuesday, which is great. I think that's a really good way to get tokens into the The problem being, it costs 1400 gold. And since their last change, they switched it so that we can't really get gold through a variety of means. They took away a lot of sources of acquiring gold, in particular in the collection track. So, I feel like the 1400 gold is a pretty heavy price tag, especially when everyone's usually probably trying to save that gold for specific bundles, you know, those, those higher value bundles that everyone wants to talk about. So token Tuesdays, maybe it's just me, but I feel like they often don't get purchased from the general population when I feel like those should be one of the main ways to getting your tokens to get that one card every couple of months. Cause it's 6, 000 tokens for those cards for most of them anyways, you know, it's going to be difficult. Regardless, even if it's a little bit cheaper. So essentially what my proposition is, we go from 1400 gold to 1000 gold. It's still very difficult to acquire gold in Marvel Snap, but at least the price tag isn't as severe. And now you're getting 1000 tokens for 1000 gold. And it just feels like it makes a little bit more sense. How do you feel about that one?

Alexander Coccia: 1:13:53

No, I agree. I feel like the the price tag is way too damn high, especially since they actually piloted the token Tuesday at a much higher value prior. Like it used to have, it used to be a little inconsistent. Like you'd get different values for each Tuesday. Sometimes it was 800 tokens and sometimes it was 1200 tokens or whatever. Like it kind of changed, but It was way more value than this. This is actually pretty much the lowest baseline we've ever had for a token Tuesday. And it sucks because like, if you do the math, that's a very expensive series five card if you're just investing the gold straight up. Right. And the other side to that is you're right. Like gold acquisition has become increasingly more difficult. You don't get it in the collector's reserves. And that's kind of sad because you ultimately, you get it in like the season pass. Plus 50 bonus caches. Like I actually look forward to opening those bonus caches for a chance to get some gold. How is it possible the bonus caches are better? And if you make the bonus caches better, you also encourage things like Agatha farming and all these other things, because people don't want to open their collector's reserves because they're going to get titles and. Garbage. And so they go after those those kind of post 50 season pass things that are available to everybody free to play or not. Right. So I do agree. Token Tuesday needs to be more kind of valuable for people. And the other thing is, I think token Tuesday distorts the value of all the currencies in the game, because if you think about how much card execution costs and how much each token is essentially worth when you get bundles. Like the Dracula bundle or any bundle that features tokens. It's like the price just elevates because, Oh, it's, there's tokens in there. Let's see if the tokens are that, the bundles that expensive. Cause the token baseline is so damn expensive at the same time. It's like if the token value went down, those bundles should come down a little bit. No?

Drewberry: 1:15:33

Oh, absolutely. Some of the prices are just so skyrocketed high. And some, one of the things that I've kind of noticed, and I don't know if it's too bad or it's okay, but we've definitely grown accustomed to this. Price line, you know, there's just like, Oh, that bundle is 85 or whatever. Like that's just how it is. And maybe that's okay. Because a lot of people have grown to understand that they can't purchase every single one. You got to pass, you got to wait, you got to look for that one that you're really excited about, but it's still. Very expensive. It's still just, it's just crazy expensive. And that's a really good point. I hadn't even thought about is the correlation between the essentially the baseline price of a token. What is the value of a token? We can use token Tuesday kind of as that example and cross reference that to all the bundles and every other means of acquiring tokens. And it's just not quite there when it, when it just feels like it should just be that natural. Like I'm excited. It's Tuesday. I'm going to get a thousand tokens. I'm, I'm happy, but it's, I think a lot of people pass on it. Maybe that's just me.

Alexander Coccia: 1:16:35

Absolutely, no, you're right, and the other side to this is like, some of the bundles are so expensive that even for me, like, I'm like, man, like, if I'm not buying a bundle, like, I literally release content, and I could use the money I make from the content to buy the bundle, and even I'm like, that's too damn expensive, right? Oh yeah. It's kind of crazy, and but then again, Like anybody that's like, Hey, Alex, you've ever played a gotcha game that like, you know, you got to grind and all that. Like I get it. Okay. Marvel snap is not nearly as bad as some other stuff out there. Right. However, there's still definitely room for improvement. And it's not unlike any other mobile game that has so many different currencies just to obscure the value of the dollar. Right. Like it's become so difficult to compare the value of things. Like, well, how much, how much credits is our tokens worth? How much gold is credits worth? Like, it's very hard to do all these conversions and figure out, okay, is this 65 bundle actually worth it? Is the 100 American Pro Bundle actually worth it? Right? And they, they put 6, 000 tokens in that bundle. That's one series five card. It's like, well, it's a hundred bucks though. A hundred bucks, but I get a card. What? Like, it's crazy. And then you look at the season pass. And you get miss Marvel. And that's why we always say like the season past does provide some significant value. So yeah, it's crazy. The bundling. So we're kind of like, we're all over the place right now, but like, there is a lot to discuss about the economy now on the on the screen here, you do have a kind of suggestion for these collectors reserves. Now, I don't know about you. I have like. I have like 500 something I have not opened.

Drewberry: 1:18:03

What?

Alexander Coccia: 1:18:03

I think they're completely useless.

Drewberry: 1:18:06

So you think they're gonna, do you think they're gonna get buffed? And then that's when you'll open them up? Is that it?

Alexander Coccia: 1:18:11

I don't even know. I don't know. I have no desire to collect these caches. I the reserves, I literally have over 500. I, in fact, I have not opened a collector's reserve in months and months and months. It's literally, I feel like I'm not even missing out on anything, maybe some credits, but whatever, like for me, it's, they're completely useless. So I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on how to improve them.

Drewberry: 1:18:33

Well, I'm just like mind blown right now that you're sitting on 500 reserves, but I know you're not the only one I've seen people talk about that online in hopes that it gets changed or something along those lines. And maybe it does at some point. But I completely agree. It used to be so much fun to open up reserves and now I do it without thinking. Honestly, 50 credits, the 15 boosters, it's, it's all blends. It all blends the same to me. And it's funny, you talk about different resources and different, you know, currencies that exist in Marvel snap, like I'm, I'm telling you in like 2024, 2025, we're going to have super catches, super duper caches. We're going to have all kinds of caches. There's going to be like 12 different currencies by the time we get this right. At the rate we're going with all these crazy additions, but. Man, yeah, that is, that is wild. I would like to see them change the reserves. I think my leading, and I've got the point here, is that let's bring gold back. If, if so many things are going to cost gold, you know, like these bundles that we talked about, the token Tuesdays. I think that players should have a means of acquiring a little bit more gold. And what they ended up going with, which was a really weird change, I thought. I think it was originally 50 gold and then 50 tokens. And that was the 50 50 split. And then they switched it to 100 tokens. Except 50 percent of the time you get a golden ticket for conquest. Now, I didn't love this change. I would like to see this go back to a hundred gold so that players do have a means to put that goal towards whatever they want. We're looking at variants would be a nice, you know, if people see all this incredible artwork, they want to pick it up and they don't have a lot of means because they're probably saving that gold for a bundle to get those tokens to get the new card. So yeah, let's just get a little bit more gold in the player's hands. I think that'd be a lot more exciting and some players I just don't like to play Conquest, so even if you give them a gold ticket, they don't use it, or they don't care for it. Some people maybe are very excited about it, but that's a polarizing currency to give especially since it might be in bundles in the future. So, I feel like we could probably omit that, just let Conquest be the fun mode that it can be. And let's just stick with the currencies that we have. Let's not add some super duper caches or anything like that. Let's, let's just keep it where it's at. What do you think about that change?

Alexander Coccia: 1:20:57

Well, I mean, they've kind of added spotlight keys. That's kind of an additional currency to I hate to break it to you, but, but I almost don't even want to add anything because I think you said it perfect, like everything you said, I agree with a hundred percent. Like you're right. It's just, it's concerning. Cause like I get, you got to keep the lights on. And my concern is that, okay, let's say you're giving out more gold, right. And they do have the weekend missions we didn't have prior, right. Which is fair, but it's really not that much gold, right. At the longest. But if they start increasing the amount of gold that's being generated, what stops them from just increasing the cost of the bundles? And, and like, it's like classic inflation, man. Like that's just, right. Everyone's got more gold, jack up the price of the bundles. Right. So it's like, you know, there's always going to be that catch 22, but, and for me, I've always been, listen, obviously like I'm not, I'm not a full whale. I'm more of like a dolphin. Definitely. Like I skip out on bundles and stuff like that. I'm just too damn cheap, man. But I, I do love supporting the game. I don't buy lots of variants. I just don't, I like unlocking them. And I, I do kind of open the odd premium mystery variant. Cause I guess, you know, the Gamba, but you know, whatever, but I will say those, I think that free to play players are very important to this game's ecosystem. And I think that the more that we can do to give them a good, positive experience, where they can feel like they can participate in the game properly. Of course, if someone pays, yeah, they get more variants. Like they can buy the variants. Yeah, that's fine. But I do like the idea of free to play players having more agency in how they can participate in the game. I just want them to have a positive experience because at the end of the day, They create a healthy environment for all of us. And so I do think that the way the economy is currently set up, I think kind of counter counteracts that a little bit. Although I will tell you that the Miss Marvel 35 percent acquisition rate that we talked about prior tells us that the spotlight cash system is working. More cards are getting into the hands of more players.

Drewberry: 1:22:42

Yeah, that's a really interesting point. I think they are doing a good job with that system. I think that system, while it did have, you know, some pushback at the beginning, it has fallen into a decent spot. One thing that I definitely slept on that I'm starting to come to realize is that these new cards end up... Being shown in a Spotlight Cache, maybe, I think the current rate is about two months after they've been released. So, when you look at that, it's kind of like an opportunity to wait into those two months, and then open up those Spotlight Caches, hoping to get the new card featured in that week, as well as that card that you ended up passing on. So there's just this, like, weird rotation of waiting. For when the right time is to use those spotlight caches. What I think I sometimes worry about that you alluded to is the free to play players. These players probably accumulate more of the population in Marvel Snap than we really know. Especially those that don't actually watch content or interact with communities. There's a lot. It's a mobile game. People are just downloading it and playing this game. What I worry about is they're not going to know how to maybe optimize those spotlight caches, or maybe they're just opening them up at random. They're not getting the roles they want, and that creates a bit of a feels bad experience and then maybe they leave, but it's hard to say it's had its highs. and it's lows, which is why I don't want to push to make any drastic changes, but I do feel, especially right now and with a lot of cards coming down the pipeline that look to be series five releases and an extra card being released every single month, I think it's a good time to maybe announce some changes, talk about changing the economy, making these tiny tweaks. That's what I would like to see next from Second Dinner anyways.

Alexander Coccia: 1:24:27

Yeah, well said. And I just realized I actually made a bit of an error. I said that the acquisition rate of Ms. Marvel at 35 percent is indicative of the spotlight caches. I know the comment section is going, Oh, season pass card. None of this, none of the spotlight caches, but you guys, you guys know what I mean. It is true. More people are getting more cards, just not Ms. Marvel in this sense, but so anyways.

Drewberry: 1:24:45

Yeah, I'm sure they knew. I'm sure they knew.

Alexander Coccia: 1:24:48

They knew what I meant, I just, I missed. Alright now one last point on the economy we do have I'm almost nervous to bring it up. Because people are going to get a little feisty here. And this is the series drop situation. Now this is something that even cozy and I spoke about in the past. It's, it's borderline unacceptable at this point, like no series. The fact that Howard the duck is laughably still 6, 000 tokens. And the reason why I don't, I won't spend 6k on Howard the duck. Something's got to happen here, Drew. And what are your thoughts?

Drewberry: 1:25:16

Man, Howard the duck seems like a big bad, doesn't he? Because he hasn't he hasn't dropped in quite a few months. And High Evo's a big bad and he's not going anywhere. So it's hard to say what that really means nowadays. I honestly thought the big bads might've rotated by now, looking at like cards like Thanos and Galactus, I thought maybe. This would be the duration of a big bad, but no, it looks like, I don't know what's coming down the pipeline. I guess the reason I have this point, and the point is, just so everyone knows, is I think there should be a minimum of one series drop per month. And the reason I want to put that point forward is because I don't quite understand why we're not doing that. Most current reason I've heard from both developers and the community, whenever this is brought up, is that they're trying to create a big pool of series 5 cards and series 4 cards, respectively, so that there is a proper drip with the spotlight cash system. And that makes a lot of sense. We definitely do need to have a big pool. But when you're releasing 4 or 5 cards a month and none of them are dropping, it just doesn't quite make sense. I don't see why we can't just have one every month and start there. Well, the Series 5 would still grow, Series 4 would still grow, but you still get that one card that falls down for players to get excited about and pick up. Like, there's that Series 3 get your free card thing. I don't even know if people are using that anymore because it's been so long. We just need a little bit of info. I would just love to see them comment on it, honestly, at this point. Some information.

Alexander Coccia: 1:26:51

Yeah, they have not said anything about the serious jobs. And I think that's been something that has been stewing in the community a little bit. And I think that the silence on that line, I think kind of sows a little bit of distrust. Like people just like, why are they talking about serious jobs? Like, it's like, you're not addressing the elephant in the room, right? Like, just, just tell us something's going on. Right. And I know it's frustrating for a lot of people. To the same extent though, like that is another argument for like the value of tokens. It inflates the value of tokens because if things are getting series dropped more regularly, then that's, that's a half off discount, right? So again, like that value of the token is affected by the infrequency of those token drops or those series drops, I should say. So the result is that like. All these economic factors, like you kind of even brush up, like, oh, I brought this up too because, but like, dude, like, they're all intertwined, they all shake each other's hands, they're all patting each other on the back, because like, they're all in one system, and one affects the other, and so if we get a little more gold, if we're able to buy a little more bundles, and acquire a little more tokens, and the series drops don't hurt as much that they're not happening. But we're not getting those things. And the gold is being dialed back. And if you look at the bundles, we're getting more paid bundles and much fewer gold bundles. And the value of the gold bundles is disproportionately weaker to the value of the paid bundles. So there's all these small things happening and it's small changes over time. It's kind of like that, that death by thousand paper cuts situation. Yeah. So. Now, I think, I think it's a really important thing to talk about. I really do hope series drops do happen eventually, because we ain't forgetting about it. Like, clearly we're not forgetting about it, and we shouldn't, damn it. So it's a very good point, Drew. So thank you so much for for discussing that. We're going to be moving on to our Top 10 Ongoing Cards. This is actually one of my favorite things to do. Anytime we do Top 10s, it's exciting. And Drew, I'm excited because listen, Ongoing is the name of the game this season. And so there's going to be a lot to discuss here. There's a lot of absolutely beautiful. Ongoing cards to discuss. Now we got them ranked. We're going to start with number 10 and this is a ranked order. So you're not just throwing out 10 random cards, right? Miss Marvel is fair game. She's in my list. I warned you, you better have her in there or else you got to pencil her in fast because she, she did herself a spot in the top 10. We're gonna start at we're gonna start with any notable and honorable mentions. We like to do this just in case, cause there's some cards that need to be mentioned, need to have some love thrown their way. If you don't mind, I'm going to start. There's a card that I cut from my list. It's literally number 11th. And I love it. I really do. And for me, it's everyone's favourite Flurkin who I cannot find. Cannot find. It's gonna be, it's gonna be Goose. It's Goose, right? And Goose is one of those cards who is just so damn good from a control perspective. Fantastic ongoing card. And I use it all the time. Especially when Galactus is lurking, right? I use it to to, to really good effect this in control. For me, it got cut from the list. What are your thoughts on Goose?

Drewberry: 1:29:42

I love Goose. I also think we have the exact same variance of the exact same border and we both have a lot of boosters for this card because it just looks so good with the Ranged Dallas variant. That's amazing. But yeah, Goose is such a fun card. Nice lockdown gives that boost. I especially like it in the long going list with Spectrum to give that buffs and just secure lane. Very fun card and I think perfectly balanced, would never need a change. It's just always going to have its moment here and there. But I agree, not quite top 10.

Alexander Coccia: 1:30:10

Yeah, absolutely. Was there any other honorable mentions you want to call out here?

Drewberry: 1:30:14

Honorable mention for me would be Morbius. Such a good discard card, gets so much power. It's almost in every single discard list. I just, probably for the sake that it's only in discard, I omitted it from the ongoing top 10. There's just a few other cards that are run in a lot of top meta lists and don't entirely rely on discard being meta. That one archetype being meta. So I didn't put him in the top 10, but he's such a good card.

Alexander Coccia: 1:30:39

Yeah, for me, he actually landed on 14th. So he didn't land on my top 10. I actually rank all the cards. The way I do my, my system, I have like a system. I rank all the cards. I say, is this one better than this one? No. Is this one better than this one? Yes. And that's how I kind of decide my order. Right. So Mobius ended up at 15th. This is Morbius, not Mobius. Mobius, not actually in my top 10 either. Me neither. Okay. Whoa, look at that. I wonder why that happened. Anyways. All right. Let's discuss these cards here. Let's start with number 10. I'm going to give you the floor to get us started with number 10.

Drewberry: 1:31:11

All right, mine's, mine's probably a bit of a twist here, but I'm going with Electro.

Alexander Coccia: 1:31:17

Ooh, okay, that is actually surprising. I would never have thought to call out Electro. I didn't even include him on my list. He's technically an ongoing, but you don't play him for the ongoing. This is, this is a curveball, Drew.

Drewberry: 1:31:27

The reason I'm putting Electro here, I think he's a sleeper in terms of giving those ramp decks an actual win condition, like actually getting to them to the point that they need to be. And it doesn't look like he's the card that won you the The game, but he's the one that brought you to that turn five. I don't know like Dr. Doom and then into Odin or something like that, right? Like he just allows you to get to those cards earlier that do make the impact So I think he slept on a little bit and I will also add since waves nerf I think he is the best ramp option available.

Alexander Coccia: 1:32:00

That's that's actually an excellent point. He Probably is the best ramp option available right now for sure. And and his restriction, like I always laugh when people like, Oh, look, it's Isle of Silence. They snap and throw a lecture. Then I'm like, but your deck is designed to only play one card to turn anyways. Like you're not actually getting that much value, but it's kind of funny because like, you just, you feel that freedom, you feel the freedom. It is such a good effect, right? It is a phenomenal effect. And I think you're right. It is good. And to the same end of, I don't know, listen, I don't know if you have this card on your top 10, but like what you just did here is mind blowing to me because like One of the highest win rate ongoing cards in the game is not in my top 10 and it's Typhoid Mary because the ongoing card is not a good ongoing effect so you don't play it for that ongoing effect but it actually is one of the highest win rate cards in the game. Did I just steal your thunder or do you have her on your list?

Drewberry: 1:32:44

I do not have her on my list. We're in the same, we're in the same mind. Yep.

Alexander Coccia: 1:32:48

So, my number 10. Now, this is going to be fun, because my number 10 is a card that I think is getting a lot of respect lately, and that's Null. How do you not respect Null? I mean, it's, it's like the linchpin of a lot of Destroy, but it's funny because, like, Destroy cards don't, the decks don't need Null. It's just the threat of Null. Like, you always have the, the Deadpool's huge, the Venom's Zola, you have all these plays, but then it's like, wait a minute. They probably have Null, right? They have to have Null. Who does not play Null? And so I think Null really emerged with Mobius and Mobius wrecking death. So we'll have to see how it comes out in the future as Mobius and Mobius kind of settles in, in his poo status. And so at the end of the day, Null lands top 10 for me.

Drewberry: 1:33:28

That's a really good point about Mobius changing, you know, like if death falls out of favor, then Null rises I, I agree with Null. I probably had Null at 11, so I'd be very close and I'm totally fine with a 10 slot here for Null. I think that's a great one. And everyone better have this card because it's the most. Shown card in spotlight cash weeks in like the last two months, at least. But yeah, no, it's just a great card. Very fun card thematically looks awesome. It's so fun to build it up into crazy power totals.

Alexander Coccia: 1:33:55

And if you don't have a girl, he is reappearing for the ninth time in spotlight cash as soon. So there you go. Drew number nine for you.

Drewberry: 1:34:03

Okay, number nine, because you you let me know to scribble her into my notes, I got Miss Marvel, which might be a little bit lower, but I'm playing it safe because this is a new card. That's kind of my excuse right now but I'm going to put her at number nine. Surprised me, very good, but I need more time.

Alexander Coccia: 1:34:21

I'm willing to say that I have her a little higher. The number nine. So I'll be giving you my thoughts on why maybe you did her a little dirty at number nine, but number nine, for me, we're staying at the forecast. And we've got ourselves a card that I think took a lot of people by surprise and it's Manthing. Manthing has been a staple in a lot of my decks. And I actually came up pretty hot with Manthing. I was like, I think this card is pretty good, but he released at the wrong time. There've been so many cards that this has happened to, right? Like Jean Grey, for instance, which. Does not make my top ten. It doesn't make yours either. Came out during Bounce, which is horrible. Like, Jean Grey gets destroyed by Bounce. When Man Thing was released, Luke Cage was literally everywhere. Literally everywhere. And then now that that meta's kind of settled out a little bit, suddenly, you're actually hitting people by surprise with Man Thing. So, for me, number nine.

Drewberry: 1:35:09

That's fair. I love Man Thing. I think it was my most, my favorite card to play with in the October release. And, and great that it was actually 3, 000 tokens as well. What a fun card. I really do love it. It did not crack my top 10, but it was also close. It was in like my Honorable Mentions.

Alexander Coccia: 1:35:25

I'm shocked. I have no idea what your top 10 looks like now. If you don't have Man Thing... And you don't have null? Okay, we're getting spliced now, and Ms. Marbles at nine? Drew has been drinking the Kool Aid. So let's continue here I did some of my nine, so I'll lead off with my eight. They actually kind of go in hand in hand, to be honest with you. I just mentioned them. It's Luke Cage. Okay, Luke Cage. I mean, for me at eight, I think it makes a lot of sense. He is a staple. A lot of decks were like, well, listen, you're playing a lot of Cerebro. You playing a lot of Luke Cage or what? Oh yeah.

Drewberry: 1:35:55

Oh yeah. Love Luke Cage. He is also in my list spoiler for me and I won't get into it too much, but he is a little bit higher.

Alexander Coccia: 1:36:02

Okay. Good to know. So we're going to be hearing more about Luke Cage and famously known as Nicolas Cage around our channel. But regardless, love this guy. Do you want to hit us with your number eight?

Drewberry: 1:36:12

Yeah, my number eight is Sarah. Now, I probably would have had her a little bit higher, but since this whole back and forth with Mobius, I do feel like she got pushed completely out of the meta. Well, not maybe not completely, but pretty, pretty harshly when Mobius was a 2 3. And now that he's been recently changed to be a 3 3 with the same ability, I feel like I need to wait and see. How she's going to do a very strong card, which is why she's in my top 10, but I'm putting her at 8.

Alexander Coccia: 1:36:42

8 is wild to me. I have her too, but let's just say she's not 8. I'll be talking about her a little later. It's like, this happens all the time with me and Cozy too, and I'm like, oh, this card sucks. And Cozy's like so offended. I'm like, am I wrong? What have I done, right? I remember I dissed Carnage on a destroy list we did, and Cozy legitimately still brings it up. To this day, he's like, I can't believe you thought carnage was a bad card. I don't think it's a bad card. It just, it was like, I gave him like a nine and cozy had him at like two and he just has not let it go. So it's like, I get it. Right. But I, oh man, Sarah. Okay. Sarah, for me at seven, I got a card that like, honestly, I had not played in the longest time and then suddenly I'm like, just, it's the right time to play Wong. It feels like the right time to play Wong. And the thing I like about it, I actually had Wong higher originally. Because there's nothing in Marvel Snaps scarier than a Wong sitting there on the other side of the board, and you've got no answer. You have no Cosmo, you've got no Rogue, it's just sitting there, and you're like, whatever they're gonna do, they can just do it. Like, they can just do it, and I got nothing.

Drewberry: 1:37:46

I think for that exact reason is why I actually didn't put him in my top ten. It's crazy our list right now, how different they are, I love this. I'm floored. But with Wong, it's like, because I know that he set it up and I don't have an available counter, I just get out of there. And that's probably what makes me a little bit hesitant. He's such a good card, but it feels really bad when he does get countered and your whole plan is in shambles, especially if it happens on that turn six. But I'm also not denying, he was certainly an honorable mention for me because he is such a good card and one of those cards that always keeps coming back in the meta with those crazy on reveals.

Alexander Coccia: 1:38:23

The rule is, is if you play Wong and they snap, you always leave. Like, you never, if they snap after Wong, even if it's a turn later, cause a smart player will be like, I'm not going to snap yet. I got Cosmo waiting for you, but I'm not snapping yet. If they snap on turn five, when you turn four, you still leave. Like, you always leave if they snap after Wong is revealed. Cause like, very few decks can out, like, can just straight up man fight a Wong. Right? But if they got an answer, then everything just crumbles. Right? So I like, I like exactly what you said. You're number seven, Drew.

Drewberry: 1:38:52

I love that. You gotta, you gotta be aware if you can man fight a Wong, you gotta be ready.

Alexander Coccia: 1:38:56

That's like, that's a cool, that's a t shirt somewhere.

Drewberry: 1:38:58

Yes, exactly. My number seven is your number eight. I got Luke Cage. So I mean, I, I can't, I mean, seven to eight, that's pretty close. I think we value this card at a similar range. Just grew in popularity recently with, you know, man thing, or just needing it for some rebro or just, you know, being a really cheap ongoing card that you can get out there to, you know, Not have those power reductions for the high Evo shenanigans. It's just a really good tech card. And the fact that he's cheap is just great. So he's just a great ongoing card.

Alexander Coccia: 1:39:28

Yeah. He's legitimately fantastic and nothing does what Luke Cage does in Marvel snap. A very unique card, a very unique, powerful effect. Why don't you lead us off with your six?

Drewberry: 1:39:38

Okay, so my number six is an interesting one. I think I dropped this one from maybe where it should have been because I don't love the card itself, but I got Red Skull here at number six. Similar to what we were saying earlier with Typhoid Mary, I think Typhoid and Red Skull are similar, you know, like rankings in terms of stats. Yeah, that Shuri Red Skull list is basically carrying this guy, but he is good. In other things, you just don't see it as often. So I carry a little bit of an angry bias towards him. Despite me kind of liking the card at the same time. I don't know. It's a weird, conflicted feeling I have with Red Skull.

Alexander Coccia: 1:40:14

Your mentality and your approach to this list is totally different than mine. Right? I agree. Like Red Skull is one of the best cards in Marvel Snap. It is from a win rate perspective, cube rate perspective. It is not in my list because I don't, I don't see it as like an ongoing card that I want to play. It is an ongoing card. I want to play, but it's, I don't want to play it for the ongoing. So like I discounted it, I cut it from this list, but like, I guess comments like, let us know, like, am I wrong to do that? I think I probably am. Cause I think you're right. Like Red Skull is one of the most impactful cards in this game right now. It has been for months. In fact, this thing has been nerfed, nerfed again, buffed. I like to call it a lot for me at number six. It's not Red Skull. It's almost the complete opposite of Red Skull. It is Zabu. It has nothing to do with buffing the opponent and buffing yourself. It's going to give that solid minus one cost for four costs. Now, Zabu used to be like the number one borderline card in Snap altogether. But then Mobius and Mobius came out, slapped it around a little bit. And just generally, I feel like the meta has evolved and deck building has evolved to just not rely on Zabu anymore. And if you don't have to rely on the turn two Zabu, you feel like you have all this extra freedom. So Zabu has slipped a little bit. Like it just doesn't feel as meta relevant as it used to be. However, also impacting Zabu is the nerf to Shang Chi because the, one of the benefits of Zabu is like, Hey, I get to play, you know two, four drops on turn six and one of them was Shang Chi. So Zabu at six for me, curious of your thoughts.

Drewberry: 1:41:36

Very, very true point about the recent changes but I do have Zabu a little bit ahead. So I don't know if I can touch on it too much, but you did raise some really good points about how this card has actually changed its viability recently. But my gosh, is it ever still popular? It's got to be one of the most popular turn 2 plays, if it's in hand. I feel like everyone just throws it down if they got it. So yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll get into it a little bit of why I think it should have been higher. But at my number five, I've got armor. Another just incredible tech card shuts down an entire archetype. It can be game winning if you... I love it for those decks like you know, the Infinite She Hulk sort of thing, protecting those big cards that you want to play, making sure they don't get destroyed. I also love using armor with a Tuma as just a nice little combination. There's just a lot of cards in decks that armor can work with and fit in that she just ends up being like, Oh, I've got a deck of 11 cards. What could I throw in here? Well, if I don't really need to destroy anything, I could put in armor to prevent things from being destroyed. So I really like armor.

Alexander Coccia: 1:42:41

I forgot a tomb existed until you just said the name. I don't have armor in the list. Like I actually dropped it quite a bit down. I think it's all like 17th on my list, which is kind of crazy because I don't disagree. And you think about what it does in the meta, like it kind of it destroys the destroy naturally. Right. It protects your cards. But I feel like it's used against me a lot too. Like I play against a lot of Shuri and they're like, ha ha, look at this. I get to use your armor to protect my red skull or whatever. And it's like, damn it. What have I done? But I totally do understand. Like armor is one of those cards that like it's accessible from all basically early in Marvel Snap and it's all, it always feels relevant. That's just enough power to feel relevant. It's effect is really strong. So I like that call out, you know, maybe I'm wrong, so I do agree with you. Absolutely. Number five for me. Number 5 for me, this is where my Ms. Marvel comes in, and it's funny because I just said number 5 and I went to the 5 cost there, but Ms. Marvel at 5, I almost felt like she could have gone a little higher, but I feel like this is where I'm most comfortable putting her. I see the value, and you know what it is? It's like you have that selective memory of like the times where she kind of, you know, burned you a little bit, where like that middle, it's like of course that middle location doesn't let me play that card there, like whatever it is, right? But most of the time, like, I feel like, as we discussed prior, I'm able to get the conditions off. The 415 power is a lot. People aren't running the counters. It's just been a good card, and I feel like the win rate does support the fact that it has been one of the fairest releases thus far. So, number 5 for me.

Drewberry: 1:44:08

Respect to you, Alex, because you were saying earlier that you put this one at 2 stars and didn't think it was going to be all that great, and now you're putting it in your top 5 ongoing cards in Snap. But that's, that's the name of the game, right? Like we gotta, we gotta experience these cards. We can always talk about the preview and look at them. I do that a lot myself and often I'm wrong. And then it turns out that they're actually pretty good and you recognize that and that's awesome. I, I agree. I, I agree with a lot of your points. I think actually. I'm leaning towards your rate ranking of Ms. Marvel here than my own. I was just hesitant because of the timetable that she was actually released. But yeah, we'll probably find out that this is a pretty good card long term as time passes.

Alexander Coccia: 1:44:48

Absolutely, I agree 100%. Who do you have at 5 then, if it's not Ms. Marvel?

Drewberry: 1:44:54

So I've got Zabu, so we could go back to the cat. But basically, when I'm looking at this card, if we go back to those changes that you mentioned, which were 100 percent accurate statements, and I also talked about the impact of Mobius on Sarah. The reason I have Zabu a little bit ahead is because now Mobius is a 3 cost, and if I play Zabu on curve on turn 2, I can still get my 4 dropout on time before Mobius impacts my game plan, and I think that's pretty cool. Actually getting that one discount makes this card worth it. And if they don't get the Mobius out early enough, or they don't get one of them counters out, then I will still have opportunities to continue to play those cards and ramp out my opponent, essentially curving them out, tempoing them out. It feels still very strong. One of the more popular two drops. Whenever you end up with like two, three, four, four drops in your deck, you can throw this in and it's going to help out a bunch. So I, I'm still pretty high on this card, spite mobius being released and a few other counters being popular. I think it's, I think it's just so good.

Alexander Coccia: 1:45:59

Taking me off of Zabu just a bit. It's funny. Cause it's not even Zabu's fault, but it was the nerf I use in quotes to Rockslide. Rockslide dropped down to three costs with its same effect, but just losing a little bit of power. It's like Zabu for free. Cause you used to play Rockslide on three anyways, cause you want to prioritize the disruption, right? So like, it kind of felt like Zabu lost a little bit of, of its allure because of that nerf. Quote unquote to RockSlide, which actually just made it cheaper and you still get the same effect. Right. So I do agree though. Like there's going to be a meta again, where Zawu ruins everything. Like it's going to happen again. Like we know it's coming. It's just, it's not quite here yet right now, but definitely love that call out. Now for me at number four it's a card that like, honestly, people forget, people forget how good this card is. But it's Patriot. Patriot is a card that honestly, like, it's a go to almost at any point in your career on Marvel Snap. If you just have played Patriot since the release of this game, since Beta, and it's the only deck you've ever played, not only have you gotten the Infinite every time, you've had a variety of different approaches to Patriot. You've had Ultron Patriot. You've had Absorbing Man, Brood Patriot. You've had so many different variations, right? This card continues to be one of the ones that just delivers.

Drewberry: 1:47:13

Yeah, I love Patreon. I can't say anything about it other than I didn't have it in my top 10. What? I don't have it in my top 10. I do love the card. It's so much fun. I just haven't been playing it nearly as much recently. I don't know if it's just other cards rising in prominence. Or other decks, but it just hasn't been on my radar, but I did love running a Silver Surfer Patriot list with Brood and Cyclops, actually, and a bunch of cards like that. It was a lot of fun to get a bunch of power but yeah, he doesn't crack my top 10, but I don't even want to say anything bad after that because They are really fun decks to play with and a really good point that you made. But if you get this card early in your series three climb as you're acquiring new cards, it's probably one of the most fun cards that you could get early on because you already have all those no ability cards and you can toss together a deck pretty quickly. So he's, he's a great card through and through.

Alexander Coccia: 1:48:04

Every once in a while, I still get a question. It's like, Hey, Alex, why does Misty Night suck so bad? Like this card's useless. Why would I ever play Misty Night when I could play Iceman or whatever else? Right. It's like, or a Wattu even. It's like, well, my friend, you obviously don't have a High Evo yet, and you also do not have Patriot yet. Mission 8's best days are still ahead. So anyways, yeah. So it's funny how you mentioned that, like, it kind of rejuvenates cards you already have in your collection more than likely, and gives you something to play with, which is also very competitive. Now I am going to go to my number three here. That was my four. Number three, I think this might take you by surprise. You know what? If there's a chance, your list is all over the place right now. So there's a chance. That you have this card, and if you do, huge respect. If you don't know, I actually don't know what to do anymore. This is my surprise right hook that I think no one would have expected. But for me, I think Invisible Woman is by far one of the most slept on and underappreciated ongoing cards in Marvel Snap. It is a card that like, think about the Kitty Pryde meta. How do we get around Kitty Pride? We used Invisible Woman with Killmonger in order to wipe the board state after the game had ended to counteract Kitty Pride. Think about how Tribunal works, right? There's multiple winning lines, but one of them revolves around the Modoc Hela discard behind Invisible Woman. Think about how you protect. Patriot and Mystique in Patriot Mystique decks. Think about how you protect Cerebro and Mystique. Like, this card carries so much weight on the burden of its shoulders and gets no respect. It will eat the Enchantress for you. It'll eat the Rogue for you and then reveal behind it Your Patriot mystique, it'll reveal behind it. Whatever it is that you want to drop, my friend, you wanna get hit with a right hook right now? It'll keep hit your atum alive at the end of the game. Oh my goodness. You, the second time a you've done has ever been mentioned, invisible woman number three,

Drewberry: 1:49:46

Alex, I'm gonna tell you. I just didn't have the balls to put her in my top 10. I'll be straight honest, I wanted to, I understand. I completely agree. This is one of those cards that wins you the games and people don't recognize that it was the reason that you won. But I just, I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I don't know why. And look at that variant you got. Oh my gosh, the art germ is so sick. Gosh, you're right. You're right about Invisible

Alexander Coccia: 1:50:07

Woman. Listen, we clearly have very different threes. So maybe you're right more than I am. So I'm very interested in hearing your number three.

Drewberry: 1:50:15

Well, you know, what's crazy is that I, I'm, I'm shocked actually, now that I think about this, because one of these cards in my top three, you do not have in your top 10, which is shocking to me. And it might just be this next one, which is Devil Dinosaur. Devil Dinosaur is my number three for the ongoing cards. One of the best power for cost cards. Works in a variety of decks. It's always gotten like everybody to infinite. It seems it's always one of those strong cards. You can copy it with mystique if you need to. Lots of combinations available, or you just throw it out into a single lane because it's going to have like 12, 13, whatever the power total ends up being. Yeah, devil dino. Great card. Is this the one?

Alexander Coccia: 1:50:57

This is the one I don't have. And it, it pains me. It pains me not to include devil dinos from my top 10. I absolutely love this card. I just felt like I kept cutting it. I kept cutting it, like, I was playing it in Loki, I kept cutting it. It's actually seeing play right now in Ms. Marvel based decks, which is kinda cool to see. But, maybe you're right, maybe I'm wrong. Honestly, maybe I should have played some Devil D If I look at my list now, like, I probably could have put Devil Dinosaur in for like, Man Thing maybe? Maybe? Man Thing, right? But at the end of the day, like, Devil Dinosaur, I, I, I appreciate the respect that you're giving it. Cause it does deserve it. It definitely does deserve it.

Drewberry: 1:51:33

Yeah, it's been good for so long. If we even go back to the beta days, it got nerfed and changed and all kinds of crazy things. And, and I think it's always going to be a relevant card because it's not too difficult to have a lot of cards in your hand with so much card generation as well. I would, I would give you that point though. That's a very good point when it comes to Loki kind of reducing the value of Devil Dino because you end up... Swapping with a bunch of cheap cards and you want to do that plan prior to turn five, so you never really have the time to play Devil Dino. He's more of the backup plan. But I think there's a lot of lists and a lot of places for Devil Dino to fit that people are sleeping on right now. And he's just, I just love the card so much.

Alexander Coccia: 1:52:09

It's a good call. I like it. Now you can lead us into your number two here. So my top three is Invisible Woman thus far. You brought Devil Dinosaur top three. Who do you have for number two?

Drewberry: 1:52:18

This is crazy. There's... I'm just gonna go for it because this is just wild. All right, number two, I've got Dark Hawk. Could it be the same with you?

Alexander Coccia: 1:52:28

He's my number one. Okay. My number one. So we're almost there. We almost did it.

Drewberry: 1:52:34

Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, that's, that's pretty good. Yeah, I mean, what to say about this car? This, it seems like, you know, actually you brought up one of the greatest reasons. Why this is such a good card in that Rock Slide has been changed all to crazy places and he's the number one card to pair with Darkhawk because you get a bunch of power out of the card and still this remains one of the top cards statistically win rates in a bunch of metadex. Seems like every time there's a new card it's like, oh I could take this new card and throw it in a Darkhawk list. It'll work. It'll find a way. It's working with Ms. Marvel. So, yeah, he's just always a good card.

Alexander Coccia: 1:53:10

Yeah, he never really does you wrong. Like, it's... I think the thing that makes Darkhawk so powerful is that he couples perfectly with Disruption. So not only are you putting up this huge vertical power that you can also, you know, Mystique and stuff like that. It's the fact that they're drawing garbage or they're not drawing at all because you have a Black Widow that just got buffed too. And so you're playing the Black Widow and then you're playing the Rock Slide, the Korg, and you're just destroying their ability to execute on their game plan. And so I think that that is a hugely valuable component of Dark Hawks. So ironically, right now in a meta where there's so much ongoing, you'd think people would be running the Rogues and the Enchantment, but they're just not, right? And it's still susceptible to the Shang Chi's, but people just cutting tech. We're getting greedier. We're getting creative. So I feel like Darkhawk is being countered less often than he should be and is often just an absolute win condition. So, he also counters Thanos very well and whenever Thanos is popular, Darkhawk does a good job of dealing with that. So that's your number two. My number two is one that you had way down on the list. It was Sarah. Sarah free is number two, just because I think that it is a immensely powerful effect that you cannot replicate in the game. It's, it's actually, I shouldn't say that like Zabu does it, Ravonis does it, so maybe it's not as unique as I used to think it was. Still though, I think this is, this card is still one of the absolute best in the game with Mobius and Mobius kind of getting getting capped at the knee there a little bit, an arrow in the knee, as one might say, if anyone's been on the internet for more than 10 years. It's been like, Sarah's had its moments where it's like, it felt unplayable, but it's back. I think it's back a hundred percent.

Drewberry: 1:54:38

Okay, fair. I like that a lot, honestly. Sarah, always one of those good cards. You set that up on turn five, you have this crazy turn six. It usually works out and actually probably a cubes dealer because you're setting up for that turn six, which your opponent can't react to after it's already occurred. So yeah, I, I respect to Sarah. I probably did her wrong having her lower in the rankings. And I totally understand why you gave her number two, but you're blowing my mind that you don't have this one card in the top ten. Oh my goodness.

Alexander Coccia: 1:55:07

Alright, let's hear it. Let's hear it. Yeah, because my Darklock's number one.

Drewberry: 1:55:10

Yeah, fair. And that's a good pick. I probably could have went either way, but... When I was thinking about top ten ongoing cards, and I was looking through the list, I was thinking, what is the card that has won me the most games? Like just tried and true, locks it in, and that is Professor X.

Alexander Coccia: 1:55:27

He's my number one. Oh my gosh, Professor X! That's a spicy take!

Drewberry: 1:55:31

Himself Oh yeah man, Daredevil Professor X combos are game winning. You throw, here's another one for you Alex. Cause you love Atuma, Professor X Atuma is such a good combo. You set that up in the open lane, and then you exit, it's just... And then they're out of there. They either retreat or they stay in and it's an easy win with an Alioth combo or just whatever else you got because you only have to focus on winning one more lane. I love this card. I also think it has a high skill ceiling because some people will throw it out thinking that they chose the right lane to play into or something like that. And then they ended up throwing the game because they played it into a lane that The opponent had more power. It can, you know, backfire, but I think in the right hands with Daredevil in particular, this, this card is just nuts. I think this is such a good card.

Alexander Coccia: 1:56:19

You know what, it's, it's a good call out. I did not include it in my top 10. And it's funny because like, but you're right. Like it's, it's ability to control the mind, the The board state, it combos beautifully with Alioth, right? Like, it just, it basically sets up an Alioth, a Smorgasbord on turn six. And you have tools to basically make the best of it. And I think that you're seeing it a ton in like the Psylocke you know Timestone style ramp, Thanos based decks. And you, it works so naturally with Jeff. And just securing that location is so nice. The thing I love about Professor X, though, I've been playing a lot of Tribunal lately. No one expects Tribunal and Professor X can't deal with the Tribunal, but I got to tell you, it's a cool call out and it's, I love this Top Ten because we have such a very different approach to the way we did it to our Top Tens and I mean, I agree with some of your calls. I really do. Pro X. Wild, wild. We'll never have thought number one, but at the same time, like it does make perfect sense. It is a staple card in the current meta. One of the most commonly played ongoing cards right now. Daredevil's bugged for most people. So it's like, Daredevil's bugged and Pro X is seeing a lot of play. So love the top 10 list. What an absolute blast here. One that did not join any of our lists. was Ronan. But anyways, surprise, surprise! Regardless, Drew, thank you so much for joining us today. It was an absolute honour to have you on the Snapchat. We've been wanting to do this for so long and hopefully we can have you on again in the future. Drew's content is absolutely fantastic. Grade A, absolute god tier content. You gotta check him out. And Drew, thank you so much for being here.

Drewberry: 1:57:53

Alex, thank you so much for this opportunity. It's been an absolute blast. I would love to come back anytime. You let me know, I'm here. And thank you so much for everyone listening

Alexander Coccia: 1:58:01

Of course, and It's time for us to say goodnight on another fantastic episode of the Snapchat. Thank you to everyone for supporting our content, for listening to us ramble for what has been basically two hours of content.

Cozy Snap: 1:58:15

Guys, have a good one. Have a great one until the next Snapchat. Happy snapping.