The Snap Chat: Marvel Snap Podcast
The Hellfire Gala Season Begins! | December's New Card Breakdown | The Villains of Marvel Snap | The Snap Chat Ep. 57
Will Sebastian Shaw power up your deck? How good are the Ms. Marvel season cards? What are the current 'villains' in Snap? Join Cozy Snap and Alexander Coccia as they chat about this and more on this episode of The Snap Chat and every week as they discuss all things Marvel Snap.
Will Sebastian Shaw power up your deck? How good are the Ms. Marvel season cards? What are the current 'villains' in Snap? Join Cozy Snap and Alexander Coccia as they chat about this and more on this episode of The Snap Chat and every week as they discuss all things Marvel Snap.
What's going on guys and welcome back. We have a brand new season and it's the last one of the year. The Hell Gala starts Tuesday and Sebastian Shaw is our season pass card. Today, Alex and I are going to break down the card, our thoughts on him and all the new cards coming out in December, as well as our final rankings on. November's Cards, taking a look back at the Miss Marvel season. We got ourselves a big one today, talking news, notes, OTAs, and everything in between. And we're going to be talking about that all today and more on this episode of the Snapchat. And as always, I am joined by Mr. Alex Coccia for the brand new season. Buddy, we've got oursel This is typically like my favorite episode every month. There's so much to break down. We got a lot of new cards to break down. We reflect on the old season. How you doing, bud?
Alexander Coccia:I'm doing great. And you're right. Like it's gonna be an absolutely wild season. I think there's a lot of really interesting cards and reflecting on the prior season as well there was some bangers in there that might not have been expected. It's been a wild time to be a Marvel Snap player.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, man. On top of that, it's, it's the last one of the year and we've got some news and notes that kind of snuck it into the update video. The, the trailer was bomb, the, the little James Bond reference to it the, the red carpet. Ben Brode looking fly as usual, but we've got ourselves some hidden announcements. They had a lot of emotes in there. I want to call that out first, dude. The emotes! They delivered on the emotes, but I have to ask this, okay? Are people gonna hate them? Like, I hope people use them in good fun, and like, they're gonna be toxic. But I think they're, I think it's perfect. I think they're going to be amazing.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, they look like they're going to be pretty cool. And to answer your question, are people going to use them to be toxic? Yes. All the time. They're going to be used to be toxic, like non stop.
Cozy Snap:And then not only do we have the new season coming out Tuesday, dude, but we also have the balance patch as well, which is a big, I know a lot of people are kind of waiting for this one, yeah?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is a balance patch that should really shake up the meta. I'm hoping for something pretty big. I think the meta's starting to get a little stale. I think that some of the constant same usual suspects have been dominating the top tier of the meta. So I'm hoping that things get shaken up.
Cozy Snap:Does Alioth get addressed?
Alexander Coccia:No, I don't think so. I think Alioth is left. Honestly, I do, I think, I don't think Alioth gets changed.
Cozy Snap:Well with that, I know we're gonna be talking about Alioth probably on your side. What are we talking about on your side channel, bud?
Alexander Coccia:Cozy, we're gonna be talking about snap's, newest villains. There's always villains out there that are really pissing people off, and I think that there's some new ones that have emerged in Marvel Snap. We'll be discussing those. We'll also be discussing the December update, the emotes, the smart decks, and all of that as well. Then finally, we're gonna be doing our weekly mailbag. Cozy. It's gonna be a good one.
Cozy Snap:December, December, man. Are you, you guys celebrate the holidays a lot over there?
Alexander Coccia:Oh yeah, oh yeah. We're going pretty hard. The kids love it. I just I put up a 12 foot Santa right in front of my house. Massive. Massive Santa Claus.
Cozy Snap:Bolting that down to the, to the house? How do you keep that baby inflatable, yeah?
Alexander Coccia:Oh yeah, it's inflatable. It's one of those big Costco inflatables. It's Costco! It's a Costco inflatable Santa.
Cozy Snap:Okay, okay. Here's a good question for you to get things going in December, okay? If there was a Mount Rushmore, alright? A Mount Rushmore of Christmas songs. Hit me with like a few of those that are on there for the Alex list. Are you a Christmas music guy?
Alexander Coccia:You know what? I'm not like a huge Christmas song person, but I do love Feliz Navidad. I can listen to that song. It's just such a good spirited song. The one that I really hate is that that last Christmas I gave you my heart song. Which is just so overplayed. I can't handle it. In fact, when I used to work retail years ago Years ago, I worked at a, basically a Best Buy, Canadian Best Buy, it was called Future Shop. And what I did was, we had like a CD player that controlled all the music in the store, and I would sneak in there, and I would put that song on repeat for hours and hours and hours until someone would notice and change it. But sometimes it would be like an 8 hour shift where that one song would repeat over and over again and no one would notice. That's how forgettable it is.
Cozy Snap:Hey, I hate you because literally it's on the Rushmore. Dude, Wham got the exclamation point from Last Christmas. I mean, Last Christmas is easily on the top four, man. Maybe there's a divide We'll have to find out from our viewers. But dude, Last Christmas has got to be on. My most hated is probably, and I didn't know I hated this song until, like, it was playing and I was like, I'd kill it. Get rid, the 12 Days of Christmas. It drives me, dude, it drives me nuts. I can't do it. Can't do that one. What else is on there? What are your other, like, bangers?
Alexander Coccia:I mean, I really like, like Silent Night is a nice one, but you gotta be in the mood for that. Like, you just gotta, it's a, it's a very somber song, right? But like, I don't know. Just, I just hate that one song. Everything else is good. I'll listen to anything else.
Cozy Snap:Rockin Around the Christmas Tree is like, is a, is a staple. We'll have to do, like, movies next week. Is a staple. The Christmas song, the, the Chestnuts Roasting? I mean, come on, that's like I'm not even sure what song that is. Chestnuts roasting over an open fire? You're pulling my leg. Come on, Jack Frost nipping at your nose?
Alexander Coccia:Okay, is that Frank Sinatra?
Cozy Snap:So you hate Christmas?
Alexander Coccia:I'm actually not sure. That was a legitimate question.
Cozy Snap:I'm not trying to be funny. Yeah, you hate the holidays. No, I get it. It's called the Christmas song. It's THE Christmas song. I was not prepared for I hate last Christmas and what is the Christmas song, by the way? Like, they invent I, We need to move on. I'm gonna get too angry here. Okay. And so you, The Most Hated is Last Christmas for you. Most Hated.
Alexander Coccia:It has to be, but I think it's like, not the original. It's like the Beyonce version or something like that. There's some new version that has like a lot of like, over singing in it. If that makes sense. Like there's a lot of like, way too much like, just weirdness. But Silent Night's a banger. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think so. No? But I said it was somber. It's a different kind of song. I don't know. I was caught off guard by this.
Cozy Snap:Alright, confirmed. Elephants and Christmas. Alex hates to put it on a t shirt. So we've got obviously Sebastian Shaw coming out. And it's not holiday themed. We've got the Hell Gala as the, as a theme this month. Which a lot of cool variants, a lot of cool things coming out. We're gonna break that down in a moment. But as always, Alex, we gotta talk about November. We like to rank cards every single month, like we're doing right now, but we gotta hold ourselves. A little bit responsible. See what we ranked these cards before we got our hands on the cards. And it's hard, man. It's hard to rank these cards until you play them but we got some fun rankings for the November season, buddy. So we're gonna go and, and look back at what we ranked them, and then we'll also give the new rankings. And obviously, man, we had the season pass card to kick things off, Ms. Marvel was our season pass card, and looking back, looking back, you know what, roll the clip.
Alexander Coccia:I don't know if we're gonna talk stars, but I'm not hot on this card.
Cozy Snap:No way? Okay, what's your star rating?
Alexander Coccia:Are you, you think this is gonna be strong?
Cozy Snap:Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you why. Wait, what's your star rating? I wanna hear. I gotta know.
Alexander Coccia:Oh, you're gonna put me on the spot. I'm leaning towards like a 2.
Cozy Snap:A 2 star?! A Black Knight?! Alex, you rated this the same as Black Knight. You gave this a two, a two star. I just need to know, were you, were you hammered? I just gotta know.
Alexander Coccia:I was pretty inebriated, yes. I do apologize to everyone in the Snapchat community for getting extremely buzzed prior to recording. I wasn't myself that day. The ratings have been completely off. I do apologize. I take full responsibility for my actions.
Cozy Snap:It's all good. I can't wait to relive some of these rankings. You know what? Hey, you really swung for the fences on this season. And I commend the cause you nailed the Legion. And I think you were like, I'm going to go four for four on this season. I'm going to nail this. So you gave it a two star. And I gave it a four and a half. Obviously right now, Miss Marvel, man, I think. A, a near five star card. I mean, it's near perfect. I would probably give it almost a perfect ranking. Just love how you framed that.
Alexander Coccia:I gave it a 4.5 star, you gave it a two star, probably the best card ever released in the last little while. it don't think gets worse. I'm so sorry. Cozy. I got it wrong. But yeah, no, the card's been phenomenal and I think the, the key component of it is that the requirements of having cards in those locations, it seemed way more difficult in my head than it ended up. Playing out to be. The other side to that is something like Dr. Doom solved a lot of those problems. You're seeing a lot of decks with Dr. Doom and Ms. Marvel being played together in order to alleviate that problem. Especially since the Doombots themselves are six drops. So it's very unlikely you're not going to have a six drop in a location with Ms. Marvel being kind of like being duplicated. So yeah.
Cozy Snap:What is she now? What is she now for you? Star wise.
Alexander Coccia:I definitely think she's a four star card. Okay. She still has some limitations, I think. I still think, like, I know people say, Oh, you can still play her right or left. Nah, she's a mid card. You want her to go mid. I don't care what anyone says. Like, I think it's still best mid. The card is undeniably good.
Cozy Snap:It's kind of crazy, too. I just thought Enchantress was going to make her way back this season. It's kind of nutty that she really didn't all that much. And that allowed Ms. Marvel you know, to do what she does best. So yeah, obviously very good season pass card, and when we talk about Sebastian Shaw coming up, it's kind of crazy because he's gonna, I'm not gonna spoil it, but he's got big shoes to fill with Loki, Elsa, and Ms. Marvel. Just a really strong three months in a row. Definitely tough. Now, the next card we ranked Alex was Gladiator, who was a 3 7 at the time, and, Alex, do you know what you ranked Gladiator?
Alexander Coccia:I don't want to say it out loud because I know what I ranked him.
Cozy Snap:What, what did you rank him?
Alexander Coccia:Didn't I give him four stars?
Cozy Snap:You gave him four stars, which I commend. I was watching your stream and I was like watching this man, like really try to make this card a four star card. And I loved it. I had to, man, I tried so hard. So we get I gave him a two and a half with the potential to go up to about a three and a half. You gave him a four. So final rankings now kind of. Kind of weird still I probably two and a half is what I would stick with.
Alexander Coccia:I am like two and a half but I'll round up to a three like I played a lot of this card way too much of this card and in some decks and some matchups He's just a pain in the butt for the opponent Like there's some decks that just do not match well against him another ones like oh great. They're playing, you know tribunal I lose I'm not playing gladiator ever I guess but other than that if you're playing an initiative based surfer list he's actually pretty good and so like I don't know, I think that he gave a little bit of room for Negasonic to breathe because he can earn initiative very effectively and stuff like that, but yeah, the card, the effect is still kind of suspect, and I tried playing him with Cosmo to not let the effect go off, and it's like, man, what are we even doing at that point? I don't know. Yeah, the card's definitely a two star card.
Cozy Snap:I wanna know the Alex star conversion chart, because if Ms. Marvel's a four, and this is a three It's that small of a separation between those two?
Alexander Coccia:No, as I was speaking, I realized how wrong I was. I ended up saying it was actually a two.
Cozy Snap:Okay, okay. Just wanted to clarify. I think you'll have some days ahead. Maybe. Maybe not. We'll have to see. Maybe it's this season. We'll talk about it with Silver Surfer. So Gladiator definitely, like, he's just Awkward. And he's one of those cards that you don't have to play, and I think that's ultimately where I landed. I honestly haven't played him since that release week. I just have not been bothered to play him because I enjoy consistency, but if you enjoy chaos then maybe it is the card for you. And then we've got Annihilus, which Alex, I am very proud to tell you, you did not sleep on Annihilus. You gave Annihilus a four star, I gave it a four and a half. And my God, I think I think it was just that, right? We, we said he would be one of the most hated cards, or at least he's going to change Marvel Snap. And yeah, I think he did. Right. He's definitely what we thought he would be.
Alexander Coccia:He's a great card. Absolutely. The thing I really like about Annihilus is he really showcases the idea of not getting greedy in Snap when designing decks, Annihilus, we're like, okay, we're going to add debris. We're going to add hood. We're going to add center. We're going to add all these things to make this like junk deck. The opponent can't do anything. Then it kind of realized like, wait a minute. Like, all you really need is Hood and, and Sentry. And then all of a sudden you got a good deck. Like, the Turn 5 Swing with the Void going over is enough for Annihilus. And I think it's a really good lesson in deck crafting. Being like, listen, you don't have to go all crazy with, with like, all in on a specific card, a specific archetype or anything. Sometimes just that splash is enough to really make it feel good. And I think that's what Annihilus really hammered home.
Cozy Snap:It's like every season there's a really good combo deck, and then there's always the value deck, right? So we have the, the Statue of Black Bolt, right? If you can't, value is always king, unless your combo is consistent and can go over the top, right? And so, I think that's why even Surfer, we've seen struggle at times. Because it's not, is it not the best combo deck? Is there one better than that? And if it's not, then you play the value list of just getting, like, consistent high stats. And so yeah, I definitely agree. I think the total package with Annihilus right now is too risky. Although We have cards we're about to talk about that could really end up making it much more of this kind of junk list altogether. So Annihilus, obviously, very good card. And then, of course, we've got Martyr and you know again, I am proud to say, I think you gave her a 2? You gave her a 2, I think, which is, which is fine. Listen, I know somebody made her work in some type of cra You can't convince me on it. Just, just not a good, just There's no way. I think she's here just so X Mansion can give you her and you get like a badge or like pole.
Alexander Coccia:That's it. Yeah, it's a poo poo card. But I mean one of these had to get released eventually and it's kind of unfortunate because like I think the effects actually cool. I think the text is actually really interesting. But it's not enough, and I feel like the flavor's off, like in the sense of like, you know, it'd be cool if I could viper this, and it was like a negative two or something, and like, therefore it was actually detrimental to the opponent in some way, I get where they're going with this, it just, it felt really awkward, cause also four power is enough that It's, it's still decently statted, but it's just not worth the risk. Like Ant Man can get to 1 4, Hawkeye gets to 1 4, gets way higher in bounce decks. Why even bother playing Martyr?
Cozy Snap:I definitely just, I don't see it. I know people have been trying to make her work. I kind of called it too. I was like, I know there's going to be people trying to get this car to be worth the value and overall, it just, it doesn't make the list. For myself. I don't know if you're going to I think, again though, I think it's good that we have weeks like this allowing people to save up their caches. We have some really good spotlights coming up. So, if we're going to rank them all together I think, what, Ms. Marvel at the top, number two would go to Annihilus. And then it would be Gladiator, Martyr. Kind of an easier season to rank than the previous ones, like, both October, September. We had so many good cards, it was like, what do we, what do we put ahead? So all together just good months of Snap as far as card releases. Gil and my friend, that takes us to December. Now, this is going to be a December to remember. I think for a lot of reasons. Mainly because we've got ourselves some interesting cards coming out that kind of complete some archetypes that bring a new spin to them. It's so funny when you look at just the top tier of what we've had in the months and then what will be coming out here. I want to say this, though, man. This, oh man, it's so crazy that the balance patch comes with a new card, right? Because you have Shaw bringing in his own Metafield. And then, this is bound to be a bigger, this is the last time they can change. I think they can in OTAs, but I don't think they will. This is the last time they can truly change what a card does in this year. For at least four weeks, right? I mean, they're gonna come after holiday break. So the meta's gonna be determined for a while here, man, and it could be You know, the Loki man, it's, I don't know what to expect. I'm nervous. You know,
Alexander Coccia:I'm nervous as well, but I think they've always had a pretty decent plan. They obviously know what needs to get changed, what balance has to get done. I just wonder if that's going to align with what people expect, right? Like that's always the question people's expectations before. Compared to what actually ends up happening, but I think that this month is going to be pretty wild and to get a patch AND a season pass rollover at the same time is going to be pretty crazy, because I think that there's a lot of banger cards in here. I think it's going to be a really interesting month.
Cozy Snap:And then they realize, I think they're like, you know what, we've got a lot happening. We need the OTA because they didn't have it. Then they put it back in and I think that that's a good thing because who knows? Especially with like a season pass card, it's risky to say no OTA because there's some adjustment that might need to happen. With that though, let's go ahead and go into the newest card coming out. We've got Sebastian Shaw. Now, a lot of these cards got updated right before they've come out, which is always good to see. Sebastian Shaw, for those that don't know, is a 3 cost, 4 power card. Win this card permanently. Gains power. Gain plus two more power wherever he is. In the hand, in the deck, off somewhere at the Hellgala. Oh boy, man. Big shoes to fill like I talked about. We've got a couple of good months before we go into any type of synergy and all this stuff. Just like, hit me with the star rating.
Alexander Coccia:He's definitely a 4. Like, it has to be. I think it's a good effect. I think it's a strong card. It got buffed from datamines. It was a 3 3 prior, now a 3 4. That could go to say that, okay, maybe they thought it was a little undertuned in testing. But, I think as a 3 4, it's base stat line is strong enough. Like, I mean, it's good. And then you get to anytime you give a power, it gets a plus 2. Come on now. That's not very, that's not very difficult.
Cozy Snap:So, yeah, I for, the thing is, I think he's gonna be Awesome. Like, and I want to take that, I want to make sure the context is correct here. He'll be like a, a top tier card in the decks he's in, right? In the decks that he belongs in. Which is kind of what I love with season pass cards, that they work in a good amount of decks. Not in everything, he's not a must have meta card. I think that's bad overall for like the free to play experience. But he's gonna, like, it's funny that we sleep on cards and we compare them to others, but then if you just look at pure value, right? Like, let's talk no other synergy, except let's say Surfer hits him once. He's a 3 6. He gets a plus 2. He's a 3 8. Right there, done and done. Obviously, we like that stat line, and that's very minimal on what you can make happen with Sebastian. So, I would agree. I'd say probably overall, I like him about a three and a half, four star for myself. We're gonna have to see. Ultimately, how many decks he does belong in. We have a lot of comparisons, a lot of synergies. It's gonna be fun. It's gonna be a good one, man. Let's, let's go ahead and kind of start there. The Permanent Power. There's not too many cards that can do that. But I think there's a fair amount and the ones that do it are the ones that work with them, right? The decks that you're gonna want to play. And I think they're somewhat meta decks already. So let's start, man. What are some synergies you like? Hit me with one and we'll kind of break it down.
Alexander Coccia:What I wanna start with is Silver Surfer. Naturally. I'm a huge silver silver Surfer fan. And what I will say is I think in Silver Surfer, this is a five star card. Yeah. And the reason why I dropped it down to four was'cause like that's what you mentioned prior. It, it doesn't have that like natural it, this goes in everything field like that Elsa could or other decks in the past, or cards in the past I should say. But this one here is a little more niche in its application, but is incredible with Silver Surfer. Not only does Silver Surfer Buffet, but think about the core kind of shells of silver silver surfer, It's like a tongue twister. I'm saying it so much. Like Nova, just Nova itself, right? Nova Killmonger has been a staple in surfer decks since the dawn of surfer like at all. And now you have a card where Nova is going to be basically plus three to Sebastian Shaw, in addition to the Silver Surfer as well. It's crazy.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, dude, of course, like you got to start there. You got to start at the three cost with the surfer. That's why making them a three, four is kind of silly, kind of crazy because of the synergy you just alluded to. I, you know what? I think he is Dawken level of good, but better. And, Destroyer is already so full, so like, the decks he works in is gonna be more of that, right? So that's ultimately, like, kind of how I've placed him. So, what I like, dude, is going with the Surfer build, and it brings back the Nova, like you just said. And then you've got the Killmonger in there, and then you've got Dokken in there, and you have double synergy going on. We're kind of a big boomer bust, and if you don't draw all the cards, it's okay. So, I like that fact. Obviously, in Surfer 2, we've got Wongers. If you want to go that route with the double hit, which would then exponentially grow the card. So, you know, not bad. Do you think, we've talked about this, I don't know how many times, does Nakia finally make, does Nakia finally make it?
Alexander Coccia:Nikia has not felt horrible in surfer decks from time to time. Like I have played her. The problem is that if you don't play her on three, it's a horrible draw. Like it's just a card that you just don't want to ever play outside of turn three because like you just don't get the value there. However, Sebastian Shaw will benefit from getting the kind of the the proc from Nikia. So, I don't know. I don't, I don't think Nikia ultimately makes it. I think that Nova and Surfer are going to be enough to make Sebastian Shaw worth running. And it's that simple.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, I don't think Nikia makes it. Again, going up three points is great, but you don't, it's so tight. Would you rather run a counter car? Would you rather run these two cars that are starting to slot into Surfer? Probably, would be my guess. But also, with Shaw, and we have more, way more synergies to talk about. Locations are always fun. I think locations are important to look at, and right off the bat, dude, we've got a lot of locations that work with Shaw as just freaking Muir Island, man, Shuri's Lab, Stark Tower, Easy Ant Mace. That's easy, easy power points to be giving Shaw. However, you're going to see this as I allude to some other combos, I think Shaw is going to be one of those cards that you probably want to play late rather than early. Because his biggest counter is quite obvious, right? It's gonna be Shadow King. And as you know, Shadow King can be tough. It can be tough to play because it's awkward and having to play one on turn six can really suck for the opponent because they wanted to do something else. I like the idea of Shaw coming out as that Sarah Burst at the end.
Alexander Coccia:Shadow King's stonks are going up like crazy lately. Like, honestly, way up. And you're right, Shadow King is probably the best counter. Shang Chi is gonna be a factor too. Because I think that especially in the first, it's like, week. People are gonna be just like going super greedy on Sebastian Shaw to get him super high. But ultimately, it is 100 percent Shadow King. Because Shadow King also gives you counterplay against Collector. Counterplay against Venom, Counterplay against Sebastian Shaw. The list goes on, like almost every major archetype. Like, Shadow King says, hey, I gotcha, don't worry about it. We're gonna win this game. Like, why wouldn't you want to play Shadow King on like turn 5? Turn 6 feels weird. I often like playing him on turn 5 in conjunction with something else. Because turn 6 you want to close. You want to close the game. But Shadow King can definitely close the game too.
Cozy Snap:Well dude, I want to, I want to lead into this subject with the archetype of surfer. But then like go into the main archetype itself. Brother, Werewolf by night, packaged, with him, is gonna be silly in Surfer. Cause, it's Wolf is getting the biggest comparison to him. Wolf is a better card, ultimately, in my opinion, than Shaw is, because of the flexibility. But, you have to kinda take into consideration card space. I don't know if he'll be in the Surfer build, cause Brood, naturally, will probably wanna be figured out in here. But he could be easily, and that leads me to, my God, if you think about the compliment cards for Werewolf and now Shaw at the same time. Obviously, Forge, man. Forge is such an easy way to get this guy power. Such a good, for both Wolf and Shaw at this point. But then on top of that, you've got Nico Minoru, who could also give the plus power to both Shaw. And Werewolf, and activate that as well. That's where I really see things going, and ultimately, that leads me back to Bounce. I think Shaw might have his best build, or one of them, in a Bounce list as well. You know, is Surfer in that? I don't know. Maybe you Bounce Surfer, but who knows? But I do know that with the with the way that Wolf has been working lately And now they're throwing Shaw for more power on the forge and getting things cooking. I think that's where he's gonna end up.
Alexander Coccia:I think you're huffing pure hopium if you think that that werewolf by night survives Tuesday's patch. That's a key factor you got to keep in
Cozy Snap:mind. Okay, but even if he, there's not a lot you could do with this card to make him a bad card. I'm telling you, take him to a 3 1. He's still gonna be
Alexander Coccia:He's a 3 1 for sure on Tuesday, I think. He has to be, right?
Cozy Snap:Fine. He's getting stupid numbers though, no?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, no, he still is like, he's still great. The thing that has like, really, okay. Everyone's comparing Sebastian Shaw with werewolf by night. I think the thing that I always go back to is I think the complimentary cards of werewolf by night are always going to be better. There's so many good on reveal cards that just naturally do the thing with Sebastian shots. Like, Hey, I get to play a Koya like, Whoa, right. So, but like with werewolf by night, like even snow guard. Like, Snowguard activates Werewolf by night. You wouldn't even realize that, right? Like, that's why he's so good in those bounce based lists.
Cozy Snap:But that's why I think if you put them together, you've got the Forge and you've got Nico, and it works with both of them.
Alexander Coccia:That's fair. That's fair. 100%, yeah.
Cozy Snap:So, I get it. I don't know if they'll ultimately make the same list together, but the fact that he's also a three, and who knows, man, maybe they take him to a four. Right? Like, that would be really something. Cause then you can't even get him out anymore, and then that would actually extremely hurt him, right? Because then you can't get him out earlier. That would be huge for him.
Alexander Coccia:The thing with me though, is I don't think they end up in the same deck that often, maybe the bounce list, because I mean, with Beast, right, you can really generate some extra space, be a little more reactive, but like something in a surfer deck though, like, because you have Nova, you're going to want to run the Brood, Brood Nova is too good. And that just completely destroys werewolf's ability to bounce around.
Cozy Snap:I think it's an either, or like what we've been seeing in surfer a lot, like Patriot Surfer, I think is the best example. I just did like a huge guide and I left out Patriot Surfer because. He's, he's a complement in that deck, right? Like, it's a Patriot deck, and then Surfer can help it out. And I think, ultimately, that's what Surfer could be in a Shaw Werewolf deck, or just a Shaw deck. We'll have to see, but like, just another card to add power to the overall package of what you're looking at. So obviously, Surfer, Bounce, those are the best places. Shaw, no question, right? I think we can agree on that. Koye, Nakia, maybe a small bump up there. And Hell, maybe they try to bump them up even more in the OTA balance patches. Maybe they make a Koye. This is maybe what they've been waiting for to give a Koye some more love. We're gonna have to see. That all comes on the same day on Tuesday.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, it's hard to say, right? Like, if Akoi gets bumped up to a 2 3, so it feels less detrimental to play, I mean, at all, then maybe that makes more sense, but I mean, that's at all, like, they're coming out at the same time, this balance patch and the season rollover, and it's really, it's hard because, like, a lot could potentially change, because when you start changing the text of cards and the power of cards, the meta really does fluctuate, so I'm really looking forward, it's gonna be a wild day.
Cozy Snap:Well, dude, listen here, man, I mean Ironheart, Also, great 3 cost card to boost boost him up. Elsa, I think, won't make it ultimately, and Sebastian Shaw is a bit greedy with Elsa and the way you play her. But then you can have Brood involved, so then maybe Elsa finds her way back into Surfer. We had that for a brief period. All I know is I think Shaw has really cool decks that could be created with him making his own kind of archetype in some type of ways. Now, Alex, I have two insanely cheeky decks that people aren't thinking of. You got one for me?
Alexander Coccia:I'm going to be going straight Surfer. I'm not getting as cheeky. This is where I think the card is going to be the strongest and where I'm looking forward to the most. I'm always interested in your sexy bruise. I gotta be honest with you.
Cozy Snap:So, hear me out. Phoenix Force is really the best season it's been. It's about a 55 percent win rate over about 1, 500 games. Phoenix Force for Sebastian Shaw has some interesting, interesting ways to work because it does activate with the Force and it's already a deck that wants Hulkbuster, it wants Forge, it has multiple man, and so Shaw could naturally work like You can never shove cards into decks to make them work. They have to already work in the blend of what's going on there. And the way that that's boosting power is already happening. And so I'd be interested to see if that is something that you would work in as a compliment card. So that's kind of my, my, my first takeaway there. Especially with the Hulkbuster, I think it's extremely fun to potentially have the 5 power going to him. And then immediately he goes up to 2, and so he's an 11 power card. Kind of nutty. I don't know. We'll have to see with that. Even as a last turn, bro. That's a, you know, not a bad card to play for 11 power in one lane, if that's all you have. And then my last one, and this is where I think people were trying to build up some crazy things, but I want to see if we can make it make sense. Shuri. Now, Shuri is one of the few others that can give power. The problem is, do we see a Wakanda deck, it would be the only way you could make this work. You would need Shaw to be big in your hand, right, and continue to build him up. Because, theoretically, on 1, 2, and 3, if you can build up Shaw Play Shuri on 4, Shaw on 5, and then you can Taskmaster. The Shaw could be big. Like, real big. And so I just wanted to throw that out there. Do you think you can build up Shaw fast enough to work in a Shuri deck?
Alexander Coccia:I don't know. And I would listen, I tried to do the math on the Shuri deck. It doesn't seem like it's worth it. Like if you're competing with like a Red Skull Vision or anything along those lines, or even a Typhoid Mary for that matter, like those are just so naturally high statured cards, like Shaw is like what you, you basically play a Koie, top deck Shaw, play a Nakia, then play Shuri and then turn five. You play Shaw and it's like, well what have you, have you really even earned that much compared to just playing your red skull? Like probably not right?
Cozy Snap:Wouldn it be seven power, it'd be seven power. If you played Nikia and Ako on curve, it'd be seven power to Shaw making him an 11. Play him on Surey. I think he would go to 22 than get plus two. So he'd be, bro, he'd be a 24 power guard. I get it. Red school's better, but I'm just. You know, I'm always throwing out some crazy stuff, right? You're always brewing, I get it, I get it. Hey, why not, right? So, interesting enough, I think it could be cool to see what we got going there. Also, guys, permanent power is not ongoing. It's not Blue Marvel. You have to have it given to them, right? Essentially is the best way to think about it. So, we're gonna have to see. And also with that, he's a card that continues to get updated as cards like that come out. Which, we, we always love Alex. We always talk about cards that, you know, get better over time. So, we're gonna have to see, ultimately, how the permanent power works. Alex you know, Valkyrie. I don't know. There's some interactions I want to see if he does gain that power overall. So, Sebastian Shaw, for me obviously I think he's a great card. If you like Surfer, if you like Bounce, you're gonna love him. Now, Alex, before we move on to the new cards, I do want to state they did take out Firestar. We don't know why, exactly. A lot of people are saying maybe she's too strong. We'll have to see. I'm sure she's going to come back in a later season. Which means they move some cards together and move the spotlights. Now, and so before we go into that, the spotlight on the season past week is awesome. Like, it's now great. They put Man Thing in instead of Blob. You have Jeff the Shark in there, and then you've got Stegron. If you're missing, obviously, Jeff and Man Thing, that's a huge, that's a great week to go in on, yeah?
Alexander Coccia:Oh, and by the way, Steggy is way better than people give it credit for. I love Steggy. Playing Steggy in like a C5 deck always feels fantastic. No one expects that card. Honestly, like I'm a Steggy believer, so I think it's a great week.
Cozy Snap:Yes. Yeah, yeah. So definitely if you're missing cards too, I would spotlight this week up. Go crazy. But the next week and the next card would be Blob coming out on December 12th. And with Blob is Living Tribunal and Ravonna Rinslayer. If you missed her, now's your chance to go back and get her. And a pretty fun week of spotlights too. I think this is a, is an interesting one. Buddy, the Blob. This is a card. This is just perfection. Of the human body. Ready, what are your initial impressions? Give me a star rating on Blob.
Alexander Coccia:My initial impression is that this is what peak athletic performance looks like. Easily. Easily. This is Santa. He's in the X Men animated series, right?
Cozy Snap:Oh yeah, dude. This is, this is actually Santa before he was the Claus, man. This was like his This was his origin story.
Alexander Coccia:My early rating's three. Definitely a three.
Cozy Snap:I have him right at three. I think that Blob, I know Glenn even spoke to it, I think that Blob will get better. There's cards coming out to compliment him. What he does is awesome, and I think it will win games. But ultimately, he's only going to work in a couple of decks, altogether. In the long run, a year off from now, I think Blob is going to have a place. There's awkwardness, too, because a lot of, like, let's take Lockjaw, for example. You don't want to play Blob, because if Blob comes out of Lockjaw, he eats your whole deck. It's gone, it's merged, you're done at that point, right? Now he doesn't destroy cards. This isn't going to work with Noel. Blob is going to be a six cost four power card on reveal. Merge your deck into this and gain its total power. Ongoing, obviously. I'm not moving Blob. I'm never moving this guy. He's, he's a huge, he's a huge guy. It's more of a thematic ongoing effect, which I love. So I give it a three star and I think we've talked about it. Briefly, maybe before, what I love about them, outside of being probably the most obvious thing, is we finally have a way that isn't Enchantress, that isn't Rogue, dealing with Darkhawk. This is a fantastic Darkhawk counter. I think that's my favorite thing about them, is that you have a card now that you have as an option to not only swing a lane to win, Right? I don't know about you, but if you play Darkhawk, people are always counting on that lane to be one that they win, and then you just play them in the one they're not playing. That's a win. It's over.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, we've been looking for something to counter Darkhawk for a long time, and this obviously really destroys Darkhawk. It'd be one of those situations where if you're running a Darkhawk based deck, and you're going into you know, Conquest, you gotta fear the Blob. Because you're never gonna go out of that match unscathed. And at best, you can, whoa, you know, you're gonna Widow's Bite, you're gonna put the Rocks, hopefully they don't draw the Blob, but that means you're going into Turn 6. Turn 6. Hoping that your Darkhawk and your Mystique don't turn into complete donuts on the field is a zero. A ZERO! Right? It's kind of crazy, honestly.
Cozy Snap:We've needed it. We've needed a car that directly eats from the deck. We haven't had that before, so definitely I love what he does. He's a Lamentis. In one package here, but obviously it doesn't destroy however When I evaluated this card when it first came out the the most easy simple place that makes sense And you already know probably what I'm going to bring up is going to be hella. I think hella is the coolest place Which is fun because Hela is always on the cusp of being good and it needed a flavor change. I think it kind of edged out in November. It was hot a couple months. This is a perfect Hela card. I think this is exactly what you want in a Hela card, no?
Alexander Coccia:I agree, absolutely. It's actually one of the, my notes was like, hey, Hela's going to be banger here because Hela technically runs a lot of large cards. A lot of large cards. And the nice thing about this now is that, like, you're able to put that power on the board without having to worry about drawing those cards. The gigantos and stuff like that that are in your deck are going to actually provide value. It's kind of crazy if you think about it. Now naturally you're going to want to have this card discarded, and then you want to play Hela, right? Because it's kind of, obviously they're both six cost, but honestly, remarkable. Remarkable synergy.
Cozy Snap:I mean the idea of getting rid of him and then like last turn you have like Infinite Magneto left in your deck and Blob is like a 36 power card or whatever. That's stupid, that's crazy. Like, he turns into the Onslaught Iron Man. What lane does that go into? And that is an auto win. But he's by himself. So, like, if he goes in one lane and then you have Infina Whatever, I don't know. In the other, then you're gonna win. It makes Hela a little bit more reliable. Which I think is fun. But Alex? I gave it a three star, but where I think he could go way higher. He could excel past our thinking because a lot of people are just kind of going hella with this card. Dude, it is the Sunspot deck with She Hulk, Moon Girl, and all that greatness. And hear me out, the idea of playing a double up deck with Blob, with Sunspot and She Hulk And you play Moongirl, and you just leave your hand, you have your hand maxed out, you have it ready to go. And then what you can do is you're essentially having your deck full. If you don't even go that route, you can also go like Devil Dinosaur. And you have a lot of card generation, and you don't care. You're Agent Coulson, you're filling up your hand, but if you have Blob as the finisher, Devil Dino, and then a 30 power Blob, because your hand was You know, your deck is full of good cards. Am I crazy there? Or do you think that might be okay?
Alexander Coccia:No, you're not crazy, but like it actually actually showcases a potential downfall of Blob as well. Like at the same time, I agree with your potential statement, but it showcases how, like, there are some issues there too, because what makes cards powerful for the most part isn't necessarily their stat line. It's going to be the effect. So if a double dinosaur is in the deck, right, that's only contributing three power to Blob. It's not, it's not the ongoing effect. Right. And so like a lot of cards are like that, like a life, the three power and a life isn't what makes Elias so spicy. And so like blob is interesting. Cause like, Hey, you can run crossbones if you want. Like, yeah, if you want stats, there's cards that give you stats, but there are very few cards that give you stats and have incredible effects. And so Blob might find himself in this weird spot, it's like you're running sub optimal cards just for the stat line. I don't know. It's kind of tricky, that's what kind of brings him down a bit.
Cozy Snap:Right, cause like Taskmaster is the obvious like, oh my god, or Arnim Zola, but, but there's zero power. So at that point, it's kind of awkward, which is why I think they boosted him from a three power he was. To a four power because Mr. Negative probably would have been too strong. I think ultimately having Blob as a 3 6 would have been stupid. And I think probably they figured that out in testing is my gut feeling there. So not only do we have Hela, we have potentially some of those decks. We're gonna have to see how those kind of work out. The She Hulk, the Devil Dino. But ultimately, man, we also have Ramp, which is an interesting option. I think Ramp with Electro, and we already know it's powerful. We've seen Ongoing Ramp. It's one of the more popular decks. I think it's the sixth most played deck this last season. We thinking Electro's gonna work out?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, potentially. I mean, in those Ramp decks, though, like, you see a couple different approaches to the game, like, a lot of the ones you're referring to are probably the one with Ms. Marvel, correct? Yep. Yeah, so like the stat lines aren't that high on those types of decks, so you have to have kind of re envision what a Blob ramp deck would have to be, because even like a Doctor Doom, that's 15 power across the board, but it ain't 15 power for Blob.
Cozy Snap:It would be like a new high power ramp deck, is the way that I think about it, but the tricky thing is you could only play probably Electro. I don't know if you want to go with Wave, because Wave is ultimately not even good with Blob, and that's another low power card. It's kind of the Mr. Negative effect, you know? It's like, yeah, you could have a Ravonna, but then, like, what? You're not getting those negative cards, so you have to have that balance of having ways to activate it, but not. So I think Ramp could be a little clunky chunky. We're gonna have to see if that's how it works ultimately. But in Negative's case, he's flipping the power so he could have those Arnems, the Tasks, and the Iron Man way up.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, I mean, the way you could potentially see him being played in a ramp style deck is play him on turn 5 and then Taskmaster's turn 6. That's like, kind of the only way I see it being done. Because if you play, like, yeah, you said, like, wave. You wave him out, you just mangle your whole deck. It's like, now you're not drawing cards, you played him on 4, what are you gonna do to 5 and 6 now?
Cozy Snap:Right, right. And so ultimately, Blob, we gave 3. I think he's one of those, period though, you gotta play with him. We're gonna have to see how he works. The fact that Glynn said cards are coming to help him out. Makes me feel like three star is probably where he's gonna end up. He could be higher. Last note on Blob, though, is going to be Thanos, which I think he's kind of an auto include for. I do think that Thanos is gonna be perfect for the Blob because you do have a bit more meaty. Now, you know, if we add the stones together, you're getting one from the soul, you got four, you got five, six, seven. So you're adding actually eight. You're having eight extra power in the deck, but more importantly, it keeps your deck fat. You know what I mean? It keeps more cards in there, and then you also have the utility of the stones.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, and also, like, modern Thanos is running very greedy in the sense, like, basically, Thanos is Thanos stones, Psylocke, and a whole bunch of 5 and 6 drops, right? So it's like, it's so greedy that Blob could actually definitely take advantage of that.
Cozy Snap:But Thanos biggest counter is Darkhawk. So I love the idea of being able to have Thanos with the Blob. There's cool things. I think Blob is a cool card, ultimately. We're gonna have to see where he ends up. After playing him overall.
Alexander Coccia:Now, does Thanos become a 20 in the deck when you finish all 6? Cause it pops up and says, boom! He goes all powerful. So that's huge for Blob. So if you finish Thanos, and then you drop Blob, he's gonna absorb that 20 power and clean the deck out, isn't he?
Cozy Snap:Dude, he does. Let me go to the Power Stone here. If you have played all 6 Thanos, wherever he is, that's huge. Actually, that's massive. A big, fat style. We saw this before, of a big card kind of oh my god. This is nutso, huh? Couldn't do Lockjaw. Couldn't do Lockjaw, but that is cool. I'm excited. So there's more decks that meet the eye. I think people went Hella. And my point is, I think that Blob is gonna have a bit more potential than people might think. Now, speaking of potential, we have what was deemed the worst card in Marvel Snap, by far, to now a very, very interesting card. My buddy, we have Havoc, who I think is gonna be a split controversial card, if people love him, if they think he's trash. Havoc, guys, is a 2 cost now, 0 power card. After each turn, you lose 1 max energy, and this card gains plus 4 power. Now, I know that seems crazy, a little confusing. Let me break it down. If you play Havoc, it's very simple, guys. You get 2 energy per turn for the rest of the game. That's it. There's no other way. It's been confirmed. That's what happens. You can only play with 2. Now there's some cards that can synergize with this. Havoc, of course. You get the trade off of having a giant card for you math wizards. He can get to like 20 power if played on curve. What are you thinking now with the new kit?
Alexander Coccia:I think he's pretty interesting. Like, at first, I was like, man, this card sucks. But then they changed him a little bit. I was like, wait a minute. 2 0. Does he work with negative? Works with Ravona. Okay, hold on. I've been playing a lot of Ravona lately. It's actually been my go to deck. And I'm like, hold on. Is vipering this really that bad? Like it's sticking them with three power for the rest. If they can't destroy this card, if they can't do anything about this card, it just eats their energy the whole time. And then like, it just ticks up, ticks up, ticks up. And you're like, Hey, guess what? I have Shadow King, but it's like, see, like, I don't know. I think this could be one of the most toxic cards in Marvel snap. I think people there's potential to piss people off here.
Cozy Snap:I agree, and the way I look at it is I agree and disagree, right? So people were like, well, the Viper and Martyr didn't work. That was just a terrible play line. Like, that doesn't happen. This is my point with Havoc. First of all, people have to understand, man, you need the nut, right? You have to have Havoc and Viper. It needs to be on curve. So it's like Awkward sometimes, but to your point, it's nice in junk decks because then you can have the Shadow King involved in there, give it away, and then go crazy at that point, right? And it is going to definitely, no question, encourage unique deck design. Havoc is bringing extreme unique win conditions and crazy play lines, and I think there are more cards that are going to synergize with them. I was really down on Havoc. Because he was not a great card and they definitely did adjust a lot here. So I'm going to talk about the ones that I think he'll fit in the most, buddy. Star ratings before we get started. What do you think?
Alexander Coccia:I ended up landing out of three because in my head I was like, this card might be one as completely unplayable, or five as the most toxic card in Marvel Snaps history that completely ruins the game. From like a, Hey, I don't get to play Marvel snap anymore with like three energy because of someone just Viper this over or whatever, right? I ended up landing on a three because I actually think like as you said this is going to be one of those cards. You have to get your hands on. You have to experiment with it's going to take some really unique deck building. You can't just plug this into an existing like high Evo shell or dark. You can't just plug this into whatever you think is meta right now. It's going to take a whole new brew. And someone somewhere is going to figure out a brew that's going to ruin stuff. That's all I'm saying. So I see the potential of Havoc, so I'm going with a three.
Cozy Snap:I have now changed my opinion because of the update to exactly where I was with Nico. I think he's a boomer bust, right? And I think he's insane, like four star plus crazy new deck designs, whole new archetype. Or he's okay, and he just, like, it's not consistent enough. He's not worth both him and Viper in the deck. I think he's gonna be great, potentially. And let me tell you why. So, first of all, the one that kind of first hits my mind, at least, that I think naturally I already played a lot of, just had the deck guide out. Clearly, now that he's a zero power card, Mr. Negative involved with Jane Foster is a silly great play. I think it's just awesome. You get to flat out have what you need. And it's great both ways, because, oh no, you only have two energy, no big deal. You've got Iron Man costing zero, Arnim, Zola, Noel costing zero, you can play your cards. Or, you pull him with Jane, and now you can play him on turn six. He does work on turn six, to become, what, a two six, right? What'd he be? No, a two four, at that point. No, he's flipped, so he'd be a two six. Okay, so, for me, Mr. Negative gets a huge bump up, and that's kind of where I immediately was like, yes. I love it. Love the Ravonna synergy as well, so you have that mixed synergy. I think this is great for negative.
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely. And like, it is to be stated though, that this is an extremely restrictive effect. Like a crazy restrictive effect. One of the most restrictive effect, like if you thought like Electro was bad. This is insane compared to Electro. Like you might not be able to play any cards. Like if you play Havoc too early, and you're top decking cards that like you just literally don't have the energy for. It's like, it's wild. It's wild. And so like this card, I think you're right. Has the potential to be like five star absolute banger or a one star absolute trash heap. And I think Nico was the best comparison because like, it's just, you just don't know until it's in the hands of the entire community. I can only imagine what their testing has been like. They've probably been testing it like crazy, but I don't think you can prepare like a card like this. Like you just, once you get it out there to the worldwide interwebs. People are going to find a way. I think this card has potential.
Cozy Snap:I mean, people are going to say, we talk crap on it, now we love it. Let me tell you, making it from a 1 to a 0 power is massive because of that Jane Foster synergy and the Ravonna. You get the double hit now, rather than you, I mean, that's massive. Getting it with Jane is going to be everything and how Mr. Negative works all together. And I've gotten more comments than ever on a Mr. Negative video. This got me to Infinite Conquest. This has got me to Infinite. If you know how to play him and you're conservative, I think he's a great deck still. Love to see it. Now, I want to hit you and the chat with a question I think is so interesting. Will there be a new style of, hey, you want the Havoc, so you have armor in there too, and then you just have two cost cards. Maybe you have She Hulk in there potentially as well, but then what you do at this point is you have just a, like, a Sarah Miracle deck with Havoc, so you have Goose, you've got Angela, and Kitty Pride. And then you have bounce, man. You have bounce. This is what I was thinking. You bounce these cards back. They're free or they're cheaper. And now, before you play Havoc, you can get the interactions going. You can get your cards for free. You have turn 4 and onward to play free cards. You don't need the energy. You have Sentinel on those decks. You have Elsa to boost up later. That's also a huge spot that Havoc could work in.
Alexander Coccia:The math has to be done on like, if you're going to do like some sort of like, zoo, inexpensive style deck, at which turn can you play Havok, where like, he's no longer detrimental? Like, can you play him on turn four, so you can still get Kizaru on turn five, plus one drop or whatever? Like, where, and then like what, he procs to a 2 8? Like, that's pretty huge, isn't it? Right, so I think that, like, there's definitely potential. Wait, would he even work on turn four? If you play him on turn four Yeah, so you play him on turn four, you can still get Kizaru, because when they gain energy, it gets reverted back. Basically, whatever turn you play him on, that's the maximum of energy you'll ever have, correct?
Cozy Snap:Yeah. It's crazy to think that this card went from, like, trash in my eyes to potentially my favorite card of the season. I don't know. We'll have to see. Like, we have to playtest it. Who knows where he's going to end up. Let me know what you guys think of Havoc. Lastly, I will say with the Junk deck, as we were kind of spinning, I was like, Hey, A Bomb decks with Scorpion kind of curves out perfectly. Get the A Bomb for cheap, and now you have a deck that can play big power with Havoc. You need, you need a deck, you need a deck like Cyclops, you need a deck that can work with the low energy. And that's where I could see him.
Alexander Coccia:That's a really good idea. And even something like a, like a misty night will continuously add value. The only thing is though, is that the, I believe the energy that he occupies is not considered floated. So like if, for instance, like if he kills an energy, it doesn't, it doesn't proc up the, the Hulk. Not that it would, you would be able to play Hulk on the Havoc deck anyway, but I'm just saying like, it doesn't count as floated energy for like a sunspot.
Cozy Snap:So a bomb is going to be the answer then I think a bomb could be really cool. Cause again, Havoc is going to win the lane. He's probably in, if you can protect him. And, or if you have Cyclops down, you can also like, spit out the negative power. So, really cool win. Again, I'm going to say it, you went from like, I don't know, to probably one of my favorite cards. Love to see it on top of an interesting spotlight week. Lastly, buddy, we have Selene. Now, Selene is one we've looked at for a long time now. I'm scared of Selene and what it means if they don't address address Werewolf by night. I'm frightened, dude, because that's already, the junk bounce deck is already so good with Annihilus. It's already the top tier, one of the best decks in the game. You add Selene, it makes the deck not only better, but significantly better, dude. What do you think of Selene?
Alexander Coccia:I'm coming in with a four star rating on Selene. I think she's very strong. I think that as a one drop, like you can only have certain like effects on one drops. Like how powerful could they possibly be? I feel like this one's a lot. That's a big power swing, right? Like that's four potential negative sorry, negative three damage onto your opponent's side. The ability for it to kind of be immediately usable with Annihilus. Right. So you have Annihilus and Hood as great, you know, sorry, Hood and Selene as great one drops for Annihilus. Not only that, but like. It just seems like it's going to be detrimental to your opponent's hand. Like there's going to be cards that like have very powerful abilities, like Iron Man, that's statted the way they are because of how powerful their text is. And you're holding onto this Iron Man and it's like, well, that sucks, right? Like it's, I don't know. I think this card is going to be really good.
Cozy Snap:Dude, I love her. I think she's going to be fun. I mean, the way you look at Hood, look at Selene. If you think Hood is a four star card. Then Selene's gonna be that too, and the trade off may even be better because of the the affliction that it does. Also, Afflict also works with A Bomb, which also makes it more, you know, a potential nether. Getting it anytime we get an affliction deck is great. Loot cage stocks, way up. But the biggest thing is, when I say balance, the thing that people need to remember is Falcon can get the 1 cost back, which makes it a potential 3 played, ugh, that's crazy. That's crazy to me, man. She's gonna be great, too. I think she's a four star as well, in my opinion. Because of that, if you like that style of play. Again, we're gonna have to see what the OTA does. We're gonna have to see what the balance patch does. But as of today's meta, with the goblins, with Annihilus Sign me up, man. I'm putting her way up there.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah. She's great. The only thing about bouncing her back and forth is with that negative three, she's likely to keep hitting the same card over and over again. So you're likely just to completely crater. Like when, like their Iron Man will just be a negative nine and be like, well, this is great, I guess. Right? Like I'll play this negative nine Iron Man. And like, no, it's not going to happen, I guess. But like it's, it's synergistic in a sense that like, you're going to, obviously you're going to be holding green goblins in your hand, hob goblins, but. It's also very draw dependent. I think this is what took a star off for me. Because if you have Selene in your hand and you don't have a goblin or a nice card to hit, you're like, huh, I don't want to hit my two drop or like my, my whatever, right? So you probably want to run Luke Cage yourself. Just because there's a chance you get some friendly fire on Selene. You're gonna put Selene down and it hits your Scorpion. You're like, well, my Scorpion's garbage now, right?
Cozy Snap:That, ultimately, you brought up a great point. The most important thing about one drops are, if you pull it on the last turn of the game, is it gonna be good? And she's a no. So she, she is a no. I guess you could play her than Annihilus. That's like the biggest thing you could do. But you're not doing anything to the opponent at that point, right? So that is a way to kind of balance out the ebb and flows. Like, Forge is always good. Whereas other cars like Deadpool is a dead car at that point, right, for a one drop. All I know, man, is it's bound to be a really cool season. I think people are sleeping on just how unique and powerful every car is in this season, man. And Firestar would have been more bonkers. I think it's good Firestar's gone because it's like, she's the must buy and now complicates things a bit more overall. Let's end it with ranking them buddy. Must buy, what do you think?
Alexander Coccia:I think Celine is number one for me. I think Celine definitely you gotta get. For Sebastian Shaw I think obviously is gonna be fantastic. That's a season pass card, so that's like a, you know, money thing or whatever. So that's a whole different conversation, but I mean statistically we've always said that the season pass, if you're gonna spend money in Marvel Snap, season pass does give you the best return for your dollar and you're gonna be getting Sebastian Shaw. Blob I think is probably the lowest ranked for me, with Havok being somewhere in the middle. Like, I need to play Havok, right? I don't care if he's good or bad, I need to have that card in my collection because I want to experiment with it. If I had to skip one, I'd skip Blob. If I had to only pick one, I'd pick Havok because I like the Anarchy. But I think that Selene will probably be amongst the best. Cozy, it's been a wild month in Marvel Snap. A lot has changed. We've got a patch coming out tomorrow. But, one could hope that maybe in the patch, some of the villains of Marvel Snap might get dealt with. Now, when we talk about villains, Cozy, we're not talking about like the bad guys. What are we talking about?
Cozy Snap:Dude, it feels like we've built up like a movie, you know, like Galactus was our biggest woe. Heck, I was talking about Destroyer being at a 16. You know, I'm like. That was like the, the early plot. We were like, oh, the villain's so bad. And then we, we kept going. Galactus was the most hated. And now we're like full blown Infinity War. We've got like six villains now, or play, you know, we have a lot of cards of people hate in Snap. It's the ones that people are on Twitter smashing their phones, their keyboards for and It feels like we have more than we ever have which I think is good to share the blame But obviously bad in player experience, but so yeah, we're gonna be breaking down the villains here So let's kick it off. What do you think is the biggest villain?
Alexander Coccia:I mean, I'm going to go off and say that I think the biggest villain right now is werewolf by night.
Cozy Snap:Real the biggest one is werewolf. No way.
Alexander Coccia:Listen, I don't know. He's not like the most irritating. I don't, I don't think he's the one that people complain about the most and are angry the most about. I think there's another one that we'll talk about. momentarily, a little, little fart cloud. Maybe we'll talk about, but there is definitely werewolf by night is definitely a villain here because like it is literally in every top performing shell, it comes to the point where like, if you want to make a very good deck with Marvel snap, you put werewolf by night in it and then just put whatever the hell is around it. Like it just doesn't matter. It literally makes every archetype better.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, I think he's here. I'll we'll go here. I had Alioth like ready to go, but we'll come back to him, alright? And I'm ready to go. But let's talk werewolf. Now, I want to defend the card a bit, but also, of course, I think it is going to be adjusted. I don't think he's even in 1, in top, he's like probably number 4 on my list on the villain. List, but it, for me, you kinda have to be good to play this card. You can't just be like a casual player. You need to know location spacing, and you need to know what lane you want him to end in, and where Shang Chi could land up. So I do think there's skill involved, like early bounce, if that makes sense. He's in a lot of lists, but he's not like Darkhawk level popular. He's in the top lists, and I get it in that sense. But I haven't gotten all that much complaints about him other than people don't have him.
Alexander Coccia:You know what? I think that's part of it as well. I think that there's a lot of frustration in the community that people who are free to play or just obviously like you're only getting a couple Spotlight cash is a month to some degree, right? For free to play players. So when they miss on the role for the werewolf by night, and he's literally in the top five highest win rate decks, it can be definitely frustrating. This has been a card. And when I talk about villains, this is a card I see lamented about a lot because it is in some of the most, top performing shells and of course, like it just performs exceptionally well and it's not about getting it to like over 20 power At its baseline like it is remarkably powerful Even if you don't really get it bouncing all that much like it's just such a good card I don't know. It's really kind of reaching up. I think it probably gets touched up in the patch.
Cozy Snap:There's truly not a card that I feel the need to play on turn three more than, than the wolf. Like, there's, you know, there's other cars, like, you should be playing them here, you know, like Mr. Negative on four. Wolf, I'm like, it's three. I gotta get him out. Like, I gotta get him out now so that I can end up getting him higher. Or like Daily Bugle, I'm begging and they don't get my wolf whenever that happens. Yeah, I think you'll go down to like a 3 1. If they adjust the cost, it's a major nerf. If they adjust the power, I think he's fine because he's scaling to such crazy levels. You do have to give up lanes, you do have to give up location the, the problem is not just Wolf, it's the flexible and powerful things like Forge being one cost is still mind boggling, and then Nico's, it's those on reveals that are in every deck anyway, and then you have a car that synergizes now with all the decks, and I think that's what's really, you know, it's like Darkhawk and his package. But if you have the cheap on reveals, it's going to be the same result, you know?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah. And as we said prior, like the cards that work well with werewolf are just remarkable on their own. Like they're just very good cards and it gets applied to so many different shells and so many different archetypes. Like even bounce is remarkable with it. Just so good because like all the cheap on reveals, like they just, you know, you bounce them back and just beast is an on reveal too. It's like werewolf loves. All of it, right? So it's a, it's really great. It's a fantastic card but I think it is one of the newest villains of Marvel snap, which is the headline here. Cause it has emerged as an absolute banger car. And if you don't have it, you're definitely feeling it. So I understand that. Cozy. I'll let you kick off the one you had previously prepared the ultimate villain of snap right now.
Cozy Snap:Yeah. Yeah. So what I did was I ranked the villains in my head of like how much people hate them versus play them. Like it blows my mind. Like I've done three infinity conquests. And, like, I have problems with where Loki's at, but I'm seeing people that complain about Loki to, like, a nauseam, almost. Like, it's all the time. And then they'll be like, Oh, I got an Infinity Conquest win, Loki's too good right now, and it's, and they're like, Oh, I hate it, but I played it. And it's like, well, you're contributing to to why people hate the card, in my opinion. So, if you hate it, I don't, I don't know why you would play it. But, Alioth is one that, oh, everybody plays and everybody hates at the same time, right? Like, you didn't get this card and you're not playing it. Alioth is at the top of the list. He's going to be such a tricky card, ultimately, to fix outside of keeping the on reveal, and letting those reveal first, and then it's like almost an instant fix, and then he has like his uses, but he's not in every deck. He's definitely the top. He is the villain of villains though in Snap.
Alexander Coccia:Yo, he's 100 percent like the ultimate villain. He's like the end boss right now. He's the final boss. And like, honestly, his stats though are kind of surprising. His win rate's only 51%. Like, honestly, but his cube rate's really high. Because people are like, oh, I can win this game. We're going eight cubes. And it's like, wait a minute. Like you lose, I guess. Right. And so like, I think that's really frustrating people, but cozy. What you said rings true. People are complaining about cards, but they're playing it themselves. The meta share of a lieth is 27%, 27%! There's nothing that comes close to it. It's just insane. Every single turn six is, does this lose to Alioth? And sometimes you do. Usually you are losing to Alioth. Cause they've locked down a Storm location, they got Professor X in the other. My gosh, Alioth is a problem.
Cozy Snap:You know those little reports they send out at the end of the season, like the season recaps? I wish there was a section of, you left. I don't know how many cubes I've donated to being like, ah, it's Alioth, I'm out, and that guy probably wasn't even playing, or didn't top deck it, or the Loki player didn't copy it, you know what I mean? Like, I've, I've bowed out of so many games because of that.
Alexander Coccia:I can see, like, Alioth, like, kind of, like, lingering in people's nightmares. Like, this is like, this is like the PTSD card of Marvel Snap, where it's like, you get hit with Alioth, and you're like, no, like, how did I not see that coming? And you, and the worst part about it, like, listen, I've been caught off guard by Alioth before, and I, do you know who I blame? I blame myself. I'm like, how did I not see Alioth coming? Like, I have to know better. I go on the Snapchat, I joke about how People don't even see Alioth coming, they should see Alioth coming. And then I'm here on Twitch TV, I go eight cubes, chat's saying Alioth, Alioth, Alioth, and I'm just like, LOL, let's go, and BOOM, all my cards get destroyed unrevealed, right? Maybe I'm the one with the PTSD.
Cozy Snap:Well, it's like the old school way of the Shang Chi, you know, when he was just like the staple, and it was the Shang Chi doesn't exist. I can't tell you how many games where I'm like, Roll it, let's see it, he doesn't have it, there's no way, you know. But also the satisfaction when like Sokovia gets rid of Alioth and you're like, I'm free from my shackles. Like I'm, I am, I'm a free man. I can play you know, a fair game here, but yeah, I think Alioth, number one villain, no question with number two, buddy being, being Loki.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah. Yeah. I definitely see Loki being a villain right now, but I'm going to say that I actually, like, I think Loki has been brought down quite a bit, and I think we've discussed him a few times already. His win rate's at 53%, 10 percent meta share, so like literally a third of the meta share of a life. Like, let's be honest, this is kind of crazy. The card is so fun to play. I wonder if you actually boot his, boost his stats, remove the negative one cost to make like Quinjet more of a mainstay, and he's fine. Like, I don't know, does he feel that bad?
Cozy Snap:Yeah, he's not, he's not going to stay. I guarantee. Whether it's this or January, there's just no way I don't see it just because of the way it was like negative in beta. It's like the, the problem for future cards. And I think there's a lot with Loki happening that they don't want in every meta, and there's a way that we we're close, not really, but it doesn't take a lot to make'em playable. A unique archetype that's super fun to play. That's not as bad as Mr. Negative or like, you know draw dependent, let's say. I don't know if you get rid of his cost. If you do get rid of his cost, you have to replace it with something, I think. You can't just have, like, you get your opponent's hand. I don't think that's good enough. I don't know. We're gonna have to, or they take him down to a three, and that's what he does. He's gonna get something happening. Again, I want to encourage people. This is one of those cards, I forgot which one took forever. I think it was Shuri. Took forever for them to fix. Because they were trying to find the way to make the card good, but different. And they did! They made that perfect. And I Will not be like, I'm not going to be torching on my channel if I don't see him change this Tuesday, because I don't know if he will be, it may take longer for them to ultimately figure out how they make Loki feel good. So it could mean another season of Loki, but at the same time, it means you're not having a dead card at the end of the result.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, and I wonder what their statistics show from Loki across all MMRs and all ranks, how detrimental it actually is, because you know, you hear a lot from like, you know, the high MMR. You know, players that like, they, they see a lot of Loki very often. And you do see these in tournaments and stuff like that. But my experience is that like Loki, I guess, can feel a little bit bad from, it's like one of those feel bad cards where it's like, well, I'm losing against my own deck and they're playing it more efficiently, right. Because the negative one cost. And so like, yes, it's a powerful card. But I don't think it's as detrimental to the meta as it once was. It definitely has been brought down.
Cozy Snap:It's because of Alioth, though, a lot of the times. Like, I was playing a deck earlier this week my Destroyer on reveal deck, and I was like, oh yeah, this version didn't have Alioth. So I got Loki'd, and I'm like My fear of Loki went down tremendously, right? Because I can out beat that. You know, I have decks that can out beat Loki continually, but if you, if they get the Alioth for five, Like, somebody commented like, yeah, you destroy a deck though, they just get to play destroyer and more cards. I'm like, yeah, but they didn't set up for that. They don't have exactly what they need all the time. And their armor lane, yeah, they can use mine, but they don't have the other cards adjacent with it. So Loki and Alioth together, there's, Alioth is everywhere. And so that's the main core problem, right? It's the decks that you're building yourself and then you're giving your opponent the keys and they can ramp up with high power to it, right? So Loki, definitely for me, number two villain. I'm curious if you can guess who I have at number three.
Alexander Coccia:I'm gonna go with one of your favorite cards in Marvel Snap, one that I've never been a huge fan of, and it's Iron Lad. Iron Lad is currently in 21 percent of meta decks at a 53 percent win rate.
Cozy Snap:He comes back in the end of December, so that's good. I, feel like you're going with cards that people wish they had and they're pissed they don't have them. And in that case, that's another topic.
Alexander Coccia:Maybe the comment section's informing us here.
Cozy Snap:It's a different topic. I don't think he's a villain by any means. But I get what you mean. Like, he's like, the most missed out card. It was Jeff before Jeff came in Spotlights, right? He's impossible to replace. Jeff was impossible to replace. If I see people complain. And by the end of December or in January when you could have gotten them, that's on you, right? He's with Selene. Get him, get that. We just talked about Selene being a great card that is on you. We've seen it now that spotlights are good. They work. You can get cards that you want to get as long as you save for them. So for me, I I Iron Light, I wouldn't classify as a villain, but I get, yeah, I get the path that you're trying to take us down over here.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, I just think the stats kind of showcase the villain statistics, right? At 21 percent meta share, it's the only one that gets close to Alioth. It is really up there. It's win rate's fantastic, but you're right, it has a very unique ability in the game. It's irreplaceable, so there is a lot of frustration, I think, of people being like, Hey! This is like one of those cards that people are like, Hey, how do I replace Iron Lad? It's like, man, like you really can't. Like, it's just what it does is so unique in snap. Right. So like, yeah, maybe that informs it as well. I'm really interested in your spicy call. I've got a couple of more spicy ones.
Cozy Snap:I'm just trying to think of like what I hate to lose to right now. And you know, Iron Lad... It's so funny, man. Cause Iron Lad, I guess the way he curves out. I also like, he will always be like my, like you nailed the Legion take, right? Like Legion was your like, Ooh. Alex got that right. Iron Lad, I made a video the day after. I think this is gonna be one of the best cards in the game. I got shizzed by everybody. Right, like creators. The Twitter posts, like he's not that great. Overvalued, overhyped. Look where he's at now. And it, it was obvious at the time, right? Like, he copies a card. You get two plays of him. And so that's why I love him. But yeah, my spicy take at four. Is gonna be Pro X, and I think Pro X is in the same case as like, Loki in some instances, because of Alioth, as the, as the corner card. But I think Pro X is a big villain. Man, that thing slams down, and you didn't play in that lane, you're pissed! Whether it's Project Pegasus or not!
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, and you know what, Pro X is definitely a villain right now. And unfortunately, Professor X activates the Alioth villainy as well, like, they kinda go hand in hand. Professor X tags in Alioth! And Alioth comes in to drop the finishing, like, elbow drop from the top rope. That's basically what happens, right? So like, yeah, Professor X is most certainly a villain. And we've talked about in the past, we're like, Yeah, we have more tools to deal with Professor X. Ms. Marvel, we've got Jeff. But the problem is, all the decks that have Professor X have the same tools in them. So like, oh, they play Professor X, but I can play Jeff. And then, like, their Jeff moves in. You're like, oh, you gotta be kidding me. They had Jeff too. Of course they had Jeff too. Why would you make a Professor X? Deck without Jeff. So it's like all the same tools are being applied and it's like, oh, you know, what do you do about Professor X? I don't, I actually don't know what you do about Professor X. I don't know what you change about this card.
Cozy Snap:Yeah.'cause you can't make'em a five unless you plan on doing more ways to boost the support around'em. You can't make'em a five two, and then unless you adjust the other cards, a five, three. I don't know. Yeah. He's a tough one to place and I love him. I think lockdown is a very important archetype in the game and they need to keep it alive. We're gonna have to see how they do that, right? Because I think it will be addressed, maybe even Tuesday. You know, maybe we're talking, maybe someone's watching this on Wednesday, and it's already addressed. But, yeah, we'll have to see there. So, you know, I had Alioth, I had Loki, Pro X, and then I had Annihilus. It has to be Annihilus nowadays, I feel like. Mainly just because of, I just did the meta deck report. Top three decks. He's in two of them. Again, that Sentry plays massive. The way that he mind games you a bit is massive, too. Like, if you play a Sentry, they're just, they're like, he has it. He's got Annihilus at this point. So, I think Annihilus was exactly what we thought he would be. And come into the game as that role of a villain. And to me, those are the main ones. Like those are the ones to me that felt like the villains of Snap.
Alexander Coccia:The last one I want to close with Cozy is I think a really spicy take, but I think when, when I say people like, you know what, yes, this is becoming a bit of a villain and that is. Scarlet, Johansson, Black Widow. Black Widow is at a 14 percent meta share, only a 51 percent win rate in Infinite. However, the card is extremely frustrating to have played against you. It's being played in Bounceless, so not only are you getting hit with one Widow's Bite, you're getting hit with two, sometimes, you know, more Widow's Bites. Widow's Bites everywhere, no cards being drawn. They're playing them with Korgs as well, so you get you get, you draw a rock. You get Widow's Bite, and then like they play their Rock Slide, then the Widow's Bite you again, and then like you play the Widow's Bites down, then you draw a rock, you're like, I have no cards, right? Widow's, Black Widow has to be one of the emerging villains of Snap at a two drop.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, I love her, man. I love, I think they, they made a dead card great. And I think, you know, obviously the fact that she plays into the decks that are hot right now, Annihilus, whatnot. What's cool too is you could change her if you don't want her in balance. If that's a problem, right? If that is, I don't think she's a. A big enough problem. I agree on the villain thing, I do. I don't think she's a big enough problem. But if she does become one, you could just make her a 3 2 with a negative 2 bite and then you have that power. You still have the effect, you have the card draw that's limiting, but then you can't bounce her or people aren't gonna play her and bounce. So that, to me, that's interesting. It messes up the Darkhawk package enough. I don't, I hope they don't do it. I actually think she's fine right now. It's just in the current state of where we're at. But yeah, I mean, no question, dude. There's nothing worse than getting hit with this and you, like, win Asgard. And then nothing happens. And you're like, great. I'm gonna, I'm gonna log off. But yeah, BlackWidowMan, yeah, that's a good call. Good call day.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, absolutely. It's a card I've been really enjoying playing as well. So it's a good card. I think you're, you're right. They did it right. They buffed it just enough to make it relevant, but it isn't quite meta breaking yet, but it is hell of annoying. So Black Widow does get a special mention on this list.
Cozy Snap:What I love though, dude, I just wanted to say what I love is like Hydra cut off one head, two will replace it. Right. Hey, they can nerf these, and then Havok and Selene are right around the corner, and I guarantee you Havok has the potential to be up there as one of the most hated cards, and Selene.
Alexander Coccia:Ooh, I just realized something. On turn three, you can Widow's, you can block Widow and Selene and turn the Widow's bite into a negative four.
Cozy Snap:Oh my god, you can. I never thought of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Widow, oh! nasty and it all works in bounce it all is great in bounce, you know, and so yeah
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, and then you just send a green goblin. That's a negative six over. Oh my that's a that's a negative ten turn play on four Yeah, I just I never really thought of that before.
Cozy Snap:Bounce is going to be I think a villain of an archetype coming up soon, and it's because what we just talked about, Werewolf by Night, the cheap ones, the Fords, the Nicos, I think it's going to add up, I do, and you know, people are kind of pooh poohing on these one cost car releases, they're like, they're not Super fun. I know Nebula wasn't like loved when she came out and now, you know, we've gotten full circle where like something like Nico is like the must have.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah. Nico has been remarkable. And if you don't have Nico and you need some help because you're trying to build decks Well, we got a new feature coming. So in the December update, we're getting a whole bunch of stuff, including Smart Decks, the Albums, and OTAs. Cozy, let's start with Smart Decks. Now Smart Decks are going to be a new feature available to players. And this is actually a pretty big deal because one thing that we always joke about is there's a whole. Slew of players out there that are as casual as they come, people that are just enjoying Marvel Snap for the beautiful game that it is, and you know what? They don't have Iron Lad, they don't have Nico, and they're trying to build some functional decks. Cozy, this feature's gonna allow them to do that.
Cozy Snap:I think this is a huge feature, right? Like, when it was first announced, I remember thinking like, What a waste of resources. Like, why, why, what are we doing here? The fact that it can be anywhere from one card to eleven that it replaces and it uses data that we don't even have access to. Right? Like, we're thinking, like, untapped. Smart decks could tell us more about the meta. Or it could be, like, you know, good, not fantastic, but still, like, really good decks. The thought looking at even the small snippet that we, we saw of it. Dude, I'm thinking smart decks are Incredible for casual players. The top of the top, right? If you don't watch YouTube, if you don't, if you pick it up and you're at work and you love Silver Surfer, you have no idea that Nova and Killmonger should go with Brood. Right? Like, it's that kind of stuff that this is gonna help. It's probably one of my favorite things to be released into the game because we've seen it. Snap has a massive casual audience. It's coming out at the perfect time around the holidays. I think it's, you know, I think that's probably timely as well. And then it's great for people that don't have Iron Lab. What is the next car that's in the meta that's a great replacement here. Time will tell if they're gonna have to tweak it up and make it work. If it's an Iron LA and it gives you Jessica Jones, you're like, why the hell did it? Do you know what I mean? But we're gonna have to see how it works. But from what we've seen, the snippets. Great for casuals, incredible to see how it works, and just using AI and getting ahead of the curve in the gaming industry. Love to see it, bud.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, it's pretty fascinating, and I had a couple thoughts about it. The first thing you kind of just touched on, I really hope it's better than, Oh, I don't have Iron Lad, please recommend me a card. Oh, Vanilla Hulk, thanks. Crossbones, yeah. Yeah, it's like, what? Don't just pick a random card and tell me to play to my deck. Come on now. But the other side to it, Cozy, is I thought like, okay, it works from one to 11 cards. So if I put like Darkhawk in, is it just going to use like second dinner's analysis and their stats to just give me the statistical best Darkhawk deck?
Cozy Snap:I think it, it, it's not going to just give you the statistical best. I think that's what I mean. It'll give you like. They're the top 5%, not the top 1%. That, or top 10, maybe not top 1%. That's my guess. Because again, decks at the top tier players play are so sophisticated, they're not gonna recommend those, you know. They're gonna recommend probably whatever that that's like a great deck, you know. It's going to say, hey, you should use Sentinel and Collector with Loki. You probably know Collector by then, but like, you should use Sentinel and Mirage. Those help you get your, you know, little things Devil Dinosaur. It's huge for pools 3, especially those that don't have complete collections. Dude, if smart decks launched with this game, good god, it would have been awesome.
Alexander Coccia:It's a huge feature, and I wonder if it's the kind of feature that would help encourage some players to come back. Be like, hey listen, you want to get started again, and you're kind of out of tune with the meta? Well, this feature is going to let you kind of know what cards you have that can be the most competitive. I think that's pretty neat.
Cozy Snap:I think it does. I think it will bring casuals back. More so than not. But, I want to get my hands on it, but from what I just saw, the snippet on the, on the trailer It looked cool. It looked like it was doing its job, you know?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah. And it's notable as well. And you kind of touched on it briefly, but they did say in a question and answer that it's using a data science powered model based on your collection and the current meta to craft the deck. So it's taking the meta, which I'm assuming is going to be internal statistics from second dinner. They're not going to publicly source whatever garbage we're having. But they're going to use internal data and then they're going to also kind of use like the actual personalized collection of the individual, which is huge because the whole premise of Marvel snap initially was, Hey, everyone has unique collections. I mean, that's not so much the case now, like the players I play against the infinity conquest, I assume they have every single card and most players do. It's not like, oh, they don't have a life. So they're not playing a lot. It's not, they have a life. Right. But like. I think there was something beautiful in the onset of Marvel Snap, where it's like, you're unlocking cards, you're playing these kind of like, patched together decks that you're trying to experiment with, where like, Magneto is like, the best card you have, so you're fitting Magneto into every single deck you can, and suddenly this, this tool is gonna say, oh, you got Magneto, you have this, or hey, you unlocked Jane Foster early, well guess what, it works with these types of cards. That could be really interesting for players, especially when they're unlocking things during Pool 3.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, I'm curious, like, if I put in a life, and I put, create a deck, Does it, does it make me a new one each time? Does it make the same in a given? You know what I mean? So that number one, but the other way I was thinking is like, I build all my own decks, I do all this, right? Like, I'm not going to be using this as much as, you know, maybe someone who's more casual. But, you know what I love about it? Like, kind of low key, that I think is great. I don't know about you, but like, deck codes are great. I get it. They're fine. Like, dude, whenever I'm like wanting to play Surfer, and I'm like, alright, let me build it from scratch and find these cards. I'm like, finding the cards sometimes is such a hassle. I love that I can go like, Surfer, auto deck, slot these four out, put four more in, and I'm good to go. You know what I mean? It's gonna help, like, kinda make deck building faster for the you know, not casual player as well.
Alexander Coccia:That's actually a good good point too, right? It kinda, like, kicks kick starts ya. When you're trying to design a deck, you're like, huh, yeah, I'm going to make a you know, a Jane Foster, Thor deck. I don't know. Maybe, oh, that's actually a pretty good point. You could also make kind of like interesting combos. You can kind of data mine where you're like, okay, can I make a Thor, Jane Foster kind of new negative deck? Right. Oh, I mean, that's literally what you just did.
Cozy Snap:That was like where we'll find out a Jane Thor and Thor. Like, do those go together? Yeah, exactly. I know what you're saying. Like, could it tell you some other great combos we're not thinking about? It'd be awesome.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, cause you'd be like, okay, here's Hobgoblin, Ravonna, and Magneto. And it like pulls together this kingpin deck that you're like, bro, look at this! Oh my god! And you take it all the way the distance cause it's incredible.
Cozy Snap:But also, you know what would be so cool? It could be a video series we might both end up doing. Is day one Sebastian Shaw smart deck recommendations. This is what it's saying, or is there not the data available? Like, I, you know what I mean? Like, does Second Dinner have the data of what they tested? And in that case, it'll be really interesting, and I don't know how that'll work. I kinda hope it says data not ready yet. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. Cause then if it...
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, you hit the button, it's just, it's Glenn's best deck. It shows up immediately for everybody.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, okay, well that died. But no, I think it'd be cool to see like you know, best surfer smart decks. And go through them and talk about them. And then talk about cards you can flex out, things like that.
Alexander Coccia:And you could even make an extension to that where like, you know, for instance, let's say a player's like under 1500 collection level and they want to do infinity conquest, wouldn't it be interesting if someone could like have an option and be like, Hey, you're new, you're under 1500 collection level. Do you, would you like to use a smart deck for the infinity conquest? And you hit the button and you actually have, Oh, sure. Look, I have a life. I have all these cards. I have not been able to play before with my infinity ticket, which I mean, kind of makes you, you can't just farm infinity tickets anyway. They're hard enough to get, but the smart deck feature might give players who are just trying to even experiment with some of the more meta cards. You might not have them yet. I think there's like some extensions to this, which could be interesting. Cause like infinity conquest is not a fair fight for someone with a thousand collection level, but maybe this, the smart deck feature. Might be able to kind of soothe that a little bit. I don't know. I'm just thinking, you know, I'm just snowballing. I think the feature has potential, but that's not the only thing that was discussed. Cozy. I think it's one of the most exciting, but we also have the emotes, the emotes. be excited. I mean, how much could we possibly say about the emotes? I thought they were pretty good.
Cozy Snap:I just hope like. It's a game at the end of the day, and like Galactus saying okay is fun. I think they're, we're gonna see loud people complain about them, and it's like, I don't know. I just don't think you should take it too seriously. I get that it can be used in toxic ways. They're going to be toxic as all hell. They're going to be, period, right? But also, it's like, just don't let yourself, like, don't let someone get your goat, was like the term that I used to hear all the time, right? Like, just chill out, man. Play Marvel Snap. Like, I get it, you just lost eight cubes and the guy's hitting you with an okay Galactus. But like, I don't know, you know what I mean? Like, that's my personality, I get it. People are A, sensitive, and B, wanna, you know, wanna be vocal. But does that make sense?
Alexander Coccia:No, it does make sense, and like, listen, I suspect that a lot of people are just gonna, like, this already happens, a lot of people auto mute the player, which I think is kinda sad, honestly. You know what one of my favorite things in Marvel Snap is right now? It really makes me happy. In Proving Grounds, when you snap, and they snap back, and both players fist bump, oh, that's great. That's humanity at its finest. Like that makes me so happy. I know it's like an unreasonably happy response. I'm like, you know what, man, I want to lose. I want to lose for you because like, like, I'm just so happy right now. And like that, I think there's so many times where I'll have like a long, long match of like conquest. And when I lose, even if I lose, I fist bump. And when that fist bump comes back, I don't know. It just makes me happy. I like the sportsmanship that like, you can be competitive. But you can be, you can have sportsmanship. And I think that you miss that sometimes if you auto mute and it's one of the only ways we have to communicate with the person on the other side. And so I think it's a shame that it gets muted as often as it does. Cause obviously it's used as such toxic effect all the time.
Cozy Snap:And this is going to allow so much more communication of like, like small ways without a chat, right? Like talking to your opponent and saying, okay. And who knows, man, if they let you have like 20 different emotes, it's like, dude, there's so many ways you can kind of like. Talk, which I think is fun in a way, too, without directly talking. You know, what I think, I've seen a lot of, you know, comments like, Oh, it's just, you know, they're definitely gonna monetize these. Like, no crap. Like, that is why they're here. You know what I mean? Like, but, what I would love to see is if, with these coming out. It would ultimately mean that there's less super expensive bundles, because this is another way to kind of relieve that pressure valve of making, you know money. But I also want to see them introduced in ways, you know, this is a win for everything. I think it's a win for people that want to buy these, but it's also a win for if they're in the season pass, or if they are earned in the next thing we're going to talk about in albums, which is correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's like collecting a set. We'll make it easy and call it Venomized, right? So there's Venomized, that's tough because there's a lot of them, but you know, we'll keep it simple. And then if you collect that set, you get a reward. Whether that's, I think it was a spotlight key, a unique variant, which is awesome. What else? Like credits and gold. I get it that that's there too.
Alexander Coccia:Sure. They, they did mention a couple of things, but they very specifically. Did say that emotes were part of those packages as well, I believe.
Cozy Snap:Yes, and so that is one way. Now, I heard in the OTA, did they say like the ones that launch will have XYZ? They better launch with retroactive variants. Like the variants we've bought already better count towards these for sure.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, I mean, there's lots of question marks here. We obviously don't know what packages are being offered. I think they said that the albums are, are they 12 cards? 12 card albums?
Cozy Snap:I think in the first set, coming out, yeah.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, so 12 cards, and then there'll be a collection of I think Venomize is a perfect example, right? That's got to be one of them. It has to be, right? I wonder if you'll have a specific artist ones, too, and if that could be potentially...
Cozy Snap:Yeah, but this is awesome to me. Like, to me, this is perfect, and it adds collecting, which I love, because imagine now, there was no point to get the Venomize Baron Mordhau, but if that's the last thing you need, To get a unique Venom, right? You get a Venom that nobody has unless you have all the Venom ones, and that's kind of your goal, right? Like, everyone plays Marvel Snap different. I think this adds to the collectors, and it adds a new incentive. To collect variants, right? Rather than just like, Hey, I have my 19th black widow.
Alexander Coccia:I get what you're saying, but like, there is the potential to troll people so hard. I know what you, you, you just said you're gonna buy a venom barren to finish the kit. The kit. Imagine, imagine there's 12 cards of venom. They release a 1200 gold, like venomized Baron, you have 11 of the 12 and you're staring at the shop. You're like, I gotta spend 1200 gold. On this baron, because I want to get the exclusive rewards, like that is so troll y, I don't know if they could do that, man.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, no, no, totally, man, I think there's gonna be like expensive albums, and then like, not so much, right, like this Hellfire is definitely gonna be one. Like the it's out for one day, the new variants, it's definitely gonna be one, and that is, literally it's like a gala, it's meant to be for the, like, you know, the whales, essentially, right and so that's why they're only coming for one day, exclusive. So again, I think there's good, there's bad. Ultimately, it's going to make them money. That's why they're doing it, but I do think it's really cool to add different reasonings to get variants and continue to build on, in my opinion, one of the coolest pieces of Snap, right?
Alexander Coccia:I have a hot take. Okay. Could it be that the rewards for these albums are potentially the Mythic variants?
Cozy Snap:I think Mythic Variants are dead, I thought.
Alexander Coccia:They're dead? They're not doing them anymore? I thought that was a thing.
Cozy Snap:I don't know. Maybe they are. I can't keep track because I'm still waiting for my Ultimate Variants at this point. But yeah, I mean. That's true. I think, yeah, I think they've stated and I saw something from like a tournament site that got, like, announced early. It's like, it had like a Juggernaut. There's like a Juggernaut variant. There's a Spotlight key, which people are mad at. I think it's fine, like, if you happen to have The set, you get a spotlight key, cool, like, you know, whatever. You know, whales are going to rejoice from that. I'm kind of sad they're not having like a bunch come out at once. I think it's like the first set, it's like dude, release a bunch of sets and then that way people like you, who have like a hundred variants, you can update your game and all of a sudden you're like, Whoa, I just got seven spotlight keys, six new variants, and this, because I already had these variants that unlocked. Whatever, you know what I mean?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah. And if the variants are worth something in these kits, like I'm sitting on well, almost 600 collectors reserves. So like if unlocking 700 goal variants will actually help me like finish these kits or finish these albums. And all of a sudden, that makes the reserves, theoretically, a little more valuable, at least. Because, maybe you know, I'll actually pull variants that, like, are useful in these albums. I just hope the albums aren't, like, stacked with, like, Hey, you need to collect 12 ultimate variants. Well, it's like, well, you know what I mean? Like, we don't even have enough tokens. But that would be cool if that was one of them.
Cozy Snap:But it can't be, like, the only one. All collectors need the prize, the ring, the one ring in Magic, right? You need to have levels and I'm fine you say what you will that the people that love to farm negativity are gonna do it But there needs to be the one to collect them all and then there needs to be the easy sport variants So, you know what? I mean like both 700s and the rares. I think I'm good with both.
Alexander Coccia:You know It's cuz you own almost every game and they're all gold split crackled I mean, I wasn't gonna say it but the start of this podcast you had an absolutely filthy Ultron I was like so jealous of it. I could barely even like Get the words talking at the start of the podcast. It was so nice. The Kim Jacinto gold sparkled. you kidding me? Unbelievable. Yeah, so Koz, you are well prepared for this new system with the albums, aren't you?
Cozy Snap:I'm ready. I'll be able to tell people immediately what you're gonna be able to get from it. That's for sure. You know, it's what got me falling in love with Snap was the variants and, and like the uniqueness. I think it's I love Infinity Avatars and even more so I love the The new variant avatars because you can express, you know, I've got a friggin Infinity Border Shadow King pixelated. Nobody's having that! I love that that, like, people want to know if they're facing me, there you go! That's it right there, and I think adding to that uniqueness is definitely cool now that splits have become less rare.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, I get what you're saying. I have a question though, do you have an Infinity Border Coulson pixel?
Cozy Snap:Like for an avatar? Dude, getting those avatars are so rare. So I don't, like, I haven't been off. Oh dude, if I had, if I had the coolest, I won Infinity Conquest. I think I'm four. I've won four already. I've used'em all on Pixel avatars. But I've And the Rock Of course. And the Rock, yeah. Well, no, no. Just this season I've, I've done four new ones and so I've done, oh yeah. So this season I've done the Pixel Shadow King. I've done the Psylocke that was the Psylocke that came up. I did the Swordmaster, which I thought was pretty spicy. I got a cool Swordmaster. And then the new Doctor Strange, I thought was cool. The new art kinda water one, but anyway, yeah, so Listen, I think the small updates are nice flavor touches in this season as people are gonna be playing a bit more Snap in December. And overall you know, should be a big dubs cozy.
Alexander Coccia:We're now at our mailbag. One of my absolute favorite things that we do now on a weekly basis. So if you have a question for us, get into the comment section down below, put mailbag in caps, ask your question, and we'll be getting to as many as we can each week. And if we didn't get to yours, make sure you ask again, we'll be going through each week. Now, cozy question. Number one comes from Lori Brian Ramirez. And the question is what is worse martyr or elephants? Cozy, I'll let you
Cozy Snap:start. Ooh, I mean, it's easy for me. It's Martyr, right? It's almost a new question for you guys on this Snapchat. Is it Martyr, Elephants, or Christmas? What do you hate the most?
Alexander Coccia:You know what? I honestly, I think that Elephants are a little clunkier than Martyr. They're just like, their feet are really, really big. They're really clumsy, but ultimately I think that Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart, I already know the title of the song, that is by far the worst. If I had to rank them, so the Last Christmas song is the worst, followed by Martyr, and then Elephants.
Cozy Snap:I can't wait to hear your Christmas movie rankings, I can't wait to You're gonna be putting like, some just garbage, Home Alone's not top tier, I'm gonna lose it. Yeah, listen, I also wanna say this for listeners, viewers as well, I feel like we need, we don't have any jingles, In our, in our, in our podcast, you know what I mean? I listen to podcasts and I hear a little, if somebody who's an audio guy out there can come up with a sweet mail time intro, dude, I would love, you know what I mean? Like a little mail time, mail time. The challenge is out there, my deems will be open on Twitter wanted to throw that out, but anyway, yes, for me, martyr elephant hater over there, Alex I would love to be able to track your hate. Elephants like on an app. So we, we should have that. What's the next question for the mailbag?
Alexander Coccia:Next question is from stuff. And there's asking, assuming the devs reversed every nerf they've ever done to date, what do you think would be the most dominant deck we'll say or card in Marvel snap?
Cozy Snap:But it's tough. With beta too, like negative was a 4 4. So that was obviously like busted as all hell. So like, that's where I want to go is like, Oh, negative. But honestly, with the forecast that we have today. With the forecast that we have right now, it has to be the Zabu that came out. It has to be because of the new cards we've gotten.
Alexander Coccia:No, no. And without question, the original Zabu was absolutely insane. Negative two power cost. It's crazy. Like if you think back to the beta days, there was the time where like Nova was absolutely insane, where it gave plus two, right? And then you also had devil dinosaur. I don't even remember the stat line. Was it a. Was it a 3 cost? A 4 cost? It wasn't even a 5 3, it was something way better.
Cozy Snap:Dude, there's been so many nerfs that if you brought them back, like Lockjaw, the Thanos deck was insane. Shuri with power anywhere would be Galactus nowadays with a Ravonna deck and a lot, like, there's so many, but I'm just telling you man, The Zabu 4s, I couldn't imagine the Lockdown, if you think you hated Lockdown now, you had Spider Man in there. With like, Alioth, and it would be terrible! It'd be awful!
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, I was just, I was even thinking about like, Death Wave, like traditional Death Wave, you remember that? With like, She Hulk death. Leader. Yeah, oh, Leader, the original Leader. What's crazy about Leader, you're bringing back in time, Leader sat like, untouched for like, all of beta. All the three first months of launch, and it wasn't until like December this time last year. Everyone's like, hmm, wow, Leader's ruining everything. Leader Leech, look at this, what happened?
Cozy Snap:It's because everyone just got to pool three right around then. They did, I think it was December 1st, they did like Destroyer, Angela, and Bishop. And then they're like, alright, see you after the holidays! And everyone lost Angela that they were playing. And then they're like, oh, this Leader fella is kind of cracked. And then yeah, it all went downhill fast. So that's a tough question, but yeah, for me, my solid answer has got to be Zabu.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah. And I mean, a good fallback would be the original Shuri too was still insane with like the original red skull and all that stuff. Right. But Hey, but even then vision wasn't as strong as vision is now vision got buffed, believe it or not. So, Hey, pretty interesting. We'll close it off with two quick ones here. One from Edwin. An interesting question, why don't patch notes get released a week early? The patch notes can't change due to the app store approval process. So why withhold the information? This is, I guess a lot of games will sometimes will give patch notes in advance. I know like Diablo 4 did that with like, Hey, this is what's changing next week. Why do you think Marvel Snap doesn't?
Cozy Snap:Hey, because it's weekly patch notes. So like it's pretty rare. So the gaming industry doesn't have that usually. B, I think, the thing is, is rather than patch notes coming out early, things can change at the last minute. We know that for a fact, and we've seen that. I would say a test server would probably be more imperative, and then you can see what is being tested out there, and then things cannot be broken, things like that. I think that's another conversation. But mainly because, dude, there's a million things that can happen, and they can change their mind on a moment's notice, I guess. Even if they're locked in, they still have the ability to pull it, right? So, they may decide at the last second, hey, this felt like something we needed to do. But we're going to yank it, but if that info is out there, it's out there. And people already react strong enough to datamines. God forbid that as well, right? So probably, I think that would be the answer. I don't know. I can't speak for the devs.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah. I mean, I don't know anything about game development at all. And I guess what you're talking about is like exactly what the Firestar situation was, right? They had to be responsive. Like that's a perfect example. If they're, if they're releasing all their notes away in advance, then they don't have the flexibility to kind of back off it. Right. And, and you're right. Also, people are taking data mines as gospel truth half the time. So it's important that they give, have the opportunity to be flexible.
Cozy Snap:And I know I was going to just say, I used to conjugate for a Disney game. And I know, like, dude, Disney has to sign off on one billion things for every character. Like, I know that for a fact. I've talked to those teams. So, like, if the Baymax wasn't represented the right way, it'd be like, pull it, right? So, like, there's things that happen, dude, we don't know anything. You know what I mean? I think people see things as black and white. But we don't know. Maybe it was Firestar was broken. Who knows, right?
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely. And the final question of the Snapchat today is Do you have any worries that the game will run out of interesting characters from the Marvel Universe to turn into cards? And that's from Matt.
Cozy Snap:My word is for Marvel Snap, A or R from now, years from now, but card development, design, ain't one of them.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, I think there's like a huge well of characters and I think even coming in January, is it Meek? Who I just, I just saw, like I was watching, it's like he's the Korg's friend, isn't he? Little Meek? I was like, oh look, they can make Meek a character! Probably makes so many smaller side characters cards as well. So I think that they're probably more limited on their imagination on different card effects than they are the actual characters themselves. So,
Cozy Snap:Yeah, we've gotten to a point too, where it's like, I don't think we care, you know what I mean? Like iron lad is iron lad at this point. And we know him from that. Jeff is Jeff knows. No, I didn't know these guys beforehand. I knew a lot of them, but I didn't know all of them. And I think it's the. Suction that gets you in from the Marvel perspective with Wolverine. And then you're like, oh, they're kinda all cool. And now I love characters like Arrow. I got tagged a million times to bring an Arrow to the MCU. I'm like, sign me up. Woah, woah, they are? Yeah, I know. I needed a minute. I didn't know that. I just, I just, I found out and I just kinda walked out my house. Looked at the sunset. Thanked the maker and just took a nice long walk. You got really emotional, I can see that. Broke down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I broke down in tears. So we'll have to, We'll have to come back to that subject when we, when we release. They better cast her well. But anyway, yes I think that Marvel is such a huge universe. It's like Star Wars. They both just have incredible things to pull from. And then even if you don't know it, you end up loving it because it's just a cool, you know, cool IP.
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely. And there's so many stories to be told in comics and of course, in the MCU as well. No shortage of characters. And I think they've actually answered that question before. I think there's been a Q& A about that. They're like, nope, we don't think that's going to be a problem at all. Yeah. Anyways, guys, thank you so much for all of your support of both cozy, nice content, we really appreciate it we hope you enjoyed this week's Snapchat.
Cozy Snap:Guys, have fun in the December season, remember Alex hates Christmas, and as always, until the next one, happy snapping!