The Snap Chat: Marvel Snap Podcast
New Year, New Season: Planet Hulk | Breakdown of Every New Card | Best Snap Moments of 2023 | The Snap Chat Ep. 61
How good is the new season cards? What are Cozy and Alex's final rankings on the cards in December? What were the best Snap moments of 2023? 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.
How good is the new season cards? What are Cozy and Alex's final rankings on the cards in December? What were the best Snap moments of 2023? 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? Happy New Year, the year's 2024, and we've got a brand new season kicking off tomorrow with Scar and Planet Hulk. This season's gonna be crazy with tech cards and a lot of new flavors to archetypes. Today, Alex and I are gonna break down every single card and give our early ratings and combos and how we think they're gonna fit into Marvel Snap. We're gonna talk about that all today and more on this New Year's Day episode of the Snapchat. And as always, I am joined by Mr. Alex Coccia hello, happy 2024 or welcome to 2024 to both you and all of our viewers, guys. Hopefully you had a good New Year's Eve. I cannot believe both of our Snapchats have now lined up with Christmas Day and the New Year's Day. How you doing, buddy? How was your New Year's?
Alexander Coccia:Hey, it's been great. Cozy, what's your new year's resolution? I need to know.
Cozy Snap:Oh my gosh. I have a lot of them. Me and my wife sat down. We put them out. I've got, you know, I've got the stereotypical stuff, right? Like got to get healthier. I've had that on there like every single year, just till I push it to the next year. And then just, I have a lot of goals, man. Like goals, personal goals, family goals and stuff for the future of content creating, man. I have a lot. How about you?
Alexander Coccia:I'm hoping to get haircuts more often.
Cozy Snap:That's a good one. What about Costco less? Is that, I mean, that's a pretty easy goal to hit, no?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, but here's the thing, right? I also want to try and be healthier, and I walk to Costco. So, there's that, like Two birds, one stone. Exactly, my man. So I'm getting those steps in. I got, I got myself like one of those smart watches that counts how many steps you're getting so I can get to 10, 000 every day. I literally, I feel like I've aged 20 years in the last, like, six months.
Cozy Snap:Dude, wear more turtlenecks. Say names wrong more. Yeah, I've got a list of them. Maybe stream more, which is like, I don't know, having one stream a month or something like that. I did like 13 last year, something like that in total. Alex, what are we talking about on your side of the Snapchat?
Alexander Coccia:We're going to be talking about our final rankings for the cards of December, 2023. There was a lot of surprises in here and cozy. I can't wait to talk about that. We're going to be talking about the best snap moments of 2023 and. In terms of like Snap as a whole and just for us as well as individuals, content creators, and as people who love the game. And then finally, we're going to be closing it off with the first mailbag of 2024.
Cozy Snap:Well, buddy, Planet Hulk season starts tomorrow. And finally, dude, I got to say, I love when. The patch and the season don't come at the same day, right? Because we're going to have Tuesday be the new card scar. Let us have some fun with what I think he's going to bring. Some good evolution to some decks. And then the next Tuesday is going to be the patch. That's the series drops and then all of probably some pretty significant. We've had some crazy card changes. You know, who knows? Maybe we get a Loki change. Maybe we get some of the bigger cards you know, tuned down just a bit. But New Year, man. New us. New Snapchat. And more importantly, new season. Let's start with the Season Pass card. Get right into it on this New Year's Day, buddy. If you guys don't know, Scar is a 6 cost. He's 11 power. He did not kill Mufasa, but he is the lovechild of Kaiera and Hulk. His ability is cost 2 less for each of your cards that have 10 or more power. Obviously, these being on the board, not in your hand, I'd be absolutely busted. Let's go ahead and jump into, obviously, the cards we think are gonna be good. How he's going to serve. Is he just a big, static card? Where does he best fit? But as always, man, star ratings. And remember, you're gonna be held to these. So we gotta make This is a tough season, too.
Alexander Coccia:It is a tougher season. I'm going with an easy four star here. I think that he can definitely be even stronger. But some of the synergies are a little tricky. Because of I think there's some very cognizant, like, costing that Second Dinner did here with like Kind of like some of the cards that are going to be supplementing Scar are very specifically costed where like, you can't get them all into one deck. And so like the, the ceiling is kind of being pushed down a bit, but how often, how often has cost reduction been absolutely insane in this game? So we, we simply cannot sleep on cost reduction. I'm a minimum four star player here.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, dude. So like, I think I've learned my lesson from getting anything. I mean, we were even the hottest on Loki and we still weren't like even close to what he became. Now, obviously this isn't Loki. SheHulk has long been up there as one of my favorite cards to play. I know that, you know, you have been a huge fan of the High Evo deck that loves the SheHulk double down, just double up decks in general. We know what that can bring to the table. Now, I also know that some cards that counter him are also kind of on the uprise tick as well. But let's just cut it down for what it's worth, right? I love the four star valuation. I give him what you give She Hulk. It's just a different way that's played out. So, how you view She Hulk is how I view him, which I would say is about a four, four and a half. Which seems very high. But that's mainly because he is truly a plug and play card at his finest, right? Like, he is going to need, there's about 30 plus cards that allow him to come a little bit cheaper of cost. And we're going to, you know, kind of start there. But like, I love any card that can slot into any deck as like a big power card. Cause we don't have a lot of those, right?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah. He's kind of the opposite of like very niche to down cards. Like even Sebastian Shaw, right? We had saw the potential for Sebastian Shaw elevating something like a Silver Surfer, which it did. But it's dead on arrival pretty much everywhere else, right? It doesn't have that universal kind of applicable nature that I think something like a Scar will. Now, Scar's gonna require some deliberate deck building.
Cozy Snap:He's still a 6 11 is the way that I look at it, right? So Magneto is a 6 12 right? And I don't know how many times I plug in Magneto into the deck, because I'm like, oh man, 12 power. It's just a great final play, right? So let's start with This is why I think he's just busted, right? Giganto's a 6 14, and you're limited to the left lane. At worst, if Scar does nothing, he does nothing the whole battle, he's a 611, okay? A 411 is absolutely premium, great, really good valued stats, right? I mean, we're, it's better than Sentry, it's hard to get Darkhawk there, you have to play a lot. And technically, you either need a good location like Monster Island to pop up, or you have one other card that synergizes with him. 2. 11 is absolutely hilariously silly, and then of course a free 0. 11. Is, is downright ridiculous, and that's gonna be very hard to probably achieve a 0 11. But it's not impossible. It's not impossible. The fact that he can average as a 2 or 4, and mainly probably we're gonna see him come out as a 4 11 a lot of the times. In conjunction with She Hulk is why I give this guy just such a good rating. And it's kind of a card that I'm all about and one that I would definitely, I'm going to be playing a ton.
Alexander Coccia:I like exactly what you said there and this is something I think we've come back to multiple times when we try to evaluate cards. There's always going to be the, well, we can get the werewolf by night to 45 somehow, right? Like, there's always those like circumstances where you just, you send blob over a hundred. But, I think it's so key to think about what the baseline and most common statistical line is for these cards that you can rely on. And you're right, 411, I am happy with that. I am absolutely happy with 411. And that's because you have cards like Shadow King that slot into the two slot. We're thinking about what, what happens to a collector. You play Shadow King on a collector, and then you throw Scar into another location. Like that is a huge board flip, right? So. I love that four stat line because even if you're not like magicing to turn seven to do all this stuff That is scar coming down as 11 straight up power with also the ability for you to play something else in conjunction with it as well, so I I do think that 4 11 is where I see him being played most often and anything else is gravy And there's a lot there's like guys.
Cozy Snap:There's a lot of cards That can be cheated out early, that will have that 10 premium stat line, and then you can quickly use Scar's ability, get him out there before it dips down below that, right? There's, we can go through some of our favorites. Before we focus on the cards that allow him to be played early, I always like talking, we kind of always do this with each card that comes out. What are you playing him in, like, what are you going to be slotting him in first? And for me, personally, I think this is now the beginning, and it's going to continue to get better throughout this month. But I think this is back in action. Lockjaw decks are back here ready to go. Little bit of gamba in those, but I think that this is his best home by far, because there's a lot of ways to manipulate cards that have come out since Janejaw kind of took a fall. To me, it seems like Lockjaw is the perfect deck for the guy.
Alexander Coccia:Lockjaw will be really interesting. I'm glad you actually brought that out. Cause it was like maybe like fourth down on my list that I was going to talk about, but I do see it there and we also have another card coming out, Beta Rebuild, which could potentially have like an impact on Lockjaw too. So maybe Lockjaw needs a little bit of love given the fact that like it did fall off, like Lockjaw Thanos, there was a. Point in time, which was absolutely the most insane deck and snap. And then they made some changes to lockjaw, obviously cycling once per turn, et cetera. But where I plan to play him first is actually going to be with Annihilus. The reason for this is cause I see this play where you can do century four, Annihilus five, and you have scars of four because centuries on the board. And then you have an additional, like again, Shadow King, even a hood plus another one drop or whatever. I'm trying to figure out that turn six. But with Sentry and Nihilus, I feel like there's often opportunities to be creative with what you do on turn six. I mean, you can even play Nihilus on turn six too, right? So that you have those fallback lines. If you play him on turn six with Hood, like, that's a lot of power. And you've sent over the Void. You have Sentry as a 410. You have a Nihilus. You've probably sent over Selene. Maybe not, actually. That's a whole other Conversation but like at the end of the day, I think that there's that like, that flexibility of how you can use, utilize that two extra energy you save. Yeah. Just to make that last play more impactful. So that's one of the places I wanted to play in for sure.
Cozy Snap:Yeah. So, okay. I think Lockjaw is gonna do really well because obviously you can have cards that slam out of there quickly and you can even get Thor up there to a ten power card from I'd love that. That naturally will be where I am most excited to play, an archetype that I love to play, that I haven't been able to play in a good amount of time. The other place, and it was almost spawned from the Lockjaw build that I was cooking up. I was like, well, I loved being able to play, and Hela won't be in the picture, in my head, but I love this deck that I had. I had this Lockjaw with Black Knight deck, and I was like, okay, you can use Black Knight as a token for Lockjaw. Ebony Blade is the perfect card to get out early. The 30 cards I talked about plus earlier, most of them you can't even get out until like turn 5 or 6. Ebony Blade, as we know, can get very high power very quickly. This, to me, seems like the perfect, absolute perfect puzzle piece to already Black Knight decks that are kind of hot. They're, they're definitely doing much better than they were, have more consistency. That would be the other deck that I like them in.
Alexander Coccia:That's five head, I actually not considered that you're right, because that ebony blade sits there, and it's not susceptible to shanchi, it's not susceptible to pretty much everything, anything at all, and so like, it gets to sit there and just, just do its thing, right? And so like, I love that call out there, that's a really good call, and you're right, it would fit in a deck that naturally has massive cards, right?
Cozy Snap:Yeah, and you could just play ebony blade down, and then you could also play down ghost rider that picks the other big card, and this is where I actually think you could get away with getting a free One of these guys is essentially what you would do is you do have the Ghost Rider and then you have the actual blade itself. But I have Zabu. This is cutting ahead, but I have Zabu as one of the best synergized cards here because to your point, Sentry is obviously a big power card. But how many four power cards or cost cards can you get to ten, especially the earlier you play them? Darkhawk is a great example, just slamming them out there early. Obviously, Ghost Rider's a 4 cost. I think there's something there with Ebony Blade being discounted down to 3 to allow a 2 cost Scar, which at that point is insane.
Alexander Coccia:And you can even make the argument that if you're going to be playing 10 cost cards, you might want to have an armor, which might make sense with something like an Atuma. I don't know if that's hopium or copium or anything like that, because I like Atuma, but you know, Atuma technically reaches that. I mean, Namur does, right? But those are very niche situations where maybe a deck like that would work. I could see a Atuma working, honestly, because why wouldn't you run armor? But anyways that's a whole other conversation, but I want to throw one more archetype that I think Loki might be a winner. Again, I'm still trying to pen and paper that turn six, seven a little bit, but Sauron and Shuri, okay? Like, if you think about Sauron on turn three, Typhoid Mary on turn four. And you have Red Skull on turn five, that's two discounted effects to Scar. He's now two energy and that's on, and then so, but unfortunately you can't task master in Scar now. That would require a turn seven, right? So that's where I'm trying to figure out the line, but still that Scar is a two drop. Right? And, and Shuri Redskull.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, dude, we, I think, back when I looked at the new cars from the datamine, I was like, Shuri Soron needs something now to kind, like, it was known as the best big power deck, right? Then Tribunal beat that out, because it, it, it can just naturally get higher in three lanes, right? Which makes it difficult to beat, and, heh. It's such a great balancing act, because the Shuri deck trades tech cards for the big power, right? And it needs those tech cards in it, so can Scar replace another one of those big cards in there? And I do think, naturally, we'll get to our next card in a second, the Mama Scar, is gonna fit in a lot of these decks and make him just a better card, you know, overall. However, I have him above Sebastian Shaw in my overall rankings, and obviously, like, not, Ms. Marvel is just a hard thing to beat in general. But I do think he's gonna be much more applicable than Shaw, and that alone is gonna give him some mass appeal. Now, a couple other decks I wanted to mention, dude, and, and honestly, might be my first time, I said Lockjaw, but you You know I love Double Up Decks. Kind of the reason Rocks and Hawks is one of my favorite, and I didn't do Dr. Doom in that build, is I did She Hulk. I love playing two She Hulks. It's such a satisfying play. As you already know, Moon Girl is one that we talk about quite often on the Snapchat these days. The possibility of finding out a way, Alex, to get out, whether it's, I don't know, Devil Diamond, it doesn't really matter. But being able to get out the double Scar and double She Hulk possibility, or just giving yourself either or. Like, if you get She Hulk on the leftmost side, it's like, you're cooking. But now you can get Scar or She Hulk and change up the game plan a little bit. If you end up getting these cards together. I think this is going to be a national huge fit.
Alexander Coccia:I find that Moongirl decks tend to also be really strong 8 cubers because people will have a hard time tracking what your threat level is. Because they won't know if you have double She Hulk. They won't know if you have double Scar, right? It's hard for them to determine what the threat level is of your play with Moongirl. And that's one of the things I really like about Moongirl. I used her in, In Twitch Rivals for that exact reason, right? And it was with She Hulk, exactly, right? And like this, listen, you're preaching to the converted here, right? I love She Hulk and I love Moon Girl. And I do think there's going to be some legitimate synergy with Scar.
Cozy Snap:Now, I wanted to bring up High Evo, but we'll get to that with probably Kaiera, but I think naturally Scar, like, I was like waiting for Alex to bring up the High Evo build with Scar, but because of Kaiera's, you know, role in that. Last couple ones I wanted to throw your way. So Thanos, I was looking at. Thanos is what? He's good at ramping out five cost cards, which is good to be able to get off some of these ten power cards. Naturally, I just was kind of looking at his role in this. We have another card coming out I think next month that has another ten power card. So Thanos might come into that build. But I thought it was kind of cheeky that you could end up doing some type of Thanos build and even if it had nine powers, like, I don't know. Jessica Jones, alright, hear me out here. You can end up playing Blue Marvel and boosting those up to 10. Right, like you take them up to 10 and then you're able to then have the free scar. I thought that was kinda cool.
Alexander Coccia:It's actually a super good note, and actually a key point of Chayera, which we'll be talking about soon, because Chayera will actually enable Blue Marvel, in my opinion, because it'll protect your stones. Like it'll protect those smaller cards that will lift the value of Blue Marvel in those types of decks. Cause right now Blue Marvel is getting cut on occasion for greedier plays for the Blob Thanos style decks. And so with that addition of Caiera, of course, is what I'm referring to. Blue Marvel has a much bigger role to play. So it's, it's honestly a great call out. You're right. A hundred percent.
Cozy Snap:I mean, looking at the earliest cars that you can get out there, I talked about those 30 lists, right? Like, I think the most common of commons, outside of cheating with Jubilee, Lockjaw, Ghost Rider, those kind of methods that we've seen before, those are naturally going to happen. I mean, we've already pointed out a good amount of the decks that can work in them. Darkhawk, to me, just seems like, even with the blob thing, he seems like one of the more obvious ways to just get out a quick 10 power, you know, card out there. Maybe pass with She Hulk and you can get them both out there. I'm curious, like, what are the cards that you think are going to best synergize with Scar, and then we'll talk about the counters.
Alexander Coccia:I mean, for me, like, a lot of my planning has been around Sentry. I think that Annihilus continues to be one of the best packages in the game. Sentry works perfectly with Annihilus. The 5 cost of Annihilus does not necessarily impede a turn 6 with Scar, because you can play it kind of however you want. But the key thing is that, like, I see Sentry as being 420 power. Like I see it as a low key control card, kind of analogous to something like a nebula where your opponent is not wanting to have to deal with the location kind of situation of that void is going to come over if I don't do something about it. Right. So like a lot of my early planning has been about how can I take what I know is an incredible package in Annihilus and incorporate SCAR while not being too greedy, but. Again, trying to maybe, can I get him to two power, right? I don't know, because obviously Nihilus doesn't have that reach. It's sentry that you're kind of relying on. And if you don't draw into sentry, what happens? Scar feels like a bit of a dead draw. So there is inherent risk there. But honestly, like, I don't know, man. I'm excited for the card. I think that it's, it's going to be a solid one.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, I'll end on the note of, I'm just looking at the ramp options. I'm looking at Wave. I'm looking at Electro. I'm looking at ways that you can utilize these cheaper cards. Even Psylocke, Shocker, High Evo. To just push the power of these higher ones, and not to get, if, listen, if you have a Monster Island pop up, and then you get Sheolk and stuff, like, great, take your 2 to 3, or 0 Scar, but guys, just playing this guy as the premium stat line on value, making decks, like Alex said, with maybe an archetype that you like, is where I see Scar being pretty cool in this game, and, and, and definitely one that I'm gonna be playing a lot of. When it comes to counters, I think it's pretty obvious here. I mean, by far, no question. I made a tweet on him. I've been playing him. We saw him in a in the Sarah Control deck, right? And that's obviously going to be Mobius. And Mobius, this is his biggest counter by far. He's back on the rise. It shuts him down completely. In fact, kills the card, but he's still 611. So if you combine too many cost reducing things like She Hulk and all that, this just kills that deck. But Scar, by himself, he can survive Mobius.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, so he's slightly underpowered compared to a like a nude regular Hulk, right? Regular Hulk, 6'12 The son is a 6'11 And you're right, that's not a huge price to pay for, I, well, Mobius came out. But where you probably get punished is, like, you're probably running She Hulk. You're probably doing all these things that you want to do to cheat him out. And maybe your turn six play doesn't look quite as it should. But that's exactly what Mobius on Mobius is designed to do. If that's happening to you, like All things are balanced as they should be, right? That's exactly what Mobius is meant to do. One thing worth knowing, I know there's 3 drop when talking about ramp though, I don't want to talk about, it's a counter but it's not, but don't get, I think there's, like, you shouldn't be playing Electro obviously with this card, because you can't, like, you reduce the cost, and then you're like, okay, what now, I can still only play one card, I can play Scar and Jeff, cool I guess. Yeah, but Electro is not necessarily a ramp option. So in that case, I'm glad you actually brought up Wave prior because Wave, I think is going to be the preferred ramp option for this card. And of course the Time Stone and Psylocke.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, absolutely. It was funny, man. The only way I would play, the reason I mentioned Electro is mainly for Selene and I'll get to that, but I was doing this. This, this pushdown Electro is the lowest cost, or the lowest power in your deck. And then you play a Nihilus the next turn, push him over, and then you, like, that was the deck I was playing, and that is hot. I don't know if you'd play that. That's dirty, yeah. That's disgusting. We'll wait, you guys have to listen on Alex's side to hear that, that one. But definitely overall a little bit of a different week. We can't say, hey, these spotlights are great, because the trailer is launching, I believe. I guess potentially on Tuesday, maybe we can expect it tomorrow. Either way, it's not out yet, and that has me kind of guessing that they might change up some stuff. So we can't say, hey, it's coming out with these spotlights for sure. However, what I can tell, I can tell you both of us are saying Scar is about a a four cost card, and one that you're just not going to regret. I don't, I love looking at nerf and buff proof. I think he's probably going to be fine. I think he's going to survive. There's ways to handle him. But ultimately, he's going to be a lot better card. And we're all better people because of Mama, right? Because of Mama, we're all better people. And High Evo's the deck I want to talk about with her and him involved. But next up, Kyaira, buddy. Kyaira was the one that got datamined and everyone was like, I need to have this card. This is Hulk's lover. They had this card together. She is a three cost, four power card as stands. Again, all this could change. Ongoing, your one and six cost cards cannot be destroyed. My, my god, dude. This is like, I kind of wish this card came out a year ago for Zudex and for these other decks that really need it. Kaira, to me, I'm seeing it split in half. I'm seeing people like, she's not gonna fit in decks, and others are like, this is the next best card in the game. You can't convince me that this is not a great card. This to me seems fantastic for the decks that want it.
Alexander Coccia:Cozy, you want a hot take? I'm ready to hot take. This is five stars.
Cozy Snap:Listen, I know that you will absolutely welcome in the receipts when we go and we end up final ranking her. I know you're gonna be like, bring, like, listen, we're doing the final rankings in December, which I think we did okay with. I don't disagree. Unless something happens, this is easily a 4. 5 ish up there tech card for me. Because why not? Why would you not put her in your deck? It's like when we looked at Mobius, right, and everything that he counted when he was originally, it was an obvious he was gonna be good. This just seems, like, it seems so good. And it's funny, like, we'll get to the Six of Cards, buddy, in a second. Can we just talk about being able to play Sunspot? Being able to play your Nebula? Let's talk about your deck, High Evo. This is probably the best card for High Evo. I can think of.
Alexander Coccia:It's incredible. You play it on three and then you Cyclops on four. Like, and you basically can play Nebula and Sunspot with absolute, like, full confidence. Those things stay on the board. Of course, there's Rogues and there's Enchantresses. But who's playing all that greedy stuff outside of all the top players? But yes, of course, right? There's going to be counters, but like, as a whole, when have we had a card in Marvel Snap where you've had board wide effects that aren't incredibly strong? Like Luke Cage just got nerfed. Because of this exact type of effect, a board wide effect, that completely changes the way your opponent can interact with your board. Huge, it's huge. It's just, it's a phenomenal card.
Cozy Snap:At first I thought she was going to be because when they changed all the board wide effects to single lane, I thought either that was going to happen, but then that felt very off, felt very armory, like why not, you know what I mean? Or I thought maybe she gets a little bit better stats, and it's for all cards on the board, your opponent and yours, so like that way it's like you're playing it because you probably built a deck around it, if that makes sense, but then it kind of affects everything on the board, so you can't shang chi your opponent's card, you know what I mean? Like I thought that was kind of another way to fair her out a bit. Either way, dude, listen, people are very, they're not fully grasping how good this card is because of the decks that want to or need to, and most importantly, bringing back the importance to one cost, we're always saying this, Killmonger has been the card of cards that has just been really What keeps Zoo and 1 cost cards at bay, right? Like, you, he kinda, I would say he cycles in and out of the meta, but more so or not, he's in a deck, right, Alex? Like, he's there, the threat of him is there, it's been there for as long as we've been playing Snap, and now this is such a surefire way that if you have priority, which if you're playing 1 cost, you probably do, You just get her out right in time.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah. So it does, it does a lot to really genuinely lift Zoo as an archetype as a whole to protect them from Killmonger, but just all one drops benefit from this. Now, like this is a huge pullback in Killmonger because Killmonger, even in Silver Surfer, you could confidently play Killmonger and just snipe one drops that your opponent was relying on. Even Loki players, right? Like the, the value of Nico and, and you know, Snow Guard and it would add up. to flipping locations on occasion, right on turn six with Killmonger. So I think that the changes actually do negatively hit the decks that use Killmonger the most and which is obviously Destroy, but it's also worth noting that like, Kaira is not going to completely elevate Zoo to the ceiling because it still has, it can't go as vertical as a Blob deck or it can't Shuri does. But, if you're talking about winning three locations simultaneously and making your opponent have to go vertical, then suddenly Kaira, at a three cost, can be played pretty much slotted in anywhere in a deck that's using a lot of inexpensive cards. And then again, you talk about the value of Blue Marvel. Blue Marvel's value goes up, because now you know that those one cost cards are going to stick. So, Honestly, I'm super excited about the card. It's one of my most anticipated cards of of the past little while. I think it's gonna be remarkable.
Cozy Snap:How many times, too, do you have one cost on your side on certain decks where, like, you get the Killmonger play yourself? You know what I mean? Like, has that happened where you don't want to kill your own one cost, right? Like, maybe you get your Nico to 1 5 and you're like, damn, the price to be paid, right? But it's worth it because you can counter. Kyara protects your own one cost at that, too. So, like, it's Funny what it's doing for that. Maybe we see Ultron come back a little bit better because you have a way now to really, you know, certify, protect your Ultron drones. But on the 6 cost way, I mean, we were jumping up and down about Ebony Blade. Because we had the conversation a couple weeks ago, Alex and you guys would know, for listeners why Ebony Blade's good is there's not a lot of cards out there that you can play safely and be like, that lane's good. You know what I mean? And Ebony Blade can't be shung cheat. The fact that you gain that ability, outside of now Enchantress, things like that, right? Like, you could just play your big power card and just be like, It's fine. It's good.
Alexander Coccia:I actually had this thought of like, does Shan Qi, like now is it just over nerfed? Like you nerf Shan Qi to only affect 10 power cards and you bring up Kyara. Like you have to keep kicking them while he's down. He's actually making a bit of a comeback in the meta, right? As, as you should, like, it's a very important card to the game as a whole. But this effect is crazy. Like, it's so unbelievably strong. And it makes me wonder if Shan Chi is just gonna completely disappear. Because, like, what are you doing? Like, yeah, like, of course, like, you can still I mean, you'll still be able to Shan Chi a Dark Hawk, by the way, because it's four cost, right? It's just one of those things where, like, the card is gonna allow you to cheat out, say, a She Hulk. Like, there's situations where you're like, okay, I have She Hulk. I ended up floating all this energy because I didn't have a play. I could play it out. But I don't want to play Shu because I want to skip to turn six and all that type of stuff. But you know what, boom, drop it. It's protected by Kyara. Perfect. Right. There's nothing wrong with that. So I think there's a lot of like flexibility around the way this this can be utilized.
Cozy Snap:Yeah. Like the raft or like, just like even again, going back to why I think Lockshot could be cool. It's like, you get that Magneto, you're like, awesome. But man, I have seen people lose in even tournaments where like that man Nito's just flying out there from the Lockjaw lane and your opponent's just gonna wait. And they're gonna wait and they'll kill it at the end and then that huge swing was an easy lane to flip. You were counting on it. Game over. Kaia protects that. And she's a good card to come out of Lockjaw. If she comes out, you're like, okay, cool. Free play. Now I can do my other things that I want to do in the deck. The reason I compare her to Mobius and why I love your 5 star rating, and I'm gonna give her like a 4. 5, is oftentimes with Mobius, it's not even about what he's actually doing, which is nice, you know, like you can play your whatever cost effective cards with more confidence, your opponent can't, but man, when I've been playing Mobius lately My snap conditions, some of them, where I go all in on the 8 cuber, is location based. And, let's take a moment. Hey, guess what? Death Domain. I'm snapping for 8 cubes on Death Domain for Kaeru. You can play 1 and 6 cost cards into Death Domain. I mean, Danger Room, Safely, you know that and you know the advantage that that brings and there's more locations than one that destroy on effect. There's a lot of them. In fact, those can be won by like one PowerPoint at times.
Alexander Coccia:There's always flexibility that is often like underappreciated with locations. We always talk about card synergy, deck synergy, and all this stuff. But at the end of the day, one thing that is so consistent in Marvel Snap is you're gonna get A location is going to punch you square in the groin. It's always, it's always going to be that way, but sometimes you're on the blessed side where you get a location. It's absolutely perfect. You have Darkhawk in your hand and Subterranean comes rolling out. You don't want to snap right away. Cause you don't want to reveal it. Right. But you know, you're like, I got this now. Right. I got this. And I think Cairo is going to be the same way to, to many regards there. Now, one thing I want to mention, which is kind of interesting from a standpoint of like how the cards designed, I think that the three cost is very deliberate. Yeah. because it prevents you from playing Kyara on curve with Electro or Wave, which reduces the number of six drops you can get on the board. That is a very natural pullback effect, and that's why I really like your Lockjaw idea, Cozy.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, you're right there, and like, on top of that, it's so funny because if you're playing her deck, you need to plan out the priority because we can go, listen, guys, we're filming this on New Year's Eve, so we're, we're doing, you know, we got the double crown we were talking and laughing about this of, of the Snapchat being lined up with this. There's hours that we can spend on this card. Luckily, we're going to talk about it whenever she comes out in the more extent. But one of those, moving to our next card, let's talk about Hercules. Hercules is there's a couple Marvel characters that, you know not inspired, but they're from our lives history, right? Santa, funny enough, is actually a Marvel character. But Hercules. Now I've been waiting for this guy to come out. And I have to say, I'm a A little disappointed, I'm a little disappointed, but I do think there's some kinda cool things you can do with him. I think he's the worst card of the month. And I think this is a good point to say this month is so fun because it legit gives every archetype a sprinkle of something different. And Hercules is for Move. Now, Move is always just getting the bottom of the scraps, I feel like, of the worst card of the month coming out for it. But guys, Hercules is a 4 cost, 6 power card. The first time another card moves here, each turn, which is the biggest word on there, move it to another location. Listen, I just gotta say, man, those that have mastered move decks, they're probably pretty pumped about it. I think this is a big brain card. But the majority of the people, I think it's going to not be that great though.
Alexander Coccia:No, I don't think so either. My question was like, can Hercules go the distance as Michael Bolton once said? And I don't think, I don't think he can. I don't think he can. But at the same time, like there's something to be said about like, okay, Craven and Hercules. You know, Hercules being able to bounce things back into Craven, but then like, that's totally unreliable. Like, so I was like, okay, what do I make? How do I make a deck with Hercules work? Man, I think this is a two star card. I don't think, I just don't see it. Like, it's just so, it feels unreliable. It does feel like a counter to Magneto though. Cause like Magneto can pull something and bounces it back out. Arrow might get negatively impacted by Hercules, but then again, it has to be moved to Hercules's location. So you just play around that anyway. So I just, I just don't feel like this is the card that. That move needed, right?
Cozy Snap:We are this is going to be one that we talk more heavily on. I think when he comes out, my, here are my two thoughts between them. He's somewhere between Silk and Spider Man 2099, right? So when Silk came out, everyone's like, who cares? It's not reliable. And then we were able to come up with some really cool packages. And we made Silky Smooth work, right? And then Silk was insane. And, hear me out, I think there is gonna be some really cool Kraven stuff, to your point. I think you can use Kraven Human Torch, Helldude. I mean, I don't think people quite understand. We're talking about cheating out 10 power cards. Yo, guess who can get 10 power each turn each turn. You know who can get to 10 power pretty easy is Vulture getting this guy moving over with Iron Fist and Nico now. He moves yet again immediately. He's a 13 power card. Vulture immediately is a 13 power card because of Hercules. It's once per turn, so that has me a bit sad, but I think it now makes you respect some big move plays via Heimdall. To where I don't want to write him off. I think at top levels of play, though, he'll be better than we think. Ultimately, though, maybe the worst card. So maybe 2, 2. 5. Here's my prediction. My bold prediction, Alex, is that 2099 gets some type of an OTA to make him better when Hercules comes out.
Alexander Coccia:That wouldn't surprise me, right? It wouldn't surprise me at all. But like, I don't know, man. I think Hercules is hurting. I think Hercules is hurting. And even with Heimdall, like it's going to require what, like the order of cards to enter his location is going to determine which card gets pushed out again. Right. And so like. That's hard to manage, man. That is, that is like, not even five. That's like eight head game. That is so hard, man. I like, listen, I feel for the move players out there. And I tell you when I'm in conquest, I'm against the move player. I'm like, this is going to be the guy to beat me. Right. Because it's like, I think this is like, they all have their gold at O deck. Everything's inked. It's all beautiful. Cause it's all they play and they absolutely crush with it. I just, I don't think this is what it needs, but maybe an OTA or patch change to the supporting cards will make all the difference.
Cozy Snap:Like, every now and then, like a Blue Moony, I play that all gold deck move player, and I'm like, Heh, screw up, right? I got this guy. He, he wrecks me. I then proceed to make a move deck, because I'm like, I can do it too. And then I'm like, dude, this guy's playing another Marvel Snap that I'm currently playing. So, absolutely, I think the Respect is going to be tough. You know, I think Dagger is a great card that can also work with Hercules. Like, there's going to be cards. That can work, but ultimately, we'll have to see. The last thing I want to say about it is I do think you brought up Magneto. It's like, hey, could you end up doing a juggernaut into, hopefully, a kingpin lane, and then if it bounces into Hercules, he puts it into that lane? We have to see how this stuff works in theory, you know? I don't know.
Alexander Coccia:A cool idea. I mean, is it kingpin's time? It's probably not. I don't think it's kingpin time yet.
Cozy Snap:I've been, at that New Year copium heavy and strong, buddy. So, Alex, that brings us to, probably I would say a lot of people's most anticipated or most, like, fun. They can't wait to see him. I know when I saw his text, I saw his cost. I was like, this has me written all over it, man. Combo City. Grandmaster. Two cost, guys. Zero power card. On reveal, move one of your other on reveal cards at the location you play Grandmaster to the middle location. The ability happens again. Its ability happens again. Holy smokes, man. Holy smokes! That's insane. First of all, let's just like get it down to the bare, bare basics. This is probably going to be a pretty busted card in the right decks.
Alexander Coccia:You know what though? That middle location? It's restrictive. Two stars. Middle locat You can't play middle location all the I'm kidding. That's a That's a reference to my missed call on the Miss Marvel that I'm still sad about.
Cozy Snap:Oh, that's right. Osaka was like, Dude, you can't be believing this again. I was like, he's doubling down. He's doubling down.
Alexander Coccia:No, no, this is a Forstner card for sure. For sure, it has to be. I mean, it has the Adam Warlock stat line, which kind of scares me. but it's basically half the cost of absorbing, man. You do have the restriction of the middle location, but obviously that's not as impactful as I once thought it was, so that's been corrected. I think it's going to be a damn good card, man. Like, it's just Is it basically a two power mini Wong?
Cozy Snap:Yeah, so it mini Wong. Yeah, it's or like a baby Odin mini Wong. What I think it is, so, at its core, right, I'm gonna give him a probably a four low side, five upside. Like, I think this could be the card of the month, too. He has that potential of big brain plays, of unexpected things happening. Especially if you have a lot of cards that can use it, and utilize it, and then maybe you have like one powerful on reveal on each lane, and your opponent has to guess, Crap, what if they have Grandmaster? And he can reactivate that Arnim Zola he cheated out. Or whatever! Whatever ends up being, right? Outside the cool combos, Alex, let's just talk like pure basic good cards, man. Listen, activating things like Gomorrah again White Tiger, man. White Tiger is such a good card that is simply playing her for the value and then being able to re trigger that. Is a good play. What are some on reveals that you really like?
Alexander Coccia:I mean, the on reveals that I really like are the ones you actually just mentioned, right? But like, the question I've asked myself is like, yeah, White Tiger is good. But at the same time, it's like, wouldn't you just, is it not better just to do the traditional line of like, Wong, White Tiger, Odin? Like, is that, does that not just kind of fill the board better? Like it, I'm just trying to understand something because, okay, first of all, the text of Grandmaster is amongst the most confusing we've ever had, right? I think one thing that holds it back is that obviously it's gonna take, it's gonna take a random on reveal card and the thing that makes Werewolf by Night so good is that there's so many on reveals that are good, but to the same extent now if you have an Iceman on your board and you're like, hit that white tiger, now it's a 50 50, so there's some unreliability to that extent, so To some degree, you could have some more consistency with the classic Wong, Odin, White Tiger thing. I've been thinking about this card, and I've been all over the place with it, because I think the, the actual play pattern of it is a little more restrictive than might be given first credit, but There's nothing to be said, like, yeah, you could replay something like you played an Ironheart on Curve and you bring the Ironheart back and rip it, or you even move, you play Wong Center, like if you play Ironheart on the right, you play Wong in the center to create space, and then you play the Grandmaster there, it brings the card over, redoes it's on reveal, brings another card over, brings it's on reveal again, that could be really cool, like think about what Wong, Would do with Grandmaster.
Cozy Snap:So that's where I think this is going to be a top tier card. Like, and I'm going to get to it in a sec. We've seen what players and what we have done even with cards that have like a low side. He has so much upside that I think that there's enough decks and creativity and most importantly in Marvel Snap, we've seen this time and time again. Blob is great because he's unpredictable and I think Grandmaster is unpredictable. You can get a Heimdall out early in a move deck. And you can play him legit twice. You can move him, move him, yes, that left lane's already stacked. Again, it's like 8 head stuff at this point, but even going to, let's say, a destroyed deck, man, there's There's ways to where Venom is the only card left in said lane, and maybe you want to push Venom back in the middle for whatever reason, right? I think there are interesting combos that people are going to come up with that Grandmaster opens a whole new door. And kind of fits really well in these Ravonna, which obviously you have synergy with. You know, he's a 2 0 Mr. Negative. Even Janejaw, that whole list, he can work in that realm. But I also think he can just work as a very cool surprise card combo card, man. Getting Alioth somehow ramped out, re triggered, and you can kill with it. Send it in the middle, kill with it again. You can do that with Valkyrie. Send everything to three, then do it again. Send everything to three. Shang Chi, kill a big card. There's another big card in the middle. Play him for two. Shang Chi's played for two costs in the middle, and then you do something else. That is where I think he's got the 4 to 4. 5 star quality.
Alexander Coccia:He also dodges Cosmo, which is kind of notable. Like if Cosmo's in right or left location, right, he'll pull a card out and then re trigger the on reveal effect, which it just, Cosmo doesn't matter there from that perspective. So now we have a couple of ways to counter Cosmo. You have the Echo gameplay, which I'm still one of the only believers out there. They just don't play the Cosmo on top of Echo, or they just play the Cosmo on top of Echo because Echo's actually invisible, but I think that this is also a low key way to dance around Cosmo, which is pretty cool as well for very inexpensive cost.
Cozy Snap:I mean, bro, look at just scrolling down here. Brood. Being able to reactivate a brood on a Silver Surfer turn and getting two lanes of brood, like, out of nowhere. I feel like Ghost Rider, right? You cheat out a big card, sends Ghost Rider in the middle, he can do one more big card, getting that hella back. Doesn't it seem like he could be a ticket to bringing more consistency and or just cheeky things that we have not been able to see because Odin costs too much and Wong is the most like, take me or I win type of card.
Alexander Coccia:Oh, 100%. Wong is very much like, am I actually going to stay into this game because they're sitting on a Wong and I don't have an answer? Right? Like that's, like, do you ever just, do you ever want a man fight? Fight Wong, usually not, right? But with Grandmaster, there's a lot of chances that you just might not see him coming. And I like the idea of using him with Silver Surfer because, if you think about it, Silver Surfer decks are currently experimenting with Maximus still. And if you play Sarah on turn 5, Grandmaster represents a 50 percent discount to one cost. So suddenly you can play Grandmaster, bring over, you know, your Killmonger, or even you can play Silver Surfer, then Grandmaster, hit that, and then play your Maximus later. And all of a sudden, like you still have energy left over for another three drops. Like it's crazy because like those, now you have instead of doing like three three drops, you do two three drops and two two drops. It's four cards on turn six. Could be like literally insane, especially in a deck, which you're right, all the honor reveals are generally useful.
Cozy Snap:There's literally so much we could talk about them. We could keep going, but I've got to say this is probably my most exciting card of the month. Kaeyer is like the most like blanket, I think, just like a great card to have in decks. Grandmaster, for me, is the top of the list of like, I cannot wait to do like a sub a thon when the guy comes out. However, where I think he's gonna work in the next card we can go to, is going to be, oh man, Beta Ray Bill. I think Grandmaster re triggering Mjolnir is really cool, but also, we have Beta Ray Bill, who is gonna naturally fit into Janejaw. It almost feels like Lockjaw, Janejaw. This is gonna be the month of resurgence for it. He's a 4 cost, 5 power card at the time on reveal. He shuffles Stormbreaker into your deck. And Stormbreaker doubles Beta Ray Bill's power. And Stormbreaker also has 1 power. It's like a little bit of a better Mjolnir and Thor. But he's a tad bit more expensive. We have seen these cards before, Alex. We've seen the Dakin. We've seen Sebastian Shaw. The ones where you can manipulate power to get even bigger power. It's not hard to get this power. To get them kind of rised up in their overall net worth. He just kind of fits in with everything we've already been talking about today.
Alexander Coccia:I'm kind of concerned about Beta Ray Bill, honestly. My star rating's a little low, I'm going two on Beta Ray. Sim I know, I, listen, if you disagree, I'm all, I'm here for it. My concern is that he's going to be very dependent. On how good Lockjaw ends up being and so if Lockjaw itself doesn't pan out to be meta defining or like competitive or anything like that, which I think there's a good chance it will be, Bayday Ray Bill, I don't think competes in many other different archetypes. I think it's a little more niche. That might've been originally anticipated. However, it's not to say that it can't be good because it can be good, but I'm a little more hesitant because it, it, it takes me back to Sebastian Shaw where like the supporting cards of Beta Ray Bill outside of Lockjaw naturally, are we going back to Okoye and Nakia again? Like, that's, it's just, like, they're just not nearly as strong as some of the other pieces that could be supporting other cards in the same archetype.
Cozy Snap:I think, for me, it's Lockjaw is so different than it once was because of the cards that have come out in the game. So, with Beta Ray Bill, like, we've got, like, Nicos now that can kill a card and draw two. And it's allowing us to get access to things like Stormbreaker, or you do hope for the roll, or you just have Janejaw on the deck and you can play it out naturally on Curve. We already know 410, do nothing to him, and 410 is the stat line you're trying to get. That's a killer stat, stat line. Janejaw, the thing that people don't talk about enough with Janejaw is, it's either a really good cube deck or really bad. If you play down Jane on 5, a good player's gonna retreat a lot of the time. They do the math, they add the math. This doesn't surprise anybody if you use Jane. Using Nico to draw, things like that, I think is interesting. And the cards we've already talked about, and the way we want to cheat out big power early for the Scars, for Kaeyer, for Protection. I think he just kind of fits into that mold. Two seems low. I'm gonna give him probably a three to three and a half. But I do think Thor is not a super popular card. Ever. He's never been super popular because of this whole metric, right? That, that to me is, the best, when Thor is the best is when you're playing Conquest, you don't get the, you don't have to play Jain because you pop that Mjolnir, and then you keep your opponent on their feet, and you already have the other cards you need. You know what I mean?
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely. But I also had this thought of like, I wonder if they changed Thor. Like, I actually wonder if Thor gets OTA or patched. And the reason why I say this is because if you think about like the way this deck would play, you have Lockjaw three, Thor's already a three, and then you have Beta Ray Bill four, Jane Foster five. It's like, there's this overlap that does, it's not smooth. And I wonder if, I mean, Thor's largely underplayed, right? It would not surprise me if a change to Thor comes, I don't even know what the change would be, to make this card make more sense, because they kind of feel like they're occupying the same lane. Don't they? Don't they kind of feel like they're occupying the same lane? Am I wrong?
Cozy Snap:Yes, but in those decks, you're kind of already going like guns a blazin throwing things in Lockjaw, snapping on the Jubilee into Lockjaw, you know what I mean? Like, yes, it doesn't play out in a good curved deck, which is again why Thor isn't really played all that much, like You would think with Thor stats, he'd just be a surfer, you know what I mean? But I totally, totally get your point here. We're gonna have to see how beta is, but I know in the comments, there's a lot of Love for him as a character all together. Now lastly, Alex, this brings us to our last card of the month. Meek, man. Meek, Mike. I feel I He's been called a lot of names. This is the new Dak and Dok in here. One of my favorite just movies is Thor Ragnarok. He's obviously really good in that. A 1 1, my friends. 1 1 for Discard. Discard is gonna get some major love between now and the next couple months. After each turn, if you discarded any cards, you're gonna gain plus one power to Meek for each of those discarded. And Meek is going to move, which is such a crazy little extra effect there. Now we talked about it where I think we looked in the future of one of the cards coming out of ramping into discard and I was like, why are you trying to do that? You have to remember like, why are you playing a move discard? What are you trying to accomplish here? What are you ranking our friend here?
Alexander Coccia:I'm gonna be conservative on three stars. But I can see Meek actually being four stars. However, he's a one star in pretty much anything other than some sort of discard shell, like a very niched down card. So very Selene esque where it's like, you're not playing this in like random decks, it doesn't have the universal appeal. However, one power per discard is actually a lot like, are you satisfied with Meek being a one four? Like, that's the question because like, I actually think we're discarding less than we used to. Like, we're not doing the MODOK, Hela stuff as common. Black Knight is good and has very targeted discard. So I think that holds Meek down a little bit. But if Hela discard can make the argument for something like a Meek and just blowing up hands again, I mean, you, maybe it's enough. Like maybe he gets to like six power, honestly. And that's one six is nothing to scoff at.
Cozy Snap:Yeah. So here's the thing. I think obviously we have so many good cards coming out and it's not that Meek is bad necessarily. It's, I look at them. He is a, okay, first of all, this card does not have a true one cost really all the time that belongs in the deck. So it's nice to be able to have something to play and to make work into that build. It brings unpredictability, like dude, if there was still a dependable discard with Chavez, Oh man, I would love Meek, right? Because then you could really calculate what you're trying to do. And then you have that extra little bit of unpredictableness that Meek would bring, moving to a lane and that opponent's like, okay, Where's that going? We know Storm is in Discard decks all the time. Shut down a lane and fill up a lane and get Meek to go over to that Storm lane and win. You know, there's some cool things you can do with Meek there. He can get to restricted locations, which I think, outside of Wolverine, Discard does struggle with. Right? I don't know about you, but you see a Synctum Symptom, you're kind of like, I'm screwed. He, to me, seems like a worse Morbius, but you get to play him for one. Yeah, dude, he's super pigeonholed. I think, if you're big on Discard, celebrate. I would, I would focus on the Discard cards coming out in, with the with the Black Order season, and then get Meek as a compliment card to that. There's better cards this season. I agree, I think he's kind of pigeonholed, but he's decent in the deck.
Alexander Coccia:It's also notable, I believe, I believe as of right now he's, he's series four. So that does make a difference, right?
Cozy Snap:I like that a lot. I think then just wait, get them on tokens when you get the other discard stuff.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah. And then one final thing I want to mention about Meek. First of all, I love the character. Korg is one of my favorite characters in the MCU. Every time I see Korg, I'm actually so happy. But what I will say as well is like, you talk about accessing a location that you can't access. He also control you cause you'll just move out of the location. If you, if you happen to discard something else after, right. You don't, there's an element of a lack of control with Meek, which I think is kind of interesting. So that's also worth noting, but honestly, it's, it's a card that needs to exist for discard cause you're right. We haven't had, we've been using Nebula in discard for, for a while to some degree, right? Obviously, we're using Black Knight now, but I think Meek has a role to play.
Cozy Snap:I'll end on it with this. I think, dude, there will be a deck. I think it's her name's Proxima Midnight, where you're going to discard her and she flies to a random location. Mark my words, there's going to be a Dude, this is gonna be so chaos in like March or something. There's gonna be a MODOK play on Wong, where you've got Meek on the board, and you have the Swarms in your hand. And you know how it just does that animation like crazy, and you just have It has to do the fast forward effect. Meek's gonna get to like 18 power and then just get to one lane and seal it off, dude. Because he gets a power point, right, per card discarded?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, but I think he might only move once. Because like, if you, I think he gets the power and then just shifts.
Cozy Snap:For each and moves, which is even more fun. He gets like 16 power and then he just goes boop and goes to a lane to win it.
Alexander Coccia:Because if you move back and forth, hold on, they can just play Kraven onto you, not even Morbius anymore.
Cozy Snap:I think it's a one move thing and he gets the power. Either way though, you know what I mean? Like that, this deck is kind of one of those silly decks that can win, but like if you do that, this with like Dawkin or Swarm and then you just like have Morbius on one lane and you're just like, all right Meek, go to the left baby. And if that's the case, then Meek ends up being broken and really good and kind of a gambit card that you can plan out. We have to see, we're gonna have to test these out when they're out. That's why it's so tough. But either way man, I would say this could have been a two hour episode and if it was not on a holiday, me and you would have just been able to go to town. But I can confidently say looking at it, there's some obvious like, you gotta love them. Let's end with this. Put them out in order. What are your favorites starting from the top?
Alexander Coccia:Oh, it's Kaira for sure number one Grandmaster number two I mean, Grandmaster I think might get outperformed by Scar. I wouldn't be surprised if Scar would ultimately is better than Grandmaster, that wouldn't surprise me. I'm going to go with Meek, then Hercules at the bottom. Unfortunately for me.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, I think, so I think Scar, or Kaer, then Scar, I agree with that. However, I think those are like the value plays, whereas I think Grandmaster, those that play the deck, like me, is easily my number one. Like, who I'm like excited to play into my Ravonna builds and stuff like that. And then working down, I would probably go Yeah, probably it's right up there with probably Beta, then Meek, then Hercules for myself. But we're gonna have to see.
Alexander Coccia:I forgot Beta exists, I didn't even rank Beta. Yeah, Beta's above Hercules, probably under Meek for me.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, either way, good month if you look compared to December, where it was a good month, but kinda, there was no like I don't know, I think all these are exciting more exciting than the ones in December.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, there's a lot of flavor here, and I think December had a lot of flavor too, and we'll be talking about that very shortly.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, we will. So guys, we will re evaluate the spotlights and everything once we have confirmation on that.
Alexander Coccia:Cozy, December 2023 was an absolutely wild month with card releases. We got some archetype defining cards and some cards we thought were going to be archetype defining cards and have ultimately fallen short. It's going to be a really interesting discussion. We're going to be giving our Final rankings and comparing those final rankings to what we thought going into the season as a whole. So Kozy, I'll pass it off to you to give us your first ranking on the card that you maybe thought was maybe the absolute banger of the season.
Cozy Snap:Yeah. December was, I would say like close to like maybe July ish like of a month that like the cars were fun. They weren't like crazy impactful. I think the archetypes that were like dominating kind of like kept doing what they were doing. We had some OTAs come in. For me, I think our most pleasant surprise, which we both gave. Three and three and a half star ratings. It's gotta be Blob, right? I think Blob was the most like, game changing card to come in of the month. Most like, exciting, fun. I don't want to be down on him too much and we can get to him. I think Shaw, ultimately, it's so funny. I think Shaw is a great card, but because he was so archetype limited, right? It kind of reminded me of the Nebula season that came out, where people just weren't like, super excited. It almost just felt like a card of the week and not a season pass card.
Alexander Coccia:Oh, absolutely. I think that season sorry, that Sebastian Shaw did feel a little too narrow and that really impacted his value. And that is the perfect assessment of him. And it would make me wonder if hopefully in future seasons, in future months, going into 2024, if we get some additional cards that will benefit Sebastian Shaw to increase his viability across different archetypes, because he basically is just a silver surfer card and Blob. We like, we were actually right to identify that Blob was going to be great in Thanos. We literally said, Hey, Thanos. It's gonna be awesome in Thanos because of the way you can ramp into power, the way that, like, you just naturally stack power in the deck and stuff like that, and it proved to be exactly that, and I don't know, Blob was a huge, huge surprise to me.
Cozy Snap:Huge surprise. I mean, we just talked about Scar on my side, and I think this kind of highlights it. When I've been looking at new cars lately, I've been doing these these star ratings, and in that, there is, like, Competitiveness, there's flexibility, and there's these different kind of, you know, rankings. Because just saying, 4 star, like for instance, we both gave Shaw, you gave him a 4, I gave him a 3. 5. It's hard because when they're archetype specific, like, yeah, they're that for sure in their archetype. Even better, possibly. But then, we mainly like to look at cards as this overall package. Blob delivered on that. Blob was a card that you can ultimately play in a lot of different decks within Snap. Whereas Shaw, great card. I don't think we whiffed too much on the rating because he was good in the surfer build. But it could be tough. This month was very much limited to different archetypes.
Alexander Coccia:The thing that really surprised me about Blob specifically was like, first of all, I thought that ramping Blob out would have been much harder. I thought like, Hey, you're blowing up your whole deck. You're not going to draw a card if you play them on five or whatever. But then again, it's like, Hmm, if you're playing a deck with Blob and you're ramping Electro and all this stuff. Then like, you probably drew into a Magneto or Dr. Doom anyways, right? You're probably holding something in your hand that you can play on turn six regardless of whether or not Blob just blew up your entire deck. And look at Blob, he's like a 48, or, 48's being conservative. I've seen him go I mean, in your first video with him, didn't you get him over 100? Like, right off the, right off the rip, as you like to say?
Cozy Snap:Over 100, and I think the thing is, and this is where like, both the top end of the player base, so like, he was a fun card, but then the top end of the player base realized, Ultimately, you have a card that is, and we don't have anything like this, right? Like, you know Black Panther's gonna get you two cubes because they're gonna leave. You know the Infidels coming on the turn seven skip. What is Blob? How much is Blob? Even if you're tracking their deck, it's impossible to know. Where are they gonna play him? Is he 19, 20, 21, 29? That's what makes him great. There's not a lot of them out there that are designed like him, and he's a new fear. Like, I've retreated games just thinking they might have Blob.
Alexander Coccia:It's a great point, because like, listen, I play a lot of Infernaut, a lot of She Naut, and like, there are games where I'm ahead on the board, and I know they're gonna drop Blob, and I'm thinking to myself, like, do I actually out trade Blob with my, with my Infernaut? Like, I don't think I do. I think I actually have to play Infernaut and She Hulk in the same lane to compensate for this Blob, and even then, does he go above 30? Like, it's crazy how, like, the math ends up playing out. Now, in most recent decks, I'm not seeing him break 30 as often. I think they're getting a little more refined, a little less greedy. But, like, 100%, like, he will out trade an Infinite. Like, he will go above 21 power, and you're like, How did that just happen? I had to skip an entire turn to get this 20 power, and you just came down here, belched in my face, and went glub, and got all the cards, and ended up beating me. Big sad, but yeah, amazing card.
Cozy Snap:It's really hard to flip. There's not been a lot up until the last couple of months to flip a lane, right? So Shuri dominated for so long because that Red Skull lane, dude, how many times were you like, well, I'm not being that, like, what the hell? Like what am I going to do now? Now we have like Shadow King, things to sneak in there. Blob is that card that can flip any lane, which is like, this fear factor. You now have to, like, I'm now playing, like, one extra power point in the lane that maybe I thought I had or something, because Blob can flip any lane on the dime. And that's truly just what makes him, you know, the card of the month, in my opinion, and a very good one at that. After him though, Alex, who are we putting at, like, the number two? You didn't hit us with the final star rating. Oh, final star rating for Blob? I think I put him as a damn near perfect card in my list. We'll talk about best snap moments. I looked at every new card coming to the game. I released that yesterday. And I put Blob towards the top. I think he's a perfect card designed, right? So I think 4. 5 is fair.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, the next card we gotta talk about is Havok. Like, Havok is a card that, like, legitimately, I loved. Now, I might be one of the ones that, like, is straight up, like, huffing Copium and everything like that. Like, I really liked Havok. I played him in way more decks than probably ever had to have been played. I really, really liked Havok Wave 5 style decks. I had a lot of success with this card, and the more I played with it, the better I was with it. It was resilient to Shadow King, which was great. People were saying Shadow King was an immediate counter, but the fact that it just popped right back up to 2 4 as a baseline was so damn good. It rarely hit Shang Chi range the way I was playing him, because he was always sitting at 8 power, most generally. And so the result was that, like I found Havoc to be one of the more successful cards I played this season. However, on aggregate across the board for all players, Havoc was probably frustrating because it was a very unique design that took a lot of practice. I find it analogous to something like Titania, whereas if you were going to really focus on learning how to play Titania, dealing with the bounce, using it as like a goblin disruption style, double play and stuff like that, then you had a great card, but when you casually pick up Titania, that card. Squarely kicks you in the nuts, and it can just throw games for you, right? So, like, I'd be interested in your take on Havoc. I love the card, but I understand the reservations around it.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, so we gave him a minimum 2 high end 4. Like, you know, we did Nico's, like, 1 and 5. He was 2 and 4, and I think we kind of nailed that. Not even, like I think he's still around that for people. People view him as a 2, and some people view him as a 4, not played enough. Two things I want to say. First of all I will give credit to Second Dinner. The cards that are Series 4 are the perfect ones of like, right on like the, Do you want to get him? They're kind of weird. Like, we just talked about Meek being Series 4. He was 2, so you don't have to like, maybe go all in to get him. But his spotlight was so good. The problem with this month is that we sold OTAs that directly affected new cards coming out. We don't really get that all too much. I had an awesome bounce deck I was loving with Havoc, and it literally lasted three days. And then Werewolf by Night got hit, then Havoc got hit, and then it kind of Viper got hit, not Havoc, but Viper. And it just kind of messed with his viability. I do think he's good. I think he's really good. I think he's a a high IQ card for a lot of players, and one that, like, he might seem tempting, but they're just safer cards if you don't have a huge grasp on, like, if you're casually playing Snap, you just don't get Havoc, but if you are, like, playing Snap, like, you're a player of Snap, then get Havoc.
Alexander Coccia:He's really good. In terms of meta relevance, he's basically a one or two, like he ultimately didn't break through on any of the core decks that really made an impact in the meta. However, it's also worth noting that prior to us we actually recorded in advance of them, nerfing the Viper synergy, which was a factor in our rating. The other thing is that I personally, for me, this is a four star card as a person who likes playing snap. I like this as a four star card, but if I were to rate it for the general population, it's definitely, it ends up being a two star for sure.
Cozy Snap:One of the hardest in the game to play was my, my final assumption on him. After that, we've got what we have left is Shaw, Selene are the two we have left. Yeah.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, we kind of, we can talk about Shaw first. I think that we, we have a lot disabled Selene, but Shaw, we kind of brushed up on, on what we're talking about Blob. Ultimately, a bit of a disappointment with regards to its applicability across archetypes. However It's exactly what we said, probably a five star card in surfer. And it is a five star card in surfer. I, every surfer deck now, I think has to have Sebastian Shaw. It's verticality allows you to compete in lanes where like you might not generally be able to win. Like I, for me, it's been like, I got Brood in one lane. I got Sebastian Shaw in another, they're going to have to really fight to win those two locations. And the third one, I don't know. We'll see what happens.
Cozy Snap:I think for me, the two things about Shaw, A, I think I said it earlier, if Blob was a season pass card, I think it would have been really cool. I think that would have fit, because it kind of goes in any deck. Shaw would have been a great new card of the week, and if you play Surfer, get him. You know, he's a great card there. The problem is, is the state of tech, right? So like, Shadow King and his versatility, and even Shang Chi's re emergence. Like, obviously the Sarah deck's doing really good at the moment. I'll just watch these surfer decks do all these fancy things through all the turns. And I'm just like, I'm like, dude, I'm gonna just nuke that Shaw lane so easily with a two cost Shadow King. You know what I mean? Like, they do all these things. The Okoyes, the Nakias are coming out, and they have Shaw on that one lane. He doesn't move, so you know he's staying put. And you're like, this guy's banking everything. I won at Infinity Conquest because this guy was banking everything that this Shaw was going to win it, right? And I just ctrl deleted him with the Shadow King. So, he came out in a tough meta. That being said, moving forward in Snap, Shaw will be a part of Snap's That creation, you know,
Alexander Coccia:no, no question. Right. And I think that like, they're going to recognize that they released a season pass card that kind of underperformed a little bit, and they're going to look to provide either, so I don't, I don't even think they buff him. I actually don't think they changed Shaw. I think in the future they need to consciously think about, okay, what. Other ways can we utilize Shaw? What other synergistic cards can we release that'll benefit Shaw in other archetypes? And I mean, maybe just by accident, that's going to end up happening, right? Cause the effect is incredibly powerful. It is incredibly powerful. And so like, I'd be interested in seeing how that shapes up ultimately down the road. And that brings us to our. Fourth card of the month. This is Selene. Now, with Selene, I gotta say, gotta say, we came in high on Selene, right? We came in high on Selene. I believe we were, we were in the four push into five star range on Selene, and with good reason. Incredibly synergistic with so we were at about four stars. We were incredibly synergistic with Annihilus, which is one of the best archetypes in the game, and has consistently been one of the best archetypes in the game. It is disruptive for the opponent, specifically when talking about the types of cards they're looking to play. And ultimately, it gets another card that gets kicked over by Nihilus, it destroys their play, it maximizes your your goblins. It just, on paper, looked like it was gonna be incredible. It ultimately has fallen flat cozy. I'm actually kind of in shock. Now what was your experience like with Celine?
Cozy Snap:I mean, I think it's pretty cut and dry easy here. It is a card that does good in an archetype. When we did the initial rankings, we both gave it a four. At that time, Werewolf, Junk Bounce. And if it didn't get touched, it would still be the best, or one of the best decks in the game, and this just added to it. You gotta remember, we had Black Widow get completely changed up, which affected her. We have obviously Werewolf by Night, completely affected. Viper affected. So an archetype in Junk that was like, really good? And finally got really good, has now been backed down. It's not a bad deck, it's just there are better decks to be played. And Selene, when we're talking about one card affected, two cards, three cards affected, and those cards were the core base of Selene that we got excited about. If we go look at our discussion, we brought up Werewolf, we brought up Black Widow, we were all excited about this, and then those cards ended up getting hurt. So that sucked. That was a big bummer. And right now, Junk, it's not that it's a bad deck, it's that there's other ones to be played, and that is her home. That's the one home for Selene. So she did underwhelm pretty heavily and it was a bummer to see kind of that unfold. I think she'll be fine. I think there are going to be days in the future for her. But yeah, definitely, you'd even go for Selene, dude. People were getting Iron Lad and Selene was a consolation prize.
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely. And like, yeah, that week as a whole was insane. Black Knight as well, right? Black Knight was in that week as well. It was a perfect, perfect time to spend some keys. But what I'll say though is that the card actually really underperformed. Running a 46 percent win rate post infinite, a cube rate of negative three, four, negative three, four. That's some of the worst I've ever seen, but it's also notable that this card is one of the ones that was easiest to counter during that launch week of Celine being launched. Because remember this is the most recent card. It was so easy just to play destroyer. Annihilus yourself in the mirror matches were so incredibly awkward with this card that I think the win rate gets negatively impacted there. And it's also notable that. We saw something similar with Annihilus when Annihilus originally came out. This deck that was very easy to predict when it was near top of the meta, very easy to counter with Destroy or whatever. You absolutely hammered it when you said that the change to Black Widow took a lot out of Selene's viability. Junk as a whole got attacked. Yeah, the Black, the Viper hit made, had an impact on the archetype as well. But most notably, the thing that really shocks me, Is that currently the top Annihilus decks are not running Selene. The reason for this is because the change of Werewolf by Night moving to 4 power took the decks that ran the Green Goblin out. Because now it's too late to play Green Goblin on 5. Because what was happening is Green Goblin was a good play with Werewolf by Night at 3. Because if you play Goblin on 4, you're actually balancing the Werewolf. And you're not occupying space on your own board. And that was a very natural way to play Selene and Werewolf by night. So, a lot happened on the OTA side to really minimize Selene's effect.
Cozy Snap:And I think that we would have saw her even splash into, which I still think she works here, Loki decks, right? Because with her, like, you're taking your opponent's deck, you're making theirs even worse, and then you're just swapping your cards out and changing out and getting rid of that effect, right? So, like, I think she Would have packed an insane punch with Werewolf by Night Loki decks. Like, it would have just been another level of, like, craziness to that deck. Ultimately, for me, I thought she was really gonna make Galactus a lot better, and she Galactus is a Galactus deck. Like, at the end of the day, that's how it performs, and I think, you know, he got better for it. He got better for it. Dude, Tribunal decks are so hot right now, though. When she came out, I was just playing, like, she was hitting my Mystique, and I was like, dude, I'm just copying Onslaught with this Mystique anyway. Like, it can be negative three power, and I'm still gonna do what I need to do. And yeah, it hurts the Iron Man lane, whatever, but like, you know what I mean? Like, it wasn't as impactful. For those that want to play Selene or have her, I gotta recommend this, guys. There's a ramp list for Galactus that you have Electro in your list. Electro is your lowest power card. He's only two power. And then you play Selene to then play Electro. Next turn, you play Annihilus, and it sends that Electro to your opponent's side, locking them only playing one card to get. It's a win. You win, you snap on it. It's a very fun snap cube deck. That was where I had the most fun with her on my holiday break.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, definitely a fun card. And that actually brings us to our next topic, which is our favorite snap moments of 2023. I got to say cozy 2023 has been a remarkable year. When we just talk about in general, our favorite snap moments, our favorite changes, patches, whatever it happens to be our favorite personal moments, but at the end of the day, Marvel snap has made tremendous gains since the launch of the game, since the beta, and now moving into 2024. I feel excited for the future of the game, but it's really nice to reminisce about some of our favourite moments that happened in 2023.
Cozy Snap:Yeah man, there's, there's a lot. There's obviously, we've talked about like the busted cards in recent weeks that have come out, we've talked about you know, I think we could, you know, focus on certain aspects of new cards coming. There's a few things that really stand out, I think. It's like, if you got rid of this, Snap would be so different than it is now. And for me, it is the OTAs that began towards the middle half of the year, the beginning middle half of the year. When we started getting those weekly OTAs, we literally saw a change in Marvel Snap. Now, some people don't love that it's like these weekly metas, but it is a damn thing that they've been nailing down. They've only missed a couple, and I know we'll probably highlight some cards where it was just like a fun week of chaos during that, bud. But right, like, I feel like that's such a huge moment for Snap, and then you kind of snowballed that into the spotlight caches, and it just kind of opened up the game a lot more.
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely, the game feels way more fresh. I remember playing like Hearthstone, other card games, where it's like, well, it's just the same decks over and over and over again, and like, that, that meta would exist for like, four months. Or you'd be playing, like, anyone who's played Paper card games are like, well, they printed this broken ass card. I guess I got to wait till it rotates out and whatever length of time that takes, right? Snap is very, very kind of a iterative, like it's really fast to completely change, and that can be frustrating for some people cause it can be hard investing resources. But if the goal of the development team is to make the absolute best game they can with the best balance, they can being reactive. With those OTAs is, it's, it's actually incredible. And to be honest with you, it might be one of those things that we do here in Snap that other cards and other people that play other card games might be envious of, like, we, we see the disadvantages of it, but I'm telling you players who are stuck in these nasty metas and like Magic the Gathering Arena and stuff like that for months and months or Hearthstone, whatever it happens to be. They would envy the idea of like, Hey, every two weeks, the developer can take a shot at kind of readjusting some core meta pieces.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, and you know what I like about it, too, is like, you know, say what you will about some of the monetization in the game, especially for, like, how expensive variants are, and bundles, and things like that. But what I think is really cool is, like, in a MOBA, when a new character or card comes out, it's like, everybody wants that. In the same week though, for free players and for all of us, I guess it's great for me too, like, I love it. You've got the new card that comes out, but oftentimes, what ends up shining and being the decks that, like, dictate that week, are is a free card that got retouched up, right? We saw that with Venom, and Venom was a card everybody has. It got, you know, working, and you already have that in your collection, and you're able to have a new spin on the deck. Spider Man got reworked, obviously made that a lot better. I mean, Alex, I think I know the card. But tell me, like, in the year, what was a free card that got an OTA change that even if we've seen it pass was like the best change that we kind of got for free?
Alexander Coccia:When you were saying that, I was like, are you gonna ask me what happened to Chavez? Is that, is that what this is? Are you gonna ask me to bring up my most hated moment? I'm trying to be positive here. I'm trying to bring up nice things. You're gonna bring up Chavez?
Cozy Snap:No, it's Marvel! It's Captain Marvel! It's Captain Marvel! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to poke the bear, but yeah, yeah.
Alexander Coccia:No, I know, I know. You got me emotional there, but it's funny. When we were coming up with this topic idea, I had said that the whole The premise of this topic was inspired by the fact that one of my absolute favorite cards in Marvel Snap, Captain Marvel, became meta for a little bit of time until they just nerfed her, they buffed her, and then she was zipping around all over the place, doing Captain Marvel stuff, saving people's cubes, but then it just, it had to end, it had to end, and she went down to a 4 4. Kozy, I'm actually kind of sad, I would like to see 4 5. Cap Marvel back, but it's okay.
Cozy Snap:I understand. I mean, dude, this was right around to where like this is this had been one of the best moments because it was I swear It's still viable, but it was legit for like a day or two Do you the Legion storm meta where you would play storm and then legion and you would fill all the flooded locations? Like that was the window where Captain Marvel existed so then you could like play her like win one of the other locations like just pure chaos and we saw like a lot of these kind of like pocket pocket metas that were so crazy for just like A small period of time that obviously, ultimately, you know, had to get adjusted in the end of it all. I think they're a bit quicker than they used to be at that. So, all of that combined, OTAs and just the freshness was, is near the top of my list with as well as Spotlight Cache. Just say what you will, I think they were obviously a good addition to getting new cards in the game. But Alex, I gotta take it back to January, Nevermind Conquest, right when Friendly Battles came out, that was such a, that was so cool to have Creativerse creators, and you could challenge your friends now, and there's things that they can build upon that, but I think that was like, I forgot that was, you know, out at the beginning of the year.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, that was in January. Cause I remember it coincided with the first ever like in person competitive event in New York city, right? Which I had the the privilege of being able to participate in, which is another one of my favorite moments in 2023. I got to meet a lot of creators in New York city for that first like inaugural tournament. It was, it was great. Like some of the nicest people, kindest people I've ever seen. They continue to be doing things behind the scenes to kind of support competitive Marvel snap. And it's just, it's great. And not only that, but that. The friendly battles ultimately became conquest mode, which was an incredible launch, which it added a whole other feature, a whole other game mode to Marvel snap, which I really enjoy playing. It added another additional reward track to the game. And so, yes, I think you're right to say that like in January, the release of the battle mode was a huge positive step forward for Marvel snap. But, like, even for us, like, it was great to be able to play against community members, right? I remember, like, those first, like, three streams after that Friendly Mode launched. I was, you know, challenging friendly battles with community members. You know, people that were, like, in our streams were challenging us with their crazy brews, right? And it also gave you an opportunity to actually meet up with a friend and test something competitively before a tournament. Whatever it happens to be. So yeah, a hundred percent. It was a great moment for Snap.
Cozy Snap:And they trickled these game modes out at the right time. So like Snap came out and you were able to like build your collection, really get used to the game. Then January came, you could then challenge your friends. And like, that was a whole nother aspect because you have decks you like, things like that. Then Conquest came out and now you have a real solid foundation and we have our first competitive. Kind of game mode because the latter was just get to infinite and you'd be done. Then, which is another huge addition, was the infinite leaderboard. Because then it added yet another kind of like, now we're at the top of the tops, right? And you have like an uber competitive environment. And so now we have this thing where we have all these different environments to play Snap in the way that you kind of want to play it. They all offer a different gameplay and reward structure. So, it was very much intentional, they could have done it a little bit faster, in my opinion, but overall, those were like, those game modes, obviously have to be a highlight.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, absolutely, and the highlight of 2024 will be the release of the Draft game mode, which are the Arena game modes. Listen, I'm just, I'm hoping for it so much, because like, oh man, I don't want to like derail here, but that type of game mode would be so perfect for Snap, because first of all, the cards, they seem to like, You're able to deck craft pretty, pretty kind of wildly in Snap, but not just that. If you're sick of the meta, if the meta is kind of like getting like out of hand, if Shuri Red Skull's going crazy or whatever happening, or Blob Thanos is all over the place, you can go into that mode where like the viability of them building the perfect meta deck is much less you know, much less capable.
Cozy Snap:Let's make 2024 the year of social snap. Let's do clubs, guilds, socialness. Let's do drafting game modes. And then let's see a tournament scene kind of evolve into snap. Let's see some more dedication around that. And then you just have the social aspect, the community, what drives games. Games come out in year one, they're always great. Year two is about the community that's formed from the game, right? So let's see that kind of evolve over time. Great year one, let's kick ass in year two. But yeah, those are definitely for me. There's so many micro highlights that I could do of the season. Getting to be able to cast Conker's, like, twice was awesome. Like, just insane. And, and, and not just cast it. Like, Conker's as a whole was really cool. I thought it was a fun event. I mean, seeing my buddy. Let's talk about tournament play, dude. I mean, we saw the rise of Alex Kocha, I'll never forget, it's like, Oh yeah, oh yeah, little Alex there, he's an okay player. Stays up all night, gets to the Rival freakin the semi The finals, the finals of Twitch Rival! Like, dude, that had to have been a highlight on your end, yeah?
Alexander Coccia:It probably was one of my absolute favorite moments of 2023. That entire thing was a blur, like, streaming for 30 something hours, and then playing in, like, the most, one of the most competitive formats in, in Marvel Snap's, like, kind of existence live in front of Tens of thousands of people. It was, it was crazy. It was legitimately one of the most fun I've ever had in my entire content creator career. And it's not just about, you know, getting to the finals, playing against the best in the world. But like it, the semifinal match, it was me and Jeff and it was legitimately one of the best games of Marvel snap I have ever. Not just played, I've ever seen, because I watched it back, Jeff played incredibly. It was just incredible Marvel snap. Like, and what makes it sweeter is like knowing that I was able to move on to the finals, beating such a talented, competitive player in Jeff. And what ultimately happened was everybody that watched that game. Everybody that watched that match between Jeff and I said, legit, some of the best Marvel Snap they'd ever seen. And that goes to speak to how impactful the competitive scene in Snap can be. Those emotions, the excitement of seeing, you know, two people that are, that have stakes going in at like four or eight cube matches with, you know, a crowd watching. The stakes. You just can't replicate that on the ladder. You can't replicate that in Conquest. And that's why I love the fact that you mentioned that there, there's definitely a place for competitive Marvel snap. And I really hope that 2024 is where Marvel snap starts to sink its heels into the competitive scene and really showcase what it it can do as a spectator's competitive game. Because it really is remarkable, and Cozy, thank you so much, because like, it really was one of the absolute highlights of not just my year, but my content creator career, so thank you for that.
Cozy Snap:For sure, man. It's so, it's the nerves behind it, like, never mind like prize pools and stuff but, you know, I did the one I'll never forget that. They'd have, it was like, the best card gamers in the world. I'm like, what am I doing in here? But like that was like the Rise of Darks Rocks and Hawks. I was going against KM I remember my side of the ladder was like KM, Best, and Jeff. And I was like, what? Like, what happened? And just like, the nerves, right? Like, the nerves behind it. I think there's a huge scene there. I want to kind of add, and maybe this can be the last moment, but I think just PC launch and seeing Snap as the number one game on Twitch. There was like literally a quarter of a million people playing Snap at the same time. You saw like big personalities, like, wow, this is a really fun ga I mean, Truly what I learned in 2023 is how many different people from all over, whether they're in the NFL, they're on Broadway. Dude, like, there's so many people that place Snap as like a fun, casual game, because it's Marvel. It's a fun game to play overall. We, there, there were certainly L's in 2023. I think we could say like, hey, we didn't like this. But ultimately, like, year in review, I think Second Dinner did a good job handling what I think was anticipation of the I don't think they thought it was gonna be this big, and they had to continue to like, adapt. To it and the player base and everything with it. So again, year two, man, excited for it.
Alexander Coccia:At the day, listen, call me a paid actor. If you want 2023 cemented Marvel snap as the best digital card game in the world, in my opinion, and like, it comes right down to it that like you play this game and you're like, yeah, along the edges, right. The bundling and all those other things that we could kind of talk about, there are some need for improvement, but at the end of the day, it's the best playing card game on the planet. And that's what sucked me in. And that beta, that's what got me in, how good this game actually is.
Cozy Snap:And I want people to know, like, oh dude, my favorite, I love it, I eat it up, like, when we get called chills, and like, whenever we work for a second dinner, I want it to be known. I think, behind the scenes, what I like about the game is like, man, I feel like the creators, not just myself, like, we have a big voice to the developers of like, hey, this sucked, this is how people are feeling. And their response to this is, is, it's just rare. I haven't seen that, and it feels really good that we can have this outlet of just like, and I've sent paragraphs, and Glynn just, he just takes it, man. I'll just be like, man, I hated this. What's this going on? This is such a bad feeling. Whatever it is, and it's just like this open feedback where we don't feel judged, and that's great. And at the same time, it's like, it's just a, I think it's a rarer thing to have, you know. And you know, we're, you know, you can call us shills. I'm actually Ben Brode's son. People don't know that. I'm actually Ben Brode's son. That's why, that's what I'm here for.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, I'm actually on Second Diner's payroll.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, you're yeah. But we have to, we have a bone to pick with them because they don't pay us anything.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, yeah. Come on, I need a raise, Dan, or I'm gonna start talking some smack.
Cozy Snap:We're employees, so don't get, yeah, this job sucks! But no, man, all together, I think That's why I love the Snapchat with you, man. We just get to talk, you know, a lot of things that we love, but we also can be, you know hard on them when we need to, and, Man, let's see where 2024 goes.
Alexander Coccia:And I tell you, we're gonna go right now. We're gonna be going to our mailbag segment. Mailbag, mailbag. Cozy. I love this segment here. We got a couple of questions here to start off. 2024. The first comes from Martha. That's a, that's like a Super Smash Brothers hero, isn't it? Is that like a, I was gonna say Kingdom Rush. That's not Kingdom Rush. It's like one of those Sword games on em. Nintendo Fire Fire Emblem. Yep. Fire. Fire Emblem. Matt's it. Fire Emblem. That's right. From Marth. What do you guys think about the bundles or the Twitch drops from bad cards like Punisher and Electra Does it mean that they're gonna get buffed sued or is that just copium?
Cozy Snap:I straight up think there's a, personally, cause I've talked to like, plenty of times, I've reached out to like Johnny, who's a great guy, I'm like, hey Johnny, What are we doing, man? Why are we picking, why are we picking Shocker and Punisher? And, I just think they think there was a good art. Yeah, I think there was, I per, I mean, you know, you can put the tinfoil hat on, it's like, why are they giving bad ones out there? Like, my response was like, oh, I just thought it was a badass art, right? Or whatever it was at the time. Dude, I don't think it's gonna be that we're getting buffs on those, as much as like Listen, my feedback, both on Conqueror's and on that was like, dude, can we get some more played cards, man? I love my Shocker Buggy Baron. I just never played it, you know?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, imagine like the Flaviano, like, Ultimate Thanos.
Cozy Snap:Come on, man!
Alexander Coccia:Right? Like, that would, that would have been something, right? But, I actually, I'm of the other side, where like, when I, like, when I saw Nega in the spotlight cash. Like there's no way that card release this is the way it is, right? They're going to, they're going to tune it up. I don't think we have a card like that right now. I think most of the cards, okay. Maybe Elsa is supposed to be coming out. I wonder if Elsa gets touched up ever so slightly, but she's been making some, some blah blahs. So I'm not actually sure about that, but it's funny. I actually like to think that like the spotlight card cat spell like cash cards might actually get touched up. But I mean, Punisher did get buffed. So, Elektra didn't, but maybe, just maybe, this upcoming patch will be surprised with an Elektra buff.
Cozy Snap:Just maybe, I love the question.
Alexander Coccia:What's our next one? Loved this episode, guys. Alex, as a family board gamer, I can recommend Marvel United. Koji, that's the game that you and I kickstarted, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It came out months ago, we actually forgot what it was. It was Marvel United that you and I kickstarted together.
Cozy Snap:Oh, I know, we were sitting there trying to think of what that was, yeah, yeah.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, so it's funny it comes up again, but the actual question is, there are a lot of archetypes in Snap currently. Is there an archetype that you have experienced in other card games that you would have liked or found interesting to try and implement in Snap? As an example, deck milling.
Cozy Snap:Ooh, yeah, that's it. I think Galen got asked that one time, like, Hey, is there any archetypes you want to introduce into Snap? And so that's definitely a It's a tricky one. Like, I thought, It's funny, I thought Loki was really cool what they did there, like, Being able to use your opponent's deck against them, and I want to see things more like that come in. I don't know. I think that's a tough one to answer. I like these Cheating big cards out, but making it fair kind of decks, like these Hela kind of builds, things like that. My answer to this kind of always feels the same, and it's like, I would love to see equipment. I would love to see, like, Captain America's shields come into the game. And, like, things that aid and bring more to, like, the lore of Marvel, in a way, right? Like, there's a lot to work with there. And if we can make Hela carrier and Quinjet cards, like, I feel like we can also, like, introduce those. That's kind of always my answer.
Alexander Coccia:You son of a gun, you stole my equipment answer. Now I don't know what to say. I'm kidding. I do know what to say. I'll say that like, one thing that's kind of missing from Snap. So, we talk about Snap as like, having control decks. But like, the way we use control is not the same as like, what control in like, Yu Gi Oh is. Or what control in like Magic the Gathering is. Cause like, Magic the Gathering for instance has instants. That'll like, actually interrupt the turn of the opponent, right, to control them. But anyways, I would, I would like to see, I don't know if I, would it be cool to see cards that like interrupt the flow of time? Like a, like a deck that like kind of changes, like, maybe makes it so that like you know, it's already on the snap timer, kind of like there was a card in Hearthstone that did that, which made it like you were always on the rope right away as soon as you played the card. It's like one of the dragons or something. I think that'd be interesting, like, like kind of like an added pressure. Component to the game, I think would be a pretty fun archetype.
Cozy Snap:Cards with stakes, I think are cool, right? Like Havok, we saw with him. And I, like, if you were to have a, like, you know, you use the energy for the rest of your game, but you can use it all in one turn. Like weird, like, things that are just, like, kind of crazy that we haven't seen before. I look, I said this when I was ranking all the new cards. Give me more cards like Nico and I'm happy. I think Nico was like a perfect card to release because it does so much with one thing. So maybe that's the archetype answer.
Alexander Coccia:Awesome, I love it. And our next question comes from Dylan McGregor. And it states, I started playing Snap around the time Conquest got introduced. Do you think a third type of game mode would be Ah, see, perfect! Do we think a third type of game mode should be introduced along with Conquest and the latter? Cozy, what do you think?
Cozy Snap:Yeah, for sure, man. I think, man, let's let's make January, February the tune up on, like, let's get the Ultimate Variants done, let's get the First Edition badge Let's just do what we have been trying to do, and then let's kick it off. Let's get going. That's what I think will happen.
Alexander Coccia:First Edition badges? Oh my gosh, I forgot those existed. There's people that have been like trying to collect them deaths, like collect the original releases of the cards. Cause like, I want all those first edition matches. And I'm like, man, I got some bad news. Like, I don't know if those are ever actually going to make it. Hopefully we get an updated roadmap. Right. But it's funny. We actually kind of touched on this in our prior ramblings about how good an arena mode would be. I would absolutely love an arena or draft mode. Would love it so much. I really hope it comes to fruition. So Dylan, yes, we do agree a hundred percent and we're going on to Mosh Pete. Moshpeed says do you ever look at the nerfs as potential buffs that that change a given card's deck or archetype? A pretty interesting idea here because they were saying that, hey, like, when Professor X got changed, did that make it more viable in negative? Did it make it more viable with Bravonna? So when do we ever have situations where a nerf becomes a buff?
Cozy Snap:Yeah, I mean, that's always been the Mr. Negative role, I think, right? Like, one thing to remember, it's like, again, I don't know why people have a hard time with this, like, Snap is a fun game, have fun with Marvel Snap. You're gonna hear us talk a lot about The meta, and like, the top plays, and like, did Professor X really repla No, like, there are better things. It felt like Professor X and Negative was like a fun addition, but like, is he better than blank or better than this? I don't know, but all I know is it's fun as hell to play it. Like, it's a fun thing to play Mr. Negative now, and that's why, you know, on Aggregate, if you look at my channel, like, Negative decks do really well view wise, because It's just fun. It's a fun thing to play. So I think yes and no to that question. I think it makes them more Accessible and fun in different ways and sometimes better, but very rarely better. I mean, there's a few instances.
Alexander Coccia:I love what you're saying about really just have fun and snap. Like I'll bring it up. My brother, like just literally on Christmas, he was playing snap. He barely plays any other. He's like, I only play civilization, but for some reason he loves snap too. He, I watched him win an eight cube game, not making this up. He played on top of a shuri. He played. A Hellcow that then kept hitting his Apocalypse because he had Swarm as well. And then it, then he had a Drac on the board. He ended up hitting like a, 34 Apocalypse while also getting a massive, like Wonged 128 power or something like that. Hellcow was like, how'd you even brew this? I'm like, I don't even know what's going on. He's like, well, he's like, I lost a whole bunch before you came. But anyways, this is, this is what my brew was. I was like, yes. This is what I want to see. Yes. You're ranked like 62, but you know what, man, you're going along the way.
Cozy Snap:Yeah. Yeah, dude. I love that. Like that's what I was doing. The game came out. I was doing the stupidest combos, you know, like the 1 percent chances. Like I'm going to win. But yeah like his Spider Man was a good instance of a card that he had to kill, but he got ultimately like better you know, for it. The hood, I think people got mad that the hood went down. They're like, oh, he's so much worse now. And it's like, no, you just use him for what he should have been used for, and that's punishing the opponent. So those are the instances I could think of to answer that question.
Alexander Coccia:And we'll close it out with saying that, like, I almost positive That they did mention that they don't really balance around Mr. Negative, like they don't actually actively like, oh, what happens to Mr. Like, unless there's an obvious, obvious synergy, they'll take a look at it, but I don't think they generally balance balance balance around the Mr. Negative effect, right? And if there's something they have to patch up afterwards, they will, but negative, negative, ironically, is a bit of an afterthought.
Cozy Snap:And that's my understanding. Yeah, I mean, I think kind of like a life you can see that as a two six, but like, I think like blob. But. Like, he's the good example of like, Blob would have been a zero power card if Mr. Negative didn't exist. You know what I mean? Like, because he does so well in his aggregate power. So I think they do slightly, but not like, oh, you know what I mean? Like, you're six, why is he a four? You know, it's like, well, that's obviously to keep him from being too stupid and negative. But for the most part, the thing about it, I don't know why we're on a tangent on negative, but I'll just say this. It's like Phoenix Force. Negative is the deck that if you pull the combo, you're gonna win the game. And if you don't, you're not gonna win the game. You're not gonna get a ton of cubes, because people know you played J. That's just how it always is gonna be, so they don't have to focus too much on that, because negative will always be that.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah. You know what? It's right. I listen, you've released some absolute banger Jane Foster Dex, but when someone snaps on me on turn four, they have negative vote. I'm like, I know what's going on five. Enjoy your one cube. I'll go next. Thank you very much, sir. And I'll hope to see you guys next on our next episode of the snapchat.
Cozy Snap:Hopefully you guys enjoy your New Year's Day, recover from your hangovers, or just watch a lot of good college football. Whatever you might be doing, Alex. Thank you for another great Snapchat. Thank you guys for hanging out. We'll see you on the next Snapchat episode. Happy Snapping.