The Snap Chat: Marvel Snap Podcast
Beta Ray Bill: A Powerhouse!? | January's Meta Decks | GrandMaster In Review | The Snap Chat Ep. 65
How good is Beta Ray Bill for Jane Thor decks? What are the upcoming cards on the rise? How has GrandMaster performed compared to its expectations? 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 Beta Ray Bill for Jane Thor decks? What are the upcoming cards on the rise? How has GrandMaster performed compared to its expectations? Join Cozy Snap and Alexander Coccia as they chat about this and more on this episode of The Snap Chat and every week as they discuss all things Marvel Snap.
What's going on guys? And welcome back. We're in the last week of January, so we have infinity conquest, and today we're gonna talk about the best decks in Marvel Snap that you can be playing to hopefully net you a conquest win. We're also breaking down the newest card to come out Tuesday, beta Ray Bill, a beloved character by many beta, is gonna look to add a big spice to the Jane Thor decks and Marvel Snap. We're gonna break down. What we think about the card, the combos, and is he worth going after? And then lastly, I'm going to talk about cards on the rise. A couple of cards and archetypes are super spicy, but you got to play them while you can. We're going to talk about that all today more in this episode of the Snapchat. And as always, I am joined by Mr. Alex, the one and only Kocha. How you doing, buddy? Good, we can snap. Twitch drops were a success. We had Grandmaster Madness. The meta is all over the place in a good way, I think. How's it going over there?
Alexander Coccia:Hey, I'm doing great, Cozy. My question for you is how are you doing? Last week, you had to get a generator just so we could record. Why don't we fill in the audience what's going on this week? Because apparently, it's never easy for Cozy Snap to record a podcast.
Cozy Snap:Never, man. We got the fiber coming in. Finally, I've been uploading the internet with like two sticks over here, but finally I got a little bit of fiber coming in. So it is another late night podcast, but that does not stop us over here. Good Monday to all of you guys, and we have ourselves a pretty good week in Snap. We got a new card coming. We got the OTA coming as well. Another update to some of the balance, I believe, coming to this Thursday, buddy. And this is it. This is the wrap up week of the month of January. The Infinity Conquest is now open as well. We got a lot to break down, buddy. So, tell me about it. How was the Twitch Drops? What were the decks you were playing the most this week? Obviously a lot of Grandmaster testing hit me.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, so I played like a complete asinine amount of Grandmaster. Like, this is the most I've ever played a singular card on its release. Simply because it aligned with the Twitch drops and I streamed for like three days straight when I wasn't working, of course. I certainly wasn't sleeping, but I was playing a lot of Grandmasters. Oh, I have a, we have a ton to talk about on the on the next side there. And I'm really excited to have that discussion with you because, I mean, you brewed. Couple absolute monstrosity beauties. I've never seen anything. I can't wait to talk about it. And honestly, I think Twitch drops are great. I think the meta is in a pretty good spot. I feel like so many different decks can win right now. And you're seeing it when we talk about like in terms of statistical analysis, like a lot of decks, like it feels like the win rates are. Kind of like squishing a little bit. You're getting a lot less like 63 percent win rate decks. Everything seems to be kind of coming in close to each other, a lot more competitive, and you like to see that. I think the the meta feels pretty good right now. It does.
Cozy Snap:Yeah. I'm excited to break it down. I think the, the adjustments last OTA did just enough to make it, you know, where the meta is competitive again, a couple of stats and win rates are kind of messed up because you have. We've had a couple of locations this month. Kamar Taj and the other one being Altar of Death. So like, Destroy, you know, maybe Honor of Eel. Little bit twisted numbers, but for the most part, yeah, there's nothing that's like, sticking like crazy. So we're gonna talk about that all over here. Alex, we know we're talking Grandmaster, what else are we talking about on your side of the Snapchat?
Alexander Coccia:Of course we will be talking about Grandmaster in review and giving our decks impressions and general thoughts. We'll also be discussing the top 10 cards of Snap with regards to win rate. And there's a couple absolute surprises on that list and I can't wait to dive deep into that. And then of course, we'll be closing it off with this week's Snapchat Mailbag.
Cozy Snap:Well, buddy we've got ourselves a very unique card coming out this week, and just like every card, you know, usually, like, Grand Master, we put, like, a whole hour to discussion towards him. And even after that hour, and even after all this week of playtesting, I still think we're just, like, scratching the surface on some of what he can do. Beta Ray Bill is going to be this week's new card. Probably a little bit less flexible than the Grandmaster by a large margin. And a somewhat unique Spotlight cash. Now, right off the bat, I'm not too crazy about the Spotlight. Now, you can say there's gonna be three now Series 5 cards, one Spotlight. We do like that. Should they open spotlights?
Alexander Coccia:Traditionally, this was like the week to skip. I think like that's kind of the way it was working out. However, like, listen, you're going to want to have Galactus in your collection. Like Galactus is one of those cards where you love them or hate them. You want them in your your collection at least. And Elsa, Elsa is completely falling off the radar, but I wonder, I wonder, we have no information, but I'm just throwing a hunch out here. So if I'm right, it's pure luck. But I wonder if Elsa is like an OTA candidate. Yeah, I really do. Because like. I wonder if like, you got an OT coming this week, she's in the spotlight, Cache is, she needs a number change, right? I think that she needs to either do plus three, or like, I don't know if they can make her do all the locations again at plus two. Elsa has felt like it's completely dropped off, and the card was so fun, yes, it was overpowered when it launched, yes, it had to get tuned down, but it provided a play style that was entirely unique. And I miss it. I miss it. I miss playing Jeff into it. I miss playing vision into it. I miss that mobility style archetype. So I wouldn't be surprised if this Thursday comes around and Elsa gets some love. If it's like a plus three or it does all the locations again, which is a text change, which is less likely, of course. If that happens, then, like again, Elsa's a card you want to have in your collection. But if that doesn't happen, and you already have Galactus, then this is probably a skip.
Cozy Snap:Well, and, you know, they always try to put cards in with the cards that, you know, maybe there's some synergy there. And, you know, hey, maybe Beta Ray Bill likes Elsa, getting a little bit of extra power to go over the top. You know, we're gonna have to see, but I would not be, you know, surprised if we did get a OTA to Elsa. So let's, let's talk about him. Do you know anything about him other than he looks like a a horse with, with a hammer? He almost looks like a meme that you would see on like Adult Swim or something.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, I'm trying to make my way through a lot of the lore and stuff in the comics. I've not gotten to Beta Ray Bill yet, I have no idea. But in just kind of passing and seeing comments on Twitter, on Reddit and stuff this might be one of the most, like, is this guy beloved? Like, I don't understand, like, everyone seems to like Beta Ray Bill? That's kind of the impression I'm getting.
Cozy Snap:He's a deeper cut. He's definitely a deeper cut amongst like MCU, right? The Marvel Cinematic Universe. But for comic fans you do have a lot of love for him. The best way to describe him, and again, I've only read like one comic with him. And from, like, my impression of him, is he's essentially Thor, okay? But Thor is, like, he's Thor has a lot of personality to him, right? And there's a bunch of different things going on with Thor and, like, his arc. Whereas Beta Ray Bill is kind of just a badass. Like, that's the best way to put it. Like, he's just always, like, aggressive. Not aggressive like mad, but he's just always kind of you know, the mighty Thor, per se, if you will. And then, of course, people at least know his, his token card Stormbreaker, that's obviously pretty big in the MCU, obviously a bit different on how it was used there. But, so Beta Ray Bill Alex is a 4 cost 6 power card, and when you play him he has the on reveal of shuffling. Stormbreaker into your deck, kind of like Mjolnir as a token card, but Stormbreaker is a 0 cost 1 power card, and when it's played, it doubles Beta Ray Bill's power. Let's go to talk about the Asgardian here, Beta Ray Bill, and how we think he's gonna be in Marvel Snap. So, as we always do, first impressions right off the rip, Alex. And listen, I love this book. It's tough. Marvel Snap is tough to rate cards, and this is just a gut feeling. This is before we get to play. What are you ranking him?
Alexander Coccia:I originally had him at 2 stars but he did get buffed. If I'm not mistaken, he was a 4 5 when we originally evaluated him. Am I wrong to say he was buffed to a 4
Cozy Snap:6? We gave him funny enough dude, we gave him 3 stars. Both of us, whenever we did the initial ranking, and that was at the 4 5. He's a 4 6 now. And so yeah, it's gonna be interesting. So what's your, what are you saying for the ranking?
Alexander Coccia:I'm willing to go to 3. I'm willing to stay at 3. I was leaning like low 3, maybe that's why I was thinking I had said 2. My expectation is a little tempered here, which of course means he's gonna be the best card in Marvelous now. But, you know, but honestly, my expectations are tempered.
Cozy Snap:So this is who he reminds me of in some ways, like the best way, outside of Thor. Okay, right kind of Black Panther, right? So, Black Panther's not in every deck, right? In the decks he's in, he wins. He does good. He does really good in those decks, but he's not all over the place. And that is where I have Beta Ray Bill, like, kind of at, like, a 2. 5, right? Because I feel like in the deck that he's in, and not like Meek. Meek has an archetype. BetaRay kinda has a deck. A deck or two, if you will. So BetaRay built for me about a 2. 5, guys, and that has largely a lot to do about his flexibility and just his overall usage there. And then if you look at, like, the fun factor, I feel like Grandmaster kinda itches that scratch way more than Beta. So I feel like they should have separated those cards a little bit by a couple of weeks, right? And we're kind of getting them back to back. That's at least the way that I look at it. So, you know, happened to be proven wrong here. That being said, the decks that he's in is one of my most played as of the last two months. So I am very excited about said deck. And I have a lot to speak on it because I've, you know, done a lot of testing around it, bud. So 2. 5, you're saying 3, 2. 5, somewhere in that area for both of us. Kind of right on the money. So Alex, I think we can just get right into it, man. Let's talk synergy. Let's talk the deck that we are referring to. Nothing too crazy. Nothing too surprising here. It's the Jane Thor deck, right? It's all about Jane.
Alexander Coccia:It's always been that deck. Yeah.
Cozy Snap:So Jane Foster, Jane Foster. Here's the thing about her. Now, a lot of people like to go back to March last year. I think it was March, maybe a little bit later in the year, but we had Janejaw, very popular deck, was kind of all over the place for a while. It was the main way to play Lockjaw. And then, of course, we have the, we, we, it was a Jane Evo deck actually for a while, right? We had a Jane and High Evo kind of going together now. Then they nerfed
Alexander Coccia:the Lockjaw, the Wasp, yeah.
Cozy Snap:Yep, absolutely. So those are like the main decks, but we're seeing more and more. That Jane is just being played with Thor in these mixed packages, right? It could be in like a Valkyrie deck. The Double Zeros deck, right? And then the way to be able to utilize Wasp and Yellowjacket alongside Mjolnir. And now Stormbreaker. Heck, I don't even know if that deck will work anymore because there's going to be too many Zero Token cards, which was kind of like never an issue. And then of course, Mr. Negative. That's the other place that Jane is, but that's obviously not going to be relevant today. I mean, I would just get right to it, bud. The thing I think people are overlooking to talk about the pros is the absolute nut player line, right? Like, forget just playing Thor on 3, Jain on 5. That feels really strong when you can get that going with the other things you can do in the deck. Clearly, we know that's gonna be great. Now you've got this guy, you got Beta Ray Bill coming to town, who's even a bigger lift off, right, getting the potential 12 power. So if you don't get Thor, awesome. And then you've got the super nut, which is going to be Thor, Beta, into Jane, which if my calculations are correct, bud, I mean, what are you putting, 10 power, 13 power, technically, with the Stormbreaker, and then at least 8 with her, plus everything else you've played, right? So that's, that's definitely some potential there.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, there's a ton of burst, a ton of burst there. And I mean, that's why Sandman exists. That's why Leech exists, right? Like those are the release files for a deck like this, but you're right. Like it turns into this, this turn six extreme burst play. And I mean, don't, don't scoff at the fact that Jane Foster. themselves is a five, eight, that's a pretty strong stat line, right? So yeah, you're right. And what I like about what you just said is that it's not reliant necessarily on Lockjaw. Now classic kind of Thor based decks, Jane Foster based decks are often running Lockjaw. And like, I've been trying to pen and paper kind of like this, like non Lockjaw based deck where you play on curve, like you're suggesting. I think it could work. However, I still think that Lockjaw will be in those decks as a backup plan for the way the draws work and stuff like that, because let's be honest. It's way too good to play something like a hammer into the the Lockjaw on turn six, get a free rotation, get the plus six, play down the Stormbreaker. Like that is a huge, huge turn, right? So I still think that Lockjaw has a role to play, but you're right. There's nothing wrong with playing Thor on three you know, a Beta Ray on four and then Jane on five.
Cozy Snap:There's just nothing wrong with it. I mean, you're probably going to win if you get said play line, right? Like, and what's cool about it is now you can do Thor. Or, Beta, and then you have Jane, and let's not forget having finally, like, synergy there. Like, we finally have two potential Thors, kind of? Is nice, that's huge, that's a lot of extra power. And then we can take that way over the top, and that's where we're gonna kinda start getting to get carried away. I mean, you hit the nail on the head there, it's either Lockjaw and Janejaw. And then you're probably gonna play Beta, Thor, and then just big, big cards, right? Or, you're going to be looking to do just these interesting reveal packages mixed with these three cards, if you will, right? So, we obviously didn't talk about them, but I mean, just talking about Finishing that off, you play all those cards down, you have 10 on Thor, 13 between Stormbreaker and Beta, and then you have the 8 on Jain. But you throw down the Godfather, the Almighty. You put in another 8, you're taking Thor to 16, you're taking Beta to 24, and you're gonna win the game by a, by a handsome amount. Now, Alex, what I like is even if you don't get this, let's just say you get Beta, you're still talking 2425 at the token. 25 power, Beta Raybuilt. And let's just say Odin and Jane together, 16. Just those cards. I mean, it has more ways to win now, in that more honest shell, not the lockjaw.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, that's what I was saying, like, on paper, like, you kind of don't need the lockjaw anymore. And yeah, you're relying on the draw and everything, but, yeah, like, it's kind of insane. And we did see Odin in the past playing with Thor, and it was kind of like a greedier deck that not a lot of people tried, right? But this year, now you have two reasons to run it this way, right? And then you could run much more of, like like a, just a Just a good cards package early on, right? Honestly, like I do think there's a lot of potential for Beta Ray Bill and it's funny, you brought up a Black Panther, but I was thinking about how it was analogous to something like a Daken and Daken obviously doubles its power as well, but at a lower initial stat line. And I don't think that Dakin has a much inherent synergistic play as the Asgardians apparently do, right? All these Asgardian synergies I think can really pop off, whereas I think you have to work a little harder for Dakin. Of course the shard goes to your hand, which is useful, it's not in your deck. But we got Jane for that, right? So I mean, we got answers, and I think there's going to be a lot of interesting experimentation.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, so that's a great point because here's the deal. You can add, so we were talking about Elsa a little bit, right, and how you can add some power to Mr. Beta Ray because what's really cool about this guy is essentially if you're able to even give this guy a little bit of love, all right, Ironheart you've got obviously the Elsa pick. I think Elsa's not going to make it into the list, you know, but I do, you know, that's another card that gives Power, you could go with something like, yeah, Akoye. I think it's gonna be more honest, like, it's kind of the Black Panther effect, Alex, where people try to get like 120 power Black Panther. I'm pretty sure just 24 is gonna get the job done most of the time for this guy, right? And maybe being a little bit greedy. No. Speaking of greedy, we talked about this a couple, I would say almost a month ago at this point. That Wong, maybe it was when Meat came out. That Wong is starting to not really be a greedy card like he used to be, right? Like this, Wong used to just be pure, if you're running Wong in a deck, you're kind of like, Oh, okay, you're, this guy's playing the Wong deck. Whereas now, he's just kind of like a nice comp complimentary piece. I would say even more so with Grandmaster. I mean, hey buddy, Wong and or Grandmaster. Either one of those cards with this, it's gonna be great.
Alexander Coccia:What's kind of hilarious about Wong is that Wong was like the original greedy Popoff card, right? That's how numbers got bigger. And as we've gotten more cards in Snap Over, its like release the numbers in Snap have just gotten larger, right? Yeah. I mean we had blub, I mean you had a video where Bob was like, what, a hundred something? Yeah. Like let's be honest, right? Like, but the numbers are getting outta control. So Wong's ability to pump numbers kind of was like, ah, Wong's Wong who Caress, right? Yeah. Yep. And I feel like. There used to be nothing scarier than a Wong just sitting there, but now we have more tools for Wong, right? Yep. We got Wong. We've always had Cosmo. Right? We've always had Cosmo, but Magneto is in the meta now. Huge. Yeah. And Magneto obviously destroys Wong in, in a lot of ways as well. I'm seeing a whole lot of rogue, I don't know about you, rogue's all over the place and never, never obvious, right. Rogue just comes out. Right. And enchanter is making some shells and particularly the, the Shiri shells, which aren't exactly popular right now. But still, Enchantress is out there as well. So yeah, I absolutely agree. And like you can actually slip Wong to more decks now because Zabu is making a comeback as well. So you're not committing that like, Oh, turn four, it's a Wong and whatever. Like you can do that, but sometimes you sneak one in turn three. Maybe you get some additional value with something like an Ironheart early, and then you play Odin on top with Stormbreaker, and you got these different play lines with Wong that didn't quite exist before. So it's a good call out, Cozy.
Cozy Snap:Well, outside of that, man, I do also want to just talk about, we've seen these like Annihilus packages kind of just creeping all up, right? Junk is dead, LOL, just kidding, it's not, right? You've got the Sentry, the Hood, and Annihilus, Yellowjacket in here, Summoned from the J, made a deck guide on this not too long ago, I like to call it the, the Thor's Toxic Terror. Listen, this deck I think is going to be My, probably number one pick for the perfect home, because you've got yourself in here, Werewolf by night to scale up high, using Mjolnir, using Stormbreaker. You've got yourself some tech cards in there, now Enchantress is in this build, you've got Shang Chi working really well, Mobius to also count you know, counter different decks you see out there. You know, maybe Mobius might work his way out of this deck, but I actually think he's probably gonna have himself pretty firmly submitted. Because you're getting another token card, you can take out one of the one drops as well. And, and Beta just kind of fits perfectly right into the way this deck is going to flow. You can go over the top, you've got a way to build up with Werewolf by night, you've got a Nihilus for a little bit of tactics to push things to the opponent's side. So this is where I see most likely Thor and Beta and Jain having a very successful home. And then again, as we just talked about, if it's not something like that, it's going to be the Jain Jaw or something to that nature. With maybe a little Grandmaster, Wong, Flarebud But that's what I think is cool. There's so many different ways to utilize these cards now.
Alexander Coccia:I know, no kidding, and This is one of those cards that I wonder if, when Beta Rebuild comes out, he's gonna buff cards via like, association, where like, Thor wasn't seeing any play. Like, let's be honest, Thor wasn't seeing much play, being like, Lockjaw's not being played with Thor. Like, Lockjaw's being played with Thanos, being played everywhere else. So I wonder if Beta Rebuild, if it's better than anticipated, or if it's able to make enough of a splash, If it rises, Thor stocks, because now you have another reason to run a car that works well with Lockjaw, works well with Jane, works well with Odin, works like it just suddenly Thor's better by association, right? So I always think about that with Snap because we've seen that so many times, like we just show Denialist. Sentry was unplayable until Annihilus came out, right? Hood saw a whole new type of play once Annihilus came out. And this has happened over and over again in Snap. So, I wonder about Thor and whether or not Beta Ray Bill actually lifts him competitively.
Cozy Snap:Well, cause Thor's only really had Jane Foster and he still really only does, like, Let's just say this, okay? We've done a lot of good talk. We'll go back to a couple synergies, but Beta Ray Bill is very narrow. Like, the guy, he Past Anytime you have a card that has to be played with other cards, you just kind of lose the flexibility. Like, Jane Foster is in the deck with him. Don't get cute. He has to be there. Like, there's no point because his biggest downfall is, we've seen this song and dance before. Thor in the beta was a four cost card. It was not great. Mainly because you didn't have enough turns to help you get the hammers naturally. And if you don't get Jane, it kind of gets even worse. Whereas now I feel like this is where you could see it, and we just showed the list. But that's why I think Zabu is going to be big, right? Because you at least buy yourself another turn if you don't have the Thor. You can play him down earlier. And then if you get the Stormbreaker, you can still have something pretty cool happen, right? So just naturally, you know, Alex, I'm thinking Zabu. Magic, just to give yourself that little bit of extra time. Possibly, I doubt it, but maybe Crystal. Right, just ways to make this less of a gamble of a card, and more, you know, dependable stats.
Alexander Coccia:I like that callout because if you Zabu and you have Beta Red Bull at 3, that also in theory allows you on turn 6, instead of playing the Odin combo we talked about prior, you could actually play Wong at 3 energy, then the Mjolnir, then the Stormbreaker, and then what you can do as well is now you have Extra energy where you can do something else. Right. So, I mean, it's kind of like, yeah, exactly. Hey, so it's a bit of a backwards design with Odin, right? It's like Odin except in reverse kind of, but it works. Right. So I like to call it a Zabu who continuously just continues to increase his presence in the meta.
Cozy Snap:And we won't go into too much, but this, that, it, what is the reverse Odin? It's Grandmaster, right? Like a really effective way, if you put Wong down, you can send two cards to the middle, reactivate them, right? And so you can do all that for not a lot. He is what I like to refer to as like the combo master. This is a combo deck, and so I think Grandmaster kind of naturally fits in here. I did play him a lot with Thor when he first came out, and there are some cheeky things you could do, like putting Thor twice. Getting two of those before you put Jane down, or you just do maybe double Mjolnir. You know, at that moment of testing, Odin was very wonky with his bugging. Some of the cards, or maybe all of them, but from my experience, I think it's just some of them, are activating, they're on reveal, and then they're, like, they're, they're doing their check in the lane that they're in, and then they go in the middle. It's kind of weird, like Galactus does that, too. It's some weird synergy with Grandmaster that we can allude to more. But I do want to call it either Grandmaster, For a purpose is coming out near beta. Cause I think you're going to get more of this combo wombo stuff.
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely. And like, I mean, anytime you're able to like get multiple products for beta rate, like he gets massive, right. And I mean, a lot of the, I don't want to say vanilla stat line, but the stat line you run for. With the forecast is generally 410. I mean, well, technically centuries like a 420, but I mean, you got to work for a little bit, but anytime you break past that 410, like you're, you're getting pure value. So yeah, you're getting a 412 in just one proc. And then with grandmaster, it keeps doubling.
Cozy Snap:What, let me ask you when you get, cause I think everybody's different here. When you get your Mjolnir, when you get the Stormbreaker, do you play it right away? Do you play the next turn? You always play T6.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, unless I suspect, obviously if they're like playing Sheenot, I'm expecting Leech, right? You gotta know, you gotta know what you're against. If an Electro's on the board, right? Sandman could be a potential play there, you gotta get it out. Yeah, but if you're playing like Right now, Thanos and Sheenot Infinite is playing Leech, and you gotta get them out of your hand.
Cozy Snap:You want to know who I as we move on, and great call dude, that's who I was going to say. Leech is the one to watch out for. You want to know who I think is a sneaky, good synergized card if you can pull something like this off? Is potentially, and I've been playing him a lot more, actually have him on as cards on the rise. It's our man, Arnim Zola. I think Arnim Zola could be a really cool combo card with Beta. Because first of all, you're already going crazy. You're already doing these combo things. But on top of that, if you're having a Wong, or even if you're not, and you have the Foresight and you put Beta in his own lane, and then you pop him into two lanes, even that one Hammer activation, you got a couple 12s, right? I think that's an interesting thing you can do, and we're having way more dependable ways on how to play on Imzola, which we can get to in a second. But yeah, any last combo pieces for you?
Alexander Coccia:No, I was just thinking when you were saying that, I'm like, so you basically just want him to be Black Panther, then? Yeah, essentially. Black Panther 2. 0, essentially, with maybe one extra step, perhaps. No, I think we nailed it. I think Beta Ray Bill could potentially you know, have some Decent meta impact. I don't think it's going to be as wide reaching. He's not going to have that wide reach, as you said prior leading up to this. Very niche card. Doesn't even have necessarily an archetype, but basically a deck. He's not going to be a an archetype defining card, but he's going to be a piece to the puzzle. And I mean, hey, listen, if it's, if it's a skippable week, then hey, that's actually not always a bad thing for people that are trying to conserve some resources, right?
Cozy Snap:I think it is, man. I think ultimately where we end at here, guys, just to give you guys the advice that we try to do our best on, right? It can be tough. I think this is, unless you're a die hard beta guy from the comics, I think this is a big skip week. Mainly because you're just not doing all that much, right? With one card. You're not really expanding your collection all too much because you're kind of pigeonholed. You're kind of pigeonholed to one deck. And then, more so, if he just zooms and takes off We've seen from past, this is going to be a terrible week for them. Because people are just going to counter the card heavy. If you thought you saw Cosmo a lot last week, it's going to be even crazier. Get ready. Yeah, get ready. So that would be my advice. I would say probably skip it, but you will see successful decks. You will see successful decks, but it could be a tough time.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, and always wait towards the weekend, like wait till Sunday or even Monday before making your purchase. Like, you just get more data. Like, you, you never are disadvantaged by waiting on the spotlight cash weeks and allowing the meta to mature and for decks to be crafted and for win rates to be released and stuff like that. Honestly, you never lose by just simply waiting a little bit on the new release.
Cozy Snap:Well, Alex, that takes us to our next subject. We have cards on the rise. Now, you know, we've had this subject before, but I feel like this might be The most important time we've had it. There's a lot of outliers booming up in the meta. And if you play them too late, if you play them in mid February, you're gonna miss the boat. It's gone. And, and some of these are doing really good in January for specific purposes, so we're gonna break down those cards. Alex, we're, we're, we're pretty hot on this subject. We've nailed, you know, Mobius in the past, and, and, Legion, we were talking about those guys in like, September, October, like, play them now. And they're here. They're here. They've been here. They've been pretty staple. So, let's go ahead and talk about it. Let's have a couple picks each with cards on the rise, bud. I'll start us off, man. We have another destroyed car kind of rising up. I saw it. Again, I never know the sources. There's always some guy who's been playing it for I saw it on Untappd. You, you told me KEM Best made a thing on it. Awesome. Lady Deathstrike. Is all over the place right now, and is really solid in this meta in particular. Whether that is to counter tech cards, whether it's to counter an Iron Man. We're seeing a lot of these, like, Mystique Iron Man decks, these combo decks with Grandmaster. She's one of the few cards, man, that's like Killmonger in Destroy. You're able to use it on offense, and then use it on defense. So Lady Deathstrike, this is the time to play her, yeah?
Alexander Coccia:It's a really spicy addition, and part of the reason for that is because a lot of Destroy Decks naturally are playing Forge, right? They're playing Forge for the Deadpool and stuff, so if you don't draw into your Deadpool, you're holding this Forge, you're like, hmm, what can I destroy? And a lot of the greedy stuff that's been going on in the meta, like we were just Finished pumping up Wong about how Wong's making a bit of a comeback and Wong is relevant again. Who loves Wong? Lady Deathstrike, right? So it's been really fun and nobody in their right mind expects Lady Deathstrike to come on down. And it's a huge surprise snappable play. So. I mean, listen, she's by no means like a meta breaker. She'll never be that unless she somehow gets overtuned or another synergy comes up. Definitely a surprise card. Definitely a card that could take people by by surprise. Surprise, surprise. And also, I just like to say, play a card that I've not seen in a while, right?
Cozy Snap:Talk about a window that is gonna be a short window to players. You might as well play her now. She creeps up, I think she was okay doing like Elsa's meta briefly or something when there was like a lot of small cards being played or in like balance metas. Like, that is when she comes. She is that, that, that release valve. That Glynn always tries to have, right? For certain metas that creep up, and Lady Deathstrike kind of found her time to shine now. That being said, if you look at the data, Destroy, she's not like, far and away the best card. She's a nice flavor pick, if you will. Definitely the definition. of a card on the rise. Alex, I got a, a few more up my sleeve, but what do you got?
Alexander Coccia:Oh, listen, I gotta talk about Hela. I don't know about you, Hela's all over the place. I keep seeing Hela, and like, unironic Hela. Like, sometimes I'm like, why is this gamer playing Hela for? Like, what are we doing here? But no, Hela is legit being played at a relatively good perc like, actual discard Hela. And I'm seeing it being splashed in Black Knight. I'm seeing just greedy ass Lockjaw Hela. Like I'm seeing it all over the place, Cozy. Like in like legitimate competitive scenarios. It's back.
Cozy Snap:I've lost some big cube games to Hela. Like some massive ones. Or like, I don't know why, maybe I've been like, I'll be like, I could take her. Like I definitely, like I lost one today. You never can. I lost one today where she put a rogue in a lane that took my gnoll How? How? What are the odds? What are the odds? I have priority 2, like, all of it you know, together, but yeah. I mean, hey another great, you know, counter card to Lady Deathstrike and Invisible Woman. By then, it's probably too late, because they already have the MODOK. Maybe they had the Hela, I don't know. But it, it is a very good archetype at the moment, and definitely one that I was going to talk about. In the best decks in Snap, I think Hela is definitely standing out. And I would add to this, since we're on the topic of Discard Buddy, you know who I'm just hot on lately? Maybe it's not on the rise, but I think it should be played way more. Bro, I love Gambit. I love him. I think he's, he's great all the way around. For so many reasons, dude. He just does great things against the big, tall decks. And he gives you a win sometimes when you're not supposed to get one. He has been my number one Grandmaster card.
Alexander Coccia:Oh, honestly, Gambit is so fun. Like, I literally made a deck called Machine Gun Meek, and it was just Gambit pew pewing, right? Like that's what it was. And like, I'm all for Gambit, but you know what drives me nuts? Well, you know what grinds my gears? Every time I'm playing Gambit. Just before I play Gambit, Kyaira comes up, like, hey, check, what up, like, Kyaira, get off the board, stop being a good card, I gotta Miracle Gambit you, I got all these Swarms, what am I supposed to do now?
Cozy Snap:You just say, don't miss. You're just like, hey, hit Kyaira first, then go crazy. That's it. Target Kyaira, then everybody else. Yeah, Gambit without question, has been a card that I just think should be seeing more play in these discard decks, but also just has good stand alone value as a trade off. I thought you were gonna say Central Park always pops up. Whenever you play you play your gambit, I feel like those squirrels are always like taking a Mr. President for the card that I want.
Alexander Coccia:Always. I mean, for me, it's every time I go to play Gambit, it's either Kyara comes out or they have Wolverine and I'm like, well, they're going to win one location probably, but Hey, listen, the way I play Gambit is like seamlessly, like greedy. I like, listen, I'm setting up Onslaught. I got Mystique. I got Wong. I'm all in. Like it's, it's board clear time. That's the way I play. I'm not just taking one or two cards. I don't care how many squirrels there are. Every squirrel is dying. Everyone dies.
Cozy Snap:Everybody dies. Dude, okay, so what got me on this is during the twist drops we did like a draft the deck section. I had the chat, draft the deck. It's infamously called now Gas Trash or Trash Gas. Whatever you prefer. It's a legendary deck, Alex. Got us through a gold conquest with absolute ease. We wiped Dara. I love you, Dara. We took down Dara on the board. He was playing, I think, Darkhawk Grandmaster. It is a, an all, listen, the deck has no synergy. It was, it was a once in a lifetime miracle. However, in that deck, you had Gambit, which was cool. He had good value. But you had another three cost who have on their rise, that's Juggernaut. Juggernaut won me so many games that we were not supposed to win from that exact thing. People were trying to play these cards in lanes, and they're getting greedy with it. And if you don't have a Lady Destruct to take out a Wong You have a juggernaut that's just as good. I think it's phenomenal. I've been loving juggernaut is now the time to play him.
Alexander Coccia:When you said getting greedy with it, I pictured like Will Smith, kind of like, I don't know, it's, it's a music video that you got to make at some point. I'm just throwing it out there. Okay. Fair enough. But juggernaut is honestly like, he's, he's a big surprise card. He's one of those turn six wins that like no one ever sees coming. It's like, Oh, you want to play here? Boom. And it's just now, right. I really like a juggernaut for that. And I mean, listen, no one's really expecting jug. He's. Especially when you're not playing him in decks that always naturally play Jug. Like, if you're not playing him in Surfer, you just kind of, he's like a, this tech splash. I mean, I've lost 8 cubers to Juggernaut, so I like the call out.
Cozy Snap:And dude, okay, so this next one, if you have not been listening, and if you want to get ahead of the curve, ahead of a cozy video, ahead of whatever, we've got a huge one for you. Now Lamby, our friend Lamby he just won the last Conquerors. He held like like an open. And yeah, the, the, the Sweatlords came out, Alex. They were, they were, they, they were sweating. I have no idea. I didn't see the tournament. But I did see a post from Lamby. And it had the decks. That did really well in the tournament. And my god, did you see this? Did you see this tweet?
Alexander Coccia:I know what deck won. I know what deck won, Cozy. I'm gonna give it to you. I'm gonna let you explain.
Cozy Snap:Well, no, no, I, well, hold on, hold on, hold on. Did you see second place though? Because second place was more, was more exciting. Did you see second place? No, I, I'm not sure. Okay. It was a destroyed deck, which I was like, oh, that's cool. And in that destroyed deck, guys, not only was Grandmaster Day, which I was like, hell yeah, but Dracula was in this destroyed deck and it blew my mind. I was like, wait. This is, this is awesome. Why is this in here? Well, my friends as much as they try to make it simple to understand, Snap is a very complex game. And even though he can be reduced by Ravonna, because he's technically a 6 0, but he's not, but he is, Gnoll can be absorbed in full power by Dracula. And it's a new way to have an insurance to get the Gnoll play for only 4 cost or even cheaper. I believe the credit goes to a guy named Davide or Da Da David, Da David, I'm sorry if I butchered your name, I'll put it in the description. But what an ingenious spin on an archetype that doesn't get a lot of change. And this is, if you want to be an early trailblazer, here you go guys.
Alexander Coccia:I got two. I can't even believe you're not bringing up one of them. I'm, I'm shocked. Okay, number one I want to talk about is obviously Darkhawk. With the change to Blob, Darkhawk's having a resurgence again. Which is great. This is exactly like the, the, the tug of war that happens in the meta between cards. Blob starts to drop off a little bit after the nerf, which, by the way, Blob Still good. It's still huge. Big stat stick, right? But because it's losing prevalence and it's not as strong as it used to be, people are kind of waning off it. So that gives Darkhawk time to shine and some room to breathe. So Darkhawk, I think, is definitely on the rise. Closey, are you really not going to talk about Arrow? Arrow's kind of coming back with the King Ben synergies. Those decks are making a bit of a comeback. The win rates aren't as high as they are, but I still think those decks are being figured out.
Cozy Snap:Oh yeah, dude. Arrow is legit. In a second, in the best decks, I got plenty to say about the move, mobster, mobster move, man. Because that is I'm surprised how well that deck is performing still. Like it has been my best deck. Over the course I actually did really, I did really good with the Toxic deck before I killed it because I made a video and then it's like, I just did terrible after that. But that was, I was climbing a lot with that, and then I was climbing just, if I need to just win a game, it's Magneto, it's Arrow, it's the Kingpin deck. Yeah, absolutely. I think Arrows, without question, is making a surgence. And it's these non Shang Chi able cards, man. Shang Chi is the biggest force in Snap. No question about it. We're seeing it time after time after time. And that's why sometimes, even in Gas Trash, I was playing Crossbones. And I loved it. I was like, wow, I actually like Crossbones because he's a safe, big, statted card, bud. So yep, I like the arrow, the arrow splash. You know, I just mentioned the Toxic deck. I actually feel like, to a good degree, I think Debris, and I didn't mean to just, like, drop bars there and rhyme. I think Debris is doing great, man. I don't know about you, but I do feel like she's definitely getting an uptick in a lot of decks.
Alexander Coccia:I'm seeing it too, but I'll be honest, I'm not like sure why. I'm not sold on Debris. I'm not sold on Debris. I love her. Why though? Like, I feel like this card's not good, honestly.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, in Junk Decks. Like, obviously I'm not trying to make her work in much of anything else, but dude. Really because right now the Met, there's just so many people playing a lot of cards. They're getting greedier. They're filling one lane, and they're trying to, she stops combo lanes. But then she also can just fill the board quickly, and just ruin decks. So, I feel like she has a little bit of both. I played her a ton in the Toxic version, obviously, because I'm trying to hazmat it, and send it over, and all that stuff. But I think Debris is definitely on a small uptick personally. A couple that, if you look towards the future, man I do think Hitmonkey is an early get ahead of it now, gonna have a chance. Gonna have a chance to get better. We have a card coming out where once you play your next turn, all of your one cost cards are for free. So, I think Hitmonkey's absolutely gonna have kind of a great time there. If you haven't gotten Grandmaster yet, and you're thinking about it, and you don't have Hitmonkey, then, you know, that is an extra little thing to try to get ahead. You have one day before the spotlights reset. And then, just to refresh people, man, we've got, we've had Negasonic, we've had Mobius. Kind of on these hot and rising cards for a while. Just stop sleeping on Negasonic, guys. If you have a deck that's good at priority, play the card. It's such a good card. And then I'll end on this, Alex. I do think, slowly, we're seeing the Sandman come back. Little Metallica. We're seeing Sandman starting to rise to stop these kind of greedy decks.
Alexander Coccia:Seeing a little bit of enter Sandman, are we? Listen, I've always liked Sandman. I like the place all that it provides. Jeff took a little bit off Sandman, but the nice thing about Jeff is that you can use it in your Sandman deck itself, right? So I do like that call out. And I mean, we're coming into a meta that maybe Sandman's required. We've got Beta Ray Bill. If you want to, if you want to counter Beta Ray Bill, then I mean, one of the ways you do that is with Sandman itself. So definitely let that call out cozy.
Cozy Snap:Alrighty, man, so to end it, we talked about cards on the rise. Let's go ahead and talk and wrap up the January meta. Just in case people don't know what's performing really well at the moment, we're gonna talk about our experience. It was Twitch Drops, so we played a ton of these decks over the last couple of days. We've played against them. I feel like we you know, we're equipped to talk about what's doing hot. So I'm gonna bring a couple decks and tell me kind of how, how you feel about the deck. Will it be OTA'd? Is it, you know, and just your general thoughts. And we start with one of the best performers by a mile and it's gonna be the Darkhawk Leech deck that we have seen for quite some time. And I think Leech is the main discussion point with it. Have you played against this deck? Is this one that you've piloted? Definitely a top performer.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, I did pilot it, and I did see it every once in a while, but I feel like it came off a little bit with the nerf to blob, because the reason for the leech primarily was to leech the blob so they couldn't blob on turn six and blow up your your Darkhawk and Mystique or whatever it is you happen to be playing in the list. So yeah, I do agree that that particular list is a strong one, and it continues to be strong, because going into the Beta Rebuild week, we just finished talking about how leech is going to be relevant, right? So it's definitely one that you can turn to if you want to steal some cubes away.
Cozy Snap:I'll be honest though, man, I Leech is, I would say, it's gotta be up there as my least, top three least played cards, at least in the last six. I, I, can't remember the last time I've played him a ton. I hate him. I hate Leech, dude. I hate him so much. Oh man, like, I don't think I get super salty playing the game. Like, if you go to any of my videos, if I lose, like, I'm always like, GG, go check out my 10 hour Twitch. I was, you know, happy most of it. When I get leeched, especially when I'm getting excited, you know, and that's probably what it is. It just, it just sucks, man. Like, show me Alioth, show me Galactus of the Old. I'm just not crazy about him, but He is a release valve, I guess, in some ways to prevent a pretty big turn six, but man, he can, poof, yeah, I can hate him.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, he sucks, right? And it's unfortunate that a 5 3 power card is one that you can snap on on turn five, right? And like, dismantle their hand if you're against a specific deck that you recognize is gonna need that combo turn six. I mean, listen, I do hate, I hate Leech as well. In fact, I take Leech out. I took Leech out of my Sheenaut decks. I was playing Kang instead, right? I was memeing with Kang, right? So, I mean, I get it, but at the same time, like, I understand why, like, Glenn is kind of in defense of Leech. I understand that release valve mentality, but it's definitely one of the least fun cards in Snap.
Cozy Snap:Oh, that's for sure, but I guess he's there for purpose. Now outside of that, we've already talked about some of these other ones. Destroy, with Lady Deathstrike, is doing really well. Annihilus Balance is hot, guys. Play it while that's hot. Thanos Blobjaw, as I like to call it, still very, very dependable, high ranked deck. And we're actually still seeing a good amount of Hela, Black Knight, and just Discard with solid stats. Like, these, these decks are doing great again. It's not Discard's not anywhere where it was with Dependable Discard, but you have options now, which I think is really cool for the archetype as we head into a month with a lot of stuff to help boost it even more.
Alexander Coccia:You said it exactly. So before, there was only one Discard deck. It was the Dependable Discard with Chavez, with Apoc, and all that stuff, right? We get that. Now what you have is you have all these different variations of discard that have lower win rates than what that dependable discard deck was admittedly. However, you have the Black Knight variation with like Ghost Rider. You also have the the version, which is Hela with Black Knight, then you have just straight up Hela, right? So there's these like three kind of variations of discard that are going right now, all of which are performing fair, decent above board. And I mean, it's good because like, listen, discard's been one of those, those archetypes is either completely terrible or it was a one trick pony. And now at least we have some variation, but I still miss, I still miss traditional Chavez dependable discard. I really do miss that. I wonder if it comes back in a different form eventually.
Cozy Snap:Well, man, listen, we would be remiss to not talk about probably going to be the best deck this week as it is many a times. Sarah Control, man. Infinity Conquest, Sarah Control, it doesn't even come close when you look at the stats, typically, of having a deck that can answer everything. Now, it just won the Lambie Open. You also had it performed stupid well in Infinity Conquest. Sarah Control right now, if you're trying to win again, this is the deck to play. There's no question about it. Alex, I think that's a clear winner if you are trying to climb in Infinity Conquest.
Alexander Coccia:It's kind of interesting to think that, like, if you're trying to climb on, like, the ladder, for instance, Sarah Control's not always the best choice. But when you're in Infinity Conquest, like, you, it's very difficult to overcome bad matchups. And Sarah Control's one of those decks, it doesn't have the highs, it doesn't reach as high as some of the other decks that we could be talking about. But it never has those lows. You never feel like, I just can't play this card anymore, I can't play this game anymore, I'm just gonna lose. Right? Like, you never get hard Hard countered. Now there is Mobius out there Mobius I should say. That can have an impact, but guess who's playing Mobius? Just you. Yeah, because you love Mobius and it seems like no one else really does except for people that are watching the cozy, snappy. They're like, wait a minute, Mobius might actually be making itself a comeback. I'm actually a believer too cozy, just so you know. But anyways, I like to call it of sur control. Very reliable archetype has always been, and I'm interested to see how it'll perform on this following week.
Cozy Snap:When it's cool, right, if we look at it, if we look at the, the, why we're talking about this meta being diverse is truly these decks we're all mentioning are competitive at the moment. High Evo She Hulk has been there, done that, it's doing the thing, it's been doing well. Bro, we have a Galactus deck that's just been hitting it hot, right, with the Selene Packers, the Goblins, it's cool to see that kind of itch in here. Listen, people can hate on cards, you know, I think people have hate for cards way back when. I think it's cool that Galactus players can now have a deck that is, you know, somewhat more reliable in its play lines. Have you been seeing this? I think, I think I saw you testing this out the other day. Maybe with like your own little spin on it, but like, we've all seen this show. Do Black Bolt stature decks. It almost feels like, not Sarah Control. In the, it's not, it's not super flashy, right. But it's so consistent.
Alexander Coccia:So Black Bolt had like a less than 1 percent play rate on, on tap. I was like, no, that's not happening. Right. So I wanted to see if I can mix a bit of a brew happen. And my brews with Grandmaster, which we'll be talking about shortly. But yeah, absolutely. I feel like any stature bolt deck, I think can potentially work well. I think that it's in a weird spot though, where like, you're often discarding your, the rock that you're putting into the hand. Like I think the disruption piece of Black Bolt's not really there. It often feels like an activator for stature, and on that note, I feel like you could give Black Bolt its power back. I feel like you could be a 5'8 again, and you probably keep stature where it is, but anyways, that's just my two cents.
Cozy Snap:Oh, you're not playing this Dokken X23 stature bolt deck out there with Dr. Doom? Oh, it's stupid. I wasn't playing that. Give it a shot. Give it a shot. That deck's stupid good. It's in a really good spot win win rate wise. I think I was playing this last Twitch Drops. It was, it was like back in December and it's still doing really well. Is that the one with
Alexander Coccia:Samurai in it? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, okay, now I know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, that deck's a totally different deck than the one I was talking about. Yeah, yeah. So the Samurai list, that's pretty cool. Yeah, as soon as you brought up Doc, I'm like, oh, he's talking about the Samurai list. Yeah, yeah. That's a cool list, 100%.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, and you have like Killmonger in there to also help you with the shard. You have X23 to ramp. You have Jeff. It's like, it's like, it's a value list is pretty much what it is, which is cool. It's a good cards list. And I just, this is what I'm loving. We have Sarah Control, we have good cards, we have big decks like The Blob, and we have Bleach Darkhawk decks. Lockdown is, is also performing well as ever. And then of course, Mobster Move, which I just talked about. I've been playing a ton of. Magneto just feels like a card I lose to so much. Play more Magneto, please. He's so good. And that's like the main gist of them, right? Like, you have Loki that is still doing okay. You have a couple Ronin decks that are fun. And they're, they're, you know, they're working. You have some on reveal Grandmaster stuff going on. It really feels like you can kind of make Snap your own in this given meta. We're gonna have to see what the OTA does take. They kind of shake it up, right? They don't want to do too much, but they also want to keep things fresh. So we're going to have to see, you know, where that all ends up, Alex. But all I know, man, is I'm always down for just a wide variety meta as we head into a new month. And you know, that brings new topics, new cards, and a lot to look forward to next week.
Alexander Coccia:I suspect this OTA is going to be a buff OTA. Can I make, can I make a bold prediction? There's a card that I feel like desperately needs a buff. That's been overlooked. White Queen. White Queen needs something. Give White Queen power, give her something. In the world of Loki, what's White Queen? I think White Queen needs something.
Cozy Snap:Okay, I like it, I like it. I would say if I were to be guessing what is going to be, I feel like they might adjust Thanos in some capacity because we're about to enter his season pass and like, I feel like maybe there's something there. I don't know, that's just like the my gut feeling a bit. Okay, I like the call. Maybe 2099 finally gets love. Maybe Stegron, that 4 7 was just a tease and we actually get him.
Alexander Coccia:Oh yeah, because that was like an accidental OTA, right?
Cozy Snap:Maybe he comes out, maybe we actually get him. And then other than that, like, I'm kind of like, I don't know, a little clueless. Don't know what's going to come out. In the OTA, but I'm excited for it.
Alexander Coccia:Cozy Grandmaster came out this week and I gotta tell you it came out to some, well we'll say some excitement. It was a card that provided a lot of utility, a lot of combo potential, but also I think a large degree of frustration where it wasn't quite as easy to play as some might have expected. I'm actually really looking forward to this topic here because I think To some degree, for some people, they feel like Grandmaster is underperformed, but I played an asinine amount of Grandmaster, like literally, I think 25 hours of this card. Like I can't explain you how much of this card I've played this week. I actually really like it. I really like it. It's not to say that I don't think that on aggregate, it could see a buff in the future. I would be surprised to see that, but I understand that we'll talk about the statistic. We'll talk about the meta. We'll talk about some decks, but overall, I want to hear it, Cozy. What do you think about Grandmaster?
Cozy Snap:Yeah, I said I would die on the hill that he's good. I think so. I mean, he's not jumping off the page performance wise, maybe on some win rates, but we are seeing him being played. We just talked about some of the best decks and there's a Destroy Deck with Dracula. He's in there that just got second place on a tournament. Grandmaster is an awesome card. I think he's an awesome card for fun. He's great for competitive play, for combos, and for what the hell just happened plays, and that's what I'm looking for. Tied in with flexibility and future proof. I think we're gonna see a lot of Grandmaster and Synergy in the future, which is I think why both of us loved them as a card. We definitely don't see anyone doing what Grandmaster does, and when I get that little report at the end of the month, man, I can promise you it's gonna say your most played card was Grandmaster by a fair margin. I've tried them in every archetype. And I'm ready to talk, man. I'm ready to talk, because I'm excited to see what you enjoyed him in, and, and your overall impressions. You know, maybe I'll dial it back. I could say maybe I get maybe like a 4. 5 is where I'd give him maybe 4 on ultimate future competitive viability. I don't think he's gonna get buffed or nerfed. I think 2 0 is about, is about where he needs to be, because I don't know what you would do with him. I don't, I don't think you want him at 2 1. You don't want him, you don't want him to have power.
Alexander Coccia:Is there a reason you say that? Because as I said, I played a lot of this card, and I found it to be very successful. My question to you is, like, there's a couple, two ways you can approach a buff. It's 2 0, there's only so much you can do. You can make it a 2 1, or you can make it a 1 1, or a 1 0. Those are beta 3, I guess, right? And all of those buffs, I feel like, could send him a little off the deep end. Despite the stats, now stats wise, In post infinite, he's running a 46 percent win rate, slightly negative on the cubes, at a 13 percent meta share. So the stats aren't good. They're not good. Not surprised. However, I feel like there's been a couple things happening. One, I think he's a good card that needs to have his code correct. It's that simple. We said it last week, no one on the first day was going to have the best Grandmaster deck. It was just never going to happen. And it's going to be one of those cards that ages like fine wine. Because it's going to have That synergy, that deck, and it's going to be an irreplaceable cog for that, that deck. It's going to happen, right? I know it's going to happen because it's so combo centric. And when that deck comes up, people say, how do I replace Grandmaster? And you can't, right? But the thing I want to say is that despite the stats, despite all that stuff, what I, what I was seeing in my experience with this card, again, I played more of this card than I've ever played on any release because of the Twitch drops and stuff like that. People were playing way too many wild. Greedy ass decks. Of course. I'm sorry. I just got to say it. They were playing with the greediest stuff. And at the end of the day, I felt like if you took Grandmaster for what it was, put it into much more simplistic shelves, allowed it to be a good card, not like this crazy. Mega combo piece, but just a good card that re amplifies what your deck's trying to do. It's shown far brighter.
Cozy Snap:The way to look at him is he's just like, he helps fill the role of a piece that you didn't get. Maybe you didn't get a Carnage that you needed, so you can do a Venom twice, you know, on a Nimrod. Maybe you want to do another Discard, you can do it with that. He's an absorbing man in some ways for a cheaper cost, and so there'd be times where like, I'll have him in my hand. But I don't have to use them. It was nice to have them as an insurance policy, or I try to use them really early on, and I did get that benefit. Listen, as respectfully as possible, I could give a on the stats on this guy. I really don't care. I've made a lot of combo decks in the past. One example, and this isn't like, I'm great, guys, I suck, whatever. There was a non reveal combo deck I played. Probably the best that I've played a deck this season. I did a lot of it on Twitch. I have about a hundred games on it. I'm at 64%. Awesome. I released the deck guide, it's at 46%. Why? Because it's a combo deck, man. Of course people, people that are not going to be great in the mass publics of toxic decks, of combo decks, for a few reasons. But one of them is something I suffer with. You want to see the combo play out. So people are playing out hands, playing out decks that they shouldn't. You should retreat, but you played out because it's a combo deck. You want to see the 20 Tigers happen. Even if you had no way to beat a gnoll at 40 power in the far lane. And so, the stats, I really don't, I'm not, I'm not freaked out about it. It's the same way as Junk has been in the past. And he's definitely serving the purpose that I thought he would serve, for sure.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, you're reinforcing what I was saying, that I felt like the convoluted combos that were heavily dependent on draws and combinations, they were just a little too far gone. And like, okay, let's just talk about it straight off the bat. Like, let's talk about like, how much is enough? What is enough for Grandmaster? This is a question I was asking myself when I was deck building with Grandmaster. I tried so many different lists. And the question was, what is enough? So Kozyal asked this. So let's say the worst case scenario. You play Iceman on turn one, and you play Grandmaster on two. Is that enough?
Cozy Snap:It's fine. It's definitely a good combo. That's probably one of the better one twos.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, so Korg times two in a Darkhawk shell? Yep. Yeah, not that bad. Yondu in some sort of Null Destroy shell?
Cozy Snap:Yeah, yeah, yes, yes on a lot of these. Are you doing, and this is gonna be a great conversation, Are you doing these always on 1 2 if you have that? Because I'll be honest, on the Rockslide, on the Darkhawk one, I'm seeing if I can get a Rockslide. To then play later, for sure.
Alexander Coccia:If I have Ravonna in my hand, I'm holding him. But if I don't have Ravonna in my hand, I'll play him out. But here's another thing. How about Selene x2? Here's an interesting synergy that I didn't see people talking about, I was experimenting with. If you play Selene on Grandmaster, Grandmaster gets hit with the Selene. He becomes an Annihilus target. And then you draw, and then you have a chance to draw onto a Hob or a Green Goblin. And then when you play Grandmaster down, you re trigger the Selene, right? They're getting wrecked in their hand. And then now the Goblin is dropping as well. Grandmaster gets kicked over with Annihilus. So like, that's pretty cool too. But then what I really started to notice was, okay, where was he performing the best? We'll talk about Dex in a second, Cozy, but tell me about this. I found him most successful with, with Ravonna on turn two. Right then, on turn three, either Black Widow or Rockside. And then turn four, you play the Grandmaster for one, plus a three powered card, or three costed card. Right, whether it's like a even a Darkhawk early, whatever. It doesn't really, you don't really want to do that, Darkhawk early, but you know what I mean, right? Playing him for one and reprocking that Rockside, or reprocking that Black Widow. That is insane! Two Widow's Bites denying two draws from a hand, for one cost? That's ridiculous. I don't care what anyone says. That's a good card. Rock Slide, now you have four rocks in someone's deck and you committed one energy to it. Keeping in mind that Ravonna Renslayer is synergizing with almost your entire package. That's a good card. So when I saw people saying that like, oh Grandmaster sucks. I'm like, well, no, the decks you're putting them in sucks and like I was watching it I was looking at untapped and these decks don't make sense Because they're too friggin greedy and they were using the card in a manner that it wasn't intended to be used if you just simplify Things a little bit you'll get a better result.
Cozy Snap:And just like I don't know even my opinion guys I just don't listen to opinions on the first couple of days I mean we try our best to give you an opinion you know, I think that's, you're gonna see that no matter what. Day of the deck now. It used to be the day after. Now I have to put him out because we got 90 other videos going out this day of. So, I've joined the party there of giving our best thoughts on what he can do. And I think it was cool that he came out doing twitch drops. Because it allowed for a lot of experimentation. Saw a lot of bounce, I just did not like him in bounce personally. I think big brain wise, maybe that's where he can be. I haven't seen the proof in the pudding there. Funny, the reason I love this card though, bro, is a couple reasons. Number one, like guys, I don't know, you can't bleep this out. I'll just say F the meta. Like just It's a, guys, we're on a year plus into this game. I'm just trying to have a, at the end of the day, I'm just trying to have as much fun as possible. Like, I'm just having fun with Marvel Snap, and I think he's the definition of it, right? I'm playing Grandmaster later, which is why I love the card, right? Like, you can play him on curve. I tend to see him with the most value. I'm lovin Wonk, and I'm lovin Arnim Zola. Those are by far the two standouts for me, and why it's because you do have Ravonna synergy for the Arnim Zola. If you are Arnim Zola, and you play Grandmaster, I don't even care what dies, what gets copied. That's poppin off, right? Been doing a lot of in the Toxic one. I did, just hands down. I played Scorpion, played Grandmaster. I snapped on that. Negative two to the hand, enjoy. Have fun with whatever that was, right? Deadpool. I just played Deadpool, Carnage, played Deadpool, back in the middle, played Grandmaster, Sin the Carnage, simplified plays like you said. You don't always go for the home run. You have to identify, I think it's the skill of identifying what's in your hand, what's left in your deck, and what's the optimal grandmaster play for that moment.
Alexander Coccia:I love what you're saying here, because it's very much the difference in like the deck building approach I take and the deck building approach you take often, right? And it's one of the reasons why we have so much fun discussing new cards and discussing decks, because you love the pop off combo. Whereas for me, I tend to be, okay, play by the lines, play like, play kind of like more efficiently. Play it on curve, play it, make, make it, like, you don't have to reach for the stars all the time. Right? Hitting Black Widow twice is good. Hitting Rock Slide twice is good, right? Hitting Ice Man twice is good, right? And when you add Ravonna to the mix, then it's even better. And honestly, a lot of the shells are actually performing pretty well. And listen, I don't mean to tap myself on the back, but I'm going to anyways, Cozy. One of the highest win rate versions of Grandmaster right now is actually a list that I developed live on Twitch TV, and it is a Grandmaster. Black Bolt list! You talked about Black Bolt on your side about how good it was and I was trying to bite my tongue like hell yeah I know how good it is because look at this list we had Korg, Grandmaster, Jeff, Ravonna Renslayer, we had Mystique, Black Widow, RockSide, Darkhawk Ironman, Stature Black Bolt, and Doctor Doom. It's running a 54 percent win rate, nearly 55 percent on 1300 games. You're gonna tell me that Grandmaster's not positively contributing that? There's no pop off synergy there. It's just good. It's just good, and what you're doing is you're playing, you're playing Darkhawk on turn six for three energy, you're playing Mystique for the two, and guess what? Then you got an extra energy for the, the stature.
Cozy Snap:Let's go, Kocha. Let's go, man. Yeah, I think where he lived up where I thought he would was First of all, these deck shows, I love it. Honor view, yes. We see, like, day one, so many people would just take a list off of, let's say, Untap, throw in Grandmaster, hope it worked, it didn't, right? He did, he took some real tailoring. To make work in these, in these lists, right? I was going to go through some of the Yahn reveals that I think he just elevates. I think he elevated Ironheart to be a much better card than she was. Talk about a card that gets absolutely boosted, right? I think Surfer is just very tough to play with him. I think it's, it's not that it doesn't work all the time. It's just can. It's a lot of thought process. It's definitely a high skill cap surfer card. I guess it's the best way to put it there, but he does have a lot of easy and good value. Bro, I've been loving him in tech builds. Like, just using tech cards twice has been kind of awesome. I don't know if you messed around with that at all. That was definitely something unique. And then you know, Jubilee? It is. It really comes back to, to, to my second love Aerial being the first. Discount Disrupt was right there after her buff. Been there. Loved her. Ravonna, we talked about her. The Ravonna synergy makes the most sense. It all, it just makes the most sense with the cards you're trying to play. It's a little shocking that Iron Man's not making all these lists, but she's definitely a huge cog in that machine.
Alexander Coccia:And again, like, this has been the first week, and we're talking about a plethora of different cards, some of which have been considered weak for some time, that are getting this resurgence with, with Grandmaster. Another perfect example of this is Mastermold. Like, tell me you didn't play at all this week, and did not get four friggin Sentinels in your hand, because someone plays Mastermold, and then they play the Ravonna. Not Ravonna, sorry, they play Grandmaster. And like, you're just, what do you, what do you do? You just don't even draw cards anymore, because you got Mastermolded times two.
Cozy Snap:We flirted, remember, at the end with the Ronin at the last SnapChat? We were like, wait a second, Ronin. Maybe that would be cool? And then the Ronin list came out, man. And that's the goal of the SnapChat. You know, people are always concerned about making the best. We are trying to just hypothesize super fun combos and we hope that you guys bust them wide open and make some really cool decks and just inspire thought. Because we don't even have Well, we had a lot of time this week to test everything out. But that's the main goal. If we can serve that purpose, I think that's what we're really hoping we can do. And to me, it is what we just kind of stated. Whether it was the toxic list with Scorpion that I played, or you used the debris to double debris, which was just stupid filthy. Because you were able to move your debris and make room. It was really cool and worked in synergy. And then to your point too the master mold. Where it didn't work is things like Valkyrie. Not that it's not great with Valkyrie. But in my experience, it wasn't working in decks that only had like one card that you want to Grandmaster, right? You need a couple cheap ones in there that just have like that decent synergy, right?
Alexander Coccia:And that's why I said if you have one drops that are okay to play, if you don't have Ravonna and you're holding your Grandmaster, you're like, well, I want to play on curve and you just do it while also having the, you know, the turn three and four pop offs. That's absolutely fine, right? Like, there's nothing wrong with that. Like, don't try to force this card to be what it's not.
Cozy Snap:I, yeah, dude, I was not a fan of Ni I saw so many Nico Minoru, I love Nico guys, but you gotta know when you have to, like, detach from a card sometimes, like, Nico does work really well, but it was like, a little funky, like, she's a little funky with Grandmaster, and she kind of takes up a, you know, one thing it took me time, man, is really perfecting my right and left lane management, right? Like, I don't know about you, but I was really kind of like, I can play Nico now but the right lane is unplayable, like, do I even, like, bother playing? Because then you, I don't know about you, I lost a couple 50 50 on Reveal, you know, hoping Grandmaster sent the right card, he didn't, whatever that may be. I mean, I, Alex, one of my favorite combos that I've been playing with is you can do Shuri twice, which is awesome. It's crazy, it's super fun. If you have the cards perfect, you can play Shuri, you can, you, you do have to have some turn manipulation, but I brought back the She Hulk Shuri deck. We were able to skip so that you could double She Hulk, play a Grandmaster, and then that leaves you a little bit of room to double something again in the middle.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, very cool. Yeah, those, those were like classic Shuri decks where people, so the Shuri change had just happened where basically she had to play in the same lane and everyone was teching Shan Chi in. And so people were using the ability to skip the turn in order to dodge the Shan Chi so they could play a one costed She Hulk. into that with the Taskmaster in the other lane, right? We saw that for a while, actually. You kind of bring me back in time. That, that deck build kind of fell off, Kozya. Hopefully I get to see you kind of do a little brewing with that. I like it, but one thing I'll mention as well is, I'll bring it up on the screen again, but the deck we were talking about before with the kind of Black Bolt, Statue, or Grandmaster deck, there's nothing really crazy inventive about it. There's really nothing crazy. There's no crazy tech. There's no, it's just, Two good shells put together that were, it's good cards that work with Grandmaster and that's all it ultimately needed. It didn't need all these crazy, like convoluted compass. It just needed good cards and to be played with some reasonable kind of intentions, right? So I just wanted to highlight that sometimes we get our hands on these cards. Maybe we overthink it. We just overthink it a bit. And ultimately I think that. Time is going to really shine brightly on this card. And if it gets buffed, then for me it's gravy. I was high on Rovona when she was in the dumpster. I never believed she'd have been buffed to a 2 3. I still can't believe she's a 2 3. I think she's better than that, and I'll keep riding it.
Cozy Snap:I don't care. My I won't go into too much detail, because I have a deck guide coming up shortly, so I'll let that do it. But my favorite Grandmaster deck It's Discard. That's all I can say on the matter. It's Discard. That's where I found the best win rate, and I do think he is going to be a staple in there. I'll just, I'll leave it there. I'll leave it there, buddy.
Alexander Coccia:I can't wait to see it, buddy. We just finished talking about how Discard needed something, and now here we go. Code's getting excited.
Cozy Snap:It's good. I'm only at, here's the thing, cause I don't even want to talk too much on it yet, mainly cause I'm at 30, let me look at the stats, I'm at 32 games. Okay, 32 games. But in 32 games, 64. 5%. Not mad about it. We'll see. We'll see if it lasts. I gotta play a lot more of it and we'll have to see. But yes, Grandmaster, at the end of the day, he does something that no one else does. You also get pretty good cards alongside him if you don't have those. I think he's one of the more interesting ones to come out, and I think people might regret not having him, we'll have to see.
Alexander Coccia:Final rankings, you said about 4. 5?
Cozy Snap:Final, final rankings, yeah, if you, if you combine everything with like the future proof and everything, yeah, I think I'm, I think I'm good with 4. 5, I'll die on the hill.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, I'm staying at four. I think people would have expected me to drop off, and I'm like, no. I think this card's a four star card for me. I mean, listen, actual performance wise, first week, it's probably close to a three, but as someone who played an absolute ass dying amount of this card, I am confident in saying this is a four star card. That's the best way
Cozy Snap:to put it, yeah. I think so, too. Like, I think if you, yeah, you know, show me the stats, like, awesome, cool. Yeah, he sucks, go ahead and don't get him. Like, I think he is going to be good in the future.
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely, and that brings us to our top 10 cards in Marvel Snap, sorted by win rate and positive cube rate. These stats have been sourced from untapped using post infinite stats, and there's a lot of interesting things here. First of all, the win percentages are much tighter than traditional, because I think the game's balance is much tighter than usual, and we don't have these crazy outliers, so on aggregate, we're seeing decks that are a little tighter. Now, what I will say is that I want you guys to guess, maybe a couple cards, down in the comments section below, give us like what, like, a couple cards, give us your top 10, give us your top 5, top 3, whatever you want, but I bet you, you're not gonna guess number 1, cause I double checked, triple checked, and then cross sectioned other stat sites to make sure, I was like, are you kidding me guys, we got some spicy stuff in this list here, we're gonna start at number 10 cozy, and there's no surprises here. Bye. At approximately a 50. 7 percent win rate, it's Alioth. Alioth, the big purple monster, has fallen off from its prior kind of perch near the top of the the meta. I mean, it's still annoying. We're seeing less of it. It was shadow buffed to a 6 3 for about an hour. I wonder if that was intentional or not, but Alioth comes in at number 10.
Cozy Snap:They're always changing the power that I'm, like, conflicting myself. Like, I was playing a C3 deck the other day, and I was like, Oh my god. I was like, wait, wait, Elias in here for the finals? Wait, no, is he 6 2? Is he 6 3? I'm always confused now what he is. I'll say this, I don't have a problem with the card. I know some people really hate him. I feel like I don't see him enough, and now when I'm seeing him, it's in the decks that I thought I would be see like, you deserve to lose if you play a lockdown deck, and you're losing, it's turn five, and there's one location to play. You gotta know by now, you gotta know Elias gonna be in that deck. He was in Destroyer a little bit, you know, people were trying to make him work with Grandmaster a little bit, which is fun. But I'm kind of okay with him. He's kind of.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, I feel like I'm okay with Alioth for the most part as well. Like I do agree. He's becoming increasingly more predictable, although there are times like, ah, it's kind of frustrating. The where it's frustrating is when like, you're, you're not sure if they have Alioth and the deck shouldn't probably have Alioth, you're down two locations and you have like an Orca and you're like I could play it. I could win, they're not, but if he plays Alioth I just lose and you like retreat and like they're like I don't know why they retreated there. I wasn't that I think you said it weeks ago like you'd want to know like hopefully on the month report like you gave away this many cubes To Alioth
Cozy Snap:Alioth And also it's like you're you're live flashing before your eyes. I it's actually on my one of my latest YouTube videos We're like it's an 8 cuber. I'm like middle lane, right lane, middle lane. I'm like let's go right lane. It was like a hazmat, so it didn't matter, right? So I played them all right lane, and then Alioth was played in the middle. And I was like, oh my god, like, because I went back and forth for so long, which one to play, and I wasn't even guessing an Alioth, right? So, he does have that effect. And I think it's good kind of that, that, that exists. He's a release valve in some ways. He just can't be too good.
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely. And we're going to go to number nine here and it's Jeff, the baby land shark at 50. 7 percent slightly higher cube rate than Galactus. Now, again, these, these win rates seem low, but I confirmed these are untapped latest patch. Post Infinite, this is what we're looking at, right? Like, it's quite interesting to see that these, these win rates have been compressed as much as they have. But Jeff the Baby Landshark running at a 21 percent meta share. I'll add that Alioth was 11%, right? Jeff's at 21%, Cozy.
Cozy Snap:21, dude, that's 1 in 5 games. I think that's also why he's just, like, at such a good win rate. Like, Jeff's a good card. I'm, like, not, like, I have been taking Jeff's out of some of my lists. Maybe it's cause I'm, like, bored of him. Because he's in a lot of decks that do good. Like, right, they just do good on aggregate, so his stats will be good on aggregate. Not saying that he's not an incredible card. I feel like though, like, he's fine. He's good. Like, he's really, really good, but like, now that Pro X has kind of been tamed down a bit, and Miss Marvel needing to, that being said, pretty much every list has Jeff, right? Like, just so many lists have him because he's just good value stats. Utilization, all of it.
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely. And I mean, listen, I I'm a believer of Jess, Jeff. I always have been it's one of my favorite cards in the game. And it really, it is the it is what all two drops are judged by, right? Like, does it compete with Jeff? Does it displace Jeff, the baby land shark in a deck? And that's kind of where you judge going to number eight here. We do have. Silver Samurai, which is a bit of a surprise to me. Silver Samurai running a 50. 9 percent win rate, but only a 1. 7 percent meta share. And I mean, Cozy, you literally talked about this on your end there. We're talking about the top decks of Marvel Snap. You're talking about that the discard Silver Samurai deck. So why don't you run us through what you've been seeing?
Cozy Snap:I mean, it just makes sense because he is built to be great in the deck that he's in. Right. So is these stats on seen in deck? Or played. What is these stats on? I don't know.
Alexander Coccia:I believe these are when they're just in the deck.
Cozy Snap:They're in the deck. That makes sense. So that deck does, like, really well, and if Si Silver Samurai is played, you are benefiting off that with X23 or getting rid of Dock and Shard. And most of the time, especially now, think about these cards. Gnoll, Blob, Arnim Zola. These are cards that are really, really good, and they they're depended on. Or Alioth, and you get rid of him. And that's such a massive advantage. Because it's the lowest power card, and so definitely he's just solid that way. And it doesn't surprise me that we're starting to see somebody, I bet you we might see other cards in that deck because it's so good, dude, it's like a Sarah control deck.
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely, and you know what, it did surprise me to see Silver Samurai perform as well as it does, but again, a very niche card. And I do find that this card, because of the shells it's playing in, is gonna be more disruptive Then something like just a regular Black Bolt or like a Darkhawk shell. Because you're not discarding a rock animosaur, you're discarding a piece of their, their pie, right? So, it's pretty interesting to see that Silver Samurai has had like a disruptive element to its play. Then we go to number seven. Cozy? You need to be so happy about this. Believe it or not, it's Arrow. I don't think a lot of people would have believed that Arrow's win rate was this high, only at 1. 8 percent meta share. But it's coming in at 7 overall, with a positive cube gain and a very decent, respectful win rate. The card is seeing additional play in the the, like, mobster move style decks. But I think that the 5 9 is just decent stats. While providing quite a bit of disruption that's pretty tailorable depending on your game situation.
Cozy Snap:Oh man, I love, I love it. I mean, I love it for a couple reasons, because Aero is Aero, and I love Aero, but I just, I, there's something special about seeing an OTA and or balance patch kind of work itself out over time and we, we continue to see that you know you know, I mean, heck yourself, you were definitely like, I don't know, I don't know, Aro, I tested them all. I wasn't crazy about her at first. This was a while back ago, right? There's accounts that just like love, they hate, they like hate themselves so much that they want to like post. Just hate on the game. Like, I think that's the main purpose of some of these accounts. But they were like, Arrow is terrible in every way you look at it compared to the old Arrow. And it's like, okay, you know it's just not. She's good. You can tell. What's her win rate? What was it at?
Alexander Coccia:It was at a flat 51 percent at a 0. 11 cube rate.
Cozy Snap:It's surprising, it is. And, you know, maybe because you're getting the displacement, and then you're having the 9 power, only 3 less than Magneto of the stat stick. And then you're playing on Kingpin 2 most of the time, so you're getting this like, massive, massive flip. She's not played in a ton of decks. But it just speaks that, you know, Mobster's doing so well. I'm surprised Magneto's not mentioned yet, if not at all.
Alexander Coccia:Magneto actually does not make this list at all. And again, it's worth noting that these are post Infinite stats. The win rates are significantly higher if you include prior to Infinite because of the bot inflation and stuff like that. But yeah, Arrow is definitely a performer and it No Magneto does not make this list, ironically.
Cozy Snap:It's because Magneto's in a, in a Helidex and sometimes it just I don't know, what does it just go out there and just doesn't get it done?
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, but that's right though. But there are cards like Hella, for instance, which are low win rate, but higher cube rate, right? And so like those types of things will definitely play a factor. But what the next card is, what do you have number six here? We number six. Yeah. We're number six. Number six is the good boy, the good big boy, and it's Lockjaw. Lockjaw coming in at 51. 1%, 10. 5 percent of the meta. It's definitely gained in popularity both in Thanos, and obviously like Black Black Knight Discard, and pretty much hella Discard, it's, it's everywhere right now. Cozy, what do you think of the big ol dog?
Cozy Snap:Yeah man, Lockjaw is just fine. I love I love to see Lockjaw in Discard again. Way back, it was around November 20 22. So, right when Snap came out. I think it's still like a top 3 most popular video that I have. I don't know why it popped up, but it did. Discard Lockjaw was in that video. Do you remember that the early days of Discard Lockjaw and how good that was? It's so cool to see him back and not just like, I'm gonna pump Thanos stones into him until the dog is just like, desperate. Like, I, I love to see More use out of them and discard Lockjaw is such a fun way to play it.
Alexander Coccia:It's funny, it was a fun way to play was also a stressful way to play it. Because like, at the time, Blade, for instance, which was a primary target. Blade was hitting the hell every time. It didn't have Blade wasn't what it is now. It was like, I'm discarding whatever the hell I want to discard, right? Usually exactly I don't know if you do this, Cozy, I do this. When I used to play Blade or like Swordmaster or something, I would like, intentionally like, not look at the screen. Because I'm like, if I look at it, it's going to discard what I'm looking at.
Cozy Snap:Yo, I still do that, I sti Still, we'll do like Gambit. I'll be like, I'll like stare at, you know, my M. O. D. O. K. and like just don't, don't do it. And then just surely enough, it's like, Oh, shit.
Alexander Coccia:Yeah, anyway, that's hilarious. Yeah, so I definitely do that as well as we move on to our next card. Number five. And I'm, dare I say, cozy. You called, we were talking about the best text. This is where Black Bolt, Black Bolt makes a comeback here. And it's funny. I said, Hey, Black Bolt can be a 5'9 I actually don't think that Black Bolt itself is the reason why it's win rate is way, I feel like it's like the shell is working so well, because usually it's discarding a rock. I think it can definitely be five five, eight power still, but it's running a 51. 3 percent win rate in a 0. 9 percent of the meta, less than a percentage of the meta, which surprises me considering how good those decks actually are. After this video, I would exp Backed with the play rate of Black Bolt should increase. If it doesn't, I can't, I don't know what else Cozy and I can do to tell you that Black Bolt's stature and even just big, any deck featuring Black Bolt is actually pretty strong right now. We've talked about it multiple times, but yeah, Black Bolt's back.
Cozy Snap:Good card decks, man. Miles Morales, stature, Black Bolt. They're just good. They're good. And try to make lists like that work more and more, definitely fun.
Alexander Coccia:Top four now, we're into the number four, and Cozy, this is where you get a little bit of validation. This was a card in August that you were pumping as hard as you could pump, saying this was going to be a meta defining card, and you nailed it! It's X23! X23 had a 51. 5 percent win rate, 5. 6 percent of the meta, an absolute staple. In Destroy, there's very rarely a Destroy deck that does not feature x23. You called it, you said this card was going to be an absolute staple on this card. And it, it has been, it has been.
Cozy Snap:I appreciate it. Yeah. Destroy. It's it feels like a card that if you don't have Destroy, you're at a significant disadvantage, I mean, just significant. It just does so well, like getting you to be able to play Noelle early, and then, or most importantly, killing her on turn 5, playing Deadpool and Noelle, that's a very important combo you want to make sure you hit. Or just getting things out earlier. The more stuff you can destroy, the better, and it just allows you to do more and more of that. And then, of course, that Black Bolt list, you're able to do the same with, you know, something like Silver Samurai, you can, you know, get rid of X23, discard it. A lot of unique ways to play her, and definitely is just a good card.
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely, and you even see people like, just like, Man, I got my Hulkbuster, I'll throw in an X 23. Yeah, why not? What's the worst that can happen? Because he can't die! I'm just generating value.
Cozy Snap:He can't die. Yeah. Yeah, yep.
Alexander Coccia:She's been very flexible, much more flexible than perhaps initially anticipated. Now we're into our top three. Top three, Cozy! There's a couple surprises here. But two of them are kind of, I'll say they're holding hands. They go hand in hand with each other. And the first, at number three, is gonna be Darkhawk. This actually surprised me, but not surprised me. This is considering the nerf to Blob. Darkhawk comes in at number three to 5. 6 percent of the meta. I've been playing a lot of Darkhawk. I like Darkhawk. I think he's fine. I think he's back. If you're playing against a Thanos based player, and you know that they're playing the blob based shell, then you know you have to be, you know, a little hesitant if they're snapping going into turn five or six. So you just got to know the game. You got to know the meta. You got to know the opponent opponent matchups and expect the unexpected. Or to be honest, you just expect the expected. They're going to blob you, right? So Darkhawk, number three.
Cozy Snap:Is Shang Chi on this list?
Alexander Coccia:No, he's not on the list, but he's the highest play rate.
Cozy Snap:That blows my mind though, right? Like, win rate wise, I feel like my lose rate, like, which card do you think you lose to the most?
Alexander Coccia:The card I lose to the most? Man, that's such a good question. I don't think it's Shawn Chi, and it's not Alioth. Like, Shawn Chi does take me by surprise very often. I feel like I lose to Death a lot, because I don't, I'm, I'm like, where is Death gonna go? Do they even have it? Is it free? free yet. I wasn't doing the math cause I just, I just never do it cause I'm lazy. Like, I feel like that's one of the cards that catches me by surprise a lot. So, I mean, Alioth doesn't catch me anymore cause I think I play too cautious as we joke about all the time, but I don't know. Cozy, how about you?
Cozy Snap:I think it might be Shang Chi. Not that I don't anticipate it on like my big card or whatever. I just. It's gotta be that S. O. B. Like, I feel like the game's or it's probably for me, at this currency, it's Magneto and then Shang Chi.
Alexander Coccia:I wonder if we were to do it by cube rate top down? I wonder if Shang Chi's higher because of the surprise factor. We'll have to see.
Cozy Snap:We'll have to see.
Alexander Coccia:So we have, maybe that's a topic for another week.
Cozy Snap:So, so dark ho at three two and one.
Alexander Coccia:Number two is gonna be rock slide, which makes perfect sense. Almost identical statistics to ro to the dark ho, slightly higher win rate at a 51.7. But again, a 50 5.3% play rate. And remember Rockside was recently Nerf from a three five. Was it to a three? Three? Was it three five?
Cozy Snap:My, it was a four cost card at one point originally.
Alexander Coccia:That's so weird. Yeah. With no dark Hawk synergy with just like pump pump rocks and like no one played rock slide, dude.
Cozy Snap:I can't believe it was a forecast at some point, right? Like he feels great at three cast. Yeah. I love, I love rock slide. It's, it's, man, it doesn't feel bad when you get rocks on the opposing end of it, but he also like, feels like a kind of a stall play. Like, I mean, pumping two rocks is great, but if you don't get those rocks as the opponent, you're just kinda like, well, they wasted two, three. Not that they wasted it, but you know what I mean? Like, I don't know. I think he's great. I think he's perfect for what he does. Really well statted. I don't think he will get an adjustment.
Alexander Coccia:No, I don't think he gets an adjustment either. You're right, he was a 4 6, I think it was, then he got nerfed to a 4 5, then brought down to a 3 3, which is ironic for me, because I think that, like, a 3 3, you just, nah, hey, that's like free Zabu. It's basically a free Zabu now, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because you're paying him for the effect, not so much the power. The power was nice too. Number one, this is going to be contentious. And I double, triple checked the stats, to be clear, and I was surprised. And then the more I thought about it, I was like, you know what, this actually makes sense. It makes sense because of what we're seeing in the meta right now. Number one top runerate card, Kozy's showing Quicksilver. It ain't Quicksilver, Kozy. It is Black Cat. I could not believe it. Black Cat at a 52. 1 percent win rate, 4. 3 percent of the meta. But you know what? We talked about it on your side. We have you know, the the discard decks with black Black Knight running Black Cat very often. Those decks are high performing. Hela, most of the very high win rate Hela decks are running Black Cat because it's just a free nine that gets discarded for free. You don't have to worry about if it gets discarded early. And if you locked all your Hela, at least you're bringing Black Cat back. Black Cat actually makes sense. And I don't think anybody would have had that on their bingo card. To the point, I checked multiple websites, like, Is Black Cat's win rate actually this high? And it is high! It's crazy, I couldn't believe it.
Cozy Snap:Hela's just going wild, yeah, I mean, It's so funny, Discard's dead, but, We have, and not that these are new traditional Discard shells we used to talk about, but, Black Cat, X23, Black Bolt Saber Samurai, that's a lot of Discard on the top ten, man. That's crazy, I Is this the past 30 days, I'm guessing, or something like that? The past month of data?
Alexander Coccia:So the way it worked was it was post infinite. Latest patch. Latest patch portal. It was great. Portal. Portal. Yeah. The latest patch. Great portal. So it would've incorporated any no, that would've excluded any locations actually. So.
Cozy Snap:Great portal. Yeah. No, it would've had the loca, it would have to. Right? Like great great portal gave you plus 10. That was a huge, hella, a huge hella time. Maybe they maybe got like a small. A small spike there? Does it include? I don't know. I'm not sure. But either way, it doesn't surprise me. Hela and Black Cat. Well, okay. It does surprise me at number one. Yeah, it should surprise you.
Alexander Coccia:It surprised me.
Cozy Snap:I guess it's just weird that it's like, it's Black Cat that gets the spot and not, like, Hela or whatever. But I guess because she's not in that many decks. But she's only in these decks, right? Like she doesn't, her performance doesn't squander. I just thought maybe Black Bolt would be much higher. She has a 4 percent play rate too, dude. That's insane. 4.
Alexander Coccia:3 percent Black 9, which is crazy to me. And like, again, I double checked these stats, man. I couldn't believe myself, but that's what makes a very interesting Snapchat. And now it's time for our favorite segment that we do every single week, and that is the Snapchat Mailbag. If you have a question you'd like to ask Cozy and I, let us know down below in the comments with Mailbag and of course your question. We're getting started with question number one from Samuel, and it reads, With the confirmation of album improvements, what albums are you most anticipating for the future? For me, I hope to do an album with the Noir variants.
Cozy Snap:That's a good one. It's gotta be Pixels, right? Like, I feel like it has to be Pixels because I just wanna see. I want to know, I want to, I hope they give out like a grand, like, bad looking, but pixel as the final prize, like some horde pixel. Just like, seal off the hate they get. But Max Krek, I think would be cool too. I have a lot of Max Krek variants. Would love to see Ryan Gonzales, another great artist, would love to see that as an album. You know, my favorite artists in Snap obviously we already have Dan Hipp, but more of those.
Alexander Coccia:I absolutely agree. I do think that the Pixel One's a good call, and I think they need to focus more on the 700 Gold ones as well. Yeah. Cause those are accessible by everybody through the collection track. Like, you can get 700 Gold variants as part of your Progression, right? So I think that that keeps people engaged with the system, gets them rewards, keeps them engaged with the game, which is a good thing. And then, of course, I want to see the Archer ones eventually and stuff like that, right? But ultimately, I think, I don't know if they answered this in the Q& A, but I think they said that they do intend on have pretty much every variant eventually in an album of some sort. Collectible, achievable, and providing you with some sort of progression. So, at least that's good. I'm glad that albums are getting touched up.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, I'm ready to see them, man. We got the other ones at, like, Christmas, and now it's, Let's go! Let's get more albums. I'm ready to see them.
Alexander Coccia:Question number two comes from TheFBIagent69420. Had to read that full name. How would you guys feel about a card mechanic that revolved around the snapping mechanic? Maybe like a high standard forecast that automatically snaps for you once it's revealed, or can only be played if you have snapped? It's Marvel Snap, and I'd love to see cards based around the snap mechanic. Love the show, guys.
Cozy Snap:That's a fire idea, man. I love that. I love the specifically, I like the forecast. Shout out. You have to have had the snap already, or it's like a 4 12, and it just snaps for you, no matter what, right? And like, you're just kind of like, all in on the YOLO effect. That's really cool. I thought it was gonna go more there's a datamined Mephisto, he's like a 6 0 if you play him. You double the odds, you can get 16 cubes or whatever. Which is really cool as well, but I like that idea, man.
Alexander Coccia:I was leaning towards, like, a card that gets, like, plus five or something if your opponent has snapped. That seems really cool. Like, a defensive card where it's like, they snap, and then your card just gets buffed. Like, a defensive, like, no. Like, that almost could be Captain America, honestly. Captain America's shield. It's like, oh, you're snapping? Boom! The shield comes up. Cap's worth plus five, or, like, he does plus two across the board, or gets a blue marvel effect, or I don't know, man. Making stuff up, but I thought of this defensive card. That would be cool So.
Cozy Snap:There's so much great custom card design thought processes and we're starting to see some of them creep into the game, too So fire idea, buddy.
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely. And question number three comes from Joker N pc. I've been finding the climb from 90 to a hundred harder than before. The bot matchmaking always seemed to have the answer, but it's been so much harder the past three months than the previous three months before aid having to try and grind out 90 for three or four weeks. I get no chance to have fun and ranked at all'cause I'm stuck grinding the same decks. Has anything changed from rank 90 to a hundred?
Cozy Snap:No it has, but I will tell you this, man. When I was in high school, college, or let's say tennis, for example, and I was on my last set, and I'm like smoking this guy, it's the hardest set to win. Or if it's tied, it's the hardest set to win. If you're in football, and you're going into overtime, it's the hardest quarter to win. You're right there. That's just, that's just the law of it, right? Like, when you're right close to a goal or an objective, it's typically the hardest time, buddy. So my advice is like, almost like, try to not Picture you're a 90 man, just play the game, play the game as you would, be a little bit more careful on it. But that's just kind of the, the law of competitiveness and statistics. At least from my experience that you know, the closer you get, the harder it is, because that, you want it that much more, you're, you're You're ain't snapping on 97 cause you could get there, but you shouldn't. It's things like that.
Alexander Coccia:There's a couple of things I wanted to bring up as well. And I think one of the things that I think the player base is getting better. There's more information out there. People are much more experienced just like yourself. People that are in the nineties are good players. Like they're players that are like well aware of the meta. They, they got the good decks, they got good collections. So I think the competition has just. So that's something worth considering. So those are a couple of other things worth noting here. Oftentimes I think people that have a hard time climbing there's two things you can do. First of all, you're often not retreating very often. Like, I've, I've kind of like, watched streams and stuff like, they should probably leave if they care about their cubes. And they stick in games where like, they have very low percentage plays. Like for instance, they don't have initiative and like, I'm like, That deck has Alioth in it, right? Like you're staying in for eight and like that deck has Alioth in it. Accept the four and play it safe. And then they roll and they get smoked, right? The other thing worth noting is if you're having trouble climbing, play a consistent deck that you learn the ins and outs and the snap mechanics on. This kind of gets understated, but when you're playing a very specific deck and you get used to the mechanics of it, you start to identify when you have your snap scenario, right? So I think that when you know when you are ahead statistically and you're able to snap on those times, then I think you have a greater opportunity to climb more effectively. But ultimately, I think people are just getting better and you're probably way better than you think you are. And I'm sure you'll get to infinite at the end of the day. Our next question comes from I am a Barty and it reads, Which single world like game describes you and Cozy in their playstyles in Snap? Like, for example, Cozy is Binding of Isaac because he loves combos and breaking the game, and Alex is a Slay the Spire because he's very tactical and builds crazy decks. I got a quick one while you think, Cozy, because I know that's like a bit of a right hook for you there. I'm gonna tell you, because it's like, how am I supposed to even answer that? I think, I think, that I'm kinda like Hades. I'll explain why. Because, when I'm playing Marvel Snap and I get introduced to a new character like Beta Ray Bill, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna try and find out more stats. I wanna find out more information. I wanna find out more about these heroes and I get drawn into the lore. Hades did that for me. When I was playing with all these different heroes, which apparently might, I didn't realize half of them were in the Eternals, by the way, which is kind of an interesting thing. But the other side to that was I was like, you know what? I get drawn into the meta, so I feel like, with Hades, the story side around it was really interesting. And I get really drawn into the story, and the MCU, and the comics of Marvel Snap in a way that I never was before. So I'm gonna say I'm a little bit like Hades.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, you can tell who gets these questions ahead of time. I like a great example I'll take your biting of Alex, buddy, er, biting of Alex, I'm gonna call it that now. Binding of Isaac. Great, great idea with the Kalbos thing. So I will steal the answer of, of the question asker of Binding of Isaac. Great game, by the way. As well as Hades. Hades 2 coming up soon.
Alexander Coccia:I'm gonna say that, okay, I had one prepared for you too, Cozy. Have you, have you ever played Enter the Gungeon? No? Oh man, so Enter the Gungeon is like this bullet hell game, where you just collect guns and you just shoot stuff all over the place. I feel like that's you. Crazy chaos, stuff flying everywhere, combo stuff, like that's you baby. That's what I, anyone that's played Enter the Gungeon, that is Cozy's, you know, analogous Marvel Snap game.
Cozy Snap:Okay, I'll have to give it a whirl.
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely, and we got one last question here, and it's from Edwin Edmund Reads. With Broken Cards releasing and getting a nerf or buff later, can Second Dinner go with top Marvel Snap players for testing and balance? I know fighting games do this, but will Marvel Snap?
Cozy Snap:Probably not. I don't know, I would like for them to. I agree. I would like for them to, I don't think it's gonna happen.
Alexander Coccia:The thing that I always go back to, and I see this get offered a lot You gotta remember that I think that some of the best decks in Snap, they're not always coming from the people you expect them to. When a card gets released to the masses, what happens there is completely unpredictable. Because, I mean, the development team is trying to add additional resources to Balance, and even with some like pro players and content creators and stuff helping with Balance, it'll never replicate what a full wide scale release will do. It just never will. There'll be someone out there that'll figure something out, that'll break the game, that'll find a way to make a synergy happen, and that, that will elevate the card in a way that you perhaps never expected. So that's something I would mention.
Cozy Snap:Yeah, I mean, I think there's times where it's like, we could've seen Giving advice, you know, like, hey, Blob looks like he's probably gonna be pretty crazy. But here's the fun part, and Loki, that's where people point to. How did they not see it, Alex? How did they, how did they not see it? I'll tell you how. Go look at reviews. Go look at what we had to say about Blob, what we had to say about Loki. We were high on them, but we were not thinking they were gonna break the game. Not even close, right? Like, you can read something, and you just don't. We were like, Blob's like a four star. He's good, right? Like, wow, his power. We even broke down everything that he would do. And we broke down what he's doing now. Like there's nothing different on when we broke him down to what he's doing now. There's nothing new discovered just in practice. You're like, Oh, this is crazy. It's very hard to tell. It's very hard to tell.
Alexander Coccia:Absolutely. It's a very difficult job. And once it's in the hands of the masses, there's no way of knowing just what will happen. Thank you guys so much for watching and for supporting our content. Leaving a positive review is generally helpful for you know, helping the podcast get out there amongst the masses and friends.
Cozy Snap:Alex, as always, great episode of the Snapchat, buddy. And congratulations. We always throw a little NFL talk in here. Congratulations to Niners fans and Chiefs Kingdom, Patrick Mahomes, for making it to the Super Bowl. We'll be talking to you around then for sure. Alex giving all of his. Hard cut Canadian advice for the NFL fans out there. As always guys, thanks for listening and until the next one, happy snapping!