Is Star-Lord Better Than Shou-Lao? | Magus is UNPLAYABLE | Drax Preview | The Snap Chat Ep. 168

This week, Alex is joined by the "Mr. Worldwide" of Marvel Snap: Dara! They kick things off with a life update, discussing Dara's move from NYC to Australia and now Thailand, living the $3 Bolt ride life while navigating a 12-hour time difference.

They dive straight into the Star-Lord Season Pass review. While Alex thinks it's a solid 4-Star card, Dara drops a massive hot take: Star-Lord might be better than Shou-Lao due to his insane synergy with Fin Fang Foom and Grandmaster.

Then, they roast the Super Premium card, Magus, agreeing it is "Toxic Doxy" levels of bad and a hard skip (1 Star). They also review Moon Dragon, deciding it's a "Doom 2099" dependent card that falls flat if not played on Turn 2. On the flip side, Dara claims Drax (Avatar of Life) is the best non-Season Pass card of the month, praising its ability to counter Ramp decks.

Finally, they open the Mailbag to discuss a wholesome community letter and debate a spicy game design question: Should Marvel Snap introduce a 5-Turn Game Mode to create a true Aggro meta? Plus, a heavy dose of nostalgia as they reminisce about Warcraft III tower rushes and the "Golden Era" of Blizzard.

Join Alex Coccia and special guest Dara as they chat about this and more on this episode of The Snap Chat—and catch Cozy and Alex every week as they discuss all things Marvel Snap.

You’ve been listening to The Snap Chat. Keep the conversation going on x.com/ACozyGamer and x.com/AlexanderCoccia. Until next time, happy snapping!

Transcript

Introduction and Welcome Back Dara

Alex 0:00

Hey everyone and welcome to the next edition of the Snapchat Today. I'm joined once again by Dara. Dara, it is great to have you back on the Snapchat. It's been a couple months and, uh, I mean, you're one of my absolute favorite people to have on the Snapchat.'cause not only are you a connoisseur of Twitch streaming, but you're actually a former ranked one player. Absolutely. Top shelf Marvel Snap gamer. And since we've last dis uh, discussed what's been going on in the life of Dara, you've actually made a massive, massive change. I thought living in Australia was crazy, and you're like, no, no, I need to go crazier. So Phyllis said, what's up with Dara?

Life in Thailand: Cost and Convenience

Dera 0:34

Dara moved to Thailand. That's where we're at now. Took a, took the leap all the way to Australia and then went a little bit further to Thailand. So now I'm completely on the opposite side of the world from where I was before in New York City. So kind of crazy. But I love it here, honestly, not that it sounds like I'm a salesman for it, but Thailand, actually, it might be one of my favorite places to live. It's just like good food. Everything's like really affordable. It's just like. You get around, like if you wanna hop in like the equivalent of Uber, it's like Bolt. It's called Bolt here. It's like it costs like$3 to go anywhere. Three USC actually

Alex 1:05

sounds amazing.

Dera 1:07

Yeah, it just like, you don't need a car'cause of that. But you could, if you want$3 is to get a car, like a full-sized car to like come pick you up. If you wanna, you can hop on the back of a little motorbike for like a dollar and, and they'll just like take you somewhere. It's kind of crazy.

Alex 1:21

We have to change like your branding from just Dara JN to like Dara Worldwide I think. Because you're literally Mr. Worldwide at this point. That's from New York to Australia to Thailand. And it's crazy.'cause actually we're recording right now. We're literally on opposite sides of the world. It is a 12 hour difference, time difference for us, which is kind of made scheduling a little challenging, but still really cool to think that like literally you are in the nighttime. I'm in the morning, total opposite ends of the world. If I dug through Earth, I might actually just get to you.

Dera 1:51

That's right. But I actually, it's kind of crazy'cause we actually have been living on like, uh, a couple different schedules while we've been here in Thailand. So it's like, I did try and do like the na schedule while I was here. So I was waking up at this time at like 9, 8, 9 pm like Thailand time, which is 9:00 AM Eastern time. But it does, right now I'm on a Thailand schedule, so

Twitch Streaming and Community Engagement

Alex 2:13

Yeah. And you're still streaming of course. So like, we're gonna have your links down below to, to kind of catch on stream, which hopefully one day I, I'm hearing rumors, I'm hearing rumors that Twitch drops might come back eventually. And, uh, there is a connoisseur of Twitch drops.

Dera 2:28

Some say I'm a Twitch Drop main, you know, that's my main game that I play.

Marvel Snap Discussion: Star Lord Review

Alex 2:33

Yeah. But, uh, I mean, we're all looking forward to, uh, Twitch drops potentially coming back. It's just a nice, fun way to reengage with a lot of the community. Like for me, it's fun because the YouTube community would love to get those rewards, right? And so I get to engage with a lot of people that don't, aren't like regular Twitch watchers. And the amazing thing about that as well is that, um, people that often like just come on to Twitch for Twitch drops sometimes they're like, oh wait, this is actually kind of fun. Like, maybe I'll check out new card releases, or I'll check out whatever. And it's awesome to kind of add people to the community because I find Twitch in YouTube, I treat them as two totally different platforms, right? And the way you're able to interact is totally different. Twitch has much more of that, like, oh, hey, you're in chat. How are you? Like, it's a very personal connection in some ways. Uh, YouTube has a little bit, a little bit of that as well, but it feels a little different because it's like a, it's a vad and I can respond in comments, but also like. The Snapchat will get like 350 comments, 400 comments. So it's hard to catch up all the time, right? So it's like, uh, it's a bit of a different interaction, but uh, that's why I love switch drop. So hopefully one day they make their comeback. But you know what, before we talk about anything more, we gotta talk about some actual Marvel Snap there. We gotta talk about some actual Marvel specifically. We got a lot to talk about today. We gotta talk about the star lord that just came out. We're gonna review star Lord, we're gonna review Moon Dragon, we're gonna review mags, we're gonna preview drags. And we got a bunch of mailbag questions, which I think are really interesting and I think that I'm gonna pitch some stuff at you in the mailbag, which I'm excited for. So that's gonna be good too. So let's start with star. Lord Dara, I would love to know your thoughts on Star Lord, because as of right now, I honestly, I went against the green a little bit when I was streaming it. People were popping and be like, yo star Lord is absolutely cracked. Everyone's saying it's crazy. Uh, other streamers, other people saying it's absolutely like the most, bro, it's more broken than show LA and all this stuff. And I'm just like, bro, I don't see that. I didn't feel that in my play and I went into my review. I do like my, my kind of my early review video and I was like, yeah, like it's good. I had fun. I ranked up, I won games. Positive win rates and stuff. But like, nah, this ain't, shall lao like this is not even in the same ballpark in my opinion, but if you disagree, I want to hear it because I've been told that I'm on the low end of my opinion, so I wanna find out where DARE is.

Dera 4:45

Yeah. So I think part of the best part about being on this podcast is I think we do end up on the opposite ends. I am on the, this is more cracked than shy allow side. I originally, my original take was kind of similar to yours is like when I first played it for the very first time, I actually misread it. I thought it I didn't realize it gave energy too, which is obviously absolutely cracked. I think. Yeah. I, I was like, oh, is this gonna be like a 4 9, 4 10 every game? It was like, that sucks. Like you have to like combo that with something like, uh, high evolutionary. But actually the best decks I think for Star-Lord aren't VO decks. I think you're just throwing this into like any random deck and you're just. Powering up huge E like last turns that have anywhere from like 16 to 22 power or 22 energy that you're playing out on the last turn. It's basically like completely overshadowed the fallen one. Like you would never play the fallen one when you could play star Lord because your last turns are gonna be so crazy. Like I think the thing that really activates Star-Lord is actually playing more than one star Lord AKA like grand master or abs man or something like that. Or I've even been playing a Phoenix Forest star Lord deck that just like brings stuff back. But I think the fact that you could play this more than once is the main thing. If you just play one star Lord on turn five or turn forward, like obviously that's not gonna be that good. It is gonna be just like you get a little bit of the extra energy back. But it's really the fact that you can play two of these on one turn, essentially. You can activate it more than once. You can even Odin in it if you want. I had a deck I was trying with Odin and it's just like, just having the ability to play so much energy on one turn you just play tech cards, you play combo cards, you play anything you want, and it's just like, it's absolutely cracked. And I think. Better than sha la is my current take.

Alex 6:20

Wow. That's crazy.'cause I, I still don't think he's better than Sha la though. I absolutely respect what you're saying. I think the ceiling on Star-Lord is far lower than Sha la because I felt like Sha Lao was able to do crazy stuff with the way that like, you could attack very specific, like prior, like guaranteed locations. You could add power to a location where your opponent wasn't expecting. Or you can use like Kitty pry to add it to another different location. Like I think the versatility of where the power was distributed with Sha Lao was a major, major advantage. And you were playing good cards overall with Shall Lao and with Star Lord. I think you're right, like there's a lot of cute stuff you can do and you bring up fall one. I actually fall one. I'm one of the few people that enjoyed fall one. I was playing fall in one Nimrod Black Panther decks where like, if you were to like surey the, uh, you know, the. The, what's his name and do the symbio Spider-Man stuff with, uh, with the fallen one, you could literally zola Black Panther on the last turn, like out of nowhere. Like you had enough to do that, which was really cool. Right. And it would catch a lot of people by surprise, which is what I love doing. But ultimately, anytime I was playing a Symbio Spider-Man deck, I'd end up just playing Galactus and everyone, which is kneel nonstop. So I never actually did those combos very often. I might be the biggest fan of gala. I don't know why I love Galactus as much as I do, but I just do, I dunno why we're talking about Galactus right now, but with Star Lord, it was like, it, he was good. He was definitely good. But I felt like, and I don't want to like sound dismissive, but like, I felt like a lot of the stuff you're talking about is like, it's very cute, right? Like when you're talking about like the abs man stuff and like the, the grandmaster stuff, it's like all these extra hoops you're running to and you're committing really hard to a single card. And I feel like I would say that like just playing him on turn five and like an Evo deck where you're kind of floating energy each turn. I feel like the, this more simple approach gives you a better barometer as to like what its actual power is. Because like, like what you're saying, the high end is definitely there is what you're saying. But I'm saying is like I think his floor is actually pretty high too. You know what I mean? Like I'm not disagreeing that he's a good card. I'm just saying that like a lot of the cutesy stuff you're talking about, I don't think most people are gonna turn to. And I think that like the more consistent Evo style play is where most people are gonna play him. And I feel like he's actually pretty good there, but I don't think he's like phenomenal. Do you know what I mean? Like what I'm trying to say? I guess Dara is like, do you think that the decks that you're describing can be like actual meta staples?

Dera 8:39

I think they already are. I think that's the thing. I think they, it can completely is warped the meta where you're either playing one of those decks or you're playing something to counter one of those decks. Like the top decks right now on untapped are super giant decks because that's the only way to really shut the shut it down is to play super giant. If you're not playing super giant, you're kind of getting, if shit on by star Lord, just playing a million cards on the last turn.

Alex 9:06

Yeah, no, I totally understand. Um, what's interesting is, so I just, before the podcast, I took the untapped based statistics for, um, for the, uh, star Lord I ranked, uh, basically I sorted it by win rate with it ranks 82 a hundred plus, right? So ranks 80 to a hundred infinite. And I ironically, it's actually one of the decks I featured in my video that, um, that is actually the number one deck right now, which is Sunspot Nebula, Misty Night, Bruce Banner, which was a major meme in my video. I can't believe that ended up making it in scorpion Superior Spider-Man, Cyclops Star Lord. And then you have the high Evo abomination. She Hulk package. And I'm actually like, that's awesome. It's running a 61.4% win rate as of recording 0.68 QS positive, which is great. And what's interesting about this is that like, that seemed so not fancy. Right. And I'm so glad it did really well. And I actually, I ended up in my video as well. I took out Nebula or Misty night interchangeably as I was testing and kept putting in Jim Hammond, which I thought was kind of funny.'cause he would just, like on the last turn he would just jump up to 10 Power. He would just jump up to 11 Power, nine power, which I was pretty cool. It's a one nine. Like how can you be mad about that considering how hard Nebula has to work for? Right. So like what I'm trying to say is, is like I absolutely can see that maybe as like the real chefs start cooking that maybe something's gonna come up, but even as a baseline, an absolute baseline, like seeing an Evo deck take this card and perform at a 61% win rate. Admittedly with some potential bond inflation here and there from ranks 80 to a hundred. I think it's pretty good. Like I ended up coming away like thinking this is a great card, it's a good card. I think it's a solid season pass card. But I still don't think it is as disruptive as shell allow it. Like I don't know if we're going to see Star Lord get Nerfed, like, do you think he's a Nerf candidate?

Dera 10:54

For sure. I think he'll 100% get nerfed. I think it's undoubtedly gonna get nerfed. The question isn't if, I think it's when

Alex 11:01

really

Dera 11:02

if you look at the stats of just popularity of cards played, let's take a look at like you said, 80 to a hundred. I'm pretty sure that it's, yeah, it's right now it's at 35% star Lord in all decks. Played.

Alex 11:19

It's a lot.

Dera 11:19

Yeah. Like pro on tap decks. Yeah. So that's just like 35%. I think that's higher than Shall I was. I'm not sure. But it might have been. Let's check 30 days if that was, I always remember when was 27%,

Alex 11:30

27%

Dera 11:31

sing

Alex 11:31

was like 70% on release.

Dera 11:34

Yeah. Yeah. It's not as bad as that honestly. Like, but Fang F is higher than Star Lord though. That's the thing. Fang F is actually just like still just crushing it and Star Lord activates being able to play Fang F. So that's just like another,

Alex 11:48

yeah.

Dera 11:48

Plus for Star Lord.

Alex 11:50

I actually really liked the fact that you brought up Fang Fu.'cause I actually want to, I wanna talk about that for a sec. I think that Fang F might be low key, like one of the best cards released in a while and I think that he pairs perfectly with Starlight. I think this was something that I missed personally in my evaluation of the card, like Fang F was star Lord, that extra energy you give, like now Fang Fu, like we talk about ramp, we talk about Luna Snow, we talk about all these ways you ramp, we talk about wave, we talk like there's tons of ways to ramp, but Star Lord gives you so much extra energy that seven power on Fang Fu, it means nothing. You could still drop Fang Fu in a Hulk on turn six. Like it's crazy, like how much power you can generate with something like a star Lord to the point that Fang FM's seven power means nothing. In fact, the way I lost a lot of my games playing Evo was like, let's say there was a situation where like, I felt like, okay, my best play now is I'll play Hulk out now turn. Five or whatever because I sometimes I was playing magic too, so maybe I'll play Hulk out early or whatever and then like that lane is just lost in my head. I'm like, actually if they fang f that lane I just lose'cause they're gonna take that Hulk power and just apply it to Fink Fang and sure enough, that's what happened over and over again. So Fink Fang F's a huge winner with Star Lord. I think that like the two work beautifully together and it wouldn't surprise me if the top performing decks have both of these cards in them.

Dera 13:11

I think almost all of'em do. Yeah, that's the thing. And I think those are gonna be the two first Nerf candidates I think. Like I don't think they'll Nerf star Lord because of Season Pass. So they'll wait a little bit to see how it kind of plays out. But Fin Fang fu I think might be next on the hit list.

Alex 13:26

You actually think so? So you're calling right now, Fink Fang Foo and Star Lord, master of the Sun, both getting nerfed.

Dera 13:32

I think Fang F for sure eventually. I don't know when but I think that is sooner than Star Lord. I think Star Lord will eventually get Nerfed. Yeah.

Alex 13:40

And what do you think they do to Fink Fang F.

Dera 13:43

They just bring down the power. Like that's probably just what they'll do. They'll just make it like a 7 10, 7 9, something like that.

Alex 13:50

Wow.

Dera 13:50

I think that, wait, nothing too fancy. I don't, I don't think you could really change. You'd have to completely rework the ability to do any other thing.

Alex 13:58

And star Lord. If you had to predict a Nerf, what would you predict?

Dera 14:02

I think the classic second dinner way. I think again, they just bring down the power, but that might not even be enough again, because star Lord, uh, I don't think the power is in the power on star Lord. I think the power is in the energy.

Alex 14:16

Yeah. And I like the flavor of the card where like it actually gets the power that it, it floats. Like, I like the design, I like the idea that it gets the power that it generates. I would not want them to be like, all right, it's just a four eight that gives you power, or it's a four seven that gives you power. It's basically wicked with more power or whatever. Like that would suck. I think I like the flavor of it, but like. Does it go to four three? That seems kind of crazy. No. Like I don't know. Like I just don't know what to do. I think the energy side of it has to remain untouched.

Dera 14:46

Yeah, I think they would, I think that's what they would go with. I think they would change the power side of it. The energy side. I think like, I think the power side does matter when you're playing it multiple times. Like when you grand master it, like it, it ends up becoming a lot bigger. So it's just like, you do get a pretty large card for that. Like extra, like you said cutesy stuff. But yeah, I think it's still like, I actually don't think we, it's that cutesy. I think it's actually fairly consistent to get off, uh, like big energy turns, you know, I, I think that that's not too uncommon in the deck since, 12 card deck,

Alex 15:18

for what it's worth, I really liked, uh, Dexter's, uh, Modoc hella deck, which I thought was clever. I thought that was really funny. The idea of like, Hey, turn six, I'm just gonna discard everything and play hella at the same time. Get wrecked nubs like that. I think that was really clever too. Um, that's running a positive view, uh, as well. So that was, uh, kind of fun to see.

Dera 15:37

Yeah, that's one of the highest win rate decks, uh, when you lower it all the way to just like 20 average game or 20 games played. But I think one of the things that deck is really, really it really dies to stardust and you just can't do anything of that point on stardust. That's pretty much like it. A lot of the tech in this game kind of artificially hold some decks back because there's just one card that just like crushes it and that's why you see like super giant is going to be holding back this card from just blowing up because you can't have star Lord really just go everywhere because people can just play a direct counter to it.

Alex 16:17

Yes. And obviously Super Giant will absolutely do that. And what's funny about the Hella deck is ranks 80 to a hundred plus. It's running a positive 44 cube rate, or 0.44 cube rate going to untapped. Uh, but a 46% win rate, which is always really fascinating to see when it's like the win rate is low, but then the cube rate's super high.'cause probably people are like, what are they doing? They're so far behind, they're gonna lose. Then like, Modoc, hell a surprise play, which I think is really cool. So if like you're into that, if you're onto that train early, you're probably gonna be able to steal a lot of AQ games from people until of course they play Stardust on you. That's kind of be a little sad.

Dera 16:50

Which, uh, which deck are you looking at that has that? I think I, another,

Alex 16:55

I was at the, uh, the Hella with, uh, with, uh, tha Ble Ross, crystal star Lord Gambit Ling. No, not Gambit, it's the Modoc.

Dera 17:03

Oh, version has, uh, yeah, there's Gambit, Modoc, hella one that has a 65% one. Right. But yeah. How many games? 20 games. That's why I lowered all the way to 20 because. If there aren't enough people playing this game anymore to

Alex 17:17

see, I use, I use 200 as the baseline. I only look at 200 games played, and then what I sometimes do is I'll go down to one 50 to see if there's any outliers. But 20 games is like, that's a really same, I just think

Dera 17:30

there aren't enough people playing. Yeah. Well I just don't think there's enough people playing the same 12 cards to the only decks that actually make it to the 200 are the creator decks. I don't think really of, that's why it's just like none of the people who are just playing the game to play the game, I think really make it well, I just mean like that aren't all collectively playing the same exact 12 cards. That's why it's hard. I like, every time I try and look for a new deck on a tap, it just looks fun. I have to lower it because there's only like pen decks, you know, that have over 200 games played so.

Alex 18:02

Yeah, and there's the other side of it, it's like also, uh, untapped will not post a deck that's not played by more than one account. So like if, if one person is playing a specific crazy cook, it won't actually show up in the stats until a second separate account plays the exact same 12 cards. So that's why also you'll get like cards that are on Twitter, cards that are posted by creators or cards that are featured in videos. Like those types of decks will often like see, get the sample sizes, right. So, yeah, absolutely. Uh, working with data's, uh, I mean you're, you are literally a data guy, right? Like that's, that's kind of one of your fortes, right? So yeah. It's, that's, that's a whole sample

18:39

size

Dera 18:39

is gonna be bad. Yeah.

Alex 18:41

Yeah.

Dera 18:41

That's the thing.

Alex 18:43

It's been getting worse. It's been getting worse. That's why I've been using ranks 80 to a hundred because I like having larger swaths of data. I like seeing things on aggregate, like how they're doing and things like that.

Dera 18:54

Yeah.

Alex 18:55

But yeah, like you're, you're right. You find more novel things. Once you dig a little deeper, but like the consistency could be questionable I guess.

Dera 19:03

Yeah, I would just say that even when you look at the 200 plus games for, especially when you're including below infinite rinks, it's going to obviously include bot games, but also you're gonna have a lot of people who don't know how to play the deck playing the deck. So it's gonna bring the stats way down. Versus if you have someone who's just a master of the deck playing 20 to 40 games, you're gonna see the potential for the deck, not necessarily the consistency of the deck for like people who dunno how to play it, but it's like how high can it go based on if someone who's master of the deck. But obviously you run to the low game problem of people just having a good run against like good decks that they face. So. It is, it is a counterbalance of just like you have to take all the caveats when you're looking at the data.

Alex 19:46

Yeah. And for me, like, because I know like my audience spans from like competitive players to what mostly I would believe are like casual run the mill. Like I'm, I'm on the potty, wanna play some Marvel Snap, like what decks do I play type stuff. Like they aren't gonna be masters of the decks that like they're, they want to experiment with. Right. So, so I think that that it's fine to feature like a wider range of things that, uh, that they can play. Right. So that's kind of, uh, yeah, know your audience I suppose is, is another thing I, I try to do that too.

Dera 20:14

I think that's true. Yeah. And like you said, like if you want a more consistent style deck, like less cheeky like, like stuff going on, then obviously high Evo, that kind of stuff, you know, it's gonna be a little bit more consistent and like you knowing your audience stuff that's a little bit more straightforward to play. But honestly I think any Star-Lord deck pretty straightforward in the sense that you can just skip the first four turns place to our Lord. Then. We play something on turn six, so

Alex 20:40

such interactive gameplay, don't play for over half the game. And then for two turns just wall up your opponent from behind. That's, uh, that's, that's, that's exciting Gameplay there. That's interactive. We thought hella was bad. I, we just finished talking about hella, but like, we thought OG hella was bad and now it's like literally skip four turns, play one card, then win.

Dera 20:59

Yeah, I like it though. I think it's fun. I think it's a fun card, but I do think it's gonna be a little bit oppressive at times and I think that's why they're gonna have to eventually Nerf it.

Alex 21:07

Okay, so before we move on to the next card, uh, star Lord, what's your star rating?

Dera 21:12

Five outta five.

Alex 21:14

I'm sticking with my four. I'm gonna stick with my four. I think she love felt like as close who as a five you can get without being utterly metal warping. I think that, uh, star Lord is very good. I can see him being a 4.5, but I'm gonna stay a four because that's where my heart is. But final question, do you think the season pass, it's definitely worth a 10 bucks or what?

Dera 21:34

It's definitely worth, definitely in the sense that I, it's hard to say nowadays with like nerfs and whatever, but like I always, and seeing the pass is almost always worth it comparatively relatively to the other ways you acquire the cards.

Alex 21:47

Yeah. And this is your classic, like a week before it enters Snap hacks? It gets nerfed.

Dera 21:51

Uh, yeah, probably. I think that's probably what will happen here. I actually do think that that is probably what will happen here. Like so you just have to take it. Like, I still think it'll be a worthwhile card even after the nerve is a thing. Like, I think it'll probably go to like 4 4, 4 3. I don't think they hit it more than that, so.

Moon Dragon: A Mixed Bag

Alex 22:08

Okay. Yeah, probably four. Four. Just a little like love tap, little love tap down. Just a little bunk on the, but uh, the behind as they say. Alright.

Dera 22:16

Yeah.

Alex 22:16

We gotta move on to the next car, which is Moon, dragon, Moon dragon. Um, didn't come out too much fanfare a lot of this. This always happens though, right? It's kind of funny. You get three cards on day one of a new season. It's the season pass card that most people are fixated on. Moon Dragon. I was like mid on. I kind of came in LA last week with Nina. I came in at three stars on Moon Dragon and I think a lot of what I was concerned about ended up being true. But my gosh, when you look at stats of what Moon Dragon decks are doing, they're actually very high. They're great win rates, and she is doing well in them. The only problem is, is the major thing that I've talked about before was that if you don't play her on turn two, she feels awful so bad. It's one of the most feel bad cards of like, oh, I didn't play this on curve. I guess this is a dead draw now. But if you play her onto like even something like a chamber, you could play your chamber a little later and then still kind of take the value. You can't do that with Moon Dragon. So I wonder if the Moon Dragon, and I'll talk about some stats in a set, but I wanna give you the floor to give you a chance to talk about it. Like Moon Dragon. Like if you get her down on two, honestly, it's good, man. But outside of that, oh my gosh, the, the floor on this card is so low once you pass, turn two.

Dera 23:31

Yeah, I, I agree completely. I think Moon Dragon is one of those cards that like, it does feel strong if you get on turn two and your deck is playing a Moon dragon type thing. But I actually think the best deck to play it in is gonna be not the best deck because it's gonna be like a Doom 29 9 deck probably is gonna be what you wanna run it actually to get the most value out of Moon Dragon. But Moon Dragon itself, I think in the decks that it does kind of work in like ramp, you're only gonna get the value if you play on turn two and then you end up playing like two or three turns more on any more on curve. And it doesn't really work out most of the time, especially with ramp.'cause you're gonna have too much energy on the last turn. You're gonna play two cars maybe. You know, it's, it's just like. There's too many things that cause it to go wrong, I think, and by go wrong, I mean like you don't get full value out of it. So if you look at the stats that I just like checked, I'm pretty sure most of the decks that you would play Moon Dragon in, there's actually a Moon dragon list version of that deck that's just higher rated, like has better stats. So percent I think you take it up. Yeah. So that, that's my take on Moon Dragon is, I, I I agree with you. It's probably is like a three'cause it's like playable, but it's probably there's a better deck out there without it.

Alex 24:41

Yeah. So I didn't like, I played a decent amount of Moon Dragon I played mostly star Lord. The way it worked for me was tons of Star-Lord. And then I played Moon Dragon and then I played some Magus as well. And we'll talk about that card next. But the thing I really liked about Moon Dragon is exactly what you're talking about. Nothing like, like those ramp shells where I think she worked particularly well. And I liked the fact that she can work really well with something like a superior Spider-Man, which created an additional ramp option. Right. And uh,'cause like those decks can run electro, they can run Luna Snow. But now superior Spider-Man benefits from both Chamber and Moon Dragon because if you know you're gonna play superior Spider-Man, you could p your chamber, Moon Dragons are gonna have the green power. So superior Spider-Man becomes a very good way to ramp up. And then you can fin f you, you got all those different options. Obviously you have the war machine style place, like I liked that part of what she did. And you're right, the Doom 29 99 deck, according to one tap based statistics on 100, uh, 1,100 games played is running a 57%, one 8.36 cubes, and that is 80 to a hundred, which is fine, but you play just regular war machine ramp and you're like way higher than that on both win rate and on the cube rate. So it's like, yeah, you can play Moon Dragon, but like as you said, you're making a really good deck, like a little bit worse, which is not what these cards should be doing.

Dera 25:58

Yep. Yeah, it's just not consistent is the thing. Like you said, you, you're either playing that card on turn two or you're not playing it at all, so. I don't think that makes for a good deck. Like every card that's come out that's kind of been that way has been not good. You know, it's just like, unless it's completely brokenly overpowered, you know, and I don't think this card makes that, that bar high enough. You know? It's just okay card. And if you play it on turn two, it's pretty good. And if you don't, it's kind of worthless.

Alex 26:27

I think the last time we saw a card like that, that was like, like played on curve or even maybe one turn after was like the og, Mr. Fantastic, not og, Mr. Og, Mr. Fantastic First Steps where like if you get him down on curve, his power like level was so much higher, disproportionately higher than getting down a turn or two later. But his floor was also higher too, right? Like this mo Dragon feels like it has a very, very low floor. For me, I feel like this is probably a skip, like if you're playing ramp, I don't see you playing the, like you could. There's like better versions of RAMP without it, right? According to current stats. And some of the more novel stuff with Doom 2099, it just doesn't do it. And Doom 2099, I think I suspected this'cause they buffed Doom 2099 and the prior OTA leading up to Moon Dragon's release. And I was thinking to myself, I was like, you know what, this is kind of a damning factor on Moon Dragon.'cause like Moon Dragon very clearly is a Doom 2099 card for the most part. And when you see Doom 29 99 getting buffed in advance of the card, I'm like, oh, that card's probably coming in soft because they're like, we don't wanna maybe Buff Moon Dragon'cause we're not sure about it everywhere else. But if we Buff Doom 2099, it's basically a buff to the Moon Dragon for one point and ended up not doing anything. And I mean, even Aurora was supposed to be a June, 2099 deck to some degree, and it just didn't work out the way people thought it would.

Dera 27:44

The stats of Moon Dragon, like we said, don't look bad. So it's just like, I, I can't say for sure that it's going to like fall out of the meadow entirely, but. Maybe there'll be like one specific deck that it is, but for me, I guess it's a skip just because I don't think it's gonna be as flexible as you'd want it to be put into enough stuff that makes it worth picking up.

Alex 28:10

Yeah, and I love this that we've talked about stats a couple times here, and this is a good example where I think the stats kind of deceive you a bit. Where you can like look at this card and look at the decks it's in and be like, oh, it's doing pretty good, but I think it's being carried by war machine. It's being carried by Fang Fu. It's being carried by these really strong archetypes that it was able to be plugged and played into almost directly. It, it's not really standing on its own, it's kinda standing on the merits of these already super good decks. Right? And so when you look at the stats, you see like on aggregate stats, like I'll just bring up what I have here just prior to the show. On aggregate it's running at 54% win rate, at 4% popularity, positive cubes. That's all fine, that's all good. But you're talking about like, yeah, it's in a ramp deck that's running a 57.8% win rate on 2000 games. You take that card out, that ramp deck gets better. So like, you know what I mean? It's like, it is exactly what we've been taught about the entire time. Where it's like sometimes these stats can be deceiving. So if Moon Dragon for me is a tentative skip, like, I don't think after the token weekend mission, I don't know if this card sees much play, I just don't think it shakes enough of the meta. And if you're telling me if, like, do I invest five six K tokens into this card? Like I would say no.

Dera 29:20

I think it's like if you love to play Doom 29 9, pick it up. If not, then skip it. It's just like, it's a very, uh, very specific card that I think it's gonna be a nice to have, not a must have.

Magus: A Disappointing Card

Alex 29:33

Yeah, for sure. And there are Doom 2099 enjoyers out there. They do exist. And uh, my heart goes out to you. Moving on, friend. Moving on to Magus. Now Magus, honestly, I realized something about this card when I was playing it a little bit. It didn't play as much of this card as the others. And that's'cause I just didn't like it. And this has been happening here and there. Tell me if I'm crazy Dara, and tell me if I'm crazy in the comments, but like, I just didn't like playing this card at all. Like, I didn't like the play pattern. I didn't like, I don't even care if it's strong. I just don't wanna play this. Like, I just don't wanna play this type of card. And I didn't find it enjoyable. I found it like frustrating. It's like, oh, well you can hit, you know, you can play, uh, Evo and then you can like run warlock and you can have an Ironman in your deck and you can skip turn five with the war and you can do all those things. Like, yeah, I played like 20 games. I did that once and still lost. So I'm like, okay, talking about getting cute, right? This is the ultimate, like, let's get cute card. And I don't know, I just don't think it's for me, I, I'm, I'm really down on this card. I didn't like it at all. I'm curious about your thoughts. D.

Dera 30:38

I think this is one of the worst cards we've seen in a long time. Released actually. I think it's absolutely, I think it's a one star card. I think it's actually like bringing your deck down by having it and trying to build around it actually makes your deck actively worse. I try to make this work and same thing, it's just so bad. It's actually just a really bad card. I think that, there are a couple things in it that just make it really bad. The fact that you have to have the cards in your deck still to activate. It's really hard to build a deck that's gonna make you get the value for the cards still being in your deck when you skip the five energy. That, or I, I say five Energy.'cause that's like probably the best thing you can do is like get an Iron Man, get like a, even like, I don't know anything like a devil Dino, who knows what, what do you want? Like a blue marble? I don't know. There's just like nothing really, like you would need an ongoing because you can't use on Reveal. So there's just too many conditions. It's an activate, so you have to get it down a turn early. You can't play it like obviously you need to play it and activate it because it's like skip energy. So the only way to get real good value out of this is to combo it with the other cards that also like skipping, but now there's better cards. That you'd rather play if you're gonna do stuff with skipping than play mags because it's, it's like you'd rather play, uh, a star lower deck than, and you star lower just doesn't combo with mags.'cause you're playing it on similar turns, so, or you're activating and you don't wanna skip all your energy and you don't wanna play She Hulk in those decks. So that's like, chill is the only way you wanna play this card, I feel like, and it just, what I've seen, the cards, you end up drawing them and they're in your hand. So maybe if they change this to be copy the text of a character in your hand or deck. Maybe it's playable, but it's still bad. I think that's the thing. But right now it's just unplayable. I think this is like the biggest skip I've ever seen in my life, unless they buffet.

Alex 32:18

Yeah, it's pretty rough. And uh, last week I mean I came in at 1.5 and so did Nina where like that's pretty low. Like one was like reserved for like OG release martyr. Like that was, that's, that's what a one looked like. Is this better than that?

Dera 32:37

I think it's worse than that. I think it's worse than, oh

Alex 32:39

my God. Really worse than original Martyr.

Dera 32:43

I think this is on the level of Toxic Doxy, which is one of the worst cards in the game. I think this is just like almost as bad as it gets funny because funny, I think you're actually hurting yourself. What's that?

Discussing the Toxie Doxie Card

Alex 32:54

I think it's hilarious to think that you brought up Toxic Doxy and I had to like take a second and be like, what the hell is that card even do? That's the one that toots on two cards, but you can't play them the next turn, right?

Dera 33:03

Yeah. It actively, it's like if you play that card, you're actively trolling yourself 90% of the time. It's just like that one is like if people made you play the card, like you would hate it.'cause you're like, oh man. Like whenever you, something transforms into Ox on an accident, you're just like, oh shit. Like this is, this is bad. It did just like, it just made it so I can't play my cards now. And you just have to retreat and leave the game. It's like this card got played. It's like so bad that when it gets played, it just like actively hurts you.

Alex 33:31

And didn't this release at a two one.

Dera 33:34

I think so

Thoughts on Premium Season Pass Cards

Alex 33:36

like it was a two, one, I was positive and it got off to a two three and still sees literally zero play to the point that I'm sure many of you forgot this card existed. We're kind of getting to that point in Marvel Snap where like we're actually forgetting about a card's existing. And I think that Taxi Doxys definitely one of them. Yeah, like for me, this is a huge skip and I'm, I'm okay with that. I'm, I'm okay with super premium season pass cards not being great. Like, that's not something I'm gonna get upset about. I'd almost rather that than them being absolutely broken and destroying the meta and stuff like that. I don't know if second dinner wants that. They, they're like those sweet, sweet greenbacks, right? So like, you gotta get, uh, you gotta sell the, what, what do you, you guys call'em Benjamin's Sweet Benjamin's. I don't, I don't know who's on your dollar bills.

Dera 34:18

What the bot what? Or the USD

Alex 34:21

Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, that's right. I'm Thailand. You're, you're worldwide. I mean, you, you see all the currencies, right? You're talking about the USD. It's, they're, it's.

Dera 34:28

Yeah. Benjamin's

Drax: Avatar of Life Analysis

Alex 34:29

Benjamin. That's right, that's right. Sweet Benjamin's. But, uh, yeah, for me, mag sucks. I just don't like him. And even if he was good, I'll be honest with you, even if you're like, yo, this card's actually pretty good in this, like one deck playing being played in like top 10 ranks. I'm like, I still don't wanna play this though. Like, I still just don't enjoy it. Like, it's just like, even if like, it's just, I just don't like the play style. And for me for that reason, it is a massive skip. But, uh, not all, we're not gonna jive with every single card, but the real question is, does Dara vibe with Drax avatar of life? There are three, four that reads, end of turn, plus three power. If your opponent played a card with greater power, this turn, move to that card. If you'd be winning its location. I always stumble over that last, that last sentence there. It's such a weirdly red sentence, but basically Drax, you play him down as a three four. If they play a card with more power, he gains plus three. And if he can beat that card's power at its location or if he can be winning that location, I should say, he will physically move there to then win the location. It's almost like a soft Captain Marvel type effect. Dara, I'll give you the floor. What are your thoughts on drag's avatar of life?

Dera 35:47

I think this is better than Captain Marvel by 10 x. I think this is the best card of the season outside of the season pass card. I think this is going to be I a cracked card. Honestly, I think this is gonna be a must have card. It's gonna be in a lot of decks. I think like almost every deck is gonna run this card. It's gonna be that good, I think.'cause you're gonna be, it's basically gonna be like a three 10 most games. I, uh, like it's gonna be at least a three seven. And then most of the time it'll be a three 10, I think.'cause you play, if you, as long as you play it out, turn three, turn four, someone's gonna play a five cost plus card or five power plus card. And then they have to play an eight power plus card, which will most people do on the last turn. You know, it's just like, I guess it's not guaranteed, but it's just like, oh, there's so many Fin fink f so many other things out there. And the fact that it moves to location to win it is just like a chef's kiss on top. You know? It just like makes it just that much better.

Alex 36:36

I guess the thing that I see, like, first of all, I think he's a solid card, very likely to have excessive stats almost every single game.'cause the way you win games in Marvel Snap is you play power, right? That's how you win games. You play power. Unless you make people kneel, that's also a choice. But, um, for most part, you know, you play power. You win games. Here's the thing though, you talk about Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel is coded to ensure that you win the game if possible. I know that we like the joke about like the why didn't Captain Marvel move type stuff. Especially since like for whatever reason they don't wanna fix the spaghetti code of having like multiple captain Marvels out and like how they sort themselves out. But like there's a chance, and this is where my question mark is. I think statistically he's gonna have very high power, as you said, like over 10 power, easy. They're easy, like for sure. But will his movement sometimes be a detriment? Is there a chance that he moves from a location you're winning? Right? So let's say you're winning a location and he's in that location'cause he has excessive power. They play a big card to a location to flip it. He moves there now creating a losing location and you're already losing the third location. So he win. So he might actually cook you with his movements at times. And that's something that I almost wanna see play out. Like in theory having lots of power and flipping a location should always be beneficial. But I think there might be circumstances where he might cook you by accident.

Dera 37:59

I don't think the way this card is worded, it actually guarantees like, so you might already be winning the location that they play a bigger card into and they can pull this card out of another location to the one that you're already winning. But they'd have to commit a pretty big card to do that. So I, I don't think it's gonna be worth it to them to like move this to like, there's gonna be the rare game where it does move and grief you, I think, but I think it's gonna be more rare than it is gonna win you the location. I'm sure it's gonna be like, people are gonna have Drax blindness and it's gonna be like, oh, I played this card to win, but it moved Drax and now I lost. So it's just, I think that's gonna end up happening more often than it cooking you.

Alex 38:36

No, I actually agree. Drs. Blindness is gonna be huge. I mean, I like, so I've been playing Unironically Echo here and there, but, um, yeah, people just play cards on top of her nonstop. Like, nonstop, like Echo is the, the queen of like, oh. I'm just gonna play my, miss Mar, like Miss Marvel on top, no one's playing Miss Marvel. You know what I mean? Right. And yeah, I think Drax Blindness is gonna be even harder because like you really don't see it. It's just gonna jump off three power and then flip a location you might not be expecting. Here's a good thing I was wondering about. So RAMP is currently really popular, right? We just talked about ramp with Moon Dragon and how like her decks are good, but other versions without her are still good. With drags, it feels like kind of like a really decent counter play against these ramp decks, like the warm machine ramp decks, they're all playing chunks and you could play Drax on curve and he's gonna almost consistently every single turn gain power because they are ramping in a way. And even on turn three, if they play an electro, he's gaining plus three, right? They play war machine, he's gaining an additional plus three and then they play whatever into Fink Fang Fu. He's probably gaining every single turn. Is this a decent counter play towards ramp?

Dera 39:47

I think so like obviously Fin Fang Fu might actually be a problem for this card, but I think it is gonna, like you said, ramp will be giving it plus three every single turn. But Fin Fang Fu, you play that on the last turn, it gets too big. Drag goes to the Fin Feg Fu Lane. Actually it doesn't go there if it loses. So I guess, yeah, maybe it's not a problem. I, I guess it is. Yeah, it's not a problem. I think Drs. Yeah, it's good against that deck. Just straight up.

Alex 40:13

Yeah.'cause if it's losing, he'll know. He'll never move. He'll just remain where he is, right?

Dera 40:16

That's right. That's why it makes Drax so great. It's just like he only moves if it's gonna win. Win that lane.

Alex 40:21

Yeah. Yeah. And be it being an end of turn, the end of turn Pro and then the end of game Will Pro. So he'll move on, turn six or seven and then the end of game will actually drop. He might be susceptible to like. I see what you did there. Dammit. Felt, I know that someone's kid somewhere listening on TV was like, oh, oh, I, I, okay. Yeah. I'm old. If I would've done that in front of my kids, they would've freaked out too. I like, I still don't understand like this. I

Dera 40:45

don't think they could see it on the Snapchat. They couldn't, they couldn't see it, but

Alex 40:49

they couldn't see your hand motions?

Dera 40:51

My hand motion? Yeah. Not

Alex 40:52

really. You just slightly cropped that of frame, but um, but yeah, like, uh, I don't know. I think the card's gonna be really good. I'm gonna be going with a solid four star rating on this card.

Dera 41:03

Yeah, I think four as well. I don't think it's gonna be, when I say it's cracked, it's not gonna be ultra cracked. It's not gonna be Star-Lord. I think it'll just be, it'll be very playable in like any sort of tempo list. Like you just play this card, it's gonna be a big card. Like it'll be three, seven to three 10 every single game. Plus, for what it's worth, it go up to three. Three.

Alex 41:21

Last week I came in at three and a half and I've adjusted upwards to four and I think partially because, is that

Dera 41:27

because of my description?

Alex 41:28

There

Dera 41:29

you go.

Alex 41:29

Yes. You, you, you pumped, you pumped my rating. Known pumper dare Jann.

Dera 41:34

So that's how it goes. I, I described the situation. I actually just saw this during the season season video that they put out. I was just like, wait a second.'cause it's like, at first I thought it could only go off once, and then I realized it's the end of turn and then I'm just like, it, my brain just started going like, Ooh. And then it moves to car to the, it just like kept getting better and better every time I saw the, everything that it did.

Marvel Snap Community Appreciation

Alex 41:55

Yeah, for sure. It, it definitely is, I think gonna be a particularly strong card. So yeah, for us, uh, excited to see it in play. It's gonna be a unique one and actually a really cool design too. Definitely overstated. But it's the movement side that I'm most curious about that I want to kind of see in play. And that is gonna take us to the Snapchat mailbag. We have three questions slash statements. The first is a quick one, and I just kinda wanna make this comment because, uh, I realize this in editing sometimes, but the mc man says, I think this is the third or fourth week in a row that Alex has mentioned, the nebulous cyclops combo laughing face. So I just wanna say that like I re, I recognize that sometimes when I'm editing, I'm occasionally repetitious with things and stories I say, and I wanna apologize like in advance for me doing that in the future. Dara, do you ever find yourself like going to the well in the same story, not even realize like you're going to the well?

Dera 42:48

Oh I don't know if it's that I don't realize is that I just, one, I like to tell the thing that, you know, I'm passionate about or that I like, you know, like, obviously you're a big fan of nebulous cyclops, but I like just whenever something comes up that someone mentions, they're like, obviously when I'm streaming or whatever, I always will just get back into the same rant about the same thing all the time. But also I do it for the people you know, who aren't always there. So I think that's one of the things. If you say it again, it means that other people get to hear it for the first time. So I think that's always good too.

Alex 43:19

That's true. And the other thing that I've done a lot over the last little while is without realizing it, so whenever we have someone like brand new on the Snapchat, I always ask'em like, how'd you get started in Snap? Like, what got you into the game? What made you start making content for the game? Stuff like that. I find that really interesting. And I always end up on the same path where I tell my story again for like the 19th time about how like, oh, like I applied as a creator and the second inner ghosted me, and then I just started streaming it. Then I started making content and like I'd go through the same story over and over and every time I'm editing like, oh my God, Alex, like, don't you listen to your own show? Shut up, bro. Like, just, just stop talking about the same People

Dera 43:55

like the story though, you know, I, I love the Alex or, or origination story. You know,

Alex 44:00

the origin story of Alex is a, is a popular one. That's right. Um, but, uh, crumpy 1 25. This was a heartfelt comment that I really appreciated and, uh. I wanna read it out. So Crumpy says, thank you for everything. I'm currently in the hotel to leave for the Navy, and one of the biggest things I'm gonna miss is the time I would get to listen to you and all your guests. Cozy will always be in my heart as well, but when I come back, I'm gonna have at least eight episodes to watch back to back. And I know listening to you will help me when I feel homesick. Since I've listened to pretty much every podcast. Wish me Luck and I hope the best for you and your family. And I love all that are listening to the podcast too. I've never seen such a wholesome community, Derek. The reason why I wanted to talk about this comment is, uh, first of all, like it just goes to show how amazing the Marvel Snap community is. And I don't know if you've felt this in your streaming and the content you create. I certainly have where despite the fact that like numbers have gone down, there's less interest in Marvel Snap as a whole viewership has gone down, I still feel motivated to create content and stream, do all these things because. There are so many wonderful people that are propping this community up that I don't see in other communities. Like I'm in a bunch of different creative communities Snap and the people that still listen to this show and engage in streams and come to DARE Streams, come to Alex Streams, come to Dexter Streams, you guys are different. You guys are just cut differently. And, uh, I just wanna say I appreciate you. Like honestly dare, like is this not actually like an incredibly wholesome community?

Dera 45:28

Yeah, I, this will definitely, like obviously I actually started my whole, the DARE origin story, my whole streaming career also like is from Snap. So it's just like seeing this community and just like everyone a part of it, like even people who don't play the game anymore are still part of the community and they still come and watch and participate in Snap even though they, like, they've uninstalled or whatever. They don't play anymore. They don't participate in it themselves, but they still participate in the community with us, the creators, and with the other people who are, you know, in Chad, in the comments, you know, down below, leave a comment. Subscribe.

Speculating on Game Design and Mechanics

Alex 46:05

Yeah, it's been crazy. I've, I've heard a lot of people say like, Hey, Alex, don't even play the game anymore, but still listen to the podcast. Or Hey, Alex, still check in on the new cards every once in a while, even though I haven't played in months. Or like, Hey, Alex, looking forward to whatever you do next. Just waiting in the wings here, right? Yeah, like the community has been absolutely remarkable and, uh, obviously grumpy. Thank you for everything that you do. And, um, thank you to everyone who continues to support Marvel, Snap Creators, and even on this podcast where, you know, obviously Dara is, uh, uh, you know, a, a creator of Great Stature, right? Known, known across the worldwide universe, Mr. Worldwide, as we've said so many times already. But you know, on the podcast we feature other creators who are smaller and still, building their audiences and stuff, and you guys have been so tremendously positive, so tremendously supportive. Subscribing to their content building the positive comments. And um, that means a lot to me. It means a lot to them. And it goes to show you how amazing this community is. I'm not just saying it. You guys are different. Thank you. And that brings us to our final statement of the day from uc, fan 10 10 going on the limbo talk. We had a discussion in our discord where someone asked if there was a card that could make a game. Five turns instead of six, maybe it's dark child. There has to be played on turn three, like magic. So essentially, Derrick, do you see a design space where you can make a card that forces the game to end in five turns versus six or seven?

Dera 47:29

Uh, I really, um, I think the fact that you would have to have it be played out by like turn three or something, it'd have to be like Ebony Moss. Like you have to play it by turn three or you can't play it because. Like you can't just have it end the game on turn five obviously and just be like up it's over and one turn if you do it on turn four and isn't enough. I could see that being a cool design space though. I think like having a faster game, like maybe even make it so you have to play on turn one or two, I don't know. Or like you include it in the deck and it just start a game. This is gonna be five turns if you meet some conditions or something like that. I don't know, like there's gonna be something that could definitely, uh, make that possible. I don't know if they'll ever actually add it because I think they've designed like the entire game around six turns mostly, you know, so I think it'll be tough for them to actually add that. But I, they've added like air shi and other things, you know, that they kind of break deck building. So like I could see them adding that and then like retweaking it later if it's too oppressive in some way,

Alex 48:30

I'm gonna go on a limb here and say that I think this would be an awful idea. And the reason why is because I think it would pigeonhole the meta. There's a reason why like in magic. Mono Red Agro is like incredibly popular.'cause if you wanna like rank up fast, one of the benefits of ranking up fast is getting more games in. So if you can reduce the length of the games, you could do the math and be like, well if I have a 55% win rate or 53% win rate or whatever on this deck, but I'm just grinding games faster, then I will rank the infinite faster. I can rank the one faster or whatever. Right. That's a concern I have where you're taking a really short game and you're compressing it even shorter and you're just churning out games like crazy, like you know, you're just churning it out. They would almost have to make, so yeah, the game could be five turns but could only have a maximum of like four cubes or something. They have to minimize how many cubes you can get or else like people are just gonna use it to farm as opposed to actually play the game properly. I guess that's my major concern. Does that make any sense?

Dera 49:27

Yeah, I think actually I think the design space actually could be cool though with a card like that.'cause I think one thing that's really missed from Snap being exactly six turns is like these other card games where you have these different archetypes where you have like agro that ends the game fast. Or like control that takes longer games. You don't really have that kind of variation in Snap because everything's six or seven turns, so that's all you get. But I think with something like this, I really do think that you can you can add this kind of mechanic to add this, this, uh, agro style deck that ends the game early. But you'd have to have some drawback. Like of course, I think you could definitely be like play this card out and it gives your opponent plus five energy the next turn, but it ends the game next turn. Like it's something like that. I think that that'd be interesting. You know, it's just like it gives your opponent an entire energy's worth of extra turn, but it's gonna end the game. That'd be kind of cool, you know, it's just like. Something interesting like that. Like you play it, it ends it on turn five. I think. That'd be interesting.

Nostalgia for Classic Games

Alex 50:26

That would be kind of cool. Like they actually get turn six, but it's just compressed and they have the energy too. Interesting. Yeah. Very interesting. Could also still potentially be toxic, but uh, still fascinating. I like that Darius cooking that actually. Okay, so we're talking about like going through things fast. Do you remember the era of hear stone where like, control warrior was like, like the meta and like games were like 40 minutes long and it was awful and like everything was just a total, like I just did not wanna play that game anymore because of it. Do you remember that era of her stone?

Dera 50:55

Yeah, I don't remember that era. I, I loved the, just like, uh, that era actually I was a control player in general. I was control p priest player. Like I hit rank one in Hearthstone when, uh, Nomi Priest was a thing and I was drawing my entire deck and doing the entire thing. That was how you play the, the, uh, the deck I played is like, you would go through your entire deck and then just you. Played out everything and that's just how it went. So

Alex 51:19

I

Dera 51:19

really liked

Alex 51:20

agro, like mem really liked mem.

Dera 51:23

Oh mem that's an OG deck. That's early days. That's yeah, that's uh, first expansion.

Alex 51:30

Yeah. The guy expansion, right?

Dera 51:33

Yep. Cos

Alex 51:34

maybe you wanna play some, some Hearthstone. I gotta say the only thing about her stone that's been bothering me is that like, I really wanna play battlegrounds, but I do all my stuff so fast and then there's like a, like a four minute timer. I'm like, oh my gosh, I gotta wait four minutes for all these gamers. Like, what are we doing here, man? Like come on. That's the only thing that kills me. The time is so slow. That game should be a quarter of the length of time. I, it kills me man.

Dera 51:59

Well play some TFT and you'll never have time that you're waiting. That's TFT is a game that's just always making you rush. And I think that's the better Autobi.

Alex 52:07

So much rush found too.

Dera 52:09

Yeah.

Alex 52:10

I've been playing so much riff. I'm starting to learn about all these TFT characters. Maybe you should teach me some TFT. Maybe we should do like a YouTube series, like Alex learns, TFT with Dara.

Dera 52:18

I would love that. But you should also sign up for the box bootcamp. Next set. So every single set, they basically reset the game every three months. So you get a chance to come in with a fresh set of eyes and you can hop in anytime, you know, and just like, uh, any set and just like learn it with everybody else.'cause everyone has to learn it. So I think that's like one of the benefits of the game is like, that's why the game is crazy with the metrics, with the stats. It's just like, it's a game that every single set, it's been gaining more players, more viewership. It's just like, it's a great game. I just, and

Alex 52:51

that's actually an important lesson even for Snap. Like Snap can't do that. Like, a good example of this too, and a game that I'm lowkey addicted to, I love is Diablo four. And one of the things is that like, even after I stop playing the season resets every time, like you just, you make a new character they've made it. So the culture around Diablo four is. You make a new character at the start of a new season and like you just, everyone's at the same spot again. Like all, like my friends who play dabble, they all make a new character. We all make new characters and we do the season content together. Everyone starts in the same footing with Marvel Snap, a new season comes out. The problem with that is you're still super behind. Like you're still super behind. Like you're not, like there's no reset mechanic, right? With TFT as you said, like there's a new season and everything's just, it's, it's rolled over. Everyone, everyone starts from the same spot again. It's a new experience. And so it's a good entry point. Like for me it's like, oh, it's a new season of TFT. If I'm gonna play TFT, now's the time. And same thing with Diablo four. Like Snap doesn't have that because of the way the collection system works.

Dera 53:45

Yeah, it's, uh, TFT also completely free to play. Another bonus there, there's$0 that you can spend on anything that impacts the game itself. Only cosmetics. So that's also another huge plus. But yeah, I think Snap it's time to do a reset like some sort of rotation, some sort of thing. They, we've hit that point in the lifecycle where I think that's their next move. If they want to have some sort of big comeback, some resurgence, they have to do that. I think

Alex 54:11

I was just thinking about how like you're gonna like email your like riot rep and be like, yo, do you know that like League of Legends TFT ad you wanted me to do? Well I five headed it into Alex's podcast.

Dera 54:22

Yeah. I wish they paid me. You know, that's the thing that I, I would love to be I to know anybody that works at Riot. You know, that's the thing like,'cause it is just like Riot does it right? I think with EFT legend or RA people always say, oh, it died because it was too free to play. I don't think so. I think it died because like the game wasn't quite there for a broad enough audience, like the audience shrunk before it became, unviable. But I think they do it right in the sense that they do right by their players. They care about their players first and then they care about. Monetizing, milking them through cosmetics and stuff later. It is just like, that's the thing. It's just like, they don't actually, they don't seem like they're just out to try and get the money. They, they seem like they just want to get more people playing the game. And I like that.

Alex 55:08

Yeah. Mobile milking is definitely a thing that exists in, uh, the world of games, unfortunately. But yeah, I've, I've experienced the same thing. Even with Riff Bound. My engagement with like the riot staff and stuff has been incredibly positive. Like, they actually legitimately do care about their communities, their creators, their their players, and, uh, the perception of their games and how people are interacting with them. To the point where, like, I recently saw like someone,'cause I know they're working on like a League of Legends two, I believe. Like they're actually redesigning that game as a whole.

Dera 55:33

What? Oh yeah. You're talking about like the whole rework.

Alex 55:36

Yeah. Whole

Dera 55:37

rework. It's not gonna be called League two. Right. But they're doing,

Alex 55:39

it's essentially re. Yeah. Yeah.

Dera 55:41

Whole

Alex 55:42

differentiate. Pretty sure. Yeah. The game designers were like, yo, like just on Twitter, like, yo, like what do you wanna see? Hit us up. Like actually just give us ideas.'cause we're, we're taking in everything right now. Like that's cool man. I like that.

Dera 55:52

That's what I feel like so many games that are super popular, like are billion dollar games that have been around for 10 plus years. Should do and should have done. Hearthstone I think should have done that five years ago and they still haven't done that'cause they have so much spaghetti code in that game that they should have actually just like completely rehauled it. I don't know if they ever will, but like same thing with like World of Warcraft. Like they should have like rehauled that 10 years ago as well. You know, it's one of those things that like they did rehaul some stuff I guess, but they could have done much bigger re reworks I think. Yeah. Like Wild Classic I think was a pretty good reset. Yeah, that's a reset. They just went back to old code base. I think they need to do new code base is a thing, right? Like they need to just like refactor, I think. Wow. It's a great example of a game that they just did, like a graphics update and a engine update. Just like made it so it was just like, brought it up to 2026 as opposed to 2004. You know, I think they would've definitely, uh, recaptured a big part of the audience that left.

Alex 56:52

I like how you're talking about spaghetti code and you're pretending like Marvel Snap doesn't crash 15 times the stream.

Dera 56:57

Oh, it does, but at least it, it still like looks, you know, like it's a game for the new age. Like that's the thing. Like they did cook, I think with Marvel Snap and the like, the way the game feels and looks like if Hearthstone looked like Marvel Snap, you know, it, it would feel upgraded. That's the thing. Like Marvel Snap feels like a next iteration of Hearthstone,

Closing Remarks and Future Plans

Alex 57:14

yeah. I play like a lot of, tons of car. I play way too many card games and like a lot of them, like I see like on Steven stuff, I'll pick up, try and you're right, the feel of actually like playing cards and Snap and stuff like that it's at a different level. The even small things, like when I play Hulk or she Hulk and they go like, rah and they smash the ground and like they do all those things, right? Like that stuff's cool. It gives the game a lot of flavor and a lot of games don't have that weight to the cards being played and stuff like that. Still convinced Lockheed's animation's a bug, but, uh, maybe, uh, that'll get fixed eventually. But Dara, we've talked about pretty much everything today. We should have a a, a podcast just dedicated to talking about the good old days of, of OG Blizzard when, uh, you know, when that, I remember, man, that's like bringing me back to like my high school, college, university days. I, uh,

Dera 57:57

that's right.

Alex 57:58

Love those days. Those are good days. Very positive days. Depending on who you ask. I remember my wife one day was like, yo, like you, we were gonna go rollerblading, right? I'm like, hold on, I'm in Sunken Temple and wow. Like, we just need to finish this boss. And we wiped like six times and then like, it was the middle of the night. By the time I'm like, okay, I'm done. And she's like, yeah, we're, I'm going home.

Dera 58:16

That's how it goes. Yeah. That was my mom telling me I need to go to bed, you know? It's time for dinner. No, I'm just kidding. That, that, that's the meme. But like, I, I pretty much just like, I only played Wow. For a year, so I can't really like, speak on that. I was a Warcraft three kind of guy. You know, Warcraft, you were too, obviously. I know you're a Dota guy, right? So I like, I always forget, you know, so like,

Alex 58:36

I was top 50 in, uh, frozen throne in Warcraft three.

Dera 58:39

Yeah.

Alex 58:39

Top 50 night off.

Dera 58:41

That's right. Night off was the op race. I remember that was just like I liked night off, but I was a dirty or player, you know? So

Alex 58:50

Did you like tower rush

Dera 58:51

people

Alex 58:51

and stuff?

Dera 58:52

Uh, yeah. I mean, I, I also tower rush with night off. I think that's even better. Like, I used to go build the little, not tower rush. You would do, uh, the tree detectors. You would get the, uh, your actual, whatever the thing was called that like built units. You just go build that near them and then just, oh gosh. Uprooted tip of my tongue. Smack them.

Alex 59:12

Forgot nature

Dera 59:12

of war. Forgot

Alex 59:13

or what's

Dera 59:14

something, something like that. Yeah, yeah. I just remember that that was always like, that was a real strap. People did, you know, you just go walk that thing into their base.

Alex 59:22

Yo, would you wanna stream some Warcraft three at some point?

Dera 59:25

Maybe. It's been a long time, but yeah,

Alex 59:27

maybe we do some twos. I play

Dera 59:28

some Warcraft. Three, some twos. I love playing. I, I used to just like, uh, play heroes only against like family and friends that, that was just like so fun'cause it just like, I could kill since I was just like, when you're much better at than like people who are just casuals. You can just like go and just use Blade Master and just kill their entire army. And Base was just like a hero. And that was just like so fun. But those would be really fun. Yeah. Just like

Alex 59:52

you Blade Storm all their wisps and they just explode. They don't even know what's going on.

Dera 59:55

That's right. Yeah.

Alex 59:57

But, uh, all right, Terry. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah, we could keep talking about this, like the OG days of like blizzard and stuff forever, but, uh. Thanks so much for joining us today, guys. Down in the description and in the pink comment you're gonna find D Twitch. You gotta follow. He's an absolute Chad. Love, love his stream. And guys, we'll see Dara again soon, I'm sure. Absolutely wonderful takes very analytical and I think that you're gonna be right on almost all the calls you made today, in particular. In particular, the drafts just might be one of the surprises of this season. Thank you so much for watching everyone, and we'll see you on the next one.