Welcome back to Burning Questions, where we investigate and speculate on trending topics in the Snap community. This week we're discussing Shang Chi and Venom changes and looking at the best Snap Twitter accounts.
1) Is Shang Chi a problem?
Back in December, I was asked if Shang-Chi was being intentionally pushed out of the meta. At the time, it seemed like an unequivocal ‘yes.’ We had just seen the introduction of cards like Ebony Blade and Loki that make Shang very weak, had metas that revolved around ducking under 9 power, and Shang had just been nerfed to only hit 10-power and above. It seemed like the devs had artfully achieved the impossible: a slow de-emphasis on Shang while maintaining a healthy and fun metagame that didn't need him. His play rate dipped below 18%. Well, fast forward to today, and Shang is reigning over the format with a 39.4% play rate. In a distant second is Zabu at 27.5%; a card reduces the cost of Shang Chi.
So what happened?
First, the Planet Hulk season happened. The devs have made it explicitly clear they like it when the meta of a season somewhat fits the flavor of that season. So we got hards like Skaar, Caiera, and Blob that help big guy strategies. I've seen this season referred to as the "big, dumb idiot” since it favors decks that go tall with large cards (high cost and high power). This is partially by design, as mentioned above, but what happened to the low-Shang metagames of November and December?
The other concurrent trend is the steady dismantling of mid-range scaling cards. Cards that have recently been heavily nerfed or seen massively reduced play because of other nerfs include Elsa Bloodstone, Angela, Kitty Pryde, Werewolf by Night, The Collector, Bishop, and Kraven. These cards were core in decks that could duck Shang Chi or work around him in other ways. The introduction of new “big, dumb idiots” has been partially responsible for the Shang revival, but just as important has been the destruction of decks that can win without huge cards that Shang feasts on. Thanos, Lockjaw, High Evolutionary, Destroy, and other large lad decks will continue to reign if these midrange scaling threats don't exist. As long as those decks are on tip, Shang Chi will have massive value.
Shang Chi is a hard card to change. If Shang were to be nerfed again or reworked to be weaker, we would just have a bigger, dumber idiot meta than we have now. Shang might be a problem, but he's also a solution. The better answer to reducing the meta’s reliance on Shang Chi is to strengthen more decks that neither play him nor lose to him.
2) Was Venom going to be nerfed?
After the OTA on Thursday, some text detailing a change to Venom went live on the Marvel Snap website. This is a change that did not go live in the game.
What is the deal here? Was this a change supposed to go live but didn't make it into the game? Or was this a potential change that was never meant to go live but was left in the notes?
Glenn Jones had this to say on Discord:
“Sometimes, we prepare more changes for a given OTA than we may ultimately publish because it takes time to localize the notes and QA the updates. This allows us to gather the maximum data while remaining flexible on what changes will go live.
In this case, the notes for a change we prepared and removed just slipped through one of our postings briefly. It isn't currently planned for future patches or OTAs, though we may consider it again.”
For those new to the game, Venom used to be a 3/1 and was nearly unplayable. However, the destroy archetype has received a lot of support since then, and Venom has become one of the stars of the deck with oodles of synergy with the other cards in the archetype. Would a change to 4/5 harm the archetype too much? Even if it doesn't, it would radically nerf the few remaining fringe Nimrod strategies as well as Phoenix Force decks. This change doesn't strike me as particularly creative or elegant. Perhaps X-23 needs to be changed to activate one per turn. I'd much rather see a change to a card like Knull or Death to rein in destroy rather than a change like this to Venom. Though Venom could probably absorb a nerf to 3/2.
Hopefully, the team won't revisit this change and will find a more elegant change to the destroy archetype if they feel one is needed.
3) What Twitter accounts should you be following?
There are a lot of great Marvel Snap Twitter accounts, and below, we've got the top 3 that you need to be following. Many entertaining smaller accounts are awesome, and we hope to highlight those in the future, but this list is limited to absolute must-follow accounts to improve your game.
1) Snap Decks
In my opinion, the best Marvel Snap account on Twitter. An excellent resource for decks. The account is very well run and, unlike much of Twitter, they love up to their promise of “no bad vibes.”
2) Marvel Snap News
This is a great news source for those who want to stay on the very cutting edge of information.
3) KM Best
The primary value added to your life here is the Sunday meta roundup and deck list dump. But KM also produces some of the best ones on Snap Twitter.
That's it for this first edition of 2024. Hit me up on Twitter or leave a comment below if you have a burning question.