Hello, and welcome back to Burning Questions! This article series examines the most interesting and important questions and conversations happening in the Marvel Snap community. This week, we're talking about community witch hunts, free boosters, and Storm.
1) Does the community always have a new card to witch-hunt?
I've heard this concept put in a few different ways. “Snap always has a villain.” “Crybabies always complain about a new card until it gets nerfed.” “After X gets nerfed, the community will whine about Y.”
The basic idea is that regardless of how powerful or well-balanced the meta is, the community will always find a new card to complain about. The balance team nerfs Leader, so the community moves on to Leech. Alioth gets changed, so people complain about Hela. It's a common idea, but is it true?
I've been thinking about this lately, and I think it doesn't take into account Snap's dynamic nature. There's this idea that a particular card was totally fine, and people find a new card to complain about in each metagame, or that players are simply too lazy to play around cards they don't like. We've heard about Leader, Galactus, Alioth, and many more. But cards don't exist in a vacuum. Take a card like Hela. I've heard people say this same refrain about her. “Hela was always fine. People are just finding the new big thing to complain about.” No, Hela got better! As decklists get refined and new cards are released, decks develop improved synergy and become more consistent. This happened to Hela. It was a fun meme deck that got a lot more consistent. Lockjaw was changed, and the deck took a slight dip and rose again after other changes. Now, I'm not calling for a Hela nerf. I don't know if her win and cube rates call for it again yet, but the idea that people complain about her to find something to complain about is disconnected from reality. Could Tribunal be the next villain? If the deck gets better and better, yes. Could Phoenix Force become the villain someday? Absolutely. It is continually getting more refined and consistent; I could see Phoenix Force becoming problematic someday, especially if it gains cards and goes unchanged while other decks get touched.
So, why do people complain about a card?
Either there are few viable counters to a deck, its win, cube, and play rates are sky high, or a combination of the above. We saw this perfectly with Alioth. Alioth had incredibly high play rates, in the 30% range, while being one of the winningest cards in the game. Alioth was changed because it was too powerful, plain and simple, not because of community outcry. The same was true about Galactus, despite its adherents always trying to claim the deck was worse than it was and that you should learn to play around it.
Then why does this theory exist?
If a commonly complained about card gts changed, it means many people are winning with it. If you change someone's winning deck they'll be upset. Understandably so. Think especially how this feels for early adopters of a deck before it becomes too powerful. Imagine you've been playing Phoenix Force for months. You're good at piloting the deck, you've invested splits into it, and it is getting better and better. Now, the community starts to complain about your deck, which you know wasn't problematic before; it was a struggle to win with it. But you helped refine the list, the deck got a couple of new pieces, and several of its predators or iffy matchups took nerfs, and now it is great, and you are winning like crazy with it. You feel like a genius on the cutting edge of the meta. Understandably, you would feel bewildered by a nerf and think it's unwarranted. But the cold, hard truth is your deck got better and crossed Second Dinner’s balance thresholds. Ideally, they adjust it without killing the card like they were able to do with Galactus (I think Alioth still needs a point of power, and we need to buff other priority rewarding cards, but we'll see).
If there's always a new villain, it's because decks change and their match-ups ebb and flow, not because everyone is a crybaby.
2) How can I take advantage of the new bonus boosters in the shop?
In one of the best recent changes to the game, Second Dinner revamped the fast upgrade section in the shop. Previously it was a place where you could pay extra gold to upgrade your cards that you didn't have enough boosters for by paying for those extra boosters. Now, the shop functions similarly, except that the boosters are free. The most important thing to realize about this change is that you can manipulate which cards appear in your shop. Because the shop only shows the cards you are most booster-starved on, you can ensure that your favorite cards are always there. At first it might not seem particularly useful, after all, if you play enough you're likely swimming in boosters for most cards. But for the variants I upgrade the most, my favorite variants, it's easy to get them to zero boosters. I've used this feature to work on my Peach Momoko Magik, Rian Gonzalez Spider-Woman, and Steampunk Quake variants. You do have to wait through the other variants for that same character to go through the shop, but because the shop changes every 8 hours, it doesn't feel like a huge burden. If you want to juice one particular card, get the other variants you have for that card to infinite, but don't split them. That way you can ensure that your one favorite variant is always in the free boosters section. It's only a matter of time until someone uses this to achieve all possible splits on their favorite card (which is currently 128 splits, I believe).
There are other cards, like my Baby Doom and Momoko Shang, that I'd like to work on splitting as well, but I have so many boosters for them that I won't run out any time soon. This means I can work from both ends, upgrading my favorites with the lowest boosters and those with the highest boosters. This is a genius change by Second Dinner. After all, I'm logging in more, three times a day, and spending more of my credits because I always have something to spend them on.
3) Which Storm looks do we still need in the game?
If you've been following comic book Twitter or watching X-Men ‘97, you know that Ororo Monroe, a.k.a. Storm, has had a lot of different looks over the years. There's been especially hot debate over her hairstyle, but she's also had quite a few outfits. Storm has among the best collection of variants in the game, but I'm insatiable when it comes to Storm. I always want more looks. We're getting another sweet Mohawk look in an upcoming bundle variant.
But what other Storm looks do we need variants for? We already have the classic shiny silver Jim Lee Storm and the Artgerm Krakoa-era Storm. Here are three excellent Storm looks that haven't made it into Snap yet.
Asgardian Goddess Storm
Wakanda Wedding Storm
Cairo Thieves Quarter Kid Storm
Now, let's take a peek at the ask-the-team channel on the official Marvel Snap Discord to see what's going on there.
4) Q: Red Hulk has the downside of being predictable since it shows to your oponnent, however, it often goes to 6/15 and 6/19, if not higher.
A 6/15 itself is already bigger than giganto, which has a location restriction.
If Red Hulk triggers his effect twice, it's already 1 point away from Infinaut with basically no restriction.
To me, Red Hulk makes Giganto and Infinaut look obsolete. How is Red Hulk doing? Isn't he a bit overtuned? Thanks in advance!
A: Red Hulk is certainly something of an experiment, as his drawback is largely centered on how he interacts with the cube system. Because we don't have many other cards like that, measuring exactly how much Power it's worth wasn't straightforward. We probably overshot it a touch, but I don't agree that it obsoletes either of those cards given most of them still see play in the same decks. Infinaut in Evo is the most prominent case where one's been replaced, and it's also enabled other changes like a decreased need for Magik (which is a role of new cards--to create room for variation).
-Glenn
**Red Hulk showing to the opponent when he gains power has been more interesting than I'd anticipated. He creates tension, and it's a clever way to lower the power level of a card, as Glenn says, by affecting cube equity. That being said, I think he is a bit overtuned, though probably not by as much as he seemed at first. Changing him to +3 would hurt, but he'd still be good. I'd be fine with something as small as changing him to 6/10 to start. Let's give Giganto that point of power while we're at it.
5) Q: Will we be seeing a lot of buffs to the Zabu affected cards this next OTA?
I'm excited to see what happens to Dark Hawk, Adam Warlock and Werewolf by night.
A: Darkhawk has a high-performing new home, so I’d like to let him settle in and see how it goes.
We’re still gathering information about card performance in Zabu’s wake, so we’re not going to move much on that count yet.
-Glenn
**The Zabu change is an absolutely fundamental one to Snap. It's worth taking time to figure out what changing him affects. At the same time, keeping Zabu in the current unplayable state is a bummer. I think they need to move more quickly on fixing Thanos and Zabu and not let it drag on. Additionally, I hope a lot of 4-cost cards will get buffs soon. I know they need to gather data, but hopefully, that means a couple of weeks of data, not a couple of months.
That's it for this week. Hit me up on Twitter or in the comments if you've got a Burning Question you want answered.