Burning Questions - 08/03

Hello! Welcome back to Burning Questions, where we examine the burning topics in the Marvel Snap community. This week, Alliances launched, and we had an interesting OTA!

1) What impact have Alliances had?

Alliances launched on Tuesday and, other than a few bugs, have been largely successful and well-received. If you're still looking for an alliance to join, check out this channel on the SnapDotFan discord. Alliances have felt engaging and fun without feeling burdensome or obligatory. I suspect that between players grinding for Cassandra Nova in the Diner and now Alliances, Second Dinner is probably seeing a pretty healthy uptick in engagement and play time.

However, the biggest change to the game from Alliances has been the noticeable change in the metagame as people choose decks to complete their bounties. In particular, the bounty that requires you to move seven cards in a game has caused a flood of movement decks in Conquest mode, especially in proving grounds. To a lesser extent, the “destroy cards” and “fill all locations” bounties have also led to an uptick in play for destroy, Zoo, and Patriot archetypes. Ladder is still similar to how it was before since people often seek refuge in Conquest mode to avoid tanking their ladder ranking. Still, the wider variety of opposing decks has also been noticeable for most players. It's been refreshing facing a wider variety of decks, and I've enjoyed how bounties encourage players to try new decks, with many people trying decks outside their comfort zone. And, as opposed to card launch and hot location days, not everyone is trying the same thing simultaneously. It has felt like a very successful shake-up to the game.

2) How can I complete “X” bounty without spewing ranks or just losing?

You can add Deadpool or Iron Fist to a deck and click on the auto-fill feature, but here are a few decks to try for some of the most popular bounties that are both more fun than auto-fill and may help you complete them faster as well while not totally tanking your rank. Plenty of strong decks can complete each bounty successfully, and building your own is also part of the fun—these are the ones I've enjoyed personally because they're fun, efficient, and a little different.

Move 7 times

Destroy X Cards

Fill all locations

3) Did Loki need to be reworked?

I think so, but probably not for the reason you think. I don't think Loki was overpowered—in fact, I think he had gotten pretty weak, and the recent OTA actually made him stronger.

Loki

Loki, like Zabu, Thanos, and Lockjaw before him, had become an unnecessary design constraint. Every card that generated other cards was immediately slotted into Loki shells. Cool and interesting cards like Snowguard, Agent Coulsen, and Mirage can now either find new roles or be adjusted to help them do so without Loki being the beneficiary. It also sounds more fun to experiment with Devil Dinosaur or Collector as card-generation payoffs now.

Also, I'm pretty excited about next week's new season pass card, Kate Bishop. She is an incredibly powerful and flexible card, and I'm happy that everyone's first thought won't just be to shoehorn her into a Loki deck.

Whether Loki was a big part of Arishem's power level or not is up for interpretation, but what I'm certain about is that the change to Loki will open up new deck-building avenues not only for that deck but also across the game generally.

Now let's hop over to the official Marvel Snap discord server in the ask-the-team channel and take a look at some interesting dev answers.

4) Q: Clearly with this last patch the team has decided to nerf every card that goes into an arishem deck instead of just nerfing arishem, why did you decide this was the best approach? Especially as we finally see arishem falling off a bit with the rampant dark hawk/cass decks being played right now. I feel like arishem will always play 11 good cards so constantly nerfing those cards seems unsustainable.

A: There’s a reason we didn’t mention Arishem alongside Ock and Leech, and that’s because he’s a red herring. Arishem’s impact on these cards was demonstrating that it wasn’t fun for them to be played frequently. Being able to play them on turn 4 encourages that, yes—but before Arishem they saw very little play. Those are *both* bad states for cards, and we want to fix most in that situation. Ock and Leech seemed doomed to be irrelevant or oppressive, so we’re trying to find a healthy middle ground.

We locked this OTA about a week ago, so Arishem was stronger and has declined since then. But even knowing that, we’d certainly have changed Ock and Leech for the reason above, and Loki for the reasons stated in the notes. The only nerf we might not have made was the one aimed specifically at weakening Arishem, which was Blob.

-Glenn

Author's note:

I think Glenn's analysis here is very smart. Leech and Doctor Octopus saw more play because of Arishem, but they were both unpleasant to play against before that. Doctor Octopus was always a powerful, underplayed control card that happened to be weaker at his job than Professor X and hampered by past move-heavy metas. Otto needed to be changed regardless of Arishem. They may have gone a little too hard on him—he could probably go to 4-Cost, 9-Power, or pull more than one card. As for Arishem, I think nerfing him directly right now would be a mistake. His play rate has dropped to around 12% in the last seven days, and he has two powerful counters, Darkhawk and Cassandra Nova.

Additionally, Arishem felt strong but not unbeatable with decks like Silver Surfer or Discard, which were often able to go over the top and beat it on raw power. This will be especially true now with the Doctor Octopus and Leech changes. Arishem may need more adjustments in the future, but making them now would be premature.

5) Q: The patch notes on Shadow King call out that his effect is going to work differently from Valkyrie's in how the two interact with Luke Cage. How will the other "set" cards, namely Bast and Taskmaster, work and is it possible that maintaining the same verbage for different effects might end up confusing?

A: Reading feedback, I feel fairly confident we should consider a change to Shadow King to set him farther apart, likely using the word "Reset" or “Remove power changes” for clarity.

-Glenn Jones

Author's note:

I've seen some confusion about Shadow King’s new function. Essentially, he wipes away all permanent (not ongoing) cost modifiers. These include those from cards like Silver Surfer, Ironheart, and Shuri and modifiers a card grants itself, like Collector, Kraven, and Sage. The change is great and makes Shadow King more powerful and intuitive. However, Glenn is right. He needs to be reworded to say something like “Reset” or something clearer. Any changes like this will create some initial confusion, so it's important only to make them when they positively impact the game, and I believe this clears that bar.

That's it for this week! Join the conversation in the comments, and come find me on Twitter for decklists, comic lore-related posts, and Burning Questions!