Burning Questions - 09/13

Hello and welcome back to Burning Questions, your weekly look at the hottest topics in Marvel Snap. This week we're talking about Madame Web, the OTA balance changes, and card backs!

1) Has Madame Web lived up to the hype?

Community hype for Madame Web was quite high before release.

Madame Web

Ongoing: You can move one of your other cards away from here each turn.

Madame Web has a modest 52.7% drawn win rate filtered to post-infinite only and her play rate and cube rate are not especially high. So, is Madame Web a bust? Not quite.

She is seeing solid success in exactly two types of decks: Move decks with Hercules and semi-clog disruptive decks with mini-move packages with Dagger. In most decks without Hercules or clogging cards, she hasn't been particularly impressive. I think the pre-release change from 3-power down to 1 made her less useful as a generically good card without leaning into Vulture, Dagger, and Human Torch. She is just a scaling move payoff enabler at the moment.

However, there is reason for optimism that Madame Web could still live up to expectations. First, next week's card Araña was always going to enhance Madame Web decks. They won't always need to be played together, but they will be powerful together. The move decks she's currently working in will only get better.

Araña

Activate: Give the next card you play +2 Power and move it to the right.

Additionally, the change to War Machine has already had an impact on Madame Web's viability. Using Madame Web in lockdown decks and Spectrum Ongoing decks was something people played around with before War Machine’s change, but they weren't particularly successful. Early returns indicate that this single change could boost the viability of both of those archetypes, so be sure to keep an eye on them and take them for a spin. Ongoing Spectrum decks are being played with Goose, Ebony Maw, and some affliction like US Agent or Man-Thing. Lockdown decks are built around Storm, with or without legion and can play otherwise restrictive cards like Ebony Maw, Infinaut, Crossbones, and Cull Obsidian.

I think Madame Web is primed to have a better second and third week than her release week. Expect direct counters to remain out in force during Araña’s release week, though.

2) Is Second Dinner eliminating everything “annoying” from their game?

Alioth lost his destruction and Professor X became more of a soft lock. Leech was changed on August 1st, some of the most annoying locations were removed on August 20th, and now Sandman has been nerfed again.

Check out Sandman's history:

So, is Second Dinner trying to remove all of the most annoying aspects of their game? It seems like it! Obviously, it's good when the game has fewer experiences that cause players to close the game, but what are the other implications of this philosophy?

First, the strategies that are currently thought of as the most “annoying” are probably going to get hit. This means they're going to follow through on their plans to do something about clog, so expect imminent changes to some of those cards. It also probably means no highly restrictive locations will be added to the game anytime soon.

While I can understand wanting to ensure that the game stays fun and engaging, I hope this doesn't mean the end of all “control” style decks. Decks that try to control what is happening (lockdown, clog, tech-heavy decks, etc.) have long been among my favorite decks to play. They present a fun deck-building puzzle and reward reading a metagame and reacting to your opponent. Hopefully, there is always a place for decks like this, regardless of their annoyance level for the opponent.

3) What are your favorite card backs in the game?

These sweet Gorr card backs were recently datamined:

Gorr

Infinite Gorr

Presumably we'll get these in November during the Asgardian themed season.

My personal favorite infinite card back is this Quantumania hourglass cardback. It gives off a haunting feeling of being watched by Kang.

Infinite Kang the Conqueror

My favorite non-infinite card back is the Guardians of the Galaxy mixtape. It's a perfect representation of the retro-style of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Personally, I think it looks better in classic black than the gold of the infinite version.

Mixtape

The funniest card back is definitely this existential dread Sentinel. He looks so disturbed. I definitely rock ennui Sentinel from time to time.

Sentinel

My favorite bundle card back is this Kaiju Stegron. It was from an expensive bundle that just had a Kaiju Stegron variant, so not many people picked it up.

Stegron Kaiju

I'm sure you have totally different favorites! Let me know which card backs you like the most in the comments below! Do you always use the same one or do you rotate?

Now let's hop over to the official Marvel Snap discord and check out a couple of developer/player interactions.

4) Q: Is the Agatha Change permanent? I used her to do dailies on days I didn’t have the energy.

A: Maybe? We'll see how it goes.

-Glenn

Author's note:

I really like the Agatha change, but maybe not for the reasons you're thinking. Will she be strong? Maybe? Who knows? That has very little to do with why I like it. I love that it's an attempt to try something new while the character has an anticipated upcoming TV show. In comparison to traditional card games, the massive advantage that Snap has as a live-service game with an aggressive balance schedule is that they can just try cool stuff! If she's too strong they'll change it back. If it's annoying they'll just change it back! I love the idea of trying something thematic like this, even if it's temporary, maybe especially if it's temporary. Second Dinner should show off their ability to create temporary game environments more often. Hopefully, “imbalance patches” make a return and they try additional, fun, thematic changes in the future.

5) Q: Are Leagues a regular part of Snap? We've had Deadpool League as our tester. We had Jeff League as the follow-up, and now we have a Symbiote League. Each at two weeks apart, for 48 hours.

Personally, my experience with leagues has been lacking. It feels like Snap is moving towards a generic mobile experience to boost engagement at any costs. And based on the response from users on this discord to the three public leagues *and* the beta league has been overwhelmingly negative.

Should we expect that Leagues will continue to return and be a volume-driven event or are there changes on the horizon to address the feedback received?

A: We'll absolutely continue to refine and hone Leagues. We're listening to the feedback.

-Griffin

Author's note:

While I'm sympathetic that developer resources and time went into the creation of leagues and that may make it hard to abandon them, I'd be pretty happy if Leagues simply disappeared. Honestly, the best thing I can say about them is that at least they didn't lock extremely desirable rewards in them. I don't think they promote healthy play patterns. At best they feel easily ignored, at worst they feel like chores you have to take care of or work. It's time to move on to a new idea, not every idea works out.

That's it for this week! Find me on Twitter and leave a comment and let me know what you think of my opinions! See you next time!