Burning Questions - 10/11

Welcome back to Burning Questions where we tackle the hottest topics in Marvel Snap. This week we're talking about the OTA, community jargon, and potential multiplayer modes!

1) How will this OTA affect the meta game?

We got a major OTA balance change on Thursday.

I, among many others, have been pretty hard on the metagame we've had for the past few weeks. Like the others, I observed that having one of the poorest recent metagames at the same time that Pokemon Pocket soft launched and Balatro launched on mobile was less than ideal for Marvel Snap's momentum.

So was this OTA enough to shift the meta in a meaningful way?

Hellcow

Activate: Discard a card from your hand.

I think the Hellcow change might be bigger for Hela than it seems. The games where Hela just draws poorly but still wins by simply playing Hellcow on 4, another discard effect on 5, and Hela on 6 with nothing else become a lot harder. By making Hela's worse draws more likely to be losses, Hela is losing consistency—exactly what it problematically gained from Hellcow’s buff. While I think she's still playable, and I wouldn't mind her getting another little tap (such a powerful turn 6 card needn't have 6 power herself), I think this stands a chance to reduce her presence enough to allow the rest of the metagame to breathe. Again, the issue with Hela was never the deck's power or win rate, it was instead her warping effect on the meta. She always ushers in metas focused on max-points combos and decks that aim to end the game before turn 6 (Professor X in the past, clog and War Machine now).

Speaking of the other major pillar of the metagame, will the changes to Viper and White Widow meaningfully affect clog? The Viper change is a great one—her stats were simply too high to be paired with such a great ability—but she's not significantly weaker. The big hit to clog is the change to White Widow’s token, Widow's Kiss.

Widow's Kiss

Destroy this when your side of this location is full.

White Widow was so generically good that she saw play outside of clog decks. Now, her Kiss is significantly less impactful, and especially so in clog, where she now has mostly anti-synergy with the deck's primary strategy. White Widow may have some new niche uses and interactions and could still find her way into some decks. But she won't be in clog. Second Dinner has successfully divorced her from that archetype. This will have a major impact on that deck's consistency. Whether or not clog survives as a top deck with Kate Bishop, Titania, Green Goblin, Debrii, Hood, and Viper—the deck still has tons of tools—remains to be seen. But it won't include White Widow.

Taken together, these changes will have some impact on which decks see the most play and should allow room for a few decks that couldn't compete before to squeeze their way in. I think both decks remain viable, though, so hopefully these changes prove to be enough to increase diversity while allowing these decks to continue to exist, but at lower play rates.

2) What is your favorite Snap community slang?

The Snap community has developed quite a bit of jargon in its two years of existence.

• Casserole - Coined on a Bynx stream by Ben Brode, who was suggesting that there be some interesting term for winning all three lanes and he threw out “casserole” as an example of the type of silly term the community could come up with — except it stuck!
• Four bangin’ in the keys - Used on KMBest’s Snapchat podcast, meaning having to use all four of your keys to get a new card. Sounds vaguely like some type of Floridian tribulation.
• Boomer Snap - When you Snap on turn 6, therefore chasing your opponent away and costing yourself potential cubes.
• Pump - A favorite term from DeraJN streams that refers to losing large amounts of cubes through careless gameplay, experimentation (“cooking”), lax play, or purposefully donating to opponents.
• Magento - Started with Bynx as a funny way to troll viewers and farm engagement, but has spread like a virus to the point that it's the default way many streamers, from Alex Coccia to KMBest refer to the master of magnetism (magento-ism?).
• Skillmonger - Similar to above, but especially funny because of the undertone that Killmonger is somehow a low-skill card, which adds a layer of irony.
• ________ enjoyer - Started organically in several places based on chronically online diction, but grew out of control after being widely adopted in usernames by additional top ladder players. They've since moved on to “gyatt” based naming conventions. Whatever will they think of next?

Let me know what I missed in the comments below!

3) What are your favorite Okoye variants?

Okoye also received a small buff in the OTA, which may finally give us a chance to show off some of her excellent variants. While I know Okoye already had her devotees, I'm going to be showing off these personal favorites for the first time (at least until I realize she's still too weak):

Okoye actually has one of the better Pixel variants in the game. The mountains of Wakanda in the background give this a wonderful 16-bit RPG vibe.

One of the earliest season pass cards has been languishing in our collections for too long. We finally have reason to trot out this wonderful Flaviano variant.

This gorgeous Justyna variant was in a recent bundle that I'm sure most people passed on. Always stay Justyna complete!

Vincenzo Riccardi will have a stack of variants added to the game in November and this Okoye is one of the best ones. It looks great animated with the skirt flowing and the techno-futuristic Wakandan buildings behind her. Hopefully she proves useful enough that I can justify getting this one!

Now let's go over to the official Marvel Snap discord and check out some developer Q and As!

4) Q: Re:Storm - War Machine - Legion Combo

First of all, I'm sure I'm going to get a bunch of negative reactions to this post, but since there were no changes in the OTA patch, I would like to ask the team why, if Prof X was nerfed because it was toxic to the game, and it wasn't reinstated now that we have Madame Web, Nocturne, and all the movement cards, there is another combo worse than Prof X that doesn't allow you to play in the whole 6th round (like the older Spidey + Absorbing combo was).

I think this combo is even worse and more toxic to the meta (and of course you can counter it with multiple cards), and the worst thing is that the nerf was - 1 less power to Warmachine.

Do you have those kinds of toxic comps in mind? Why did White Widow get nerfed in this OTA and the worst combo is still alive?

-Ridan

A: We use the OTA to adjust imbalances and other metagame issues based on their impact and severity. The War Machine deck wasn’t one of the best or most popular decks over the last few weeks, and has numerous points of interactions, thus we didn’t consider adjusting it further. Like any other deck, if it proves problematic it will earn that attention.

-Glenn

Author's note:

SnapFan tracker stats show that War Machine has a 5.18% meta share and a 58.08% win rate (rank 68) over the last seven days. I think, while this combo is pretty annoying, it's not especially strong or consistent. Although, the last featured location (F.E.A.S.T.) and hot location (Olympia) were both especially favorable to this strategy. It should feel less prevalent in the coming meta, but we'll see.

5) Q: F.E.A.S.T. location wording: Will we get modes with more than 2 players?

The new F.E.A.S.T. location says "...ALL players get +1 Energy next turn." The ALL in all-caps stood out to me and to many others. Why didn't the devs use "both"? It seemed to imply it would work with more than 2 players. Does this mean we could/would get modes with more than 2 players in the same game? Or is this just inconsistency with the wording?

In contrast, the Weirdworld location prior to the most recent rework says "Both players draw from their opponent's decks." (It used "both" instead of "ALL")

-Punzaman

A: We're not planning to add more players, but the words are functionally identical and we didn't see any potential for it to be confusing in practice.

-Glenn

Author's note:

There are quite a few modes I'd rather have before a mode with more than two players including the draft mode already being explored, PvE story modes, and some type of auto-battler. Like Glenn notes, it doesn't hurt to be future-proof for it, though.

That's it for this week! Hit me up on Twitter and join in on the conversation in the comments below!