Burning Questions - 12/13

Hello and welcome back to Burning Questions, your weekly romp through the hottest topics in Marvel Snap! This week we're talking about the latest OTA balance changes, which cards to buy with tokens, and Kang!

1) Was the Arishem nerf justified? Is Arishem dead?

Game Start: Shuffle 12 new cards into your deck. On turn 3, get +1 Max Energy.

While it's true that Arishem didn't have massively out-of-bounds win rates, make no mistake, the deck was simply too strong. The play rate was high enough that it was smothering other decks, especially in Conquest. Yes, the nerf was justified, but did it kill the card?

Unlike others who also felt Arishem was too strong, I think it's critical for Marvel Snap to ensure that Arishem remains viable and strong. It was one of the most purchased card they've ever put out and plenty of people play it exclusively. High Evolutionary didn't quite pan out as the hero for low-collection-level players (they should fix that, too), but Arishem is one of the best first high-series purchases for new players that want to compete right away.

Arishem will remain strong. This change especially attacks Arishem’s ability to leverage Agent Coulsen and Loki, so lists will change. However, Arishem can still abuse the many powerful 4-Cost cards and can try out new strategies like King Eitri and Quicksilver for Wiccan builds. Arishem has always been the king of tech and it will still have 7 energy on turn 6 to fully take advantage of the tech cards it's able to draw. The reduction in deck size will help Arishem remain viable. Arishem mains, don't despair. Your judgemental Celestial is still playable and you can still happily spam him in conquest.

2) Is the Cerebro buff too much?

Ongoing: Your highest-Power cards have +3 Power.

I've been advocating for this specific change to Cerebro for some time. Whenever I posted this on social media, I was usually met with comments that it was too big of a buff. However, I think this change was a necessity for Cerebro’s long-term viability.

Cerebro has a hard cap on its power. 4 x 7 will always be 28, for example. The natural and inevitable power creep that happens in any game was very close to pushing Cerebro into permanent irrelevance. Now, with a 33% reduction in its energy cost, Cerebro is worth building around again. Whether or not it ends up in a top deck is mostly irrelevant (C3 and C5 look strongest). The crucial thing is that one of the most enjoyable cards to theory-craft with and build around remains fun to try out.

3) In light of the recent OTA and series drops, what are the best token purchases?

Here are the top cards that dodged nerfs in this round of OTAs. Buy them if you're able or were waiting on the OTA.

Hydra Bob

End of Turn: This moves if a player Snapped.

Wiccan

On Reveal: If you've spent all your Energy on previous turns, +2 Max Energy.

Anti-Venom

On Reveal: Set the Cost and Power of your deck's top card to 0.

Darkhawk

Ongoing: +2 Power for each card in your opponent's deck.

Zabu

On Reveal: Give each 4-Cost card in your deck -1 Cost.

Darkhawk is never going to drop. He’s a nerf-resistant money-maker. Don't plan on it happening early next year, just get him now. Oh, and if you haven't bought the season pass yet, Galacta is going to be a major force for the foreseeable future.

Each turn, the first card you play at another location reveals with +2 Power.

Now let's hop over to the official Marvel Snap discord where there has been a flurry of interesting Glenn Jones answers to go over.

4) Q: Arishem shares several roles in the Marvel Snap metagame, but in the card acquisition system he plays one role that no other card has since High Evo released (except maybe for Loki, who has also been altered substantially since it was released): giving players who are early Series 3 an endgame viable deck. Maybe not the best one, and maybe not the best version of it, but one that they can see other post-Infinite players playing, see content creators playing, etc. This probably happened too recently to figure into your metrics, but I think in terms of the kind of "ramp into Alioth/other big 6" style of deck, the release of Peni Parker has maybe pushed Wiccan into being better than Arishem at that style of play even before this nerf. For players who have a large enough collection to include Wiccan and other popular cards in the archetype.

But if you look at the best Wiccan decks, they feature a lot of newer Series 5 cards -- almost always Kate Bishop, Copycat, Galacta, Gorr, and now Peni. Arishem, because of the 12 randomly generated cards, has much wider deckbuilding constraints than something like Wiccan does. So for players who are either collection complete or close to functionally so, switching to a Wiccan deck if Arishem struggles post-nerf is a compelling alternative. But for players who are lower in CL, they may not have the cards to assemble another viable deck in terms of being something they see other players/content creators they enjoy watching playing.

Glenn says "Ensuring a diverse metagame has always been an aspect of our balance philosophy," but the way that interacts with a monetization model that makes card acquisition prohibitive can create a lot of feel bad moments for players. I don't expect anything I've said above to change what you're doing right now, but I do think for a lot of players, it would matter to at least hear someone at Second Dinner say they understand how those two things interact to cause a pain-point, and I think Glenn's answer before was probably factually correct but I don't think empathy for players who are treating Arishem as a way to obtain cards they have no other way of obtaining came through in how the response was said. I recognize you're in a tough position of trying to satisfy a disparate fanbase (a lot of people are cheering this nerf right now, to be sure).

A: I understand an aspect of Arishem's core appeal is providing access to a large variety of cards in a fun way. And yes, there are a variety of players with different collection sizes for sure, so Arishem's capacity to do that will vary among those players. Second Dinner is in agreement that the card is fun and should be viable.

However, while I agree those players exist, I think the impact you're describing has been overestimated. I'm not sure where you'd like to draw the line, but as an example: Arishem games from players at or below 3000 CL are ~3.4% of Arishem's total games over the last month. Ideally, Arishem can still provide that gameplay for many of those players--in fact, the change to avoid duplicating cards already in the deck improves access to cards players don't own. But they are a small group of players compared to those impacted by the decrease in deck diversity, and we're balancing the game for everyone.

-Glenn Jones

Author's note:

As I mentioned above, I agree with the OP that Arishem serves a critical role in alleviating the negative feelings around Marvel Snap's bad acquisition system. Luckily, I think Glenn and the team came up with a clever change that should lower his play rate while leaving him viable.

5) Q: It's been a year and the constant reply on Kang has been along the lines of  'we're still thinking of what to do and we're taking suggestions '

I find it hard to believe that there hasn't been even 1 suggestion for a Kang change or rework that isn't worth at least a try/test (like Zabu)

So my question is what is the status of Kang? Can we expect a change in the card soon? Is there anything that you can say on this card?

A: We’ve tried several, but not found something we like for that update. However, redesigning Kang isn’t a top priority relative to new seasonal content, game modes, balance analysis, and other critical work. Zabu was in a similar spot—he was just easier to solve for us.

-Glenn Jones

Author's note:

Kang is returning to Spotlight Caches on January 28th. If Second Dinner runs that cache without reworking Kang it would be a massive disappointment. Please rework him, or at least try something before this happens!

That's it for this week! Come find me on Bluesky (@scosco) and Twitter for decks and comic talk! Join in on the conversation in the comments!