Quantumania is coming to a close, but before moving into the next season - Days of Future Past - I need to touch base on some commentary that I made before, specifically about Kang! I mentioned that there were a lot of unanswered questions about Kang in the last article...well, as they got answered, Kang became more desirable for sure. The fact he resets snaps means you can snap on turn-6 and get some number of retreats for free. Of course, snapping on turn-6 is generally not considered the best play...but Kang really shakes that up, especially in battle mode. Once your opponent has seen Kang, what do they do about the turn-6 snap next game? Do they try to conceal info and not play anything (and then you skip playing Kang and steal the game)? I think this is bad for the game ultimately as it undermines an important feature of the game...but it's quite powerful in the bluff/cube aspect of the game.
On top of that, he has been confirmed as a "big bad," meaning there are no plans on the horizon to move him down to s4. These cards ultimately becomes "better" spends on tokens. On top of that, with the new bundles announced mid Feb., tokens are not quite as rare as they were. I am still a dolphin player, but I have a decent amount of gold and am able to take advantage of these token purchases. As such, I did purchase both Kang and Thanos (still not a Galactus fan, but since he's never downranking and tokens are less rare...I may snag him eventually).
Snap.fan March Open
We've learned from our mistakes last time and are ready to announce our 2nd shot at this:
- March 18th, 12pm (noon) EST start time.
- 8 rounds of Swiss (matched based on your score) BO1, then cut to top-8 (BO3 for top-8).
- Deck submissions are required, deck must be the same for the entire tournament. These will be available at signup time.
- 300 person limit on signups (so check in for when the link is live, expect it somewhat soon).
- Prize pool is $250 USD at a minimum.
- Will be broadcast live at twitch.tv/defaultdan
More details will be shared here in the near future, with ample time to sign up and submit decklist!
Premium snap.fan access is also coming soon, sorry for the delay.
Anyway...moving on, before reading what I write, I want to highlight that the most recent seasonal video put out by Second Dinner is quite well done. I would recommend checking it out here.
Season Pass Perks (from purchasing)
Numbers are based on prior season(s):
- Nimrod - Season Pass card. See below for thoughts!
- Modok Variant - Self explanatory.
- Wolverine Variant
- Sentinel Variant
- 4 Mystery Variants
- 3-4 Avatars
- 1 Card Back
- 300 Credits
- 900 Gold
- 245 Boosters
As I've said in the past, this $10 USD price tag is equivalent to 700 gold purchased directly from the store, and even if you literally do not care about Nimrod at all right now...it's still the best cash purchase that has been offered (can see the spreadsheet here).
Nimrod Decks
I like Nimrod from a card design perspective, as you do not have to go all-in with him. There are many different ways to interact with destroy. Some generic ideas:
- Galactus. He will always destroy the left-most location he is not in first. If Nimrod is there, he will then show up in both of the other 2, 1 of which will be destroyed next by Galactus. This results in 2 Nimrods on the Galactus location. Now imagine Nimrod was hit by a Shuri (Shuri into Hobgoblin was also a Galactus line before). The turn-6 Galactus deck is significant stronger now.
- With just Carnage and nothing else special, Nimrod+Carnage is 7 mana for 14 power. While this is not crazy, the fact that this slots into the deck that also wants to run Hood or Bucky and has a reasonable play with little to not added synergy is solid. Shuri works well here as well.
- Turns out, I should just be saying Shuri. If you can kill Nimrod at all, Shuri is adding solid value to him.
New locations, variants, and cards
Locations
These locations were all covered in the video linked above, but here they are:
- Orchis Forge - After you play a card here, add a Sentinel to your hand.
- Krakoa - On turn 5, takes over and plays both players' cards for them.
- Ateroid M - After you play a 3 or 4-Cost card, move it here.
Orchis does not seem like anything special to me. Dinosaur decks will be running around when it's featured. It seems relatively low impact in the grand scheme.
Asteroid M will surely see people wanting to play Vulture and Kraven in movement style decks. Probably solid for the duration.
Krakoa is really interesting to me. I've already seen a lot of people compare it to Ego...which is potentially fair, but also just not. Ego flips and you lose all agency. Krakoa flips and you have a mini-game of how to best optimize for when Krakoa makes plays. I actually think this is quite interesting as you have some ability to prepare.
Cards (s5 token shop):
- Kitty Pryde - You can return this to your hand to gain +2 Power.
- Master Mold - On Reveal: Add 2 Sentinel to your opponent's hand.
- Negasonic Teenage Warhead - After ANY card is played here, destroy this card AND that card.
Kitty had unanswered questions... Edit: Dev answered this and she can be returned and played on the same turn. This does cause an issue with "undoing" actions - you can no longer just click and drag cards back to your hand to undo your turn with her, and have to use the "undo all actions" buttom instead. Since we can do it every turn, we spend 6 mana and end with a very telegraphed [6/10] that dies to both Killmonger and Shang-Chi. We can get added value with Angela/Bishop, but this doesn't strike me as amazing regardless, but I'd love to be wrong. She works with Mr.Negative + Jane Foster for what that's worth. I like her, but I'm really unsure how to rate her at the moment.
Master Mold is kinda cool for cluttering opponents hand and perhaps going for a Ronan gameplan (or just otherwise deny draws). I expect there will be a lot of experimentation with Master Mold in some sort of fashion.
Negasonic is basically a blind counterspell. I also think this will have a decent bit of experimentation, but will very much be meta dependent on how good it is.
Do I plan to buy any of these? If you've read what I've written before...you know the answer is no! :)
Steampunk Variant Rush
There will be 5 Steampunk variants available from your "cosmetic" Reserves, similar to the one that occured at the end of December. They will show up more often, so if you want them, this is perhaps a reason to stop hoarding Reserves. The ones included are:
- Bishop
- Falcon
- Shocker
- Cerebro
- Yellowjacket (I'm not 100% sure if this is the correct variant)
There's new titles also...but meh?