Our dataminers have been hard at work in the data mines and found a bunch of new and updated information. I'm here to help you digest and make sense of the information!
Features
Featured Sets are the biggest new element from the patch. They are specialized, theme packs that are able to contain anything. Our first packs are Variants only and are Fantastic Four themed. It makes sense to start small with variants, but I expect them to contain more series 4 and 5 cards in the future. The first round isn't bad for low series Fantastic Four fans since they're a way to get series 3 cards Invisible Woman and Human Torch, but I expect the value of these to get better later on. Smaller new features include a pity timer for rolling an additional card from Snap Packs and the implementation of matching boosters from Snap Packs, both of which are very welcome changes.
Upcoming Seasons
We've got a clear picture of upcoming seasons through September and we even got a smattering of information about October.
August
August is Heralds of Galactus season. I always try to theory-craft with the cards well in advance and I hope we get a few tweaks and buffs to these cards because I'm having trouble finding enough to do with most of August’s Series 5 cards.
September
September is for androids with Activate abilities. This season includes some of my favorite characters and I'm hoping they end up being powerful despite the telegraphed nature of the Activate keyword.
October
October is the perfect time to do something spooky and an entire season dedicated to zombies fits the bill. The Hunger is a virus that first appeared in the Ultimate Universe and kicked off the first of many zombie storylines in the comics. There are some interesting characters here like the Zombie Galacti, who feasted on Galactus and collectively took on his power cosmic and Headpool, the zombified head of Deadpool. There are a lot of additional zombie versions of Marvel characters and Colonel America is also a zombie character.
These cards include a brand new keyword, Horde. From the data files it appears to be a mechanic that makes a Zombie Horde when you play your first Horde card and grows larger when you play subsequent Horde cards. I've seen it compared to the Amass mechanic in Magic: The Gathering. However, this is all unconfirmed and Horde could work differently or have some other aspects that the game files haven't shown. It could be a simple, new keyword or it could be related to a limited time game mode similar to how the Champion skills and reactor overdrive effects we uncovered ended up being a part of Champions Arena and High Voltage: Overdrive respectively. If Horde is a keyword it seems susceptible to Shadow King and makes me wonder how it would be mixed in with future, non-zombie seasons.
Further in the Future
We don't have a clear idea of what the seasonal themes for November and December will be. Often, titles tip off the developers’ future plans, but this time we got a massive glut of over 300, mostly pretty generic looking titles. It's hard to extract any specific themes from these, but we do have quite a few titles related to music, which could indicate some kind of musical season with cards like Spider-Punk, but it could also be some other type of in-game musical celebration.
There are also a bunch of new titles related to food, but I have a hard time believing that's a potential seasonal theme. It feels more likely to be a little flavor for Thanksgiving. There are quite a few unused cards in the data files that are going to be used eventually. Characters like Toad and Mephisto will certainly be added sooner rather than later.
Bundles Are Back!
For a while, our intrepid miners were unable to uncover bundle information in the files. This patch, advance bundle information was once again accessible. This might be a temporary situation and you should consider the bundles highly subject to change. Here are a few of the higher value ones that were found.
Final Thoughts
This patch brought some very nice smaller changes to Snap Packs like pity timer and booster matching. I'm excited for the possibilities that themed Featured Sets bring. We also got, presumably finalized abilities for the Grand Arena cards and that mode looks like it's going to be really fun. We'll have a full guide to Grand Arena very soon, so keep an eye out for that! Time to hop in the shower and rinse off all this excess data. See you next patch!