On April 1st Second Dinner dropped their monthly patch. It was prank free, but it did include some interesting information about upcoming seasons and a change to ladder ranks! Let's go through the highlights of the patch!
Ladder Decay Changes
Changes are coming where your ladder rank will start after each season reset. Previously, everyone would go down about 30 ranks (rounded to the nearest 5, then add 3 bonus ranks).
The new reset will be as follows:
- Infinite rank will go to rank 75
- Between rank 90 and 99 will go to rank 73
- 80-89 to 65
- 70-79 to 63
- 60-69 to 55
- 53-59 to 53
- 1-52 - No decay
There was a bit of initial confusion about the timing of this change. These changes will go into effect at the next reset, at the end of “What If…?” season.
The reported purpose of the changes is to help players build on past seasons to climb towards infinite and to punish returning players less. The change is interesting and has me wondering if fewer players were reaching infinite in the last few seasons.
Custom Card Changes
Previously, to access the Custom Card screen you needed to have fully split a particular character to infinity at least once. Now you will have access for any card that has a variant or for which you've earned any flare or finish from Character Mastery. At least for me, this led to dozens of additional Custom Cards that I am in the process of going through and customizing (basic blue borders for all!).
Mystery & Premium Mystery Borders
Two new rewards, Mystery Borders and Premium Mystery Borders, will soon be earnable in the game. Presumably, this will replace the specific borders we've seen given out in game modes, login bonuses, and in bundles. It seems like a smart way to streamline things.
Upcoming Seasons
May
We know that May’s season theme is New X-Men. Only one card has changed from the original datamines, but it's a consequential one. Elixir has moved from a 1/1 with Activate to a 2/3 On Reveal. At 1/1 I think he was probably far too flexible and strong. At 2/3 I still expect him to be a powerful and useful card.
June
We got a bit of a surprise when we saw that June will be called Masters of the Arcane! We saw quite a few magically-powered characters in the datamines, but we weren't sure how they'd be presented and packaged together. There are quite a few really unusual designs among these, so it's nice to see the development team stretching their legs and trying new things.
First up is Clea, a 1/1 who gives you a 1-Cost skill that afflicts when you buff Clea. Investing extra power into a 1-drop is always risky and this seems like far too big a hoop to jump through for such little payoff, so I'm expecting some numbers changes here before release.
Jennifer Kale gives us an Activate version of Psylocke. I think she's mechanically distinct enough from Psylocke that she won't replace Psylocke in decks that need to get a 4-cost out early but will be an upgrade in decks that need that energy for specific combos later on. I can think of a variety of decks that I can use Jennifer in. This card seems like an ideal candidate to be one of the new series 4 cards that will be coming along with the acquisition changes.
A character I really enjoy from the comics, Morgan Le Fay is an interesting new build-around. I don't think she fits into existing discard or destroy decks very well. You'll need to destroy or discard a bunch of small things that you want to play out later. Maybe you could use an early Bullseye to discard a bunch of 1-drops that you can bring back with Morgan Le Fay and then rain down on the last turn with the help of Black Swan. Or we could try her in a “DeathBird” Zoo deck where we kill Squirrels and other generated 1-Cost cards to discount Death but we play them back out on turn 6 alongside her, soaking up any Ka-Zar, Marvel Boy, and Blue Marvel buffs. New build-around cards always have the highest bust potential, but they're also the most interesting cards to theory-craft with.
Nicholas Scratch looks like another series 4 candidate. He's the type of card that will get better as more cards with skills are added to the game, but he's also Killmonger bait. He'll be an option in any skill-heavy deck that doesn't have another 1-Cost card it really wants to play.
Nightmare is probably the card I've seen the most chatter about on social media. He's certainly interesting, but I'm not totally sold on how good he is. I've seen him most often proposed as an addition to Sauron decks. Sure, you might turn your Red Skull into something good, but you also might not. I'll have to run through some numbers for different potential targets before his release. I see him more as a replacement for Sauron than an addition alongside him. Nightmare works with much of what Sauron works with, but he also works with some that Sauron doesn't help with. One of the best Nightmare targets will be Infinaut. I think utilizing Nightmare to remove restrictions like that will be one of the best ways to use him. I can also see him working on some kind of deck that wants to have a big finish since there are quite a few low cost cards that he can transform. Ebony Maw, Martyr, Titania, Maximus and Lizard are all cards I'm happy to try to roll a new ability onto.
Another Magician that generates Incantations (these skills also happen to be spells), Merlin looks like a very flexible card that can go into a wide variety of decks. You can lean into his synergy with cards as diverse as Collector, Wiccan, and the Hood or you can just play him as a generic option generator with no real downside, much like Nico and Kate Bishop.
One of the more mysterious cards we found was Astral Projection. It appears to be a skill, but one without a parent card. Maybe it's another Merlin Incantation or a new Arcana for Agamotto. Maybe Doctor Strange is getting a rework. Those all seem more unlikely than it simply being a skill that you can include in your initial 12 card deck. If that is what it turns out to be, this would be another strong new series 4 candidate.
Well, this one seems good! Ongoing effects always benefit from layering and multiplication and I'm sure there's plenty that can be done with this from simply getting more of some beneficial Ongoing effect to high shenanigans. All that plus a 3/5 body and you have the makings of a new “rate card,” that is a card with great stat/power ratio that can be played in decks with little synergy or with a ton of synergy. In other words, a meta staple that people who don't get it constantly ask about replacing.
Prepare to bargain! One of the most long-awaited characters comes with one of the most interesting abilities they've ever made. Dormammu sends you on a little quest. Negotiate the rituals well and you get a nice payoff.
At the start of the game the first Summoning Ritual card is added to your hand.
- 0-Cost skill, SummoningRitual01 - On Reveal: Merge your highest-Power destroyed card with Dormammu to continue the ritual. (Banish this.)
If you successfully complete that ritual, you'll get the second one.
- 1-Cost skill, SummoningRitual02 - On Reveal: Dormammu steals 1 Power from EACH other card here to continue the ritual. (Banish this.)
And then finally you get a big Dormammu on board.
- 3-Cost skill, SummoningRitual03 - On Reveal: Destroy 2 of your other cards here to summon Dormammu. (Banish this.)
It's hard to evaluate Dormammu yet, but it's impossible to say he's not interesting! There will be some interesting Dormammu game plan considerations. Do you want to summon him by turn 5 to take full advantage of his destroy trigger? Or do you want to save it for turn 6 to dodge Shang Chi and wipe away some detrimental cards like the Hood in a big swing.
There are additional magic users with assets already in the data files, so there's plenty of potential for additional series 4 cards.
July
As expected, Second Dinner will be taking advantage of the theatrical release of Fantastic Four: First Steps on July 25th by creating a season that revolves around Marvel's first family.
The delightfully retro H.E.R.B.I.E. (Humanoid Experimental Robot B-Type Integrated Electronics) was introduced for the 70s animated Fantastic Four as a replacement for the Human Torch because of licensing issues and became a mainstay of early 80s FF comics. As for the other characters… aren't those just the Fantastic Four? There has been a lot of debate about Snap reusing characters. It makes a lot of sense from a marketing perspective since a lot of the most iconic characters were given simplistic abilities and used up in the early stages of the game. On the other hand, just simply releasing new Fantastic Four cards with a “First Steps” label feels a bit lazy. We don't know anything about these cards. Maybe they're created à la the High Evolutionary evolved cards by H.E.R.B.I.E. or made by destroying your Marvel-1 rocket card. Maybe they're generated in hand by your Fantasti-Car card. Or maybe they're really just new, sellable versions of the Fantastic Four.
Stay tuned for another article coming soon with speculation about other seasons beyond July!
Bundles
Second Dinner keeps info for Gold bundles much more tightly under wraps than they used to, so we no longer see the prices of those so far out. Here are a couple of interesting cash bundles scheduled for June to keep an eye out for.
Check out our article with speculation about other seasons beyond July! Head to the comments and let me know which June cards you're most intrigued by!
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