Welcome back to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. It's been a while since I posted an article covering the recent changes, but we will get back into it. This recent OTA seems like a great place to start. OTA and patch changes can cause knee-jerk reactions for any number of reasons. So, given the general sentiment over these recent changes, it’s always a good reminder to take some time and look back at them objectively. That’s my goal this time, so let’s get to it.
The Good
It's always nice to start with the good. Attuma was rarely used, if ever. I don’t think I have seen him in the last few months outside of being randomly generated. Attuma suffered for many different reasons, but one of the main ones is because any small amount of clog from your opponent just negated him easily, and some form of clog has been in many different decks for multiple weeks, if not months. This makes Attuma a complete liability; add to that, he needs another card to be viable anyway since he can not solo a lane at 10 power, and the 10 power stat line just is not justifying the cost when there are more efficient threats in the format.
With all that working against him, the 360 change from useless to a clog counter is an excellent decision and design choice. This interesting change doesn’t look game-breaking at face value and lets players explore a brand-new card that has been forgotten. Those are all significant changes in my book.
While Cannonball's usefulness has been down ever since the nerf to Professor X, he still saw some play, although not that much.
So, adding one power back to his stat line is a good general change, although I feel that this will be mostly irrelevant. Many players are testing out the new Attuma in destroy shells, which naturally do well against clog strategies, making Cannonball less effective. However, it is still nice that they are giving out a little buff.
While I wouldn’t say I like this change personally, this is a good change to a card that saw a lot of play and did an excellent job with a good stat line. While this doesn't remove any of the actual power from the card, it removes the “steal” aspect, which will matter in a small number of cases. For the vast majority of games, she will still be relevant and useful as she provides some asymmetrical information and is still at her 5 power. The possible bad to this change actually comes from some of the patch notes,
“We're making a light tweak to Copycat here, as the card has seen a more dramatic play rate than we expected, and decks have also been shuffled more often than we guessed they would be.”
As a writer, I understand that words matter a lot, so using the word “guessed” really adds a sour taste to this change, even if it is overall a good change. It begs players to ask, “Did you not test how often the deck might be shuffled?” “Why are you guessing about things?” In reality, they probably estimated the number of shuffle effects and deemed it okay on release, but then the number was higher than their estimate. That’s a better way to word things to make it feel better to the player that you tested everything thoroughly. More on this idea later. Either way, it’s a good minor nerf, and I expect Copycat to find still a place in the meta-game going forward as she is relatively unchanged, although slightly less interesting.
The Bad
Here are all the changes that Loki has been through since his initial release about a year ago.
Loki
| Date | Cost | Power | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-10-14 |
2
|
2
|
Curr: On Reveal: Replace your deck with your opponent's starting deck. Give those cards -1 Cost.
Prev: On Reveal: Replace your deck with your opponent's starting deck. Give them -1 Cost and draw a card.
|
| 2024-09-26 |
3
|
5
|
Curr: On Reveal: Replace your deck with your opponent's starting deck. Give them -1 Cost and draw a card.
Prev: On Reveal: Replace your deck with your opponent's starting deck. Give those cards -1 Cost.
|
| 2024-08-29 |
2
|
2
|
Curr: On Reveal: Replace your deck with your opponent's starting deck. Give those cards -1 Cost.
Prev: On Reveal: Replace your deck with your opponent's starting deck. Give them -1 Cost and draw a card.
|
| 2024-08-01 |
3
|
5
|
Curr: On Reveal: Replace your deck with your opponent's starting deck. Give them -1 Cost and draw a card.
Prev: On Reveal: Transform your hand into cards from your opponent's starting deck and give them -1 Cost.
|
| 2024-01-09 |
4
|
5
|
Curr: On Reveal: Transform your hand into cards from your opponent's starting deck and give them -1 Cost.
Prev: On Reveal: Replace your hand with cards from your opponent's starting deck. Give them -1 cost.
|
| 2023-10-26 |
4
|
5
|
On Reveal: Replace your hand with cards from your opponent's starting deck. Give them -1 cost.
|
|
Released
2023-09-05
|
3 | 5 | On Reveal: Replace your hand with cards from your opponent's starting deck. Give them -1 cost. |
| 2023-08-08 |
3
|
5
|
On Reveal: Replace your hand with cards from your opponent's starting deck. Give them -1 cost.
|
| 2023-07-12 |
3
|
4
|
Curr: On Reveal: Replace your hand with cards from your opponent's starting deck. Give them -1 cost.
Prev: Never gonna let you down.
|
| 2023-06-13 |
1
|
1
|
Never gonna let you down.
|
| 2022-12-10 |
0
|
0
|
On Reveal: Swap hands with your opponent
|
That is a lot of changes, multiple ability changes, multiple costs, and different power levels. Loki probably warranted these many changes, and this is what his stats were pre-OTA.
It’s reasonable that he was changed again. Mainly because he was becoming overly familiar as a splash card in pretty much any deck after this change; for any deck, Loki is a lot less useful after turn 2, which is a nerf to the card. But, on turn 2, he essentially does the same thing. Now, there is a big reason why they chose his cost and energy. At this new stat line, he is not at a premium for his cost, meaning playing him out is worse than before, especially for his most common deck, Arishem. However, I am not convinced this is a good change. Creating mirror matches on demand and even earlier in the game doesn’t promote fun gameplay. Seeing your synergies come out against you cheaper is pretty frustrating. This will be a lot less common, which overall is better, but seeing play patterns that we previously saw with Arishem and Loki now just a turn earlier is going to overtime still causes much frustration. While this change does tone that down, it can and will create the same issue repeatedly until there is an ability change rather than a stat change. Arishem Loki is still hovering around the same percentage play rate and win rate wise based on the trackers we know. I don’t expect that to change as even more time continues.
Additionally, Loki doesn’t fit anywhere anymore. It fits in Arishem, but like any other deck, it will be bad outside of turn 2 and maybe still on turn 2 since you don’t have extra energy to abuse. Either way, the design is still awkward. It’s probably not a good card, but it still will lead to frustration. It’s just not a good change. It doesn’t balance the card; it kills it outside of probably one deck, which can still do the same thing.
Overall, I think this is more of an odd change and not really a bad change. Taking cards that have a niche place and seem altogether fine and changing them is a little weird. Destroyer still can fit in the same space as before while being slightly weaker power-wise, and his use in the Galactus deck is improved somewhat. But the references to Nimrod and Death seem slightly awkward. With Nimrod, I don’t really care if everything gets destroyed at all because that’s kind of the point of Nimrod plus Destroyer, and then with Death, Destroyer costs 6, so I’d have to either ramp him out or play Magik actually to use his effect to help make Death cheaper. If that’s my strategy anyway, I’d probably want more things destroyed than less. Killmonger and Squirrel Girl seem a lot easier to pull off. Overall, it just seems odd when many other cards could use a buff, but instead, we change this one to give it a better shot at cards that liked the old version already. Either way, it feels odd. It’s not exactly bad. This is a fun deck with a decent power level, and the new destroyer has made it unpredictable. Give it a shot.
New Destroyer
The Ugly
Here are Taskmaster's numbers pre-OTA
Does this look like it needed a nerf? No. Not at all. Yes, Taskmaster saw some good play in Negative Decks and was doing well with the resurgence of Phoenix Force, but this is not a position where a Nerf is warranted number-wise. So what gives? Well, the official statement is as follows.
“While it's been a while since Taskmaster was truly problematic, our most competitive playtesters identified some upcoming decks where 5-Cost Taskmaster was just going to be Way Too Much.”
Okay, that's a fair point, realistically. We don’t know the play testing, and we don't know exactly how future game states will look. We can speculate, but we have not played with all the cards coming out in the next couple of weeks before the next OTA to gauge effectiveness. I would be dishonest if I said the community always correctly identifies the good and bad cards before actual gameplay.
Now the next wrinkle -
“Normally, our default practice is to let the metagame sort itself out in these kinds of situations–discovering something busted is often pretty fun! However, in this case the concerns were so substantial, and the deck so strong, that we've decided to shortcut to the post-nerf state…”
The fundamental idea here is that they are preemptive to a problem that has not happened instead of letting it go like they typically do. That leads the community to wonder what is so backbreaking about the next three cards being released before the next OTA that will cause Taskmaster to be busted more than the multiple cards they let the metagame “sort” out. This causes massive backlash at the developers because of some asymmetrical information and asymmetrical experience. For example, I can speculate that in the future, Human Torch being moved a lot and then copied by a 5-cost Taskmaster might be back-breaking for the game, but since this is a preemptive change. I’ll never experience it. Honestly, unless I were a playtester myself, I wouldn’t even have the joy of trying to find it. Even further, I won’t have the opportunity to try and counter it.
Single handily wiping out any chance for me to try the same thing as the playtesters. Now, I’m sure there are many things that playtesters get to do that I won’t do, but because I don’t have this chance even though it was looking like I should, I can't even gauge if this is a good change. I’ll never really know if it’s warranted. I won’t be able to partake in this “fun,” they state themselves. That leaves a really ugly sour taste.
Additionally, there have been multiple times where the developers have been surprised by what the community has done after a card release that wasn’t completely seen in testing. How do we know this wouldn’t be the case with Taskmaster? The developers probably know the game well enough to make this decision, and I’m inclined to trust them. But, it just puts an ugly feeling when many cards could be changed and do something right now. Instead, we are left with a pre-nerfed card floating in limbo.
This is another preemptive change, so what I stated above applies somewhat here. However, this one is slightly different for some other reasons.
“While it's true that Bounce decks have been very strong lately, that's only part of why we're making this update.”
Here are Beast's pre-OTA stats
Does that seem “very strong” to you?
Here are the metrics for two different bounce decks in the meta.
Does this seem “very strong” to you?
It doesn’t to me. Now, in my meta article a couple of weeks back, I stated that bounce decks can be some of the strongest in the game, and while this is true, bounce is a very skill-intensive deck that awards good sequencing, making it a fairly small
portion of most meta-games. There are many different decks, some with better win rates. However, none are so high to warrant nerfs. Also, Sandman being a meta contender doesn’t help that play rate or win rate either. Regardless, bounce is always kept in check promptly when it starts getting slightly overpowered.
Here is Beast change history
Beast
| Date | Cost | Power | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-10-14 |
3
|
5
|
On Reveal: Return your other cards here to your hand. They cost 1 less next turn.
|
| 2024-09-26 |
2
|
2
|
On Reveal: Return your other cards here to your hand. They cost 1 less next turn.
|
| 2024-08-29 |
3
|
5
|
On Reveal: Return your other cards here to your hand. They cost 1 less next turn.
|
| 2024-03-21 |
2
|
2
|
Curr: On Reveal: Return your other cards here to your hand. They cost 1 less next turn.
Prev: On Reveal: Return your other cards here to your hand. They cost 1 less next turn.
AvX: Once you play 4, X-Men have +1 Power.
|
| 2024-03-14 |
2
|
2
|
Curr: On Reveal: Return your other cards here to your hand. They cost 1 less next turn.
AvX: Once you play 4, X-Men have +1 Power.
Prev: On Reveal: Return your other cards here to your hand. They cost 1 less next turn.
|
| 2024-02-07 |
2
|
2
|
Curr: On Reveal: Return your other cards here to your hand. They cost 1 less next turn.
Prev: On Reveal: Return your other cards here to your hand. Give them -1 Cost.
|
| 2023-12-05 |
3
|
4
|
Curr: On Reveal: Return your other cards here to your hand. Give them -1 Cost.
Prev: On Reveal: Return your other cards at this location to your hand. They cost 1 less.
|
| 2023-06-08 |
3
|
4
|
On Reveal: Return your other cards at this location to your hand. They cost 1 less.
|
|
Released
2022-05-24
|
2 | 2 | On Reveal: Return your other cards at this location to your hand. They cost 1 less. |
Is it possible the next three cards released warrant this early change, or would the addition of activate as a mechanic make bounce completely overpowering? It’s possible. I actually won’t be able to gauge that since I won’t be able to play with the old beast and the new cards. I am also left confused because the external metrics and internal metrics don't match up.
Honestly, this change is probably not bad for Beast, and he will do perfectly fine at 3-cost. But the optics are all wrong, so it’s in the ugly category. Not only does it have the same reasons for backlash as Taskmaster, but this is also a bad look-
“We have some upcoming new cards and changes to existing ones that will impact Beast's strength.”
To most people, the knee-jerk reaction is that the new cards are so powerful that they will produce some broken synergies; instead of toning them down to a balanced state with the game currently, let’s nerf some cards that make these broken strategies. Why? It’s simple: new cards mean people pay for resources to get them, and old cards don’t give up anything. Is this a correct assumption? No, we should have a little more faith that the developers are not trying to swindle us, but either way, it’s a bad optic for the game and an ugly taste for anyone invested. Final verdict: Change is probably okay, but the feeling of change is not good at all.
Patch Feel and Conclusion
Overall, a wide range of viewpoints received this patch very negatively. Objectively, it isn’t the worst patch, and it made some changes that are altogether fine for the game and probably even good. But the optics and explanations leave a sour taste for many players. Currently, this is what the patch post response is on Snap Discord.
Doesn’t it look too positive? Even I have strong personal feelings about these changes. The worst thing is that it leaves everyone in limbo mode until the end of the season. My goal was to be as objective as possible when considering everything, but I know this is a hot topic, so regardless of what I said here, I’d love to hear your opinion and thoughts in the comments below.