Pool-4, Pool-5, and so much more!

First, pool/series-5 cards. I'm going to do my best to judge myself on my prior rankings!

Let's start with the cards I'm relatively certain I placed appropriately:

And the errors I made:

Titania (listed S, more likely B or A) - I think she's super strong, to best honest...but I've struggled to find a deck to slot her into. I still think she's good, and am happy that I bought her.
Attuma (listed B, perhaps C instead) - I'm not sure where Attuma lands, honestly. May have been correct...but doesn't seem to be much draw to purchase him, so I've seen like 1 since token system release?
Helicarrier (listed B, D or C instead) - I put it up higher out of respect for a lot of people wanting it for discard decks, honestly. Card seems bad, even in discard decks thought.
Agent Coulson (listed C, A or B instead) - Highest winrate of pool-4 cards thus far. Clearly missed the mark.
Thanos (listed D, B perhaps instead) - The decks generally don't even want to play Thanos, but rather just the stones. Regardless, he's better than listed.

Orka is unlisted as he's been bugged and was not released!

The present and future

Galactus

There's a lot to say here. First off, Ben Brode recently tweeted that "Galactus is on the watch list" and some people are up in arms about wanting their 6k collector tokens refunded if so. But let's remember that when you go to purchase a card from the token shop, it literally tells you right then and there that no refunds are available. I literally wrote that Galactus was a mistake to print, all but saying that I think he needed a rework and/or nerf. So when that popup said "are you sure ya want to buy this?! No refunds!", I think people should really have understood what they were getting into. For what it's worth, Stephen (SD Dev) said that "there will be no refunds of tokens for balance changes" on the official discord as well.

Yes, I know I listed him as C tier, and now he's maybe getting nerfed...unless I hear otherwise, I'm assuming that they are realizing the play patterns are dumb and not fun, and that is the more likely reason that he is getting nerfed.

That said, if they do want to change their mind on that, I think it is imperative that they take the same treatment that they had with Jane Foster in Nexus Events...that is, give the refund, but also give every active account a free Galactus. If I'm suddenly down a card because I believed Second Dinner, boy will that make me mad.

Collector Tokens

All of this brings me to my other original point - don't spend collector tokens just because. If you really want to play a card, go for it...otherwise, just be patient. Let the meta play out, let nerfs and/or buffs play out, let cards downrank, you will get them over time. Again, I truly think I was/am 100% correct on this call.

My hot take of the day - I liked series-3 full track randomness more than I like the token system. At least I felt like when I got a card, I could go play around with it and have fun. Now I just feel like I can't do that because of the gain rate of collector tokens and the cost of cards. The agency over cards we can acquire is nice in theory...but the cost of cards/rate of token gain just overshadows the positives. Instead of playing the game for fun, I feel forced into minmaxing my card acquisitions. I'm sure some others disagree, but I am also pretty confident that as time goes on and the people who were excited to finally get X card hit the collector token wall, their opinions are likely to change.

New series-5 cards

Knull came out last week, along with Klyntar as a location. Next week, we will get Sentry and Darkhawk. I had an article written about all of these 2 weeks ago, but SD's planned releases came out first so I scrapped it!

At this point, people have played Knull, and I think many have come to the conclusion I had - that Knull isn't anything great or special. He fits in a Venom deck, but not in a Surfer Girls one. He can be played after Galactus, but then opens you up to a loss to Rogue potentially. All-in-all, I don't think he's worth the tokens...but hey, if he appeals to you, go for it.

Darkhawk seems bad for now (in a normal game, he's a 4/7)...but could find a place after we receive January's season pass card, Zabu. A turn-3 Zabu into 2 4-drops on turn-4 into a turn-5 Sera into up to 6 4-drops on turn-6 is pretty good. Darkhawk + Rockslide is a real combo here, and we can even Rockslide on turn4 and be happy with it. Would I buy Darkhawk? Nope, see above.

Sentry is an interesting card at the very least. [4/8] is a solid base statline, but still nothing special. To make him good, we need to gain value from his On-Reveal (yes, we can play him into a Cosmo lane as a backup, that isn't great, but isn't awful either). Viper is the best combo here, making it so we spend 6 mana and 2 cards to essentially get 19 power (8, 3, -8 to opp) and a clogged slot for opponent on turn5? We can also just fill up the right lane, but again, that's not really "good", just okay. The Viper play is quite amazing though. Will I buy him? Probably not, see above, but I wish I weren't in this situation.

Oh ya, and next week's featured location is Vormir. Biggest question for me right now is what happens if I play a card blind there, before it reveals...does the 2nd card (thus, first card that the location sees?) get destroyed?

New Roadmap

Battle Mode vs Friends is the most hype thing here, in my mind. It opens the potential for 3rd party tournaments and and easier testing of interactions for science. Snap.fan should be hosting some tournaments once this hits, stay tuned for details! I'm a big science person though, so I'm pretty excited to more easily be able to test how card interactions work when it requires cards on both sides of the board to be tested.

Past that, PC Widescreen is great, unranked mode is great, and new competitive modes are great...but those are still some amount of time away. The concept events are also nice, overall. Guilds, Booster Magnets, Avatars and Titles by Deck, Seasn Cache Improvements, and In-Game Events all sound great. I'm perhaps alone on this next part, but I am not a fan of Infinity Rank Leaderboard. It is more about how much someone plays than how good one is (though both are required)...so I will never be high up there, with 3 kids and a full-time job.

Deck Categorization on snap.fan

This is being updated in the present, and should be better maintained moving forward. If you are seeing a deck not categorizing correctly, please stop by the snap.fan community discord and share that with me. Feel free to tag me there, and I will look into getting it updated. There should be another article coming