All Comments

The best combo I've seen (for pool 1 at least) is:

1) Fill the bar with Nightcrawler.

2) On turn 5, move ONE Nightcrawler out and add ONE Blue Marvel.

3) On turn 6, move the other three Nightcrawlers out and fill the bar with Onslaught.

One week into the game, I'm getting a little tired of featured locations. In theory, it's a great way to mix up the meta. In practice, most of the locations are extremely unbalanced if you can prepare for them. I don't want to spend 3 days each week running weird decks with janky combos.

TBH, I think most ongoing abilities are OP at this location. 

titsania

Honestly, I am uncertain if my sample size is big enough to make my next claim. After having played several dozens of Demon Hunter runs, I have noticed that skipping a Relic Hunter bucket (containing useless cards) is detrimental to which bucket options you will be presented afterwards in the same run. In other words, it might still be better to take the useless Relic Hunter bucket to not worsen it's future offer rate, unfortunately. 

Thanks for the detailed reply. 

I wonder if they'll ever let each player 'Choose 1 location for the game'

I don't know summoning 4 tigers is pretty fun too

Bump?

I did watch Rings of Power, and it had some highlights for sure. Elven cities! Hobbit songs! 

My spouse made the unilateral decision that we would watch it (he got at least one "you un-cancelled our Prime subscription for ~THIS~?!?!??" out of me) but by the halfway point I was on board. 

The timeline is jolting and jarring, though, and there are definitely some bits that feel like they exist to meet a fight scene quota. 

Your concern about an unfinished series is a very reasonable one. While season 1 does not end on a cliffhanger, it's very much setting up the next chapter. Which will arrive first: Rings of Power season 2 or GRRM's The Winds of Winter? 

Still no fix for the Nasus/Disintegrate bug that I've reported to riot on three separate occasions :)

Not that Nasus is that big in the meta right now anyway but it would be nice 

I can't speak for everyone here, certainly, but I think it comes down to a combination of "we play the game", "we only have so many people currently/we need to prioritize", and "it's big/popular". The latter is self-explanatory, but having staff members who actually play the games in question is a big help, in my opinion, for a couple reasons:

1. We have a non-zero amount of first-hand knowledge regarding the game's systems, so we (hopefully) know what we're talking about lol. In this way, we gain credibility in the things we say and can be of more service to the readers.
2. Enthusiasm for the game can translate into enthusiasm to write about the game, pushing content for something you enjoy. If I was coerced to write about, say, Gwent, when I legitimately don't like Gwent, it might come across in the quality of my work and that would be a shame for those who read it. If I had to do that on the regular, I could see myself getting frustrated with the "job" and decide to stop outright. I volunteer my time to contribute, so I'd frankly rather spend that time with the games I actually like.
3. Playing the games means we're more capable of interacting with that community. I can engage with Hearthstone or Snap players and have a substantive conversation with them about the game, because I know enough to have something to say. I don't own any Magic the Gathering cards, haven't play the paper game since I tried it 10+ years ago, and don't play the online version; how can I reply to someone in the comments and be helpful to them?

These three ideas work in unison and contribute to some extent toward what we report on on the website. We lost the people who were enthusiastic about Magic the Gathering, and in turn the quality and quantity of our MtG articles went down. I'm not trying to bash anyone or provide excuses: it's a simple fact that we don't have the resources to elevate our Magic game, so it falls to the side as we turn our attention to other things. That leaves the remaining Big Four: Hearthstone, Legends of Runeterra, Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel, and now Marvel Snap. Snap is "the new hotness" and many of us on the staff enjoy it, so...there you have it :)

Yes, but the whole point of Marvel Snap is short games with a high level of chaos. Every deck has a strong potential counter out there. 

Killmonger is pool 2, baby! Most folks reading this can worry about him later, including me.

Those Zoo decks are cool and all but all it takes is one Killmonger and you lose the game.

All this is not to say that it wont be eventually fixed and OW2 making good in future (5v5, and removing most if not all of the CC is probably a step in the right direction) but this is not how I imagine OW2 to be like. OW1 was a resounding success that practically defined the hero shooter genre - its sequel is currently looking more like a cheap derivative with no new defining ideas of its own except living off the name of its predecessor.

Yeah, I agree. The problem is not that the OW2 is bad, but rather that it does not meet the expectations of the first one. I think a big reason for this is the game that was announced a couple years ago is not the one that just launched. Originally it was supposed to launch as a full sequel with a huge focus on pve and a bunch of pvp content. But around last year they realized that, mostly because of the pve stuff, it would still take a couple more years until everything is done.

So instead of not releasing more content for a couple more years they decided to finish up and release all of the pvp stuff, which consisted mostly of reworks (5v5, comp 2.0, rework of indivitual heroes and the entire tank category etc.) than actual new content. Which brings me back to the expectation problem. People expected at least 3 years of work and a full fledged sequel, but what they actually released was one year of work and a full rework of the gameplay. And they did a terrible way of communicating this.

When the release date was originally was announced what they released was titled "Overwatch 2 pvp early access". However I don't think the early access part was mentioned by blizzard ever since. Instead what they did was to call Overwatch 2 "a new era of Overwatch" instead of "a sequel" in the trailers, but did the crucial mistake of keeping the "2" uncommented in the game title, which is a problem because the same name was used to announce it 2019 when they wanted to release a different product.

So long story short: I think the problem with OW2 is not the game itself, but the expectations that came from the marketing, which failed to highlight (or even mention at all) what OW2 actually is compared to what was originally announced. With that in mind I'm really curios about what the opinion of the game will be in a couple years when everything of the original OW2 vision was released.

I'm enjoying all the Snap content bois! I've been in CCG hibernation for awhile, but I am really loving this game. The Brodeskis at Second Dinner really created something special, and I hope it continues to thrive! 

Not sure if this is possible with how the bbcode rendering works but I find it frustructing to hover over a Marvel Snap card and only see the image with the cost and power of the card.  I do not know enough of the Marvel Snap cards yet to know what the ability of the card is without clicking through to the specific card page which breaks up reviewing a deck list or reading an article.

It would be nice if the card's associated Ability text could be rendered below the card's image as well.

Just curious what determines which games get hosted on Out of Cards.

Do you judge solely on playing the game extensively yourself or only put with your peers recommendation?

Hmm, wonder what Mjölnir does? :p

I will fully admit that Ive not played overwatch 2 as yet (and to be honest would probably never will, just dont have the time and theres better games), but I have been keeping tabs on it from launch because I was stunned to see it now f2p and was interested in its progress since the last time I touched OW1.

Grinding, monetization and some form of phone verification controversy aside, OW2 had a frankly terrible start, with reportedly hours of queuing, being DDoS twice, people complaining (likely unfairly) about tanks, innumerable bugs, and how some characters have to be unlocked if you dont have OW1. Its a blizz sequel so Im not all that surprised at the number of players, but it is surprising how many problems are propping up. You wouldn't think it a good idea to release a game as big as this one in such a state and yet here we are.

A week ago, there's apparently issues with matchmaking, and as we speak there's talk of long queue times because apparently (to no one's surprise) there's not many players wanting to play support.

All this is not to say that it wont be eventually fixed and OW2 making good in future (5v5, and removing most if not all of the CC is probably a step in the right direction) but this is not how I imagine OW2 to be like. OW1 was a resounding success that practically defined the hero shooter genre - its sequel is currently looking more like a cheap derivative with no new defining ideas of its own except living off the name of its predecessor.

Overwatch 2 is, from what Ive heard and read, a massive let down, currently problematic in all areas

Really? Because the sentiment that I got is that the only thing people are really complaining about is that it's almost impossible to get hero skins for free. This complain makes sense in the context of OW1 were you used to be able to get almost every skin for free through grinding (after paying 40$ for the game), hower this monetization is fairly standard for a f2p game like OW2.

Other than that the over 25 million players (which is 3 times as much as OW1 had at launch) also seem to really enjoy the core gameplay changes aswell as the new main mode, maps and most importantly looking forward to finally having regular content updates in the form of 9 week long seasons that either introduce a new map or hero. And ofcourse the two big pve modes which was the focus of OW2 before they decided to release the content that they had ready instead of not releasing anything for a couple more years until everything is finished.

Oh wow, now that is something.