The following changes aim to relieve metagame pressure created from a variety of directions, especially the Professor X lockdown decks that have recently ascended to the top of the standings in public competitions, as well as our internal metrics. We're aiming to create a pretty big shake-up, so read on!
- Professor X
- [Old]5/1 - Ongoing: Lock down this location. (Cards can't be added, removed, etc.)
- [New]5/2 - Ongoing: Moving is the only way to add or remove a card from here.
We've seen glimpses of the danger Professor X could pose over the last year or so, but rarely realized that potential. In many decks where Professor X was popular, such as Thanos, Professor X wasn't often one of the better cards. However, some things have changed and over the last month Professor X has reached new heights. And that's not just because it solves other threats–Xavier is doing significant work against a sea of matchups.
Given the gameplay of Professor X isn't something we want becoming a dominant element of the metagame, we decided to make a change once the existing card pool failed to effectively counter Professor X. This change removes two ways Professor X shut down locations: switching sides and movement. The latter is the most meaningful, as cards that can move will now be able to challenge Professor X, while Cannonball–a dominant card in its own right–will no longer create a combo. We may arrive at a better solution in the future, as we know this weakens the "story" of the card considerably.
- Cannonball
- [Old]5/8 - On Reveal: Move the highest-Power enemy card here away. If you can’t, destroy it with a Rock.
- [Change]5/8 -> 5/7
Speaking of Cannonball, that card has spent weeks as one of the top cards in the game, and seen a ton of play to boot. While we're optimistic that removing Professor X will blunt that strength enough, Cannonball's dominance has been thorough and in enough different decks that we're taking away one Power. This should help ensure the metagame does shift and that a few other 5-Costs can return to the fray. If this hits Cannonball too hard, we can always revert it.
- Hela
- [Old]6/6 - On Reveal: Resurrect all cards you discarded to random locations.
- [New]6/6 - On Reveal: Resurrect all cards you discarded to random locations with -2 Power.
We've spoken at length on Hela in various forums. The deck has passionate fans and detractors alike, and has largely stayed within the tolerances we established for it. However, something else that's important to our definition of a balanced metagame is that players have options where they find problems. That's the foundational idea behind creating "release valves" within the card pool that can address various pressures. Whether Death and Sera are strong or not, Mobius is there for players who feel such threats merit special attention.
Moving Leech to 4-Cost was one of the ways we've tried to address this, but in that case the cure proved worse than the disease. We've tried subtler things, but have yet to see the kind of success we'd hoped for. We've also debated a variety of cards we could add to the game to serve this role, but new cards take time to get into players' hands. So today we're taking action very similar to what we did with Galactus, and adding functionality that will create a better balance dial on the card itself.
- Ebony Blade (created by Black Knight)
- [Old]4/0 - Ongoing: Can't be destroyed and its Power can't be reduced.
- [New]4/0 - Ongoing: Can't be destroyed.
This change is technically impactful to Hela, but that's not why we're making it. We've been happy to see Black Knight find plenty of homes after a soft start, but have decided that giving the Ebony Blade complete protection from interference is unnecessarily strong. Having a large card that's immune to Shang-Chi is novel and powerful enough to see play, and it wasn't trivial to let the Blade freely dodge locations like Negative Zone, either.
- Red Hulk
- [Old]6/9 - When your opponent ends a turn with unspent Energy, +4 Power. (if in hand or in play)
- [New]6/10 - When your opponent ends a turn with unspent Energy, +3 Power. (if in hand or in play)
It is with a heavy, fiery heart that we're sanding a touch more strength off Red Hulk. The goal for this card was to position it as a simple "big monster" with ranging strength, but that range hasn't been wide enough to ensure sufficient healthy competition with other 6-Cost cards. This is a fairly small tweak, but the card doesn't look like it's super far ahead in the data. There are plenty of novel decks playing 6-Cost cards that aren't Red Hulk, it's just been the default for a few too many decks aiming to make Power without leaning on heavy synergies.
- Gilgamesh
- [Old]5/7 - On Reveal: +1 Power for each of your other cards in play with increased Power.
- [Change]5/7 -> 5/9
After seeing a few of our big cards go "too big," we were more careful with Gilgamesh. The occasional Blob or Red Hulk will happen, but positioning such a card as the Season Pass would be a little more worrisome. However, after the first week of play, it looks like we were too careful.
This is a fairly fast turnaround to make on a new card, but the low cube rate of the card was in particular a large concern for us. We always want to ensure that the Season Pass card feels like a great addition to players' collection, but its performance thus far hasn't met that bar. While Gilgamesh and Blue Marvel get Very Large, the backup combos are weaker than expected and there are fewer other decks to slot into, so this change should ensure Gilgamesh's card communicates his canonical strength in-game.
- Captain America
- [Old]3/2 - Ongoing: Your other Ongoing cards here have +2 Power.
- [Change]3/2 -> 3/3
Just a small tweak to Captain America here. We hit the Spectrum Ongoing deck slightly harder than we wanted to during the last OTA, and we'd like to ensure Cap is an appealing card for early and endgame Ongoing decks alike.
- Shanna
- [Old]3/2 - On Reveal: Add a random 1-Cost card to each location.
- [Change]3/2 -> 3/4
Yeah, we're doing this again. Shanna is a tricky card to evaluate, as the card winds up taking four slots and has so much variance in Power. We don't like to change the same card a ton of times, but it's been a while since the last try. We'd held off for so long in part because we expected that Mockingbird and Gilgamesh Zoo decks might provide the lift we needed, but that hasn't been the case.
- Stegron
- [Old]4/6 - On Reveal: Move an enemy card from here to another location.
- [New]4/7 - On Reveal: Move an enemy card here one location to the right.
Stegron is one of those "fine" cards that's never really been good or bad. It's just failed to find a steady home, and we think that's in part due to the original effect's randomness hurting its appeal and its strength. Giving Stregron a more specific effect will create more space from existing cards, and perhaps lead to Stegron claiming a space all its own.
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That's all for this week. Until next time, happy snapping!
