MARVEL SNAP is here! I'll tell you, I'm pretty excited to be playing the game now - haven't gotten too far on the Collection Level or Ranked Ladder, but I'm enjoying myself. I thought that other members of the community might like to have a place to share their decks, so they can show off their collection and give other members of the community some lists worth trying out.
Yes! The game is going to release on October 18. It will be available on iOS, Android, and PC. You should be able to pre-register for the game right now in the App Store, and if you do you'll get a cool Variant of Iron Man.
I find that answer really strange, tbh. I had thought October would be a "beta" season (meaning that all its rewards are going to be made available to new players later, like they've said all beta season rewards will be), so the answer, in my opinion, should have been that, and not "Well, you get an extra week, so..." October was always going to be a five week season: we've seen them move season starts to the second Tuesday before, and they're on record saying that some seasons will be five weeks to stay in line with the months. The November season will still be four weeks: it'll start on the 8th and go until December 6th.
I do agree that it makes more sense to launch the game closer to a new season starting, but maybe they want to make sure there aren't any unexpected bugs with the season launch that interfere with the global launch. And yeah, considering that they've said that ALL beta rewards will be available to new players after launch, it seems strange to start some players halfway through a season.
I'm holding onto the idea that October will be considered a "beta" season, and November will be the first True Season, meaning that all the rewards from October will be made available later anyway. At the same time, I feel like they would have said that if it were the case. Maybe I need to carefully word a question on the Discord to get more clarification.
You're right about Ultron not being a good card for this location. However, it got me thinking and I do kinda wonder if he could work in a Patriot deck - at least as long as PP is featured.
Skeletons aren't the only spooky thing about the deck. As any good prosecutor will tell you, there's nothing spookier than a Solid Alibi. And I believe it was Edgar Allan Poe who said, "The spookiest thing on this planet is a good pun." Kael'thas Sinstrider. Game, set, match.
Besides, what are we going to call the inevitable Skeleton/Elemental hybrid decks, if not "Skelly"?
I agree with a lot of your ideas; it does feel like the progression would feel more rewarding if the pools were broken up more (especially Pool 3) and players had more control over which cards they were chasing. It sounds similar to Runeterra's Region Roads where players choose a "path" with themed rewards that they earn: cards, Variants, Avatars, etc. all themed within that grouping. Obviously, the difficult part is balancing each "path" so there isn't one that's the for-sure pick and one (or several) that players will skip.
But yeah, the biggest problem in my opinion is that Pool 3 is way too big. It's got almost 3 times as many cards as Pool 2 (and will likely hit 75 cards in October, when Daredevil is added to it); there's so little control over which Pool 3 cards you get that one player can feel they're opening only "pack-filler" while everyone else gets the good stuff - and they have no control over it. Some cards are only good if you have another specific Pool 3 card: Death, for instance, isn't as good without Wave. To be honest, I don't know what's worse for player retention: offering players a choice where they might later feel they chose "wrong," or offering them no choice where they might later feel they've been "unlucky." It's possible this is one version they tested that sounded good but didn't feel great in practice.
Your last point is very interesting, but sounds mostly like a matchmaking problem. I wonder if the team has this sort of scenario on their mind. For my money, Daredevil is really the only Season Pass card (so far) that would feel unfair to play against. Wave is a meta staple, but much of her power comes from interactions with other Pool 3 cards. Thor has good upside, but is a vanilla 4-Drop if you never find Mjolnir. With only Pool 1 cards, it's hard to build "unfair" decks surrounding these cards, even though their power level is higher than the standard Pool 1 card. I might ask a similar question on the Discord (or see if one has already been asked) and see what the response is. My guess is it's something along the lines of, "We believe that having more cards equals more options, not more power."
Yeah it's weird that they don't have that in yet, considering how important these original art pieces are to the game's economy. The devs are on record saying that they'll be credited in-game at some point, though.
If it works like what they did on the gameplay stream, a match will basically consist of any number of games until one of the players has 10 Cubes. So the snap doubling mechanic actually works really well here, since winning a big pot could be huge in determining the winner of the match, and a player's use of the snap in one game could be the difference between winning and losing the entire match.
Of course, that's only assuming they do in fact use the "10 Cubes to Win" format, and not something else.
It was slightly tongue-in-cheek, but in the featured decklist it can be a 4 Mana "Summon Smite, Edwin, 2 Gnolls, and Crabatoa to eat whatever your opponent gets" which can be a huge board swing in the right matchups.
*To be honest, I thought that I'd said it was the best Rogue card from the mini-set, because obviously the best Rogue card in Standard right now is Drakefire Amulet.
Roasting Naga Demon Hunter cards because I can't think of any other way to make myself feel better about losing to DHs who don't need to play well to win:
Dreadprison Glaive: I appreciate that Blizzard feels it's necessary to teach Demon Hunter players that they should be hitting minions instead of just brainlessly jamming into the face.
Multi-Strike: If I worked on Hearthstone, I would send daily memos to my coworkers, "Don't Give Demon Hunter Windfury." I would have no other responsibility in the company. I would work in HR, and any designer caught attempting to give Demon Hunter Windfury would have to attend a weekend seminar where all they would do is try to climb Standard Ladder against Demon Hunters with Multi-Strike. I would not have a salary, but would show up early every morning with a fresh batch of memos.
Predation: So apparently what Blizzard learned from Eye Beam is, "Make it hit face, too." And here I was thinking the lesson was "Don't make 'Deal 3 damage' Cost 0, you morons."
Kurtrus, Demon-Render: Blizzard decided that Bakuing the Hero Power wasn't good enough, so they made it refresh like Shadowreaper Anduin or Questline Hunter. I see nothing wrong with emulating some of the most broken strategies in the history of the game, this should all work out fine. I really enjoy fending off Demon Hunter's aggression, including an on-curve Drek'Thar, only to lose because my opponent has Lady S'theno and a couple of spells in hand. How nice for them. On top of that, they get to summon two X/4s with Rush, where X is the number most likely to frustrate their opponent.
Lady S'theno: Infinite Attacks to clear the board while also triggering Kurtrus' Hero Power? No, this is perfectly fine. This stupid garbage is so overtuned that Naga DH players are unironically running Archdruid Naralex for the 36% chance they hit Nightmare because Blizzard made this deck so easy to auto-pilot to wins that the players had to step in to make things a little bit more challenging for themselves.
Drek'Thar: HSReplay says that Drek'Thar has a 68% mulligan winrate, but "only" a 61% played winrate, so I'm going to spend the rest of the month trying to tell my Demon Hunter opponents that they're costing themselves 7% of a win every time they play Drek'Thar. Maybe it'll work.
I've been enjoying Kibler's Battlecry Shaman (hence why it made it into this article), and also this Heal/Ramp Druid from China because I think Boomkin is a really great card.
Thanks for your comments, these are all valid points. I just want to explain my thought process behind a couple of them:
1) I went with the most popular Dragon Paladin list over any best-performing deck solely due to sample size. Because I was trying to share decks that have "good matchups" against certain meta decks, I didn't want to feature a deck that had less than 100 games in that matchup and claim that it was "favored." I hope I will get better at being able to pick out the decks that have good win rates in certain matchups; it's a learning curve, and I'm working on it. Thanks for your detailed breakdown of the deck's chances against Questline Hunter.
2) Yes, the lack of Shaman is glaring. This is partly because I was trying my hardest to feature more decks that people may not have seen or thought of playing (although there are some decks here that people have likely seen before: AM Mage, Handbuff Paladin, for example). It was also hard to find non-Burn Shaman lists that had enough games to feel comfortable featuring them--I don't recall seeing a Mutanus list that had a big enough sample size for me to feel comfortable with. Again, learning curve--I'll work to get better.
3) QL Priest over Boar Priest in this article is simple: Aesan featured Boar Priest in his very good breakdown of the best current meta decks. We overlap in some places, but not in this case.
Flashback to Eye Beam before it got nerfed, but at least this doesn't have Lifesteal. The Naga in DH aren't necessarily terrible, so I could see that archetype becoming a real thing and this would fit right in. Could be a nice time.
Arcanite Reaper, but better. Is aggro Demon Hunter a thing? Probably not, so I don't see how this makes the cut in anything in Demon Hunter. We'll see, though. Because this is an absolute basher of a weapon.
Is good card for Naga Druid, if that's a thing. Real good synergy with the 1-Drop, since it's so cheap you can play it whenever and get this activated. Lotta fours, too. Lotta fours.
MARVEL SNAP is here! I'll tell you, I'm pretty excited to be playing the game now - haven't gotten too far on the Collection Level or Ranked Ladder, but I'm enjoying myself. I thought that other members of the community might like to have a place to share their decks, so they can show off their collection and give other members of the community some lists worth trying out.
EDIT: Our SNAP deckbuilder is up and running!
Yes! The game is going to release on October 18. It will be available on iOS, Android, and PC. You should be able to pre-register for the game right now in the App Store, and if you do you'll get a cool Variant of Iron Man.
I find that answer really strange, tbh. I had thought October would be a "beta" season (meaning that all its rewards are going to be made available to new players later, like they've said all beta season rewards will be), so the answer, in my opinion, should have been that, and not "Well, you get an extra week, so..." October was always going to be a five week season: we've seen them move season starts to the second Tuesday before, and they're on record saying that some seasons will be five weeks to stay in line with the months. The November season will still be four weeks: it'll start on the 8th and go until December 6th.
I do agree that it makes more sense to launch the game closer to a new season starting, but maybe they want to make sure there aren't any unexpected bugs with the season launch that interfere with the global launch. And yeah, considering that they've said that ALL beta rewards will be available to new players after launch, it seems strange to start some players halfway through a season.
I'm holding onto the idea that October will be considered a "beta" season, and November will be the first True Season, meaning that all the rewards from October will be made available later anyway. At the same time, I feel like they would have said that if it were the case. Maybe I need to carefully word a question on the Discord to get more clarification.
Thank you for the kind words! Also, I've changed the name of the Enrage Warrior deck to reflect whose it is, thanks for pointing that out.
You're right about Ultron not being a good card for this location. However, it got me thinking and I do kinda wonder if he could work in a Patriot deck - at least as long as PP is featured.
Skeletons aren't the only spooky thing about the deck. As any good prosecutor will tell you, there's nothing spookier than a Solid Alibi. And I believe it was Edgar Allan Poe who said, "The spookiest thing on this planet is a good pun." Kael'thas Sinstrider. Game, set, match.
Besides, what are we going to call the inevitable Skeleton/Elemental hybrid decks, if not "Skelly"?
I agree with a lot of your ideas; it does feel like the progression would feel more rewarding if the pools were broken up more (especially Pool 3) and players had more control over which cards they were chasing. It sounds similar to Runeterra's Region Roads where players choose a "path" with themed rewards that they earn: cards, Variants, Avatars, etc. all themed within that grouping. Obviously, the difficult part is balancing each "path" so there isn't one that's the for-sure pick and one (or several) that players will skip.
But yeah, the biggest problem in my opinion is that Pool 3 is way too big. It's got almost 3 times as many cards as Pool 2 (and will likely hit 75 cards in October, when Daredevil is added to it); there's so little control over which Pool 3 cards you get that one player can feel they're opening only "pack-filler" while everyone else gets the good stuff - and they have no control over it. Some cards are only good if you have another specific Pool 3 card: Death, for instance, isn't as good without Wave. To be honest, I don't know what's worse for player retention: offering players a choice where they might later feel they chose "wrong," or offering them no choice where they might later feel they've been "unlucky." It's possible this is one version they tested that sounded good but didn't feel great in practice.
Your last point is very interesting, but sounds mostly like a matchmaking problem. I wonder if the team has this sort of scenario on their mind. For my money, Daredevil is really the only Season Pass card (so far) that would feel unfair to play against. Wave is a meta staple, but much of her power comes from interactions with other Pool 3 cards. Thor has good upside, but is a vanilla 4-Drop if you never find Mjolnir. With only Pool 1 cards, it's hard to build "unfair" decks surrounding these cards, even though their power level is higher than the standard Pool 1 card. I might ask a similar question on the Discord (or see if one has already been asked) and see what the response is. My guess is it's something along the lines of, "We believe that having more cards equals more options, not more power."
We don't know right now, unfortunately. As soon as there's an official announcement of a release date we'll make sure to inform everyone we can.
Sure, Necrium Blade builds could come back into style but it's a big deal that it can no longer be tutored with Sketchy Information.
Yeah it's weird that they don't have that in yet, considering how important these original art pieces are to the game's economy. The devs are on record saying that they'll be credited in-game at some point, though.
If it works like what they did on the gameplay stream, a match will basically consist of any number of games until one of the players has 10 Cubes. So the snap doubling mechanic actually works really well here, since winning a big pot could be huge in determining the winner of the match, and a player's use of the snap in one game could be the difference between winning and losing the entire match.
Of course, that's only assuming they do in fact use the "10 Cubes to Win" format, and not something else.
It was slightly tongue-in-cheek, but in the featured decklist it can be a 4 Mana "Summon Smite, Edwin, 2 Gnolls, and Crabatoa to eat whatever your opponent gets" which can be a huge board swing in the right matchups.
*To be honest, I thought that I'd said it was the best Rogue card from the mini-set, because obviously the best Rogue card in Standard right now is Drakefire Amulet.
Roasting Naga Demon Hunter cards because I can't think of any other way to make myself feel better about losing to DHs who don't need to play well to win:
Dreadprison Glaive: I appreciate that Blizzard feels it's necessary to teach Demon Hunter players that they should be hitting minions instead of just brainlessly jamming into the face.
Multi-Strike: If I worked on Hearthstone, I would send daily memos to my coworkers, "Don't Give Demon Hunter Windfury." I would have no other responsibility in the company. I would work in HR, and any designer caught attempting to give Demon Hunter Windfury would have to attend a weekend seminar where all they would do is try to climb Standard Ladder against Demon Hunters with Multi-Strike. I would not have a salary, but would show up early every morning with a fresh batch of memos.
Predation: So apparently what Blizzard learned from Eye Beam is, "Make it hit face, too." And here I was thinking the lesson was "Don't make 'Deal 3 damage' Cost 0, you morons."
Kurtrus, Demon-Render: Blizzard decided that Bakuing the Hero Power wasn't good enough, so they made it refresh like Shadowreaper Anduin or Questline Hunter. I see nothing wrong with emulating some of the most broken strategies in the history of the game, this should all work out fine. I really enjoy fending off Demon Hunter's aggression, including an on-curve Drek'Thar, only to lose because my opponent has Lady S'theno and a couple of spells in hand. How nice for them. On top of that, they get to summon two X/4s with Rush, where X is the number most likely to frustrate their opponent.
Lady S'theno: Infinite Attacks to clear the board while also triggering Kurtrus' Hero Power? No, this is perfectly fine. This stupid garbage is so overtuned that Naga DH players are unironically running Archdruid Naralex for the 36% chance they hit Nightmare because Blizzard made this deck so easy to auto-pilot to wins that the players had to step in to make things a little bit more challenging for themselves.
Drek'Thar: HSReplay says that Drek'Thar has a 68% mulligan winrate, but "only" a 61% played winrate, so I'm going to spend the rest of the month trying to tell my Demon Hunter opponents that they're costing themselves 7% of a win every time they play Drek'Thar. Maybe it'll work.
I've been enjoying Kibler's Battlecry Shaman (hence why it made it into this article), and also this Heal/Ramp Druid from China because I think Boomkin is a really great card.
Thanks for your comments, these are all valid points. I just want to explain my thought process behind a couple of them:
1) I went with the most popular Dragon Paladin list over any best-performing deck solely due to sample size. Because I was trying to share decks that have "good matchups" against certain meta decks, I didn't want to feature a deck that had less than 100 games in that matchup and claim that it was "favored." I hope I will get better at being able to pick out the decks that have good win rates in certain matchups; it's a learning curve, and I'm working on it. Thanks for your detailed breakdown of the deck's chances against Questline Hunter.
2) Yes, the lack of Shaman is glaring. This is partly because I was trying my hardest to feature more decks that people may not have seen or thought of playing (although there are some decks here that people have likely seen before: AM Mage, Handbuff Paladin, for example). It was also hard to find non-Burn Shaman lists that had enough games to feel comfortable featuring them--I don't recall seeing a Mutanus list that had a big enough sample size for me to feel comfortable with. Again, learning curve--I'll work to get better.
3) QL Priest over Boar Priest in this article is simple: Aesan featured Boar Priest in his very good breakdown of the best current meta decks. We overlap in some places, but not in this case.
Thanks for your comments!
Take their Supplies! Take their Gold! Take their Ship!
Ring of Tides Horn of Ancients Xal'atath Tidestone of Golganneth
Flashback to Eye Beam before it got nerfed, but at least this doesn't have Lifesteal. The Naga in DH aren't necessarily terrible, so I could see that archetype becoming a real thing and this would fit right in. Could be a nice time.
Arcanite Reaper, but better. Is aggro Demon Hunter a thing? Probably not, so I don't see how this makes the cut in anything in Demon Hunter. We'll see, though. Because this is an absolute basher of a weapon.
Is good card for Naga Druid, if that's a thing. Real good synergy with the 1-Drop, since it's so cheap you can play it whenever and get this activated. Lotta fours, too. Lotta fours.