And we also have some new information on character mastery and the series drops,
which are really exciting to talk about.
I'm happy with the amount of cards that dropped,
and we'll talk about some more of the specifics.
And if we have a little time at the end,
I do want to cover the new locations,
because I actually think that they're pretty,
like,
cool.
I like them.
But let's get into it,
shall we?
Redwing is a 3-4 that says,
The first time this moves...
Add a card from your hand to the old location.
Now,
I'll admit,
I was pretty hesitant about this card,
and
I think I might be right.
I don't know.
Right now,
like,
looking at the statistics,
at least on Snapfan,
it's running,
like,
a 49%
win rate when played,
which is not amazing.
It's not great.
And I also,
you know,
I think it's because of...
the design it's just so in order to proc this effect in order to add a card from your hand to the old location you need to move this card which automatically puts a big restriction in order for this card to be effective you have to include move cards in your deck that's that's
a given and if you include only one move card in your deck the chance of drawing red red wing and that move card is going to be extremely limited right so
oftentimes you need a move package in order to get the most out of this.
The problem with adding a move package is,
well,
now what is your priority targets going to be?
Right?
If Breadwing moves and it only puts like an Iron Fist down on the board,
that's not going to be enough value to put this in your deck.
Sure,
technically that's 3,
6 in stats,
but if you compare that to Vulture,
I mean,
it's not even a contest,
right?
Vulture would be a much better spent
3-power card.
So,
where does this card fit?
Initially,
I thought that I'd see it in Dracula Dump,
which seems to be the predominant deck that is being used with it.
And I also thought that maybe it could fit in Phoenix Force,
although I'm not seeing that take off like I thought it would.
The thought there is if you destroy
Red Wing,
it's not a bad target for Phoenix Force,
but I guess the problem is there are just better targets for Phoenix Force,
right?
Sure,
you might get out,
like,
I don't know,
a Black Panther or a Nimrod or something out of your hand on a good roll,
but you could also get,
like,
a random Carnage or something,
right?
So,
like,
yeah,
I don't know.
I'm glad that I was pretty hesitant with this card because it just didn't seem to land in an amazing spot.
There's just a lot of investment that's required.
In order to make this card functional,
which it could work if the payoff was really high,
but the payoff is random.
I think that's probably the biggest part about this card is that it's a random card from your hand.
If it was targeted,
let's say,
to,
like,
the highest cost card in your hand or the highest power,
I think this card would get out of hand.
It would get very,
very strong.
So I understand the design limitation here,
but then,
like...
yeah why why put it in your deck to begin with so yeah i'm not too particularly impressed with this card um personally i would give it like a uh two out of five and look i haven't played with the card so when i'm giving my ratings on this it's just based off of what i've seen but
based off of what i've seen it's random it's rng based and the decks that it fits in have better replacements for this like
For example,
in the Dracula dump deck,
you could just play Makkari over this.
It's also a 3-4 and puts a body on the board,
and you don't have to worry about the extremely restrictive combo pieces.
So,
yeah.
I wish it was a bit better,
but
I understand maybe why they're a little hesitant.
It could get out of hand if not,
you know,
kept in check.
Okay,
let's move on to the character mastery update.
And,
yeah,
I don't...
I...
I'm just going to say,
I don't think that this fixes the problems that I have with the mode,
but it's,
you know,
quality of life changes.
Basically,
the development team heard a bunch of people complaining about the,
like,
the chance of getting certain finishes and flares,
and they've adjusted them.
So,
banana finishes and banana flares are about half as often as before when you split a card.
And yeah,
they should be.
Like,
I've heard it pointed out in other podcasts and things.
Like,
there's one card in the game that the banana thing would even matter for,
and it's Hitmonkey.
Like,
it's not a universal finish,
and it's not,
like,
particularly funny.
Like,
I don't see a banana and just,
like,
laugh my...
my butt off so like yeah get get rid of it i honestly i'm surprised that it's only half as often i would even venture to say it should be not often at all probably not anywhere close to happening but you know i
i guess they have to have some bad roles in there um so now rays are about one quarter to one fifth as often as before depending on the cards uh character mastery level
And if you don't know,
the chances of rolling a particular split actually changes as you go up the character mastery track.
So getting Raze about a quarter of the time as opposed to what we have right now is really good,
right?
Like,
some of the most interesting flares that I want to experience are,
like,
the Gilded Gold or whatever,
right?
Like,
the Raze or whatever.
I could take them or leave them.
And they also mention here
Embers.
About one third as often as before.
I can't say that I've dealt with too many Ember splits,
but apparently people were complaining about that.
So,
yeah,
just a small update.
I'm kind of disappointed that they didn't listen to the feedback about splits in general.
Again,
I think the biggest problem with this mode is that you could attempt to argue that it rewards,
like,
dedication to a certain card if it was based on splits.
But it's not.
It's based off of variance,
and splits are like a small bonus to that.
So,
yeah.
They either need to up the number that you get on splits,
or they just need to rename this mode.
Because it's not,
you're not mastering anything because you happen to get more variance from it.
You know what I mean?
But,
yeah.
That's the update.
It's nice.
I think,
you know,
that'll make our cards a little more pretty.
But,
kind of disappointed that they didn't jump on the...
the criticisms.
Okay.
Let's move on to some actually some actual good news.
Um,
we have a huge,
huge series drop announced that is going to be happening on March 4th.
Uh,
here
I'm just gonna read them out.
I'm sure you've probably already heard these if you've uh,
you know,
been listening.
But,
uh,
to series 3 from series 4,
there is Null,
Zabu,
Modok,
Nimrod,
Ghost Spider,
Nebula,
Silk,
Spider-Ham,
Lady Deathstrike,
Mobius M.
Mobius,
Havoc,
Selene,
and Hercules.
So obviously there are some duds in here.
Like,
I don't know about Selene.
I don't find her particularly useful.
Silk has been struggling to find a place ever since that little mover's deck died.
Hercules is situational,
but pretty okay.
Same thing with Havoc.
I think that...
you know,
Havoc has in place in the game.
But a lot of these other cards are amazing to see drop to Series 3.
I mean,
Gnoll is a staple in the Destroy deck.
So seeing that go down is incredible.
And the same goes for Modok.
It really opens up that discard archetype.
So seeing it drop to Series 3 is great.
And all the rest of the cards in here are really awesome too.
I think
Mobius, M.
Mobius in particular,
is a really good card to drop because it's a tech card.
Um,
I've heard this sentiment echoed on,
um,
on other podcasts,
and,
like,
I,
I tend to agree.
I think that tech cards should be some of the first to drop,
because they're answers to things that
Series 3 players might find annoying.
Um,
they're not exciting cards to get.
Like,
I don't think
Mobius and Mobius is an exciting card,
but you can play him with things like Sandman and just get value there.
Like,
you don't need your opponent to be running something insane,
uh,
to get value off of it,
so,
yeah.
Really cool.
I like a lot of these.
Nebula is also just a great one drop.
Same thing with Ghost Spider.
And yeah,
the rest of these are just like pretty good.
I'm not upset about it.
Okay,
let's talk about
Series 4.
We have,
and this is from Series 5 to Series 4.
Loki,
Blob,
Sebastian Shaw,
Elsa Bloodstone,
Ms.
Marvel,
Werewolf by Night,
Scar,
Black Knight,
Corvus Glaive,
Cole Obsidian.
cannonball and a nihilus and wow i mean
This is really cool to me.
I think all of these cards are good in their own way.
Particularly,
I think
Scar,
Coal Obsidian,
Cannonball,
and Annihilus are some heavy hitters,
man.
Those are some cards that I think a lot of people are going to be excited to grab.
The rest of these cards,
I think,
have their place,
right?
Like Blob,
Loki,
Ms.
Marvel,
Elsa Bloodstone.
They've had their time to shine,
and now they're a little bit past that.
I should also include...
Werewolf by Night in that list,
where it's like the decks that they were in were super good,
but they've just been sort of eclipsed over time.
I think it's fair that they drop.
But you can still make decks out of them.
I know Blob still makes quite a few decks,
and
Loki is incredibly niche,
but it's just a matter of time before someone finds a way to make that deck annoying again.
I also like that they're dropping Black Night and Corvus Glaive.
I feel like those are two very unique discard cards that allow you to
experience that sort of play style in a different way.
I really like Black Knight.
It's just,
it's hard to play him on his own without Hela because it's just not putting up the numbers.
Even if you discard an Infinaut,
for example,
and you put down,
you know,
that blade and then throw down an Infinaut with Ghost Rider,
great.
You now have,
you know,
a little bit over 20 power in two lanes,
but...
If somebody throws down an Iron Man Mystique combo with their Ravonna,
they can very quickly scale to that number now.
Like,
it's just,
it's tough.
It's tough to compete.
I'm glad that they're dropping it,
though,
just in general.
I think these cards are really interesting,
and yeah,
I'm really excited to see what people think.
I know for,
like,
particularly for Series 3 players,
I would imagine the drops of Nolan Modok already make this Series drop worth it.
Those are two cards that really accelerate those archetypes.
And for Series 4,
I think a lot of these options are really appealing.
Just Blob and Cull of City are big cards that can really add some beef to your deck.
Same thing with Scar.
And I think a lot of these other cards really push archetypes like Annihilus.
So,
like,
yeah,
I'm really happy with this.
I think in total,
there was 26 cards dropped?
25 cards dropped,
which is really good.
I think that they're making a good choice here.
Obviously,
you know,
would I love to see more?
Sure.
But this helps,
right?
It's helpful for them to drop these cards,
especially the ones that have been in here for over a year.
I feel like those ones definitely should go down.
Now,
the big question to ask after hearing these series drops is,
A,
when is the next series drop happening?
And B,
are they going to be as generous as this one?
Or is this like...
their Hail Mary to try to buy back some good faith.
I don't know.
Like,
I'm glad that they did this.
When you combine this with the series drop that they did near December,
it looks pretty good,
right?
They did drop a lot of cards,
but a while back,
I think Lauren Whatevs mentioned that statistically,
like,
in order to make this system worth it,
in order to make spotlights actually feasible,
You have to be able to drop a certain number of cards a year.
I don't know what it is off the top of my head.
So I apologize for not getting all the facts.
But
I think the point I'm trying to make is these flexible series drops just aren't cutting it in terms of player progression.
This is a good start.
I think that a lot of the cards here are good to see.
But,
I mean,
you look at the number of cards that are now bloating the game and...
Yeah,
it's like everything is demanding your resources.
If you wanted to run MODOK before,
you had to spend the tokens or you had to get lucky and hope that it appears in a cache.
So,
like,
it's really tough.
Like,
I was looking for Pixie for a long time and it finally appeared in my shop and I'm really excited to get it.
But
I was waiting since the ban compensation.
I've been waiting.
every day since the ban compensation to get Pixie,
because it's one of the archetypes that I wanted to experiment with and it took until about last week for me to get that card and I've been checking every day so like,
even that system in itself is really backwards,
I don't particularly think that having all of these cards high up in these series is healthy for the game like I,
if I'm playing a game
If they think that it's making them more money,
then...
More power to them.
Maybe there's something that I don't know.
But I would assume that people playing your game,
like player retention,
is probably really important.
And it's difficult sometimes to,
I guess,
balance that with the straight up money making concepts in the game.
So,
like,
I don't know.
I'm not a game designer.
And I'm certainly not a financial expert on mobile game microtransactions.
But...
This system definitely needs to improve.
I know they've spoken about those improvements happening in the last quarter of the year,
which,
or excuse me,
in the first quarter of the year,
which if that translates to like typical business quarters,
you're probably looking at the end of March,
I think.
So we'll see.
I'm hoping that they address some of the issues that I'm concerned about.
I hope that they're willing to,
I don't know,
change the way that they look at.
monetization in this game but we'll see i like i don't know the back end obviously so we'll see okay so to quickly end out here i do want to talk about the two new locations just very briefly uh the first one is the asgard besieged location and if you've seen this one on the board you're probably more than well aware about what it does it
says after turn three add the destroyer to the winning side so this location is
really,
really interesting.
If it appears on the right side as the third location,
you have to make a split-second decision.
Do you want that 16 power to destroy the rest of your board,
or do you forego the 16 power,
give it to your opponent,
and keep the cards that you have already played down?
If you're playing something like a bounce deck,
maybe you could do both at the same time,
but for the decks that I play,
I often have to...
To make a decision like,
okay,
do I put speed here and try to take it for myself,
destroy my Nebula and Hakka Kate Bishop or something?
Or do I wait and instead let my opponent take that 16 power and hope I draw into my Shang-Chi or something so I can try to mitigate that later?
It's really fascinating.
It's like,
and obviously the other choice is that neither player go for it and nothing happens.
But I do think that it puts up like an interesting gambit.
It's like.
That 16 power is nothing to joke about.
That could really swing that lane.
But you got to forego something like,
oh,
and obviously,
you know,
if it's the first location or second location,
you have a little bit more time to decide.
But,
yeah,
I really like that.
Like third turn flip.
You got to make a choice.
Like,
is this valuable to you in this moment?
Really neat location.
OK,
so the other location that I wanted to cover is the Smithsonian Museum.
which says your cards here have plus one power for each ongoing among them so this is flavor-wise it's really cool to me because you know history is ongoing you know things in the past can continue into the future uh in a in
a dumb way i guess uh i i like the way that this sort of plays into the ongoing archetype as like a way to show that uh yeah they are continuous and it sort of feeds into the two time-based cards that we have um with
Mobius and Ravonna.
I'm excluding Kang here.
But both of those cards benefit from this just implicitly.
And I think that's really neat.
This is also a good time for this to come out because obviously with Sam Wilson,
Captain America,
having that shield and Sam Wilson both here is going to make this much,
much better.
I also like this from the standpoint that like a lot of the on reveal locations in the game give
on reveal like a small bonus right like the the the valhalla location repeats on reveals on turn four right so that's very specific it has a one-time benefit so having something that gives a minor benefit to ongoing is nice the
the only other like big benefit to ongoing i would think is onslaught citadel right that doubles the power of ongoing cards and while that's great it's nice to have a little benefit like something that doesn't
completely,
you know,
flip the game on its head,
but it does give a small bonus to the ongoing archetype or even just a couple ongoing cards in your deck.
I think that's nice.
It's something that I think is missing from this game.
So yeah,
those are the two new locations.
We talked about the quality of life updates to character mastery,
the series drops,
and the new cards.
So that is all I have for this week.
I appreciate you sticking with me.
As a heads up,
you can rate this podcast.
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And if you're listening to this on YouTube,
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Tell me if you have different thoughts.
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And if there's one thing that you can remember,
it's that I'm InfoNaut.
Thanks for listening.