I completely agree! When you look at it objectively, every iteration of their economic system has been a notable improvement on their preceding model, and I think most of the complaints come from players who don't understand the underlying philosophy of Snap, and how it differs from previous digital card games. Snap is fundamentally a collection game, and while you can accelerate your progression a little bit by spending money, you mostly need to play the game to achieve higher levels of success.
Snap is also unparalleled in its balance passes: which other company would commit to regular patches 3 weeks out of 4? And these include nerfs to overperforming cards AND buffs to underutilized ones. Snowguard is a perfect example: it went from unpredictable and useless to a format staple!
Also, to the original poster complaining about not receiving compensation for a changed card: have you never read the warning that appears when you purchase a card with tokens? It clearly states that you will not receive any refunds for any modification which might occur later on.
Sera in Surfer decks has been on the decline for a few weeks, in favour of more pro-active cards like Spider-Man. Hit Monkey would be at best a 3/8 in the shell you propose; while the new versions of Nakia, and especially Magik, offer a lot of upsides for that deck.
Magik is now an all-star card for combo decks and control decks that are looking to extend the game as much as possible to give them a greater chance of drawing their big bombs. I expect Limbo to soon be the second most frequent location in the game after Flooded.
I expected that Galactus would continue to use Spider-Man, since the change has no impact to their common pattern of Wave on 3, Galactus on 4 and Spider-Man on 5, but none of the 8 or so Galactus decks I saw today (ranks 75-80) played him.
Given all the conversations that have been going on since he was datamined, I predict The High Evolutionary will be the most popular day 1 purchase since the Token Shop has been implemented. He opens up at least 2 archetypes, and people are excited to try him out!
I seem to be in the minority, but I really enjoy their card release system -- the most fun I had was finishing Series 2 and early Series 3, where I would take my far-from-optimal deck and faced similarly janky brews.
In particular, the acquisition rate once you're finished with Series 2 is great, even if you're completely free-to-play. Since you're getting 5-6 cards every month, you can still outpace their release schedule of 1 card per week.
Finally, while the change to the Series 3 shop is theoretically worse than before, in practice, it's the opposite. I only bought 0-1 card per month while working through Series 3, so getting a card PLUS tokens would have been awesome.
Choose Your Card: Series 3 cards now have their own section in the Shop! Once per season players who haven’t completed Series 3 will be able to claim one free Series 3 card to help them fill out their favorite deck and take a step closer to completing their collection. Now you can save your tokens for Series 4 and 5 cards! You don’t need to wait long for these updates, both of these changes will be in our next patch!
One of the developers provided important details on Twitter about this over the weekend. You will no longer be able to buy Series 3 cards from the shop, only Series 4-5 cards, meaning your free monthly Series 3 selection will be the only way to pick up specific cards from that group.
This is slightly worse than the present situation. While you're working through Series 3, you currently gain enough tokens in a month to get one Series 3 card -- so that part is functionally the same in the new system. However, you get 3,000 tokens when you initially unlock the Token Shop, or the equivalent of three Series 3 cards. That will no longer be possible.
In all other card games, the test of your skill is dealing with the variance of your deck, and how it matches up with what your opponent is doing. That's not the case with Snap, since you'll see 75% of your deck in most matches. That's why the random locations are so important in this game: that's where the variance comes into play. It looks like Second Dinner finally realized that removing that variance 3 days out of the week was a bad idea.
I believe Iron Maiden is referencing two things with the title of this tour:
1) "Days of Future Passed" is an influential album by the Moody Blues that came out in the late '60s. It was one of the first concept album ever, and is often cited as marking the beginning of progressive rock.
2) "Days of Future Past" is an iconic arc in X-Men comics that came out in the early '80s (that explains the old TV, public warning approach and general vibe in the Snap video). It tells the story of an alternate future ruled by Sentinels where Kitty Pryde travels back in time to the "present" to try to prevent the events that will stoke antimutant hysteria.
The Shadow King also had a prominent role outside of comics fairly recently, because he was the main villain in the "Legion" TV series that ran a few years back. He was brilliantly played by Audrey Plaza in the first 2 seasons of the show.
Sidenote: You consistently misspelled the dimension where the Shadow King exists -- it's the "astral plane" (as in "plane of existence"), not the homophone "plain".
I hope that the "suit" responsible for accepting the Google/Yahoo deal was laid off -- they clearly didn't understand how eSports culture works, and just opted for the short-term gains to the detriment of the long-term health of Blizzard's properties.
I assume all the other Blizzard games suffered a similar drop, which means we're entering a long and difficult rebuilding phase for all Blizzard games. Let's hope the new Microsoft management will have a better understanding of the competitive scene!
I was heavily invested in Mercenaries since the launch -- I did my daily missions every day, all the special events, and I carefully collected all the mercs. I loved that it was nice time-filler game with no PVP pressure; I work from home, and being able to pause a game if I got an urgent email or phone call was great!
However, the fact that there were so *many* missteps along the way was disconcerting, starting from the disastrous and uninformative initial presentation, to all the fumbling regarding progression and unbalanced content (remember when you would need to cancel a run because a Dopplegangster showed up in your path?).
The monetization model was also completely out of whack: 20 bucks for a bunch of useless coins? 25 bucks for a freaking portrait? The only time I spent real money was on the Prelaunch and Welcome bundle; the rest was paid with gold.
Their initial response to the Rattlegore incident was the final straw. It proved to me that Mercenaries is a failed experiment, and will never be considered a priority by Blizzard. I fully expect Mercenaries to go into maintenance mode within a year or two. All the time I dedicated to Mercenaries has now gone to Marvel Snap!, which does everything Mercenaries wants to do, but ten times better and with a team of developers that actually cares.
Galactus is easily my favourite antagonist in the Marvel universe. He knows what he's doing is wrong, but he can't stop because that's the only way for him to survive. The first story I read about him was in the mid-80s, when he comes to Earth after being herald-less for a while. The Fantastic Four team up with the Avengers and many other local heroes to fight off Galactus, and they actually manage to knock him out!
It turns out Galactus was so weak, he was on the verge of dying, and instead of slowly wasting away, he decides to commit "suicide by superhero". Reed Richards deduces all of that, however, and manages to create a temporary energy source to revive Galactus until they find a more permanent solution. Galactus is so grateful he swears he will never again attack Earth.
------------------------------------------
Whether it's for Hearthstone or Marvel SNAP, I always love these deep dives into lore; keep 'em coming!
That being said, I did notice a few typos and grammar mistakes you should probably fix:
SETTING THE SCENE - Ben Grimm: with a short of temper and self-loathing issues Delete "of"
- Alicia Masters: sculptor that's in a relationship "that's" should be "who's"
- Alicia Masters: Ben is constantly worries that she doesn't want to be in a relationship with him or that she dumps him for someone else. "worries" should be "worried" "she dumps him" should be "she will dump him"
ALL ARE INSIGNIFICANT BEFORE GALACTUS - Paragraph 2: Their thoughts are quickly interrupted when they notice the sky is on fire, though Johnny notes that there's heat. I think you dropped the "no" in front of "heat".
- Paragraph 4: big G in his famous full-purple look, but Marvel Unlimied Missing "t" in "Unlimited"
- Paragraph 6: with her contemplating on the value of human life and questioning weather bringing Delete "on" "weather" should be "whether"
- Paragraph 8: At last, Galactus finished his machine "finished" should be "finishes"
GALACTUS WAKES... AND HE HUNGERS - Paragraph 4: where [Snap Card (The Watcher) Not Found] happened to be. I believe the SNAP card is called 'Uatu, the Watcher'
THE SURFER IS BORN SO HIS HOME WORLD MAY LIVE - Paragraph 4: into Galactus' craft, who escaped to the 4th dimension "who escaped" should be "which escapes"
- Paragraph 4: stop the World Devourer, Norrin Rad makes a space-craft... "Rad" should be "Radd"
- Paragraph 6: spare populated worlds form the former's hunger "form" should be "from"
Actually, I haven't seen any Killmongers after playing for about 90 minutes. I saw 2-3 Shang-Chis, though, as well as 2 Elektras, which I thought was a genius idea.
Overall, people don't seem to play different decks to use this location; there was a lot of Leech+Leader, move decks, destroy decks, etc.
The initial tone deaf reaction to the Rattlegore fiasco last week ("Oh, you didn't finish the event in time because we put out incorrect information? Let me change the announcement and not offer any solution to your issue. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!") has killed any remaining interest I had in this game mode.
I know they eventually walked back and said they would implement a solution, it's still another example in a long string of issues that have plagued Mercenaries since before it even launched (anyone remember the confusing and unhelpful "First Look" video they put out?) To me, it's become clear that Mercenaries will always be an afterthought for Team 5, and I don't intend to waste any more time on it.
I commented on this elsewhere, but it looks like Medivh's Unstable Rune can cancel your own team's effects -- which would be the only way it isn't completely and utterly busted.
That's the first thing I noticed about that treasure. It's very good in certain boss encounters, but considering that your team acts first in most situations -- especially with the change to initiative ties from earlier this year --, I expect Medivh and his Unstable Runes will be reserved as a counter to specific bosses that will remain on your bench during your climb.
I really like that the designers have increased the complexity of the mercenaries, with creative interactions with the bench that work in PvE and in PvP.
I do wish the game mode was solely focused on PvE -- we already have five other modes based on PvP; we didn't need a sixth one.
I completely agree! When you look at it objectively, every iteration of their economic system has been a notable improvement on their preceding model, and I think most of the complaints come from players who don't understand the underlying philosophy of Snap, and how it differs from previous digital card games. Snap is fundamentally a collection game, and while you can accelerate your progression a little bit by spending money, you mostly need to play the game to achieve higher levels of success.
Snap is also unparalleled in its balance passes: which other company would commit to regular patches 3 weeks out of 4? And these include nerfs to overperforming cards AND buffs to underutilized ones. Snowguard is a perfect example: it went from unpredictable and useless to a format staple!
Also, to the original poster complaining about not receiving compensation for a changed card: have you never read the warning that appears when you purchase a card with tokens? It clearly states that you will not receive any refunds for any modification which might occur later on.
Sera in Surfer decks has been on the decline for a few weeks, in favour of more pro-active cards like Spider-Man. Hit Monkey would be at best a 3/8 in the shell you propose; while the new versions of Nakia, and especially Magik, offer a lot of upsides for that deck.
Magik is now an all-star card for combo decks and control decks that are looking to extend the game as much as possible to give them a greater chance of drawing their big bombs. I expect Limbo to soon be the second most frequent location in the game after Flooded.
I expected that Galactus would continue to use Spider-Man, since the change has no impact to their common pattern of Wave on 3, Galactus on 4 and Spider-Man on 5, but none of the 8 or so Galactus decks I saw today (ranks 75-80) played him.
As for Lockdown High Evolutionary -- my favourite at the moment -- I replaced Spider-Man with Stegron and Sunspot with Jeff the Baby Land Shark for a nice suprise on turn 6 if Hulk seems too risky.
Given all the conversations that have been going on since he was datamined, I predict The High Evolutionary will be the most popular day 1 purchase since the Token Shop has been implemented. He opens up at least 2 archetypes, and people are excited to try him out!
The header image for this article is for Wakandan Embassy, not Wakanda.
As always, thanks for keeping up to date with everything that happens in Snap!
I seem to be in the minority, but I really enjoy their card release system -- the most fun I had was finishing Series 2 and early Series 3, where I would take my far-from-optimal deck and faced similarly janky brews.
In particular, the acquisition rate once you're finished with Series 2 is great, even if you're completely free-to-play. Since you're getting 5-6 cards every month, you can still outpace their release schedule of 1 card per week.
Finally, while the change to the Series 3 shop is theoretically worse than before, in practice, it's the opposite. I only bought 0-1 card per month while working through Series 3, so getting a card PLUS tokens would have been awesome.
One of the developers provided important details on Twitter about this over the weekend. You will no longer be able to buy Series 3 cards from the shop, only Series 4-5 cards, meaning your free monthly Series 3 selection will be the only way to pick up specific cards from that group.
This is slightly worse than the present situation. While you're working through Series 3, you currently gain enough tokens in a month to get one Series 3 card -- so that part is functionally the same in the new system. However, you get 3,000 tokens when you initially unlock the Token Shop, or the equivalent of three Series 3 cards. That will no longer be possible.
In all other card games, the test of your skill is dealing with the variance of your deck, and how it matches up with what your opponent is doing. That's not the case with Snap, since you'll see 75% of your deck in most matches. That's why the random locations are so important in this game: that's where the variance comes into play. It looks like Second Dinner finally realized that removing that variance 3 days out of the week was a bad idea.
I believe Iron Maiden is referencing two things with the title of this tour:
1) "Days of Future Passed" is an influential album by the Moody Blues that came out in the late '60s. It was one of the first concept album ever, and is often cited as marking the beginning of progressive rock.
2) "Days of Future Past" is an iconic arc in X-Men comics that came out in the early '80s (that explains the old TV, public warning approach and general vibe in the Snap video). It tells the story of an alternate future ruled by Sentinels where Kitty Pryde travels back in time to the "present" to try to prevent the events that will stoke antimutant hysteria.
It took me a minute to figure out why Camp Lehigh gives you a 3 drop: it's because Captain America is one. :)
The Shadow King also had a prominent role outside of comics fairly recently, because he was the main villain in the "Legion" TV series that ran a few years back. He was brilliantly played by Audrey Plaza in the first 2 seasons of the show.
Sidenote: You consistently misspelled the dimension where the Shadow King exists -- it's the "astral plane" (as in "plane of existence"), not the homophone "plain".
I hope that the "suit" responsible for accepting the Google/Yahoo deal was laid off -- they clearly didn't understand how eSports culture works, and just opted for the short-term gains to the detriment of the long-term health of Blizzard's properties.
I assume all the other Blizzard games suffered a similar drop, which means we're entering a long and difficult rebuilding phase for all Blizzard games. Let's hope the new Microsoft management will have a better understanding of the competitive scene!
I was heavily invested in Mercenaries since the launch -- I did my daily missions every day, all the special events, and I carefully collected all the mercs. I loved that it was nice time-filler game with no PVP pressure; I work from home, and being able to pause a game if I got an urgent email or phone call was great!
However, the fact that there were so *many* missteps along the way was disconcerting, starting from the disastrous and uninformative initial presentation, to all the fumbling regarding progression and unbalanced content (remember when you would need to cancel a run because a Dopplegangster showed up in your path?).
The monetization model was also completely out of whack: 20 bucks for a bunch of useless coins? 25 bucks for a freaking portrait? The only time I spent real money was on the Prelaunch and Welcome bundle; the rest was paid with gold.
Their initial response to the Rattlegore incident was the final straw. It proved to me that Mercenaries is a failed experiment, and will never be considered a priority by Blizzard. I fully expect Mercenaries to go into maintenance mode within a year or two. All the time I dedicated to Mercenaries has now gone to Marvel Snap!, which does everything Mercenaries wants to do, but ten times better and with a team of developers that actually cares.
Galactus is easily my favourite antagonist in the Marvel universe. He knows what he's doing is wrong, but he can't stop because that's the only way for him to survive. The first story I read about him was in the mid-80s, when he comes to Earth after being herald-less for a while. The Fantastic Four team up with the Avengers and many other local heroes to fight off Galactus, and they actually manage to knock him out!
It turns out Galactus was so weak, he was on the verge of dying, and instead of slowly wasting away, he decides to commit "suicide by superhero". Reed Richards deduces all of that, however, and manages to create a temporary energy source to revive Galactus until they find a more permanent solution. Galactus is so grateful he swears he will never again attack Earth.
------------------------------------------
Whether it's for Hearthstone or Marvel SNAP, I always love these deep dives into lore; keep 'em coming!
That being said, I did notice a few typos and grammar mistakes you should probably fix:
SETTING THE SCENE
- Ben Grimm: with a short of temper and self-loathing issues
Delete "of"
- Alicia Masters: sculptor that's in a relationship
"that's" should be "who's"
- Alicia Masters: Ben is constantly worries that she doesn't want to be in a relationship with him or that she dumps him for someone else.
"worries" should be "worried"
"she dumps him" should be "she will dump him"
ALL ARE INSIGNIFICANT BEFORE GALACTUS
- Paragraph 2: Their thoughts are quickly interrupted when they notice the sky is on fire, though Johnny notes that there's heat.
I think you dropped the "no" in front of "heat".
- Paragraph 4: big G in his famous full-purple look, but Marvel Unlimied
Missing "t" in "Unlimited"
- Paragraph 6: with her contemplating on the value of human life and questioning weather bringing
Delete "on"
"weather" should be "whether"
- Paragraph 8: At last, Galactus finished his machine
"finished" should be "finishes"
GALACTUS WAKES... AND HE HUNGERS
- Paragraph 4: where [Snap Card (The Watcher) Not Found] happened to be.
I believe the SNAP card is called 'Uatu, the Watcher'
THE SURFER IS BORN SO HIS HOME WORLD MAY LIVE
- Paragraph 4: into Galactus' craft, who escaped to the 4th dimension
"who escaped" should be "which escapes"
- Paragraph 4: stop the World Devourer, Norrin Rad makes a space-craft...
"Rad" should be "Radd"
- Paragraph 6: spare populated worlds form the former's hunger
"form" should be "from"
Actually, I haven't seen any Killmongers after playing for about 90 minutes. I saw 2-3 Shang-Chis, though, as well as 2 Elektras, which I thought was a genius idea.
Overall, people don't seem to play different decks to use this location; there was a lot of Leech+Leader, move decks, destroy decks, etc.
The initial tone deaf reaction to the Rattlegore fiasco last week ("Oh, you didn't finish the event in time because we put out incorrect information? Let me change the announcement and not offer any solution to your issue. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!") has killed any remaining interest I had in this game mode.
I know they eventually walked back and said they would implement a solution, it's still another example in a long string of issues that have plagued Mercenaries since before it even launched (anyone remember the confusing and unhelpful "First Look" video they put out?) To me, it's become clear that Mercenaries will always be an afterthought for Team 5, and I don't intend to waste any more time on it.
Aggressive pirate rogue is working pretty well for me. People don't tech against weapons and play very few taunts.
### Brawl Deck
# Class: Rogue
# Format: Wild
#
# 2x (1) Buccaneer
# 2x (1) Filletfighter
# 1x (1) Patches the Pirate
# 2x (1) Southsea Deckhand
# 2x (2) Bloodsail Howler
# 2x (2) Cavern Shinyfinder
# 2x (2) Parachute Brigand
# 2x (2) Ship's Cannon
# 2x (3) Cutlass Courier
# 2x (3) Pufferfist
# 2x (3) Raiding Party
# 2x (3) Shady Dealer
# 2x (3) Southsea Captain
# 2x (3) Swordfish
# 2x (4) Dread Corsair
# 1x (7) Mr. Smite
#
AAEBAZurBAKRvAK/gAQO1AXuBvsP0BXl0QKuhQPVjAPpsAOvoASKsASKyQT90wSY2wSa2wQA
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
Here's my suggestion for the first part. You should be able to complete it in one game:
### Discover Hunter
# Class: Hunter
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Hydra
#
# 2x (1) Peasant
# 2x (1) Tracking
# 2x (2) Amalgam of the Deep
# 2x (2) Doggie Biscuit
# 1x (2) Murkwater Scribe
# 2x (2) Selective Breeder
# 2x (3) Harpoon Gun
# 1x (3) Ramming Mount
# 2x (3) Revive Pet
# 2x (4) Azsharan Saber
# 2x (4) School Teacher
# 2x (4) Warsong Wrangler
# 2x (5) Pet Collector
# 1x (6) Beaststalker Tavish
# 1x (6) Defense Attorney Nathanos
# 1x (7) Hydralodon
# 2x (7) Mountain Bear
# 1x (9) King Krush
#
AAECAbv5AwbF+wPbkQThnwTtsQTnuQTE7QQM6ukD8OwD9PYDw4AEqZ8E16ME5aQEwKwElrcEwLkEssEEg8gEAA==
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
That's the first thing I noticed about that treasure. It's very good in certain boss encounters, but considering that your team acts first in most situations -- especially with the change to initiative ties from earlier this year --, I expect Medivh and his Unstable Runes will be reserved as a counter to specific bosses that will remain on your bench during your climb.
I really like that the designers have increased the complexity of the mercenaries, with creative interactions with the bench that work in PvE and in PvP.
I do wish the game mode was solely focused on PvE -- we already have five other modes based on PvP; we didn't need a sixth one.