It's very easy to win games when you're still mostly just facing pool 1. New players, simple mechanics.
You'll discover that both cards and decisions matter a whole lot more as your collection level progresses. It becomes much less "just poker" and much more about properly predicting what your opponent is going to do.
And if you want 8 cubes, basically ever, you have to be able to surprise your opponent in some fashion. Otherwise, they will retreat.
Isn't poker about predicting what your opponents will do
Sure, and you can even win Texas Hold'em with a terribad hand, since you never have to show your cards if your opponents all fold.
But in Snap, the only way you get 8 cubes, or even 4 cubes, is by BOTH properly predicting your opponent's move AND also actually winning.
Because if they fold, you only get 1 cube, which definitely doesn't count as "winning" - unlike how it would be in poker.
LoR is in a much better place than Snap, despite the fact that Snap only just launched. I'll briefly explain why.
1- There is inherently just way too much randomness in terms of locations -- this is intended, so the game is fun and exciting. However, it makes it nearly impossible to have a pro competitive scene. Too much chance that your deck just can't play due to the locations.
2- You kinda hit on this slightly, but you have no idea just how many cards in the game are "problematic" in the way that Killmonger and Leader are problematic. I'd say they printed at minimum 10 cards that should never have been printed.
3- The structure of Snap is such that you really just need to build a proactive deck and accomplish your game plan, while psyching out your opponent enough to win the cubes. The game concept should NOT allow for hard control to be a thing. But due to the types of cards you mentioned (Leader and Killmonger, and at least 15 others), it is entirely viable to just build a deck of hard control, where your only game plan is to negate your opponent's game plan. And it actually works.
4- The game just gets old and stale after a while. It's too samey, even despite all of the location RNG.
Anyways, #3 is the reason the game will fail. They made fundamental, fatal mistakes in some of their card choices. They printed WAAAAAAAY too many direct counterplay cards for this style of game, and it will bite them in the butt HARD when these hyped up new players discover that.
It's very easy to win games when you're still mostly just facing pool 1. New players, simple mechanics.
You'll discover that both cards and decisions matter a whole lot more as your collection level progresses. It becomes much less "just poker" and much more about properly predicting what your opponent is going to do.
And if you want 8 cubes, basically ever, you have to be able to surprise your opponent in some fashion. Otherwise, they will retreat.
When I unlock my final card. (Which is iceman because the game hated me), until I unlock my first pool 3 card, will I be matched against pool 3 players with my pool 2 cards?
Why does the game hate you for Iceman being your last card? He's not exactly a top notch staple in ... like ... any deck that I know of.
Aside from the "Hate Pile" decks that dominate pool 3.
If Ego comes up as a location, pretty sure it means the opponent has Agatha in the deck. I don't think it can even spawn if there is no Agatha in the game.
It's super rare for it to ever come up, in any case.
I took my first account up to 2200+ collection level, and I saw Ego less than 5 times total.
No, I watched 6 Agatha games, and Ego was in none of them. Its appearance is not related to the cards in your deck. It appeared because I played Scarlet Witch. (That girl has been ruining my games lately.)
I saw him last week and the opponent didn't have Agatha either. (Btw, who makes the decisions between Agatha and Ego?)
OK, fair enough. I don't even remember where I saw someone connecting Agatha and Ego as having a causal relationship. I did just look up Ego as a location and it's "Ultra rare," which fits with my experience. No need to plan moves around it or build your deck with it in mind.
Side note - I read an interesting article from someone who is just farming boosters and new cards using Agatha and not even paying attention to his games. Just taps through the games while doing other things. And based on his comments, it seems like Agatha is MUCH more competent than Ego at playing your cards. Ego appears to be 100% random. Agatha seems to have some basic grasp of game mechanics, though.
talk about how every single streamer has left for marvel snap
I guarantee they won't stay with Snap. I played the game up until collection level 2200, and it gets absurdly annoying up there. Second Dinner printed waaaaaaay too many "screw you" counter cards. It is a completely viable and effective strategy to play a deck that has absolutely no wincon of its own - it just completely shuts down any wincon your opponent might be trying to achieve.
And way more than half of the players in the upper tiers are playing those kinds of decks. I literally started a new account so I could enjoy the game again.
When the streamers get up to those higher collection levels and have to face nothing but "screw you" decks ... over ... and over ... and over ... and over ... they will stop playing.
Nifty, I don't think there are nearly as many players as you think in this game (and especially not in this forum) who play hard control decks with all draw and no wincon. It seems like most of your rants go off on that sort of player - who doesn't really even exist.
A cursory look over the current list of best decks on Mastering Runeterra shows that they literally all "do something." So, umm, yeah - I guess good decks are decks that actually do something. Also, fresh snow is white. And water is wet. And fire is hot.
For the record, what I posted was not a tier list. It was just meta stats. So, it only shows what people are playing most, not what is actually performing well.
Edit - For the list of the best-performing decks currently, this guy has the lowdown on that: Best Decks Nov 22
With all that being said, I'm still kicking people's butts with Privateers, aka MF/Swain. It's hilarious to see people flail about trying to handle two or three Leviathans.
If Ego comes up as a location, pretty sure it means the opponent has Agatha in the deck. I don't think it can even spawn if there is no Agatha in the game.
It's super rare for it to ever come up, in any case.
I took my first account up to 2200+ collection level, and I saw Ego less than 5 times total.
Every now and again I just can't fathom why I've lost the game.
I'm going to assume that you won a location, lost a location, and tied the third location. If that's true, then the tiebreaker comes down to who won their location by a larger margin.
E.G. - Player A wins location 1 with 10 points more than player B. Player B wins location 2 with 5 points more than Player A. They tie location 3. This means that Player A has a higher total score, and thus wins the game.
Why the heck are you even going to mobalytics anymore? Ever since the fiasco with Swim, the site has been a joke. Honestly, it wasn't even very good when he was still around.
If by "tiebreaker" you mean - we each won a location and tied in the third location - then here is your answer:
The person who has a higher overall total point value is the winner.
Visually, this means that your winning location had a broader point difference than your losing location. E.g. you lost one location by 5, but you won the other location by 10.
There is more RNG now than there was when I made the comment.
But you didn't quote the entire section there - I specifically said that a lot of RNG comes from the locations. And obviously some of the cards have randomness built in. However, cards like Gambit will not always be random - like if the opponent only has one card, or only a few cards and all of them are valuable.
Only an idiot plays Morph, by the way.
Edit - all of that being said, I've had enough of Snap, personally. I got into the 2200+ Collection Level, and the vast majority of my opponents were just playing brain-dead BS counter-decks. Like, their entire deck is nothing but "screw you" cards. Example: One of my favorite decks requires killing off some units. So, I would set up my kill location, but the dying cards have low value, so I would usually not have priority for flipping. So, guess which card would nearly always come down on my opponent's side on the same turn I try to kill off my units? You guessed it - Armor. Or maybe they would switch it up and have Cosmo instead. Same difference. Almost every. Single. Time. Or if not that, they Shang-Chi my Death. So, maybe I switch to playing a Zoo deck with the Ongoing theme - it doesn't care about Armor, Cosmo, or Shang-Chi, so it should have better luck, right? Nope- in that case, they will have Enchantress for sure. Or the card that steals an ongoing ability, forget the name. And they always have Green Goblin and often Hobgoblin as well. Or else Professor X.
Most of the player base apparently loves winning the higher levels of Snap by just driving their opponent up the wall with frustration, while playing decks that don't have a wincon other than screwing over your opponent.
Got old enough that I'm done with the game. If I ever come back to it again, I'm starting with a fresh account, so I don't have to play against all that junk.
I just made an updated version of my Deathwave deck. It's been optimized quite a bit over previous postings of it (meaning it's probably waaaay out of range for most people here, but all depends on how your luck goes in pool 3).
Although people's fondness for Angela or Cable surprises me to some extent.
If you put Angela down first in a location you intend to fill, she could become a 2/7 or even a 2/9 if you move a Nightcrawler out. She's a very efficient play most of the time.
Cable is sacrificing 1-Power off the vanilla in exchange for a card, providing you a resource, potentially denying them one, and you get some information as well ("I just took their America Chavez, so she can't be drawn/played on 6". He was supposedly super worth it in the beta as a 2/3, but I still think he's a fine card as a 2/2.
Personally, of that list, I don't care for Namor or Bishop. Namor is fine but I don't usually put just the one card in a location I plan to win. Bishop, meanwhile, is not good if you only play for curve: he'd be a 3/4 if you play a 4-drop, 5-drop, and 6-drop. He needs a swarm of lower-cost cards to really build up *shrugs*
Yeah, the list I put there is aimed at new players. Several or most of the cards in that list get replaced in pools 2 and 3, as decklists become much more specialized.
Edit - I probably should have included Sentinel in the original list. He's super solid as a card that you can just play over and over and over.
My personal favorite deck is called Deathwave. It has Death and Wave in it, but it will take new players quite a while to get those cards. It's a combo deck. You play Wave on turn 5 and then you play Death + something else big on turn 6, allowing you to play two very large cards when your opponent can only play one. This works because Death's discount applies after Wave's effect. So, as long as two or more cards have been destroyed by anyone before turn 6, Death will cost 2 or less, allowing you to play her alongside another powerful card. If you have Odin, you can play Wave on turn 4, then Odin to make her reveal happen again, then Death etc on turn 6.
These are some common inclusions in the deck:
Cost 1 less for each card destroyed this game.On Reveal: All cards cost 4 until the end of next turn.On Reveal: Activate the On Reveal abilities of your other cards at this location.On Reveal: Destroy your other cards here. +2 Power for each destroyed.On Reveal: Destroy your other cards at this location.On Reveal: Destroy ALL 1-Cost cards.When this is destroyed, replace it with the Winter Soldier.On Reveal: Remove the top card of your opponent’s deck.
You know, I'm not usually big on saying I told you so, but .......
Sure, and you can even win Texas Hold'em with a terribad hand, since you never have to show your cards if your opponents all fold.
But in Snap, the only way you get 8 cubes, or even 4 cubes, is by BOTH properly predicting your opponent's move AND also actually winning.
Because if they fold, you only get 1 cube, which definitely doesn't count as "winning" - unlike how it would be in poker.
Most players crying in pool 1 or pool 2.
LoR is in a much better place than Snap, despite the fact that Snap only just launched. I'll briefly explain why.
1- There is inherently just way too much randomness in terms of locations -- this is intended, so the game is fun and exciting. However, it makes it nearly impossible to have a pro competitive scene. Too much chance that your deck just can't play due to the locations.
2- You kinda hit on this slightly, but you have no idea just how many cards in the game are "problematic" in the way that Killmonger and Leader are problematic. I'd say they printed at minimum 10 cards that should never have been printed.
3- The structure of Snap is such that you really just need to build a proactive deck and accomplish your game plan, while psyching out your opponent enough to win the cubes. The game concept should NOT allow for hard control to be a thing. But due to the types of cards you mentioned (Leader and Killmonger, and at least 15 others), it is entirely viable to just build a deck of hard control, where your only game plan is to negate your opponent's game plan. And it actually works.
4- The game just gets old and stale after a while. It's too samey, even despite all of the location RNG.
Anyways, #3 is the reason the game will fail. They made fundamental, fatal mistakes in some of their card choices. They printed WAAAAAAAY too many direct counterplay cards for this style of game, and it will bite them in the butt HARD when these hyped up new players discover that.
This is not really true at all after you graduate from pool 1, but I'm sure you'll realize that soon enough.
It's very easy to win games when you're still mostly just facing pool 1. New players, simple mechanics.
You'll discover that both cards and decisions matter a whole lot more as your collection level progresses. It becomes much less "just poker" and much more about properly predicting what your opponent is going to do.
And if you want 8 cubes, basically ever, you have to be able to surprise your opponent in some fashion. Otherwise, they will retreat.
Why does the game hate you for Iceman being your last card? He's not exactly a top notch staple in ... like ... any deck that I know of.
Aside from the "Hate Pile" decks that dominate pool 3.
OK, fair enough. I don't even remember where I saw someone connecting Agatha and Ego as having a causal relationship. I did just look up Ego as a location and it's "Ultra rare," which fits with my experience. No need to plan moves around it or build your deck with it in mind.
Side note - I read an interesting article from someone who is just farming boosters and new cards using Agatha and not even paying attention to his games. Just taps through the games while doing other things. And based on his comments, it seems like Agatha is MUCH more competent than Ego at playing your cards. Ego appears to be 100% random. Agatha seems to have some basic grasp of game mechanics, though.
I guarantee they won't stay with Snap. I played the game up until collection level 2200, and it gets absurdly annoying up there. Second Dinner printed waaaaaaay too many "screw you" counter cards. It is a completely viable and effective strategy to play a deck that has absolutely no wincon of its own - it just completely shuts down any wincon your opponent might be trying to achieve.
And way more than half of the players in the upper tiers are playing those kinds of decks. I literally started a new account so I could enjoy the game again.
When the streamers get up to those higher collection levels and have to face nothing but "screw you" decks ... over ... and over ... and over ... and over ... they will stop playing.
Nifty, I don't think there are nearly as many players as you think in this game (and especially not in this forum) who play hard control decks with all draw and no wincon. It seems like most of your rants go off on that sort of player - who doesn't really even exist.
A cursory look over the current list of best decks on Mastering Runeterra shows that they literally all "do something." So, umm, yeah - I guess good decks are decks that actually do something. Also, fresh snow is white. And water is wet. And fire is hot.
For the record, what I posted was not a tier list. It was just meta stats. So, it only shows what people are playing most, not what is actually performing well.
Edit - For the list of the best-performing decks currently, this guy has the lowdown on that: Best Decks Nov 22
With all that being said, I'm still kicking people's butts with Privateers, aka MF/Swain. It's hilarious to see people flail about trying to handle two or three Leviathans.
If Ego comes up as a location, pretty sure it means the opponent has Agatha in the deck. I don't think it can even spawn if there is no Agatha in the game.
It's super rare for it to ever come up, in any case.
I took my first account up to 2200+ collection level, and I saw Ego less than 5 times total.
I'm going to assume that you won a location, lost a location, and tied the third location. If that's true, then the tiebreaker comes down to who won their location by a larger margin.
E.G. - Player A wins location 1 with 10 points more than player B. Player B wins location 2 with 5 points more than Player A. They tie location 3. This means that Player A has a higher total score, and thus wins the game.
Why the heck are you even going to mobalytics anymore? Ever since the fiasco with Swim, the site has been a joke. Honestly, it wasn't even very good when he was still around.
Masteringruneterra.com/meta-stats/ is where you should be looking. Just forget mobalytics ever existed.
If by "tiebreaker" you mean - we each won a location and tied in the third location - then here is your answer:
The person who has a higher overall total point value is the winner.
Visually, this means that your winning location had a broader point difference than your losing location. E.g. you lost one location by 5, but you won the other location by 10.
There is more RNG now than there was when I made the comment.
But you didn't quote the entire section there - I specifically said that a lot of RNG comes from the locations. And obviously some of the cards have randomness built in. However, cards like Gambit will not always be random - like if the opponent only has one card, or only a few cards and all of them are valuable.
Only an idiot plays Morph, by the way.
Edit - all of that being said, I've had enough of Snap, personally. I got into the 2200+ Collection Level, and the vast majority of my opponents were just playing brain-dead BS counter-decks. Like, their entire deck is nothing but "screw you" cards. Example: One of my favorite decks requires killing off some units. So, I would set up my kill location, but the dying cards have low value, so I would usually not have priority for flipping. So, guess which card would nearly always come down on my opponent's side on the same turn I try to kill off my units? You guessed it - Armor. Or maybe they would switch it up and have Cosmo instead. Same difference. Almost every. Single. Time. Or if not that, they Shang-Chi my Death. So, maybe I switch to playing a Zoo deck with the Ongoing theme - it doesn't care about Armor, Cosmo, or Shang-Chi, so it should have better luck, right? Nope- in that case, they will have Enchantress for sure. Or the card that steals an ongoing ability, forget the name. And they always have Green Goblin and often Hobgoblin as well. Or else Professor X.
Most of the player base apparently loves winning the higher levels of Snap by just driving their opponent up the wall with frustration, while playing decks that don't have a wincon other than screwing over your opponent.
Got old enough that I'm done with the game. If I ever come back to it again, I'm starting with a fresh account, so I don't have to play against all that junk.
You can get boosters for them randomly from reward chests as well.
I just made an updated version of my Deathwave deck. It's been optimized quite a bit over previous postings of it (meaning it's probably waaaay out of range for most people here, but all depends on how your luck goes in pool 3).
Also tossing in my version of Zoo and Ultron, if anyone wants to see those:
Yeah, the list I put there is aimed at new players. Several or most of the cards in that list get replaced in pools 2 and 3, as decklists become much more specialized.
Edit - I probably should have included Sentinel in the original list. He's super solid as a card that you can just play over and over and over.
My personal favorite deck is called Deathwave. It has Death and Wave in it, but it will take new players quite a while to get those cards. It's a combo deck. You play Wave on turn 5 and then you play Death + something else big on turn 6, allowing you to play two very large cards when your opponent can only play one. This works because Death's discount applies after Wave's effect. So, as long as two or more cards have been destroyed by anyone before turn 6, Death will cost 2 or less, allowing you to play her alongside another powerful card. If you have Odin, you can play Wave on turn 4, then Odin to make her reveal happen again, then Death etc on turn 6.
These are some common inclusions in the deck: