March 21st Balance Changes, Variants, and more.
Let's get right into it!
Friendly reminder that you can now claim 1 free s3 card per month. Even if you were s3-complete yesterday, after the downrank, you are able to claim a free s3 right away. The downranks this month were as follows:
s5 to s4:
- Zabu
- Sauron
- Shanna
- Dazzler
- Shadow King
s4 to s3:
- M'baku
- Orka
- Attuma
Snap.fan Schedule
Snap.fan has a schedule page, where you can see all the scheduled bundles, series5 releases and more! If you want to know the series-5 release schedule, I will also include it here (but in the future, use that schedule page!):
- March 21 - Negasonic Teenage Warhead
- March 28 - Kitty Pryde
- April 4 - Hit-Monkey
- April 11 - Jeff the Baby Land Shark
- April 18 - Snowguard
- April 25 - Stegron
- May 2 - Nebula
- May 9 - Iron Lad
- May 16 - Howard the Duck
- May 23 - High Evolutionary
- May 30 - The Living Tribunal
To see what newst of these cards do, scroll down (otherwise go to https://snap.fan/cards/ and check the "Unreleased" box).
Balance Changes
The nerfs -
- Thanos [6/11] to [6/10]
I don't think this does much, at all. A lot of people didn't care about the buff to 11 power, and so this is a bit odd. SD admits that stones are more critical than Thanos...
- Space Stone On Reveal: Next turn, you can move one card to this location. Draw a card.
So this just changes the direction of Space Stone, basically ruining its interaction with Lockjaw (instead of moving Lockjaw to a fresh lane...moving a card into the Lockjaw lane is opposite to what you'd generally want to do). It's a decent way to hit that interaction, but this alone would leave Thanos strong, but...
- Quinjet Now reduces costs to a minimum of 1.
Good change. Mostly hits Thanos. Thanos is still a playable deck I think, but this puts it in line with other decks.
- Red Skull [5/13] - Ongoing: Enemy cards at this location have +1 Power.
So Red Skull loses 2 power and his ongoing becomes a little less of a drawback. With Shuri, that means he loses 4 power himself, and another 4 if Taskmaster is the followup. This also makes Sauron a little less critical, and at the end of the day, this is actually a potential BUFF to Red Skull when played without Shuri (which some Electro/Sandman decks were doing).
- She-Hulk [6/10] to [6/9].
Good change, she was a bit overtuned in a number of decks, not just Shuri or Thanos.
- Aero [5/8] - On Reveal: Move the last enemy card played this turn to this location.
So she gains 1 power back, but doesn't move all cards. A lot of people are saying she is dead, but I truly do not think she is. Instead of being a blanket "yea, play this in every deck", she now is a counter to various strategies (the Shuri ones and Galactus for example) and also has some of her own synergies unhurt (Sandman). I think she will be a healthy, yet still solid card.
- Mystique, Absorbing Man, and Taskmaster - These cards now require the previously played card to be in play in order to copy its attributes.
Their text has also been updated to make that clear.
Knull no longer updates power in deck (does in hand). Morbius no longer updates in hand or deck...not sure why they aren't the same, but whatever.
New datamined cards
Entirely new archetype for Wasp, Misty Knight, Shocker, Cyclops, The Thing, Abomination, and Hulk. And this reads like it works passively without playing the card. Sounds cool to me! The Evolved cards are:
Wasp: Evolved - On Reveal: Afflict 2 random enemy cards here with -1 Power.
Misty Knight: Evolved - When you end a turn with unspent Energy, give another friendly card +1 Power.
Shocker: Evolved - On Reveal: Give the leftmost card in your hand -1 Cost.
Cyclops: Evolved - When you end a turn with unspent Energy, afflict 2 random enemies here with -1 Power.
The Thing: Evolved - On Reveal: Afflict a random enemy card here with -1 Power. Repeat this twice more.
Abomination: Evolved - Costs 1 less for each enemy card in play that's afflicted with negative Power.
Hulk: Evolved - Ongoing: +2 Power for each turn you ended with unspent Energy.
Speaking of Nebula, May Season is...
New Bundles
WOOO, Token Tuesdays extended til the end of May. I love to see that at least. Will hopefully get a full analysis up in a day or 2 (but there's not a ton new here outside of TT). For those that are mainly interested in Tokens, the short thing here is that if you do not have enough gold for all of it, you can skip out on the cheaper bundles - generally, you are paying a 50 gold premium to otherwise get a 1:1 ratio on tokens and gold.
New Variants
New Variants to Game
