The Deck That Won the World Qualifier! | Why Polaris Fails in Affliction | The Snap Chat Ep. 177

This week, Alex is joined by top-ranked player and Golden Gauntlet World Qualifier winner: Coougarrr! The duo kicks things off by breaking down Cougar’s incredible undefeated tournament run using a surprise Hydro Stomper deck, proving that off-meta tech choices can win championships.

Want to climb the ranks? Cougar shares his Top 6 Laddering Tips for hitting High Infinite, including how to detach your ego from retreating, identifying missing roles in the meta, and why mastering a single deck is better than constantly switching.

Next, they dive into a massive OTA Balance Patch Review. Alex and Cougar discuss the targeted nerfs to Moon Dragon and Chamber, the 1.3% play rate of the newly buffed Wolverine, and why Alex is absolutely loving the Techno Organic Virus. Plus, they declare an "ugly variant protest" until Second Dinner finally gives Captain Marvel the buff she deserves.

Finally, it’s time for new card reviews! They break down why the Objective mechanic on Polaris tragically ruins her synergy with Malkuth in Affliction decks. Then, they hype up Mother Askani, an incredible 4.5-star release that buffs and copies your hand, setting up insane combos for Sebastian Shaw, Daken, and Victoria Hand.

Join Alex Coccia and special guest Coougarrr as they chat about this and more on this episode of The Snap Chat—and catch Cozy and Alex every week as they discuss all things Marvel Snap.

You’ve been listening to The Snap Chat. Keep the conversation going on x.com/ACozyGamer and x.com/AlexanderCoccia. Until next time, happy snapping!

Transcript

Alex 0:00

Hey everyone and welcome to the next edition of the Snapchat, and this week I have with us one of the top players in Marvel Snap, a tournament winner, constant competitor. And it's Cougar. Cougar. It's great to finally have you on the Snapchat. You're someone that I've wanted to have on for the longest time because you are legitimately one of the top players in the game. And just before we recorded, you actually apologized to me. You're like, Hey Alex. Sorry. I'm not actually as high ranked as I usually am. I'm only top 200. I'm like. Bro, like, do you realize there's like millions of people that play this game? You are remarkably high ranked. And, uh, first of all, I wanna welcome you to the Snapchat and ask you how you're doing.

Coougarrr 0:35

Yeah, dude. Thank you for having me on. I've been, such a long time listener. When I first started out playing the game, the first pieces of content that I started finding on YouTube was you and Cozy on the Snapchat and watching both your channels. So it's really like a full circle moment to be on myself. It's really cool. But yeah, it's a, a bit of a privilege. Point of view saying top 200 isn't that high of a rank. But I, I do still try to compete. I've, uh, I've had a little bit of a switch though lately where I've, I've been putting more of a focus on having fun.

Alex 1:04

You know what, that's what you have to do. We're gonna talk about like laddering tips and some like ideas of how like you can compete.'cause you've obviously experienced that. But I think that you're touching on something incredibly important. Marvel Snap. A game and we can take from that game, whatever we choose. If you are someone who's driven by results, driven by competition, then absolutely I'm happy that you have that outlet in Snap, right through the golden gauntlet, through the ranking process. If you're someone who likes to cook and just, you know, kind of, uh, see how things work and see how things go and try to be creative, you absolutely have that outlet as well. And I think that's one of the things that like. Early on in my Snap career I struggled with as well. Like I just want to be, you know, as competitive as I could and I had some good tournament results and stuff like that. Did you ever hear about the time I brought she Hulk to a tournament? But long story short, the idea here is that like, I love the idea that you're saying I wanna go back. To having fun and that's what you find important, despite the fact that you are highly capable of getting to rank one on the ladder if you so choose.

Coougarrr 2:01

No, I think that's super true. Like even speaking outside of myself, I have some friends like Jimmy Dickens or but that the community would be familiar with. Who are these similar players that where they have. Good tournament success. They've been to the tops of the ladder, but then after, you know, they've been there for a while and they've competed and they've done it, they start falling back in and just try to play the game how they enjoy more so than anything.

Alex 2:25

Yeah, absolutely. And just to give you guys a breakdown of what we're gonna be discussing today from a topic perspective, I'd like to go on to like your, uh, experience competing in tournaments, which you've had fantastic results in. We're gonna do an OTA breakdown, we're gonna talk about laddering tips. We're gonna talk about archangel Polaris, and of course Mother Ani, who I think is gonna be a fantastic card in Marvel Snap. And so let's start with that. Let's start with the, uh, the competing in tournaments part, not something that, uh, you know, I got most familiar with. Uh, your content because of the fact that you are a tremendously successful player. So why don't you take us through kind of, um, first of all, your experience in Golden Gauntlet, your results in Golden Gauntlet, and then from there maybe we'll discuss how you prepare for something like a golden gauntlet.

Coougarrr 3:05

Yeah. Yeah, so I think talking about my tournament experience would have to start with actually the Snap Judgments League ran by Pulse glazer. I started competing in there just for fun in their Patreon tier, and I've had a, a really good amount of success there. I don't remember what I placed my first couple of times, but that kind of got me familiar with, you know, playing more conquests and thinking about, you know, what, what do you need to do differently from. Ladder to a tournament and then when Marvel Snap, you know, announced that they're gonna do these official tournaments, I was like, this is so hype. Like that's what a lot of the top infinite players have been wanting. Like a way to get out there, do some skill expression and compete for some big in-game rewards and. Even though I am one of the more decorated players to participate in Golden Gauntlet, it didn't really start out that way. I believe my first two or three that I competed in, I actually didn't make top cut, didn't really even come close. I went like three and two, three and two. Two and two, and, and once you hit two losses it's really hard to make top cut. You have to, you have to almost just play it, uh, fun the rest of the day. But that's a, that's an all day event.

Alex 4:18

Yeah. I mean, those things happen though, right? And you start to build kind of like, uh, that experience and of course the confidence to continue competing. Like, I have a great example, like there's a rift bound tournament happening in Lil right now. And one of the people that literally won the best of, for like a given champion has been knocked out like near immediately in the course. To the tournament. And that's just sometimes how the cookie crumbles, as they say. Right. And the most competitive, talented players, you know what they do? They shake that off, they keep practicing, they come back, that next one right. Come back stronger. Mm-hmm. And I think that type of mentality is important, that competitor's mentality. And so why don't you tell us like, what was your best tournament result and what do you think contributed to the success that you found?

Coougarrr 4:59

So yeah, leaving, leaving those first two. Mixed results tournaments. I was trying to do a little bit too much, be a little too fancy, play some inconsistent decks, and then I really just had a switch going into the following golden gauntlet, which would've been world qualifier three, where I said, you know what? I don't want to play what I think's meta or to try to force something that I'm not already playing. I said. There's this deck I've been playing on ladder a lot. It was ROC Hydro Stomper deck around the time nobody was playing. It teched out to, to combat the meta that I expected, which was around the release of Invisible Woman. So it was all end of turn decks was a big thing. So I had a, a cosmic ghost rider to prepare for that, and I, I sent it to the high elo. Players to, to get some feedback. And nobody really had anything to say. No one had much confidence in me besides km. He was like, I actually really like the angle you're taking here and I, I hope you end up succeeding. And I believe in the tournament. I went completely undefeated on the whole day for World Qualifier three.

Alex 6:07

That's unbelievable. And I think that, like I've mentioned in a couple OTA videos and like just general like decks of the week videos where I think that ROC is actually one of the best one drops in the game. It is an incredible scaler. Like you gotta work for it, right? You gotta work for it. But those move hydros, stopper, petroc decks, and the one you're discussing. So much better than the average person in Marvel Snap thinks it really is. And so I'm glad that you found success. I'm glad you cooked and uh, you know, you got ready for what the meta was gonna be bringing to you in that given tournament. And then ultimately, like how did your kind of tournament end, so to speak.

Coougarrr 6:43

Yeah, so I actually had quite the ringer of a top cut to make it through. I had to play a bunch of big name players. I had to play sizer, I had to play oh, their name's blanking me. Another, oh, Ava. Ava is another very respected move player. They're both on move decks and I was playing, you know, the smaller of the move decks, but I had the tech to make up for that. I ran Mercury in the specific tournament and then after I beat them I had to play roam. Plays who is in the same alliance as me. He was running what a lot of people considered to be the best deck for the tournament, which was a super giant Sauron list. And he had stuff like Shadow King and Enchanters and really hard ways to, to shut me off. And that was actually the closest match of my whole tournament. It came down to the wire, I believe it came down to actually the last game. We both had two cubes left. The whole thing was broadcasted. It was a blast. We're buddies, so we were emoting each other the whole time. And then past that, I played a player, I'm, I don't remember his name, but he was on a, another super giant list, but a Dark Hawk one. And so this one had, you know, a little bit less of a. A tech matchup. There was no enchanters to worry about shutting off my hydro stomper and I knew I just had to be patient and stay playing my game, and I ended up taking down the whole thing.

Alex 8:10

That's amazing. Congratulations, obviously. Um, and I mean, it's, it's fantastic to see that kind of success and how like, you, you brought something that was innovative people that like, people would not have expected your deck to perform as well as it did. But let's not, I want not take away something like this is so important to understand. It's not just the deck. The deck can be good, but you give me that deck, I don't win that tournament. The player. Yeah. The practice, the work you put in. Uh, so why don't you, uh, before we move on to the next topic of discussion, why don't you let us in on like. What type of practice you put in prior to the turnout? Like what? What does the preparation look like going into a tournament so you can be successful to that degree to win the entire thing?

Coougarrr 8:48

Yeah, I think you're touching on a, on a good matchup or not a good matchup. There a good topic there where I was one of, I believe two or three people who brought any form of hydro stomper to that entire tournament. It was very much slept on and under the radar. And no one really had a lot of confidence in it. And in turn, no one had experience playing against it, which was a very powerful thing going in my favor. And then, like you said, it's a, it's a skill expressive deck where you get to allocate your power, very latent into the game. You get to choose where you want your TRO to land and where you're gonna juggernaut people and stuff like that. So that's a lot of the, a lot of the power of the list, but. As far as preparation, honestly, I don't really do anything too fancy outside of running my games on ladder and trying to think about, you know, what the expected top decks in the tournament are gonna be. Like I mentioned earlier, invisible Woman First Steps just released. So I was expecting a lot of end to turn. You know, it's a bit of a. Easier list to pilot, less stress on the brain, very high points. So I came prepared with tech for that matchup. And then I also was expecting a fair amount of move deck, so I had a mercury in my list and. What I really was not prepared for was this was a, a complete call and I, I lucked out. Cerebro was really popular at the time and I have no answer for that deck, so I just prayed. Hopefully, you know, I don't see it throughout the rest of the tournament and I didn't see it, not even once, which was absolutely a blessing. But I say a lot of the times in order to win one of these tournaments, you know, whether you, it's your first time, whether you win twice, it doesn't matter. You have to get a lot of good luck going your way.

Alex 10:37

Of course. Well, I mean, you gotta be good to be lucky sometimes. And I think that was the, uh, the case for you. First of all, congratulations on your success and hopefully that success continues. And what we're gonna do here is we're gonna now talk about the. OTA that just dropped. Now this dropped just a few days ago. I thought it was kind of mid, not that exciting, but I'd like to see some older cards get buffed. And so what I'm gonna do here, I'll introduce, uh, kind of what happened. I'll pitch it to you. You can give us your take and then we'll move on to the next card so we don't spend too much time on the OTA'cause we got a lot of stuff we wanna talk about today. But, uh. I wanna start with Moon Dragon. The reason why I wanna start with Moon Dragon is Moon, dragon and Chamber. They occupy very similar spaces in Marvel Snap, right? They're often being played in tandem. There is some differences here and there. You don't see Moon Dragon in a lot of the like war machine ramp decks. They actually occasionally feature that is a place where like you'll see chamber almost exclusively. But of the two I felt like. I don't know if I love the Nerf to Moon Dragon. I think the Moon Dragon Nerf is more about what? Uh, fantastic four First Steps. Invisible Woman, I said that name totally wrong. Invisible Woman. Fantastic. Four First Steps. What she's doing to these. End of turn, rep, uh, replicating abilities, right? Because you're replicating the Doom 2099, which is where Moon Dragon's very naturally gonna be. And so as a result, I think Moon Dragon might've caught a bit of a stray. I don't think this card's particularly problematic, but I kind of see where they're coming from. Interested in your thoughts.

Coougarrr 11:59

Yeah, I think. Camm has been given a lot of good discussion on this lately. I think it's, uh, like at the top end of infinite, a lot of us look at the nerfs to Moon dragon and the nerfs to chamber and are like, ah, this is a little like, like a little misplaced. That's not the deck that's dominating up there. But then when you, you take a step back and you think, for the whole player base and you look at, you know, decks and trends in the past, like CER or scar. Catching a lot of nerfs, stuff like that. Doom 2099. Even previously. Last time he was good. He caught a lot of nerfs until he wasn't playable. Yeah. And it's like these pretty simple, straightforward to play decks that that end up eating it and Moon, dragon and, uh, chamber. I could, I could see why they would. Targeted there. You know, they're each very big, two drops very large. So I personally don't play much of these cards, but I think it's, I think it's decently impactful.

Alex 12:56

Yeah. And of the two, right, like, as I, as I mentioned, we did have a Nerf to chamber as well, both going from two twos to two ones, their effects remain the same. Which do you think is the most impactful now? Chamber started as a two, three, now it's down to two, one. I actually think that like chamber stats, like this is enough of a decrease. Now two points off the top. Um, where Chamber's power level has definitely been, I don't wanna say compromised'cause I still think it's a, it's a decent card, but be curious on your take.

Coougarrr 13:23

I agree with you there. I think chamber's a little more hurt, but I think that's mostly just'cause he's played, you know, in a bit wider of applications. Like you said he is, he's in all those ramp decks as well. So they also feel the Nerf to this card.

Alex 13:37

Yeah.'cause we nerfed, um, war machine to 8 5 9, which was maybe not the biggest Nerf they had thought of. But anyways, it's all good. I I like, I like those ramp decks. I think they're cool. Like, and actually we're not even seeing that much of them. I think they're kind of being slept on right now.'cause there's always like new hotness. That comes out and then like good decks kind of get forgotten about. And I think that's one of them for sure. And, uh, not in the OTA, but I just wanna throw it out there in relation to Doom 2099. And I don't wanna wheel this into existence'cause it's, it's one of my favorite cards in the game. But what is your take on Aurora? Is this a card that's kind of overreaching A little bit like in terms of its power level?'cause I think that it is. First of all, an amazing card from both a design standpoint and a power standpoint, but do you find it to be oppressive in any way, or do you think it's, it's just flying high enough away from the sun?

Coougarrr 14:23

I don't really find it to be, uh, oppressive that much. I'm curious, uh, when we flip back to you, what, what list do you think she's the most like, strong in? But in my experience, she's like, she's a nice role player in Doom 2099. And normally you're playing Dr. Doom if you see him over top of her, but she's, you know, very good consistency piece there. And then in her own lists, they're typically like a lot lower to the ground. Decks that are trying to interact with your opponent and prevent them from doing their game plan, and she's kind of what subsidizes that and makes it, you know, a viable strategy.

Alex 14:56

Yeah, I think that you're right. I don't actually prefer the Aurora 2099 decks. They exist. They do. Well statistically they're fine. It's that like tons of small things, spider, ham, you know, type decks. Mm-hmm. Where you have these. Thing. Fantastic. Four first steps as one of the lane closers as well, where she tends to overperform a little bit. Perhaps it's one of those situations where you're not seeing this in top infinite, but as you come down the ladder a little bit it's kind of a, a little more popular. Um, in particular, it's the thing Fantastic four first steps deck that I think that Aurora has had a pretty big impact on, especially since like, that runs Iska now, right? Yeah. And when you have Iska and the thing First steps, those are two, like that two power. That she's adding, that's not like that's, it kind of does, does double duty on cards like this for isca, right? Mm-hmm. It increases that reach for thing, it increases the reach of his, of his destruction ability. So it kind of like disproportionately benefits those cards. And that's why I think she has been particularly good because you give her, give her everything the plus two, and then all of a sudden they do a little extra with it.

Coougarrr 15:59

Yeah, I think, I think the Iska shout especially is a really powerful synergy for Aurora and even Doom 2099 abuses that where they're running a invisible woman first steps and they can get the extra power onto the iska and then double it and then double it again. So it is, ISKA is really scary in these lists.

Alex 16:20

Unless I'm crazy, I typed Iska and it just didn't come up. I was like, what? What is like this? I'm gonna check that again. Iska. If I type iska, does it not actually come? That's crazy. Iska apparently does not exist. Whoa. Yeah. Would you believe there are bugs in Marvel Snap? I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but every once in a while, every once in a while there is a bug. And, uh, I should have, my phone is actually, so I just looked at my phone. My Gemini is like running with a sentence of everything I've been taught about. So it must have picked up my voice. Voice at some point. It's picking up all of

Coougarrr 16:48

it.

Alex 16:48

Yeah. So it's, it's gonna, it might start talking at some point, but that's okay. But anyways, yeah, so I think Iska has been fantastic. Not hit by the OTA though, but let's, let's focus on the cards hit by the OTA because we do have wolverine. There's three wolves. We got lots of wolverines here, but it is the newest wolverine, the horseman of war. It got puffed, and this card saw absolutely no play. Nobody cared about it at all. It goes from a four three that does plus four power. Once it's, it has five power. To a plus four. I might've said that wrong. It did plus three before, now it does. Plus four. Yeah. So give one of your cards at each location plus four power as opposed to plus three prior. So it is an essentially a plus three buff.

Coougarrr 17:30

Yeah,

Alex 17:30

because they, they kind of, they kind of really raised the ceiling on this card, which I'm okay with. I tried to play it in Nomura. And it just still sucked. I don't know at some point the numbers make a card. Good, right? Like this has a lot of stats now. So I'm curious on your thoughts on Wolverine.

Coougarrr 17:46

Yeah, I think I've been playing him a little bit. I'm trying to, to explore in that, like, do you remember, do you know what I refer to if I say buff Slop?

Alex 17:56

Yeah, I have an idea.

Coougarrr 17:57

Teched out. Yeah, the teched out buff decks. Like back when Mitch, Mr. Fantastic was still a two drop. I've been trying to play around in that shell and I've had, I've had mixed success. I know another infinite player smiles of Snap Academy, YouTube. He's had been doing the sim same thing, you know, just different build and the buff is actually really powerful. Like when's the last time we've seen a card with. Plus four on it, plus four to all three lanes. Like, that's big. But I think a lot of what kind of hinders me with this guy is you just look, atho Lau and you look at him and you're like, okay, I'm getting way more of a buff on show lau and I'm duplicating it. I'm time stewing it. And if you have to go cast it down with the spidermans, maybe you're even getting more.

Alex 18:39

One thing I did notice with this card though, and this was the one that really set it apart. Are we starting to get better base variants, by the way? If you think about how the, the base variants have been getting better over time. I feel like Eduardo Mellow and Ryan Kenard are like, people would be chirping us, man. Like, I feel like the artists are being told like, Hey, can you make this look a little worse when they submit their work and now they're starting to cook a little more. Like if you think about Wolverine, like even Iron Fist, like these are great. These are great variants right off the hop, right? Like these, these, oh, like when

Coougarrr 19:07

Lee, yeah.

Alex 19:08

Come on, man. Like this is the OG I That's not even OG Iron Fist. Where's OG Iron Fist? I don't even know where he is. This is OG Iron Fist. Well, not that this is right.

Coougarrr 19:16

Yeah.

Alex 19:16

And then now you're coming out with this like, come on, these are spicy for base cards. Right. So I just wanna shout that out.

Coougarrr 19:22

They are. Maybe it's correlated to, uh, a lot of these newer cards. Not all of'em are coming out with variants like right away, off the rip. That's true. So sometimes they're just stuck with their base art for a while. So I do appreciate the, uh, the increased quality.

Alex 19:34

Yeah, I gotta have some increased, uh, variant quality from time to time. Uh, techno organic virus. This is actually my favorite card of the season. It's surprised me to see that it wasn't performing as well. As I would've expected at the start, uh, not a crazy change. Basically, instead of doing a plus one plus two cost, every time it returns to your hand, it now does plus one. This isn't that crazy'cause generally speaking, you are running Mobius and Mobius in these decks to prevent it from ever getting higher, uh, black swan being, being, uh, experimented with as well. I think this is actually a kind of nice quality of life change. I think that techno organic virus is a really cool card. I really like it. It is the exact type of super premium season of pass card I wanna see. It's not meta oppressive, but it does a really cool thing. It's a deck building challenge. The only thing I don't like when we're talking about variants is why are we still releasing super premium season of pass cards where we have like something like this, we, okay, super premium variant.

Coougarrr 20:29

Yeah.

Alex 20:29

No variant. Come on guys. What are we doing batch? Why is this not like, we have some examples of that, like the squirrel girl bundle. We have the Bucky Barnes Venom one that has the two. Why or do we not have the token card having the variant? Does anyone ever test any of this? I'm curious. Anyways, outside of that, what are your thoughts on technical organic virus?

Coougarrr 20:52

I'm similar to you. I think this guy is super cool, super unique and, and proposes good deck building challenge us, which is a lot of what I like to do when I play this game is, oh, I want to do this with a certain card and how can I make it work and how can I make it compete? And this guy's been really cool. I think the, the incremental buffs and getting all your cards just buffed up has been really fun. I think the buff is pretty impactful. You get like maybe one more pro of this and now you even see people. Propping it up in v hand running like a quinjet to where the second copy you get is still back at one cost. And it's been pretty, it's been pretty powerful.

Alex 21:29

Yeah. That's cool. Now what I'll ask you now, just quick take on, we did bring him up. Mr. Barnes, what's your thoughts on, uh, Bucky Barnes here? Going from a two one to a two, two, I should add Crazy buff.

Coougarrr 21:41

Oh, it's, it's actually giant. Not at all. I think maybe in like one in 10 games, you might have this effect, like priority, if priority even matters in, in whatever scenario you find yourself in. But you're playing this guy to destroy'em. And you're getting Winter soldiers, so I'm not a giant fan, I guess, you know, maybe on Venom or on like a fastball special you get, yeah, you get the extra point. So it is marginal, but it's one of the least impactful points that they could have added to a card in Snap.

Alex 22:13

Yeah. Technically, maybe like if Bucky was being played in like Dormammu, like it was early on, then maybe there's some hope there. But yeah. It's like, it's kind of irrelevant. I'll, I'll kind of put the next two together. We have KR going from four five to four six, and Odin six, nine. Nice to six 10. What are your thoughts on KR and Odin getting a point?

Coougarrr 22:33

I think KR is like their new, uh, electro. Yeah. Where they were just buffing. Electro from what? Like three. Three made'em, three, four made'em. 3, 5, 3,

Alex 22:42

2. Started as a

Coougarrr 22:43

three. Two.

Alex 22:43

Oh yeah. 3, 2,

Coougarrr 22:44

3.

Alex 22:44

Three. Three. Four. Three, five. Yeah.

Coougarrr 22:46

Instead they gave him three plus ones. I think this guy's on a similar path and we might end up seeing him like a, like a four seven. But I think it's good. I think it's good to put, put points into these, strategies that are a little bit older or don't get as much new card support aren't as viable and. Competitive, you know, at a, at a high end. So I do like to see a point here, even though it is just one point, I like it. And similar with Odin, he is, you know, in all the Wong Nomura on reveal decks, and it's just another point similar to Kaza, where, strategy that needs a little bit more help, a little bit more of a competitive edge. Just toss it a bone, give it a free power. I'm, what do you think about both of'em? Like I'm happy with the direction.

Alex 23:32

Yeah, they're totally fine. It reminded me of like rogue going from three one to three, three as well. Um, there's been a bunch of cards that have been like gradually stepped up over time. It did. I'm glad they're starting to kind of figure out some of these older cards. And while we start to talk about Black Bolt, there is one buff that we, I have to, will into existence. And maybe just maybe as a connoisseur of move, you might appreciate this. Is there gonna come a point in time where Captain Marvel. Gets any attention whatsoever? Is this like either from like, Hey, we're gonna code it so she works with multiple variations of her, or like mm-hmm. Four or five. Like what are we doing with Captain Marvel? This has to be one of the next ones, right? Don't know. Don't dare say she's fine as she is.

Coougarrr 24:12

No, I was gonna say, didn't they make her a four six, like last time she was really good.

Alex 24:16

Yes. Yes she was. And she was really good in those like silky smooth stall decks, right?

Coougarrr 24:21

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think the days have changed a little bit. I don't know if her even at four six would be that oppressive or that much of an issue. I can't lie.

Alex 24:30

No, I don't think so.

Coougarrr 24:31

Yeah, people are multiplying points now and stuff like that, and she's just a, an honest four, five. I mean, I, I'm with you. I think you can give this card extra, an extra point or two.

Alex 24:41

Okay. So in protest, until this is, this buff happens, this is gonna be my variant for ka the Marvel.

Coougarrr 24:47

I'll do the, I'll do the same thing. I don't know if I have it though.

Alex 24:50

Yeah,

Coougarrr 24:51

I'll,

Alex 24:51

let's do like a, yeah, we protest the cards that are bad with ugly variants and ugly uh, splits. That's what we'll do. Dexter would love this. I'm

Coougarrr 24:58

with that movement.

Alex 24:59

Alright. And then finally Black Bolt. Um, they did mention in the notes here that they don't love the idea of buffing these types of destructive, disruptive cards, I should say. I said destructive also kind of emotionally destructive. Yeah. Uh, black bolt goes to from a five seven to a five eight Black bolt stature used to be legit, like top meta stuff. Right now it's kind of fallen off a bit. What are your thoughts on this?

Coougarrr 25:22

I made a funny joke when I first saw it. I think, uh, where, where are all the Cerebro people being angry. You can't play C seven anymore with Blackboard and stature in the same thing. Yeah, it's sad. But besides that, outside of the cerebral memes, I think it's a pretty good spot to, to throw a point on. I think this deck mostly got hurt, last time it was viable to where it is now, where it's, you know, a little weaker. I think it was the Fenris Wolf change more than anything. Putting it from a two cost up to three. I think that hurt the curve of this list and the, and you know the point ceiling a lot.

Alex 25:55

No, for sure. Actually. Uh. The thing that, that was like released and then no one touched it and all of a sudden became one of the best cards in the game. Nerfed like significantly. And then completely disappears is crazy. But yeah, I don't think we'll see much black bolt yet. Um, I've always been torn. I love this, this singing variant and I've always liked this one too. Not that particular cut, but, um, I've always been like, you know what? I love him destroying a microphone. But like, I dunno if you've ever seen the in humans, he should not be singing.

Coougarrr 26:23

Why So you

Alex 26:24

have a bad

Coougarrr 26:24

voice?

Alex 26:25

No. In the humans, his voice is so disruptive that like, even like opening his mouth and like exhaling will like destroy like a city block.

Coougarrr 26:35

Holy.

Alex 26:36

To, to some extent Don't,

Coougarrr 26:37

don't give this guy a mic. Yeah.

Alex 26:39

Yeah. Do not give him a mic. It's probably why the mic don't, don't have on the. But also if you're thinking about watching the inhuman, don't, it's garbage. It's, it, it's like, it's like watching a Disney produced, like high school like thing. I don't know. Like, you know, like you go to a high school play and you watch it and you're like, you know, they're trying their best. Like, I appreciate this. Like, they're doing the best they can and you know, you like what you like the kids there, you're like, yeah. You know, give'em a hand. Like they're doing the best they can. Yeah. That's what it felt like watching the in humans. But like for some reason they had way more budget and you're like did anyone like read this script? Did anyone like look at these performance? Like some of the acting performances were like, bro, like come on this person. Like, I can do better than this. I ain't an actor. Right? Oh, in humans is unwatched. Yeah, it's unwatchable. And if you like it, I know there's someone already typing in humans is the best one. If you are typing right now in the comments that in humans is awesome, you are wrong. I'm willing to say that right now. You're wrong. It is not a good. Series. And there's a reason why it got canceled because it was literally unmitigated fill. So if you've not watched it Cougar, you can save your time there.

Coougarrr 27:40

I thank you, dude. I, I will save my time. I'll not be checking it out.

Alex 27:43

We're going to, oh, no. I was gonna talk about Polaris, but we should No, we're not gonna talk about Polaris yet. We'll save that till later. Do you know why? Because I wanna hear about your ladder tips first.

Coougarrr 27:52

Ah.

Alex 27:54

We want to talk about laddering tips.'cause obviously you're someone who does a extremely great job of getting higher into the MMR brackets. The rest of us fight it out the lower sides, you know what I mean? But you're up there near the top. You tend to experience. A different style of gameplay as well. So why don't we start this off with what would be like your number one, like the number one tip? Usually we, you know, on YouTube we go in reverse order, you know, keep people into the video longer. Yeah. Keep people watching. Yeah. Top, top one right now, what is the number one tip?

Coougarrr 28:26

I think the biggest thing to stress would be learning how to Snap and retreat properly. Okay. I think, you know, there are a couple, there are a couple things that go into it. Like I would say watching the YouTube content to figure out, you know, what type of lists do I expect to see? So you have an idea of, you know, what tech cards do they include, you know, what am I playing around in this game? But also just like. Not having an an ego for yourself to cope, stay a ton, which making content, you know, going into content creation, I've been cope staying so much more than I used to, which is a lot of fun, but it's not great for trying to climb all the way up to those top ranks. So it can, it, it can definitely get boring, like needing to leave for one early on in a bad matchup. But if you, like we talked about earlier, if your goal is, you know, there are different goals in Marvel Snap and if your goal is to. Reach those heights and get up there and compete in top ladder. You do need to detach yourself from those scope days.

Alex 29:23

Yeah, and I've talked about this so many times where like I literally cannot Snap. Because if I Snap and they leave, the content's gone. So in all my games that I record, I cannot Snap. Sometimes I do because I'm like, I know it's the, like, I just do it.'cause I know instinctively it's the correct time. And then when they retreat I'm like, I just ruined, I had a great hand. I could have made great content with this. It's my fault. I like, I'm, I'm set with myself. I'm like, I did that. I, I forced them to leave. They'll stay for two probably. They're not staying for four, they're not staying for whatever. Right. So like, when I'm making content, I literally never, ever Snap. And it's painful sometimes it's just the way the game is. I actually, I've said this before and maybe it's'cause the content side of me, I hate retreating. I can't, it's one of the things I dislike, I dislike most about the game. I wanna see games finish fun. I never, it's the games through.

Coougarrr 30:11

Yeah. Seeing turn six unfold and seeing, you know, all the, everybody saves all their output until the last turn, so you see everything flip up and it's super exciting and a, and a big rush. And if you win, you feel really good. But yeah, retreating, you do see a lot less of that, but I wanted to say. Starting YouTube. For those of you who have not seen my channel yet I started, I believe a little bit over two weeks ago going on three weeks now, and it's going pretty good over there. It's my name that you see beneath with an extra o and then Snap afterwards. But besides this shameless plug, we will link

Alex 30:43

all

Coougarrr 30:43

that by the way, for sure. When I'm recording, dude, I've been doing the same thing. I have not been snapping in fear of retreating. And the last video I made, I actually, I slipped up on this a few times. I was playing move, bounce, and just out of habit I was hitting the Snap button and then people were immediately retreating and I'm like, oh man, like I just sit, you know, sunk all that time. And I, I just gotta not scrap it. I can still throw it in the video, but I'm not gonna get any gameplay outta that.

Alex 31:10

Yeah, I know. It reminds me of like, it's like retreating on turn six is like the ending of the Sopranos. That's basically anybody that would know. That's like, if you've watched The Sopranos last episode, it's like, it just cuts to black. So it's like, it's like exactly that. Basically if you don't watch, if you've never watched The Sopranos, you're like, what's this guy even Todd about? But anyone that knows, knows what I mean. Alright. Not in reverse order. The second most important tip, now we're going descending. Second most important tip.

Coougarrr 31:37

Second most important. I would say second most important tip probably would be deck selection. I think a good thing I. To, to touch on here would be identifying, you know, what cards are the cards that you really like playing yourself that you know are a little kopi. Like if you're playing ATU in and you're Thanos solicitor in your Aon list, because it's a bit of a diluted deck, like you're probably shooting yourself in the foot a little. And hindering your win rate. So identifying, you know, what cards are, cards that I'm just throwing in here because I want to, versus what cards are actually good and making the deck whole and sometimes, to, to not save yourself. Or to save yourself the energy of thinking about all this. You could just net deck and take something that someone from Higher Infinite is having success with and just get, get good and understand that, but especially in your own deck building, you gotta be able to identify, you know what, what are bad cards that I just really like playing.

Alex 32:37

Yeah, we all have our COPE cards. Right? Can I take number three?'cause it's based on decks too. Yeah. Number three I think is gonna be actually committing to mastering specific decks. If you get frustrated after playing four games and you l lose four games, like for instance, your deck that you won the tournament with. Truck move. Right. With Hydro stomper. Guaranteed. Anybody that tries a deck right now is they're gonna go like one in nine. Because they gotta get That's Yeah. Tough. Yeah. You gotta get used maybe not that much, but you know what I mean. Right. You might actually start off a little rough. You gotta commit to learning the decks. The amount of times I've seen, like I release a video with a deck and like I, I love like looking afterwards and I look at like the stats of the, the list I made, like, oh great. Like it's doing fantastic. I take a lot of pride in that. I want people to be able to watch my videos and be like, oh, the deck Alex showed is good and it's performing well. Like, this is fantastic. I will play. This and I will find success too, right? Yeah. And it comes to the point like even if I didn't, if I tested cards and tested decks and I don't feel confident in the decks that I was ultimately playing, I don't think those are the ideal 12. I will literally say, here's what I played. I don't think we're there yet.'Cause there's some time pressure, release content early and stuff like that. I don't get to cook till the middle of the night anymore. I used to, but what I wanna say is the amount of people that'll come and be like, Hey, I played four games of this deck and went one in three, like wtf, this deck sucks. I'm just like, bro. Like, what are we talking about here? And I look at it and it's a very, very innovative, completely different way. And I bet you if I'm watching their game, I'm like, you know, you're not playing super giant correctly with Neonic. Like, you're not doing like all the minute things that you learn, the nuanced things you learn by playing the deck over an extended period of time. Um, yeah, not just that, but you start to learn the intricacies of matchups, which matchups you're better against, which ones you should be. Leaning towards, retreating on which ones you can push into, uh, multiple cube advantages, you know about your surprise cards, what they might not be expecting. So I want to say that I think that if you want to be competitive and you want a ladder, instead of just kind of jumping to different decks all the time, which can be fun. If you wanna have fun, absolutely do it. But's not what this conversation is. This conversation's, how do you be successful on the ladder, how do you rank up? And it's not gonna be flipping decks nonstop. It's gonna be. Focusing in on a couple decks that you know are meta relevant and learning the ins and outs and the nuances of playing them successfully.

Coougarrr 34:45

Yeah, like from personal experience, I believe getting to the top 1000 area or top 500 area, I was playing pretty much exclusively two decks, which was the old Phoenix Force Nimrod list. And then after that I was just playing classic discard and just, spamming the same list a bunch of times. Got really familiar with the matchups I got comfortable with, what is my good hands that are good to Snap and good to double the stakes in this game. And that's what helped me rank up. But. Another thing I'd like to touch on is, you know, even now where I, I have had that success and I do consider myself a great player. Like I just went to record for a move bounce deck. I had to play a bunch of games before I even put the camera on to relearn and get a, get another feeling for the play patterns and all that. Again,'cause. Not all decks, uh, you know, are super intuitive and stick with you like some of the more difficult ones. Even me, like I've had good success with it in the past. If I drop it for, however many months and then go pick it up again, I have to, get, re, re-familiarize myself with all those details.

Alex 35:47

Yeah, absolutely. The next tip I wanna say, and then I'll give you the last one. We'll do five tips. All right. Tip four, I'm still in tip four. You do Tip five. I'm gonna say the value of tech and surprise cards, the amount of times I've gone into games and being like, sh she doesn't exist. Right? And then like, my Galati gets punched out. Galati fantastic. Four first steps gets punched out, or something happens, or you talked about, um, oh, do they have, uh, before you brought up Enchanter, right. And Chant is a great example of a surprise card that usually is only played in those ongoing decks right now, despite the fact that I think it's a fantastic card. But yeah. You mentioned going into that tournament, I need something like Cosmic Ghost Rider. Now, not necessarily a surprise card'cause it's so prevalent, but having those tech pieces be able to answer questions that your opponents are asking, I think is super important. And something like Cosmic Ghost Rider, something like Enchanters. Something like Shachi, those are massive. Cube equity cards because if your opponent sitting in, they're playing reliable, discard with, can you another tournament winning deck, by the way. And they're sitting there thinking to themselves this dracula's gonna win this lane. And then you ghost rider her in. That's sad days for them, and that's how you win eight cubes, where they're like, why are they snapping? Why is it that they think that they can flip this boy? And all of a sudden the Cosco Coast Guard comes down, or the right guardian comes down, or whatever comes down. Those tech pieces, those surprise cards, and sometimes I feel like. We don't get that right as deck builders all the time. And I love your take on this too, because we tend to focus on over synergizing for specific new releases, like mm-hmm. Archangel comes out and we dive so hard into what archangel's a bad example, but sometimes you get so fixated on adding all the synergistic pieces to test a card out. You might take out the tech pieces that actually make these card good. You might take out something like a shadow king. To put a more synergistic card into a deck. But meanwhile, it's like, bro, that shadow king is where the cubes are at. Yeah. So I just wanna say that if you want a ladder and you wanna rank up, you definitely have to use surprise and tech cards.

Coougarrr 37:47

Yeah. And another, another personal experience here would be one of my, one of my most, most, it was one of my first cooks and one of my most successful lists, and it was. I'm not sure where it was featured, but it was a, a werewolf by night anti-venom r moonstone deck where you're running Ironman Gore mystique Sage and you're trying to dump all this super late. And I actually had this guy, shadow King and the list, and no one. Ever expected me to drop a shadow king. But actually it was there like to serve twofold purpose. One, like all my power was ongoing, so I'm not hurting myself. And two, I didn't have a Luke cage or anything with the anti-venom. So pairing Shadow King and anti-venom is actually just. Upside for yourself. Like even if you don't have a target for it, you're reducing the power of one of your own cards and then you could bring it back up with a shadow king after the fact. So I do really like that shout of, you know, even, even if it's just one card that no one expects, like say you put this guy, I'm not saying to do this exactly, but if you put this guy like. In a destroy list or in a discard list, your, your opponents are never in a thousand years gonna expect that or play around that on the final turn of the game.

Alex 38:58

That's, yeah, a hundred percent. And like for instance, there was a point in time where destroy lists were running shun chi.

Coougarrr 39:04

Yeah.

Alex 39:04

Um, not common right now, but it was happening.'cause actually Xi feeds into null, for instance, and stuff like that. Right. So,

Coougarrr 39:10

and death. Yeah.

Alex 39:11

Yeah. And death of course as well. But I, I mean, I was often playing it on turn six when I Yes.'cause you'd use, you'd use the X 23 to get the null out earlier than turn six. You'd knock something out, withers, right? Mm-hmm. Um, but, uh, whatever. That's a whole other thing. We're not seeing that very commonly anymore. Last laddering and ranking tip, I have to pass it on to you. The higher ranked of us two by a factor of, I don't know, 50,000. So why don't you, uh, why don't you close us off here?

Coougarrr 39:39

I think I'll close this off on a bit more of a niche tip, but this is like coming, looking at it from a Deck builder's perspective. When you're watching, you know, when you're playing and seeing what decks you're going against on ladder, when you're watching this YouTube content and seeing, you know, what's popular right now, what are people playing? It's been harder to do this lately, but often you can kind of identify. What role is not being filled in this metagame and, and what's a unique angle that I could take on it from a deck building perspective and attack it that way? I think lately it's been a little hard just because there's such wide ranging stuff you have to cover. Like you have to be prepared for the. Tech that doom 2099 runs. You have to exceed their point floor. You have to exceed chao's point floor. You have to not die to the juggernauts and lias and star Lord. And so it, it's asking a whole lot of you nowadays, but to pull from a past experience again. When Thanos was really meta the, the tech versions of Thanos when those were running rampant everywhere and even the ongoing Thanos a angle me and my buddy RM took was to play one of our old. Our old favorite lists, and it's actually those, um, those afflict decks that run high evolutionary and abomination, and that's the only afflict cards in the whole list, if you're familiar with what I'm talking about. The ones that are more move oriented and run the Miles Morales, that actually originated from me, but it, it well played on an angle of, okay, they're filling up their board. I'm gonna hazmat their whole board. My Ajax is gonna get absolutely huge to win a lane. I'm gonna get a free abomination. And they weren't running Mobius at the time. So it's all final turn output that I get to pick where I'm placing it down, being able to skill if out those wins.

Alex 41:21

I know this is unrelated, but the amount of times I split abomination and do not have a gold or ink or crackle is so upsetting. It's like one of those, like, you keep splitting it and for some reason it's cursed. That's, that's, that's, it's aranya for

Coougarrr 41:32

me. I'm

Alex 41:32

pushing for like 20

Coougarrr 41:33

splits on Irania. Yeah.

Alex 41:35

That's so funny. But, um. I I love that. I love what you're saying there. And, um, ultimately I think that like there's, we could keep going forever, right? I think that obviously being informed on the meta is important. I think that, uh, practicing a specific deck, specific archetype is important. The last thing I wanna throw out there, I know I was gonna stop at five. Let's throw six, and I wanna throw this out because I know. Last tip. There it is. What are your thoughts on. Being novel. And what I mean by that is sometimes when I lose games that are eight cubers or whatever, or I get thum, uh, thumped in conquest, if I happen to venture in there mm-hmm. It's people that are playing decks that like, you know, I know the matter. Well, I, I, I literally study it. Mud might say it's my job. And then sometimes I go up against someone, I'm like, bro, I honestly don't know what they're doing. Like this is something I've not seen. This deck is not some sort of, uh, some meta, you know, deck that they're playing. They've created something wholly new. And for that reason, I have no, I, they just went, they're going, we're going eight cubes and I have no idea what they're gonna do. And I love that. I think that sometimes being novel and coming up with something very creative that your opponent can't just understand what they're doing. Like when I see your petroc, I know what your game plan is, right?

Coougarrr 42:55

Yeah.

Alex 42:56

Some decks don't show their hand that way. And I think that, uh, if you're creative and you're playing something novel. You can steal cubes that way.

Coougarrr 43:03

Most definitely. And, and when I run into those people, I don't know about you, but I find myself actually wanting to stay in knowing I'll probably lose eight. Just to see what they were packing. Yeah. Just to see what idea they were playing on.'cause sometimes I'll take that and, and run with it myself. Like one, one of'em would be a, a player named Fox made this really cool man spider list where it's running like. Anti-venom and it was playing around using the first ghost rider to discard a task master. Then you play on a man spider, and then when you play the ghost rider to bring back your task master, it'll still copy and hit that man spider. And I was like, that's just such a cool idea that's so outside the box. How do you even think about that? And I switched the, the list by I think like maybe three cards and made it, you know, overall a bit better. But I played that, I played the heck outta that list. It was so much fun for me. Yeah.

Alex 43:55

Being creative is definitely an asset. So yeah, guys, right from one of the best players in Marvel Snap. Not so you play better. We could keep going. Maybe we have to revisit this topic another time too, but I think that's a nice baseline for how to get better at Marvel. Snap we got 20 minutes or so. To discuss Polaris and Mother Ani. Now, Cougar, just so you know, just so you're aware, we do five star ratings here, one through five stars, one being like OG Martyr, five stars being like OG Loki, and anywhere in between you can cope as hard as you want. You can hate as hard as you want.

Coougarrr 44:30

How are we? How are we with uh, half stars?

Alex 44:32

I personally am not a fan of the half star I like. Okay. Because once you start doing half stars, it's, you're just, you're just working from a 10 point system now. But then I get, yeah, that's true. People like Nina who come on and Nina's like, I'll give this 1.79. I'm like, damn it. Now we're working, now we're working in the, uh, the, the higher, uh, order decimal places. But you can do whatever you want. You can, you can do. Hundreds of a decimal point. If you want to cougar, I'm giving you complete, complete freedom to rank these and score these as you wish. Let's start with Polaris. Polaris. The horseman of pestilence is a two. Two. It reads objective cards in play are afflicted with negative five power. Once you accomplish that, put a card from your hand here. So if any cards. In play are afflicted with negative five power. She basically pulls a card. It's, it's, uh, it's two cost

Coougarrr 45:27

dragon

Alex 45:28

lord, two cost dragon. Lord, you took the words outta my mouth. Two cost dragon. Lord, what are your thoughts?

Coougarrr 45:34

I think leading off, I'm gonna give this card a three star. I'm actually really excited for the afflict archetype. It's one of my favorite decks and it's been struggling for a little while now and we haven't had. I mean we had like, like a Caliban and stuff, but that's not really for the standard afflic decks. So we haven't had a new card in a while. And I think this card's hitting on something that's a pain point there where in those standard lists you wanna run like four, four costs and sometimes it's hard to play everything out in your hand. So I think this card being able to pro like late in the game and say she pulls, you know, even a Malachi and then Mal pulls another card and that card is a hazmat that flips up and busts your Ajax. I think it's gonna be able to do some pretty cool stuff. The only reason I I wouldn't go any higher is I think that a flick just doesn't have like what does it do when it's put up against a star, Lord? You know? It's put up against these com. Yeah. When it's up against these combo decks, you kind of are just priced into leaving because you're not able to run much of those interactive tech pieces. You're, you're your tech quote, unquotes is interacting with your opponent's power.

Alex 46:43

So you're playing affliction. They skip four turns. Turn five. Play star Lord. You're like, cool. I guess I'm dead.

Coougarrr 46:52

Uh, you, you, you can maybe beat just to turn five star Lord, but if they duplicate that guy, you're, you're out of there every time.

Alex 47:00

Yeah. I, I'm Memeing a little bit, a couple things that stand out to me. First of all, um, what you said broke my heart because I've been thinking a lot about this card.

Coougarrr 47:10

Yeah.

Alex 47:10

Um, and you brought up Mal. Do you? Oh, man. This is the most heartbreaking thing. I love Mal Malki. I think it's a great affliction card. And I'm, I'm taking my glasses off because I'm trying not to cry. Malka doesn't work with objective. Like

Coougarrr 47:23

what? What do you mean? Like, you'll pull a malaka and then he won't do his own reveal

Alex 47:28

if you pull. If you pull Oh, if you or Polaris, she doesn't do it. Yeah. So as a result. Gotta cut, you gotta cut Malmuth, Malkuth can't be part of that. And so all of a sudden those decks just got worse. And now you're playing these cards, which might be okay by taking one of their best cards out. So you could play on curve, you could play Polaris and Malki, not Mal. Yeah. Polaris and Caliban. They're, they're curved together. They're both pestilence, they're both horse people of pestilence. And, but you got, you can't have malus, it can't happen because of the way. Objective works with end of game.

Coougarrr 48:07

Uh. That is upsetting. I think I'm, I might still try coping.

Alex 48:11

You might still try. I don't get together. I don't wanna soul crush you. But that's,

Coougarrr 48:14

no,

Alex 48:15

that was what, it's rough. I know Frustrating about Cban and now Calvin's actually being played. But in Doom 2099, it's the backup play. The Invisible Women fan Task Force First Steps. It's either C or her did well, I think.

Coougarrr 48:27

I think another bad interaction is the order Polaris and Caliban are played in. If you play them both and then your Caliban. Pros, your Polaris would've already checked because of play order.

Alex 48:39

Yes, because you have to play pol uh, Polaris? Yes. If you play them on curve, the play order's completely scuffed because Polaris will check and then bin will proc. It is so heartbreaking, this stuff. And that's why she like, man, I wanted to give her like a three. I don't think I can, I think I gotta go two. Despite the fact that I like the card, man, I like the card. Yeah, it's a really cool card, but it's just like damnit.

Coougarrr 49:03

I wonder, I think Malki might still be fine.'cause like normally you're run surge or za or something. You have some dud hits on your Malachi. But yeah, like you're saying, if you do pull a hazmat off your Malachi, this is gonna check before that hazmat reveals,

Alex 49:19

right? Yep, it does.

Coougarrr 49:20

Yeah. And that's, that's really bad.

Alex 49:23

The only good pull from, uh, Malmuth, I guess is like Cager. You get Luke Cage, right? Yeah, that's what I was say. Cages, whatever you take that or red guardian. Yeah, but outside of that, like, yeah, I don't think it works. I just don't think it works. But like you, I mean you call hazmat's. Perfect. This will pro that man things great US agent, especially with the change that they made to the text of like the way the costs work. US agent benefits from that. Oh,

Coougarrr 49:49

it's been for so long.

Alex 49:49

Yeah. It's been definitely man thing benefits too. Yeah, you're right. Ending hit like a wasp.

Coougarrr 49:54

Yeah.

Alex 49:55

Yeah. It'll hit a wasp. That's right. So we do have better cards from that standpoint. But you're still looking at turn five Ajax, right? I'm just thinking about like what your turn six looks like. It brought, it probably still is like some form of Luke Cage hazmat combo or whatever. Maybe mystique into like you mystique the Ajax. I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out what my decks look like, but I don't think I can play malki, which I think is a little sad. And I, I wanna bring this to you. Not just to keep, you know, complaining about mal, this is not a Malka review. Yeah. But do you think that they need to reconsider how end of turn, objective and these game mechanics interact? Like we've gotten used to these set rules of they check via their play order and stuff like that, but at the same time it's like you're releasing. I don't wanna say it feels half-baked, but you're releasing a keyword that doesn't function with other keywords, like at all. Mm-hmm. In archetypes where you'd expect them to work together in some way.

Coougarrr 50:52

Yeah, I think. I don't know. I think the end of game interaction is kind of fine with Maliki. That's intuitive, like objective triggers before the end of game reveals what happened. But I think the two horsemen of pestilence with playing the meet out on curve, I think that definitely needs to be looked at. Like what the heck's going on there?

Alex 51:12

What if Malki does it on turn six on turn six reveal this card? Like I'm just saying like, what if you change Malki text?'cause now you have multiple. Objective cards that don't work with it. Like, I don't know, I think Malachi's a really cool card. I'm just throwing it out there.

Coougarrr 51:27

Yeah, I agree. I would like if that was the case, but I think, I think it's more egregious that the, the horsemans don't play together. But yeah, please make it, make it all work together. I would love to run Malka than these afflict decks. He's so good.

Alex 51:41

Yeah. So anyways, a little ho hum on Polaris. Uh, despite the fact that I thought I, I'm still excited to play this card, don't get me wrong.

Coougarrr 51:49

Yeah.

Alex 51:50

But I'm more excited about Mother Ani.'cause I think Mother Scon might be one of the best cards of the season. Like without question, I think it's an absolute banger. And if I'm way too high on it, that's fine. I was way too high on techno organic virus. It literally got buffed. I was wrong as hell. But that's okay because now I'm even happier about techno organic virus. But Mother Asani is a four four that on Reveal. Give the Leftmost card in your hand plus two power. And a negative one cost and then copy it. That's like three cards in one. You're copying the card, you're reducing its cost, and you're buffing it. It's like super majestic Wing beat. It's incredible.

Coougarrr 52:25

Plus Frigo. Yeah.

Alex 52:26

Yeah. Plus Frigo.

Coougarrr 52:28

No, I'm, I'm super stoked for this card as well. I think she's gonna be one of, one of the best of the season. I, I think I'm gonna come in hot at a nice, nice four stars. I don't think, I don't think she's gonna be, no, no. OG Loki or OG show Lau, but I think she's gonna be, uh uh. S tier role player in whatever list you player in, like me personally, it's a, a bit of a, a cope list. One that I keep going back to, but I'm gonna be playing some docking copy up decks with Mother Scon. That's what I'm excited for.

Alex 52:58

Let's go. I'm embarrassed now because I wrote 4.5. I told you you weren't supposed to use Oh, okay. Point fives. But I guess that's my way of saying it's not broken like that. But it's really, yeah. Yeah. I think we're, I think we both agree. You in spirit said whoop 4.5. Uh, yes. And I feel if we were doing half

Coougarrr 53:14

stars, I'd probably say 4.5. Yeah, I would agree with you there.

Alex 53:18

Yeah. Uh, I think this card's great and one of the beautiful things about it's, imagine Sebastian Schaffer a sec. Okay. Sebastian Shaw's sitting in your hand. You play Mother Ani, you hit Sebastian Shaw. It gain plus two. Yeah. Negative one. Cost gets its plus bonus and then copies as the buffed card, like the copy of it. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, is that's the thing I want people to understand. The copy has the plus two and the negative one. It's not just copying the original, it's copying the juiced version. Oh, I got

Coougarrr 53:46

what you're saying. Yeah.

Alex 53:47

So yeah, it's even better than you think it is. It's copying the juiced version.'cause it says then copy it. Right. Yeah. That's nuts. So it's stupid. It's so good. This card is like absolutely bonkers. V hand is back. If you don't like Victoria hand, you're gonna be very upset.

Coougarrr 54:05

Yeah. And like even in my docking example, like say you play this and you hit a docking and you have a quinjet down, you're gonna get one of your dawkins is two costs. The other one's one cost. They both have six power. Like that's crazy. Your turn five could be, play those two out and if you have like a Luna Snow energy, you could play the bullseye down too. Or you could play a grand like, that's nuts.

Alex 54:25

It is nuts. It's crazy. I think this card is ridiculous. Zombie glocky. I dunno if you wanna copy it. Yes. I think those decks are probably fine, but you could, you could hit something like your um, Maverick, right? Maverick would love this too. Oh man. No, it would double pump maverick. Boom, boom. And then whatever you don't even need, you don't need combine'em

Coougarrr 54:43

together. Yeah.

Alex 54:44

Yeah, exactly. What about Wolverine? Horseman? Just buffed. Oh right. Gets plus two power and negative will cost. It's a three five now. For, it's a three five. That does Plus four to three cards.

Coougarrr 54:58

Yeah. Three 17.

Alex 55:00

That's not bad.

Coougarrr 55:01

That's not bad at all. Especially if you hit like a captain card or whatever, you start duplicating it.

Alex 55:06

Captain Card is another great example of a card that wants to get hit.

Coougarrr 55:09

Yeah.

Alex 55:09

While we're talking Surfer cards, how about brooded?

Coougarrr 55:12

Yeah. Oh, this is a bit a bit of a feels bad synergy piece, but the new Gambit, horseman of Death is gonna love this card.

Alex 55:21

People have kind of forgotten about that card and I'm kind of happy for it. That card's probably the best card that no one's playing right now.

Coougarrr 55:27

Yeah, his player gets dropped off a little bit and he's just like, if you get three of'em down, it's just dumb

Alex 55:33

what you do. This just so stupid. I know. I've, I mean, we've kind of, usually we spend more time going through each individual car. We just kept throwing'em out in an excited fashion. But I think Mother Scon is great. I love it. I think it's great. I think this is an absolute beauty and it's gonna be in the grand arena if my notes serve me correct. So. Okay. Free to play accessible. Free to play right. Free to play accessible, which is nice. Of course, you can spend your 800 gold. Oh, by the way, I wanna show a second dinner. Uh, they, they started at 800 gold. They put'em up to 1200 gold and they brought'em back down to 800 gold. You know what that tells me? Y'all voted with your wallets. Everyone was like, no, 1200 gold's too damn much. So now they've been backed down to 800. I don't dunno if anybody ever noticed that, but it's one of the few examples where things got cheaper, deflation, Marvel snapped, deflation happened.

Coougarrr 56:16

We,

Alex 56:16

we,

Coougarrr 56:17

we have power of the community.

Alex 56:19

Yeah. Would you believe that guys? You do in fact have the power? My man. This has been such a fun episode. It was great getting a chance to not only, uh, have you on and, and feature you a fantastic new content creator on the scene, but of course, um, I wanted to celebrate your successes in Marvel Snap, its competitive scene, and to, uh, to look into the mind of one of the top players in the game.

Coougarrr 56:41

Yeah. Dude, thank you again so much for having me on here. It was a blast. It was our, our first time really getting to, to chat with each other and, and like everybody says, Alex is, the nicest guy out there and I can't say enough good about him and his content. I mean, thank you again, dude.

Alex 56:57

Oh that's super kind. And I'm super appreciative of you and everyone that continues to support not just my channel, but all the channels in Marvel Snap. Thank you so much for watching everyone. We sincerely appreciate you guys, and we'll see you. On that next one.