This is not don't expect to be pressa night fast day's time straight from because
you'll find be surmi sidet Hey everyone, and welcome to side Quest, the
every other week Authors and Dragons non game in which we get together and either
talk to somebody cool or pick a random topic and beat it into the ground
until it's begging for mercy. More of that ladder than the first one,
because cool people don't really talk to odds. No, no, no.
If there's some cool people along with me tonight, but not that cool till
it can be considered like you know that. So joining my name is Rick
Qualitian. Joining me tonight are John G. Hardness and m K Gibson.
A lot of it, everybody, y'all doing what up? A lot of
initials tonight, a lot of ins. I only took it because Mike Gibson
dot com was taken, so I had to have something else, you know
that makes sense. That's a very twenty first century reason for picking a name,
and and it's kind of cool I think to have, like you know
that, I guess that author name that doesn't say necessarily male or female.
I think it's it's not really necessarily a bad idea. You know, it's
just kind of like, Okay, don't don't don't worry about what I look
like. Just read my fucking stories. I thought, Jeffy, don't want
to see what I look like. I thought you were just going to say
that it was cool to have an author name people could pronounce. But you
know, obviously I don't think that's cool since I've been like living for like
how many years with this one, more than we want to count. I
swear if they ain't been a time machine, I'm going back and I'm like,
no, your author name is Rick Fury. That's what you're doing,
okay, but a cat's gonna call your fucking eye out. Rick. Did
you ever get a chance to go back and watch some of the Some of
the games were done at the at A and D Con this past August.
Because the one, the one I ran I had, I gave everybody characters
and they were all pre made characters, but they were all based off of
you guys. So there was Joan Hardass the Cleric, which was John obviously,
there was Do Hayes, the Haffling Mushroom Cleric, but there was Walt
Eerie, the oath Breaker Paladin that was played by I want to say,
I want to say, Steve did it. Steve played your character. He
was just a dit Freyboddy. So you set the standard on how to be
a shitty paladin, how to just suck at paladinning Well, Hi, Rick
Globo Taper. That is probably the only thing that I liked from from fourth
edition was that line that basically said paladins must be lawful good, but lawful
good is technically whatever you think is lawful good, And that right there kind
of set the stage for, like, you know, for for silas to
exist. I'm gonna find the motherfucker who wrote that line a bunch of right
in the dick. In the meantime, we often like to start these off
with a bonus action, well not often, something like sometimes when when we
remember and this is where we just pick a topic and like you know,
and talk about it for maybe ten or fifteen minutes before getting to our main
topic. But oddly enough the two are kind of related. So I figured
our motus action, we're going to talk about card games. That's uh that
that we enjoy, you know, And just just just before we get started,
we already did a full fucking episode. John on Magic, so or
you did, you did a whole episode, know what you're talking about.
But there is a new competitor. There is a new hot card game in
the collectible card battler market. And the reason that this is a viable competitor
to a monolith like Magic and Wizards of the Coast is because of the intellectual
property that it's built around. I mean, look, Pokemon was fun.
It's I don't know whether the cartoon came before the game or the game game
before the cartoon, but it was all kind of twisted together or whatever.
Lorcana is the new hotness incollectible card games. And this new little startup based
out of Florida owns the ip that it's based on it's fucking Disney, and
that means that all the people who are doing all of the things that are
oh well, this is kind of like Ilsa from Frozen, but we can't
use that. Nopeop, you can just play Ilsa. You can play Captain
Hook, you can play Mickey Mouse, you can play Maleficent, you can
play Simba scar any all of the Disney Currently it's just limited to the Disney
branded animated ip. My goofy Fuck's your mini mouse. Cluck cluck. Yeah.
I played in the release event, and I did play a deck with
a Goofy and a mini mouse and a Mickey mouse, and it had the
Sorcerer's Apprentice theme going on, so Mickey summoned brooms and beat people with brooms.
The game's the I haven't seen anything this hot since we were waiting to
see if anybody was going to find the one ring in the Magic the Gathering
Lord of the Rings set by the way, two and a half million dollars.
He sold that thing for Holy shit, I assume there was one one
ring. Yeah, there's you can get the card and there's hundreds of thousands
of copies of the card, but there's a serialized version, one of one.
Post Malone bought it for two point six million dollars. The cool thing
about that, there's really nothing cool about a rock star spending way too much
money on a collectible, except that he bought it from a Canadian forklift driver
who bought one pack of Magic cards and changed his life. I don't even
I don't even like this. Still big game. Yeah, and it's like,
ah, that's that's the story you want. You know that it is
that's pretty awesome. But no, this lord on a game. It's flying
off the shelves. Nobody can get it. Prices are really inflated. But
the game's good. It's gonna have legs because not only is it Disney,
but the mechanics are good and it's enjoyable. It's playable by everybody, from
little kids eight or up to old farts like me. I mean, I
played in the release event at my local game shop and there were elementary school
kids and AARP card carriers like me hanging out. Please please tell, Please
tell me you send some little kids home crying. Uh no, they sent
home crying. No. I just didn't give a shit. That's the thing
is, I didn't care if I want or not. There was no money
on the line, and you got the same number of prize packs just for
hanging out, so I didn't care. But the game is fun, it's
quick, the mechanics are fairly similar to Magic. But one of the things
I really like about it especially is a game for young players and a family
friendly style card game. You're not trying to kill your opponent. The idea
in Magic is you start with twenty life and you reduce your opponent's life to
zero, so you murder somebody. Yeah. With lor Kana, you're trying
to build lore, and whoever builds up to twenty lore first wins. Okay,
you attack your opponent's creatures because you build lore using your creatures, so
if you murder their creatures then you're more likely to win. But you don't
attack your opponent. You're not trying to murder somebody. So from a conceptual
standpoint like that, I think it's it's a little hippie dippy sure, but
so Constructor was a destructive Yeah, exactly. And if you're looking for something
to build on and get little kids involved, it's an easier sell to parents
than talking about while we're creating these monsters and war and blah nah, I'm
summoning Timone and Pumba and whatever the hell that little crazy chicken was in Milana
and they're just gonna run, run, run and make a lot of lore
and win. But I think the game. I think the game has legs.
I would not be at all surprised if it grew. And I mean
Disney owns everything. Yeah, so you can have a Star Wars Lorcana because
they own Star Wars you can have Marvel Lorcana because they own Marvel. I
mean, the the breadth of IP that Disney has control of is stunning.
And Ravensburger is the company that made the game, and they're the same folks
who make all of the licensed versions of Monopoly. You've seen them a Star
Wars Monopoly, Lord of the Rings Monopoly. Tell you here, I was
about to say, one of you nerds has some random IP Monopoly. Surprised
you don't have a Transformers Monopoly. Actually I have D and D Monopoly too.
See. I don't let Monopoly into my house, never again. Never
again. It's a great game to make families hate each other. Guys have
spawned, right. So I think that from my perspective as a magic nerd,
this is a great gateway game because the mechanics are similar enough, but
it's all scaled younger. The vibe feels more friendly. Like you said,
it's constructive instead of destructive. And I think that it is a good way
to get kids into playing collectible card games once it's widely enough available that everybody
can get the cards that might actually happen. I was my son and I've
been playing a game, uh for those who have spawn out there, you
are aware that once they reach a certain age, they become monomaniacs. They'll
find a game and anime as something and they won't shut the fuck up about
it ever. And they will walk into a room and then I will never
get out of that, right right you. And then they'll walk into a
room like and then then then this happened, and then then this and then
this. So one of the games my son he's pushed, he's come up
on twelve, but he's been getting into the kind of retro gaming. He
loves that eight and sixteen bit style, like modern games that look kind of
old, you know. And one of these games that's out there is called
The Finding of Isaac. It's a classic game from ten years ago. And
for those who do or do not, okay, what, well, it's
exactly well. The digital world ten years ago is kind of classic. Of
those who are not familiar with the Game of the fast version is it is
a parable of like that it blends the Bible and but not on a religious
aspect, because the creator grew up in like a staunch religious household. So
it's a story about this kid whose has to go through the trials of being
raised in an abusive religious household. So there are you know they have They've
got demon names, Kane, you know able, They've got all these these
things in the game. So the people created a card game based off the
video game, and it is ridiculously fun. Just the gist is like you
and up to up to think six people. Your goal is to collect four
souls and you get a certain amount of cards. Every gets a card,
and then every turn you like draw a card, and there are two monsters
in the middle of the table, and you're trying to defeat the monsters.
Some monsters give you more items. Some monsters you kill them, will drop
a soul. Now you're trying. It's both cooperative and screw your neighbor because
sometimes if you work as a team, you've got to be Some monsters as
hard to beat, so you need to use your abilities to help other people.
But there's a tap phase, there's a collection phase, there's an item
phase, and if you die, you don't you're not out of the game.
You just have you have to give up one of this, one of
this, one of this. Some of your items are permanent, so it
gets you have to be real. You get to get real combination, real
tricky. It's like back for those of us who played magic back in the
day. I'll they're like, Okay, I tap this, I tap this,
do this. This is the effect because rules is written says fuck you
you know, or just play a blue white bitch, and they're like,
nope, you just can't. So it is, but he is grasped mechanics
so quickly, and it's like he is one step away from becoming that magic
nerd. Now I destroy him on the regular, and I don't take it
easy because I want him to like this is how you play competitively, and
he's he's actually beat me once and I, you know what, I had
to give him applause, you know, out of the ten times or whatever
we play. But like, so it's it's on Amazon. I think it's
like thirty ish bocks. It's like Binding of Isaac four souls. And if
you just want to try and do it's kind of it if you played a
little bit of Munchkin, you'll get some Munchkin vibes off of it. So
the Munchkin meets Magic is what it's kind of like. Okay, and I
highly recommend it, just like just for something a little bit different. Comes
with one diet that's all you're gonna needuse the six sided die to to do
these things, and it's it's it's a lot of fun. I highly recommend
it very cool. My family is really none into cards. I mean,
my my oldest had a brief stint with Yugo years back, but my other
two are autistic. They don't really want to play that stuff. So what
we try to do is like more like you know, like like family based
game that we have to force them in. So I guess the probably the
closest to a guard card game we got was a couple was maybe like last
year we got this, uh this game called Poetry for Neanderthals and you play
it with cards, you play it with teams. Comes with an inflatable club,
and the idea is you have to get you have you have a word
or a phrase and you have to get your partner to guess it. But
you can only use one syllable words to explain it. So it's like like
like for cup, it's like it's like like me drink wet. You know,
you can't say water and if you say like if you say like,
you know, a word with more than one syllable the person the other team
smacks you with the like you know, with the club. So that's kind
of fun because it brings it brings in some like you know, some some
cartoon violence and stuff and child abuse, yeah, exactly, familial abuse.
All right. So I just have this, I have this mental image of
your wife never relinquishing the club and never hitting anyone who's not you see.
See that this is one area where like, you know, my my like
you know, my writer skills come in come into play, and the fact
that well a lot of my characters are kind of dumb asses or that like
that I write so like the whole concept of like speaking in one so much
in words. After yeah, after I write a whole like chapter full of
like sasquatches being like turd smack. It's not that difficult. Oh yeah,
we've we've read your ship, buddy. We know that you're very well burst
in one syllable words. All right. That's that's that's nice. Fuck you.
Well I was gonna segue into our main thing, but instead I'm just
gonna turn this off and like go sit in the corner and cry, go
burn quincy books like it's not about bottom. I don't give it a shit.
Burn them all you want, baby, Yeah, I know I'm waiting
burn five or six copies. I'm waiting for somebody to be like, oh,
oh, Rick, you pissed me off to watch a bunch of I
burned my books, and I'd just be like, wait for me. Wait,
we mean to make popcorn? Yeah? Can I have a link to
that? Can you post that on your social media? Because I'm not giving
the cash back, And you know, it's like, what the fucker you're
talking to the guy who's who came up with the idea of burning our Shingles
books during Shingle of the movie. So anyway, anyway, so I mentioned
that that our that our bonus action was related to our main our main topic
in which we're going to talk about a game that all three of us have
been nerding out on, whether it's on phone or yeah. But Marvel Snap,
this fucking game. Yeah. So for those of you are not familiar
Marvel Snap. It came out a while back. Marvel's not came out of
what that almost rived. It's a it's a card game based off Marvel characters.
It's digital, so there's really nothing to collect. There is there is,
like, you know, some pay to win stuff going on. They're
not a lot and if you do and that, I have no respect for
you. But it's just a ridiculously fun game. And what makes it fun
for me is that it just is really balanced. Yeah it is. It's
a card it is at its essence, a card game, a card battler.
But it is very balanced and and you know, it works in seasons.
There's a new season what every month? Is that how it works?
Yeah, And everybody can play the season and you can get the shit or
you can pay what it's like, fifteen bucks a month to jump ahead and
get the cool skins and ship a little earlier. And I do I pay
the fifteen bucks because I get the cool I get the cool pictures, I
get the pretty pictures. See what what what? What? What? What
I like most about it is that there's a lot of games out there.
I mean almost every mobile game has like, you know, a pay to
like you know, win feature, and usually it's horribly unbalanced where it's like,
hey, you give us money, so we're gonna give you like you
know, we're pretty much gonna give you every advantage and fuck these cheap bastards
and Marvel's Marvel's snap to a degree, like you know, yeah, you
get the new cards and some some of the new cards are really good.
But there's a random element to the game with both how you how your cards
are shuffled the playing field. It's different every time, and that random element
really is the big equalizer for fans who don't know who are just who are
listening to us. The gist is once you once you got the game,
you create a deck up. You can create many decks, but like you
start, Let's say you start a deck this guy, I think it's eight
or ten, ten cards, or's a eight, it's twelve, it's either
it's okay, twelve cards, twelve okay, yeah, okay. You can
start with twelve cards in your deck and you get dealt three and your opponent
gets dealt three. Fan theratists. Yeah, And there are three zones in
the middle of the screen. This first zone is the first one that you
see. These zones have different effects and ability. Sometimes it's plus one energy,
sometimes it's a minus. Everyone here takes a penalty or something to that
effect. So your goal is you want to win three out of the two
out of the three zones and to be the winner. So you play a
card in an area kind I can almost let a Texas hold him kind of
field like this. It's you're beginning, you're turning your river kind of thing.
And your cards have an amazing combination of effects the way you put them
together, the way you build it. You know, because for example,
iron Man he cost five energy, So every round you get another energy.
So round one one, round two two energy, and so forth and so
on. So bout round five you have five energy, you can lay down
iron Man he costs five energy, has zero power. However, his ongoing
ability is he doubles the power of everything at that zone on your side.
So if you already had fifteen power down, boom, now you're thirty.
Yeah, and so you start thinking theseategically. Yeah. So for example,
other cards, some cards affect other cards. So you mentioned iron Man,
he costs five. There's another card. They're called mister Negative. Mister Negative
reverses power, and yeah, I don't like that CARDI but it reverses power
and costs. So iron Man goes from costing five and having zero to costing
zero and having five, which means the moment you play him, he's a
ten power card because he doubles everything there. Yeah, yeah, I hate
mister Negative because I've never built a successful deck with mister Negative. So that's
my beef. It's purely a me thing. Yeah, And there are archetypes
of decks, Like there's a whole collection of decks that get bonuses when they
move or they move other cards and give So if you've got a card that
has that has a gets a bonus if it moves. Let's say you've got
Human Torque, which power doubles every time it moves. Yeah, Well,
on turn one, you play Iron Fist and its ability is the next cards
you play gets moved. So turn one you play Iron Fists. Turn two
you play Human Torch. Human Torch immediately moves and his power goes from two
yeah to four. And if you play that smart, I mean I've had
games where like Human Torch end of the game with like thirty two power or
or higher. I've seen him around sixty four or higher. Because it's it's
in my particular move deck, you get like, like you said, Iron
Fists boom, and then you want Cloak move him again, and then Doctor
Strange he moves people again, and then the end Heimdale shifts everybody over and
then you know Cloak and Dagger and all the people who have move base abilities.
And so when you're when you're playing the game, you look at some
cards are unique, but a lot of them have certain things, either ongoing
effects on reveal effects. You put your card down as soon as it flips
open, it does something. There are cards that have discard abilities, you
have cards have destroy abilities. These like the primary abilities that you can build
dex around. But then there's smaller ones that have more unique traits that once
you start putting certain combinations together, Like one of my favorite ones to do
is magic the X Men character iron Man. Iron Man's class as his sister,
her own revealability is she whatever zone you're in, she turns it to
limbos. Now you have seven rounds instead of six. So I love to
put down the Hulk on round six, and like because my Hulk has been
building up energy this entire time, and then on round seven I put out
Taskmaster and somewhere else. So then he copies the Hulk's power and put them
somewhere else. And now they've got two giants. I've got to deal with
but sure as shit. I always go up against someone with a shang chi
who anybody nine or high or he immediately kills, and it is just exactly
you know. But that's why I put the Hulk out there as a distractor.
But here's here's the thing. If you're playing Hulk with Taskmaster and the
other person goes first because you switch up, I don't think it switches up,
but it's a random thing. Who goes first each round? You take
ends, no, you don't take No, you don't take turns. It's
it's random winning. If you're winning two zones, you're going to go first.
If you have a greater if you're winning one zone and tied in the
others, you're gonna go first. If your opponent's winning, they go first.
Really sure, yeah, I've never never your re name would be highlighted.
Whoever's name is highlighted during the beginning to turn, that's who goes first.
Yeah, but you can you can manipulate priority by intentionally sandbagging two.
Not to try that. I thought, I really did think it was a
random But that's based on who's ahead. That's good to know. But anyway,
back to the back to the point, giving something about playing the Hulk
and then playing task Master, who copies the last card you've played. So
if you go first and you play a shang Chi, you destroy the Hulk,
and then when task Master activates, he has nobody to copy, so
effectively, you've just completely gimmed him. And that's because they nerved to task
Master, because when when I started playing, Taskmaster would still copy a card
that was destroyed. Yes, but they nurfed him, so now he only
copies the last card if if they're still on the battlefield. Well that's also
a cool thing about about it is like usually about twice a month they come
out with balance updates where they look and they see what cards are broken versus
like what are being overplayed, and they like they mess it. They mess
it around, like all the yeah, I was playing, I was playing
what was it? Wasp? Wasp is a zero It's like, you know,
it is a zero power card. I think she gives you one or
two points, but she would take away points from two other cards. And
eventually they realized that was too powerful, so they nurf to show socially took
a way power from one opposing card. So yeah, so so some sometimes
doing that will completely either make a new deck for you or destroy, like,
you know a deck that you've built around some certain card. Well,
that was like one spider hand hit. You know, he was a two
two card that like Spider hand for the nerds out there or no, the
Spider Man Lord. Just watch the animated movie when he comes onto the field
on reveal. He hits his giant mallet and he hits the opponent's card,
whoever the highest powered car is. He just turns him into a pig.
They still are like a six twelve card or whatever, but they had a
special text. It's all gone because they're now a pig, so it removes
all their special text. Sometimes it hits the hulk and like, well he's
still a six twelve card, so you're not really stopping much. But then
they nerved him to be a one one and he only now he only hits
the far left card. I think. Yeah, he started as a one
one that hit right card in your hand. Then he shifted to a two
two that hit the biggest card in your hand. Yep. Then they tweaked
him again to make him a one one that hits the far left card that
often will still hit the biggest card in your hand because you start with three
cards, but they shift from right to left as you other things. So
if you're playing Spider ham it might still get your death and death is an
eight twelve, but every time a card is destroyed, Death's casting cost is
reduced by one, so frequently by the end of the game, you're playing
death for zero if you build your deck around it, unless you get hammed.
And I keep a because I have a couple of major decks. My
love my death deck without a doubt. It's when it's my bread and butter
deck. But I in the one I'm playing now, I always keep a
superscrull in case I go because a death, because once I start seeing things
being destroyed, like I know they're going to play a null, I just
waiting for it. And so when I dropped Superscrull out, so I'm like,
my superscull has the amount of powers your null plus two point plus two
points. Yeah, probably the biggest nerve in the games, at least as
far as I can remember. It was Spider Man, not Spider Yes,
originally Spider Man. He would web up. He would like if somebody played
it, it would web up your side, so you couldn't play a card
there, so people would would play a card that would give him extra power,
like Electro. Then but then on the first fifth on like the fourth
or fifth or wave Wave turned made every card four power. So in the
fourth turn they would play Galactus destroy everything, and then in the fifth turn
place Spider Man, which would just fuck you because you could literally do nothing.
So they changed Spider Man and completely destroyed that by basically making Spider Man
just hop around the board and drag other cards with them, which was a
complete change. It was a yeah, it was it was. I enjoyed
the change because I lost way twenty games to that combo. I did too,
and and honestly, I felt like it's a better It's a it feels
like a better flavor. And the animation is cool because you play the card
ups over and then it shoots a web up and the card swings over to
someplace else, and then it shoots a web onto an opponent's card and it
brings it with him, and it's it just it's better flavor. Yeah,
And most most of the Spider based cards now move in some some way or
another. Yeah, Spider, Gwen or Ghost Spider Ghost Spidery Ghost Spider.
She you play her, and the last card you played, she moves to
where you played her. Spider Man twenty nine ninety nine is pretty nasty because
the first time he moved, he'll destroy a card wherever he lands. Yeah,
and you know, I've lost some big cards with people, like,
you know, with people doing a movement deck and using doctor Strange and dragging
him over. Doctor Strange teleports your highest level card to wherever Doctor Strange is.
So my friend who is the he's the mega player of this and he's
like he frequently hits ranked one hundred every season, you know. And I
I was telling Rick before the game started, like he sent me a text
like once you reach a level one hundred, you go into the national ranked
system. So my buddy Adam is now like for the forty eight thousandth player
out of the eleven million of us that play. So he's good. He's
really good. But now that he's got his Aliath and Galactus working in perfect
synergy, he basically does everything like boom boom boom, destroys every size,
plays the Galactus and then plays Aliathe right after that, and so that no
matter what you play against him, you lose because it just destroys your cards
and it's just, oh my god. So it's frustrating, and it's like,
I'm glad I hover around the seventies. I maybe I hit eighty once
in a while. Yeah, but that's that's where my skill set it.
And fortunately, I think that. Fortunately, the good thing about Galactus is
like, yeah, some people play him masterfully, but I think the majority
of people play him stupidly, to the point where you can obviously see that
somebody's gonna play a Galactus and just completely ruin their like their attempts, which
is really fun. Really all over Galactus by having cards that move cards,
or having cards that give your opponent cards. Debree is a great one,
or Hobgoblin and Green Goblin. Both of the Goblins really fuck your opponent because
Green Goblin has a casting cost of three energy and a negative three power and
when you play it, it goes to your opponent. And then Hobgoblin has
five energy cast and cost minus eight. Yeah. I used to like,
I used to keep an Odin in my deck, and when when you play
Odin, it activates the powers of all the cards on your side and I
used to keep just as a giant fu to the you know, to the
Hobgoblin players. Yep, yeah, Like, And I was playing a guy
earlier today and I was playing and it was very obvious he played Armor,
which makes it so that cards in that lane can't be destroyed. Then he
played Centry on that same lane. And what Centry does is he's a four
I think something ten four ten, but he brings a minus ten void counterpart
with him, because Centry in the comics, he's the great big Superman knockoff.
But he has this dark side, his dark mirror images Void. So
you can't play Sentry on the far right lane because it always puts Void on
the far right. Well, when somebody does that on turn four, it's
pretty obvious to me that they're going to want to put Viper on the far
right lane because Viper gives one card at that lane one other card on that
lane to your opponent. Well, I had enough shit with low cost in
my hand. I've done that many times. You stack the right side and
then they just retreat them. Yeah, and then people just retreat all the
time when they can't get that mechanical. That's the thing you can retreat before
the end of the game, which limits the number of points you get.
But there's a lot of a lot of people who like to snap, which
doubles the points right at the beginning of the game, as kind of I
guess an intimidation move, and then this and then like, and then if
they retreat, you wind up getting essentially full like full points if you want
to full game points. Yea, yeah, because you start and you're playing
for cubes and it's the cosmic cube, the tests iract that Loki dicks around
within the first Avengers movie. You're in Thor and all that jazz you start
the game with. If you play the whole game, it'll cost you'll win
or lose two cubes. Yeah, you can snap and double it, so
you'll win or lose four cubes if you go all the way to the end,
or if you will snap, and if your opponent snaps, it goes
to eight, so you can win or lose eight cubes by going all the
way to the end. And I tend to not snap very often unless I
really feel like I'm ahead, because I don't a lot of times i feel
like I'm winning, I don't want my opponent to run away. I don't
want it exactly. I don't. I almost never snap. Now. The
other thing is you can also like not taunt, but there are emo emoticons
you can click on. It's like hello, you can like do things like
one of my favorite ones is if you and another player played the exact same
card, you do the Spider Man pointing at each other. Thing. Yeah,
but there's something they can ask you to snap, and I'm like,
they keep getting snap, Snap Snap. I'm like, I'm not going to
and so they snap. It's up to four and I win and then I
give him the fist bump and they just go away. So it usually if
somebody hits me with the same emoji like three times in a row, I
mute there. I mute them because I'm like, okay, because for a
while somebody figured like normally normally those emojis come up pretty slow, but somebody
figured out like how to spam them. So like I lost one, one
or two to somebody who must have been twelve, and suddenly it's like.
One of one of the more annoying ones you can get is uh, Miss
Marvel comes up and gives you a cute little like you know, thumb thumbs
up, which basically is equivalent to an fu. Yeah, and and like
you know, it was like fifteen of those on her own. It was
just like, okay, I'm muting you in case I ever run into your
annoying ass again. Oh, I didn't realize the mute stock from game to
game. That's great. I don't know if it does or not. Like
you know, I very seldom remind people's names because before Marvel Snap Party,
Before Marvel Snap, I was a big Clash Royale player on my phone,
played a lot of Clash Royale. And because I again card Bass do the
thing, dude, Da da da da, And it was my it was
my toilet time, my wasting time, you know. I like, but
I got to a point where, like I had nothing else to get in
the game. I was bored that it was just repetitive and I just wasn't
enjoying is what I got Marvel Snap. I'm like, I'm deleting this,
goodbye, goodbye clan of my friends. Like I'm done, I'm walking because
Marvel Snap just feels that fills that hole in my heart that like you know,
yeah, I played a lot of Injustice to God's among us on my
iPad. That was my play it for fifteen twenty minutes, sitting in bed
before I'm ready to go to sleep. And now I play Snap. And
there's the way you set up your the way you can customize is you're can
use you get little icons and this represents who you are, and you get
little banners and titles underneath. One of the banners even says I am on
the toilet. It was mine for the longest in the game, and I'm
just like, all right, that's kind of great. It was either that
or y, yes, this is a loincloth, or my mom said this
is my last game, you know, something to that effect. You know,
I I love this game so much, and I love the every month
that they have a new theme, you know, and they like because you
know, the last month was the japan themes when they brought out like,
you know, the Silver Samurai and Dacon and a lot of these characters from
like the the the Japanese parts of Marvel Comics. And this this month it's
the what's it called, yeah, X twenty three it's Loki. It's the
Lokey season televisions. Yeah, And he just made the collector card That's why
they had to nerve him this season, because they just they already made it
by putting Loki in the game, you just made the Collector card that much
more powerful. Okay, that's why I keep saying so much goddamn Collector lately.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Look, low Key is a tough one.
I run into practically, no Loki. It's really weird. Well,
because the nerve Collector, because the Collector wasn't two two. Now he's a
two zero, So two costs for nothing. Then you have to play all
these cards that all like bring a card into the deck from outside your deck
and to off buff bub buff them up, and Loky'll do it an entire
opening hand. Yeah. So it makes the Collector great, but they nerved
him because it's like, oh, well, we need to bring this power
down. It's a little bit. Yeah. One thing that they do that
I really like is they have a lot of thematic game thematic cards that work
together. A lot of the teams work well together, like all of the
Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah, they're not really fantastic separately, but they
each have almost an identical mechanics, so they pile on and they're cumulative and
like Zabu and Kazar work well together, and Shanna yeah, and Shanna yeah,
and a lot of these, a lot of them just kind of mesh.
Although like Cap and Bucky don't work well together. They don't care great.
Yeah, no, the Fantastic Four completely kind of unrelated. Yeah.
I never play Cap anymore. I play Bucky. My main deck right now
is a destroy deck, and I play the I play the piss out of
Bucky. I really. One of my favorite things is either X twenty three
or Deadpool on turn one, Bucky on turn two, and then Deathlock on
three. Deathlock destroys everything else. Well, Bucky when you destroy him,
he turns into the Winter Soldier, and then Deadpool when you destroy him,
he comes back. Same with X twenty three, she comes back. As
soon as I see the Bucky or the Dead or any of those those cards
you just mentioned, armor, I just drop armor on that lane. There
is nothing more satisfying than somebody putting like Wolverine Bucky and then you drop an
armor on them as they fill up the thing and it's just like you can
see their soul crumbled. Yeah, yeah, you have to. If you're
playing the dest roy deck, you can't put all your eggs in one basket
because armor will just screw. Not at a certain level, Like if you're
like around the twenties and thirties, you can once you get into the fifties
and sixties, you're certain good people they're like because every season everybody goes back
down to a certain they dump be down to a certain amount. You have
to wait for that. According effect, you drop thirty ranks, and over
the course of a week or two that according in effect, everybody's kind of
one bucket. The bucket gets bigger and bigger. So the better players immediate
start jumping in the forties, fifty, sixties, and seventies, whereas people
who are just like you know, just not as good, they hover around
the twenties and thirties. So yeah, I've been making it to around the
eighties lately, So that means I'm starting the seasons at the fifties, which
is way easier. I keep getting seventy seven, seventy eight, and then
I go in this the game does not like me because I go to this
massive losing streak. It's like every it's just it's the perfect deck to go
against me no matter what I do. So and what's funny is I'll change
decks and then that'll be the perfect deck against me, Like, damn it,
I drops me down to sixty eight. Then I can build back up
to say I got my hovering background seventy three right now, Yeah, at
seventy one right now. I just but I only need one more cube to
level, so I'll probably, I don't know, I'll probably grab a level
level or two tonight. Now, have you guys played against each other?
Because my one friend and I we do that. We'll call each other.
You can like create a private game with a code texted to each other and
you guys, we could play against each other just for the funzies. So
if you're ever board one day you want to do it, we can totally
do that. During the day. We should we should set up like we
should have a live streaming, like you know, I'm the Discordia. You
know, I bet that's how I bet that's how some people rapid advance through
levels. Well, I don't think it doesn't count. The victories don't count
towards your No, no, no, no, this is this is a
private for funzie. You can have a funzies match with your friends. Cool.
So yeah, there's also that Devastation or whatever mode or annihilation. Yeah,
but I almost never play that because I don't conquest conquest thank you.
The prizes aren't work with it. Yeah, it's it doesn't work for my
ADHD because Conquest mode is all about play the same deck through like five or
three or four or five matches, and I'm just like, I don't want
to play against the same deck three or four or five times. And yeah,
I've had it where like you know, I've I've I've my deck has
come up with against the deck that just I cannot beat, and it's like,
I'm not gonna stick around and just get like smacked for five like games
here. Yeah, do I need to go up against the Galactus deck four
times in a row? No, I'm just I'm gonna walk you win this
round, buddy, Congratulations. I finally I did get Galactus. Finally I
saved up enough of those tokens and I got my Galactus. Haven't used him
yet, but I have him, saying I haven't I have him, I
haven't used him, but man, Aliof is a badass. Aliof is speaking
of those tokens, those tokens like I I'm very when they change. Okay,
So for the fans, when you're leveling up your car cards, they
don't get more powerful, they just get new cool borders. It's all cosmetic.
And as you level them up, you're a little there's a separate meter
where you're like I tried best way to describe it. It's not your official
ranking. It's just like kind of like your your number stat. I'm somewhere
around like in the six thousands or seven almost just sort of seven thousand.
Yeah, I just looked it up while we were on this. I'm at
sixty two thirty two. Okay, find you. So they you go up
a certain nut in every every so off there's little increments as you go up,
you get like little boosters or a little like like a little mystery box.
And the mystery box used to have a lot more tokens in them.
You would get like two hundred tokens or one hundred tokens or fifty tokens.
Now the tokens are so sparingly because like again they have a storefront and to
buy and to buy cards with in game currency, you either spend real money
or you have to use the in game currency which used to come at a
much better rate. Now it's a much less and it takes far, far
longer to get the cards you want using their game currency. Honestly, I'm
always getting tokens, like I'm always trying to spend spend them like they they
they dump them on me. It seems I'm yourself record, you know,
because I'm I'm on a token deficit overate. Yeah. I think like right
now I've got what have I got thirty one three thousand or so two hundred
token? No, I got forty one hundred tokens okay, And I'm trying
to decide whether I want to buy the new the new card they just released,
because you have to you have tokens gold or the collector things. These
are the collector tokens, okay. The credits are the things you get every
day all the time. That's that's what you level up your characters with.
Yeah. And then gold you has variety of uses. Yeah, usually I
buy variant arts with gold. Well, usually what I do is like every
Tuesday, it's token Tuesday, so you can buy a can pack for your
gold in the shop. Yeah, so that if I have enough gold,
like a thousand tokens and some boosters. That's what I usually saved my gold
Up four for that. I like some of the variants. I hate my
one friend loves it. I hate when I get the pixel variants. I
hate it. Oh my god, they're so ugly. Yeah, it's I
grew up in the eighth Bit era. I don't want it anymore. I
don't find it catchy. I don't want the I don't want to. It's
kind of we're all con going people. There's always gonna be that booth.
It's selling like the digital artprint of Pikachu, and I don't want that either,
you know, but like some people love that digital style. I'm not
one of them. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm not a big fan
of the I hate the eighth Bit, so I don't play any of them
in any of my decks. Yeah. I like the dan Hip variants,
which are very cute, see kind of cheeby. Yeah yeah, yeah,
that's that's the store this week is all dan Hip variants, except I don't
like. I don't like the Hulk variant for some reason. That's just someone
is like this or this cartoon looking it looks like, you know, like
yeah, yeah, the coloring book looking one. Yeah, I've got him.
I just don't I don't like them. Yeah, I went the all
Life field one. I went them all like a tiny feet or no feet
in a lot of pockets. I want like more like than the nineties style
like big shoulder pads era of cards. I just went in the shop right
now and used up my gold and I got I bought two variants and I
got a really pretty death variant. I don't usually do the variants with the
gold. I'll save up like maybe like three thousand gold and do one of
those like one of those like once a month packs where it's like, Okay,
you get a cool variant, but you get like like a whole bunch
of boosters and a ton of like you know, a ton of the daily
credits and stuff. So I'll usually use that and then, like the collector's
tokens, I'll save up. I have like five thousand right now, and
I'm just usually the newer cards are like six thousand. So when like when
a good one comes out, like you know, because the one they have
out there right now, it's like Ravona something and she doesn't strike. Did
you read that card? Scription? It took me, like so many tries
to read that it makes it what it means. Well, if you've got
a three, if you've got a like a card that's like wolf spent wolf
bang, Okay is three one with Ravona, she's a two one right,
But the way the wording of the card is, it's like any car any
card like with one or less becomes one less minimum of one and like witmut
so it does nothing more. Yeah, I know, I understand what it
does. But the way the kind of rules is written as it is written
on the card gets it looks like it says only one one cost cards become
less minimum of one. Like I know that's not what it's trying to say,
but that's kind of how it reads. And it baffled the ship out.
I mean the first three times I've read explain it because it because I've
read it, and I was just like, this makes no sense. It
reduces across your cards, yeah, by one, as long as the card
is small enough has low enough power to start with. Yeah. Right.
I think the last six thousand card or point like collector card that I bought
was probably high evolutionary because that changed my entire deck. That was a huge
card that came out so high. Evolutionary still don't have that. I don't
think what I have Avolutionary does is it takes a bunch of other cards that
normally don't have powers and it gives them powers. And they're generally a whole
bunch of fu powers. Like a lot of them. Yeah yeah, a
lot of them. Either buff your deck, put deep up the other deck.
Yeah yeah. I love playing like dude, Like I don't even use
the thing, but when he play gives play against me, he like literally
shits on you. He shits bricks on you and reduces the powers of your
cards, and like the animation is like, I gotta I gotta applaud it.
I hate it every time, but I app it because he's just shitting
bricks on you and reducing the power of my cards. Yeah, no,
he's awful. I have. I have some decks where I run a Luke
Cage, which Luke Cage just for that reason, your card your cards can't
have their power reduced. Let me tell you, I always keep an Enchantress
in my deck because I know I'm going to run into you Luke Cage motherfuckers.
And I love playing that, like really Okay, So so the best
way to play Luke Cage is to play Luke Cage and then throw a Cosmo
on it so people can't debuff Luke Cage. But a lot of people don't
get to that, so they'll play Luke Cage, do a bunch of other
things. Suddenly Enchantress comes down and their entire like thing because a lot of
people will play Luke Cage and then like and then do say yeah, and
then Spam has mad at you, which is just well, especially if you
have it with a Wong Wi. Yeah, that will just destroy you.
But if you get rid of if you're rid of a Luke Cage's powers,
that just completely screws everybody. The setup that I I'll be playing the game,
you know, whether I'm just on the toilet or I'm just playing.
Like said, then at my office, I boot up and then like as
soon as I see Invisible Woman Drop, I just roll my eyes because I
know it's just going to be a Hella deck. I know it's just gonna
They're gonna hide Hella at the very because they means they got hell in their
opening hand, so they're gonna discard everything drop Hellaa. But you don't see
it coming, oh no, and then boom, she brings back all the
cards I got discarded that game, and they discard a lot so people they
overstack with Giganto and like all these other like the Hella carriers all these other
things, so that like Hella comes back and brings back all those cars poof,
poof, poof, foo poof, and you know it's coming as soon
as you see the Invisible Woman drops. There's literally no other purpose for using
Invisible Woman, I mean none whatsoever. Great character in the comics, terrible
card. Yes, I used to run her in Patriot. I really liked
her in my Patriot deck because you play Invisible Woman on two Patriot on the
same lane on Mistique on that same lane, so then Mistique will reveal copy
Patriot and then all of your shitty little cards with no abilities get buffed.
So that's where that's how I was playing a lot of Invisible Woman. See
the main deck I play is what I call a spoiler deck. I'm mostly
playing high Evolutionary already, but I purposely keep cards like Armor, Enchantress,
sand Man, sand Man. Yes, because these are cards, these are
cards that don't buff me, but they screw up other people's that other people's
so so the destruction decks. One of the things they love to do is
in the final round they'll play Death and they'll play Null, and that combination
is will just destroy you. But by playing sand Man, they can only
play one card and that makes so you can defend against that, and if
you play it in Aliath, you can just annihilate that that entire like you
know strategy. Yeah, so I am not a fan of Sandman, but
I keep them in my deck. I hate that less than fucking Professor X.
I fucking hate playing against Professor X. Professor X is just like,
oh no, cock block everything. You can't put any more cards here,
you can't destroy any cards here, you can't move cards here, and the
cards that you played here before Professor X got revealed, oh yeah, they
don't do anything now. I hate and people look people like whenever I see
Daredevil coming up, I know that a Professor X is probably going to be
played, because that's primarily when people use Daredevil for to set up like where
they can put a Professor X. Yeah, yep, have you fucked around
with Shadow King and not? I have them in my deck, but I
don't really use them well for ricks deck specifically, that ability like resets all
their power back to their base costs and like all the buffing, all the
things. Like you ever want to see a null like just come out with
this big throbbing dick and just chop it right off, because like now you're
back to zero, buddy, that's six power and you have nothing. Because
shadow King is really good against move decks too, because is human. Torch
and Vulture all get buffed so much by and Craven. They all get buffed
by either moving or having things moved to where they are, and shadow King
just ships all over that. Valkyrie is another card that does that. Yeah,
yeah, you know, I've I've got I've lost more than one game
where I've I've had like three good cards and somebody will play has their fourth
card Valkyrie, and there's no defense against that. It basically makes every card
in a lane three power, so if somebody else has more cards than you,
they just automatically win that. What I've seen done to really good effect
is Falkyry with Cerebral or Silver Silver Surfer or both, because Cerebro buffs your
biggest yes, your biggest creature. Well if your biggest creatures are all threes,
yep, Cerebros popping every and see that's why High Evolutionary costs three.
Then Silver Surfer buffs everything. Yeah. See that's why the high Evolutionary deck
is great against Cerebro because it messes up that thing. So now other cards
are not three. But yeah, now that now that it's also on a
steam, I am enjoying that as well, because like it used to because
like sometimes I put my phone just out of reach when I'm working. I'm
in the morning where I'm working in the afternoon, I'm writing, I put
my phone out of reach, I put let music play, and then so
I can't be distracting. But I'm at my laptop and I'm like, but
my laptop can get to snap now too. Oh no, Like who do
you play as? Just in case any of our discord or anybody wants to
hop on and they're like and they're like, hey, I'm getting my ass
kicked by Kimmy. You know, it's literally just GiB. That's my name,
GiB. If you see me coming in and my characters are let me,
I'll pull up my deck roll fast one second on my phone. DA
let me see here. Also once you set it to like the higher frame
rate on your phone and like all the animations look great, and my phone
starts getting hot. Every game takes them per cent or two of power that
I'm playing, and I don't care. It's great. But my go to
deck is a high high evolutionary deck. It is. It's what I call
my infleeked deck, and it I like it because I don't need to spend
energy every turn to make something happen. Because every time you don't spend energy,
for the Hulk Key goes up plus two plus two every single time.
So my deck consists of one second here. Okay, I'm getting old.
Where my glasses there? They are all right? Oh no, no,
no sun spots. So he always goes up in powers as long as you
got left over energy. Kitty Pride, who gets more power for every round
I like to like hate that. I mean too, Misty Nike, thanks
a high evolutionaries lounge of left of her power. She gives one extra power
to some other card in your hand Angela to zero, but every time you
play a card against her, like Kitty Pride put over it, she gets
plus two. Every time someone plays in that lane Cable just as a fuck
you, I'm just gonna take one card away from you, just to see
what happens. Armor to stop some of the destroy decks. Magic to try
to push it to seven rounds. Cyclops is a great one because left of
energy he does minus two power off of people on the other side. Super
Scroll for all those annoying nul decks or super Scroll is also great from someone
that plays a Devil, Dinosaur or Darkhawk or Rode in all the and I
played against a guy who did all three and so the superscull got all those
abilities. High evolutionary obviously, Taskmaster and Hulk. That's my go to deck
right now. All right, so if you're on there, I am a
thirty year old Simpsons joke, I am mister Plow and my favorite deck right
now. I have a whole bunch of them. But the deck I have
right now is another is also a high evolutionary deck. Misty Night very very
useful card. Mirage. I love the fact that she steals a low power
card but potentially turns it into a higher power card. Yep, Armor because
fu if you're playing a destruction deck. Truth. I like Shocker because he's
a low he's he's a low card with three he's a two cost card with
three power. But he'll take another card in your deck and make it one
less cost. And if you have like an Aliath or like an or like
an abomination or so, that can make a big difference. Cyclops, same
with same with you. I always keep a shanging Shee in my deck because
again I told as I said, it's a spoiler deck. I want to
take away from you as opposed to buff me up, because that makes me
happy. High evolutionary Obviously, Enchantress removes removes ongoing effects. Powerful card.
John mentioned he hated the thing. I have the thing in my deck sand
Man, And let me tell you there isn't like For a while there I
was getting crushed by falcon and Beast decks with like with like bast and like
low level cards because they would just like continually spam each round, just like
with tons of cards. And let me tell you, nothing destroys that that
build faster than sand Man. I guarantee, if you're playing against somebody and
you play a Sandman, you will get them retreating because there's nothing they can
do. Abombination. One thing I like about abombination is cards like the Thing
and Cyclops. The more power they take away, the less cost that that
that abombination has, so at the end, Abomination could be like a one
or sometimes a zero cost card, which and with nine powerful. And then
I took Hulk. I used to do Hulk, but I took him out
of my deck and I put in Alath instead. Yeah, Hulk is great,
he's very powerful, but I was getting screwed by a lot of those
helidex and Hulk does nothing against that. Whereas Aliath, if you play that,
you can stop a helidext, like at least if you play it the
right way. Yeah, I'm gonna tink around with like the my Aliath because
I wouldn't mind making my own Aliath slash Galactus kind of thing. But I
like your I like your stance, and they're like, but man, that
Sandman is like, like I said, I've made this joke to you before,
but it's like it's like that old lady on the homeowners Association who's like,
no one will have fun on my watch. I'm going to make sure
we are we are all miserable. I've had like like some of those ones
were like okay, you get like plus five power. I've played Sandman like
the first the first card of the of the game, and you can immediately
see people just be like, screw it. I don't want to play this
because, yes, you're right, half the fun is like putting down multiple
cards and sand Man just takes that away from you, and like, you
know, it's more like sand Karen than yeah it kind it is, all
right, So any closing, any closing thoughts on this before we wrap up?
No, I think, but I do think we should like definitely set
up for those after this thing episode comes out. We'll find out who plays,
try to get a thing where we all play, like maybe like like
I'm like one of those Jackbox games. We like, we can get a
Marble Snap like day where we can get some of the other fans who are
in the discord, like we'll get online, We'll get all each other's codes
and like stream some games together. I think this could be a lot of
fun. Yeah, yeah, I agree. This sounds like it would be
a virtual thing. Although whoever is displaying their deck is gonna be a wee
bit of a disadvantage. So well it is, but the person should be
looking at their phone and their device less and not looking at the screen,
but like, you know, that's we're all friends here, because it's like
I was literally just about to send you an invite code, but then yousually
once you said, say man again, like I close the game. Never
mind, I'm not gonna fuck Rick. I'm not playing you win by default.
I'm not man, I'm gonna turn on the game tonight and I'm gonna
be like, oh, there's GiB and suddenly it's like retreat gone, is
it me? Do I spell? But I thinks I've played against and mister
Plow, I'm like, is that you so? Probably? I mean literally,
I have been mister Plow since this game came out, I haven't.
I have not changed that. Once I pick a name, I don't go
back and change it, like I'll change my like I'll change my avatar,
I'll change my title, my lick in my little subtitle. But I don't
change my name because, yeah, I'm saying, I've always been given all
my games just because it's the easiest thing to remember. Just GiB and if
you see that, that's me. So all right, guys, Well,
thank you very much for joining us for this side quest. I hope,
I hope we kept you entertained. If you're a Marvel uh snap player,
let us know and uh. In the meantime, we'll be back next week
with another quest for competence. And until then, bye bye, you have
a good night. Also, some dragons ought to under Creative Commons license,
meaning you were free to share this material so long as credit is given to
those who created, which is us. People you just heard to play the
game opening and closing themes performed by the Gore Core four