Welcome back! We'll be resuming our "OTA, Patch, OTA, Off" cadence after this week, assuming future patches continue to land as scheduled. We're largely happy with the metagame at the moment, so today's changes aim to weaken one threat in particular while distributing a handful of buffs to more fringe cards.
- Red Hulk
- [Old] 6/11 - When your opponent ends a turn with unspent Energy, +4 Power. (if in hand or in play)
- [Change] 6/11 -> 6/9
Red Hulk has been the best 6-Cost in the game since release, and even created upticks in a handful of other options that effectively countered one big play, like Leader and Spectrum. Elements of the strength and its counters were intentional, given the mechanic revealing Red Hulk to your opponent was a novel bit of mechanical space we rarely explore. We expected that to mean Red Hulk's cube gain rate would be much lower when compared to similarly winning cards, due to it being very difficult to get the final double, so part of the card's baseline strength was compensation for that downside. However, Red Hulk's cube gain rate has also been quite strong, leading to today's nerf to level the playing field. In fact, some of us have wondered how many 8-cube games Red Hulk was stealing by "tricking" opponents into countering the big guy, only to lose to a combination of smaller cards!
- U.S. Agent
- [Old] 2/3 - Ongoing: 4, 5, and 6-Cost cards here have -3 Power.
- [New] Ongoing: 4, 5, and 6-Cost cards here have -4 Power.
On the flip side, U.S. Agent released a bit on the weak side. The change to Zabu reducing the number of 4-Cost cards in play combined with the resurgence of Angela-based swarm decks probably reduced the potential impact of U.S. Agent. However, the data doesn't indicate that this card is too far off the mark, so we're just improving the effect a little.
- Jean Grey
- [Old] 3/3 - Ongoing: Players must play their first card here each turn. (if possible)
- [Change] 3/3 -> 3/4
No, this isn't just because we're all loving
X-Men '97–although that's definitely true! Jean has stood on the edge of a balancing knife for some time now, with an effect that can be frustratingly strong. However, with the metagame seeing a major uptick in big combos like Annihilus and Hela, along with Angela-based decks easily evading the effect's downsides, now seems like a good time to explore pushing a bit more Power into one of the strongest X-Men. Jean's Ongoing can uniquely hurt specific opponents alongside tech cards like Cosmo and Echo, offering players who enjoy a more controlling strategy a new way to play.
- Stature
- [Old] 5/6 - Costs 1 if your opponent discarded a card this game.
- [Change] 5/6 -> 5/7
Similarly, Stature has proven that one more Power is within reach. This has been an unusual card to monitor, as every now and then we'll see Stature temporarily vault into our Top 10 cards on internal metrics, but never make a prolonged stay. After seeing the cycle often enough, we've chalked it up to the cyclical presence of Mobius M. Mobius in various decks. With Pixie decks that always play Mobius performing well lately, it's fair game to give Stature a small buff in compensation for that vulnerability.
- Mantis
- [Old] 2/2 - On Reveal: If your opponent played any cards here this turn, copy one of them into your hand.
- [Change] 2/2 -> 1/2
Admittedly, we were quite conservative on the previous functional change to Mantis, going with 2/2 out of concern for the card becoming annoying against enemy Venoms and the like. Since those fears proved unfounded, we're restoring Mantis to 1/2.
- Jane Foster
- [Old] 5/8 - On Reveal: Draw all cards that Cost 0 from your deck.
- [Change] 5/8 -> 5/9
Last but not least, the Mighty Thor! It's no secret that we think the Asgard-themed deck built around finding and slamming various hammers is a lot of fun, and players seem to agree. It's an archetype that flirts with competitive play fairly often–as this is being written, Beta Ray Bill is on the rise–but struggles to maintain such performance. In fact, we're chalking part of that up to the new Sandman punishing turn 5 Jane especially well. Adding a bit of Power for those games where you have to prove your Worth the hard way makes sense.
— That's all for this week. Until next time, happy snapping!
