Burning Questions 3/20

Welcome back to Burning Questions, your weekly stroll through hot Marvel Snap topics. This week we're talking reworks and Team Clash teams!

1) How would you change the new Gambit, Horseman of Death card?

I do think the new Gambit is problematic for the game. It acts as a kind of reverse Shang-Chi cutting the legs out of decks that rely on key low-cost cards. It's less that it's too strong than that it's too unpleasant. Horseman Gambit becomes even more problematic when he's duplicated (I think the sweet spot is duplicating him once, as opposed to the decks that try to make 3-4 copies, but they're all annoying). 

But what can be done while still retaining the identity of this clearly popular card? Making him 4-Cost would help, as would upping the requirement to 6 total Cost, but here are some ideas that aren't just fiddling with the numbers already on the card.

Make him count the cost paid rather than the base Cost

Cards like Valentina and Iron Patriot make hitting the Objective entirely too easy. While I think this is probably a difficult technical hurdle, I think it would alleviate a lot of the issues with this card. They've never had a situation where cards on board are counted by the cost paid rather than base Cost, so I'm not optimistic this will be Second Dinner’s solution – but it would be a good one.

Play 5 (or 4) total created cards

Rather than tying his ability to Cost, let's tie it to an amount of cards played. Again, this removes the easy value of Valentina and would change the type of decks that would choose to play Gambit. It would also potentially elevate the upcoming rocks archetype that a lot of people are excited for.

Add (once per game) or some other way to limit copies 

This is probably too clumsy, but some way to prevent a copy or second instance of the Gambit ability would make the card less problematic, while still leaving this a powerful and playable card.

Randomly destroy a 2 and a 3-Cost enemy card

This is a more extreme change, but changing the card to something that can't just wipe away all of your opponents’ small cards would help with the pain points Gambit currently pushes. It's a higher floor, but a lower ceiling. Alternatives would be to have him destroy a 3, 4, OR 5-Cost, multiple 2s, or some other combination of amounts and costs. There are a lot of options here.

2) How do you feel about the state of Mr. Negative?

Mr. Negative has long been one of my least favorite play patterns in the game. I think that decks that hold everything back for a big, hard-to-counter flourish on the final turn should generally be limited and fragile. Mr. Negative has been far too consistent for too long. Sure we have Mobius, but a meta where Negative is the only good target for Mobius and Mobius being the only good counter for Negative isn't very fun. Negative rarely sits atop the metagame, save occasionally being a Conquest powerhouse, but the deck is enjoying some solid mainstream ladder success these days. This would be the perfect time to nerf or rework one of my least favorite cards. Here are my best ideas that still leave Negative very strong (perhaps stronger than I would personally like, but, hey, it's not all about me!).

Make Jane Foster grab only base 0-Cost cards. 

This still leaves her in a position to grab Wasps and Hammers, but disentangles her from Negative. I love this change largely because of how little it would impact Mr. Negative. The best Negative decks don't even need this snap-equity, trump card, so why provide it? It's long past time to separate these two.

4/-4

There's a certain attractive symmetry and this change might lead to more creative attempts to remove the albatross of a -4 body from the board. This is another change that is fun, effective, and would still leave Mr. Negative highly viable.

3) What future Team Clash teams would you like to see added?

The Defenders would be a great place to stash some of Marvel’s most prominent street-level heroes, popular stars of the gritty Netflix and Disney+ shows, and some of the classic members of the Defenders from the comics. How great would it be to have a playable Jessica Jones card? Or a cool Misty Knight card with an actual ability?

They're kind of perfect in how they could be built out with characters that aren't currently keys on any of the other teams. They could even be the first team with a degree of Discard synergy. Here's a potential roster to show how deep this group could be without pulling key members from the other Teams:

Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Valkyrie, Misty Knight, She-Hulk, Silver Surfer, Angel, Clea, Moondragon, Echo, Ghost Rider, Spider-Woman, Colleen Wing, Namor, Yellowjacket, Wasp, Red Guardian, Cloak, Dagger, Black Cat

Top candidates for the Team Clash "redesign" would be Jessica Jones, Misty Knight, Luke Cage, Silver Surfer, Angel, Daredevil and Echo — all popular characters that I think players would be excited to try with reimagined abilities.

Hulk and Doctor Strange are too entwined with the Avengers team, but I think a case could be made for shifting Iceman and Darkhawk over. Iceman especially feels needed from a design perspective to include some vintage Defenders feelings. We could definitely use more villainous teams, but the Defenders just make a ton of sense with what characters are available and would have a large, varied roster.

That's it for this week! Come back next time for more Burning Questions! As always, thank you for your support! If you enjoy our content and want to support us, consider subscribing! It helps us produce more content and we are really grateful for any support! Please spread the word about Fourth Location and subscribe to our YouTube channel!