OTA Changes 25 June with Decks!

The OTA is here and it is significant! Two cards returned to familiar stat lines, two cards may have taken a bullet for the sins of others, and there were some significant buffs to Move cards ahead of next month's Spider-Man: Brand New Day season! We also got some massive changes to Grand Arena Massive Melee, so be sure to stick around and read about those!

The Changes

• Debrii: 3/8 ⇨  3/7
• Negasonic Teenage Warhead: 4/5 ⇨  4/4
• Aurora: 6/6 ⇨ 6/5
• Jubilee Silver Surfer: 4/2 ⇨ 4/3
• Nocturne: 3/4 ⇨ 3/5
• Topaz: 2/3 ⇨ 2/4
• Web Sling: Now gives +1 to the card when it moves!

Analysis and Decks

• [Old] 3/8 - On Reveal: Add a Rock to each other location.
• [Change] 3/8 ⇨ 3/7

This is a great change. 3/8 was so excessive that even after this nerf Debrii will see a lot of play. The clogging is meant to be a bit of a downside, but that downside has been fully transformed into upside with cards like Techno-Organic Virus and Ozymandias. Even before those cards released, Debrii was underrated value. There are so many other cards that benefit from the rocks like Zombie Mr. Fantastic and First Steps Thing that they never feel like a constraint in the decks she sees play in.

• [Old] 4/5 - After an enemy character is played here, destroy it. (once per game)
• [Change] 4/5 ⇨ 4/4

I do think Negasonic has been a part of an oppressive presence, but that presence is being facilitated by Supergiant! Sugi is slowly becoming an issue and I would have liked to see her lose a point of Power before NTW. For whatever reason, the animation or stress hormone spike she can induce when she's a surprise, people seem to really have an issue with this card being good. I'm fully on the other side and have always felt that she was a fun, quirky card that represents solid design and rewards smart play.

• [Old] 6/6 - On Reveal: Give one of your other On Reveal cards at each location +2 Power. Repeat for Ongoing, Activate, and End of Turn.
• [Change] 6/6 ⇨ 6/5

Aurora has absolutely been on the rise and Aurora with Venus was the deck I was personally playing the most this past week. I'm still surprised to see Aurora get hit this quickly, as I'd figured they'd let her run a while. I probably would have preferred a small change to one of Aurora's strongest scalers, rather than Aurora herself. The deck has felt overplayed, but didn't feel especially overpowered. This type of change is designed to ding play rate, so it's definitely in line with how SD usually approaches these situations.

Aurora Persists

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• [Old] 4/2 - When you draw a card, add this card's Power to it.
• [Change] 4/2 ⇨ 4/3

Look, I'm not here to tell you Jubilee SS was great, but I definitely don't think she was as bad as most of the community and creator sentiment I saw around her. I think she was a step behind and this buff is two steps forward. Going from 2 ⇨ 3 makes a huge difference for this card, as it will often represent 3 extra Power per game.

Thanos Jubilee

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• [Change] 3/4 ⇨ 3/5
• [Old] 3/4 - Moveable once. When this moves, replace its location with a random new

Too much reliable, free location change genuinely makes the game more boring and good players are always going to lean hard on it when it's available. The reason Nocturne was problematic before is that her 5-Power body meant she truly felt like free location control.. even if she trolled you sometimes. Have the power-levels risen enough that a 3/5 isn't as attractive? Absolutely. We've seen several buffs to 2 and 3-Cost cards recently, while there has been an increased points cap on higher-curve combos as well. Debrii needed to come down to a 3/7 because she just felt like too much free value at 3/8. I think the game can handle 3/5 Nocturne. She's not the clear-cut choice for location control in every deck like she was before. We have Merlin now as competition and several decks are utilizing Legion.

• [Old] 2/3 – After you play a card here, move it to the middle location.
• [Change] 2/3 ⇨ 2/4

I played around a bunch with Topaz when she came out and she didn't feel bad at all. She has a passive ability to move something as early as Turn 3, which is inherently pretty strong. Not having to rely on an On Reveal or Ongoing ability is quite nice. The location constraint is her primary downside as it's not always easy to organize your board how you'd like and it makes her more predictable for your opponent. She is quite powerful with Sparky to bounce cards around. The new stat line should get her a lot more experimentation during the upcoming season.

• [Old] 1-Cost - On Reveal: Next turn, one of your cards here is Moveable. (your choice)
• [New] 1-Cost - On Reveal: Next turn, one of your cards here is Moveable and gets +1 Power when it moves. (your choice)

Wow, this is a massive change. This is another card that I experimented with a bunch and it really did feel like too little value despite being occasionally useful. The forward facing nature of it made it feel a tad slow and a step behind other 1-Cost options. Now Web Sling might eclipse those options rather than just join them. The fact that the devs specifically called out in the patch notes that it can multi-proc in a single turn is huge. Each time that card moves on the following turn it will get +1 and Move enjoyers know the shenanigans that are possible on a single turn. Even if you don't get +2 or +3, the extra point of Power gives this card a much higher floor. Don't sleep on this. It's the biggest change of the day, not Nocturne.

Post-OTA Multiple Men

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Topaz Herc Bonkers

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Massive Changes to Massive Melee!

There have been some major changes to the decks. A boatload of tech has been taken out of the mode and some of the underperforming decks are a lot more interesting. The Sentinel deck looks like a blast and it's nice to see Venus enter the mode in the Thanos deck (that skill is still terrible, though). Primary beneficiaries that didn't change will be the Human Torch, Black Panther, and Thors.

Final Thoughts

The dev team's patch notes claim this OTA isn't meant to rock the boat, but the changes to the Move cards, especially Web Sling, feel very impactful going into Spider season. We've seen them buff cards in the past in anticipation of synergy with upcoming cards (Martyr, Crystal), and I expect this is the same strategy. Despite some quibbles on which cards got hit, the decks that needed to be reigned in got changed and there are exciting cards to play with, making this a a pretty solid OTA.

I've included just a couple of fun, quirky decks below as a treat for our lovely supporters! We love making ad-free Marvel Snap content and supporters help us do just that!