Surprise Team Clash Patch!
Surprise! Second Dinner is taking immediate steps to balance Team Clash. We've seen these with limited time game modes before, but never this quick. I'm really happy with this quick patch to balance, because it is impossible to perfectly balance something like this before launch. A different company may have left Team Clash alone, the meta didn't feel especially bad, but I applaud their desire to give it more balance, even when it's not an emergency.
Why did they make these changes?
To the surprise of almost everyone, Thunderbolts was by far the strongest Team, with Avengers running in a distant Second, and the Spider-Verse pre-con is terrible!
Thunderbolts ability: +2 -> +1
This is the biggest change. The Thunderbolts ability was incredibly powerful and a deck that should have been built around clogging or other disruption and finding sneaky ways to play a lot of unexpected Power late was often just winning on raw points. It's a really harsh nerf, so they must have been performing way outside acceptable margins.
Buffs
- Agony: 2/3 -> 1/2
- Symbiote Spider-Man: 4/4 -> 4/6
It's good to see Agony go down in price. The deck is at its best when it can win with a big Man-Spider and 2/3 Agony was making that a lot harder. Symbiote Spider-Man has felt truly awful in the mode and will still probably be bad at 4/6. He just doesn't mesh well with what the deck is trying to do and often gets in the way. Hopefully he and Anti-Venom are tweaked before the next Team Clash run.
- Nightcrawler: 1/1 -> 1/2
- Wolverine: 2/1 -> 2/3
Nightcrawler is a great change and there will now be incentive to play into his play lines. I'm surprised by the Wolverine buff. He's felt reasonably strong to me, as long as you don't accidentally play him out when there aren't any X-Men on board (he just blows up). Perhaps it's just the best way to improve the deck generally than an indictment of him individually.
- Toxie Doxie: +2 -> +3
- Star-Lord: 2/2 -> 2/3
- Groot: 4/10 -> 4/11
I like making Toxie more powerful to compensate for the change to the team mechanic. It also serves to incentivize playing more Thunderbolts in your deck, something that they were able to do without better than most of the other Teams. The Guardians of the Galaxy have felt weak, especially since your opponent can often end up benefiting quite a bit from what is meant to be your team mechanic.
Nerfs
- Hawkeye: 1/1 +2 -> 1/2 +1
- Vision: 4/7 -> 4/6
The Avengers take a little tap too. The Hawkeye nerf might look small, but it's a major nerf to his maximum size. They are also taking another point from the deck with a small Vision nerf.
Changes to pre-constructed decks
- X-Men: Esme Cuckoo -> Armor
- Spider-Verse: Vulture, Kraven -> Arana, Spider-Punk
- Guardians: Silver Surfer FS -> Rocket and Groot
When I first saw the pre-cons I couldn't believe they had put Esme in it. There actually are ways to successfully incorporate Esme in an X-Men deck, but not in that pre-con. Putting Armor in the deck with Wolverine is weird, but apparently Elektra was wrecking shop. Vulture for Araña is a really solid swap, but I'm not as sure about the Kraven change. It all comes down to Anti-Venom's functionality. Kraven was one of the worst hits, and now Araña gives you another way to get rid of Anti-Venom's downside. Rocket & Groot is a good way to allow you to punish your opponents for playing into highlighted lanes so that is a welcome change.
You can also hear Lauren and I talk on our YouTube channel!
