So Ben Brode apparently told Kotaku to snap on turn 1.
I feel the “playing it safe” explanation and I often forget to snap.
So, trying it out and here is a wacky game. My opponent pulled a massive disruption play on me and I almost retreated out of instinct. I decided to try to play chicken until the last turn, and then re-examined my hand and realized I had an easy 8 cubes due to Peak and Iron Man.
That’s not exactly correct…
“If you’re not good at determining whether to snap, you should probably be snapping round one,” Brode told us, “because it’s better than never snapping!”
So technically he said that snapping on turn 1 is better than forgetting to snap at all. But he also contradicts that later with:
“Somebody with a negative win-rate,” explains Brode, “but who wins eight cubes when they win, and loses one cube when they lose, is going to skyrocket up the ladder.”
If you always snap on turn 1, there’s no way you can lose one cube when you lose. It’s always going to be at least 2 (if you retreat), or more likely 4 or 8 (if you don’t).
Me personally, I have very specific requirements in my deck for when I snap. It’s good to have an objective criteria to play off of.
I don’t see the contradiction because someone who wins 8 but loses 1 understand when to snap, which he just said first turn snapping is for people who don’t understand when to snap.
Right, that’s my point: The headline “Ben Brode Says People Who Snap At The Start Are Smart” is not actually the point he was making.
that was what I was saying, you said that
which makes it sound like Ben said that and then contradicted it afterwards since the quote you posted was Ben’s. If you meant the author was saying that and then posted a quote from Ben that contradicted it then we are on the same page, but that wasn’t how I read what you wrote. Because Ben did say that snapping on turn 1 is better than not snapping at all, and I don’t see how the next quote from Ben is a contradiction of that statement at all.
Either way the author of the article has no idea how to communicate and completely misunderstood what Ben was saying, then ran with the most sensationalist headline because that’s what is ‘journalism’ these days I guess.
Finally playing a Leech/Leader/Surfer deck and I feel like a monster. A successful monster.
Go visit Vormir please.
I kid, but put Sera and Galactus in there and declare yourself my mortal enemy.
I hate Surfer, most busted OP card in the game, though Galactus is charging in hard to join the conversation. Those two cards are probably responsible for 75% of my losses (most the rest RNG get fuckedery)
Hit 60 last night and my mystery variant said, “HEY! Remember Move decks!?!??!” I guess I should be grateful it wasn’t a pixel variant.
Finally! Spider-Man was my offer this morning. Perfect timing as he goes well in both the Zabu and control decks.
I swear to god I have cursed luck though. I played probably 20 matches with Zabu after purchasing the pack yesterday, and I got to play Zabu 4 times. It was absurd, there was even two more matches I drew him turn 6. But the math is the math, it should be 50% to have him on turn 3, and it happened 4 times in 20 matches.
The RNG really hates me.
Two things: you really want to put America Chavez in a Zabu deck, to bump the odds of getting it by turn 3 to 55%.
Second, I’m don’t know that you’re wrong. I know this sounds like tinfoil hat stuff, but I also got this feeling and recorded 43 games. Not just whether I saw Zabu, but by which card I saw him by. Or if I didn’t draw him at all, then I recorded how many cards I saw before the game ended or the deck was reshuffled. (If the suspicion is that the shuffling is bad, then you can’t consider the samples after an in-game reshuffle).
There was one game where Yondu revealed Zabu as the bottom card of the deck, and I didn’t count it since it seemed like an unnecessary complication.
Them I compared the odds of seeing Zabu in the first N cards to the observed distribution:
| card no. | seen | drew zabu | % | expected % | cum % | cum expected % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 43 | 4 | 0.09 | 0.09 | 0.09 | 0.09 |
| 2 | 43 | 4 | 0.09 | 0.09 | 0.19 | 0.18 |
| 3 | 43 | 4 | 0.09 | 0.09 | 0.28 | 0.27 |
| 4 | 42 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.09 | 0.28 | 0.36 |
| 5 | 28 | 2 | 0.07 | 0.09 | 0.35 | 0.45 |
| 6 | 25 | 1 | 0.04 | 0.09 | 0.39 | 0.55 |
| 7 | 23 | 2 | 0.09 | 0.09 | 0.48 | 0.64 |
| 8 | 18 | 4 | 0.22 | 0.09 | 0.70 | 0.73 |
| 9 | 8 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.70 | 0.73 |
So, this is kind of wild. 43 games, and I did not drew Zabu as the 4th card (i.e. the normal card draw of the first round) even a single time. And it was almost 2.5x too common as the 8th card.
Then I swapped a 4-cost card I was basically never playing for a 2-cost card that at least had some chance of getting played, and did another 16 games.
| card no. | seen | drew zabu | % | expected % | cum % | cum expected % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 16 | 2 | 0.12 | 0.09 | 0.12 | 0.09 |
| 2 | 16 | 1 | 0.06 | 0.09 | 0.19 | 0.18 |
| 3 | 16 | 1 | 0.06 | 0.09 | 0.25 | 0.27 |
| 4 | 16 | 2 | 0.12 | 0.09 | 0.38 | 0.36 |
| 5 | 10 | 2 | 0.20 | 0.09 | 0.57 | 0.45 |
| 6 | 8 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.09 | 0.57 | 0.55 |
| 7 | 8 | 1 | 0.12 | 0.09 | 0.70 | 0.64 |
| 8 | 7 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.09 | 0.70 | 0.73 |
| 9 | 5 | 1 | 0.20 | 0.00 | 0.90 | 0.73 |
Now, the sample on this second attempt was not large. I stopped recording since it was just so obvious that I was getting better draws. I might try to scrape a bigger data set from my snap.fan match history, though it’s a bit annoying since I can’t detect reshuffles happening.
So if you’ve already recorded a dataset, I’d be very curious what happens if you just add in one more 2-cost card into the deck (or a 3-cost that sorts before Zabu in the deck view) and do another 20 games.
(The hypothesis would be that the shuffler is bad, and the input to the shuffler is based on the display order. Not that there’s anything specific to Zabu. I had similar issues with other decks that must get a combo centerpeice on the table on round 3, where a obviously beneficial change to the deck by removing a unused card just murdered my win rate. But this was the first time I started writing down the data.)
I actually do, but like I said, I have the worst luck. Even with Chavez my play rate for Zabu is low.
Interesting data, unfortunately I don’t ‘officially’ record anything so don’t have solid data to back it up, but even today it’s <50% if I see him at all.
But when it works, turn 5 double Spider-Man is delicious.
Right, and there are in fact a very simple implementation mistakes in a shuffler that would make the distribution grossly uneven in a game where the decks are this small.
So even if you’re not actually writing down this in a spreadsheet (“there’s dozens of us, dozens!”), I’d really be curious about whether moving Zabu up a spot makes a noticeable difference. (My rotten luck was with Zabu in 3rd, the decent draws had Zabu in 4th. Of course if you already have Zabu in 4th, the so much for that theory :-P)
And yes, the double-Spider-Man is just dirty, especially with DD. It’s good that so few people have Absorbing Man, and need to at least work for it with getting the hand into the right state for Moongirl to copy Spider-Man
I’m also seeing a lot of versions with Darkhawk/ Rockslide. Absorbing Man I wouldn’t say super common, but definitely not uncommon. The thing I like about Moon Girl over Absorbing Man is getting double Spider and Shang Chi is nice.
I would have a hard time replacing any card here, though Dracula and Infinaut are the obvious pull. But they are a nice pull for turn 6, and have won me games. Plus it can help because you don’t want priority on Shang Chi. So a double whammy of sorts.
But other things can work.
Have you had JJ be effective? I didn’t have a lot of success with her; useless as a last round play, and on earlier rounds needing to not play on her lane is surprisingly restrictive. Zabu just plays so many cards!
Psylocke is quite nice 2-cost, since it’ll let you play a 4 on round 3 if Zabu whiffs, and a round 4/5 Zabu can still save the day if you didn’t need to skip too many early plays.
with moongirl and absorbing shenanigans, I’ve had double JJ in a lane as well. definitely works in this deck. I also run Drax though which is the opposite of JJ in a lot of ways (yeah, Rescue is the exact opposite ;) )
I run Psylocke for the 2 slot and she helps a lot. Sometimes you just play her on 2 for the whopping 1 point, but when you don’t have Zabu in hand, she means you get to drop one of your 4’s on 3 which helps everything feel smoother. Bonus if it is Crystal who I also play since that gives you another shot at Zabu.
Zabu on 3, then Crystal into Moongirl on 4 has won me a lot of games. You draw 3 cards pretty much guaranteed to all be 4’s then you double them. I also don’t run Chavez though, preferring Sera which allows me to still do well enough if I never see Zabu. Sera on 5 means I still get 2 4’s on 6. My non-Zabu games still feel decent much of the time since I might Psylocke on 2 into JJ, Drax or Crossbones, then on 4 I play one naturally and on 5 I Sera then on 6 I often have access to Enchantress and/or Shang Chi to deal with stuff. Keep changing my mind about White Queen. She might be my favorite ‘underrated’ 4 drop, but sometimes clogs up my hand in this deck since I don’t want to be moongirl’ing their card most of the time.
Haven’t played a ton of games with it so far compared to many players, but my win rate is feeling solid. Kitty Kat deck
31-9 with an average cube rate of +2.15 so far
For the first time since I’ve been following this thread, I actually have all the cards for a deck someone posted! Only because I got the season pass, of course, for which I can thank the Storm art that I couldn’t pass up. So obviously I had to try it out, and I promptly lost several games as I had no idea what I was doing. Kinda got the feel after that, though, and managed to pull off a few wins. Including one against Galactus, which was nice. I keep having trouble with Dracula discarding some random low power card that’s left in my turn 6 hand, but I’m probably just not sequencing things right to end up holding only Infininaut at the end.
The idea is to play evetything leaving only Chavez and Infinaut. Or, barring that, play Moon Girl when Infinaut is in hand to increase the odds.
But you need to make plays on other lanes, and provide coverage just in case. The best thing you can do is double turn 5 Spider-Man. That’s the game winner right there.
Also I completely agree @ineffablebob, I think this season’s variant arts are fantastic. Love the classic pulp adventure vibe they have. Even the new cards like Shanna are great looking.
Shame Kazar isn’t that good, it’s a fine looking card. But that Storm is chefs kiss
I like to title this piece: get fucked Galactus
As soon as I saw Wolverine turn 2, I expected Galactus left lane on turn 4/5. Fortunately with Spider-Man and Moon Girl in hand, I did have the answer. Which is fortunate I had priority, because Doc Ock could have ruined things
As soon as Spidey flipped they exited, before the animation even finished.
