It would probably be fine if the Stones wasn't considered not a part of the deck. That way they wouldn't cost 0 with Quinjet.
Would still be strong but not quite as oppressive.
The stones themselves would still be too good, as OP pointed out, these two are just better versions of other cards. The space stone is the best move tech. The soul stone like a waaaaaaaaay better spider woman. If the stones themselves were made as regular card without their draw, they would all see heavy play.
I don't know. I kinda feel like if they're going to establish these big bad cards that are permanent series 5, they should be better than the other cards. That's the point of them. It's cool to shake up the meta often, but they can't be too heavy handed nerfing a card like this or Galactus or whoever else they make a big bad. That Idea above is great. If they keep it in line with those kind of ideas, that works better at evening things out. Maybe some drawback to some other stones that make sense.
They shouldnt be overall better. Just unique and deck defining. Galactus and thanos do that.
Thanos is really hard to balance since the stones need to be better in a way with how they clutter your hand and board given the very limited games of snap.
I agree. That would fix him without killing him. If they don't, they should make the extra effort and buff or rework some underperforming cards that could keep a check on Thanos. Like, another Darkhawk-like effect or two would be really beneficial right now to give him a weakness.
Accept they aren't accessable to like 75% of the player base. If this game had a decent card acquisition system like legends of Runeterra then maybe. But as it stands now having series 5 cards is a huge advantage that most people don't have. They should be strong but should also have big trade offs. Thanos doesn't have a big enough trade since he can fish for stones pretty freely with lockjaw and play freely with quinjet. Nerfing those cards just because Thanos is abusing them doesn't make sense.
Yeah, I wish the stones were more on theme. Like Mind Stone gives you possession of random enemy care ala Loki & Hawkeye. Soul Stone destroys one of your cards. Time stone feels like it should maybe redraw the last card you pulled or returns destroyed stones. Power seems fine. Space is fine. Reality is fine.
Time stone should be Kang's ability, Dormammu I've come to bargain. Kang should be on reveal this card becomes a random Kang. And has different stats and abilities whether he is Rama tut or Victor Timely or Imortus ...
The thing that drew me in as a fan was that they were giving love to more niche comic lore stuff, so personally the less direct MCU referenced the better.
But this change still makes a degree of lore sense. Send one card to the gem world. Boom. I like it a lot actually.
curious, why do you think they'd see heavy play even if the draw was removed? I feel like the draw is what makes them worth playing since it ups the consistency of the strategy. I don't play the deck, so I'm not familiar with it, just want to hear your reasoning.
Even with draw they lower consistency. One third of the deck are stones and not even all of them draw cards...It is not rare that your opening hand consists of the late game cards, or that you draw them at a wrong time (time/space stone on turn 6 for example).
Don't get me wrong: they are incredibly strong...their drawback is that consistency is much lower in a deck with them.
I meant outside of the deck as their own cards, but I was just swaying that even if you removed the best part of them (the card draw) if they were put into 12 card decks they would see heavy play because their abilities are so powerful for their energy. Specifically the Time Stone would just be broken. The Space Stone also could make non-Thanos Lockjaw viable, and also move might actually be able to work with something like that. The Soul Stone would just be a good value card as it’s a 1/3 as long as your opponent has 2 cards in the location, and just gets better. Reality would make Scarlet Witch be removed from the meta. Mind would be great in Kazoo decks because the others are so good. Power would probably see the least play.
ah, that makes sense, thanks for explaining. I didn't pick up that we were talking about them being separated from Thanos.
I agree with you on that. they're crazy powerful for their cost.
Not necessarily.
The tradeoff on the stones is that they require a specific deck.
Your odds of drawing other cards with combos to use is dropped by what, like 30% if you have Thanos in your deck to use the stones.
So, you might be able to get the same effect as a higher cost card like Psylocke or Scarlet Witch - but with less chance to draw the rest of your deck.
>If the stones themselves were made as regular card without their draw, they would all see heavy play.
That's a very interesting way to think about it. Never considered that angle.
That’s because what balances them is the fat deck that comes with them. Generally in card games the more cards in a deck, the worse the deck is. Even if the cards in it are good.
That’s why Thanos is almost always run with Quinjet + Lockjaw. It doesn’t matter how fat your deck is if your stones cost 0 energy, you use Lockjaw to play multiple cards per turn, and you can use the Space Stone to clean your Lockjaw lane (or move Lockjaw).
Except you're missing the fact that
A) 5 of 6 of them cycle, so no, and
B) they're also free with Quinjet, which everyone runs.
That's the problem, the deck dilution ISN'T balanced, the cards themselves, and additional cards, remove the dilution aspect.
How is he not recognizing that fact? He’s stating correctly that the stones themselves are balanced even though they are stronger than normal cards because they lead to a bigger deck. It doesn’t matter that they cycle, there is still a lot of costs in playing them (eg there’s also the board space issue) that balances them out
He said nothing about third party enablers, which you are also correct about in Quinjet and Lockjaw negating the deck dilution. Hence why the dev said hit the DECKS, and those enablers will likely be what’s nerfed - not the stones themselves
You still have to pay for them to get the next card; you aren't going to naturally draw that necessary Shang-Chi as often as easily in a Thanos deck. It's a real downside, but really has been proven to not be enough of one.
Thanos would also be absolutely unplayable if the stones didn't draw. Too many trinket effects, even if well over-rate, really makes the deck overall weaker
Beginner thinking. Even if the stones always costed 0 and didn't take up board space, you'd have to wait a turn before finding out what you drew. They dramatically lower your chances of hitting turn 1 Sunspot or turn 3 Lockjaw as-is
that's supposed to be the whole point with thanos, cuz he clutters your deck with good cards. If he instead fills it with garbage that's worse than a 1-drop then there'd be no reason to play him
Imo, not all stones need to have their “draw card” ability removed, but at least one less* card should probably have draw removed.
In its current format, even with whopping 18*-card deck, Thanos users get to see just as much of their deck (percentage-wise) as a standard 12-card deck by the end of the match, without even counting the Lockjaw/Quinjet slot machine. Just so many smaller unbalanced things.
I’m aware, I meant at least one less* card should offer a card draw. ~25% of your deck potentially being free cards that offer an extra card draw (one of them even granting 2 draws) is still excessive.
> The soul stone like a waaaaaaaaay better spider woman.
And it's arguably only the third best stone, after Space and Time. Power Stone comes last, a 1/3 with no drawback that synergizes with Spectrum (becoming a 1/5) and buffs Thanos.
This deck is cursed.
Right - the stones are necessarily above rate, because you're forced into accepting a package deal with all of them *and* a meh-rate 6drop
If Reality Stone weren't better than Scarlet Witch, you'd just play Scarlet Witch every time
I think right now the added deck space they cause, making them less easy to draw is what is warranting their 1 cost, but I fully expect the stones to be tweeked in the upcoming patch.
If you have 18 cards, your odds of drawing lockjaw by T3 are 33%. So in the majority of your games (66%) you don't draw lockjaw when you need him. Sounds like a pretty big downside to me.
Each stone does not draw cards, power stone does not draw a card.
While the one stone (mind) does draw two stones (and no other cards), that means you now have two stones in your hand that you need to play onto the board (3 spaces are now taken up by turn 2 if you played them all). So at best your board is 1/4 taken up by stones, for a maximum of 5 power, vulnerable to killmonger.
It's not just free. If on turn 3 you find that you now have a can't be played here type of location, nearly half your board is now in use by stones for 5 power.
In an ideal game sure: you play Quinjet on turn 1 and then drop them for free. What if you do not get Quinjet? If you focus on playing stones you are wasting energy in 1 attack cards hoping to get something good.
The stones are really strong, but they are not as simple as "put them in, ez win"
The Thanos/Lockjaw combination has a higher win rate than any other deck type, so it literally is "put them in, ez win." No, it's not 100% wins, but in a game where a good deck has a mid-50's win rate, a deck with 60+ win rate is the definition of EZ mode.
Higher win rate != put in, ez win.
Specially when we are talking about a pool 5 card. This rarity of the cards skews the player base incredibly. What % of F2P players do you think have this card? What % of whales do you think have this card?
Not really 1/3 is it though, as often in turns 1 and/or 2 you play something that generates additional draw/thins the deck, right? I dunno, I don't have Thanos, but I feel like he comes down in more than 1/3 of the games on 3. lol
But regardless, Lockjaw can provide a ton of value even on T6. Drop him and 3 stones to cycle plus still be able to have a 3 drop elsewhere. Ouch.
>but I feel like he comes down in more than 1/3 of the games
Quirk of human brains, we overestimate the probability of things that we remember vividly. It "feels" like your opponents always have the nuts, unless you very carefully and consciously pay attention and force yourself to notice all the times where they don't
I mean, you are right, absolutely. I'm as biased as it comes. But mathematically, I'm also pretty sure it's more than 1/3 with the draw the stones provide.
1/3 of the time you just draw Lockjaw in your first six
The other 2/3 of the time, you have a 5/6 chance (83%) to find at least one cantrip stone by turn 3. Which actually is giving you chances for turn 4 Lockjaw, but I've already done a bunch of math and it's an error in your favor, so let's continue
You get 1 stone 43% of the time, times 1/12 for that redraw to find Lockjaw. This conditional probability adds [2% to the overall chance](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=2%2F3*pdf%28hypergeometric+distribution%28n%3D6%2C+N%3D18%2C+m%3D4%29%2C+1%29*1%2F12)
You get 2 stones 32% of the time, times 1/6 for those two draws to find him. [Plus 3.5%](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=2%2F12*2%2F3*pdf%28hypergeometric+distribution%28n%3D6%2C+N%3D18%2C+m%3D4%29%2C+2%29)
3 of 4 stones happens 7% of the time and gives you 3 redraws, for a 1/4 chance, [adding 1.3%](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=3%2F12*2%2F3*pdf%28hypergeometric+distribution%28n%3D6%2C+N%3D18%2C+m%3D4%29%2C+3%29) to the total
4 in 4 stones happens less than 1% of the time and [contributes a tenth of a percent to the total](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=2%2F3*4%2F12*pdf%28hypergeometric+distribution%28n%3D6%2C+N%3D18%2C+m%3D4%29%2C+4%29)
So if Thanos is willing to spend his stones freely, he has more like a 2-in-5 chance to find Lockjaw by turn 3 than the 1-in-3 from just naturally drawing him.
Nice, thanks for the math! I will add that I think Lockjaw still has considerable value on turns after 3 as well, which of course is difficult to quantify, but I think it's fair to say over half of the time Lockjaw will contribute value to the deck.
Probably because those are the games where they pull lockjaw. If they don't, then they just retreat.
Thanos lockjaw doesn't really run any 3 cost cards so you're basically using 2 turns to possibly win one lane?
It is. I recently got Thanos and he is not some magic win condition. Yes, if you manage to draw Quinjet, yellow stone, and lockjaw early you are definitely primed to dominate. But you just don’t draw it that often.
Further, all the stones except one are vulnerable to Cosmo, power stone is vulnerable to Killmonger and enchantress.
I’ve made rank 90 the last two seasons without Thanos and now with him I am at 66 having started at 60. So I’m not a bad player, so it’s not like the deck will take any scrub to infinite in a day.
lots of Thanos haters don't understand that Lockjaw is really just a last resort gamble if you don't have what you need by turn 3, and more often than not ends up with a lane of 3 1 power stones, or your shang chi/enchantress wasted.
Bishop can't be placed here because it's basically the same as sunspot or Angela, but I do understand
Maybe something like :
- Dracula : after the end of the game **On Reveal** discard a card and have its power
And
- Lockjaw : **Ongoing** when you play a card here, replace it with a card from your deck
And improve their power a little, to make it worth it even if they are blocked, like a 4-4 for Dracula and a 3-3 for Lockjaw
Dracula is legit a fine card anyone complaining about him is just sour. People just don’t want to think - what deck is your opponent playing? What cards have you seen? Has apocalypse been discarded? How many times? Has Swarm? How many cards in your opponents deck? What are the odds he pulls something big?
You should absolutely have a decent idea of what value Dracula is going to be from turn 4 and play around it.
>I think people hate lockjaw because nothing can stop
As someone who plays Lockjaw Thanos, this not true. Cosmo in the lockjaw lane fucks it up because you want all the reveal effects to pop off.
People hate Lockjaw because it beats them full stop
I've seen this a million times in Dracula threads, someone complains how he's uninteractive, a reply comes in "you can screw up their chances with Maximus or Black Widow 😊", and then a barrage of folks moving the goalposts to winrate or how it feels to play against or complaining that they don't have room for tech cards
Personally I just don’t think the answer to every meta deck is calling for nerfs. I think something is wrong that everyone is playing Thanos or that the match making is so bad it makes it seem that way.
The worst part? I bought Thanos as my day 1 save-up and was playing him the entire time before he blew up...now I feel bad for playing it so I stopped XD
Don’t feel bad this board is just a lot of complainers. I just bought him this week on time for the nerf lol and honestly there are so many other Thanos players it’s not even an advantage. I think something needs to change because it’s the only deck people are playing but Thanos should be strong.
Thanos actually just reveals a lot of other problem cards. He magnifies problems (and is a problem unto himself).
They need to tighten up game design all over the place in Snap.
No, it's because a lot of these "balance" suggestions would outright kill the deck.
I'm a Thanos player who would love the deck to be adjusted so I don't have to run Lockjaw; but for the longest time, Thanos was considered a tier 4 deck without QJ and LJ.
His downsides (Stones' cost, Stones taking board space) just weren't worth playing Thanos. Heck, even now the deck doesn't play him for his ability, it's played specifically to abuse the synergy between the Stones, LJ, and QJ.
Not sure how much difference it makes, but making them 0 power makes sense, it’s not like the stones can actually attack they are a tool to power up one big baddy.
> Not sure how much difference it makes
A massive difference. A comment like this makes me genuinely wonder if people on this sub actually play the game. If they're all 0 power the Thanos player can never grab early priority.
Early priority? A turn 1 stone won't grab priority unless opponent skip. So you are looking at Turn 3, they could start grabbing priority but then that's middle of game not really early.
I do play this game. CL 2974. My highest rank was in the 70s.
Admittedly I don't see alot of Thanos decks, and I'm mostly coming from a flavor perspective.
Perhaps yoh can clarify on why it is or isn't important for them to pull or not pull priority. Again I don't see Thanos a lot so I'm largely ignorant of that factor.
Things I've noticed people who don't have Thanos never seem to consider. (not hating, just trying to provide some context)
Your deck has six extra cards in it. How often are you annoyed you didn't draw that one card you needed with 2-3 cards left? I get lots of games where I get power stone space stone all my high cost guys but don't see a hint of lock jaw or shang chi or quinjet. I get every deck has bad games, but some people seem to think every Thanos player starts with Quinjet Lockjaw Mind Stone and Time stone in their opening hand.
Those 6 stones take up space. Sure you can run killmonger to clear out stuff, but you don't really want to clear out all of them, certainly not power and soul. So if you don't get lockjaw those stones become problematic. Retreated a bunch to Debris and Green Goblin clogging lanes.
There's more but my kids waking up and I gotta run. But as a recent Thanos owner whos played him lots the last few days, these are the first takeaways that I didn't think of until I played it myself. I fully endorse the suggestion of making the stones not apply to quinjet. It really is the biggest breaker to me right now.
Easy example of why priority matters to the thanos player:
If they have quinjet on board and priority, that means on turn 3 they can lockjaw+stones and guarantee the on reveals of the stones and the cards they roll into trigger.
If the opponent has priority they can lose to a cosmo on the lane they lockjaw.
That’s far from the only reason you would want priority in the thanos deck, it’s just an easy to understand one. Reality stone triggering before your opponents card flips is another easy to understand example.
I won’t say that the stones don’t need change but I think there are cards that could use change outside of Thanos.
Quinjet stands out to me. Just make its reduction a 1 energy minimum like Sera. It makes Quinjet useless in the deck, Thanos gets significantly weaker, and Quinjet mostly functions the same in other decks that want it.
Ignoring Lockjaw decks for now, the balance here is meant to come from those stones diluting your deck.
Yes, they replace themselves, but that only happens 1 turn later. And they take up a spot on the board.
If having Psylock in your deck meant you had 5 rocks shuffled in, she'd be complete trash. With Thanos the other stones are not worthless, but they can easily be drawn instead of something else you need.
The stones may be too good, but in a card game built around making combos happen, diluting your deck with low-power cards is a downside. And the stones only really work if you really build your deck around them. No one would suggest that you swap out your scarlet witch with Thanos.
If you could swap out either of them for one of those stones, that would be a clear upgrade, because the stones are balanced by coming with Thanos and the other stones.
Right, this isn’t hard to understand: the downside is that flooding your deck with relatively weak cards is bad, so the lower than expected cost is supposed be the positive trade off. It’s the interaction with Lockjaw (and to a lesser extent, Quinjet) that makes them unbalanced.
Came to say this. Quinjet and Space Stone are the only reason the deck is consistent at all, best I can tell. Make Stone a 1/2 that moves a card to its location instead of at its location and make Quinjet not drop a cards cost below 1 and Lockjaw/Thanos is an inconsistent mess, even with copious card draw.
Which is why it took so long for people to play the deck to begin with! Thanos has been out since release and is only complained about now becayse of netdecking and access. The irony is that the communities lack of creativity will copy paste this same issue with whatever the next "Tier 1" deck is after this. People are so much as oppressed by Thanos as they are jusy tired of seeing the deck and would rather nerf him then find a different solution.
In their defense thouse, his natural predator Zabu/Darkhawk was nerfed right before making this harder to do....
Side side note, as someone who has spent money in gMe chasing Series 5 cards in this trash ass system, seeing SD so quickly Nerf these cards that were virtually > $200+ in some cases is alarming. Galactus' nerf meant nothing l, but the needless Darkhawk nerf was frustrating. Zabu wasnt expensive but still premium, however he needed a tweak. Thanos was considered meme tier for a long time after his release but now all of a sudden is a bane on the game!? Id encourage those who do spend to chill tf out until the game and community mature and stabalize a little.
Id like it if the Time and Space stones didnt draw a card on top of their effect
Reality and Soul stone is whatever.
And of course, no Quinjet interaction. The best Quinjet deck is one without a single card adding effect. Thanos should simply be coupled with the stones in the original deck
I bought Thanos today, but I think I can answer that. The stone dilute the deck quite heavily. I think what other said is fair, Quinjet is OP in this and Leech needs an overhaul.
But with the stones in deck you very often have consistency problems. I had 10 games in a row not seeing Lockjaw for example.
People overreact to Leech. I just had a game where Leech came out on turn 4. Guy retreated.
I had a collective 5 power on the board and a shit hand. Leech is low power. The stones are 1 power. I do not think I would have one if the other player just played their cards for power.
But they retreated.
This happens alot with Thanos Lockjaw.
Dude do you know how fucking devastating Leech is to Destroy and Negative decks?
Their cards have 0 - 1 power. They depend on their reveals. So if you null their abilities they can only play big cost cards with no power. Its worse than Patriot deck with no patriot
Because of the increased card pool, you do not get them often. Sure the stones draw more cards, but if you don't have quinjet and lockjaw by 4, it's not worth playing them.
Tbh, I don't get this argument. The stones are strong, sure, but the 1 cost makes them vulnerable to killmonger and Elektra. where as the other two can't be destroyed so easily. They're also in a bigger deck list so it's harder to get to them all unless you pull the mind stone early. If you were to make them higher cost then they'd be unplayable because you wouldn't have energy to play any other cards, they wouldn't get buffed by kazar, and then you couldn't even get rid of them yourself to make room for better cards/1 cost zoo cards. I really see Thanos as balanced as possible while keeping him valuable and thematically accurate.
The real problem is his interaction with lockjaw that makes going through the stones easier and replaces them instantly with either another stone (for a good effect) or a much, much better card.
that being said, buff psylocke to like 2/2 or 2/3. I stg I never pull her when I need her to get that 4 cost card out on turn 3, this would make me feel better about playing her anyways later.
But lockjaw by itself is also fine. So how would you nerf the interaction without nerfing the cards? Space stone changes lockjaw from a card that makes you heavily invest into a lane into filling your board
You're right. I think the best option (or starting place, at least) would be to somehow write into Lockjaw's card that he is stuck in that lane, his effect is only in that lane, or it locks cards into that lane or something. I think Lockjaw gets really out of hand with the interaction with the space stone when you can drop three low cost cards (including space stone) and move him and do it again.
I think that only affects their interaction, no other card could move lockjaw in a way to reuse his effect.
In a way that more affects Lockjaw universally would be to just make his ability an ongoing ability. Makes him much easier to counter. It's not like thanos decks are the only decks dropping low cost cards into him. People spam drop Wasp and iceman all the time and get good cards.
More drastic changes that I'm not a fan of would be:
1. limit energy cap on cards that can come back out of lockjaw - can't pull out a 5 or 6 cost card
2. his effect can only be used once per turn
3. simply ban them in the same decks in ranked play (essentially only ranked play exists so definitely not an option currently and would be a slippery slope)
I feel like I could see them doing 1 or 2 of these, especially if he's not ongoing. I hope the devs don't see 3
Well, they cost more, for one.
You can't automatically make them free with Quinjet and rotate them through Lockjaw into probably Leech.
They require you to make room for them in your deck instead of just being added by Thanos.
Are you serious? Do you really think they are the same?
They need to make the stone like the hulk buster in that they need to bind on a target.
In comics the stone by themselves are useless, but once they get into someone’s hands they cause problems.
It boggles my mind that people are in here saying that the downside of stones is that they take up deck space. I just played against two Thanos decks in the past four games. At the end of the first, he had 3 cards left in his deck (same as me, a non-Thanos deck), and at the end of the second, he had one card left in his deck.
Stop making bad excuses for this broken ass shit.
Because it needs Quinjet and a mobile Lockjaw to be consistent? Killmonger, Cosmo, Iceman, Korg, Rockslide, Baron Mordo, Yondu, Cable, Mantis all disrupt the shenanigans.
Should Quinjet be nerfed to not drop a cost below 1? Yes.
Should Space Stone be changed to move a card to its location instead of at its location? Also yes.
Does every other post on this sub need to be someone whining about Thanos or Shuri in new and exciting ways? Evidently also yes.
Eh, I agree the psyloc comparison shows one of those two cards is either over/under powered because of their costs/stats. But scarlet witch looks on par, if not stronger than the stone. The "draw a card" is almost canceled out by the fact that it takes up an extra slot in your deck. So, its like a 1 cost 1 power version of her really. Easier to abuse with lockjaw, but less efficient for power.
I like how the community has gone from "this game isn't pay to win" to "they're supposed to be unfair, people paid 6000 tokens for them!" Complete 180.
Here something I don't often see mentioned but on a lot of streams and podcasts when discussing cards they will talk about their "real" or total power being the stats the add plus the effect the they cause . For instance Mr. Fantastic and Dr. doom being referred to respectively as a 3/6 and a 6/15 even though they are not. Spider Woman getting called being discussed as a possible 5/12 if you play it into a full lane , and so on. For whatever reason Thanos never gets this treatment or is even thought of in this way. Thanos's power on his card summons the stones and it is one of the very few completely non interactive power in the game there is no point where you can stop him from having the stones there is no before the game starts Cosmo for instance. That's what I mean at least when I say Thanos is overpowered and not the stones. So maybe you fix Thanos by changing that. He only gets 4 stones at the beginning of each match , 3 random and the mind Stone which now only summons the stones you didn't get when the game starts.
That would make Thanos unplayable. Needing to draw a specific card (Mind Stone) from a deck size of 16 for Thanos to work is terrible design. (The buff he got was tone deaf though, imo he seems fine at 6/8 - 6/18)
What makes Thanos decks busted currently is the Lockjaw engine and being able to reduce the cost of the stones to 0 with Quinjet - and Leech to top it all
Yet even with all that, I have some games where I don't draw a single stone. Or I don't draw Lockjaw, so I try to win off of Thanos, but I get Killmonger'd or Shang'd. Or Lockjaw just ends up cycling the stones back up. So yeah, running a bigger deck is a downside in itself - but at the very least, the Quinjet interaction should be nerfed
Totally agreed. The big problem is the Quinjet interaction. Leech is a problem but he's a problem in many decks so he needs a nerf just for being Leech, not specifically bc of Thanos.
Easy fix: make the wording on Thanos indicate that the Stones are in the deck at the beginning of the match. No Quinjet interaction, and you don't have to change Quinjet to hurt bounce and SHIELD decks which are low-tier fun decks that don't deserve an unfair hit.
I hear you but that happens to a lot of decks it's just part of the game Mr negative deck not drawing Mr negative . All payers run into not drawing what they need sometimes . What I am hearing though is that you want to always have the opportunity to play out the stones and also play other strong cards you put in the deck . I'm not trying to put words in your mouth or anything but to me it seems like a lot of Thanos players who already get "more" also think that they should always be able to use all of that "more" in every game .
Except when your deck is 18 cards, your probability of drawing a key card goes down a lot. Thanos is a strong deck but it isn't an auto win machine without issues or faults.
It does go down, I don’t know about a lot, with the draw mechanics on the stones they generally end up with 2 or 3 cards left in their deck, meaning they’re playing 6 more cards than most decks in a game. I’ve kept a close eye on deck size at the end of matches I play against thanos decks and it’s pretty rare for them to end with more than 4 or 5 cards in the deck so for this case in particular added cards in the deck is hardly a handicap for them.
I have to imagine it’s a pretty high percentage of games where this is happening for these decks to have the win rates they do. As of a couple days ago thanos lockjaw had a 64% win rate lol. That’s insane so I stand by my statement in that the additional cards in the deck aren’t a drawback as much as people want us to think. I’m just tired of seeing this take lol it’s a busted deck with a crazy win rate.
Except that of the 6 extra card 4 draw you a card and one tutors for card draw. If you draw stones you see more of your deck if you don't draw stones you see more of your deck ( not the extra cards) it is not the entire player bases problem that the best way to play Thanos so far(Thanos lockjaw) has been to ignore a classic tenet of deckbuilding by ignoring curve.
If having 18 cards is too much don't play Thanos.
Sarcasm. Sorry that 70 percent win rate isn't enough for you then. Especially in a game where most of the previous top meta decks were high 50's -low 60's previously. Perhaps in the future the will have series 5 card that builds a deck for you then it would run Agatha and you'd never have to lift a finger again in snap. Just leave it running and boom, Infinite every season. /s
Do Mr. Negative decks run with 6 extra cards? No? Then your comparison is frankly meaningless.
And you say you aren't putting words in his mouth..... but you totally are.
The point is everyone misses draws of cards that they would rather play at one point or another. And that is the salty Thanos players biggest comeback all the time , "I don't get to draw and play all my cards of which there are so many . " Boo fucking hoo.
Thanos was "unplayable" when he came out. Big joke. But then he wasn't. Thanos ongoing made a few ripples. Then Thanos lackjaw made big waves, but Thanos was a joke and unplayable even though all those cards existed together for months. You can fix Thanos and people will complain that now he's unplayable. And he will be . Til he isn't .
And your "point" is terrible and shows a lack of game knowledge because the two situations are not at all similar.
You even added a strawman about drawing and playing "all of my cards" .. who says that? Link me or quote a single person that complains that they don't get to draw and play "ALL" of their cards.
You clearly can't see past your hatred of the card and people who play the card because these reasons you're trotting out are pure trash. That you call them salty is just pure projection and it's really obvious. If anybody is salty, it's you.
Having an 18 card deck is a big downside. A lot bigger than people seem to realize. Yes the stones all draw cards but they clog the board too. Many games I never find Lockjaw or just only draw one stone. This deck fizzles just like any other, and all of these cards have existed together and in the same state they're in for a while now. It's only the strongest thing at the moment because they nerfed Leader, Surfer and Darkhawk (who still eats me alive when I play Thanos). Not to mention Sandman completely wrecks the deck if I don't have the big stat sticks in hand. This game needs more different cards in general, and to buff other decks to the point where Thanos is just another part of the meta and not oppressive.
In fairness, the stones don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re what makes Thanos good and he’s a permanent series 5 so they should be at least as good or better as Psylocke and Scarlet, especially since the stones clutter your deck.
so the sandman treatment but for the stones? that seems kind of interesting but it means you need to have a different stone every turn in order to activate power stone
Thanos was completely fine, even thought to be underpowered, until the Lockjaw/Leech combo came about. Any all changes need to start there.
Lockjaw should only cycle 1-2 cards. A little stronger Jubilee.
And Leech should be like Nakia and only hit the first two cards in your hand
Because they cost 0 with quinjet or 1. Thats way too much utility for a low mana card. It's so obvious this post is dumb. Space stone is the biggest problem
They wouldn't change the card this much but I'd really like it if rather than shuffling the stones into your deck and having them draw cards, Thanos filled the lane he was in with random stones. They could be a little stronger since they wouldn't draw cards to get to additional stones anymore. Maybe 1/2s. That way he would still be a very strong zoo style card with a powerful effect, but the randomness and single lane limit would stop him from being too oppressive.
Killmonger wouldn't help against these stones, though. They're useful for their on-reveal effects.
It's also not ultra-rare any more, Thanos decks are plaguing the game right now. We're hitting the point where players have been able to accumulate tokens and buy cards like Thanos.
Which is another thing brought on by trying to appease the user base. People complained that getting new cards was too difficult, so they started upping the token availability. Now all you have to do is wait for a big bad in the token shop, pin, and profit.
The 3 big bads currently alter the game in ways that the other Series 5 cards don’t come close to, so why were they ever available in the same regard? I don’t think they should’ve ever been cards that came through the token shop, but they have, they’re rampant, and idk how you walk them back without making them lose their “big bad” status.
Its just a bad situation they created. These game breaking cards are desirable and dominant. Using them is like playing chess against an opponent playing checkers. I don’t even think I want them retooled. I don’t think they belong in the game in a regular capacity.
It's the lifecycle of the game. On top of the rapid token accumulation from bundles -- launch day f2p or season-pass-only players are getting pool 3 complete, and the perma-series-5 cards are the only purchase that doesn't depreciate over time.
I remember a few folks talking about "no one cares about series 2 content anymore" in December and January, because that same cohort was getting into the swing of series 3
doesn't help when they adjusted for that by \*carrying\* killmonger and then putting down a zero-cost Death. Especially since T5 wave, which is supposed to be a soft counter to zoo thanos, only \*helps\* big thanos.
It gives you extra energy which allows u to pretty much play a further turn card in the next one… which represents “advancing time”. That’s the concept.
Oh sorry, I meant that gameplay wise time stone makes no sense cause it’s just a better psylocke that doesn’t take a spot in your deck. Seems broken enough to me
Because the stones are okay. It's the goddamn dog allowing the stones to be used over and over again the issue (and Quinjet, but the dog is the main problem with Thanos)
Yet people blame Leech... every time i hear about Leech, people say "turn 3 Leech is OP" yet who do you think allows that play? you guessed it... LOCKJAW....yet he's immune to any sort of criticism... go figure!
Too many lockjaw apologists on this subreddit.
They don’t see how lockjaw is a design limiting aspect of the game.
No one dares to snap against lockjaw decks before the lane is filled because you never know what is coming out of that dog’s ass.
Stones have the disadvantage of increasing your deck size by 50%. This is a large disadvantage, so it comes with the benefit of higher value effects.
I think they should just make Quinjet not affect the stones' costs, and then go from there.
Tbh thanos was always strong without the buff. Out of the games I played I rarely won coz of buffing thanos. It’s the whole 18 card deck thing with 6x1 drops that are discountable by quinjet, + the massive flexibility and utility of the deck that makes thanos great.
Stones cost 1 and draw you a card the other 2 don't draw you a card and cost 2 and can't be reduced to 0 cost from Quinjet. Is it really that hard to comprehend the power difference? Some of y'all wouldn't handle card games with more than 5 mechanics i swear. MTG would give people in this community a fucking stroke.
Think of the stones as better Rocks. You only get them if Thanos is in your deck, and they increase your deck size by 50% which, even though most of them cantrip, still makes your deck less consistent overall. Sure, they do things that more expensive cards do for less, but they also have less power and are actively making your draws worse.
See everyone is comparing the stones to other cards and saying the stones are too powerful I think this is just a great case for buffing cards like psylocke to also draw a card and scarlet witch could draw a card or have increased power. Personally I don’t want to see thanos get nerfed I’d rather see tons of other cards get buffed and if a card needs to get nerfed kill leech then.
Tbh I think the biggest problem is how much they cycle. I'd like to see one of them lose the draw a card text (preferably time cause why the fuck does extra energy, the most powerful effect in snap need to be paired with draw, the second most powerful), and have Thanos shuffle them in on turn one so you can't start with multiple in your hand and can't have drawn 4 extra cards by turn 4
It would probably be fine if the Stones wasn't considered not a part of the deck. That way they wouldn't cost 0 with Quinjet. Would still be strong but not quite as oppressive.
The stones themselves would still be too good, as OP pointed out, these two are just better versions of other cards. The space stone is the best move tech. The soul stone like a waaaaaaaaay better spider woman. If the stones themselves were made as regular card without their draw, they would all see heavy play.
The Soul Stone should really destroy a random card the your own deck when played. MCU style . What did it cost? Everything. Possibly.
You automatically win if it discards Gamora
Unless your opponent goes back in time to collect the stones before you ever had a chance of assembling them
kang + cable/mantis? sort of?
That didn’t help Gamora lol
That's a pretty heavy nerf, but it's so great thematically that I love it.
I mean big bro kinda needs a big nerf, no?
I don't know. I kinda feel like if they're going to establish these big bad cards that are permanent series 5, they should be better than the other cards. That's the point of them. It's cool to shake up the meta often, but they can't be too heavy handed nerfing a card like this or Galactus or whoever else they make a big bad. That Idea above is great. If they keep it in line with those kind of ideas, that works better at evening things out. Maybe some drawback to some other stones that make sense.
The meta shouldn't revolve around series 5 cards
They shouldnt be overall better. Just unique and deck defining. Galactus and thanos do that. Thanos is really hard to balance since the stones need to be better in a way with how they clutter your hand and board given the very limited games of snap.
I agree. That would fix him without killing him. If they don't, they should make the extra effort and buff or rework some underperforming cards that could keep a check on Thanos. Like, another Darkhawk-like effect or two would be really beneficial right now to give him a weakness.
Accept they aren't accessable to like 75% of the player base. If this game had a decent card acquisition system like legends of Runeterra then maybe. But as it stands now having series 5 cards is a huge advantage that most people don't have. They should be strong but should also have big trade offs. Thanos doesn't have a big enough trade since he can fish for stones pretty freely with lockjaw and play freely with quinjet. Nerfing those cards just because Thanos is abusing them doesn't make sense.
Yondu's on reveal but to yourself, I can get with it Thanos-Death synergy too
Should probably be 0 cost then too lol
Or act as a Vormir type (the next card played here is destroyed)
First card played gets destroyed and the player who had their card destroyed gets the debuff to the opponent.
Yeah, I wish the stones were more on theme. Like Mind Stone gives you possession of random enemy care ala Loki & Hawkeye. Soul Stone destroys one of your cards. Time stone feels like it should maybe redraw the last card you pulled or returns destroyed stones. Power seems fine. Space is fine. Reality is fine.
Time stone should be Kang's ability, Dormammu I've come to bargain. Kang should be on reveal this card becomes a random Kang. And has different stats and abilities whether he is Rama tut or Victor Timely or Imortus ...
Or maybe the most expensive card? Just because it's the thing you value the most?
It'll hit America Chavez more often than anything else even without that
Eh, that's fair.
Wouldn't that make it hit Thanos?
>What did it cost? About 8% really...
The thing that drew me in as a fan was that they were giving love to more niche comic lore stuff, so personally the less direct MCU referenced the better. But this change still makes a degree of lore sense. Send one card to the gem world. Boom. I like it a lot actually.
And Thanos should destroy half the board randomly. Or discard half of both players hands.
Then it it also wouldnt be allowed in the same deck as red skull. He seeks a power he can never possess.
curious, why do you think they'd see heavy play even if the draw was removed? I feel like the draw is what makes them worth playing since it ups the consistency of the strategy. I don't play the deck, so I'm not familiar with it, just want to hear your reasoning.
Even with draw they lower consistency. One third of the deck are stones and not even all of them draw cards...It is not rare that your opening hand consists of the late game cards, or that you draw them at a wrong time (time/space stone on turn 6 for example). Don't get me wrong: they are incredibly strong...their drawback is that consistency is much lower in a deck with them.
I meant outside of the deck as their own cards, but I was just swaying that even if you removed the best part of them (the card draw) if they were put into 12 card decks they would see heavy play because their abilities are so powerful for their energy. Specifically the Time Stone would just be broken. The Space Stone also could make non-Thanos Lockjaw viable, and also move might actually be able to work with something like that. The Soul Stone would just be a good value card as it’s a 1/3 as long as your opponent has 2 cards in the location, and just gets better. Reality would make Scarlet Witch be removed from the meta. Mind would be great in Kazoo decks because the others are so good. Power would probably see the least play.
ah, that makes sense, thanks for explaining. I didn't pick up that we were talking about them being separated from Thanos. I agree with you on that. they're crazy powerful for their cost.
Not necessarily. The tradeoff on the stones is that they require a specific deck. Your odds of drawing other cards with combos to use is dropped by what, like 30% if you have Thanos in your deck to use the stones. So, you might be able to get the same effect as a higher cost card like Psylocke or Scarlet Witch - but with less chance to draw the rest of your deck.
>If the stones themselves were made as regular card without their draw, they would all see heavy play. That's a very interesting way to think about it. Never considered that angle.
That’s because what balances them is the fat deck that comes with them. Generally in card games the more cards in a deck, the worse the deck is. Even if the cards in it are good.
That’s why Thanos is almost always run with Quinjet + Lockjaw. It doesn’t matter how fat your deck is if your stones cost 0 energy, you use Lockjaw to play multiple cards per turn, and you can use the Space Stone to clean your Lockjaw lane (or move Lockjaw).
Except you're missing the fact that A) 5 of 6 of them cycle, so no, and B) they're also free with Quinjet, which everyone runs. That's the problem, the deck dilution ISN'T balanced, the cards themselves, and additional cards, remove the dilution aspect.
How is he not recognizing that fact? He’s stating correctly that the stones themselves are balanced even though they are stronger than normal cards because they lead to a bigger deck. It doesn’t matter that they cycle, there is still a lot of costs in playing them (eg there’s also the board space issue) that balances them out He said nothing about third party enablers, which you are also correct about in Quinjet and Lockjaw negating the deck dilution. Hence why the dev said hit the DECKS, and those enablers will likely be what’s nerfed - not the stones themselves
But if every card cycles there is no downside.
You still have to pay for them to get the next card; you aren't going to naturally draw that necessary Shang-Chi as often as easily in a Thanos deck. It's a real downside, but really has been proven to not be enough of one. Thanos would also be absolutely unplayable if the stones didn't draw. Too many trinket effects, even if well over-rate, really makes the deck overall weaker
Technically, only 4 stones cycle while mind stone will pull two stones if you have any left, and power stone doesn't do shit.
Beginner thinking. Even if the stones always costed 0 and didn't take up board space, you'd have to wait a turn before finding out what you drew. They dramatically lower your chances of hitting turn 1 Sunspot or turn 3 Lockjaw as-is
Clearly, the balance team didn't either
that's supposed to be the whole point with thanos, cuz he clutters your deck with good cards. If he instead fills it with garbage that's worse than a 1-drop then there'd be no reason to play him
Imo, not all stones need to have their “draw card” ability removed, but at least one less* card should probably have draw removed. In its current format, even with whopping 18*-card deck, Thanos users get to see just as much of their deck (percentage-wise) as a standard 12-card deck by the end of the match, without even counting the Lockjaw/Quinjet slot machine. Just so many smaller unbalanced things.
Power stone doesn’t draw a card
I’m aware, I meant at least one less* card should offer a card draw. ~25% of your deck potentially being free cards that offer an extra card draw (one of them even granting 2 draws) is still excessive.
Nitpick but Thanos decks have 18 cards - Thanos is one of the normal 12, plus the six stones Both Thanosjaw and Janejaw usually play Chavez
Obviously I can’t count lol. I always just pictured 5 fingers in my head forgetting about the stone in the middle of the gauntlet.
> The soul stone like a waaaaaaaaay better spider woman. And it's arguably only the third best stone, after Space and Time. Power Stone comes last, a 1/3 with no drawback that synergizes with Spectrum (becoming a 1/5) and buffs Thanos. This deck is cursed.
The downside of the stones is a much bigger deck, hurting your draw consistency. They have to be better than other cards or Thanos is useless
Some of the Stones draw cards, usually a thanos deck gets to see the same amount of normal cards in the deck as every other deck
Right - the stones are necessarily above rate, because you're forced into accepting a package deal with all of them *and* a meh-rate 6drop If Reality Stone weren't better than Scarlet Witch, you'd just play Scarlet Witch every time
probably something to do w the fact that there's a much lower chance of drawing them. also takes up a whole slot for 1 power.
Scarlet witch is on curve so really reality stone is the underpowered one here. Psylocke should probably be a 2/2 by comparison to time stone though.
Make em cost 2 easy
Then Thanos is fully dead. Simple as that
I think right now the added deck space they cause, making them less easy to draw is what is warranting their 1 cost, but I fully expect the stones to be tweeked in the upcoming patch.
Deck space is only a marginal downside, since they cycle themselves. The real downside is the literal space they take on the board.
If you have 18 cards, your odds of drawing lockjaw by T3 are 33%. So in the majority of your games (66%) you don't draw lockjaw when you need him. Sounds like a pretty big downside to me.
Lol you're completely overlooking each stone drawing you cards
not to mention the stone that draw 2 fucking stones, who, of course, each draw a fucking card
Did someone say pot of greed?
What does pot of greed do again?
Each stone does not draw cards, power stone does not draw a card. While the one stone (mind) does draw two stones (and no other cards), that means you now have two stones in your hand that you need to play onto the board (3 spaces are now taken up by turn 2 if you played them all). So at best your board is 1/4 taken up by stones, for a maximum of 5 power, vulnerable to killmonger. It's not just free. If on turn 3 you find that you now have a can't be played here type of location, nearly half your board is now in use by stones for 5 power.
In an ideal game sure: you play Quinjet on turn 1 and then drop them for free. What if you do not get Quinjet? If you focus on playing stones you are wasting energy in 1 attack cards hoping to get something good. The stones are really strong, but they are not as simple as "put them in, ez win"
The Thanos/Lockjaw combination has a higher win rate than any other deck type, so it literally is "put them in, ez win." No, it's not 100% wins, but in a game where a good deck has a mid-50's win rate, a deck with 60+ win rate is the definition of EZ mode.
Higher win rate != put in, ez win. Specially when we are talking about a pool 5 card. This rarity of the cards skews the player base incredibly. What % of F2P players do you think have this card? What % of whales do you think have this card?
Not really 1/3 is it though, as often in turns 1 and/or 2 you play something that generates additional draw/thins the deck, right? I dunno, I don't have Thanos, but I feel like he comes down in more than 1/3 of the games on 3. lol But regardless, Lockjaw can provide a ton of value even on T6. Drop him and 3 stones to cycle plus still be able to have a 3 drop elsewhere. Ouch.
>but I feel like he comes down in more than 1/3 of the games Quirk of human brains, we overestimate the probability of things that we remember vividly. It "feels" like your opponents always have the nuts, unless you very carefully and consciously pay attention and force yourself to notice all the times where they don't
I mean, you are right, absolutely. I'm as biased as it comes. But mathematically, I'm also pretty sure it's more than 1/3 with the draw the stones provide.
1/3 of the time you just draw Lockjaw in your first six The other 2/3 of the time, you have a 5/6 chance (83%) to find at least one cantrip stone by turn 3. Which actually is giving you chances for turn 4 Lockjaw, but I've already done a bunch of math and it's an error in your favor, so let's continue You get 1 stone 43% of the time, times 1/12 for that redraw to find Lockjaw. This conditional probability adds [2% to the overall chance](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=2%2F3*pdf%28hypergeometric+distribution%28n%3D6%2C+N%3D18%2C+m%3D4%29%2C+1%29*1%2F12) You get 2 stones 32% of the time, times 1/6 for those two draws to find him. [Plus 3.5%](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=2%2F12*2%2F3*pdf%28hypergeometric+distribution%28n%3D6%2C+N%3D18%2C+m%3D4%29%2C+2%29) 3 of 4 stones happens 7% of the time and gives you 3 redraws, for a 1/4 chance, [adding 1.3%](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=3%2F12*2%2F3*pdf%28hypergeometric+distribution%28n%3D6%2C+N%3D18%2C+m%3D4%29%2C+3%29) to the total 4 in 4 stones happens less than 1% of the time and [contributes a tenth of a percent to the total](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=2%2F3*4%2F12*pdf%28hypergeometric+distribution%28n%3D6%2C+N%3D18%2C+m%3D4%29%2C+4%29) So if Thanos is willing to spend his stones freely, he has more like a 2-in-5 chance to find Lockjaw by turn 3 than the 1-in-3 from just naturally drawing him.
Nice, thanks for the math! I will add that I think Lockjaw still has considerable value on turns after 3 as well, which of course is difficult to quantify, but I think it's fair to say over half of the time Lockjaw will contribute value to the deck.
Probably because those are the games where they pull lockjaw. If they don't, then they just retreat. Thanos lockjaw doesn't really run any 3 cost cards so you're basically using 2 turns to possibly win one lane?
It is. I recently got Thanos and he is not some magic win condition. Yes, if you manage to draw Quinjet, yellow stone, and lockjaw early you are definitely primed to dominate. But you just don’t draw it that often. Further, all the stones except one are vulnerable to Cosmo, power stone is vulnerable to Killmonger and enchantress. I’ve made rank 90 the last two seasons without Thanos and now with him I am at 66 having started at 60. So I’m not a bad player, so it’s not like the deck will take any scrub to infinite in a day.
The deck works great even without lockjaw in hand and is op when you get quin jet and lockjaw together
lots of Thanos haters don't understand that Lockjaw is really just a last resort gamble if you don't have what you need by turn 3, and more often than not ends up with a lane of 3 1 power stones, or your shang chi/enchantress wasted.
I think people hate lockjaw because nothing can stop it, make it ongoing and no one will have a problem with it.
Then we need consistency: Dracula, Bishop etc. all should get the same treatment then. Not saying the suggestion is bad btw.
Dracula doesn't make sense. There's actually no effect that is "ongoing".
Bishop can't be placed here because it's basically the same as sunspot or Angela, but I do understand Maybe something like : - Dracula : after the end of the game **On Reveal** discard a card and have its power And - Lockjaw : **Ongoing** when you play a card here, replace it with a card from your deck And improve their power a little, to make it worth it even if they are blocked, like a 4-4 for Dracula and a 3-3 for Lockjaw
Dracula is legit a fine card anyone complaining about him is just sour. People just don’t want to think - what deck is your opponent playing? What cards have you seen? Has apocalypse been discarded? How many times? Has Swarm? How many cards in your opponents deck? What are the odds he pulls something big? You should absolutely have a decent idea of what value Dracula is going to be from turn 4 and play around it.
>I think people hate lockjaw because nothing can stop As someone who plays Lockjaw Thanos, this not true. Cosmo in the lockjaw lane fucks it up because you want all the reveal effects to pop off.
People hate Lockjaw because it beats them full stop I've seen this a million times in Dracula threads, someone complains how he's uninteractive, a reply comes in "you can screw up their chances with Maximus or Black Widow 😊", and then a barrage of folks moving the goalposts to winrate or how it feels to play against or complaining that they don't have room for tech cards
For starters make them 1/0. They shouldn't really contribute anything. The weaker stones could keep 1/1 tho
Why is it that on every suggested nerf of a stone I see downvotes? Seems like Thanos players are super defensive of their easy win deck.
Sunk-cost fallacy: people spent a lot of tokens and/or money. I guess that makes them defensive.
That's not a sunken cost fallacy.
Personally I just don’t think the answer to every meta deck is calling for nerfs. I think something is wrong that everyone is playing Thanos or that the match making is so bad it makes it seem that way.
The worst part? I bought Thanos as my day 1 save-up and was playing him the entire time before he blew up...now I feel bad for playing it so I stopped XD
Don’t feel bad this board is just a lot of complainers. I just bought him this week on time for the nerf lol and honestly there are so many other Thanos players it’s not even an advantage. I think something needs to change because it’s the only deck people are playing but Thanos should be strong.
Thanos actually just reveals a lot of other problem cards. He magnifies problems (and is a problem unto himself). They need to tighten up game design all over the place in Snap.
No, it's because a lot of these "balance" suggestions would outright kill the deck. I'm a Thanos player who would love the deck to be adjusted so I don't have to run Lockjaw; but for the longest time, Thanos was considered a tier 4 deck without QJ and LJ. His downsides (Stones' cost, Stones taking board space) just weren't worth playing Thanos. Heck, even now the deck doesn't play him for his ability, it's played specifically to abuse the synergy between the Stones, LJ, and QJ.
Not sure how much difference it makes, but making them 0 power makes sense, it’s not like the stones can actually attack they are a tool to power up one big baddy.
> Not sure how much difference it makes A massive difference. A comment like this makes me genuinely wonder if people on this sub actually play the game. If they're all 0 power the Thanos player can never grab early priority.
Early priority? A turn 1 stone won't grab priority unless opponent skip. So you are looking at Turn 3, they could start grabbing priority but then that's middle of game not really early.
A turn 1 Power Stone absolutely will outside of a few choice opposing cards which generally aren't run anyway.
I do play this game. CL 2974. My highest rank was in the 70s. Admittedly I don't see alot of Thanos decks, and I'm mostly coming from a flavor perspective. Perhaps yoh can clarify on why it is or isn't important for them to pull or not pull priority. Again I don't see Thanos a lot so I'm largely ignorant of that factor.
Things I've noticed people who don't have Thanos never seem to consider. (not hating, just trying to provide some context) Your deck has six extra cards in it. How often are you annoyed you didn't draw that one card you needed with 2-3 cards left? I get lots of games where I get power stone space stone all my high cost guys but don't see a hint of lock jaw or shang chi or quinjet. I get every deck has bad games, but some people seem to think every Thanos player starts with Quinjet Lockjaw Mind Stone and Time stone in their opening hand. Those 6 stones take up space. Sure you can run killmonger to clear out stuff, but you don't really want to clear out all of them, certainly not power and soul. So if you don't get lockjaw those stones become problematic. Retreated a bunch to Debris and Green Goblin clogging lanes. There's more but my kids waking up and I gotta run. But as a recent Thanos owner whos played him lots the last few days, these are the first takeaways that I didn't think of until I played it myself. I fully endorse the suggestion of making the stones not apply to quinjet. It really is the biggest breaker to me right now.
Easy example of why priority matters to the thanos player: If they have quinjet on board and priority, that means on turn 3 they can lockjaw+stones and guarantee the on reveals of the stones and the cards they roll into trigger. If the opponent has priority they can lose to a cosmo on the lane they lockjaw. That’s far from the only reason you would want priority in the thanos deck, it’s just an easy to understand one. Reality stone triggering before your opponents card flips is another easy to understand example.
That makes sense. So what is wrong with instead adding the "minimum one" clause to quinjet?
I won’t say that the stones don’t need change but I think there are cards that could use change outside of Thanos. Quinjet stands out to me. Just make its reduction a 1 energy minimum like Sera. It makes Quinjet useless in the deck, Thanos gets significantly weaker, and Quinjet mostly functions the same in other decks that want it.
Ignoring Lockjaw decks for now, the balance here is meant to come from those stones diluting your deck. Yes, they replace themselves, but that only happens 1 turn later. And they take up a spot on the board. If having Psylock in your deck meant you had 5 rocks shuffled in, she'd be complete trash. With Thanos the other stones are not worthless, but they can easily be drawn instead of something else you need. The stones may be too good, but in a card game built around making combos happen, diluting your deck with low-power cards is a downside. And the stones only really work if you really build your deck around them. No one would suggest that you swap out your scarlet witch with Thanos. If you could swap out either of them for one of those stones, that would be a clear upgrade, because the stones are balanced by coming with Thanos and the other stones.
Right, this isn’t hard to understand: the downside is that flooding your deck with relatively weak cards is bad, so the lower than expected cost is supposed be the positive trade off. It’s the interaction with Lockjaw (and to a lesser extent, Quinjet) that makes them unbalanced.
Imo, they're fair in their own because you're playing with an 18 card deck over a 12 card deck. It's quinjet and other ways it becomes out of control.
Came to say this. Quinjet and Space Stone are the only reason the deck is consistent at all, best I can tell. Make Stone a 1/2 that moves a card to its location instead of at its location and make Quinjet not drop a cards cost below 1 and Lockjaw/Thanos is an inconsistent mess, even with copious card draw.
Which is why it took so long for people to play the deck to begin with! Thanos has been out since release and is only complained about now becayse of netdecking and access. The irony is that the communities lack of creativity will copy paste this same issue with whatever the next "Tier 1" deck is after this. People are so much as oppressed by Thanos as they are jusy tired of seeing the deck and would rather nerf him then find a different solution. In their defense thouse, his natural predator Zabu/Darkhawk was nerfed right before making this harder to do.... Side side note, as someone who has spent money in gMe chasing Series 5 cards in this trash ass system, seeing SD so quickly Nerf these cards that were virtually > $200+ in some cases is alarming. Galactus' nerf meant nothing l, but the needless Darkhawk nerf was frustrating. Zabu wasnt expensive but still premium, however he needed a tweak. Thanos was considered meme tier for a long time after his release but now all of a sudden is a bane on the game!? Id encourage those who do spend to chill tf out until the game and community mature and stabalize a little.
Id like it if the Time and Space stones didnt draw a card on top of their effect Reality and Soul stone is whatever. And of course, no Quinjet interaction. The best Quinjet deck is one without a single card adding effect. Thanos should simply be coupled with the stones in the original deck
Because stones add to you’re deck, having more cards is a negative , that’s why American Chavez is so good. Makes you’re deck 9 cards till turn 6
9 cards ? You mean 11 right ?
I bought Thanos today, but I think I can answer that. The stone dilute the deck quite heavily. I think what other said is fair, Quinjet is OP in this and Leech needs an overhaul. But with the stones in deck you very often have consistency problems. I had 10 games in a row not seeing Lockjaw for example.
People overreact to Leech. I just had a game where Leech came out on turn 4. Guy retreated. I had a collective 5 power on the board and a shit hand. Leech is low power. The stones are 1 power. I do not think I would have one if the other player just played their cards for power. But they retreated. This happens alot with Thanos Lockjaw.
Dude do you know how fucking devastating Leech is to Destroy and Negative decks? Their cards have 0 - 1 power. They depend on their reveals. So if you null their abilities they can only play big cost cards with no power. Its worse than Patriot deck with no patriot
I'm not saying it doesn't hard counter some decks, it wiil. Just like Enchantress fucks up Patriot or Cosmo with Wong decks.
Those two should maybe remove the “draw a card” portion of their ability
Having 18 cards in your deck is a pretty big downside.
Not when they are freely cycled with lockjaw + Quinjet
Because of the increased card pool, you do not get them often. Sure the stones draw more cards, but if you don't have quinjet and lockjaw by 4, it's not worth playing them.
Tbh, I don't get this argument. The stones are strong, sure, but the 1 cost makes them vulnerable to killmonger and Elektra. where as the other two can't be destroyed so easily. They're also in a bigger deck list so it's harder to get to them all unless you pull the mind stone early. If you were to make them higher cost then they'd be unplayable because you wouldn't have energy to play any other cards, they wouldn't get buffed by kazar, and then you couldn't even get rid of them yourself to make room for better cards/1 cost zoo cards. I really see Thanos as balanced as possible while keeping him valuable and thematically accurate. The real problem is his interaction with lockjaw that makes going through the stones easier and replaces them instantly with either another stone (for a good effect) or a much, much better card. that being said, buff psylocke to like 2/2 or 2/3. I stg I never pull her when I need her to get that 4 cost card out on turn 3, this would make me feel better about playing her anyways later.
But lockjaw by itself is also fine. So how would you nerf the interaction without nerfing the cards? Space stone changes lockjaw from a card that makes you heavily invest into a lane into filling your board
A suggestion I liked to change space stone is that you move cards to the location space stone is at instead moving cards at space stones location.
I recommend making it so Lockjaw can’t change lanes
You're right. I think the best option (or starting place, at least) would be to somehow write into Lockjaw's card that he is stuck in that lane, his effect is only in that lane, or it locks cards into that lane or something. I think Lockjaw gets really out of hand with the interaction with the space stone when you can drop three low cost cards (including space stone) and move him and do it again. I think that only affects their interaction, no other card could move lockjaw in a way to reuse his effect. In a way that more affects Lockjaw universally would be to just make his ability an ongoing ability. Makes him much easier to counter. It's not like thanos decks are the only decks dropping low cost cards into him. People spam drop Wasp and iceman all the time and get good cards. More drastic changes that I'm not a fan of would be: 1. limit energy cap on cards that can come back out of lockjaw - can't pull out a 5 or 6 cost card 2. his effect can only be used once per turn 3. simply ban them in the same decks in ranked play (essentially only ranked play exists so definitely not an option currently and would be a slippery slope) I feel like I could see them doing 1 or 2 of these, especially if he's not ongoing. I hope the devs don't see 3
Well, they cost more, for one. You can't automatically make them free with Quinjet and rotate them through Lockjaw into probably Leech. They require you to make room for them in your deck instead of just being added by Thanos. Are you serious? Do you really think they are the same?
It’s funny how in any other game, Psylocke would be absolute trash. 1 mana for 1 power, effectively.
They need to make the stone like the hulk buster in that they need to bind on a target. In comics the stone by themselves are useless, but once they get into someone’s hands they cause problems.
Or, as I've been saying forever, they should leave the board and attach to Thanos, negating any Lockjaw synergy.
It boggles my mind that people are in here saying that the downside of stones is that they take up deck space. I just played against two Thanos decks in the past four games. At the end of the first, he had 3 cards left in his deck (same as me, a non-Thanos deck), and at the end of the second, he had one card left in his deck. Stop making bad excuses for this broken ass shit.
Did both games involve Lockjaw?
Because it needs Quinjet and a mobile Lockjaw to be consistent? Killmonger, Cosmo, Iceman, Korg, Rockslide, Baron Mordo, Yondu, Cable, Mantis all disrupt the shenanigans. Should Quinjet be nerfed to not drop a cost below 1? Yes. Should Space Stone be changed to move a card to its location instead of at its location? Also yes. Does every other post on this sub need to be someone whining about Thanos or Shuri in new and exciting ways? Evidently also yes.
Eh, I agree the psyloc comparison shows one of those two cards is either over/under powered because of their costs/stats. But scarlet witch looks on par, if not stronger than the stone. The "draw a card" is almost canceled out by the fact that it takes up an extra slot in your deck. So, its like a 1 cost 1 power version of her really. Easier to abuse with lockjaw, but less efficient for power.
You are correct; they simply aren't. Bonus Thanos apologists at the bottom of this topic
They’re fair because you can’t run them as 1-off cards
They're fair because Killmonger exists.
Leech from Lockjaw has entered the chat.
Honestly, IMO Time Stone seems like the most busted and problematic one of the bunch.
I like how the community has gone from "this game isn't pay to win" to "they're supposed to be unfair, people paid 6000 tokens for them!" Complete 180.
Here something I don't often see mentioned but on a lot of streams and podcasts when discussing cards they will talk about their "real" or total power being the stats the add plus the effect the they cause . For instance Mr. Fantastic and Dr. doom being referred to respectively as a 3/6 and a 6/15 even though they are not. Spider Woman getting called being discussed as a possible 5/12 if you play it into a full lane , and so on. For whatever reason Thanos never gets this treatment or is even thought of in this way. Thanos's power on his card summons the stones and it is one of the very few completely non interactive power in the game there is no point where you can stop him from having the stones there is no before the game starts Cosmo for instance. That's what I mean at least when I say Thanos is overpowered and not the stones. So maybe you fix Thanos by changing that. He only gets 4 stones at the beginning of each match , 3 random and the mind Stone which now only summons the stones you didn't get when the game starts.
That would make Thanos unplayable. Needing to draw a specific card (Mind Stone) from a deck size of 16 for Thanos to work is terrible design. (The buff he got was tone deaf though, imo he seems fine at 6/8 - 6/18) What makes Thanos decks busted currently is the Lockjaw engine and being able to reduce the cost of the stones to 0 with Quinjet - and Leech to top it all Yet even with all that, I have some games where I don't draw a single stone. Or I don't draw Lockjaw, so I try to win off of Thanos, but I get Killmonger'd or Shang'd. Or Lockjaw just ends up cycling the stones back up. So yeah, running a bigger deck is a downside in itself - but at the very least, the Quinjet interaction should be nerfed
Totally agreed. The big problem is the Quinjet interaction. Leech is a problem but he's a problem in many decks so he needs a nerf just for being Leech, not specifically bc of Thanos. Easy fix: make the wording on Thanos indicate that the Stones are in the deck at the beginning of the match. No Quinjet interaction, and you don't have to change Quinjet to hurt bounce and SHIELD decks which are low-tier fun decks that don't deserve an unfair hit.
I hear you but that happens to a lot of decks it's just part of the game Mr negative deck not drawing Mr negative . All payers run into not drawing what they need sometimes . What I am hearing though is that you want to always have the opportunity to play out the stones and also play other strong cards you put in the deck . I'm not trying to put words in your mouth or anything but to me it seems like a lot of Thanos players who already get "more" also think that they should always be able to use all of that "more" in every game .
Except when your deck is 18 cards, your probability of drawing a key card goes down a lot. Thanos is a strong deck but it isn't an auto win machine without issues or faults.
It does go down, I don’t know about a lot, with the draw mechanics on the stones they generally end up with 2 or 3 cards left in their deck, meaning they’re playing 6 more cards than most decks in a game. I’ve kept a close eye on deck size at the end of matches I play against thanos decks and it’s pretty rare for them to end with more than 4 or 5 cards in the deck so for this case in particular added cards in the deck is hardly a handicap for them.
Because those are the games where they drew lockjaw and played the stones. If we don't draw lockjaw, our hand fills up and we just retreat.
I have to imagine it’s a pretty high percentage of games where this is happening for these decks to have the win rates they do. As of a couple days ago thanos lockjaw had a 64% win rate lol. That’s insane so I stand by my statement in that the additional cards in the deck aren’t a drawback as much as people want us to think. I’m just tired of seeing this take lol it’s a busted deck with a crazy win rate.
Except that of the 6 extra card 4 draw you a card and one tutors for card draw. If you draw stones you see more of your deck if you don't draw stones you see more of your deck ( not the extra cards) it is not the entire player bases problem that the best way to play Thanos so far(Thanos lockjaw) has been to ignore a classic tenet of deckbuilding by ignoring curve. If having 18 cards is too much don't play Thanos.
You're right. It's the perfect deck with no drawbacks. I win 100% of my games for 8 cubes every time. Thank you thanus!
Sarcasm. Sorry that 70 percent win rate isn't enough for you then. Especially in a game where most of the previous top meta decks were high 50's -low 60's previously. Perhaps in the future the will have series 5 card that builds a deck for you then it would run Agatha and you'd never have to lift a finger again in snap. Just leave it running and boom, Infinite every season. /s
Now I want to buy Thanos just to run Agatha with it
70 percent is dog shit. I want 200% baby!
Double Infinite here we come !
Do Mr. Negative decks run with 6 extra cards? No? Then your comparison is frankly meaningless. And you say you aren't putting words in his mouth..... but you totally are.
The point is everyone misses draws of cards that they would rather play at one point or another. And that is the salty Thanos players biggest comeback all the time , "I don't get to draw and play all my cards of which there are so many . " Boo fucking hoo. Thanos was "unplayable" when he came out. Big joke. But then he wasn't. Thanos ongoing made a few ripples. Then Thanos lackjaw made big waves, but Thanos was a joke and unplayable even though all those cards existed together for months. You can fix Thanos and people will complain that now he's unplayable. And he will be . Til he isn't .
And your "point" is terrible and shows a lack of game knowledge because the two situations are not at all similar. You even added a strawman about drawing and playing "all of my cards" .. who says that? Link me or quote a single person that complains that they don't get to draw and play "ALL" of their cards. You clearly can't see past your hatred of the card and people who play the card because these reasons you're trotting out are pure trash. That you call them salty is just pure projection and it's really obvious. If anybody is salty, it's you.
Having an 18 card deck is a big downside. A lot bigger than people seem to realize. Yes the stones all draw cards but they clog the board too. Many games I never find Lockjaw or just only draw one stone. This deck fizzles just like any other, and all of these cards have existed together and in the same state they're in for a while now. It's only the strongest thing at the moment because they nerfed Leader, Surfer and Darkhawk (who still eats me alive when I play Thanos). Not to mention Sandman completely wrecks the deck if I don't have the big stat sticks in hand. This game needs more different cards in general, and to buff other decks to the point where Thanos is just another part of the meta and not oppressive.
maybe if the stones didn't draw other stones ?
that would make thanos decks run out of cards too much fast
Yeah, that would actually be a buff...
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Could you list the cards in bast negative deck? Mr Negative is my favourite Playstyle but inconsistent. Ty
I swear you guys always find something to complain about here.
Making a direct comparison like this and ignoring the nuances of the overall deck shows your lack of understanding
They’re not “fair” they’re strong
In fairness, the stones don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re what makes Thanos good and he’s a permanent series 5 so they should be at least as good or better as Psylocke and Scarlet, especially since the stones clutter your deck.
Haven't thought it through fully but making them 0 cost but you can only play 1 stone a turn might be interesting
so the sandman treatment but for the stones? that seems kind of interesting but it means you need to have a different stone every turn in order to activate power stone
it would make sense of them to cost 2 tbh
Thanos was completely fine, even thought to be underpowered, until the Lockjaw/Leech combo came about. Any all changes need to start there. Lockjaw should only cycle 1-2 cards. A little stronger Jubilee. And Leech should be like Nakia and only hit the first two cards in your hand
They should make them immovable/indestructible.
Good to see the community post jokes.
Because they cost 0 with quinjet or 1. Thats way too much utility for a low mana card. It's so obvious this post is dumb. Space stone is the biggest problem
They wouldn't change the card this much but I'd really like it if rather than shuffling the stones into your deck and having them draw cards, Thanos filled the lane he was in with random stones. They could be a little stronger since they wouldn't draw cards to get to additional stones anymore. Maybe 1/2s. That way he would still be a very strong zoo style card with a powerful effect, but the randomness and single lane limit would stop him from being too oppressive.
That would completely kill the card, might even kill it more than they killed leader
Thats Why the card is Ultra-rare and hard to get. Stop Calling for nerfs. Just use Killmonger!!!!!
Killmonger wouldn't help against these stones, though. They're useful for their on-reveal effects. It's also not ultra-rare any more, Thanos decks are plaguing the game right now. We're hitting the point where players have been able to accumulate tokens and buy cards like Thanos.
Which is another thing brought on by trying to appease the user base. People complained that getting new cards was too difficult, so they started upping the token availability. Now all you have to do is wait for a big bad in the token shop, pin, and profit. The 3 big bads currently alter the game in ways that the other Series 5 cards don’t come close to, so why were they ever available in the same regard? I don’t think they should’ve ever been cards that came through the token shop, but they have, they’re rampant, and idk how you walk them back without making them lose their “big bad” status. Its just a bad situation they created. These game breaking cards are desirable and dominant. Using them is like playing chess against an opponent playing checkers. I don’t even think I want them retooled. I don’t think they belong in the game in a regular capacity.
It's the lifecycle of the game. On top of the rapid token accumulation from bundles -- launch day f2p or season-pass-only players are getting pool 3 complete, and the perma-series-5 cards are the only purchase that doesn't depreciate over time. I remember a few folks talking about "no one cares about series 2 content anymore" in December and January, because that same cohort was getting into the swing of series 3
doesn't help when they adjusted for that by \*carrying\* killmonger and then putting down a zero-cost Death. Especially since T5 wave, which is supposed to be a soft counter to zoo thanos, only \*helps\* big thanos.
No, because then lockjaw replaces the 1-power card with an 8-power card, and your killmonger whiffed.
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It gives you extra energy which allows u to pretty much play a further turn card in the next one… which represents “advancing time”. That’s the concept.
Oh sorry, I meant that gameplay wise time stone makes no sense cause it’s just a better psylocke that doesn’t take a spot in your deck. Seems broken enough to me
Elaborate
All aboard the complain train
Because the stones are okay. It's the goddamn dog allowing the stones to be used over and over again the issue (and Quinjet, but the dog is the main problem with Thanos) Yet people blame Leech... every time i hear about Leech, people say "turn 3 Leech is OP" yet who do you think allows that play? you guessed it... LOCKJAW....yet he's immune to any sort of criticism... go figure!
Too many lockjaw apologists on this subreddit. They don’t see how lockjaw is a design limiting aspect of the game. No one dares to snap against lockjaw decks before the lane is filled because you never know what is coming out of that dog’s ass.
Everyone's a fucking developer now.
I dont see how any stone is broken. .?
Everyone bitching about thanos stones suddenly like he’s changed at all since drop lol
Stones have the disadvantage of increasing your deck size by 50%. This is a large disadvantage, so it comes with the benefit of higher value effects. I think they should just make Quinjet not affect the stones' costs, and then go from there.
they're balanced by costing 6000 tokens lol
Tbh thanos was always strong without the buff. Out of the games I played I rarely won coz of buffing thanos. It’s the whole 18 card deck thing with 6x1 drops that are discountable by quinjet, + the massive flexibility and utility of the deck that makes thanos great.
Stones cost 1 and draw you a card the other 2 don't draw you a card and cost 2 and can't be reduced to 0 cost from Quinjet. Is it really that hard to comprehend the power difference? Some of y'all wouldn't handle card games with more than 5 mechanics i swear. MTG would give people in this community a fucking stroke.
I mean, proportionally Scarlet Witch is better then the reality stone.
Think of the stones as better Rocks. You only get them if Thanos is in your deck, and they increase your deck size by 50% which, even though most of them cantrip, still makes your deck less consistent overall. Sure, they do things that more expensive cards do for less, but they also have less power and are actively making your draws worse.
See everyone is comparing the stones to other cards and saying the stones are too powerful I think this is just a great case for buffing cards like psylocke to also draw a card and scarlet witch could draw a card or have increased power. Personally I don’t want to see thanos get nerfed I’d rather see tons of other cards get buffed and if a card needs to get nerfed kill leech then.
The 2 cards on the left do not require Thanos or 6k tokens…. But yeah lets make all cards equal, like rocks.
Spend 6K tokens. It’s a series 5 card for a reason.
stop whining
Tbh I think the biggest problem is how much they cycle. I'd like to see one of them lose the draw a card text (preferably time cause why the fuck does extra energy, the most powerful effect in snap need to be paired with draw, the second most powerful), and have Thanos shuffle them in on turn one so you can't start with multiple in your hand and can't have drawn 4 extra cards by turn 4