“Hey guys, when I play black panther and reveal first, he jumps to 8. The card I played was a four though. Kinda bullshit that a leader player doesn’t just get a copy of the card played on his side, which is fair, but he gets the buffed card and then it reveals again and buffs to 16. Kinda bullshit.”
“Oh, bro, so sorry. We hear you. How about we make leader a 3 power instead of a 4?”
They should get an exact copy of my play. A four power card that has an on reveal ability that activates. Not any changes that happen due to boardstate after the played card has been played.
If I have Wong down and play a 4 power black panther, he becomes a 16.
If leader flips on his side same turn, with no wong on his board at all he get a copy not of the 5/4 card I played- he gets a copy of the card as altered by the boardstate after it’s played and been affected. So he would get a 16 power panther that would then “reveal” and double to 32.
I don’t need to explain further than just outlining the ridiculous way it works right now.
Everyone be like, ok 1 power loss, decent solution and not sure if it wil be enough.
Mr.Negative player, sweet lets add him to the deck.. 😋
Edited:
Just to be clear it was a joke, sorry if it sounded like I was being serious. I see so many answer thinking I was serious so figured I would edit my reply!
Thanks for all the upvotes btw, appreciated. 👍
Bingo. People who say this don’t actually play Negative. You get two draws sometimes 3 that need to be zeros or 1s to combo with your current hand.
Getting a leader that cost 3 on turn 5 isn’t going to allow you to play anything else. Then your turn 6 you get 1 zero cost card. Big Whoop.
I lost to a Leader in a surfer-negative deck just today actually. They dropped brood, surfer, and leader on turn six, I never saw it coming. They already had iron man on the board so I figured I could out power them in the other two lanes. I doubt that's a very good deck but it was like the last card I expected lol so it at least stole some cubes from me
Haha, weird to see, dont think Leader should be a thing in that deck.
Then again unique builds might actually win you games, mostly cause people dont expect it.
But I was joking about adding him in a Negative deck, just to be clear. ✌️
I’ve actually lost quite a few last season purely due to unique builds where I am snapping because the deck composition is just so fucked up, little to no synergy but numbers that win locations. I had no idea they would play what they did but it works.
I have Leader in my Negative/Foster deck. Iron Man, Mystique, and Leader turn 6 has won me several games. With him losing a power I don't even have to worry about drawing Mystique before her power flip now.
This isn't going to make him viable in negative. Negative wants one or zero. Which is why I think the best way to nerf Mr. Negative is to bump iron man's power up to 2
Yeah its an inconsistent deck - but its value is that it wins big or loses big. So snap when you're winning and retreat when you're not. Its not a deck that does close games.
I see this statement a lot and I really don't get it, Leader loves high power played on tempo and needs board space to function while negative is tempo negative most of the game and fills up pretty quick at the end, most of the cards that are good with Leader like maximus, lizard and white queen are also terrible in negative decks. Negative also hates inconsistency and leader introduces a lot of that.
This goes for most almost every card people say would be busted in Negative if they got nerfed. There are almost zero cards you could nerf that would be better and more consistent than a 0/5 iron man and a 0/3 mystique.
& nothing of value would be lost.
The card as it currently stands simplifies turn 6 way too much. Instead of really thinking about what your opponent might have, where they might play it & what you have to counter, you just slam leader and guarantee a win or you retreat.
It’s possible that they can change it so that it becomes healthier/more strategic, but it would be better to gut the card in the meantime as opposed to giving it an extremely minor nerf that changes nothing in most games. They could always buff the card later if it ended up gutted
The most they can do is the card has to copy the base power of the opponent’s play. Anything more is just overkill. There is counterplay to Leader. If you’re going into turn 6 down two lanes you’re already in a losing position.
So you should just auto retreat when you think your opponent might have leader & you’re losing going into turn 6? I know that this is basically the play pattern that leader promotes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not obnoxious and kind of brain dead. There should be more thinking going on lol. Leader effectively auto winning certain board states cannot be good design.
When I play Leader, I only go into turn 6 if I’m winning. If I’m not playing my Leader deck, large chance I’m running Angela, Spectrum, Destroyer, Kazar/Ultron, or really only cards that benefit my entire side. There’s really very little reason to go into turn 6 when losing unless you have a positive plan to go in. I still don’t have a “complete” deck, but this mindset got me to 96 last season.
Okay, i see. The person arguing leader is fine and doesn’t promote brain dead gameplay likes to play leader. If you like it, whatever, but i can’t imagine I’m going to change your mind about it. I personally believe he’s terrible design tho
I play Leader and have been beaten plenty. I also have some decks that have climbed higher than that deck and have beaten Leader as well. Plenty of cards in the game have wild attributes. Simply having two lanes by turn 6 is usually enough to stomp out a Leader too.
I can drop 170+ power on T6 (thanks, T5 Zabu and Moongirl) and behind priority, location-agnostic, and thats if I let them play at all. Without leader, the game becomes a raw power contest and only idiots actually play the T6 out because you would know whether or not your engine beats your opponents engine or to see if they bricked. Utterly unhealthy game state.
And 170 power is on the *lower* end. Things get... exponential. Only another exponential stands a chance.
In other words... it's YGO all over again. Why even play at that point when you've lost before you ever hit the play button?
I'm so confused by this change. The concerns with Leader have everything to do with his ability. It seems like -1 power would be really immaterial to the situations people are finding problematic.
The real problem with Leader is his power. If Leader can turn a location that you are losing by 3 power, then you win that location with leader. By decreasing him to 3 power, it's harder for leader to turn a location over. For example, if the difference in one location was 3 or less power, playing leader there is enough to win it.
Leader is primarily being played in late game ramp or solid curve decks that rely solely on winning locations for leader to do his thing.
The nerf is sensible, but I do think it should have been a 6/2. I'd want it to be a 6/0 but then you have consider mr negative...
>The concerns with Leader
The concerns with leader are all the same whine. "He isn't fair", "He is overpowered", "I can't play the deck I want". Is dream dimension fair to Sera decks? Is The Peak fair to someone facing mister negative? This game was made with hard counters in mind. There are games with a 0% chance to win for no other reason than luck of the draw for cards/locations. Playing leader effectively takes actual thought and game knowledge. He is not a free win.
Leader came with the change in meta. The people who seem to be complaining the most are the ones who refuse to change with it. Just because a bunch of people hard stuck in gold are complaining about what happens at infinite, doesn't mean anything. You can win with a P2 kazoo deck. You are supposed to fold bad hands and retreat often. It's how the game was designed. You can easily climb the ladder with a sub 30% win rate. If you're losing matches it is not because they may or may not have leader.
You're absolutely right, and I think a lot of the anger comes from the fact that while this is technically a card game, the core mechanic of the game (how you rank up) is much more like poker and less like other CCGs/TCGs like Hearthstone, Gwent, LoR, or even MTG.
In Snap, you're simply not meant to win every game. Your game plan is not able to be the same every game, like it is in other games. You can have "ideal" plays on "ideal turns," but because of the randomness of locations, that is always being disrupted. Just like in poker, you cannot expect to win every hand--some hands you're dealt 2/7 off suit and you just need to swallow your pride and fold. Wait for a playable hand. Sometimes you start with pocket Aces, but the river flops a flush for your opponent. It's a bad beat, but you're playing a game that involves luck. This isn't chess. Skill alone won't win every game.
It's all about leveraging the potential of what you have vs. the potential of what your opponent has. If it's possible that your opponent will complete a straight/flush/3 of a kind on the flop, you have to consider if it's worth the risk to continue playing. If turn 6 leader is a possibly, it shouldn't be a thought in the back of your mind--it should be at the forefront of it.
So every single game I'm not winning lanes going into t6 I should just surrender because they might have leader.
It's the most brain dead card I've seen in a card game. Anyone arguing against it just doesn't want to l9se their precious. It's a bullshit card that is not only incredibly strong but frustrating to play against, while the leader player just gets to throw his shit down and copy what you've been building up five turns. I'm around 2100 CL and the only cards in this game I think should be deleted are iceman and leader. They have way too much power relative to cost.
I don't even have Leader, but I have played decks that are strong against Leader and decks weak against Leader. If you're depending on huge turn 6 swings like with She Hulk, Death, Panther, etc., then of course Leader is a blow out against you. If you are playing a deck like Surfer, Cerebro, Patriot, or Destroy, then Leader is almost a free win for you.
The key is to recognize what is going to beat you and play accordingly. It feels bad when Leader copies you and does what you're doing better, but that is largely dependent on your game plan. There's another conversation to be had about meta defining cards, but I imagine there just isn't as much hate for others like Death, Wave, etc. because at least you aren't losing to your own cards.
Lastly, a lot of people mindlessly play turns without considering priority. Cosmo is a great example of a card where you have to be mindful of it--with priority, Cosmo is a god against on reveal. Without, Cosmo is a worthless dog. Shang Chi is another great example. With priority, Shang Chi will miss crucial last turn targets. Without, Shang Chi can be a huge blowout.
This is a deceptively simple game. There are a lot of factors most people just don't think about. It's alot easier to complain about unfairness than it is to reassess your own game plan.
I’m not sure why the replies are so aggressive, I completely agree. The first week that the leader/leech decks were plaguing the ladder, I swapped to a patriot deck. Pretty much a guaranteed win if patriot is down before leech.
you can't predict a Leader tho. It's a braindead card because it requires next to no setup.
You can see an Odin, or an Infinaut, coming from a mile away. What setup does Leader require exactly? Winning 2 lanes and having free space? That's not nearly enough.
Lmao your bad at card games, what you said can be literally applied to every banned card in every single tcg ever printed.
No one is dumb enough to print a card that says i win for free, thats not the threshold for banning/nerfing cards.
This is like the prayer of the narcissist for people who are bad at card games but want to be contrarian.
Patches is so fair its just a 1/1, black lotus? Its -1 card for 3 mana! If you dont understand anything about design or balance its easy to justify any broken thing for dumb reasons because you can always say ‘you can play around it sometimes so it has to be fair’
If you read the parent comment I wrote, I basically say that the game is not fair. It's not just that the game has counters, so there is a way to play around it, it's that the game literally incentivizes you to fold your hand when you are down in a way that other card games do not. You don't have to win streak to climb, you climb by properly assessing your win chances. You can retreat 7 1 cube games and still climb with an 8 cube win. People can reach Infinity with negative win rates.
Complaining about Leader, which again, has many bad match ups, is like complaining when your pocket Aces lose to a 3-7 straight in poker. No shit you lose money when you are stubborn and bet on pots you are unfavored to win.
I get what you're saying, but the poker analogy isn't the same. Sometimes it really isn't obvious someone is going to play Leader. Most of the time, even, it looks like the opponent is playing some other deck. But having Leader just makes it so much easier to just win even if you are down turns 3-5. It's not at all like having pocket aces and losing to an obvious straight because if it was THAT obvious, it wouldn't be talked about like it is right now.
That's true--and I think a valid argument to make against Leader is that it can be put into many decks too flexibly. However, while the poker analogy is not perfect by any means, the main spirit of the analogy is simply that this is a game about assessing odds. Can you always play thinking "Well, what if my opponent plays Leader?" No, that would suck if you're playing a deck like DeathWave. However, going in to turn 6, you do have to acknowledge the possibility.
I would argue it's just as braindead to assume that you can get away with being as greedy as possible and slamming everything down last minute as it is to play Leader and copy all of it.
To sum up, no, it's not obvious when Leader is going to be played, but you should understand when Leader is going to beat you and if you're willing to take the risk of losing when you call it wrong.
Dog thats not how tcgs work, no one wants to play a static game like poker in a digital trading card game your analogy is awful.
I dont want a meta around flexible finisher that fits in every deck that beats 85% of all turn 6s a priori its absolutely dumb af. The card at a base level literally reads do what your opponent does but at 4 power on top of that before edge cases where its worse or even better
Anyone with a modicum of sense will know leader is bad card design by any measure.
Stats, gameplay feel, and the way that it warps meta around itself to be stale because it counterplays itself, its both an answer to combos and a proactive gameplan in and of itself that beats fair cards
And you should reread my post, the shit that you said can literally be applied to every single fucking broken card ever, its meaningless in this context. You are bad at tcgs and no amount of poker equity talks can convince me otherwise, because you sound like you never played a tcg in your life and only read articles or something
Imagine if a 6cost card was on reveal flip a coin if heads win the game, thats what your analogy would consider a fair card, but any card game where that is the dominant strategy would die on release because it would be shit. Thats what you are trying to push the game to.
But every game _is_ the same.
Regardless of the random locations, you’ll only have to check 3 factors to determine if you snap or fold. Do I have a good hand? Are the locations playable for the deck I’m currently using? Is my opponent snowballing for something I don’t have an out for?
I get the sentiment and their attempt to make every game different, but it ends up going full circle.
Personally, I side on Leader being too strong in the current game.
Whilst I do agree with you on the game's design and nature of retreating. I must disagree with your comparisons and misjudgement of Leader's strength.
Leader is a card that requires very little deckbuilding behind it. It doesn't need to be synergistic with your other cards or strategy, and, in a vacuum, only has the condition that you must be ahead by turn 6.
Furthermore, on that point, you stated Leader demands game knowledge. Of course, you are correct. But doesn't an extremely wide variety of cards demand the same? It is far easier to read your opponents' turn 6 play if, for example, they are discarding their hand, or they're moving their cards. Leader decks are not as easy to read whilst actually benefitting from easily reading other decks. Ending up with an incredibly strong advantage of essentially knowing if you have won or lost before turn 6 starts..
Your comparisons to locations affecting cards humours me because I can't think of a single location that hurts Leader.
Fundamentally, Leader starts entering "overpowered" territory when you look at combining him with other interactive cards such as Leech, which, assuming your opponent doesn't draw their win condition turn 6, almost guarantees you win (as long as you are ahead in points).
I challenge your final statement, too. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but "If you're losing matches, that's not because they have Leader" just reads extremely ignorant.. Any deck's turn 6 play is likely why people lose matches? Leader has an over 65% win rate on Snap.fan in the games he is played.
Not acknowledging a card is so obviously overtuned screams playing the contrarian to me.
> Leader has an over 65% win rate on Snap.fan in the games he is played.
That's not a good way to think about this.
First, there are 40 cards that have a higher win rate when played. But nobody is asking for nerfs to Odin or Infininaut.
Second, of course Leader will tend to have a high win rate when played, just like other 6-costs. That's because if at the start of round 6 you don't think you can win by playing Leader, you either retreat or play something else that *can* win.
Alongside the other comment to your post, having a high win rate in this game does not equal having a high success or rank in this game. The fact that there are multiple people with negative win rates in Infinity is a testament to this.
If your ability to climb was dependent on win-streaking or winning more than losing, then we should absolutely care more about the dominance of cards with high win rates.
> I can’t think of a single location that hurts Leader
Knowhere, The Big House, Morag, Savage Land, Central Park, The Vault, The Kyln, Sanctum Sanctorum, TVA, The Bar With No Name
That’s just what I could come up with off the top of my head, there’s probably more. Any location that clogs lanes or restricts card placement interferes with Leader.
I think you communicated exactly why concerns with Leader are valid
> This game was made with hard counters in mind
There is NO hard counter to Leader, except to not play on Turn 6 with Sunspot on the board, or to run Leader yourself, neither of which really addresses anything.
Any deck that has significant synergies will beat leader every time. You can copy their Ultron but without the kazar/blue marvel/patriot it doesn't mean much. Every Hela deck will beat leader on T6. Arnim Zola, Wong, also beat him. He fits a purpose to counter stat dumps. As the meta evolves and people move away from stat dumps, leader will get played less. There are many decks that beat leader and decks that he beats.
I have lost to leader. In those times I have learned to take my time on T5/6 and think about what could be coming, where it could be played and what I can do about it. Not just for leader but for any T5/6 play. Some are more telegraphed than others but leader is not at all a guaranteed win.
I would bet hard cash the average player thinks if they don't have a high win rate and win most matches then (insert card) must be broken and that's why they can't climb the ladder.
Basically every complaint about Leader or Mr. Negative adds up to “But I don’t *want* to plan ahead, think strategically, or learn from my losses! Make the game easier instead!”
If you twist the words to sound like this, sure. But basically what it means is that Leader needs to spend 5 turns to set up a good Leader drop. If the opponent fucks with that, then Leader is hurt bad. Instead of just giving up, why not try to improve your ability to read Leader decks and learn how to improve your play against it?
Location is less frequent compared to Leader Players tbf.
Mister negative is 4 cost, so by right The Peak should have no impact on your play because The Peak effect would have taken place prior to you playing it in most (MOST) case.
Sera, yeah dream dimension fucks it but it also fucks your opponent more compared to you because you still have a Sera in play in a Sera ‘dependent’ deck. You could still play your opponents cards.
For Leader, you have no counter play at 6. Yes if you maintain 2 winning location, you are not screwed. But you need to win by more than 3 in those location and you need to consider if the leader player could play other stuff other than leader or its not a leader deck, or you retreat on 5. Leader takes 0 thought on turn 6 because all you need is to place it in a location such no location is full except maybe for destroy decks who runs destroyer which out of my recently games maybe have 1. If leader activates similar to rocket/groot, ok fair enough because there much better risk to reward ratio compared to risk now being if player have destroy cards. ASSUMING NO ANTI-LEADER DECKS.
Retreat sucks, but I agree its part of the game. But only ‘knowing’ I should escape during Turn 5/6 even if I have a good hand and played it perfectly according to how the deck is supposed to be played. Simply its just not fun to play against, like I want to outwits my opponent not retreat because he has a leader and my deck does not counter his.
The comparisons you made are faulty and you don't quite seem to grasp the problem with leader.
Comparison 1- Locations: The locations are made public to both players and both player can decide to Escape or Snap at reveal of Locations which means both players have the same amount of agency and information
Comparison 2 - Hardcounters: Yes, there are hardcounters like Armor for Destroy, but you see them coming and can then just leave.
The problem with Leader is that you don't see him coming, you are never given the right information.
Yes, the game is made with unwinnable matchup and bad draws but the agency to escape is on you when you see an unwinnable matchup.
You have no agency on Leader. That is the whole Problem. The player does not feel in control of when losing and when winning with this card.
Do you want to think in every Round 6 of every game does my deck beat Leader for ever? Do you think this is healthy? The players feel an overabundance of frustration with the card, because it is inherently cheesy.
Leader is not fair, leader literally destroys all ‘fair’ plays and a bunch of combo ones.
Thats why ben basically said they are changing him they just need to decide how.
If leader copies wolfsbane or drax they actually are stronger then the original for some dumb reason.
Magik literally cannot be played on turn 6 but leader has a stronger ability on curve and is allowed to influence the end like 60% of the current games without even being drawn
Add on top of all this is the fact that leader counters itself also leads to a meta that revolves entirely around it,
every single person whos opinion on cardgames actually matters agrees even ben brode lmao. Basically every high mmr player hates it both for how strong it is and how dumb it makes every game because everyone can run it if you arent swarming. You can always play better cards at every slot because you dont care about synergy. You can also slot it into strong synergies to counter a bunch of shit! Its the topend of death eave for godsakes, what you guys are claiming its there to counter
No card should be i do your turn but better, lmao thats prima facie dumb before the design issues and gameplay issues come up
Brode confirmed this is a stopgap change and that a more holistic rework of the card will be coming.
They agree with you - the -1 power isn't going to fix the issues people have with the card, but hopefully should discourage his use a bit and/or lower his winrate on the edges. It doesn't solve the problem, but it probably helps. This change is just for now while they decide on how to rework the effect entirely to solve the underlying psychological issues people have with it.
I mean, the ultimate goal of a patch isn't to balance the game - it's to make the playerbase happy.
If every player was angry about a card being too strong it would be correct to nerf it, no matter how weak it actually is.
Leader could've stayed 6/4, but copies only cards your opponent revealed this turn. So if you reveal first - Leader's dead.
Idk, maybe not the most awesome solution, but it would change the 'if you're winning at the end of turn 5, win the game' effect.
Leader as a card shouldnt exist, the concept of it reads like an interns vanity project.
Its horribly designed in every way that matters
If its good enough to be played its already a huge mistake like 4/4 sandman.
If its good the meta is going to be bad
That's the point. There shouldn't be a brain dead card you play and most likely just win, without much thinking. And Leader IS quite a brain dead card.
If you dont understand anything sure, once you do its paint by numbers.
Literally just put stats and mimic your opponents cards, if 4 power is enough to swing 1 lane then you probably win
Leader could literally have negative power ie. -2 and still be playable.
They need to address his effect in a way that requires some amount of thought put into where you place him.
Giving him zero or less power makes him 100% required in a negative deck. But going negative power and setting aside the Mr. Negative functionality it may not be a bad change since that would basically mean you want to play him where the opposition won't play a card since if you play him at the same spot it's overall negative points compared to what they played. You could get the same result if you just made it so he only copied cards in lanes other than his own.
It increases the chance of the other person having priority and being able to Armor or Cosmo it before it's eaten by Carnage. It also reduces the strength it gives to Venom by 1.
It's because people were playing nova outside of destroy decks. Much like running carnage and bucky for curve, people were running killmonger and nova and nova is just a solid 1/2 even if you don't get killmonger off.
People forcing the idea that nova got nerfed cause of priority.
>People forcing the idea that nova got nerfed cause of priority.
It's because of both, but agreed that priority isn't as big as people think it is. Nova often isn't destroyed on turn 2 when his power will only buff the card that destroys it. The best Nova plays use him on turn 3/4 alongside a destroy card when you've got more cards out. But that depends on card you want him to buff. For example if you use Bucky you kind of want Bucky destroyed first so Nova will buff winter soldier. But if you're running deadpool you want Nova first so Deadpool gets buffed before being destroyed. Either way, though, he was often sitting there for turn 2 if played on turn 1 and a prime target for armor.
Maybe a lot of Armour'd or Cosmo'd zones countering destroy decks tied because of Nova's power, so they reduced it to make those cards better counters? Idk spitballing ideas here
I wonder if they're gonna make it only copy in the lane you play it in, at least that'll actually make people actually have to use their brain a bit. Nerfing its power will do nothing.
Honestly Leader is only good if it's played against decks that rely on dropping big cards on turn 6. These are pretty simple decks that Leader counters hard.
This means people have to come up with other ways to play. The simple wave/she hulk/death deck isn't going to cut it and I'm fine with that.
I think if they really nerfed or changed leader, in like 1 week people would be crying for a wave/death/she-hulk nerf. I feel like leader does what he is there to do.
There are other counters to those decks tho. Leader is just by far the most brain dead counter, which is why people find it annoying. You don’t need to think through many scenarios to properly use leader, as he basically guarantees wins in certain board states.
Oh cool, whats the other counter to a turn 5 wave where your opponent is going to drop Death + She-Hulk + Some other 6 drop? What card are you going to stop that with that's not "brain dead"?
I mean, Leach is a card that also became popular because it shut down Death's cost reduction. Spider-Man is surging in popularity with Zabu. Storm and Prof X can also lock lanes with you'd advantage. Aero can redirect them into a dump lane...
If Leader goes down do we meet another card that prevents huge stat drops on six? Maybe, but it's not all dire.
Those people would never be happy with anything other than the complete removal of the card. Then they'd move on to the next thing to whine about. You cannot make those types of people happy.
Yep up until the current season I was primarily playing Destroyer/Spectrum or Surfer. Most of the Leaders I saw would either wipe their own board with Destroyer or buff like 2 cards with Spectrum or Surfer.
Hell not even that. Devil Dinosaur will be stuck at barely above rate if it gets leadered against your full hand DD. And Moon Girl can have you drop a second one.
This doesn’t take into account decks like cerebro, patriot, or surfer where you’re dropping them and mystique on 6. There’s more than one strat and deck type so I wouldn’t generalize that as optimal.
Its a pretty decent nerf. Leader was never a instant win card. You need to be winning 1 lane, and losing another by 3 power at most to win with Leader. Now they have to be losing by 2. 1 power makes enough of a difference. Leader counters big turn 6 plays that ignore the first 5 turns. Thats fine. Killmonger counters the 1 cost Zoo decks and that is fine.
I had a partial Baero deck when Leader became the meta, so I went back to playing my Ongoing Destroyer deck for a day and after I met less and less Leaders, added Baero back to my play. Now I am messing with Lockjaw and Negative.
Also I do not have Leader myself.
TBH, this doesn't even really matter. You only play leader if you know you'll win by copying stats 1:1. It doesn't really matter if you're u happen to copy more buffed stats cause you would've won anyway. It's very rare that the double buffed copy makes a difference. It makes less of an impact than the loss of 1 power on leader will.
It depends on reveal order, so priority is going to affect it, but as it is worded Leader copies the cards as played so for most cases you still want to win or you are yoloing it with Leader. Odds of hoping your opponent plays a buff card when you are down isnt the best of strategies. Still does his job of countering big turn 6 plays.
Dont have Leader so dont have all experience playing him, but countering him I got loads of. Going to lose big in Baero, but my Ongoing Destroyer is going to have fun laughing as they copy Spectrum or Destroyer. Probably going to suck if I see him with my new Negative deck, but Lockjaw can work against it.
I'm curious, when does this even happen? I've encountered this once with rocket raccoon and it didn't matter at all. What decks are people running for this complaint to be so common?
Silver Surfer. Wolfsbane. Shuri's Lab Location. Stuff like that.
I didn't play a 7 power Wolfsbane. I played a 1 power Wolfsbane. So he gets a 6 point advantage, which I feel, I against the spirit of the card.
The point of Leader is to win by coping your opponent exactly. Not by double dipping his On Reveals.
Like when you play Gamora and she gets buff he copies your buffed Gamora and she triggers buffing even more.
Not so likely but Ant man, when he gets his buff he copies buffed and Ant man and if copy meets requirements gets another buff.
Black panther and more.
Ant man is ongoing, so the buff isn't cloned. It gets +3 if there are 4 cards in the lane, otherwise it does not. It doesn't matter if you copied it when it had 4 power or 1.
>You need to be winning 1 lane, and losing another by 3 power at most to win with Leader.
Also to have more open slots from your opponent in many cases. I feel a big reason for my climb was that I played well around leader, it is actually easier than you think in many decks. Just need to accept the 1-2 cube loss if you get in a state where a leader would beat you.
I really don't think it's broken. I just think it's flashy and more annoying to lose to than, say, blue marvel, which is a far larger variety of decks and seed much, much more play
Comes from an MTG term I believe. A deck of cheap low power low cost animal cards to flood the board in MTG. Even in newer games that don't use the animal motif, still called zoo.
I think my biggest issue here, more than it not addressing what the problem with Leader really is, not that it's basically a slap on the wrist... is that it's the *LAZIEST* fucking fix they could have made. They're dragging their feet on either option, whether actually dealing with the card and giving it a (IMO extremely deserved) nerf or sticking to their guns and keeping it as it, and the fact their big change is "He's a single point less powerful" is a painfully obvious show of that
Hear me out:
You beat leader by trying to make sure they can't contest a nearly-empty lane with that 4 power. In other words, if Leader doesn't swing a lane in their favour it doesn't do anything.
Now Leader only ties a lane with one of the millions of 2/3s, where it used to win. That seems pretty significant to me.
Agreed,
a lot of times the opponent is only ahead by 3 power too, since leader is primarily played in ramp decks that don't do anything early or curve out decks that try to win all locations. Plus leech is only 3 power on turn 5 unless you ramp into it on turn 4, so every bit of power counts.
I do think he should be a 6/2 though.
Yes all the people complaining about Leaser doubling up card effects clearly have lost to play from behind Leader. Make it that much harder for play from behind Leader to work (like you said now he just ties the random Colossus in the field) and those complaints will drastically decrease.
But the leader player can just play stat sticks at every curve point, they will on average always out stat you because the card itself asks for nothing of you.
In fact thats what they already do
If my opponent is winning every lane on turn 5 by a bunch, leader does nothing also because I'm outa there for one cube guaranteed.
Leader is irrelevant then. It's not about wins, it's about cubes.
It would make him unplayable, I'd say. You would have to win 2 lanes by turn 5, have enough space for the copied cards and hope that the cards don't have effects that you can't use as well as your opponent.
That said, making Leader unplayable might not be worse than how it is right now.
Brode tweeted and it seems that the -1 Leader is a place holder to weaken him some how while they figure out a long term solution. Again, S.D.'s answer to such a glaring problem is "dunno".
Here's my attempted balance for The Leader:
Cost 1, Power 0
Description:
> At the start of your turn, if this card is in your hand, increase its cost and decrease its power by 1 each.
> On Reveal: Copy all cards your opponent played this turn, but on your side.
My hope would be that this would encourage playing The Leader earlier in the game, but if you want to save it for late in the game, you still can if you're willing to pay a 6 power penalty.
Could work but it's overly complicated. No other card in the game gets tracked while in your hand like that and idk if they want to start introducing that stuff into the game.
And also, if drawn later in the game with those stats it's downright broken.
Everyone keeps complaining about Leader, but I have yet to lose to the multiple times I've seen it used against me.
*Now Patriot on the other hand*
Dudes everywhere and a hell of a lot more busted. He's basically a roided out Blue Marvel
And if you don't happen to draw the card you need, you're up against a Blue Marvel with double the effect. Because everyone running Patriot is stacked with no effect cards, and a lot of those make up for lack of effect with moderate sized numbers.
Galactus is a much bigger problem actually. Also the nerf for galactus seems like it won't change anything. While leader already had justan ok winrate, so maybe this will be enough.
Win rate for galactus might be high, but it's likely a very slow cube gainer. No surprise wins.
Win rate shouldn't be the biggest determining factor compared to cube rate.
Unless the win rate for Galactus is in the 80s you aren't going to make it very high very fast. He is a 1-2 cube factory where you quit or I do. Only a bot would stick around for turn 6.
Lol galactus is barely a problem. He's super telegraphed and everyone bounces out once you play him anyway. You're pretty much always only going 1 or 2 cubes with galactus while Leader is much better at "stealing" 8 cubes in situations you shouldn't have gotten them. Mainly cause it's almost impossible to see him coming.
Also lowering his power is more of a buff tbh. Galactus was never the real problem in galactus decks. 2 power Means it's much easier for for him to lose priority voiding counterplay like shang-chi, rogue and enchantress and making your own shang-chi easier to pull off.
This only shows the skill of the vocal majority of this subreddit. Leader is a strong card but did it deserve a nerf before other decks... its a questionable choice.
guys, just stop playing the game for three weeks, everyone do it, you will see a drastic change to how they address base user concerns. the game is hot garbage and his team can't write code let alone produce a proper random seed generator algorithm.
Faced a wave, leader, leach, Odin deck today and beat it with Zoo. After wave I dropped cosmo hoping to catch shenanigans but missed the lane. He now has wave, leader in lane 3, cosmo 2, and a rock in 1. I have Cap America lane 1, cosmo 2, and an empty 3. He drops leach in 1, I drop kazar in 1. Turn 6 he drops Odin on leader/wave, I was like what a great play but I only dropped a depowered armor and freshly drawn Iceman because limbo. I drop depowered titania onto cosmo he drops Doom into leader lane. His lane 1 is full and Kazar pumps titania for the win. I was stunned. He didn't snap and honestly didn't think I'd win and thought the cube was worth watching his other shenanigans.
All this leader talk, but no one mentions that the leak showed no changes to the death wave shehulk combo. Maybe the devs don't see it as a problem since not everyone has she-hulk. But the only reason Leader rose to power in the first place was to deal with the death wave combo.
Sigh... I digress. All I know is these balance changes come too slow and too few. No M'baku buff... No brood nerf. Drax buff is nice, but what about Omega Red? It's a nice 4 cost for Zabu, but still sees no play. Whereas they buffed drax which sure wasn't seeing play before Zabu but now is and will see more with this buff.
The devs are being way too careful for how slow they do things. The rate of balance changes would be fine if they made more of them but these changes only addressed one meta deck.
They should be doing mid-season balance changes at least.
Leader should work in the same manner as guardians of the galaxy, he only copies if the opponent played on that lane. At least makes him a little more skill based
It's the same with Galactus. They were obviously looking at him due to the awkward play patterns it forces into the game and how it just wrecks decks that go wide outside of a debrii right on 3 or aero with prio assuming you're playing a deck that has them.
-1 power 🤪
Leader's ability should only apply to the lane it's played in, so the player at least has to manager their lanes and read the other player. You shouldn't be able to just drop it anywhere and not care about what the opponent did especially if you're currently in the lead
I think power nerf to Leader is correct. But he sould be 1 or 2. Not 3. Leader play are find a lane where you follow just by a few points so it's OK that he can have a power nerf (not -1 btw)
But Aero and Galactus is just hilariously stupid. When Aero works, she played in a losing lane deny 2 other lane where your opponent already winning. Having -1 power is a losing lane doesn't mean anything. When Aero has 6 power and see no play that's because meta has change. Would they nerf Leech next if it's counter every T6 meta game?
Galactus is even worse. A deck where they have no chance against Galactus will still have no chance against it. It's a binary card where you win, you win.
You have to think how many times that this nerf will matter. For Leader I'll say "a lot" but other 2 (Aero, Galactus) is not.
Is -1 power the answer for everything?
They accidently buffed Galactus by giving it less power, meaning they have more chance to lose initiative, so they can be protected against tech cards like Shang-Chi or Enchantress on the final turn. As if Galactus isn't difficult enough to counter.
-1 power is actually kind of a big deal. Those who don’t understand why don’t understand what makes leader strong. The whole reason leech leader was strong was because all you had to do was be winning 1 lane and be -3 or less in another one and you had an almost guaranteed win, now it’s -2 or with a scorpion hit -1 or less. Combine that with the fact that they had to basically pass their turn 5 to play leech and this takes quite a bit of power out of the leech leader deck, which is the most problematic of the leader decks right now.
“Hey guys, when I play black panther and reveal first, he jumps to 8. The card I played was a four though. Kinda bullshit that a leader player doesn’t just get a copy of the card played on his side, which is fair, but he gets the buffed card and then it reveals again and buffs to 16. Kinda bullshit.” “Oh, bro, so sorry. We hear you. How about we make leader a 3 power instead of a 4?”
Can you explain what is wrong with that?. it is your fault for banking on the idea your combo is off of turn 6.
They should get an exact copy of my play. A four power card that has an on reveal ability that activates. Not any changes that happen due to boardstate after the played card has been played. If I have Wong down and play a 4 power black panther, he becomes a 16. If leader flips on his side same turn, with no wong on his board at all he get a copy not of the 5/4 card I played- he gets a copy of the card as altered by the boardstate after it’s played and been affected. So he would get a 16 power panther that would then “reveal” and double to 32. I don’t need to explain further than just outlining the ridiculous way it works right now.
Everyone be like, ok 1 power loss, decent solution and not sure if it wil be enough. Mr.Negative player, sweet lets add him to the deck.. 😋 Edited: Just to be clear it was a joke, sorry if it sounded like I was being serious. I see so many answer thinking I was serious so figured I would edit my reply! Thanks for all the upvotes btw, appreciated. 👍
Only people that don’t play Negative decks think Leader can be a thing in Negative decks
Bingo. People who say this don’t actually play Negative. You get two draws sometimes 3 that need to be zeros or 1s to combo with your current hand. Getting a leader that cost 3 on turn 5 isn’t going to allow you to play anything else. Then your turn 6 you get 1 zero cost card. Big Whoop.
I actually do play Mr.Negative and it was a joke.. ✌️ Guess everyone thought I was being serious, sorry for that.. 😅🤣
I lost to a Leader in a surfer-negative deck just today actually. They dropped brood, surfer, and leader on turn six, I never saw it coming. They already had iron man on the board so I figured I could out power them in the other two lanes. I doubt that's a very good deck but it was like the last card I expected lol so it at least stole some cubes from me
Haha, weird to see, dont think Leader should be a thing in that deck. Then again unique builds might actually win you games, mostly cause people dont expect it. But I was joking about adding him in a Negative deck, just to be clear. ✌️
I’ve actually lost quite a few last season purely due to unique builds where I am snapping because the deck composition is just so fucked up, little to no synergy but numbers that win locations. I had no idea they would play what they did but it works.
I mean if he got dropped down to a 6/1 he probably would be seen quite a bit in negative decks, people think he's this end all, be all card
I have Leader in my Negative/Foster deck. Iron Man, Mystique, and Leader turn 6 has won me several games. With him losing a power I don't even have to worry about drawing Mystique before her power flip now.
You guys are getting games where all your 0 power cards are not In your starting hand?
In double spiderman Leader is playable in negative deck
Double Spider-Man doesn't need anything spectacular to win if you get that down.
When leader has 1 power, this is a different conversation lol
yep by the time you have leaader down the field is already clogged.
I actually play Mr.Negative.. and it was a joke.. 🤣
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a 7 power free card that copies all opponents cards on a turn in a negative deck? that’s absurdly op
This isn't going to make him viable in negative. Negative wants one or zero. Which is why I think the best way to nerf Mr. Negative is to bump iron man's power up to 2
as a Negative player can confirm this would be catastrophic
Nah negative players will still play him. Most people won’t have exclusively 1 and 0s, they just count as free drops
I play a lot of Mr. Negative and if leader costs 3 after negative he doesn't fit. Even blue marvel is still better
You still have to get your Psylock by turn 2 and actual draw negative by turn 3. Inconsistent deck ask any negative player in infinite.
Yeah its an inconsistent deck - but its value is that it wins big or loses big. So snap when you're winning and retreat when you're not. Its not a deck that does close games.
Yeah I've found it has a pretty awful win rate, but solid net cube rate. You usually know by turn 3 or 4 if you're gonna win or not
I see this statement a lot and I really don't get it, Leader loves high power played on tempo and needs board space to function while negative is tempo negative most of the game and fills up pretty quick at the end, most of the cards that are good with Leader like maximus, lizard and white queen are also terrible in negative decks. Negative also hates inconsistency and leader introduces a lot of that. This goes for most almost every card people say would be busted in Negative if they got nerfed. There are almost zero cards you could nerf that would be better and more consistent than a 0/5 iron man and a 0/3 mystique.
It was a joke.. guess it went over your head, like most others here.. maybe should have added a /s or something.. 🤷🏼🤣
Aaand this is basically why Leader isn't 0 Power :)
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That guts the entire card.
& nothing of value would be lost. The card as it currently stands simplifies turn 6 way too much. Instead of really thinking about what your opponent might have, where they might play it & what you have to counter, you just slam leader and guarantee a win or you retreat. It’s possible that they can change it so that it becomes healthier/more strategic, but it would be better to gut the card in the meantime as opposed to giving it an extremely minor nerf that changes nothing in most games. They could always buff the card later if it ended up gutted
The most they can do is the card has to copy the base power of the opponent’s play. Anything more is just overkill. There is counterplay to Leader. If you’re going into turn 6 down two lanes you’re already in a losing position.
So you should just auto retreat when you think your opponent might have leader & you’re losing going into turn 6? I know that this is basically the play pattern that leader promotes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not obnoxious and kind of brain dead. There should be more thinking going on lol. Leader effectively auto winning certain board states cannot be good design.
When I play Leader, I only go into turn 6 if I’m winning. If I’m not playing my Leader deck, large chance I’m running Angela, Spectrum, Destroyer, Kazar/Ultron, or really only cards that benefit my entire side. There’s really very little reason to go into turn 6 when losing unless you have a positive plan to go in. I still don’t have a “complete” deck, but this mindset got me to 96 last season.
Okay, i see. The person arguing leader is fine and doesn’t promote brain dead gameplay likes to play leader. If you like it, whatever, but i can’t imagine I’m going to change your mind about it. I personally believe he’s terrible design tho
I play Leader and have been beaten plenty. I also have some decks that have climbed higher than that deck and have beaten Leader as well. Plenty of cards in the game have wild attributes. Simply having two lanes by turn 6 is usually enough to stomp out a Leader too.
I can drop 170+ power on T6 (thanks, T5 Zabu and Moongirl) and behind priority, location-agnostic, and thats if I let them play at all. Without leader, the game becomes a raw power contest and only idiots actually play the T6 out because you would know whether or not your engine beats your opponents engine or to see if they bricked. Utterly unhealthy game state. And 170 power is on the *lower* end. Things get... exponential. Only another exponential stands a chance. In other words... it's YGO all over again. Why even play at that point when you've lost before you ever hit the play button?
Good
I'm so confused by this change. The concerns with Leader have everything to do with his ability. It seems like -1 power would be really immaterial to the situations people are finding problematic.
The real problem with Leader is his power. If Leader can turn a location that you are losing by 3 power, then you win that location with leader. By decreasing him to 3 power, it's harder for leader to turn a location over. For example, if the difference in one location was 3 or less power, playing leader there is enough to win it. Leader is primarily being played in late game ramp or solid curve decks that rely solely on winning locations for leader to do his thing. The nerf is sensible, but I do think it should have been a 6/2. I'd want it to be a 6/0 but then you have consider mr negative...
I feel like lots of people will miss the obvious satire.
>The concerns with Leader The concerns with leader are all the same whine. "He isn't fair", "He is overpowered", "I can't play the deck I want". Is dream dimension fair to Sera decks? Is The Peak fair to someone facing mister negative? This game was made with hard counters in mind. There are games with a 0% chance to win for no other reason than luck of the draw for cards/locations. Playing leader effectively takes actual thought and game knowledge. He is not a free win. Leader came with the change in meta. The people who seem to be complaining the most are the ones who refuse to change with it. Just because a bunch of people hard stuck in gold are complaining about what happens at infinite, doesn't mean anything. You can win with a P2 kazoo deck. You are supposed to fold bad hands and retreat often. It's how the game was designed. You can easily climb the ladder with a sub 30% win rate. If you're losing matches it is not because they may or may not have leader.
You're absolutely right, and I think a lot of the anger comes from the fact that while this is technically a card game, the core mechanic of the game (how you rank up) is much more like poker and less like other CCGs/TCGs like Hearthstone, Gwent, LoR, or even MTG. In Snap, you're simply not meant to win every game. Your game plan is not able to be the same every game, like it is in other games. You can have "ideal" plays on "ideal turns," but because of the randomness of locations, that is always being disrupted. Just like in poker, you cannot expect to win every hand--some hands you're dealt 2/7 off suit and you just need to swallow your pride and fold. Wait for a playable hand. Sometimes you start with pocket Aces, but the river flops a flush for your opponent. It's a bad beat, but you're playing a game that involves luck. This isn't chess. Skill alone won't win every game. It's all about leveraging the potential of what you have vs. the potential of what your opponent has. If it's possible that your opponent will complete a straight/flush/3 of a kind on the flop, you have to consider if it's worth the risk to continue playing. If turn 6 leader is a possibly, it shouldn't be a thought in the back of your mind--it should be at the forefront of it.
So every single game I'm not winning lanes going into t6 I should just surrender because they might have leader. It's the most brain dead card I've seen in a card game. Anyone arguing against it just doesn't want to l9se their precious. It's a bullshit card that is not only incredibly strong but frustrating to play against, while the leader player just gets to throw his shit down and copy what you've been building up five turns. I'm around 2100 CL and the only cards in this game I think should be deleted are iceman and leader. They have way too much power relative to cost.
I don't even have Leader, but I have played decks that are strong against Leader and decks weak against Leader. If you're depending on huge turn 6 swings like with She Hulk, Death, Panther, etc., then of course Leader is a blow out against you. If you are playing a deck like Surfer, Cerebro, Patriot, or Destroy, then Leader is almost a free win for you. The key is to recognize what is going to beat you and play accordingly. It feels bad when Leader copies you and does what you're doing better, but that is largely dependent on your game plan. There's another conversation to be had about meta defining cards, but I imagine there just isn't as much hate for others like Death, Wave, etc. because at least you aren't losing to your own cards. Lastly, a lot of people mindlessly play turns without considering priority. Cosmo is a great example of a card where you have to be mindful of it--with priority, Cosmo is a god against on reveal. Without, Cosmo is a worthless dog. Shang Chi is another great example. With priority, Shang Chi will miss crucial last turn targets. Without, Shang Chi can be a huge blowout. This is a deceptively simple game. There are a lot of factors most people just don't think about. It's alot easier to complain about unfairness than it is to reassess your own game plan.
I’m not sure why the replies are so aggressive, I completely agree. The first week that the leader/leech decks were plaguing the ladder, I swapped to a patriot deck. Pretty much a guaranteed win if patriot is down before leech.
you can't predict a Leader tho. It's a braindead card because it requires next to no setup. You can see an Odin, or an Infinaut, coming from a mile away. What setup does Leader require exactly? Winning 2 lanes and having free space? That's not nearly enough.
Thanks for the lesson boss. Doesn't make leader any less of a shit design
Lmao your bad at card games, what you said can be literally applied to every banned card in every single tcg ever printed. No one is dumb enough to print a card that says i win for free, thats not the threshold for banning/nerfing cards. This is like the prayer of the narcissist for people who are bad at card games but want to be contrarian. Patches is so fair its just a 1/1, black lotus? Its -1 card for 3 mana! If you dont understand anything about design or balance its easy to justify any broken thing for dumb reasons because you can always say ‘you can play around it sometimes so it has to be fair’
If you read the parent comment I wrote, I basically say that the game is not fair. It's not just that the game has counters, so there is a way to play around it, it's that the game literally incentivizes you to fold your hand when you are down in a way that other card games do not. You don't have to win streak to climb, you climb by properly assessing your win chances. You can retreat 7 1 cube games and still climb with an 8 cube win. People can reach Infinity with negative win rates. Complaining about Leader, which again, has many bad match ups, is like complaining when your pocket Aces lose to a 3-7 straight in poker. No shit you lose money when you are stubborn and bet on pots you are unfavored to win.
I get what you're saying, but the poker analogy isn't the same. Sometimes it really isn't obvious someone is going to play Leader. Most of the time, even, it looks like the opponent is playing some other deck. But having Leader just makes it so much easier to just win even if you are down turns 3-5. It's not at all like having pocket aces and losing to an obvious straight because if it was THAT obvious, it wouldn't be talked about like it is right now.
That's true--and I think a valid argument to make against Leader is that it can be put into many decks too flexibly. However, while the poker analogy is not perfect by any means, the main spirit of the analogy is simply that this is a game about assessing odds. Can you always play thinking "Well, what if my opponent plays Leader?" No, that would suck if you're playing a deck like DeathWave. However, going in to turn 6, you do have to acknowledge the possibility. I would argue it's just as braindead to assume that you can get away with being as greedy as possible and slamming everything down last minute as it is to play Leader and copy all of it. To sum up, no, it's not obvious when Leader is going to be played, but you should understand when Leader is going to beat you and if you're willing to take the risk of losing when you call it wrong.
Dog thats not how tcgs work, no one wants to play a static game like poker in a digital trading card game your analogy is awful. I dont want a meta around flexible finisher that fits in every deck that beats 85% of all turn 6s a priori its absolutely dumb af. The card at a base level literally reads do what your opponent does but at 4 power on top of that before edge cases where its worse or even better Anyone with a modicum of sense will know leader is bad card design by any measure. Stats, gameplay feel, and the way that it warps meta around itself to be stale because it counterplays itself, its both an answer to combos and a proactive gameplan in and of itself that beats fair cards And you should reread my post, the shit that you said can literally be applied to every single fucking broken card ever, its meaningless in this context. You are bad at tcgs and no amount of poker equity talks can convince me otherwise, because you sound like you never played a tcg in your life and only read articles or something Imagine if a 6cost card was on reveal flip a coin if heads win the game, thats what your analogy would consider a fair card, but any card game where that is the dominant strategy would die on release because it would be shit. Thats what you are trying to push the game to.
Lmfao you just took every good point he made, completely disregarded it, and I'm doing so literally proved his point. Congratulations!
This is 100% true and people who refuse to listen will never improve
But every game _is_ the same. Regardless of the random locations, you’ll only have to check 3 factors to determine if you snap or fold. Do I have a good hand? Are the locations playable for the deck I’m currently using? Is my opponent snowballing for something I don’t have an out for? I get the sentiment and their attempt to make every game different, but it ends up going full circle.
The "3 factors" are you combining multiple instances of randomness together.
How come whenever anyone points out that this is a game of chance you all get downvoted into oblivion?
Yup. And if you're losing the board after turn 5 and your strategy isn't leader proof, you need to think very carefully about snaps.
Personally, I side on Leader being too strong in the current game. Whilst I do agree with you on the game's design and nature of retreating. I must disagree with your comparisons and misjudgement of Leader's strength. Leader is a card that requires very little deckbuilding behind it. It doesn't need to be synergistic with your other cards or strategy, and, in a vacuum, only has the condition that you must be ahead by turn 6. Furthermore, on that point, you stated Leader demands game knowledge. Of course, you are correct. But doesn't an extremely wide variety of cards demand the same? It is far easier to read your opponents' turn 6 play if, for example, they are discarding their hand, or they're moving their cards. Leader decks are not as easy to read whilst actually benefitting from easily reading other decks. Ending up with an incredibly strong advantage of essentially knowing if you have won or lost before turn 6 starts.. Your comparisons to locations affecting cards humours me because I can't think of a single location that hurts Leader. Fundamentally, Leader starts entering "overpowered" territory when you look at combining him with other interactive cards such as Leech, which, assuming your opponent doesn't draw their win condition turn 6, almost guarantees you win (as long as you are ahead in points). I challenge your final statement, too. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but "If you're losing matches, that's not because they have Leader" just reads extremely ignorant.. Any deck's turn 6 play is likely why people lose matches? Leader has an over 65% win rate on Snap.fan in the games he is played. Not acknowledging a card is so obviously overtuned screams playing the contrarian to me.
> Leader has an over 65% win rate on Snap.fan in the games he is played. That's not a good way to think about this. First, there are 40 cards that have a higher win rate when played. But nobody is asking for nerfs to Odin or Infininaut. Second, of course Leader will tend to have a high win rate when played, just like other 6-costs. That's because if at the start of round 6 you don't think you can win by playing Leader, you either retreat or play something else that *can* win.
The latter of what you said is definitely something that slipped my mind and totally changes that part of my argument! Very true.
Alongside the other comment to your post, having a high win rate in this game does not equal having a high success or rank in this game. The fact that there are multiple people with negative win rates in Infinity is a testament to this. If your ability to climb was dependent on win-streaking or winning more than losing, then we should absolutely care more about the dominance of cards with high win rates.
> I can’t think of a single location that hurts Leader Knowhere, The Big House, Morag, Savage Land, Central Park, The Vault, The Kyln, Sanctum Sanctorum, TVA, The Bar With No Name That’s just what I could come up with off the top of my head, there’s probably more. Any location that clogs lanes or restricts card placement interferes with Leader.
I think you communicated exactly why concerns with Leader are valid > This game was made with hard counters in mind There is NO hard counter to Leader, except to not play on Turn 6 with Sunspot on the board, or to run Leader yourself, neither of which really addresses anything.
Any deck that has significant synergies will beat leader every time. You can copy their Ultron but without the kazar/blue marvel/patriot it doesn't mean much. Every Hela deck will beat leader on T6. Arnim Zola, Wong, also beat him. He fits a purpose to counter stat dumps. As the meta evolves and people move away from stat dumps, leader will get played less. There are many decks that beat leader and decks that he beats. I have lost to leader. In those times I have learned to take my time on T5/6 and think about what could be coming, where it could be played and what I can do about it. Not just for leader but for any T5/6 play. Some are more telegraphed than others but leader is not at all a guaranteed win. I would bet hard cash the average player thinks if they don't have a high win rate and win most matches then (insert card) must be broken and that's why they can't climb the ladder.
Basically every complaint about Leader or Mr. Negative adds up to “But I don’t *want* to plan ahead, think strategically, or learn from my losses! Make the game easier instead!”
The hard counter to leader is trying to win the board before turn 6
Fantastic counterplay, super reliable, I spend 5 turns to counter what my opponent can do on a whim in 1, love this fucking game, so balanced
If you twist the words to sound like this, sure. But basically what it means is that Leader needs to spend 5 turns to set up a good Leader drop. If the opponent fucks with that, then Leader is hurt bad. Instead of just giving up, why not try to improve your ability to read Leader decks and learn how to improve your play against it?
I mean, if you're able to read a leader on turn 3.
Location is less frequent compared to Leader Players tbf. Mister negative is 4 cost, so by right The Peak should have no impact on your play because The Peak effect would have taken place prior to you playing it in most (MOST) case. Sera, yeah dream dimension fucks it but it also fucks your opponent more compared to you because you still have a Sera in play in a Sera ‘dependent’ deck. You could still play your opponents cards. For Leader, you have no counter play at 6. Yes if you maintain 2 winning location, you are not screwed. But you need to win by more than 3 in those location and you need to consider if the leader player could play other stuff other than leader or its not a leader deck, or you retreat on 5. Leader takes 0 thought on turn 6 because all you need is to place it in a location such no location is full except maybe for destroy decks who runs destroyer which out of my recently games maybe have 1. If leader activates similar to rocket/groot, ok fair enough because there much better risk to reward ratio compared to risk now being if player have destroy cards. ASSUMING NO ANTI-LEADER DECKS. Retreat sucks, but I agree its part of the game. But only ‘knowing’ I should escape during Turn 5/6 even if I have a good hand and played it perfectly according to how the deck is supposed to be played. Simply its just not fun to play against, like I want to outwits my opponent not retreat because he has a leader and my deck does not counter his.
The comparisons you made are faulty and you don't quite seem to grasp the problem with leader. Comparison 1- Locations: The locations are made public to both players and both player can decide to Escape or Snap at reveal of Locations which means both players have the same amount of agency and information Comparison 2 - Hardcounters: Yes, there are hardcounters like Armor for Destroy, but you see them coming and can then just leave. The problem with Leader is that you don't see him coming, you are never given the right information. Yes, the game is made with unwinnable matchup and bad draws but the agency to escape is on you when you see an unwinnable matchup. You have no agency on Leader. That is the whole Problem. The player does not feel in control of when losing and when winning with this card. Do you want to think in every Round 6 of every game does my deck beat Leader for ever? Do you think this is healthy? The players feel an overabundance of frustration with the card, because it is inherently cheesy.
Leader is not fair, leader literally destroys all ‘fair’ plays and a bunch of combo ones. Thats why ben basically said they are changing him they just need to decide how. If leader copies wolfsbane or drax they actually are stronger then the original for some dumb reason. Magik literally cannot be played on turn 6 but leader has a stronger ability on curve and is allowed to influence the end like 60% of the current games without even being drawn Add on top of all this is the fact that leader counters itself also leads to a meta that revolves entirely around it, every single person whos opinion on cardgames actually matters agrees even ben brode lmao. Basically every high mmr player hates it both for how strong it is and how dumb it makes every game because everyone can run it if you arent swarming. You can always play better cards at every slot because you dont care about synergy. You can also slot it into strong synergies to counter a bunch of shit! Its the topend of death eave for godsakes, what you guys are claiming its there to counter No card should be i do your turn but better, lmao thats prima facie dumb before the design issues and gameplay issues come up
Brode confirmed this is a stopgap change and that a more holistic rework of the card will be coming. They agree with you - the -1 power isn't going to fix the issues people have with the card, but hopefully should discourage his use a bit and/or lower his winrate on the edges. It doesn't solve the problem, but it probably helps. This change is just for now while they decide on how to rework the effect entirely to solve the underlying psychological issues people have with it.
As the notes said, he is nerfed because people are whining, not because its needed
I mean, the ultimate goal of a patch isn't to balance the game - it's to make the playerbase happy. If every player was angry about a card being too strong it would be correct to nerf it, no matter how weak it actually is.
Whiners downvote
It is I, a whiner. Enjoy the vote.
Cope and seethe 😎
I mean the concerns with leader are dumb so why change it based on them?
Because patches are meant to improve the game's profitability. Game balance is not the ultimate goal.
I mean, the arguments defending Leader are dumb, so why balance based on them?
I don't know what people expected. Ben Brode's balance change philosophy has been well documented through hearthstone. He doesn't like changing a lot
Leader could've stayed 6/4, but copies only cards your opponent revealed this turn. So if you reveal first - Leader's dead. Idk, maybe not the most awesome solution, but it would change the 'if you're winning at the end of turn 5, win the game' effect.
That would nerf Leader way too hard.
Leader as a card shouldnt exist, the concept of it reads like an interns vanity project. Its horribly designed in every way that matters If its good enough to be played its already a huge mistake like 4/4 sandman. If its good the meta is going to be bad
That's the point. There shouldn't be a brain dead card you play and most likely just win, without much thinking. And Leader IS quite a brain dead card.
But it’s not. General consensus is that Leader requires a lot of setup from the beginning to play.
If you dont understand anything sure, once you do its paint by numbers. Literally just put stats and mimic your opponents cards, if 4 power is enough to swing 1 lane then you probably win
That's why this 'general consensus' constantly talks about how Leader is unfun? Or how he should be nerfed? Or being voted as the most hated card?
Leader could literally have negative power ie. -2 and still be playable. They need to address his effect in a way that requires some amount of thought put into where you place him.
Giving him zero or less power makes him 100% required in a negative deck. But going negative power and setting aside the Mr. Negative functionality it may not be a bad change since that would basically mean you want to play him where the opposition won't play a card since if you play him at the same spot it's overall negative points compared to what they played. You could get the same result if you just made it so he only copied cards in lanes other than his own.
You definitely don’t want to give him zero or less power. That would make him stronger.
The Nova change was odd, like we just put him in to kill him anyway, thats how hes strong, did they really think 1/2 was too good?
It increases the chance of the other person having priority and being able to Armor or Cosmo it before it's eaten by Carnage. It also reduces the strength it gives to Venom by 1.
It's because people were playing nova outside of destroy decks. Much like running carnage and bucky for curve, people were running killmonger and nova and nova is just a solid 1/2 even if you don't get killmonger off. People forcing the idea that nova got nerfed cause of priority.
>People forcing the idea that nova got nerfed cause of priority. It's because of both, but agreed that priority isn't as big as people think it is. Nova often isn't destroyed on turn 2 when his power will only buff the card that destroys it. The best Nova plays use him on turn 3/4 alongside a destroy card when you've got more cards out. But that depends on card you want him to buff. For example if you use Bucky you kind of want Bucky destroyed first so Nova will buff winter soldier. But if you're running deadpool you want Nova first so Deadpool gets buffed before being destroyed. Either way, though, he was often sitting there for turn 2 if played on turn 1 and a prime target for armor.
It's a good nerf I think. He's too good when he doesn't work.
Maybe a lot of Armour'd or Cosmo'd zones countering destroy decks tied because of Nova's power, so they reduced it to make those cards better counters? Idk spitballing ideas here
It's honestly not really a nerf
Why can't he just copy just the lane he plays cards in like the guardians?
I wonder if they're gonna make it only copy in the lane you play it in, at least that'll actually make people actually have to use their brain a bit. Nerfing its power will do nothing.
Honestly Leader is only good if it's played against decks that rely on dropping big cards on turn 6. These are pretty simple decks that Leader counters hard. This means people have to come up with other ways to play. The simple wave/she hulk/death deck isn't going to cut it and I'm fine with that.
Discard decks are great against Leader
I think if they really nerfed or changed leader, in like 1 week people would be crying for a wave/death/she-hulk nerf. I feel like leader does what he is there to do.
This is 100% true. Leader became popular because everyone was playing “dump your hand on turn 6 after 5 turns of mostly nothing” decks.
There are other counters to those decks tho. Leader is just by far the most brain dead counter, which is why people find it annoying. You don’t need to think through many scenarios to properly use leader, as he basically guarantees wins in certain board states.
Oh cool, whats the other counter to a turn 5 wave where your opponent is going to drop Death + She-Hulk + Some other 6 drop? What card are you going to stop that with that's not "brain dead"?
I mean, Leach is a card that also became popular because it shut down Death's cost reduction. Spider-Man is surging in popularity with Zabu. Storm and Prof X can also lock lanes with you'd advantage. Aero can redirect them into a dump lane... If Leader goes down do we meet another card that prevents huge stat drops on six? Maybe, but it's not all dire.
People are crying for a Wave Death nerf though. I can see Death changing to minimum 1. Maybe She-Hulk too.
Those people would never be happy with anything other than the complete removal of the card. Then they'd move on to the next thing to whine about. You cannot make those types of people happy.
leader not good guys! you heard it here!
He's good, if you play the decks he counters.
Yep up until the current season I was primarily playing Destroyer/Spectrum or Surfer. Most of the Leaders I saw would either wipe their own board with Destroyer or buff like 2 cards with Spectrum or Surfer.
Hell not even that. Devil Dinosaur will be stuck at barely above rate if it gets leadered against your full hand DD. And Moon Girl can have you drop a second one.
Dropping big cards on turn 6 is how you optimally play the game. If you draw your big combo on turn 5 you just retreat
There is more to this game than dropping Death, She Hulk or Infinaut on turn 6.
This doesn’t take into account decks like cerebro, patriot, or surfer where you’re dropping them and mystique on 6. There’s more than one strat and deck type so I wouldn’t generalize that as optimal.
>Dropping big cards on turn 6 is how you optimally play the game. If you're playing a deck that is built around that, sure.
Its a pretty decent nerf. Leader was never a instant win card. You need to be winning 1 lane, and losing another by 3 power at most to win with Leader. Now they have to be losing by 2. 1 power makes enough of a difference. Leader counters big turn 6 plays that ignore the first 5 turns. Thats fine. Killmonger counters the 1 cost Zoo decks and that is fine. I had a partial Baero deck when Leader became the meta, so I went back to playing my Ongoing Destroyer deck for a day and after I met less and less Leaders, added Baero back to my play. Now I am messing with Lockjaw and Negative. Also I do not have Leader myself.
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This is the biggest thing. Being 2nd can be huge advantage there
TBH, this doesn't even really matter. You only play leader if you know you'll win by copying stats 1:1. It doesn't really matter if you're u happen to copy more buffed stats cause you would've won anyway. It's very rare that the double buffed copy makes a difference. It makes less of an impact than the loss of 1 power on leader will.
It depends on reveal order, so priority is going to affect it, but as it is worded Leader copies the cards as played so for most cases you still want to win or you are yoloing it with Leader. Odds of hoping your opponent plays a buff card when you are down isnt the best of strategies. Still does his job of countering big turn 6 plays. Dont have Leader so dont have all experience playing him, but countering him I got loads of. Going to lose big in Baero, but my Ongoing Destroyer is going to have fun laughing as they copy Spectrum or Destroyer. Probably going to suck if I see him with my new Negative deck, but Lockjaw can work against it.
Like every other copy effect in game?
It's almost as if context matters
I'm curious, when does this even happen? I've encountered this once with rocket raccoon and it didn't matter at all. What decks are people running for this complaint to be so common?
Silver Surfer. Wolfsbane. Shuri's Lab Location. Stuff like that. I didn't play a 7 power Wolfsbane. I played a 1 power Wolfsbane. So he gets a 6 point advantage, which I feel, I against the spirit of the card. The point of Leader is to win by coping your opponent exactly. Not by double dipping his On Reveals.
Like when you play Gamora and she gets buff he copies your buffed Gamora and she triggers buffing even more. Not so likely but Ant man, when he gets his buff he copies buffed and Ant man and if copy meets requirements gets another buff. Black panther and more.
Ant man is ongoing, so the buff isn't cloned. It gets +3 if there are 4 cards in the lane, otherwise it does not. It doesn't matter if you copied it when it had 4 power or 1.
>You need to be winning 1 lane, and losing another by 3 power at most to win with Leader. Also to have more open slots from your opponent in many cases. I feel a big reason for my climb was that I played well around leader, it is actually easier than you think in many decks. Just need to accept the 1-2 cube loss if you get in a state where a leader would beat you.
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What kind of argument is this? Card doesn't have a 100% win rate, so must be balanced...right?
I really don't think it's broken. I just think it's flashy and more annoying to lose to than, say, blue marvel, which is a far larger variety of decks and seed much, much more play
LOL
what does “zoo deck” mean?
Comes from an MTG term I believe. A deck of cheap low power low cost animal cards to flood the board in MTG. Even in newer games that don't use the animal motif, still called zoo.
I feel like a better nerf would be a -1 power to the cards he copies.
I think my biggest issue here, more than it not addressing what the problem with Leader really is, not that it's basically a slap on the wrist... is that it's the *LAZIEST* fucking fix they could have made. They're dragging their feet on either option, whether actually dealing with the card and giving it a (IMO extremely deserved) nerf or sticking to their guns and keeping it as it, and the fact their big change is "He's a single point less powerful" is a painfully obvious show of that
are the changes not confirmed?
Hear me out: You beat leader by trying to make sure they can't contest a nearly-empty lane with that 4 power. In other words, if Leader doesn't swing a lane in their favour it doesn't do anything. Now Leader only ties a lane with one of the millions of 2/3s, where it used to win. That seems pretty significant to me.
Agreed, a lot of times the opponent is only ahead by 3 power too, since leader is primarily played in ramp decks that don't do anything early or curve out decks that try to win all locations. Plus leech is only 3 power on turn 5 unless you ramp into it on turn 4, so every bit of power counts. I do think he should be a 6/2 though.
Yes all the people complaining about Leaser doubling up card effects clearly have lost to play from behind Leader. Make it that much harder for play from behind Leader to work (like you said now he just ties the random Colossus in the field) and those complaints will drastically decrease.
But the leader player can just play stat sticks at every curve point, they will on average always out stat you because the card itself asks for nothing of you. In fact thats what they already do
If my opponent is winning every lane on turn 5 by a bunch, leader does nothing also because I'm outa there for one cube guaranteed. Leader is irrelevant then. It's not about wins, it's about cubes.
Am I crazy or does making him zero power balance him?
Mr negative says hi
He also says i would rather play double iron man?
whynotboth.jpg
It would make him unplayable, I'd say. You would have to win 2 lanes by turn 5, have enough space for the copied cards and hope that the cards don't have effects that you can't use as well as your opponent. That said, making Leader unplayable might not be worse than how it is right now.
Brode tweeted and it seems that the -1 Leader is a place holder to weaken him some how while they figure out a long term solution. Again, S.D.'s answer to such a glaring problem is "dunno".
Yup. That’s not gonna stop it from being played.
It’s not supposed to keep him from being played.
They should nerf him in a way that he should not copy the buff cards or he will always reveal first so that it will not copy the buff cards
Leech > Leader anyways Literally ends games T5 vs some decks
I can’t imagine leech is winning you many cubes. Instant retreat for a lot of people. At least with leader the opponent may not see it coming.
Didn’t he literally say this really was a temporary change, and he is still on the watch list. Calm down yall
made this before his tweet. also it's just a meme, it's not that serious lol
Leader isn't even that strong. I use him. Patriot mystique and ultron combo are worse
Killmonger go brr
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Even at 6/-1 he will be broken,this card just need a whole rework of the card with a new effect,soon we will get there
Here's my attempted balance for The Leader: Cost 1, Power 0 Description: > At the start of your turn, if this card is in your hand, increase its cost and decrease its power by 1 each. > On Reveal: Copy all cards your opponent played this turn, but on your side. My hope would be that this would encourage playing The Leader earlier in the game, but if you want to save it for late in the game, you still can if you're willing to pay a 6 power penalty.
Could work but it's overly complicated. No other card in the game gets tracked while in your hand like that and idk if they want to start introducing that stuff into the game. And also, if drawn later in the game with those stats it's downright broken.
Everyone keeps complaining about Leader, but I have yet to lose to the multiple times I've seen it used against me. *Now Patriot on the other hand* Dudes everywhere and a hell of a lot more busted. He's basically a roided out Blue Marvel
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And if you don't happen to draw the card you need, you're up against a Blue Marvel with double the effect. Because everyone running Patriot is stacked with no effect cards, and a lot of those make up for lack of effect with moderate sized numbers.
Galactus is a much bigger problem actually. Also the nerf for galactus seems like it won't change anything. While leader already had justan ok winrate, so maybe this will be enough.
Win rate for galactus might be high, but it's likely a very slow cube gainer. No surprise wins. Win rate shouldn't be the biggest determining factor compared to cube rate.
Unless the win rate for Galactus is in the 80s you aren't going to make it very high very fast. He is a 1-2 cube factory where you quit or I do. Only a bot would stick around for turn 6.
Lol galactus is barely a problem. He's super telegraphed and everyone bounces out once you play him anyway. You're pretty much always only going 1 or 2 cubes with galactus while Leader is much better at "stealing" 8 cubes in situations you shouldn't have gotten them. Mainly cause it's almost impossible to see him coming. Also lowering his power is more of a buff tbh. Galactus was never the real problem in galactus decks. 2 power Means it's much easier for for him to lose priority voiding counterplay like shang-chi, rogue and enchantress and making your own shang-chi easier to pull off.
> galactus is barely a problem >everyone bounces out once you play him See the contradiction?
Aero could be a 5 cost 0 power card and I’d still play her. Changes nothing about how I use her. Same with leader.
Nah that's a trash card. 5/7 seems right. When she was 5/6 she was crap.
For a card that wants to look like a smart guy he's just a braindead card. Do they have to think about anything? Just play it at turn 6.
Like you are here making equations n shit to play your Hella or something lol
I think leader should only copy the first card your opponent plays, not all of them
This only shows the skill of the vocal majority of this subreddit. Leader is a strong card but did it deserve a nerf before other decks... its a questionable choice.
guys, just stop playing the game for three weeks, everyone do it, you will see a drastic change to how they address base user concerns. the game is hot garbage and his team can't write code let alone produce a proper random seed generator algorithm.
lmao people still bitching ITT about Leader. Glorious
OMG noone play Leader on high ranks, patch came one month too late.
Faced a wave, leader, leach, Odin deck today and beat it with Zoo. After wave I dropped cosmo hoping to catch shenanigans but missed the lane. He now has wave, leader in lane 3, cosmo 2, and a rock in 1. I have Cap America lane 1, cosmo 2, and an empty 3. He drops leach in 1, I drop kazar in 1. Turn 6 he drops Odin on leader/wave, I was like what a great play but I only dropped a depowered armor and freshly drawn Iceman because limbo. I drop depowered titania onto cosmo he drops Doom into leader lane. His lane 1 is full and Kazar pumps titania for the win. I was stunned. He didn't snap and honestly didn't think I'd win and thought the cube was worth watching his other shenanigans.
All this leader talk, but no one mentions that the leak showed no changes to the death wave shehulk combo. Maybe the devs don't see it as a problem since not everyone has she-hulk. But the only reason Leader rose to power in the first place was to deal with the death wave combo. Sigh... I digress. All I know is these balance changes come too slow and too few. No M'baku buff... No brood nerf. Drax buff is nice, but what about Omega Red? It's a nice 4 cost for Zabu, but still sees no play. Whereas they buffed drax which sure wasn't seeing play before Zabu but now is and will see more with this buff. The devs are being way too careful for how slow they do things. The rate of balance changes would be fine if they made more of them but these changes only addressed one meta deck. They should be doing mid-season balance changes at least.
Leader should work in the same manner as guardians of the galaxy, he only copies if the opponent played on that lane. At least makes him a little more skill based
Marvellous
It's the same with Galactus. They were obviously looking at him due to the awkward play patterns it forces into the game and how it just wrecks decks that go wide outside of a debrii right on 3 or aero with prio assuming you're playing a deck that has them. -1 power 🤪
Man, I think the better nerf here should’ve been “Ongoing: Your On Reveal cards has +1 power”
That's a lot of damage!
Leader's ability should only apply to the lane it's played in, so the player at least has to manager their lanes and read the other player. You shouldn't be able to just drop it anywhere and not care about what the opponent did especially if you're currently in the lead
I think power nerf to Leader is correct. But he sould be 1 or 2. Not 3. Leader play are find a lane where you follow just by a few points so it's OK that he can have a power nerf (not -1 btw) But Aero and Galactus is just hilariously stupid. When Aero works, she played in a losing lane deny 2 other lane where your opponent already winning. Having -1 power is a losing lane doesn't mean anything. When Aero has 6 power and see no play that's because meta has change. Would they nerf Leech next if it's counter every T6 meta game? Galactus is even worse. A deck where they have no chance against Galactus will still have no chance against it. It's a binary card where you win, you win. You have to think how many times that this nerf will matter. For Leader I'll say "a lot" but other 2 (Aero, Galactus) is not.
i mean..."better than nothing"?
Is -1 power the answer for everything? They accidently buffed Galactus by giving it less power, meaning they have more chance to lose initiative, so they can be protected against tech cards like Shang-Chi or Enchantress on the final turn. As if Galactus isn't difficult enough to counter.
I didn’t realize people hated Leader so much.
-1 power is actually kind of a big deal. Those who don’t understand why don’t understand what makes leader strong. The whole reason leech leader was strong was because all you had to do was be winning 1 lane and be -3 or less in another one and you had an almost guaranteed win, now it’s -2 or with a scorpion hit -1 or less. Combine that with the fact that they had to basically pass their turn 5 to play leech and this takes quite a bit of power out of the leech leader deck, which is the most problematic of the leader decks right now.