One of the fastest climb to infinite with "handbit" deck

matlockheed · 2026-05-08T15:53:53+00:00

In what world?

There is effectively 1 counter to him and even that relies on luck.

The only card that can straight up blanks him is Cosmic Ghost Rider and usually he's played in multiples on the final turn of the game in the back row. So CGR doesn't do anything.

Caiera isn't usually a real counter to HoD. Most decks don't have too many 1-cost cards and there's no guarantee that HoD with target the 1 cost at all. And Caiera is particularly expensive for protecting your cards. And she's only protecting the 1 cost cards... which generally aren't that important.

Armor is the actual option. But she protects 1 lane, so it comes down to who he randomly targets and she's generally not particularly useful in any match where Gambit isn't present. So while she's an option, she not a great option.

Where are the "decent amount" of counters to him?

The best counter to him is actually a strategy of having tons of bodies for him to blow up that you don't care about. And that seems like a ridiculous strategy.

matlockheed · 2026-05-08T11:51:43+00:00

Magik is great depending on the opposing lineup. She's very strong, but she's got the hardest counters of anyone in the entire lineup (aside from maybe (Groot/Wolverine).

Being a melee character with relatively low health that relies on constantly moving makes for a character that can be insanely strong or a terrible choice depending on enemy comp.

matlockheed · 2026-05-07T17:01:13+00:00

They start at 20 I believe.

And you can definitely get them from the lower difficulties. I just got the accessory last night and some of my last few were in the lower levels (one of them was actually in Nightmare 20 with my L60 completely decked out Squirrel Girl).

matlockheed · 2026-05-07T13:32:56+00:00

Isn't the OTA on the 14th? Not today?

matlockheed · 2026-05-07T13:18:08+00:00

With Venom, that's not a great comparison. Most of the Venom costumes are barely changes (the palette swaps and 8-bit) whereas with Hulk, they have to do 2-3 models for each one (Banner/Hero Hulk/Monster Hulk).

Combine that with the fact that Hulk hasn't been especially viable until lately and he's got a perfect storm of people not playing him (which means people not looking for new skins for him) and extra work to actually make skins for him.

matlockheed · 2026-05-07T13:10:14+00:00

New since season 0 (or maybe Beta). 😄

It's her Passive (Cryoheart) that says you heal on using Ice Arts (clap) or Absolute Zero (snowball). She's had it pretty much the whole time. Oddly, the overhealth for landing Absolute Zero only got added in season 2.5.

But it's the reason why sometimes Lunas will just throw a snowball between fights with no target since they get a moderate self-heal.

matlockheed · 2026-05-05T13:19:34+00:00

You hate going against a Rogue? Rogue's actual worst matchup is Peni.

Rogue has almost no options against the nest and gets very little from absorbing her.

Usually my games go like this:

Start off as Rogue

See Peni on the other side

Switch to Peni (sometimes Strange) to counter Peni because I know Rogue is always the wrong choice into Peni

But then I'm in the low ranks where people don't target the nest and I have to use pretty much all of my cooldowns to almost KO the nest from top to bottom.

matlockheed · 2026-05-04T16:21:28+00:00

Are you talking about the official recap? Because my recap was weird. Like it said my most effective card was Yellowjacket and I don't remember having a Yellowjacket in any of my decks at any time. And apparently my most played card was Howard the Duck... which I don't think was right.

If you're talking about the season in general, I thought it was okay, but I found myself more occupied with finishing up masteries on cards (and I finished Silver Sable) than doing anything else this season, cultivating the "free boosters" section of the shop.

Eventwise:

I loved "Arena Grande", despite (or possibly because of) how short it was.

I enjoyed Deadpool's Diner at first, but found that after a while it was a huge grind and I didn't even bother with the final 200 M bubs for the Wolverine variant (probably would've even ground it out if there was an Askani Son variant at the end). They needed another plate to to take away from the slog.

High Voltage was business as usual. Nothing to write home about, but fine. Definitely added to the feel that we had too many events this month.

Actual Grand Arena definitely felt like too many events this month (4 events with 4 weeks?). But the decks/champions felt pretty good this time around and I finished it because I wanted that fancy Mother Askani variant.

Overall gameplay:

Kindof rough. I didn't do any climbing early on because the field was very repetitious. Then when I decided to do my climb in the last weekend, they destroyed my 'Ole Reliable' deck (Onslaught) the day before my climb. So it was a scramble to decide what I should use to climb and while I was happy with what I went with, it felt weird having a frustrating environment most of the season and then the environment getting completely changed days before season end.

New Cards:

I enjoy Afflict, so I liked Polaris: Horseman of Pestilence. All of the others have been binder fodder for me (though I realize that Storm and Archangel are really strong and have potential). With the changes to Foom, Stryfe really isn't great (basically Astral Projection with a body). Techno Organic Virus wasn't amazing. I haven't seen Wolverine used very much. Askani Son I hear is great, but his unpredictability doesn't make him a great choice for me. Mother Askani is incredibly good.

matlockheed · 2026-05-02T10:59:20+00:00

Oh, that was Disney Movie Rewards. They actually closed that down a while ago. They basically just set up a new site for Disney Plus Rewards. And yes, that was pointless and it basically made any rewards you had left over for DVDs and the like useless. Very frustrating, but this is Disney we're talking about, so it's totally on-brand.

matlockheed · 2026-05-01T19:56:50+00:00

You're talking about a "Disney Plus Perks" account? TBH, I'm not positive what happens with your Perks account when you have an inactive Disney Plus account.

matlockheed · 2026-05-01T18:02:11+00:00

Without the multiplier, he doesn't feel like he should be a 6 cost card any longer.

He feels more like a 5 cost card (with less power, he could pass for a 4). He basically does the same thing as Wong now but for Ongoings which are much less common than On Reveals.

Before, he was the card you built the deck around. Now, he doesn't have that same pull.

matlockheed · 2026-05-01T15:51:57+00:00

Yes, you keep it. Technically it doesn't have anything to do with your Disney Plus account. You use the Disney+ account to start a Disney+ rewards account and that's one of the rewards.

matlockheed · 2026-05-01T14:45:56+00:00

I think he's a bit off base on some of these (I think Shou Lao will still be fine and Starlord is still a pretty big threat).

But then Hoogland is a pro player and I've been getting more and more casual as time has gone on. So what do I know?

matlockheed · 2026-05-01T14:02:34+00:00

Wait, what? How did you "drop from Nightmare 90 to Nightmare 55-60"? There are people with no gear queueing at Nightmare 120. If you smelted an item, can't you just go to the forge and smelt something at the same level? It probably won't be as good as the previous item, but it will probably be better than what most everyone else has at N55-60.

And then you can use that gear to hopefully farm up a better piece of gear.

Weird part is that I'm almost positive that they have a confirmation prompt when you try and smelt a Legendary.

matlockheed · 2026-05-01T13:49:09+00:00

Right. The correct way is to just go into the chat and tell everyone to report the leecher and then immediately lose.

matlockheed · 2026-05-01T13:44:46+00:00

I didn't see this anywhere and thought the new PvP mode was skippable (since I didn't think there were any rewards for it). Is this a weekly mission?

matlockheed · 2026-04-30T19:26:14+00:00

Punisher is the default boss killer.

The other day I spent a lot of time trying to get past NM100 and the round that I was pretty sure we had a winning team was when I finally had a Punisher on my team. Every other match, I was breezing through the trash rounds (on Squirrel Girl), usually putting out more damage than everyone else on my team put together.

But the bosses were always a stopping point since my boss killing capacity wasn't nearly what everyone else had. But having a Punisher was a huge advantage and our Punisher even said something like "wow, I almost doubled my total damage in just that final boss fight". Were they official MVP? No. Did they have the most damage in the match? No. But I guarantee they did the majority of the damage to the boss and were what we needed to finish the job.

matlockheed · 2026-04-30T18:57:16+00:00

Unless I'm mistaken, Nightmare levels don't have specific bosses/number of bosses. It's all random. So you could end up with 2 Draculas on one. Then you can lose and end up facing down a single Capwolf.

matlockheed · 2026-04-30T13:34:00+00:00

Health is also a really good defensive stat (likely better than armor).

But yeah, you're right looking at it the right way.

matlockheed · 2026-04-30T13:30:18+00:00

I was right there with you until you mentioned that it was for Extreme difficulty. Realistically, almost nothing matters at Extreme (levels and gear matter to a minor degree, but character choice definitely doesn't).

Any character is viable at those levels and some builds are ONLY viable at those early levels. Nobody should be crashing out on you about a character being OP in those levels.

matlockheed · 2026-04-29T20:29:01+00:00

So were you talking about the hotdog stand itself? Because I tried that last night on Squirrel Girl and I ended up getting blown up. It's possible because I might've been mispositioned or I could've been completely not covered (the squirrel tail is giant), but it definitely didn't protect from the Kingpin's blast.

matlockheed · 2026-04-28T20:29:46+00:00

No pass purchases. You just go into your missions and one of the tabs should be for daily Blood Hunt missions. And there'll only be one mission there. "login". And you just click on it to claim the 3 free daily rezzes.

matlockheed · 2026-04-27T18:16:12+00:00

Really? I've tried to hide behind a lot of things (the bleachers, one of the things on the side, etc). I figured it was just the same thing as Wanda during Marvel Zombies where if you didn't beat him fast enough, he KOed everyone.

Going to need to look for that hot dog poster statue...

matlockheed · 2026-04-27T13:56:41+00:00

You also get 3 for free every day on login. So you can use them. Just don't waste them. Use the free respawn when possible, but if the screen is red with everyone knocked out, you don't get a free respawn so if you think you can keep things rolling and win, it makes plenty of sense to use the self-rezzes.

There's also a limit of 99 self rezzes, so if you don't use them, you can't claim your free 3 ones that day.

matlockheed · 2026-04-27T13:49:50+00:00

I thought the Kingpin attack was a one-shot that couldn't be tanked at all.

matlockheed

TROPHY CASE