Character Spotlight: Lady Deathstrike

Today we welcome the long-taloned lady of death who strikes fear into the X-Men and all who oppose her — Lady Deathstrike is now in MARVEL SNAP!!

Yuriko Oyama began her story in Osaka as the daughter of the ruthless Japanese kingpin, Lord Dark Wind. Dark Wind invented the process of coating bones with indestructable Adamantium to create his own army of steadfast, metallic samurai.

Seeing his corruption, young Yuriko decided to put an end to her father’s reign. After killing Lord Dark Wind, she became devoted to carrying on his legacy and thus obsessed with the mutant Wolverine. Yuriko viewed Wolverine as a disgrace to her familial honor, due to his unrightful Adamantium enhancements.

In order to match Wolverine’s lethality, Yuriko Oyama sacrificed her humanity by making a deal with the six-armed sorceress Spiral, who transformed her into the cyborg samurai known as Lady Deathstrike. Yuriko became a metal deathtrap — wielding her piercing claws and a penchant for violent vengeance — she has since sought to destroy Wolverine.

Lady Deathstrike possesses an array of superhuman attributes as a result of her cyborg transformation. Her primary means of offense are her ten extendable razor-sharp fingernails, each of which is capable of elongating to 300 millimeters to pierce through victims. Much like her cybernetic skeleton, her claws are laced with Adamantium, enabling them to cut through any substance.

In addition to her terrifying talons, Deathstrike also exhibits superhuman strength, speed, stamina, agility, and reflexes. She is a Kenjutsu master — Her martial arts skills make her a formidable fighter to any opposition.

Her Cybernetic Healing Factor enables Lady Deathstrike to rapidly repair damage done to her cybernetic and organic parts. This upgrade was installed by her ally, Donald Pierce, another master of cybernetic machinery.

Due to her part-computer nature, Deathstrike’s consciousness is highly resistant to telepathy and brainwashing efforts, which can only target her human side. She is also able to cybernetically interface her consciousness to external computer systems, allowing direct data access to her brain’s memory centers and the ability to remotely operate digital and computerized systems.

Lady Deathstrike’s fear-inducing talons are represented through her MARVEL SNAP effect:

On Reveal: Destroy each card here with less Power than this.

Play Deathstrike in a location where you anticipate your opponent will play many lower-Powered cards, and watch them get eviscerated by her claws!

Lady Deathstrike’s On Reveal effect also works well in tandem with your own Destroy-loving cards such as Wolverine himself! As Wolverine’s nemesis, Deathstrike has earned her right to consistently destroy the 2-Powered Adamantium-infused mutant.

Try using buffing cards such as Forge or Shuri to increase Lady Deathstrike’s Power to higher levels — She’ll destroy your Bucky Barnes, Deadpool, Sabretooth, and Nova, while also threatening to destroy several of your opponent’s cards!

Lady Deathstrike’s multi-affecting Destroy effect also works well in synergy with Knull and Death.

Conquer the Game with Conquest: A New Way to Play and Win!

Get ready to embark on a thrilling adventure with the all-new Conquest! This exciting mode brings a fresh twist to the game, challenging players to climb the ranks, earn medals, and ultimately unlock exclusive rewards. We’re here to guide you through this action-packed mode, breaking down everything you need to know to conquer each tier and claim your victory!

Overview of Conquest

Conquest is an adrenaline-pumping journey where players enter a series of competitive runs, each with increasing difficulty. Your objective? Rack up consecutive wins against other players and advance through the tiers: Proving Grounds, Silver, Gold, and the ultimate challenge, Infinity. With each victory, you’ll earn medals and secure your spot in the next Conquest. And as you progress, the rewards only get better!

Conquest Tiers

Each Conquest tier presents a unique challenge that will put your skills to the test. As you climb the ranks, the difficulty increases, but so do the rewards! Here’s a full breakdown of each tier:

The Ultimate Challenge: Infinity Conquest

Unlike the other tiers (which are always available), you can only play the Infinity Conquest during the final week of the season. Save up those Infinity Tickets, and get ready for a wild week of competition. Win, and you’ll be awarded an Infinity-Framed copy of your current Avatar – the ultimate symbol of your triumph. This exclusive reward can only be obtained by conquering the Infinity Conquest.

The Medal Shop: Your Reward Headquarters

The Medal Shop is your one-stop destination for turning hard-earned medals into fantastic rewards. Offering new items each week, the shop provides a selection of rewards for you to enjoy. Most items can only be purchased once. Rack up enough purchases, and you’ll unlock a bonus reward for the season. And with each new season comes a fresh, new Medal Shop.

Spider-Versus Medal Shop

Each week, the next row of items will unlock. Most items can only be purchased once.

Spider-Versus Bonus Reward

Each season has a unique reward that is earned by making enough Medal Shop purchases.

Battle Mode: The Most-High Skill Way to play MARVEL SNAP

Conquest uses Battle Mode as its format. Battle Mode is different from regular MARVEL SNAP. Battle Mode pits two opponents against each other through multiple rounds. Each player starts with 10 health. Instead of Cubes, what’s at stake is the amount of damage the winner will deal to the loser. If you can deplete your opponent’s health to zero, you win! In Battle Mode, the stakes become front and center. Every SNAP and Retreat takes extra meaning, as every point of health is critical to remaining alive.

Further, each player’s deck is locked for the duration of the Battle. This means you’ll quickly learn what cards are in their deck, and your opponent might be aware of what sneaky tricks you’re hiding. Keeping track of what cards in your deck haven’t been seen by your opponent can make all the difference in whether you can squeeze out an extra SNAP.

Do You Have What It Takes?

Conquest offers an exhilarating new way to play, filled with thrilling challenges, enticing rewards, and new strategy. Are you ready to conquer the tiers and claim your place among the champions? Dive into Conquest today and begin your journey to the top!

Character Spotlight: Daken

This vicious mutant assassin annihilates anything in his path, and he has come straight for MARVEL SNAP!!

On Reveal: Add the Muramasa Shard to your hand.

Daken is a killer, born and bred.

Decades ago, the brainwashed KGB assassin James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, AKA Winter Soldier, kills Itsu—the pregnant, Japanese wife of Logan. Unbeknownst to Logan, his unborn baby is torn from Itsu’s womb—likely surviving due to his inherited mutant healing factor—and abducted by secretive manipulator Romulus.

Near Sendai, Japan, Daken is taken in by a wealthy man named Akihira who raises him as his own. Named Akihiro, Daken is taunted for his heritage and called a mongrel by the servants. As a boy, Daken kills one of his tormentors, teaching the others to fear him. At eleven, his adoptive mother Natsumi gives birth to a son; recognizing the competition from a legitimate heir, Daken kills the baby justifying banishment by his father. Before he leaves, he kills Natsumi, releasing his claws apparently for the first time. After Akihira kills himself with a rifle, Daken is confronted by Romulus. Daken then undergoes training as an assassin.

Daken has superhuman reflexes, endurance, longevity and sensory acuity, and an advanced healing factor. He possesses three retractable bone claws housed within each hand: two dorsal and one palmar below the wrist.

Daken’s mutation allows him to control his pheromones, enabling him to disguise his own scent and cause fear or a false sense of security to the point where even Wolverine’s hyper-senses cannot detect him.

Highly skilled in espionage, Daken is a trained assassin. He has learned many forms of armed and unarmed combat from Cyber, and is an excellent tracker. He is also fluent in German, Italian, Japanese, and can read Greek.

Daken has a complicated and violent relationship with his biological father, Wolverine. For most of his youth, Daken believed Wolverine responsible for his mother’s death but when he finally learns the truth, he sides with Wolverine. They still often end up as tenuous allies and frequently betray each other.

Romulus, who secretly manipulates Daken and raises him to be a ruthless figure, is responsible for Daken’s mother’s death. Romulus schemes to pit Daken and Wolverine against one another to replace him as leader of his secret criminal empire. While Daken desires only death for Romulus, Logan defeats him and removes Daken’s wrist claws to prevent him from becoming powerful enough to become the next Romulus.

Daken has since banded himself with a number of baddies, including the Green Goblin’s Dark Avengers, the Brotherhood of Mutants, and also established himself as the criminal underworld leader of Madripoor.

Upon joining Norman Osborn’s Dark Avengers as the “Wolverine” member of the group, Daken was warned of an X-Men ambush led by Cyclops, wielding the Muramasa blade which had mystical properties that could disable Daken’s regenerative abilities and cut through adamantium. However, Wolverine interrupted the battle and in fighting Daken, the blade shattered, but Daken escaped with a shard of it. Daken then had the Tinkerer bond his claws to the metal of the Muramasa blade, with the intent to use it against Romulus.

Daken’s remarkable mutant physiology and regenerative healing factor is represented in MARVEL SNAP through his relationship to the Muramasa blade:

When this is discarded or destroyed, double Daken’s Power.

The Muramasa Shard can be destroyed or discarded to double Daken’s Power.

By default, Daken’s Power will be increased to 8 upon triggering this effect, making him an efficient 3-cost card that remains safe from Shang-Chi.

However, there are many effects in MARVEL SNAP we can combine with Daken’s Power doubling ability for some hefty bonuses, such as the Cloning Vats, Shuri’s Lab, and Wakandan Embassy locations.

Effects from cards like Hulk Buster, Shuri, Nakia, Moon Girl or Silver Surfer also support Daken reaching Power levels in the double digits and potentially far beyond.

There are bountiful fun play lines to try with Daken joining the fray — So let’s discard and destroy that Muramasa Shard and get to SNAPPIN’!

Patch Notes – Aug 08, 2023

PLEASE NOTE: If you haven’t updated your game yet, get the latest in the App Store!

GENERAL UPDATES

New Feature – Multi-Upgrade: If you have enough resources, Multi-Upgrade allows you to select the Quality you’d like to target and tap the upgrade button once to directly skip to that Quality level! Save your thumbs and save some time!
New Feature – Upgrade with Gold: If you are short on Credits and/or Boosters but still want to upgrade a card, you can now upgrade your cards with Gold (up to a limit each day).
Improved Avatar Selection Flow: Tapping on the Avatar on the Main Menu will now bring up the Avatar Select screen, allowing you to change the current deck’s avatar quickly.
When you view an upgradeable card in your Collection, and choose not to upgrade it, it will be “marked as read” and will no longer increase the red-dot notification count. Note: This went live in our last patch, but we forgot to put it in the patch notes.

BALANCE UPDATES

CARD UPDATES

Cable
- [Old] 2/2 – On Reveal: Put the bottom card of your opponent’s deck into your hand.
- [New] 2/2 – On Reveal: Draw the top card of your opponent’s deck.

Developer Note: The change to America Chavez starting on the bottom of the deck was predictably damaging to Cable, as drawing your opponent’s Chavez was usually good for them, not you. We didn’t value that too highly because Cable’s play rate was already low, but that was a mistake on our part. Conquest has shown that players really enjoy playing with cards that can give them an information advantage against their opponents. This is a simple enough change, just going to the other end of the deck, but we’ve also gone ahead and updated the template to reflect the action Cable is actually taking, which is drawing a card.

Magik
- [Old] 3/2 – You can’t play this on turn 6. On Reveal: Change this location to ‘Limbo’.
- [New] 3/2 – On Reveal: Replace this location with ‘Limbo’. Doesn’t work after turn 5.

Developer Note: Our OTA on 7/20 mentioned this was coming, and here it is! This isn’t a large change to Magik, mostly just making her a legal card to play on turn 6. However, it’s worth noting that the VFX behavior has changed a little bit. She used to light up with fire on the last turn you could play her, but now that corona will indicate whether or not you’ll be able to create Limbo based on the turn count.

Mister Negative
- [Old] 4/-1 – On Reveal: Swap the Power and Cost of all cards in your deck.
- [New] Gameplay Change: Caps Costs at a maximum of 6. (no text change)

Developer Note: This is a minor change to improve players’ quality of life by adding consistency to in-game interactions. The Peak location has this cap, which it needs because otherwise many cards would become literally impossible to play when the location appears. Mister Negative doesn’t expressly need it, because his decks are built to minimize Power in-deck. However, it’s intuitive for that location and this card to function the same, so we’re lining them up. Plus, it makes Jane Foster shells a little less risky.

Rogue
- [Old] 3/2 – On Reveal: Steal an Ongoing ability from a random enemy card at this location.
- [New] Gameplay Change: Now triggers On Reveals if the copied Ongoing card had one. (no text change)

Developer Note: As mentioned when we changed Mystique in the previous patch, Rogue is receiving an update to bring players’ expectation around copying card text via On Reveal in line with the outcome. Moving forward, we expect cards that copy text when they Reveal to consistently trigger the On Reveals of cards they copy.

Spider-Man
- [Old] 5/4 – On Reveal: Your opponent can’t play cards at this location next turn.
- [New] 3/5 – On Reveal: Move to another location and pull an enemy card from here to there.

Developer Note: All right, this is a big one. Let’s start on the mechanical angle: the previous Spider-Man incarnation was a polarizing card. It prevented your opponent from playing cards at a location, a frustrating experience. It was most popular following Wave into Galactus or in “lockdown” decks, which are both decks that use combinations of cards to reduce the total play space of the game for your opponent. We want some of that–the game needs a variety of strategies. But we don’t want those decks or even one of those cards to be the best in the game. Our best cards should be cool and awesome.

But you know who’s cool and awesome? Spider-Man!

There’s an irreconcilable dissonance in having one of the most popular characters in the Marvel canon attached to an effect we don’t want to be popular. Discovering Spider-Man in our game should be a great experience. Since launch, we’ve also added more Spider-Verse to the game and seen players enjoy the theme of movement for those cards. So we’re making a change and bringing Peter in line with the rest with a new ability. Will we return the old ability to the game on a new card? Maybe, but for now let’s go with no–it’s not been adding much fun.

We don’t take this kind of rework to a card lightly, so we’re happy to hear your feedback through all the usual channels. We don’t intend to start suddenly remaking tons of cards, but understanding your feelings may help us better understand the appropriate thresholds for this action in the future.

“Evolved” The Thing
- [Old] 4/6 – On Reveal: Afflict a random enemy card here with -1 Power. Repeat this twice more
- [New] 4/6 – On Reveal: Afflict 3 random enemy cards here with -1 Power.

Developer Note: High Evolutionary has mostly landed in a healthy spot since we made the tweaks to Hulk and Wasp during the last patch, but this is one more small twist of the dial. Cyclops has been really strong still, but we like keeping him strong in High Evolutionary shells based on ensuring a character with his popularity has a solid and satisfying home. The Thing has actually outperformed Scott a bit lately, and this change also makes the afflict curve from Wasp into Cyclops into Thing more elegant, distributing -1 Power to one more card at each stop. It’s a slight buff to Abomination, but a slight nerf to The Thing’s strength as a single card attacking a location.

BUG FIXES

Fixed a bug that would cause Mirror Dimension to repeatedly morph into another Mirror Dimension in a loop.
Fixed a bug that would cause players to get stuck on an old Season Pass season.
Performance improvements and UI/UX bug fixes.

KNOWN ISSUE LIST

For Windows: Controller and Arrow Keys are unsupported. This may impact Steam Deck usability as it will only be usable with touch controls.
Using Multi-Upgrade only counts as 1 Upgrade for the “Upgrade a Card” Mission.

New Season: Big in Japan

This season celebrates the characters, storylines, and art styles of Japan. Get ready for the BIGGEST [both literally AND figuratively] season yet!

BIG IN JAPAN SEASON PASS

For fans of X-Men, the MARVEL SNAP universe is about to take you on a journey to Japan. This month’s Season Pass gives you the opportunity to unlock a brand new card, variants, avatars, and card backs. Your journey begins near Sendai, Japan, as we introduce Daken, the son of one of X-Men’s most iconic figures, Wolverine.

NEW CHARACTER: DAKEN

[3/4] On Reveal: Add the Muramasa Shard to your hand.

Muramasa Shard [1-1] When this is discarded or destroyed, double Daken’s Power.

GIGANTIC SEASONAL REWARDS!

NEW CHARACTERS & MORE!

Some of our favorite characters from the X-Men Comics are releasing this season! You can find these new cards in Spotlight Caches or the Token Shop!

SERIES 5

When this is discarded or destroyed, regenerate it at a random location and you get +1 Energy next turn.

SERIES 5

On Reveal: Each player discards the lowest-Power card from their hand.

SERIES 5

On Reveal: Destroy each card here with less Power than this.

So, when can you expect new cards?

You can expect new cards to be released weekly – starting with last month’s Season Pass Card, Phoenix Force, releasing as a Series 5 card on August 7th.

August 7th: Phoenix Force – Series 5 Release
August 14th: Lady Deathstrike – Series 5 Release
August 21st: X-23 – Series 5 Release
August 28th: Silver Samurai – Series 5 Release

New Series 4 and Series 5 cards appear in the all-new Spotlight Cache and the Token Shop. As you level up your Collection Level, there will be Spotlight Caches where you can open a Series 4, Series 5 card, or variant. If you want to know more, check out the Spotlight Cache blog on Marvelsnap.com!

MECHA SPOTLIGHT CACHES!

August 7th:

Galactus
Nimrod
Spider-Ham

August 14th:

Lady Deathstrike
Modok

Stature

August 21st:

X-23
Nebula
Silk

August 28th:

Silver Samurai
Kitty Pryde
Spider-Man 2099

BRAND NEW LOCATIONS

Your adventure continues with these all-new locations!

Yashida Base: At the end of the game, destroy the last card to get here.
Valley of the Hand: After turn 5, your destroyed cards revive here.

BRAND NEW VARIANTS

There’s 40+ New Art Variants coming to the game this season.

Absorbing Man by Dan Hipp
Adam Warlock by Eduardo
Ant-Man by Dan Hipp
Armor – Pixel Variant
Arnim Zola by Dan Hipp
Attuma – 3099 Variant
Baron Mordo by Rian Gonzales
Bishop by Dan Hipp
Black Bolt – Variant
Black Cat – 2099
Black Cat – Pixel
Blade – Variant
Blue Marvel by Max Grecke
Brood by Kim Jacinto
Bucky Barnes – Noir
Cable – Variant
Cable by Dan Hipp
Captain America by Dan Hipp
Cerebro – 3099 Variant
Cerebro – Pixel Variant
Colleen Wing – Noir Variant
Cyclops – Variant
Cyclops by Skottie Young
Daken – Variant
Daken by Dan Hipp
Daredevil – Variant
Daredevil – Yellow Suit Variant
Dazzler by Dan Hipp
Knull by Dan Hipp
Knull – Variant
Lady Deathstrike – Pixel Variant
Lady Deathstrike – Variant
Leader by Luca
Luke Cage – Variant
Mister Negative by Rian Gonzales
Moon Girl – Spider-Verse Variant
Orka by Giulio
Red Skull – Fantasy Variant
Rescue by Dan Hipp
Silver Samurai by Nikola
Spectrum – Variant
X-23 by Skottie Young
X-23 – Venomized Variant

🤖 COLOSSAL BUNDLES INCOMING! 🤖

These Exclusive Bundles are available for a limited time! And don’t forget that you can use any new variant even if you don’t yet own the base card. Here are the upcoming bundles:

Stegronosaurus Wrecks

Stegron Kaiju Variant
Stegron Kaiju Avatar
Stegron Kaiju Card Back
12000 Credits
310 Stegron Boosters
Title: I Am Having Fun

Price: 7500 Gold

The Doctor is Tin

Morbius (Mech) Variant
Morbius (Mech) Avatar
500 Credits
1000 Tokens
500 Gold
465 Morbius Boosters

Price: $19.99

Death Becomes Her

Death (Mech) Variant
Death (Mech) Avatar
Death Mech Card Back
2500 Credits
4000 Tokens
2000 Gold
620 Death Boosters
Title: At Some Boring Funeral

Price: $74.99

My Hero Arachnia

Spider-Man (Anime) Variant & Avatar
Black Widow (Anime) Variant & Avatar
5500 Credits
310 Spider-Man Boosters
310 Black Widow Boosters

Price: 4000 Gold

Full Charge

Juggernaut (Mech) Variant
Juggernaut (Mech) Avatar
2000 Credits
300 Tokens
500 Gold
465 Juggernaut Boosters

Price: $19.99

One-Punch Women

Storm (Anime) Variant & Avatar
Captain Marvel (Anime) Variant & Avatar
7500 Credits
155 Storm Boosters
155 Captain Marvel Boosters

Price: 5600 Gold

Heroes for Hire

Daredevil Variant & Avatar
The Punisher Variant & Avatar
Misty Knight Variant & Avatar
Daredevil Card Back
The Punisher Card Back
155 Daredevil Boosters
155 Punisher Boosters
155 Misty Knight Boosters

Price: $9.99

Hail Hydraulics

Red Skull (Mech) Variant
Red Skull (Mech) Avatar
4000 Credits
1000 Gold
465 Red Skull Boosters

Price: $24.99

2 Cute 2 Furious

Jane Foster (Chibi) Variant & Avatar
Iron Man (Chibi) Variant & Avatar
2500 Credits
310 Jane Foster Boosters
310 Iron Man Boosters

Price: 2000 Gold

Join us as we go big! Really big! Colossal! Will you pit Daken against his father? Or trample new locations with Kaiju Stegron? We know you’re going to love these new characters! If you’re planning on attending Gamescom in Cologne, Germany later this month we’ll be there. You don’t want to miss what we have in store, come by and say hi!

August 3rd – Balance Updates

Welcome to another week of OTA balance updates! This week, we’ve got some buffs! Let’s get right into it:

Hawkeye

[Old] 1/1 – On Reveal: If you play a card here next turn, +2 Power.
[Change] …next turn, +2 Power. ->…next turn, +3 Power.

Apart from a stint in Cerebro 3, Hawkeye sees next to no play after players complete the tutorial. It’s about time to give our local archer some sharper arrows to play with. We want to keep Hawkeye’s base Power at 1, to keep some interesting texture between him and Misty Knight in the starter deck. Plus, he’s just a more interesting card if most of his Power is on his ability. Could Hawkeye become a candidate for Bounce decks that can repeatedly get the bonus off his On Reveal? He’s certainly got a better shot of it now.

Hulkbuster

[Old] 3/4 – On Reveal: Merge this card with a random friendly card at this location.
[Change] 3/4 -> 3/5

Hulkbuster is a unique enabler card that just doesn’t have enough Power to see play. In the distant past it’s seen play in decks with Deadpool and Multiple Man, but nowadays it just doesn’t do enough for its Cost compared to other options. We’re excited to see where players make use of a buffed Hulkbuster, and for its combo potential with next month’s season pass card. While a 1 Power buff doesn’t look like much, cards that combo with Hulkbuster multiply the bonus they get from it, so it’ll be more impactful in practice.

Vision

[Old] 5/7 – You can move this each turn.
[Change] 5/7 -> 5/8

Vision has only really seen play a long time ago in a Lockjaw deck. He hasn’t really found a home since then, and with the release of cards like Phoenix Force that fulfill similar roles, Vision fell by the wayside. We’re giving him a bit more Power to work with, while keeping him below the Shang-Chi threshold at 9 Power.

Captain Marvel

[Old] 5/6 – At the end of the game, move to a location that wins you the game. (If possible)
[Change] 5/6 -> 4/5

Theoretically in a meta where Lockdown decks are prevalent, Captain Marvel should be a great tool to help smooth out your board at the end of the game. This hasn’t been the case though, and in practice she only sees very fringe play in Hela decks. At her current statline, Captain Marvel just doesn’t have enough Power to justify her high Cost. Going to 4 Cost should give her more locations, or rather decks, to move to.

Absorbing Man

[Old] 4/3 – On Reveal: If the last card you played has an On Reveal, copy its text. (if it’s in play).
[Change] 4/3 -> 4/5

Although he has an exciting line of text, Absorbing Man has struggled to find a deck to shine in. Absorbing Man draws a lot of parallels to Wong, as they share a Cost and both double On Reveals. Wong has a few advantages though, as he can be played proactively so he can more efficiently enable plays on turns 5 and 6. Wong also affects multiple turns whereas Absorbing Man only activates once. We’re giving Absorbing Man a sizeable chunk of Power to make him more viable to experiment with.

That’s all for today! See you next time with our next full patch on 8/8.

MARVEL SNAP: Development Roadmap – August 2023

HEEEY! We’re back again with an update to the MARVEL SNAP development roadmap. Since the last update we’ve released a new game mode: Conquest, revamped card acquisition (a few times!), ultimately released Spotlight Caches, explored four more seasons in the multiverse, added new cards and variants every week, made a ton of quality of life improvements to the game, and more! We appreciate the feedback from the community along the way and we’re jazzed to share more about what’s coming for MARVEL SNAP! 👀⏭️💻

Coming Soon

Items listed here are in the final phase of development, and these features are almost ready to release to players! We’re cleaning up, polishing art, and squashing bugs. Our Quality Assurance teams scrape over all the little details to ensure we have as smooth an experience for players as possible. Once features are “Coming Soon,” we can start to plan release dates, timelines and share some insight with players.

The team is hard at work putting the finishing touches on a few much-anticipated features:

PC Launch
Twitch Drops
Seasonal Audio
Card Upgrade Improvements
Conquest Polish
Infinity Rank Revamp
Global Matchmaking – Phase 1

PC Launch

We love playing MARVEL SNAP on our phones, but sometimes nothing beats a comfy gaming session on your PC. The team has been working hard towards getting MARVEL SNAP ready for the big screen… well, the WIDESCREEN! We’ve combed through the game and rebuilt the experience for the widescreen experience – everything from main menu, collection manager, gameplay, and more!

With the official launch of MARVEL SNAP on PC, we’re also ensuring feature parity across platforms for things like in-game rewards, inbox, and news. No more needing to login on mobile to collect rewards–collect them on your platform of choice. More details coming very soon – stay tuned!!

Seasonal Audio

We love our in-game menu music, but we’ve been hoping for some more variety in our lives. Coming with our next season, we’ll be changing our in-game menu music to match the vibe of each new season – get ready for MARVEL SNAP with a new flair. 🎵 🎧

Card Upgrade Improvements

You’ve heard it before, “Upgrade cards to get more cards”… and with all that upgrading, we thought it was time to improve this experience a bit! We’re releasing two new features in our next patch to support this: Multi-Upgrade & Upgrade with Gold.

Multi-Upgrade: You’ve been waiting for the perfect variant for Shang-Chi, forever. You have all the boosters and credits. You finally get it… and now, with Multi-Upgrade, select the Quality you’d like to target and tap the upgrade button once to directly skip to that Quality level! Save your thumbs and save some time!
Upgrade with Gold: We have all been there. You’ve got an Ultra Quality card and 48 Boosters – so close to that Infinity Split, but those last couple Boosters won’t drop. Upgrade with Gold lets you finish out a card upgrade even if you don’t have all the required Boosters or Credits by splitting the gap with the Gold value.

Conquest Polish

It’s been great to see the excitement about Conquest since release and we’ve appreciated the feedback on a few updates we could make to improve the mode! In an upcoming patch, we’ll be doing a polish pass to clean up some rough edges. You can expect some of the following changes:

Improved Loss Flow (we know you don’t need to see it twice!)
Speeding up / Tap-to-Skip Animations
Updated Mute Behavior (now, stay quiet!)
UI/UX Improvements

In Development

Game features in this section are actively being developed, iterated, and improved upon. Our production team dedicates team resources, generates tasks/timelines, and ensures we’re moving forward. Features and systems in this bucket can change dramatically – we might find our initial idea wasn’t fun OR we might discover we can achieve our goals in an unexpected way!

Here’s some features that are currently in development:

Prestige Level
Spotlight Cache Improvements
Collectible Emotes & Card Emojis
Personalized Shop
Smart Decks
New Infinity Splits & Split System Improvements
Ultimate Variant Evolution

Prestige Level

Ever wish that pixel variant, avatar, or title you received turned into an awesome reward? Yeah us too. Prestige Level introduces a new reward track when you acquire any new cosmetics (variants, avatars, card backs, emotes, etc). Juice up your Prestige enough and unlock brand new infinity splits and more! We will keep building on Prestige Level into the future with Albums that drip bonus Prestige and exclusive thematic cosmetics!

Spotlight Cache Improvements

We’re continuing to monitor player feedback and data for Spotlight Cache economy tuning. We recently started with a change to the Random S4/S5 Duplicate Fallback reward from Premium Mystery Variant to 1000 Tokens and more tuning changes are being considered. In the next patch, we’ll be increasing rewards in S3-Complete Collectors Reserves, instead of 50 Tokens:

50% chance at Gold Conquest Ticket
50% chance at 100 Tokens

In addition to economy tuning, we also have some Spotlight Cache system UI/UX improvements planned for future patches:

Improved Spotlight Cache Icon
Improved Random S4/S5 Icon
Improved Opening Flow & Reward Experience
Spotlight Variants Preview
Spotlight Cache “Hold to Open”

Ultimate Variant Evolution

We are ready to make Ultimate variants even more worthy of their name. Evolve existing and new Ultimate variants to unlock their full cosmetic potential! As these variants evolve they will start to share their thoughts on your match with new VO and comic style chat bubbles. Once pushed further, new thematic VFX and SFX matching the variant art will light the board up in style. Knullified Thor with red lightning…yes please!

In Concept

We have BIG dreams about what we’d like to bring to the future of MARVEL SNAP! The first step towards these dreams is turning ideas into concepts through discussion, documentation, and planning. Features currently in the “In Concept” phase have been initially scoped out and given shape but have not yet had any engineering or development work done in the game itself.

This is where we’d love your feedback the most! Concepts listed in this section may be elevated in priority, rescoped, or scrapped entirely… or we might hear something completely new from the community!

Here are some of the future concepts we’re thinking about for MARVEL SNAP:

Guilds / Clans
Mythic Variants
PC Controller Support
New Game Mode
Season Journey Improvements

Guilds / Clans

We’re currently exploring what social systems could look like in MARVEL SNAP! For those of you (like us!) who have been playing Collectible Card Games socially for years, what did you enjoy about those social experiences? We’re looking for your feedback on what you’d love to see from Guilds / Clans / Social systems – what things would you like or dislike? Let us know!

Mythic Variants

What’s more badass than Ultimate Variants… MYTHIC VARIANTS! Custom voice lines? Wild over-the-top VFX? Maybe they jump out of the screen and punch your opponent in real life… okay, not that. But they’re gonna be awesome.

New Game Mode

We have so many ideas for future game modes! We’re interested in building game modes that bring an overall balance to the game between accessibility and deep strategy. Right now, we’re thinking through what is the MOST FUN and working backwards from there. We’re excited to build more awesome ways to play MARVEL SNAP and share more details in the future!

Let us know what you think, and please continue to share your ideas for the future of MARVEL SNAP! ✌️

Spotlight Cache Tuning Change

We’ve made an adjustment to the Spotlight Cache system that’s NOW LIVE:

Random S4/S5 Duplicate Fallback reward has changed from Premium Mystery Variant to 1000 Tokens.

Developer Comments:

Since we launched Spotlight Caches, we’ve been closely monitoring community feedback and player data. We do see the Spotlight Cache system accomplishing the primary goal of bringing more cards to more players, but we hear your feedback and agree there’s room for improvement.

Our highest priority by far is the Random S4/S5 duplicate fallback. We’re starting with a tuning change that we could get done quickly. We also have some future UI work planned and minor improvements to the surrounding systems that contribute to card acquisition. We’ll be continuing to monitor, listen, and actively make changes to card acquisition until it’s in a great place! More updates on that later…

Game development is an iterative process, so please keep sharing your thoughts and feedback! Your passion has been huge in getting us this far, and we promise to continue unlocking the potential of MARVEL SNAP for years to come. ❤

July 20th – Balance Updates

Hello again! It’s been a while since we had an OTA update, which is why we’re going to be a little heavy-handed with this week’s adjustments and provide a variety of changes in different areas of the metagame. We really value keeping things fresh and interesting, and view MARVEL SNAP itself as a puzzle to be solved every couple weeks. We’ve also modified the format of these notes slightly, to more directly emphasize the changes we’re making. Let’s dive right in!

Bounce Nerfs

Let’s begin by addressing the Beast/Falcon in the room. It’s no secret that Bounce has been one of the top decks in the metagame for the last few weeks. We actually feel Bounce is the undisputed best deck, because its matchup spread has a startlingly high number of ~60% matchups and many of its cards top win percentage charts when not drawn, indicating the deck is winning with a variety of card combinations. The skill edge the deck offers, possibly the largest in the game, also means that edge can increase for the most practiced Bounce players. So, we’re going to hit the deck firmly. Furthermore, the strongest shell in the deck is relatively transferable–you don’t need to be playing the Beast/Falcon game to have a very strong deck. That means we’re going to target cards that get shared across other versions of the archetype.

Kitty Pryde

[Old] 1/0 – When this returns to your hand, +2 Power. Returns at the start of each turn.
[Change] 1/0, +2 on return -> 1/2, +1 on return

Kitty is the best-performing card in all Bounce decks, so she’s an ideal candidate to target. Her strength has even warped how other decks approach the matchup, pushing combinations like Invisible Woman and Killmonger into the metagame. This adjustment will lower her ceiling substantially–we see Kitty pretty commonly making it to 8 Power, and in that scenario she’d now have only 6. That’s definitely a nerf, but the change does raise her floor, adding Power or saving you Energy when drawn on turn 5 or 6.

Hit-Monkey

[Old] 2/0 – On Reveal: Gain +2 Power for each other card you played this turn.
[Change] 2/0 -> 3/2

The next strongest card in Bounce has been Hit-Monkey, so we’re tagging a nerf onto him as well. We’re adding an Energy to Hit-Monkey for a few reasons. The first is just to weaken him–very often, you’d spend that Energy to play a 1-Cost on the last turn, which would itself have 2 or more Power in addition to the buff it gave Hit-Monkey, so this is just taking that away. It also makes him much less efficient to play early in the game, mostly eliminating the early Hit-Monkey you Beast back for more value later on. We chose this execution rather than something weirder like -2 Power or buffing +1 Power but adding some base Power because it’s more elegant.

Spider-Ham

[Old] 1/1 – On Reveal: Transform the highest-cost card in your opponent’s hand into a Pig, keeping its Power and Cost.
[Change] 1/1 -> 2/2

Spider-Ham’s been a generically strong card in a few decks, so it might surprise you to see it lumped in with Bounce here. However, that’s the deck where it’s seen the most play, and it’s also been the third strongest card in that deck. It has a number of reasonable replacements, so this is our smallest change to Bounce, but we have other motivations for changing the card. We’re unhappy with the extent of the damage Spider-Ham has done to a few archetypes revolving around cool high-Cost cards, like She-Hulk, Death, and especially Apocalypse. We’ll have a future adjustment down the road to Spider-Ham’s behavior that directly addresses that, but for now we’re just going to make him a little less efficient and see how much that reduces his play rate.

All right, now that Bounce is out of the way, let’s move into more exciting territory–buffs!

Phoenix Force

[Old] 5/6 – On Reveal: Revive one of your destroyed cards and merge with it. That card can move each turn.
[Change] 5/6 -> 4/5.

It’s relatively unusual for us to make a change to a Season Pass card so soon, but Phoenix decks have been a lot weaker than we wanted overall. That may be due to the complexity of its deckbuilding in part, but another reason is that we made a relatively late buff to Phoenix, moving it from 5/5 to 5/6. Unfortunately, that ultimately introduced more weakness than strength to the Multiple Man plan by making him vulnerable to Shang-Chi, which has been seeing plenty of play as a primary answer to Lockjaw locations and Evolved Hulk specifically. This change should heat Phoenix up for players in a big way and return Multiple Man to that sweet spot at 8 Power. If it’s a little too much gas, we’ll look at cooling her down but keeping the Cost at 4.

Ghost-Spider

[Old] 2/3 – On Reveal: The last card you played moves here.
[Change] 2/3 -> 1/2

We were a little gun-shy on the strength of some of our recent Move cards, as the deck can be really potent in addition to occasionally melting brains over the sheer number of possible moves you can make. Ghost-Spider was one of those cards, and having seen the dust settle we’ve decided to push her efficiency a bit. Other than Human Torch, Move isn’t a deck historically vulnerable to Killmonger, so this change should ultimately net Power for Move players. It also makes her a more interesting potential companion for Phoenix, letting players curve Shuri into Phoenix + Ghost-Spider efficiently.

Living Tribunal

[Old] 6/6 – Ongoing: Split your total Power evenly among all locations.
[Change] 6/6 -> 6/9

Living Tribunal has successfully spun up a fringe deck that pushes loads of Power, but that deck could use a little lift. That 3 Power would be a huge buff to most cards, but for Living Tribunal it plays a lot more like 1 Power. This change does open Living Tribunal up to Shang-Chi, but his effect being active from any location helps him stay nimble against that threat. If this buff doesn’t get him where he wants to go, we’ll be back.

Magik

[Old] 5/3 – You can’t play this on turn 6. On Reveal: Change this location to ‘Limbo’.
[Change] 5/3 -> 3/2

Ever since the nerf that knocked Magik from her perch defining the metagame into its deepest recesses, we’ve been looking for a safe time to reintroduce her at a more aggressive rate, since her fantasy and impact on the game are both interesting. This Season seemed ideal to do that, with a hot new variant hitting the streets via the Season Pass. We’re actually going to make a small behavior change to Magik in our next patch, restoring her to being playable on turn 6, but disabling just her On Reveal in that case. We’re debuting this stat change a little early to celebrate her time as a member of the Phoenix Five in the appropriate season.

The Great Web

After each turn, move one card to the Web for a random player.

[Change] We’re making this location appear less frequently.

Much like Miles Morales himself, players have been getting roped into a larger conflict than they may have bargained for with The Great Web. We think the location is pretty interesting and especially enjoy how it factors different cards and archetypes in unique ways, but we’re sensitive to the frustration being a little higher than we expected. We have a variety of location rarities, and Great Web was one of our most common. We’re changing it up to be one of our more rare locations, using the tier second only to the likes of Ego and Worldship.

That’s all for this week! We’ll be back on 8/3 with your next regularly scheduled OTA update.

Patch Notes – Jul 12, 2023

PLEASE NOTE: If you haven’t updated your game yet, get the latest in the App Store!

PATCH HIGHLIGHT

New Feature: Spotlight Cache
- Spotlight Cache is a brand new way to acquire newly released cards, Series 4 cards, and Series 5 cards. Spotlight Cache system will appear after you’ve passed Collection Level (CL) 500. A Spotlight Cache will replace Collector’s Caches and Collector’s Reserves every 120CL. This means that one in every 10 Collector’s Reserves are becoming Spotlight Caches. Read more in the Spotlight Cache blog.

GENERAL UPDATES

Premium Mystery Variants: A new Mystery Variant type that only offers Rare or Super Rare Variants, and cannot contain Pixel Variants. Now available in the Daily Offer section in the Shop for 800 Gold.
Daily Offer Rewards: When you make 10 purchases in the Daily Offer Shop, you’re now rewarded with a bonus 2000 Collector’s Tokens and one Premium Mystery Variant. (Claimable once per week).

AUDIO & ART

New visual and sound effects for the following cards:
- Shuri
- Infinaut
- Sabretooth
- Agent 13

BALANCE UPDATES

Other than High Evolutionary over-performing and being a bit too popular for its own good, we don’t have a lot of pressing issues to address in the metagame at this time. Many of these changes are to improve clarity and expectations surrounding cards that can have unusual interactions.

CARD UPDATES

High Evolutionary

For the last month, High Evolutionary has proven itself strong enough to support three distinct decks within the metagame. Some are better than others, and none of the three are explicitly problematic in Ranked play on any of our metrics, but we think there’s still room to improve diversity at the top of the metagame. Even if each High Evolutionary deck is different, it can feel monotonous to get paired against them in succession. To that end, we’re shaving some Power off the two most-played cards in the kit.

“Evolved” Wasp
- [Old] 0/1 – On Reveal: Afflict 2 random enemy cards here with -1 Power.
- [New] 0/1 – On Reveal: Afflict a random enemy card here with -1 Power.

Developer Note: Pretty simple–Wasp is too good. Wasp is specifically fantastic in conjunction with Lockjaw and Jane Foster, playing a more like a +4 bonus on two Lockjaw rolls than just an 0/3. However, she’s also winning more cubes overall than any other High Evolutionary card, so we’re weakening her to meaningfully impact all of these decks.

“Evolved” Hulk
- [Old] 6/12 – Ongoing: +2 Power for each turn you ended with unspent Energy.
- [New] 6/12 – When you end a turn with unspent Energy, +2 Power. (if in hand or in play)

Developer Note: Similarly, Hulk appears in every High Evolutionary shell we’ve been monitoring, and Hulk strongest there is–even given the unfortunate bug that doesn’t count the last turn of the game, should you happen to have an Energy to spare. This adjustment will remove that issue and also reduce the average Power of Hulk, especially in Lockjaw shells where players could often accumulate Energy without ever drawing Hulk at all.

We recognize these adjustments may not be as harsh as some players expected, and we’ll continue keeping a close eye on High Evolutionary in the weeks to come.

Gambit
- [Old] 3/1 – On Reveal: Discard a card from your hand. Destroy a random enemy card.
- [New] 3/3 – On Reveal: Discard a card from your hand. Destroy a random enemy card.
  - Now must discard a card to destroy anything (no text change)

Developer Note: For some time now, players have noted a confusing dissonance between Gambit’s effect destroying cards whether you discard a card or not, while Arnim Zola must destroy his target in order to create copies of it. In addition to being inconsistent, Gambit’s creative concept is “throwing” cards at your enemies–if you have no cards to throw, why would it work? Since this is a nerf, and Gambit’s not a highly-played card, we’re compensating him for that loss with +2 Power. The Wong combo decks will suffer a bit, and perhaps need to start including something like Apocalypse or Swarm if they want to blow up the board. However, using Gambit in more traditional decks might be an interesting option.

Mystique
- [New] Gameplay Change: Now triggers On Reveals if the copied Ongoing card had one (no text change).

Developer Note: Similarly, this is a change to better line up players’ intuitions with outcomes. Whenever a card in our game copies an ability, it implicitly copies the whole text box. When Absorbing Man copies a card with an On Reveal and an Ongoing ability, like Soul Stone or Electro, he gets both, immediately. But when Mystique does, she gets the On Reveal ability without triggering it–even though she was just played, like Absorbing Man. This doesn’t come up often, but we consider it a quality of life improvement. We’ll also make this adjustment to Rogue, just trying it here first.

Nakia
- [Old] 3/2 – On Reveal: Give the 2 leftmost cards in your hand +2 Power.
- [New] 3/3 – On Reveal: Give all cards in your hand +1 Power.

Developer Note: Nakia has been underperforming for a while now, a far cry from her days of dominance during the game’s beta period. In addition, her affect was a little complex, especially for a card debuting in Series 2. We’re trying to address both of those issues with this change, making Nakia a stronger, simpler card to play with. Maybe she finds a new home in the competitive metagame, maybe not–time will tell.

Text-Only Updates

The below adjustments are just to improve how a few cards are worded, to better align with our learnings around what makes SNAP cards clear, consistent, and easy to read. We’ll continue making updates in this vein over time.

Black Bolt
- [Old] On Reveal: Your opponent must discard the lowest-Cost card in their hand.
- [New] On Reveal: Discard the lowest-cost card from your opponent’s hand.

Developer Note: There is an unresolved inconsistency present in this text regarding the capitalization of the word “Cost.” We’re continuing to look into that for other cards.

Black Cat
- [Old] If this is in your hand at the end of your turn, discard it.
- [New] If you end the turn with this in your hand, discard it.

Bucky Barnes
- [Old] When this is destroyed, create the Winter Soldier in its place.
- [New] When this is destroyed, replace it with the Winter Soldier.

Cerebro
- [Old] Ongoing: Your highest Power cards get +2 Power.
- [New] Ongoing: Your highest-Power cards have +2 Power.

Developer Note: This is standard language for passive Power increases.

Doctor Strange
- [Old] On Reveal: Move your highest Power cards to this location.
- [New] On Reveal: Move your highest-Power card(s) to this location.

Kraven
- [Old] When a card moves here, this gets +2 Power.
- [New] When a card moves here, this gains +2 Power.

Developer Note: This is standard language for triggered Power increases.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue that was causing matchmaking queue times for the last rounds of Conquests to be excessive.
Fixed a number of Conquest UI/UX issues and performance.
Fixed an issue that allowed the Weekly Spotlight card to be purchased more than once.
Fixed an issue with Mystery Series 3 Card purchases if you have collected all Series 3 cards.
Fixed an issue that would see some cards target a specific card in hand/deck rather than at random.
Fixed an issue that could cause a crash when Kang interacted with the Atlantis location.
Removed a very unexpected third hand from one of Spider-Man’s variants.
Fixed an issue that prevented new users from getting 3 bonus ranks upon hitting level 10 for the first time.
Fixed an issue where Living Tribunal would mishandle the max power cap and show locations with negative power causing the player to lose.
Fixed an issue that was causing Living Tribunal to take effect before the card was revealed.
Fixed an issue that was causing Black Bolt to always discard the leftmost card in the event that several cards of the same cost were targets.
When an opponent’s Maria Hill draws a card it now correctly has a card back.
Updated Nebula’s VFX to trigger before cards are revealed rather than after.
Fixed an issue with Lockjaw overlapping with Ongoing cards.