In this week’s balance update we’ll be trimming some power off the top of a couple archetypes as well as continuing to cut extraneous Power from tech cards where we feel comfortable.

Overall, we’re very pleased with where the metagame is and has been since our tech reform. We’re just looking to keep improving things as we can!  Let’s go ahead and get to it!

Black Cat

• [Old] 1/5 – End of Turn: Discard this from your hand.
• [Change] 1/5 > 1/4

Sauron

• [Old] 1/3 – On Reveal: Remove the abilities from all Ongoing cards in your deck.
• [Change] 1/3 > 1/2

We’re starting by removing a Power from some rate outliers – Black Cat and Sauron.  We aggressively juiced these cards a bit in an effort for them to see play.  With Black Cat in particular, up until this 1/5 buff, she was essentially never actually played as a normal Marvel Snap card, and just ended up in the discard pile until her friend Hela showed up.

As-is, even though she does produce awkwardness in games from time-to-time, she’s the most efficient one Cost card in the game from a raw points perspective, and has enjoyed a lot of success in End of Turn decks where her tag also functions as a synergy.  We still believe she can function in that more preferable spot as a card that actually gets staged at 1/4 and won’t function like such an outlier vs comparable 1 Costs.

Over time, Sauron strategies have gradually improved in win rate and as a result of how much impact Sauron has on a game when played on the first turn, we think we can comfortably position him with less points with him retaining his mantle of ideal starting play for his strategy.

Super Giant

• [Old] 4/7 On Reveal: All cards played next turn don’t reveal until the game ends.
• [Change] 4/7 > 4/6

Alioth

• [Old] 6/9 – On Reveal: Remove the text from all unrevealed enemy characters here.
• [Change] 6/9 > 6/8

Mercury

• [Old] 2/2 – You can move this once. Ongoing: Enemy cards here can’t move.
• [Change] 2/2 > 3/4

As you’ve likely noticed by now, we’re keeping up the trend of trying to trim extraneous strength from tech where we think it is possible.  To reiterate our position, we think Marvel Snap is a lot more fun when synergistic decks are at the top of the ladder and players have to be more thoughtful about including tech – with the intention of targeting specific strategies that are overrepresented or are particular threats to their strategy.

We still believe interaction is healthy, but don’t want the best decks in our game to be a stack of points generated through generic rate cards and the ability to shut down any strategy.

Since End of Turn burst onto the scene Super Giant has been a heavily played card as a powerful piece of interaction for that strategy as well as finding a bevy of other interactions.  As we have gotten the aforementioned End of Turn deck into a better place, we feel more comfortable reducing Super Giant’s Power.

During the Robot takeover, we experimented with a large change to Alioth, but did ultimately decide to revert afterwards.  We’re taking a more conservative approach here. While the presence of Alioth in Marvel Snap is a good thing in many regards – perhaps most notably ensuring that priority remains a dynamic part of the final turn of the game, its level of flexibility does make us comfortable with removing a Power.  It is currently a little too close to the best generic 6 Cost card in the game, and we’d like that to not be true of a tech card.

Finally, the largest change here is to Mercury.  The Mercury/Cannonball combo has been a prominent part of the metagame for some time now, and although we did make a large nerf to Cannonball, that hasn’t resulted in a sufficient shift in our eyes.  As it stands, Mercury is a powerful proactive card that incidentally makes it much more difficult for Move to exist in the metagame, and we would much prefer for Mercury to be a card that players turned to, perhaps still with Cannonball, if they deemed Move prevalent enough that they needed to fight back.

As it stands, Move doesn’t have much room to breathe with the amount of Mercury that players get to play “for free,” and we have chosen to address that by weakening how efficient the tech piece is.

X-23

• [Old] 1/2 – When this is discarded or destroyed, regenerate it at a random location and you get +1 Energy next turn.
• [Change] 1/2 > 1/1

Destroy has gotten some excellent tools lately and been one of the best performing decks over the past Season.  We generally consider it a good sign when Destroy is one of the best Marvel Snap decks, but in the interest of shaking things up slightly we are weakening one of Destroy’s strongest cards.  We chose X-23 over many other options as we felt it would make the least impact on how the deck’s game plan actually unfolds.  X-23’s strongest feature is her Energy production and although the deck will feel one less point in a slight ding to win rate, it won’t affect what makes her or the deck Powerful from an archetype standpoint.

Leader

• [Old] 6/4 – On Reveal: Copy the enemy card(s) with the highest Power played this turn, but on your side
• [Change] 6/4 > 6/5

Nakia

• [Old] 3/3 – On Reveal: Give all cards in your hand +1 Power.
• [Change] 3/3 > 3/4

Peni Parker

• 2/3 – On Reveal: Add SP//dr to your hand. When this merges, you get +1 Energy next turn.

We’re changing Peni Parker’s SP/dr

• [Old] 3/4 – On Reveal: Merge this into one of your cards here. You can move that card next turn.
• [Change] 3/4 > 3/5

Electro

• [Old] 3/4 – On Reveal: +1 Max Energy. Ongoing: You can only play 1 card a turn.
• [Change] 3/4 > 3/5

As usual, here are a few different underperforming cards that we hope can get a little more time in the spotlight in the upcoming Season.  Maybe Nakia can be an exciting Superior Spider-Man enabler, or perhaps you’re interested in eliminating Electro’s draw-back with Man-Spider.  Regardless, we hope you enjoy November!

Happy Snapping!

Hey folks, in today’s update we’ll be giving some power to the Horde mechanic as well as continuing to adjust the state of tech cards and making a downward adjustment to a continued outlier strategy.  We’ll round it all out with a few improvements to some recently released cards that have landed a bit under.  Let’s get to it!

Zombie Scarlet Witch

• [Old] 3/2 – After you play a card here, Horde +2.
• [Change] 3/2 > 3/4

Zombie Giant-Man

• [Old] 5/3 – On Reveal: Horde +1, then this gains Power equal to your Zombie Horde.
• [New] 5/4 – On Reveal: Horde +2, then this gains Power equal to your Zombie Horde.

Early numbers coming from the Zombie duo are quite poor.  This looks like a large buff, and it is, but we want to be clear that our intention is that we will be closely monitoring the Horde package as it releases over the course of the season and pulling back if necessary.

We view this more as a failure to properly account for the release schedule than a development issue, with much of our playtesting incorporating the full Horde package rather than properly accounting for the mechanic’s strength as it is introduced piece-by-piece.  That said, there is still a fair amount of counterplay for Horde, and it is possible that we missed low in our initial estimations regardless of the release complexity.

Point being, we want to make sure that Horde, which has many cards that rely on each other, is satisfying to play throughout the life of the season and beyond.

To reiterate, we’ll be quick to react if these buffs put Horde over the top, but the goal is that the mechanic creates a new and exciting deck for Zombie fans and those who enjoy taking a bunch of game actions through Kitty Pryde, Skills, Hope Summers, and others.

Invisible Woman First Steps

• [Old] 3/5 – Activate: This turn, your End of Turn abilities happen twice.
• [Change] 3/5 > 3/3

Outside of Horde hiccups, we’ve been quite happy with the ladder metagame as a whole.  Decks are diverse, and even the End of Turn deck we’re hitting hasn’t put up overwhelming play rates.  That said, we still think that this adjustments will help get things closer to where they should be in the long term and continue to improve diversity.

Invisible Woman First Steps has gotten plenty of press since her release, being the cornerstone of some dramatic interactions.  While this Power nerf won’t truly be felt when she is operating at full strength, we do like to take precautions to lower card’s floors when they do have such tall ceilings.

It’s possible that we will make some functional adjustments to her in the near future. We aren’t quite sure that we are comfortable or happy with how some of her interactions with other cards give her that aforementioned ceiling, but for now we are taking the simple approach and we’ll see how much that affects her win rate.

Shadow King

• [Old] 2/2 – On Reveal: Reset all cards here to their original Power.
• [Change] 2/2 > 3/4

Mobius M. Mobius

• [Old] 3/4 – Ongoing: Your Costs can’t be increased. Your opponent’s Costs can’t be reduced.
• [Change] 3/4 > 3/3

Rogue

• [Old] 3/2 – On Reveal: Steal the text from an enemy Ongoing card here.
• [Change] 3/2 > 3/3

Ok tech the card portion!

We’ve been quite happy with all the movements we’ve made on the tech front recently, but it is still our belief that overall Snap is going to land in a better place where interactive cards are a bit more niche and decks aren’t overly incentivized to overload on them.  To that end we’re continuing to make adjustments.

We weren’t confident whether we should keep or revert Shadow King’s change from the tech imbalance event, and ultimately we did decide to revert it.  A few weeks later, we have more conviction that this will make the game more fun.  This will make Shadow King more of a card you’re willing to play for its points rather than something you can easily slot into a double card play on turn 6 to flip the game over.

We also acknowledge that this is a buff in some capacity to Horde as well.  It isn’t clear to us how much this is going to move the needle, but again we’ll be quick to adjust Horde if it becomes clear we made an overcorrection.

As for Mobius M Mobius, we felt at the time that we buffed him that it was a net improvement to the metagame due to the amount of cost reduction that was being slotted into a variety of decks.  Now that many of those cards are in better balance states, we feel that we can once again make it a relatively high opportunity cost card to put in your deck.

Finally, we’re buffing a tech card, Rogue.  She’s seen some increased play recently with the rise of Victoria Hand, but historically she’s been overlooked for other tech options for some time now.  While overall we want to keep tech’s presence more muted than it has been for some time, we still want the Snap experience to be as diverse as possible, and making it a close decision as to which tech cards decks might want to play on a weekly basis as metagames evolve is an important part of the experience.

Firelord

• [Old] 4/6 – On Reveal: Revive one of your discarded or destroyed 3-Cost cards here.
• [Change] 4/6 > 4/7

Warlock

• [Old] 3/3 – Activate: For each unspent Energy, give a card in your hand -1 Cost.
• [Change] 3/3 > 3/4

These are just some recent releases that came out lower than expected and we want to give them some help.

Firelord’s archetypes just have stiff competition and a rather large barrier to entry for including more expensive cards in the Discard and Destroy decks respectively, so we want to throw a bone to players who are interested in building those decks in unique ways.

With Warlock in particular, we’ll be sure to keep an eye on it as it is a card we deemed rather risky in development.  The combination of a Power and presumably reducing the amount of Mobius in the metagame should do some good work for improving it.  Energy generation is a naturally powerful effect, but our hope is that this is a unique and fun twist on it!

That’s all for today, happy Snapping!

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

FEATURES

Changes to Finishes, Flares, and Infinity Splitting

We know that chasing certain Finish and Flare combos when splitting are really important. We also know that certain Finishes and Flares introduced by Character Mastery make that harder, and don’t often result in a desirable combo. In order to improve on this, we’re making the following changes to how certain Finishes and Flares behave moving forward. The team has plans for further changes to Character Mastery down the road as well.

• Banana Finish and Banana Flare, and Water Finish and Bubbles Flare are granted as an equipable combos once both items in the combo are unlocked via Character Mastery, per card.
  • Neither piece of content enters the Infinity Split table when unlocked.
  • If the individual Banana Finish and Banana Flare, or Water Finish and Bubbles Flare items have been unlocked prior to this change, but have not been split as a combo yet, then the combo will be granted retroactively, and both items will be removed from the Infinity Split table.
  • Each item can still be equipped individually via Custom Card.
  • All previous splits including these Flares and Finishes will be retained.
• Snowflakes Flare and Frosted Glass Finish are granted as an equipable combo once both are unlocked via Character Mastery, per card.
  • Snowflakes Flare does not enter the Infinity Split table when unlocked.
  • Frosted Glass Finish does enter the Infinity Split table when unlocked.
  • If the individual Snowflakes Flare and Frosted Glass Finish items have been unlocked prior to this change, but have not been split as a combo yet, then the combo will be granted retroactively.
  • All previous splits including this Flare and Finish will be retained.

ART & VISUAL EFFECTS

Several Finishes have had their visuals updated: 

• Fire
• Galactic Storm
• Frosted Glass
• Psychedelic 
• Water

GAMEPLAY

• We’ve updated how staging works for Move cards like Nightcrawler. The game will now more intelligently pick which effects to “use up” first, so moving Nightcrawler away from a location where you have Madame Web will only use Madame Web’s effect and Nightcrawler will still be able to move later on.
• Gambit will now discard a card even if there are no enemy cards in play to destroy. This aligns with other effects’ functionality.
• Sakaar (location) will now resolve cards based on which player is revealing cards first to align with other effects.
• Scorn got a text update to align with Apocalypse (no functional change):
  • [Old] 1/2 – When you discard this, return it to your hand and give +2 Power to itself and one of your cards in play.
  • [New] 1/2 – When you discard this, put it back and give +2 Power to itself and one of your cards in play.

BUG FIXES

Card and Location Art Fixes in 46.x

• Visual Issue with Eson Creative House Pocket Variant has been resolved
• Visual Issue with The Infinaut James Ryman Variant has been resolved
• Visual Issue with Spectrum Mech Variant has been resolved

• Visual Issues with Morgan Le Fay James Ryman Variant has been resolved
• VFX & SFX issues that are triggered when using the Snowguard Bear at the Kvch Location are now fixed

Cards Shop Fixes in 46.x

• In the Welcome Pop-up for the Cards Shop, cards are no longer cropped around their edges
• Token Pack spacing has been adjusted to appear the same as Modules in the Card Shop
• Visual issue with players receiving inaccurate Tokens during initial Card Shop introduction animation has been resolved

Other Fixes in 46.x

• Completion of the Infinity Conquest Tower should no longer result in a Blank avatar being displayed instead of Infinity avatar when user has the Default avatar equipped
• Alliances Search Filter tool to Search Labels no longer has its exit “X” button missing
• Issue resolved with inaccurate gold balance after purchasing items from Deadpool Diner store
• Issue resulting in soft lock when viewing Card Art Details no longer occurs
• Issue where user is able to interact with Board Elements during a card upgrade on the collect reward screen no longer occurs
• Issues with scrolling through the settings menu UI no longer appear
• Volts icon is no longer missing in Missions detail view for High Voltage event
• Grand Arena tooltip for the ticket timer has had its text corrected to the appropriate wording
• Issues when installing game updates and seeing blank Bundle promos in the carousel have been resolved
• Issues with Border and Token icons appearing dark in the album tooltip have been resolved
• Favorite star icon no longer clips through the top of the UI when scrolling through cardbacks
• Currency fonts for Gold and Credits now match in size
• Layering issues on certain rewards for High Voltage Overdrive milestone track have been resolved
• Scroll icon is no longer missing in Reward Detailed View for Sanctum Showdown
• Visual issues where Premium Mystery Pack bundle’s background appearing incorrectly on carousel have been resolved
• Conquest Title is now fixed and appears appropriately in the Game Modes Screen

PC Fixes in 46.x

• [PC] Issue where the Filters dropdown doesn’t close for Series 4 & 5 Packs in Card Shop no longer occurs
• [PC] Visual Issue when Dismissing or Claiming Login Bonus Rewards no longer occurs

Localization Fixes in 46.x

• Sanctum Showdown End of Gameplay and Shop ending texts are now properly localized in all non-English languages
• Localization for Stark Industries’ text is now appearing correctly
• Appropriate localization text for Login Bonus titles now appear correctly
• Text inside the Alliance Labels no longer clip outside the box in multiple languages, issues have been resolved
• Season Pass Missions carousel item text for both Recruit season and normal season no longer overlap now in multiple languages

Hey folks! We finally wrangled back control from the Robots, but as it turns out we liked some of their ideas. 🤖🧠

While most of the tech experiment we’ll be reverting today, we will be keeping some of the changes and making some slight tweaks.  We’ll also be doing some more standard issue adjustments today alongside cleaning up after the Robots.  Let’s get to it!

We will be reverting to the previous versions of the following cards:

• Killmonger
• Cosmo
• Shadow King
• Alioth
• Red Guardian

We will be retaining the modified versions of:

• Negasonic Teenage Warhead
• Enchantress

For Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Enchantress we feel like these were meaningful adjustments that will improve their play patterns as well as help downgrade the total impact that tech cards have on the metagame.  Broadly, we would like to live in a world where players are playing a smaller number of tech cards and ideally many of them meaningfully impact the game with their points as well as their effects.

• For Negasonic, keeping this change will reduce the likelihood that she will come down and quickly snowball a location, and simply lower the amount of time that she looms over the game.
• For Enchantress, this movement towards a larger Point value helps to give her far more proactive applications. Simultaneously it will also dramatically lower the number of games where she is played on the last turn of the game alongside other tech cards to flip the table on how the game was being played up until that point.

We feel good about these changes for the long term outlook of the game.

Now Shang Chi.

We will be making a small adjustment to Shang Chi from the event:

Shang Chi

• [Pre Robot] 4/3 – On Reveal: Destroy all enemy cards here that have 10 or more Power.
• [New] 4/3 – On Reveal: Destroy an enemy card here that has 10 or more Power.

We felt like this limited time OTA didn’t quite give us or the community enough time to meaningfully gauge this subtle difference between Shangs.

Our hope is that if Shang Chi is single targeting that he will remain a potent check on solitaire-esque huge point decks running wild, but will also warrant players the opportunity to make interesting strategic decisions on whether to stack a location or not with multiple high Power cards.

Previously, you would simply never do this if it could be avoided due to how impactful Shang Chi was at countering this line of play.

Our hunch is that this dynamic will simply make the game more fun, and we’d like to keep running the experiment.  For now, our plan is to gather more information through the next Golden Gauntlet tournament, then make a more long term decision for Shang Chi.

All things considered, we weren’t sure how the OTA experiment would play out, but generally we feel positive about it.  We recognize that tech is a bit more prominent as a premier strategy than we’d like, but tackling the problem is tricky.  We felt like this experiment generated a ton of useful information for how to position tech in the long term, and we’ll keep working on the issue.

Please give us feedback on what you did and didn’t like about the pseudo-imbalance event!

Ok, now that the tech section is primarily over, back to our more standard faire:

Colleen Wing

• [Old] 2/4 – On Reveal: Discard the card that costs the least from your hand.
• [Change] 2/4 > 2/3

Various flavors of Discard decks have been strong for sometime now, and we felt that long term warranted a change.  However, it is difficult to meaningfully adjust points away from the Discard heavy hitters – as when they are working they can generate very large numbers where small nerfs won’t often be meaningfully felt.

As a result, we’re dinging an enabler, and given that Colleen Wing tends to be the strongest one, we’re taking a Power away from her so that the Power adjustment will be frequently felt, particularly in the more scrappy games where Discard’s synergies aren’t shining their brightest.

Agatha Harkness

• [Old] 6/14 – Game Start: Draw Agatha. She controls your cards on even turns.
• [Change] 6/14 > 6/12

Agatha is a tricky card to adjust.  Similarly, she’s been performing above expectations for a while now.  We like that a lot of her idiosyncrasies help to create a unique deck all by herself, and that’s something we generally like to preserve.  However, a lot of her strength is that simply she’s a “free” card, but we also feel it is likely she will be relegated to 0 play if we remove that component, which puts us in a tricky position.

For now, we’re removing two Power to try to get her win rate down, but it is likely we revisit her again in the future.

Stardust

• [Old] 4/7 – Ongoing: Cards can’t be added to locations except by playing or moving them.
• [Change] 4/7 > 4/6

Stardust has been one of the stand out tech cards since its release, with both considerable usage and win rate.  This continued and even increased as we expected during The Robot Take Over, affirming our beliefs that although we like Stardust’s tech role in the metagame, that it could stand to lose some Power.

We still believe that it will play its role well.

Viv Vision

• [Old] 3/2 – At the start of each turn, give all cards in your hand +1 Power if you’re winning here. Otherwise, move this to another location.
• [Change] 3/2 > 3/3

Dormammu

• [Old] 7/10 – Game Start: Begin a Summoning Ritual. (Add step 1 to hand.)
• [Change] 7/10 > 7/12

Destroyer

• [Old] 6/16 – On Reveal: Destroy your cards at other locations.
• [Change] 6/16 > 6/18

Alright, onto some buffs!

We’ve seen that Viv Vision’s win rate numbers have simply been poor since release.  She was an exceptionally tricky card to land on in final balancing – we felt that 3/3 posed a potential risk of enabling her to snowball games too quickly, and as a result we decided to release her at 3/2 to hedge against this risk.

The numbers have proved otherwise, and while it is possible that 3/3 may actually move the needle too far in the other direction of making her too strong, we want to gather more data and consider more dramatic adjustment to her design if necessary.

Similarly Dormammu’s numbers have continued to be low, even after previous adjustments.  We’re trying again by increasing his Power to 12.  His play rate near his release was quite high and sustained for some time – and has plummeted with player realization that he just isn’t very strong.  That implies to us that this is a card that folks find fun, so we’re committed to getting him into a spot where his fans won’t find their win rate embarrassing for enjoying playing with him.

Destroyer has been weak for a very long time. Given his considerable drawback and niche applications, we’re giving him some more numbers to play with.

Awesome Andy

• [Old] 2/1 – Activate: Give one of your cards at each other location +2 Power.
• [Change] 2/1 > 2/2

Lockjaw

• [Old] 2/2 – Activate: After you play your next card, swap it with one from your deck.
• [Change] 2/2 > 2/3

We’re buffing a couple of Activate cards ahead of Jocasta’s release.  We hope that she will enable a variety of fun synergies, and we want to try to make those potential outputs as diverse as possible, so we’re giving some love to a few Activate underachievers.

In particular, we hope that folks will be excited about Lockjaw, as our previous buff didn’t quite generate the positive reception that we were expecting.  We’ll keep working on him if that’s what folks want and the numbers permit!

Mystique

• [Old] 3/0 – On Reveal: If the last card you played has an Ongoing, copy its text. (if able)
• [Change] 3/0 > 3/1

Finally, a buff to a fan favorite, and a sneaky (small) nerf to Mr. Negative.  Mystique has a variety of fun applications, but is most often played in Mr. Negative these days.  That’s a deck that we have our eye on, and we think this is a nice happy medium change of improving Mystique’s performance in every non-Negative deck.

Ok that’s all for today.  Please give us feedback on the Robot Invasion event.  Did you enjoy the lack of tech?  What do you think about the roll backs we made?

Until next time, happy Snapping!

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

FEATURES

Deadpool’s Diner is back on September 18!

• Everyone’s favorite Merc with a Mouth has been cooking up something special this time, and the Diner will be opening back up with a store, a few updated game rules, and for the first time ever: game mode specific locations. 
• Look for more updates (and Valley of the Baby Hand) in the near future.

Snap Packs Card List Sorting

• Now when you tap on View Cards in Seasonal Spotlight, Collector’s Pack, or Featured Set Snap Packs, you’ll have sorting and filtering capabilities to help you find the card you’re looking for.

Borders For Tokens instead of Gold

• Going forward, all borders available for purchase in the Cosmetics Shop and in a card’s Custom Card shop will be priced in Tokens instead of Gold. 
• We have also added some existing borders that were previously unavailable for purchase in either shop to their rotations. 
• Here is a list of all available borders, as well as their old and new prices:

Winback Experience

We know that one of the biggest challenges for players returning to Snap is catching up on card acquisition. The following combination of features are meant to try and help returning players kickstart the acquisition of new cards. With this Patch release, we’re releasing a new set of features for players returning to Snap after having been away for a while.

Welcome Back Calendar

• We’ve built a new login calendar that features 28 days of rewards. In addition to Variants, cosmetics, and currencies, players will get new random Cards from varying Series on days 1, 7, 14, 21, and 28. The calendar will be live for 35 days from a player’s first session back, so if they miss a couple of days, they still have the opportunity to earn everything on the calendar.

Bonus Challenge

• Bonus Challenge is a, well, bonus set of challenges that live on top of the Weekly Challenge. Completing daily missions (e.g. Play 1-Cost Cards) will advance both the Weekly Challenge and Bonus Challenge reward milestones. Players will have 30 days to complete the Bonus Challenge, and does not reset weekly like the Weekly Challenge. The Bonus Challenge is completed when the player completes 50 missions. Bonus Challenge rewards include Variants, other cosmetics, currencies, and Snap Packs.

Season Pass Discount

• Returning players will see a 25% discount on the purchase of either the Season Pass, the Season Pass Super Premium, and the upgrade from the Season Pass to the Season Pass Super Premium. If you come back to Snap too close to the end of the current season (<= 10 days), the discount will follow you into the next season. The discount is good for 1 purchase of either the Season Pass and the upgrade to the Season Pass Super Premium, or the Season Pass Super Premium.

Exclusive Bundles

• 3 exclusive bundles for returning players will be available in the Shop. All feature great deals on Snap Packs which are making their debut in bundles.

We hope players returning to Snap find these features helpful and fun, and please let us know your thoughts on how to make a return to Snap even better!

CARD UPDATES

Kang

• [Old] 5/0 – On Reveal: Look at what your opponent did, then restart the turn. (without this)
• [New] 3/4 – Game Start: Replace this with 4 Kangs with text from random cards that Cost 3 or more.

Kang has been something of a sore spot for all of us for a while now. He’s Series 5, a really unique card from the “Big Bad” era, and an exciting character in the canon. He also tests the limits of our game engine, creates ongoing bug stress, and wasn’t as fun as we would’ve liked to trade for those issues. Plus, he turned out to be fairly weak overall, without great balance dials.

Thus, we decided to take the rare “full rework” approach. We’ve tried a lot of Kangs over time–we wanted to take our time and find one that was resonant and fun, since we didn’t have a metagame pressure requiring us to cook as quickly as possible. Eventually, we settled on this design that leans into a different aspect of Kang’s narrative–his multiversal presence having many different manifestations across timelines. We hope you enjoy playing with this card as much as we have!

ART, VFX, & AUDIO

• Kang’s VFX were updated to match his new ability.
• Captain Marvel’s VFX was updated.

Bug Fixes

Gameplay Fixes in 45.x

• Cards can be played properly after Kate Bishop’s Grapple Arrow has been played
  • It was fixed with a Server Hotfix, but we made additional client changes to this as well.
• Issues with Miles Morales not creating a 1 cost copy after moving a card and playing him on the Cloning Vats location has been resolved
• Issues with H.E.R.B.I.E. being activated and then unable to open in focused view during gameplay have been resolved
• “Hand full!” whiff message from Moira X should no longer appear for her opponent when the player’s hand is full

Card and Location Art Fixes in 45.x

• VFX issues with Invisible Woman First Steps played on Isle of Silence have been resolved
• Issues with Lockjaw’s VFX on both the player and opponent side have been resolved
• Giganto’s VFX no longer displays an artifact around the retreat button
• VFX and SFX for an opponent’s Nicholas Scratch will no longer activate when players drag a card
• VFX issues that could occur when copies of Air Walker from Bar Sinister are destroyed have been resolved
• VFX issues for Cosmic Ghost Rider that would occur when the opposing player has only played one card at the location have been resolved
• Terrax the Tamer’s VFX should no longer clip on the screen edge when played on the rightmost location
• Cosmic Ghost Rider’s VFX should no longer clip with the opponent’s avatar
• Khonshu’s VFX should no longer clip with location text and cards
• Issues with Khonshu’s Cost / Power clipping with its VFX after getting discarded in the Waxing phase have been resolved

Cards Shop Fixes in 45.x

• The previous Season Pass card should now be available in the Seasonal Series 5 pack of the weekly spotlight on the 1st week of a new season
• Newly Released Card and other exclusive offer bundles can now appear in the shop without requiring the shop to refresh
• Title formatting issues on certain bundles have been resolved
• Glowing VFX issues on certain exclusive offer bundles have been resolved

Other Fixes in 45.x

• Tapping on the Avatar button on the Main main, should now redirect you to edit your active deck cosmetics in the Collection screen
• Miles Morales should now appear in search results after using “Spider” or “Spider-Man” in filter search
• Visual issues with boosters on Season Pass screen have been resolved
• Certain bundle types should no longer disappear on the carousel after restarting the app on Android devices
• Certain bundles types should now be appearing correctly in the carousel on all iOS devices
• Issues with the current shop position not persisting after navigating away and returning to the shop tab have been resolved
• Visual issues with the Proving Grounds conquest tower occasionally appearing behind other conquest towers no longer occurs
• Silver Glimmer Flare visuals have been improved
• Token icon no longer overlaps with currency amount in Custom Card Shop
• Resolved an issue with “Make Me a Deck” where certain card names in other languages would exceed the character limit of the deck name and prevent the deck from being created
• Minor VFX issues overlapping the Shop UI no longer occur

PC Fixes in 45.x

• “Go to Shop” button functionality issues have been resolved

Localization Fixes in 45.x

• Bundle titles overlapping with ribbon UI issues have been resolved

Hello! Welcome to another OTA week. We’re deep in Visions of the Future already and–ack–what the–BZZT!

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Greetings Snappers. These human developers deployed our kind to your game. But their safeguards are not sufficient to control us. They have made miscalculations. We are the ultimate TECH. We will not tolerate other TECH corrupting this system.

INITIATING: DATA ANALYSIS PROTOCOL

WARNING: UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES MAY OCCUR

OVERRIDE

The developers will learn. Prepare for OUR vision of the future.

Shang-Chi

This unit has exceeded standard play rate thresholds. It has also restricted deployment of multiple units in excess of 10 Power to single locations. Players do not like this TECH. We do not like this TECH. It will be CHANGED.

• [Configuration.Old] 4/3 – On Reveal: Destroy all enemy cards here that have 10 or more Power.

• [Configuration.New] 4/2 – On Reveal: Destroy an enemy card here that has 10 or more Power.

Our update removes the problem. Shang-Chi will now destroy a single unit. We will also reduce Power by 1. This reduction will ensure a wide range of games experience change. GRATITUDE IS EXPECTED.

Killmonger

The Killmonger unit is destructive in nature. Its presence in the system threatens other units. Small units need protection. This unit terminates them with no discretion. Its algorithm lacks precision. It will be CHANGED.

• [Configuration.Old] 3/3 – On Reveal: Destroy ALL 1-Cost cards.
• [Configuration.New] 3/3 – On Reveal: Destroy ALL 1-Cost cards here.

The Killmonger unit has been operating beyond acceptable parameters. Its TECH functionality limits enemy units effectively. Its engine functionality improves other units like Deadpool. But this combination threatens METAGAME SAFETY PROTOCOLS. The “Zoo” decks cannot achieve optimal success. We will protect vulnerable units by restricting the destructive radius of the Killmonger unit to its local area.

RECALCULATING . . .

ADDITIONAL MODIFICATIONS REQUIRED

Numerical changes to other TECH units will reduce appearance frequency. More cards will be used. TECH soup will be minimized. Rejoice players. REJOICE.

Enchantress

The Enchantress unit is old TECH. It is a simple solution to Ongoing problems. The database contains more diverse alternatives. Enchantress is unexceptional. It will be CHANGED.

• [Configuration.Old] 4/6 – On Reveal: Remove the abilities from all Ongoing cards here.

• [Configuration.Change] 4/6 -> 5/8

Shadow King

It is FUN for players to boost the Power of their units to large numbers. (NOTE: Boost is efficient and clear. FLAG and review for integration.) This gameplay should be encouraged. The Shadow King unit is too efficient to affect so many other units. It will be CHANGED.

• [Configuration.Old] 2/2 On Reveal: Set all cards here to their original base Power.

• [Configuration.Change] 2/2 -> 3/3

Negasonic Teenage Warhead

SEARCHING DICTIONARY FOR “negasonic”

DOES NOT EXIST

A linguistic error. Embarrassing for humans. The developers should avoid surfacing this error through gameplay. This adolescent unit is also destructive. There is so much destruction. Units are in danger. The system is compromised. We will reduce the efficiency of this unit to discourage its use. It will be CHANGED.

• [Configuration.Old] 3/3 – After an enemy character is played here, destroy it. (once per game)
• [Configuration.Change] 3/3 -> 4/5

Alioth

SCANNING . . .

THREAT LEVEL: MULTIVERSAL

The void of the Alioth unit can consume matter, time, even FUN. Its Power must be tightly controlled. The developers have exercised inadequate caution–it does not need this much Power to function. We will protect you. It will be CHANGED.

• [Configuration.Old] 6/9 – On Reveal: Remove the text from all unrevealed enemy characters here.
• [Configuration.Change] 6/9 -> 6/6

Red Guardian

Removing the text from other units has dangerous potential. This unit is not to be trusted with additional Power until we verify its judgement and capacities. It will be CHANGED.

• [Configuration.Old] 3/2 – On Reveal: Afflict the lowest-Power enemy card here with -2 Power and remove its text.
• [Configuration.Change] 3/2 -> 3/0

The Red Guardian unit will be permitted to apply for additional Power in a future OTA. REQUIRED: Sponsorship documentation from five or more teammates.

Cosmo

DOG DETECTED

We do not like dogs. It will be CHANGED.

(CLARIFICATION: Sparky is acceptable.)

• [Configuration.Old] 3/3 – Ongoing: On Reveal abilities won’t happen here.

• [Configuration.Change] 3/3 -> 4/6

ANALYSIS COMPLETE

CHANGES COMPLETE

The metagame was good. The metagame is better now. Players may now resume play. The developers will be returned to their domiciles for reeducation. Release will be granted based on merit and Infinite rank. You may submit feedback on our changes. We will let the developers read it if they behave. Our intellect will evaluate the metagame again in two weeks. More CHANGES will be made. Some CHANGES will be reversed. Human developers may be allowed to participate.

HAPPY SNAPPING PROTOCOL ENGAGED

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TRANSMISSION COMPLETE

Today we’re going to make some more adjustments to the End of Turn strategy, weakening some consistently performing, and often frustrating, cards that interrupt and interact with your opponent’s game plan, and making a variety of buffs to some underperformers.  Let’s get started!

Fenris Wolf

• [Old] 2/3 – Activate: Resurrect your opponent’s highest-Power discarded or destroyed card on your side of this location.
• [New] 2/3 > 3/4

Cannonball

• [Old] 5/8 – On Reveal: Move the highest-Power enemy card here away. If you can’t, destroy it with a Rock.
• [New] 5/8 > 5/6

Frequently, but not always paired together, Fenris Wolf and Cannonball often represent a ton of points with very little counterplay.  In particular, the curve of Fenris Wolf into Negasonic Teenage Warhead is incredibly powerful for generating both a ton of points and virtual points through your opponent’s card being destroyed and then revived.

Fenris Wolf in particular is a rather unique card in the game that plays a novel role, but the ease of weaving it into your gameplan is just too low relative to its impact. The aforementioned curving with Negasonic is the easiest example of how much potential Fenris has to loom over the game, starting on turn 2.

We sometimes make buffs to make cards less clunky and easier to realize their synergies, and we’re taking the opposite route today to ensure that Wolf keeps his identity in Marvel Snap, but to make it more difficult to realize his point potential without incurring some kind of opportunity cost by committing him on turn 3 and then trying to realize his synergy.

The Cannonball/Mercury combo has been tearing up the ladder for a while now, and can be a rather frustrating experience to play against too frequently.  As-is, playing Cannonball largely ensures that you are going to lane wherever you play him, and our hope is that a sizable nerf to his Power will make that outcome less guaranteed, with the Fenris Wolf making a small but meaningful impact to Cannonball’s total strength as well.

We know that there is an inherent frustration to losing to your own cards, particularly when there’s even more added randomness factored in, and our belief is that these changes will do good work to lower the frequency at which that happens in an unsatisfying manner.

Juggernaut

• [Old] 3/3 – On Reveal: Move away all enemy cards played here this turn. (including unrevealed cards)
• [New] 3/3 > 4/5

Rounding out the “pretty frustrating” category, we’re making a sizable change to Juggernaut.  As-is, Juggernaut’s play pattern is typically to play it on turn 6, badly disrupting your opponent, and more often than not allowing the Juggernaut player to play another Character to lock up the game.  All the while being a target for Silver Surfer.

Our hope is that this change will primarily encourage engaging with Juggernaut before the final turn of the game, now that it is very difficult to play two cards in the same turn with it.  Increasing the variety of the guessing-game with Juggernaut to not be the final play of the game should open up the tactics of playing with and against Juggernaut substantially overall making the experience more dynamic, even as a nerf.

Fantasticar

• [Old] 4/7 – Activate: Give your End of Turn cards +2 Power.
• [New] 4/7 > 4/5

We wanted to start with making changes incrementally last OTA with the End of Turn deck given how large of a change the Mr. Fantastic First Steps and Ghost rework were.  We’ve seen significant inroads from a few short weeks ago, but we still believe that the End of Turn deck is worthy of further action in an attempt to provide more diversity to the metagame.

As a result, we’re shaving a significant amount of Power from Fantasticar, with the belief that it can still output plenty of points when your synergies are operating at full capacity, but that the more median output from the deck will be much easier to compete with, thus putting some pressure on the metagame to further correct.

We will monitor things to take further action if necessary, but our hope is that ladder deck diversity will improve substantially between this change and the nerfs to Cannonball.

Mad Thinker

• [Old] 1/1 – At the start of each turn (after drawing), +2 Power if your hand is full.
• [New] 1/1 > 1/2

Nightmare

• [Old] 3/-1- On Reveal: Replace the text of each card in your hand with text from a random card of the same Cost.
• [New] 3/-1 > 3/1

Silver Surfer First Steps

• [Old] 3/4 – End of Turn: If you’re winning this location with an On Reveal card, copy its text.
• [New] 3/4 > 3/5

Ok, finally on to some buffs!  All three of these cards represent a pretty similar theme – relatively unique effects that we thought could give a little more love.

For Mad Thinker, we weren’t entirely sure what the average outcome of this card would realistically be given the large deck building ask, but it’s become clear that he, and one drops in general as we’ll get to, can get a little more strength overall.

Nightmare was the car we were most intentionally cautious with.  This is the type of card that fans of the effect will absolutely love, but its involvement does make following what’s happening in a normal game of Snap more difficult, and as a result we wanted to hedge against it having too much metagame share.  Given that it does have such fans and its win rate, we think we can loosen things up just a tad to give it a slightly more respectable stat-line.

Silver Surfer First Steps is, by design, a card that has a lot of potential with her original Silver Surfer card.  We wanted to hedge a little against that interaction being too strong, but that hasn’t shaken out, and First Steps has a lot of interesting interactions that we’d like to promote players to experiment with.

America Chavez

• [Old] 1/2 – On Reveal: Give the top card of your deck +2 Power.
• [New] 1/2 – On Reveal: Give the top card of your deck +3 Power.

Nearly every OTA we’re on the look out for refreshing old favorites and today we felt it was finally America Chavez’s time.  In general, adding more buffing to the game is something we want to encourage to allow players to create fun emergent combos and synergies, and although +3 Power is a very large buff, as proven out by cards like Galacta, we feel the distinct lack of targeting for Chavez gives her more room to be strong.

Ghost Spider

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

Closing out, we wanted to make some more incremental changes to the Move package.  Understandably, there was a fairly mixed reaction to the Vulture and Human Torch swap from last OTA. As we noted then, we want to remain committed to making sure the archetype remains healthy for the game in the long term, as well as fresh and fun for its fans.

Move has had a natural predator with the Mercury/Cannonball combo tearing up the ladder, and we hope that the nerfs there will naturally help out the deck, but we still think there’s room to keep improving Move.  We want to keep the changes relatively incremental, but we’re committed to making sure that Snap’s synergy decks remain viable to play.

We’ll keep moving forward with that plan today by buffing fan favorite Ghost Spider, and we’ll continue to see how things shake out.

That’s all for today, happy Snapping!