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

FEATURES

Spotlight Variants and Series 3 cards added to the Cards Shop.

• Since the removal of the Spotlight Cache feature, we’ve been trying to find a home for Spotlight variants. Going forward, you will find Spotlight Variants in rotation in the Daily Cards section of Cards Shop alongside Ultimate Variants.
• Additionally, we’ve added individual Series 3 cards alongside Series 4 and Series 5 to the Daily Cards section.

Two new Featured Sets in the Cards Shop are releasing later this season:

• X-Men cards
• Destroy cards

New Conditional Bundles

Season Infinite Bundle

• Only available for players once they hit Infinite in a season.
• Will include 3 Rainbow Fire Card Borders OR 3 Gold Fire Borders. (Random)
• Borders are launching exclusive to this bundle 
• Price: $14.99 USD (will vary based on your region)
• Purchasable once per season

Season Pass Complete Bundles

• Only available for players once they complete Level 50 of the Season Pass.
• Will include a Mystery Variant and Gold at a value price.
• Purchasable once per season & Pricing will vary.

New Card Exclusive Variant

• A featured Variant for the newest Series 5 card of the week
• Only available for players who have acquired the new card within 7 days of its launch
• Price: $9.99 to $19.99 (Higher priced bundles will include an additional Boosters, and the $19.99 sku will also include 1 Premium Mystery Border)
• The exclusive Variant will become widely available in the future. That timeframe has not been determined yet.

Top 5000

• Only available for players who reach Top 5000 in post-infinite, ranked play during a season.
• Will include 4 White Fire Card Borders (Borders are launching exclusive to this bundle)
• Purchasable once per season
• Price: $19.99 USD (will vary based on your region)

Snap Pack Bundles

• These bundles will be available for new or low Collection Level players. They’ll become available for players at the following CL levels: 214 (End of Series 1), 486 (End of Series 2), or Collection Level 1000.
• The bundles are not retroactive for players who are already beyond those milestones.
• Pricing will vary.

Bug Fixes

Gameplay Fixes in 44.x

• Select cards that aren’t “End of Turn” should no longer gain power from Fantasticar’s ability
• Silver Surfer First Step’s ability should no longer repeat twice when played after Wong

Card and Location Art Fixes in 44.x

• When a Herald merges, the VFX should now be center aligned
• Border rarities should now appear correctly in Artist view (no longer just showing pink fallback borders)
• VFX should no longer appear under the retreat button after Frankie Raye is revealed
• Herald card VFX should no longer persist when destroyed by Arnim Zola
• Alex Maleev Khonshu variant reference tokens’ artwork should now appear correctly

• Merlin’s Polymorph skill card should no longer cause overlap issues when in hand
• Jim Hammond Human Torch VFX should no longer play at the start of each turn even when player has no bonus Energy
• Added card should no longer cut off momentarily when RedShift is played on Kamar-Taj
• Location art should no longer change to Ruins temporarily when ‘The Seventh Cosmos’ is triggered
• Sakaar Grand Prix VFX should no longer extend outside of the screen when triggered on location 1 or 3
• The game should no longer crash when the end turn button is pressed before Jeff’s VFX finishes
• Nightmare should now create ghost versions of the card whose ability is being copied on the in-hand cards
• Thanos VFX should now appear correctly after playing all infinity stones
• SFX should no longer play after VFX deactivates if Fantasticar is returned to hand quickly
• The Herald Reference card should now be added in the detailed card view

Cards Shop Fixes in 44.x

• Daily Cards info popup has been updated to display more appropriate information
• Free Series 3 module should no longer appear after purchasing the final Series 3 card in your collection
• Free Card module should no longer appear for Series 3 Complete players

Other Fixes in 44.x

• Bundle card art assets in the Offers shop should no longer disappear
• Ping ring VFX should no longer overlap with the navigation bar while in the shop
• Bundle and variant names should no longer overlap each other in the carousel
• Awkward visuals issues should no longer appear when tapping items in the Cosmetics Shop
• Issues when equipping newly unlocked reactions for the first time should be resolved
• Event Timers should now update appropriately when Game Mode Events end with extended Shop Time remaining
• Download progress bar should now clear appropriately on login screen for players in Japan
• Momentary visual issues should no longer occur after claiming season pass rewards

PC Fixes in 44.x

• Main menu should no longer be intractable when the new season pop up is observed
• Loading Bar should no longer extend off screen
• Event badge buttons SFX should play appropriately

Localization Fixes in 44.x

• Tooltips in the top left corner of the Cards Shop no longer cut off in various languages

Today we’ve got some big shake ups.  We’re taking a big swing to correct metagame imbalances, including a rework to provide more counterplay to “End of Turn” strategies both now and in the future.  We’ll also be making some widescale changes to the “move package” to help future proof it.

We’ve got a lot to get into, so let’s get started!

Mr. Fantastic First Steps

• [Old] 2/2 – End of Turn: Give a card in your hand -1 Cost or +2 Power.
• [Change] 2/2 > 3/4

Surge

• [Old] 2/2 – On Reveal: Give the top card of your deck -1 Cost and +1 Power. After you play it, repeat this ability.
• [Change] 2/2 > 2/1

Over the last few OTAs we’ve been placing an emphasis on slowly trimming some strength from tech cards and specifically trying to whittle down on midrange strategies that emphasize rate cards over having their own synergistic game plan. A common theme of those decks is using Surge and Mr. Fantastic First Steps to super charge said rate cards, providing efficiency and additional points to the extent that they can compete with synergistic decks.  Further, these 2-Cost cards have a ubiquity problem, showing up at a play rate we do not believe is sustainable for the long-term health of the game.

Additionally, there is the “End of Turn” problem.  These decks have performed at a pace that also exceeds what we deem is manageable with just a few stat tweaks, and we’ll be taking a more heavy-handed approach to that below.  When it comes to Mr. Fantastic First Steps specifically though, his position as a ubiquitous rate card for a wide range of strategies as well as a synergy piece for End of Turn decks means he’s contributing twofold to problems that currently exist in the metagame. We don’t believe that a simple Power nerf would be sufficient in the same vein that we’re comfortable trying with Surge.

We debated changing his ability to give a card -1 Cost or +1 Power, but ultimately we felt that would increase the frustration of playing with and against him as the delta between the two results would be too large. As a result we’re moving forward with a more substantial nerf, moving to 3-Cost, which still lets his ability play out in a consistent and satisfying manner.

Similarly to how we’ve started to reevaluate in the past some of the Power we’ve been putting into 4-Cost Cards and tech cards, we’re taking a look at how we evaluate our 2-Cost scalers and we’ll continue to monitor them as the metagame settles down.

Havok

• [Old] 2/0 – End of Turn: You lose 1 Max Energy and this gains +4 Power.
• [New] 2/1 – End of Turn: You lose 1 Max Energy and this gains +3 Power.

Ghost – We are reworking Ghost:

• [Old] 3/5 – Ongoing: Your cards are always revealed last. (Their On Reveal abilities happen last.).
• [New] 3/4 – On Reveal: Remove the abilities from all End of Turn cards here.

The second piece of the puzzle.  Although we made a large change to Mr. Fantastic First Steps, we don’t think that is sufficient action against the End of Turn deck, which is using Invisible Woman First Steps and various means to copy her.

Broadly speaking, that deck is working as intended, and we like that it is a synergy deck that requires you to build up your Rube Goldberg with several interlocking pieces and get a spectacular payout.  There is an opportunity cost to putting all of the End of Turn cards in your deck and the strategy rewards strong planning in a way we love to encourage.  The major issues are that the numbers scale a bit too much, and that there isn’t sufficient counterplay against the strategy the way there is with a mechanic like Ongoing.

To address the first issue, we’re toning down Havok, who will generate the same amount of numbers the first time he triggers, but becomes less powerful over time, particularly when copied.

The second concern is being addressed by a major rework to Ghost.  Ghost hasn’t had much of a role in some time, and is presently overshadowed by many other 3-Cost cards, so we felt comfortable dramatically changing her role.  We also wanted to ensure that the End of Turn tech card was accessible.  We believe that this new card will give players much greater agency to fight back against End of Turn strategies if they choose to do so, yet it is a narrow enough effect that it won’t meaningfully contribute to tech card soup.

While these are big changes to address the metagame, we’ll still be carefully monitoring how the End of Turn deck continues to perform, as well as continue to keep an eye on the midrange decks if these Cost-reduction nerfs don’t move the needle on player incentives.

Ok! That was a lot of talk about cards and strategies that have been tearing up the ladder for the last month, let’s make a large gear shift towards Move.

Vulture

• [Old] 3/3 – When this card moves, +6 Power.
• [New] 1/2 – When this card moves, +3 Power.

Human Torch

• [Old] 1/2 – When this moves, double its Power.
• [Change] 1/2 > 3/3

This is a large curve swap with widespread implications.

At a high level: we didn’t think balancing the entire Move package around Human Torch, more specifically a 1-Cost double-scaler, was feasible in the long term.  This artificially encourages us to keep Move enablers weaker because there is such an efficient payoff, as well as makes it difficult for us to make cards that may naturally find homes in Bounce/Move.

It also put a lot of pressure on Killmonger specifically, and the waxing and waning of that card, and Destroy decks, had cascading effects on the viability of Move, which is a link that we aren’t super comfortable with.

On the more micro level, we think this gives us a lot of freedom to prop up a variety of other cards so that strategy is about the same Power level, or becomes even stronger, but doesn’t have such an outlier effect on one of its specific components that we need to balance the entire archetype around.

To illustrate that, a couple of buffs:

Topaz

• [Old] 3/4 – After you play a card here, move it to the middle location.
• [Change] 3/4 > 3/5

Dr. Strange

• [Old] 2/3 – On Reveal: Move your highest-Power card(s) to this location.
• [Change] 2/3 > 2/4

This is just a first example of how we think we can allocate more numbers spread across Move decks, and hopefully encourage the use of different cards than have been popular in the past, because so much of the point allocation isn’t absorbed by Human Torch.

To be blunt, we don’t have a great sense of how the chips are going to fall here with the entirety of the Move package, but we’re happy to iteratively adjust a lot of different Move cards in an attempt to keep the experience of playing the archetype both fresh and healthy.

White Tiger

• [Old] 5/1 – On Reveal: Add an 8-Power Tiger to another location.
• [Change] 8-Power Tiger > 9-Power Tiger

Terrax

• [Old] 3/3 – On Reveal: For each location, shuffle a Rock into the losing player’s deck.
• [Change] 3/3 > 3/4

And finally, we just have some more opportunities to buff underperformers.  White Tiger is a classic early series Card that’s been weak for some time, and although this is an amplifier to Odin in early collection play, we think the trade off of improving an older beloved card, that also happens to be a 5-Cost, is worth the potential trade off.

Terrax on the other hand is performing poorly on release.  We aimed a little low here, as we often do with cards that can make it hard for the opponent to play the game, but we think his numbers dictate that we can be a little more generous with no repercussions of Darkhawk decks picking up an unreasonably large metagame share.

That’s it for this week, happy Snapping!

Hey folks!  We hope you’ve been enjoying the debut of Grand Arena.  In today’s update, we’re going to be adjusting a few cards that have been underperforming for some time, make some adjustments to Dormammu to allow his quest to be more easily achievable, and put some downward pressure on a few consistent overperformers.

Let’s jump right in.

Sunspot

• [Old] 1/1 – End of Turn: Gain +1 Power for each unspent Energy.
• [Change] 1/1 > 1/0

The “End of Turn” strategy has gotten quite the slew of toys this Season, and its win rate, especially when utilizing High Evolutionary and Fantasticar, has been consistently creeping up.  Sunspot is a historically high point generator in the High Evolutionary deck, and this time is no different with his unique ability as a scaling one Cost that can help to fill locations quickly for First Steps Human Torch and First Steps The Thing as well as getting double benefit from Invisible Woman First Steps.  We appreciate and want those synergies to work well together, but his number output is just a touch high with all the extra goodies he’s gotten this season, so we want to be a little cautious and tone him down.

He should still be impressive when your deck is firing on all cylinders, but hopefully his average impact is just a touch tamer to help ensure that the End of Turn strategy keeps a reasonable win rate.

Gwenpool

• [Old] 4/6 – On Reveal: Pick a random character in your hand 3 times. Give +2 Power each time.
• [Change] 4/6 > 4/5

Long time players probably won’t be surprised by this change.  Gwenpool has consistently been near the top of the charts in play and win rate for a long time, waxing and waning through periods where Galacta and Dr. Doom 2099 usurped her as the strongest 4 Cost.

We’ve been slowly chipping away at the outliers present at 4 Cost cost, as well as adjusting Zabu, and while things have improved considerably since the clear dominance of Galacta, Gwenpool is still left standing as a small outlier for the strong individual cards + tech cards strategy that we want to make sure to keep in relative check.

Her raw numbers output is just extremely high, and that’s ignoring when she gets synergies going with cards like Brood.  She’s an enjoyable card, and we like when she does enable said synergies, but we just want to make sure she’s a little closer to other options when you’re just using her normally.  Similarly with the Zabu change from last OTA, we want to slightly attack that archetype’s sensitivity to the raw number of points it generates.

Dormammu

• [Old] 7/11 – Game Start: Begin a Summoning Ritual. (Add step 1 to hand.)
• [Change] 7/11 > 7/10

We’re adjusting Summoning Ritual 3 as well.

• [Old] 3 Cost – On Reveal: Destroy 2 of your characters here to summon Dormammu. (step 3/3)
• [Change] 3 Cost > 2 Cost.

This is a similar change to one we’ve made a couple times now with cards like Captain Carter and The Ancient One.  When cards ask players to engage in their quests, sometimes it turns out we’ve asked a little too much of players in a game that only lasts 6 turns, so we’re taking some strides to make Dormammu easier to set up and play with.  Reducing the cost of Summoning Ritual 3 should make it substantially easier to weave all the Rituals into your curve as well as generate enough fuel on locations to both get Dormammu into play as well as viably contest another location to play a competitive game.

We put a lot of care into trying to make sure that Dormammu’s sequence was sufficiently difficult to execute due to his nature of functionally starting in your opening hand.  There was a substantial fail case if we made the opportunity cost of executing his Rituals too low because you are not required to draw him, which would create a lot of same-iness from game-to-game if he proved too strong.  That said, we missed the mark a little bit, and with more data to back it up we’re trying to assuage the difficulty in casting him.  This is a fairly risky change, and we acknowledge that, so we’ll see how it goes, we might need to make more creative adjustments to get him into the right spot.  Work that we think is worthwhile given his stature as a character as well as the unique nature of his design.

Black Cat

• [Old] 2/6 – End of Turn: Discard this from your hand.
• [Change] 2/6 > 1/5

The goal of our last change to Black Cat was to, in a bizarre twist, get players to actually spend Energy and put her onto the board.  As it turns out, given the unreliable nature of when she’s drawn and when you’ll be able to spend Energy on her, she still remains largely a card that you leverage with Hela.

We’re taking another shot with it.  This is a pretty aggressive buff as an extremely efficient 1 Cost card, and if this doesn’t prove to be a viable route for her design, we will consider some kind of rework.

Invisible Woman

• [Old] 2/3 – Ongoing: Cards you play here are not revealed until the game ends.
• [Change] 2/3 > 2/4

Domino

• [Old] 2/3 – You always draw this card on turn 2, and not before.
• [Change] 2/3 > 2/4

We’ve largely held the line that 2/3 is the maximum amount of Power for a 2 Cost that doesn’t have an explicit drawback.  That said, given the relative strength of 2 Cost cards in the game at the moment, and the fact that that Invisible Woman and Domino’s text boxes ask something of you, with Domino scripting your game in a specific direction, and Invisible Woman removing your ability to react at locations, we felt this was an appropriate adjustment vs cards that are a little more “plug and play.”

Mobius M. Mobius

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

Many strategies are using cost reduction as an effective means to to augment their gameplan, both in combo decks as well as midrange ones.  This is a normal part of SNAP, but the prominence of these cards has been steadily on the rise, and we want to make some more efforts to make sure there is counterplay to them. Our hope is that increasing Mobius’s Power, and as a result, lowering the opportunity cost to play with him, will give players more reasonable access to a tool to manage some of these Cost reduction card’s raw strength as well as helping to limit some of the difficulty in being able to effectively plan against their outputs from turn-to-turn.

Agony

• [Old] 1/2 – After you play a card here, merge this with it.
• [Change] 1/2 > 1/3

Agony is a card we think is just very fun and it has been underplayed for some time.  The ability to combine it with a variety of other cards and create interesting synergies is something we always want to prop up due to the unique gameplay it encourages and the numbers here have been tame enough for us to take a swing with her.

Blink

• [Old] 5/7 – On Reveal: Swap the last card you played with a card that costs more from your deck.
• [Change] 5/7 – 5/8

We know that these types of strategies are beloved by the community, and as long as they can stay within a reasonable power band, we are happy to prop them up when appropriate.  Especially given that Blink has been underperforming and, in general, 5 Cost cards have been struggling as of late, this seems like a good opportunity to get her a buff.  We’re going to continue to look for opportunities to buff our most exciting higher Cost cards in the game.

That’s it for today folks, we hope you enjoy the tail end of Grand Arena, and we’ll be back soon.  Happy SNAPPING!

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

FEATURES

Card Shop Updates

Featured Sets

• Featured Sets are a new offering in the Card Shop that feature limited-time combinations of individual Cards, Variants, and/or Featured Snap Packs. Want to crack open a Pack of Variants? Sure! A pack of Destroy cards, you got it! A pack of X-Men cards, sure thing bub! You can even purchase a featured single card or Variant directly for Tokens. Remember that you can always view the full contents of any Snap Pack by clicking on it.

Bonus Card Protection

• This adds triggers to a Snap Pack’s “goodie” drop table so that after a certain number of goodie rolls, a bonus base card(s) is guaranteed.
• Bonus Card Protection only exists for base cards granted by goodie rolls, and does not exist for any other reward types in a pack’s goodie drop table.
• Each individual goodie roll counts towards triggering an eventual guaranteed bonus card.

Snap Pack Booster Matching

• When players open a Snap Pack, if they earn Boosters from their “goodie rolls”, those Boosters will match the new card. This will help kickstart players’ Character Mastery journey.

Improved Red Pips

• The red pips in the Card Shop should be clearable and working more as expected!

GAMEPLAY

Grand Arena: Coming July 24th – Aug 7th

This brand new limited time game mode lets players choose one of eight Champions to bring into the Grand Arena to battle for Glory. Players can either use the Champion’s preconstructed deck, whether they own the cards or not, or build their own. Mole Man and Mad Thinker will be available as rewards during the event!

Each Champion card starts in your hand, and brings with it a brand new skill card to synergize with its core strategy. Invoke the Council of Reeds with Mr Fantastic or show up for Clobberin’ Time with The Thing First Steps.

This game mode will be available between July 24th and August 7th, with the shop open until August 9th.

Stay tuned for more details as we get closer to the event.

Bug Fixes

Gameplay Fixes in 43.x

• An issue that would occasionally cause drawn cards to overlap with and obscure the rightmost card of your hand should be resolved
• An edge case where a face down card could be momentarily visible when the card was moved should be resolved

Card and Location Art Fixes in 43.x

• Nicholas Scratch’s VFX should no longer throw an exception that could impact performance
• Morph’s VFX should no longer cause a client crash and be re-enabled
• Several Skill cards that were displaying too narrow should now appropriately fill the Skill card UI
• Esme Cuckoo’s Pocket Variant should no longer display awkwardly with different splits and finishes
• Khonshu’s VFX should no longer have a delay when played with Silver Samurai
• Copycat’s VFX should be once again playing correctly
• Punisher’s VFX should no longer have strange artifacts displaying under certain circumstances
• The Ancient One’s Tao Mandala skill should no longer have a visual artifact around the outer edge of the skill card UI
• Morgan Le Fay’s VFX should no longer have a delay when a card returning to hand triggers it
• War Machine’s VFX should no longer display at destroyed locations
• Arishem’s intro VFX should no longer clip slightly into the background
• Nocturne should no longer go partially off screen on the opponent’s side of the board when moving

Cards Shop Fixes in 43.x

• The red pip displayed on top of cards viewed in the card’s pack’s pool view should be removed once viewed in detail view
• The token and gold currency widgets in the Cards Shop should navigate to the appropriate areas of the shop
• A bug that was causing claimed free tokens in the Cards Shop to not update their state correctly should be resolved and an error should no longer be thrown
• Cards should no longer rearrange themselves vertically before snapping back into place when viewed within a card pack’s pool view
• The “Hold to Confirm” text should no longer slightly overlap the purchase button for card packs

Other Fixes in 43.x

• Background music should properly play in-game now
• A loading spinner should no longer display behind card assets during certain upgrade flows
• The red pip for when a Gold Pass daily claim is available should be functional again

PC Fixes in 43.x

• The hitboxes of various buttons and UI elements on the main screen and carousel should better align with the visuals
• A duplicate of Nova’s VFX should no longer be briefly observed behind the retreat button
• Strange Supreme’s VFX should no longer get partially cut off along the top of the screen

Mac Fixes in 43.x

• A crash related to Gyro and Haptics support through the iPad OS emulation layer of MacOS should no longer occur

Localization Fixes in 43.x

• A string related to Reward Claims in French should no longer have an errant space that was causing an exception that was negatively impacting performance
• Seasonal Spotlight titles in the Cards Shop should no longer extend beyond the UI in Japanese
• The Mastery label when viewing a card in the Collection should no longer extend beyond the bounds of the UI in Thai
• The title of the New X-Men card back should be properly localized in all languages

Hey folks! We’ve got Grand Arena right around the corner, releasing a week from today, and we’re very excited to see what everyone thinks.  For today though, we’ll be making some small downward adjustments to some top meta contenders, as well as making some tweaks to a variety of cards that have fallen out of favor, several of which will be featured in the preconstructed decks that will be available for everyone to play on Grand Arena.  Let’s jump right in!

Zabu

• [Old] 1/2 – On Reveal: Give each 4-Cost card in your deck -1 Cost.
• [Change] 1/2 > 1/1

Long time players might not be surprised to see Zabu warrant further adjustment.  He continues to be a tricky card to balance, and today we’ll be making a small nerf to his Power.  This is somewhat of a continuation of the discussion of last OTA – we’re keeping an eye on the presence of how many midrange decks are utilizing a boatload of tech cards, and the play rate of cards like Shang Chi, Enchantress, and others continues to be quite high.

We understand the importance of and want there to be ample counterplay in our game, but simultaneously we would prefer that the premier strategies of Marvel Snap be high synergy driven decks.  Zabu is a critical component of these midrange decks, and overloading your deck with the aforementioned tech cards as well as rate options like Galacta, Gwenpool, and so on gives you a lot of opportunities to play two 4 Cost cards on the final turn, usually at least one of which is a powerful answer to your opponent’s strategy.

These decks aren’t without weaknesses though, and despite their ability to play a large amount of rate cards, they still aren’t typically as strong at generating raw points as their synergistic counterparts if they can’t successfully interact with their opponent.  This might appear like a small nerf, but we believe that these midrange decks are especially sensitive to Power changes given their more limited ability to generate points.

Given that, we’re making this change to Zabu for now, with the expectation that we may need to make greater changes if these midrange and control decks aren’t as sensitive to the number tweaks as we would like.  Again, we want to stress that counterplay is important, but it is our goal to ensure that players have agency to execute their game plans relatively frequently.

Bullseye

• [Old] 3/3 – Activate: Discard all cards that cost 1 or less from your hand. Afflict that many different enemy cards with -2 Power.
• [Change] 3/3 > 3/2

The popularity and success of Discard has waxed and waned over the last few months, but one thing has remained consistent – the strongest versions of the decks feature Bullseye, and the frequency at which Bullseye shows up is something we’re sensitive to given his interaction with Swarm.

There are a few issues here – most notably that the Swarm/Bullseye interaction can be difficult to track given how much game actions it generates, frequently creating a fast-forward segment.  The tradeoffs here between making the game slow down considerably and not giving players a strong understanding of what took place during the turn.

While we could make an adjustment to Swarm, we haven’t found a satisfying rework that would keep that card’s identity intact, and ultimately there is a cool and unique element to comboing off with Bullseye, it’s just something that we don’t want to happen too frequently.

Finally, Bullseye is just really strong, so while there are a variety of other intangibles taking place, the best solution we have for now is simply to weaken him a little bit, to attack his win rate, make sure that the fast-forward action isn’t too prevalent, and give more room for other Discard cards to enter the meta-game.

We’ll continue to look for opportunities to improve the overall experience with these interactions while trying to retain as much of the fantasy and gameplay that draws players to these strategies.

Negasonic Teenage Warhead

• [Old] 3/3 – After an enemy card is played here, destroy it. (once per game)
• [New] After an enemy character is played here, destroy it. (once per game)

We’re doing a couple of adjustments to cards today based on the increased prevalence of skills in our game.  If skills had existed from the beginning, it would have likely influenced several designs that call out Cards, and we’re continuing to audit these interactions to make sure we have the most functional and fun game pieces possible.

Negasonic is extremely exploitable as skills continue to enter the game at a more rapid pace, and we want to make sure that her role remains in the game as a satisfying way to control a location.

Mirage

• [Old] 2/2 – On Reveal: Copy the card that costs the least from your opponent’s hand into your hand. Give it +2 Power.
• [New] 2/3 – On Reveal: Copy the character that costs the least from your opponent’s hand into your hand. Give it +2 Power

Similarly here, Mirage will no longer be able to target a Skill in your opponent’s hand, which naturally eliminates her ability to give it Power, creating a very unsatisfying experience.

Simultaneously, we’re buffing Mirage.  We believe that this is both a fun amount of variance to prop up in the game, and it gives more options for various synergies like Victoria Hand.

The Thing

• [Old] 4/6
• [Change] 4/6 > 4/7

Hey, it’s the F4 season, so why not give the original a little love?  This is an acknowledgement that our vanilla characters have long fallen behind, but more so is a buff to High Evolutionary.  The Thing has fallen behind as an option in those decks, and we’ll keep reevaluating starter cards over time as we’ve discussed.

Marvel Boy

• [Old] 3/1 – End of turn: Give 3 of your 1-Cost cards +1 Power.
• [Change] 3/1 > 3/2

It’s a semi-frequent topic that we want to make sure our classic strategies remain as viable as possible, so it’s time for another Zoo buff.  Marvel Boy is one of the most fun and unique cards in that deck, with the potential to prop up other strategies as well, so we’ll be improving it for now.  We’ve got our eye on some larger adjustments we can make in the future to help Zoo out as well.

Jennifer Kale

• [Old] 2/2 – Activate: Next turn, you get +1 Energy.
• [Change] 2/2 > 2/3

Jennifer Kale has simply been the weakest of the Energy generation options since she came out, by a sizable margin.  Hopefully this gets her into a more playable state by itself, but we are also monitoring what we can do to improve the strength of 5 Cost cards generally speaking, a movement that will directly affect her.  The Zabu change today starts to move the needle in that direction, but it will continue to be top of mind for us.

Green Goblin

• [Old] 3/-3 – On Reveal: Switch sides.
• [Change] 3/-3 > 3/-4

Green Goblin has fallen largely out of favor, given that “3 Power” is just not a particularly strong rate for 3 Energy anymore.  We’re always a little nervous about making a change that directly could buff Clog decks, but we suspect there’s very little risk of ruin here, and we always want to make sure that players with a variety of interests can successfully play the decks they enjoy if they’re willing to work for it.

Doctor Doom 2099

• [Old] 4/3 End of Turn: Add a DoomBot 2099 to a random location if you played (exactly) 1 card.
• [Change] 4/3 > 4/4

Speaking of changes we’re a little nervous about, we’ll be making a small buff to Doctor Doom 2099.  This is a card we’ve had to nerf multiple times in the past to dethrone it from being one of the strongest rate 4 Cost cards in the game, but as a result its play rate has heavily declined to the point of barely showing up.  It’s the Fantastic Four Season, and Doctor Doom is also featured in the Grand Arena, so we wanted to show his 2099 side a little love. That said, we’re being cautious, particularly with the release of First Steps Invisible Woman in a couple of weeks, who is an excellent synergy piece with Doom as well as the rest of the F4 team.

That’s all for today, we hope you enjoy the unveiling of the Grand Arena, and happy Snapping!

This week we’ll be making large adjustments to Thanos, Galacta, and Lockjaw with a smattering of other smaller changes.

Overall, the SNAP metagame is quite healthy, but there has been a large presence of strong generic decks that incorporate a variety of tech cards that wax and wane for some time now.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, we want there to be counterplay for strategies when something rises up to be more dominant, but the ability for decks to not invest in synergistic pieces to execute their own cohesive gameplan goes against some of our core philosophy for making SNAP.  We want players, for the most part, to be able to regularly execute their gameplan unless their opponent is paying a reasonable cost to try to counter a specific metagame.

Thanos is the largest contributor by far to this, so we’ll be making adjustments for the long term health of the game, even if it creates some bumps in the road for the short term.  Let’s go ahead and look at all the changes for Thanos and the Infinity Stones.

Thanos

• [Old] 6/12 – Game Start: Draw Thanos and shuffle the six Infinity Stones into your deck.
• [New] 6/12 – Game Start: Shuffle the six Infinity Stones into your deck.

Space Stone

• [Old] 1/2 – On Reveal: Draw a card. Ongoing: Nothing can stop you from playing or moving Thanos.
• [New] 1/3 – On Reveal: Draw Thanos. Ongoing: Nothing can stop you from playing Thanos.

Time Stone

• [Old] 1/1 – On Reveal: Give Thanos -1 Cost.
• [New] 1/1 – On Reveal: Draw a card. Give Thanos -1 Cost.

Reality Stone

• [Old] 1/1 On Reveal: Replace this location with a new one.
• [Changes] 1/1 > 1/2

Although we want to encourage Thanos getting into play, having him start in your opening hand is a high floor of strength that we don’t believe will be sustainable in the long term.  This gives control decks a guaranteed late-game character that is comparable to other strategies with plenty of real estate in their deck to incorporate those aforementioned tech cards.

So we’re taking some steps to rebalance Thanos around remaining in your deck at the start of the game.  It’s still a critical component of Thanos’s core fantasy that you can both find him and assemble all six of his stones, so to that end we’re changing Space Stone to find Thanos specifically, so that you can still properly work towards the amplified Power Stone in many of your games.

We are also reverting our Time Stone change, as it is no longer clearly the strongest stone when cost reducing Thanos isn’t guaranteed to generate value anymore.

Finally, we’re adding some additional Power to the stones to further compensate.  This is a large scale set of changes, and we’ll keep an eye on how this lands, but ultimately our goal is that Thanos’s core play pattern is more centered on playing out many or all of his Stones and investing cards into mitigating the potential downside of filling out so much of your location space. We want players to pay a larger cost for filling their deck full of tech cards to widely promote as much synergistic gameplay in SNAP as possible.

Galacta

• [Old] 4/5 – Each turn, the first card you play at another location reveals with +3 Power.
• [New] 4/6 – Each turn, the first card you play another location reveals with +2 Power.

Galacta has sustained high play and win numbers since her release, and we’ve tried to hold off on changing how impactful her ability is due to +3 Power breakpoint being one of the more unique aspects of the card in SNAP’s ecosystem, but we think it is finally time to adjust her to only grant +2 Power.

Some of the motivation here is that she has been an outlier for some time, but we’ve also found internally that she has been blocking to creating synergistic Power scaling cards, given that she has such a large impact on any card that engages with the game in that manner (like Brood or Sebastian Shaw).  We would rather live in a world where we can make a variety of exciting cards without fearing having to balance around Galacta specifically, and we suspect that this change will still keep her relevant, just at play rate that will give more synergistic 4 Energy cards room to shine.

Red Guardian

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

Here’s a more direct response to the tech card “issue.”  Again, despite a lot of talk and nerfs through the lens of trying to reduce the power and presence of tech cards slightly, we still want to make it clear that we believe and acknowledge that these types of cards are important for allowing a healthy metagame that churns.  We just think their impact is a touch too high, and Red Guardian is exemplary of this.

Given that Red Guardian is a functional 3/5 at base that is effective against almost every strategy while often skewing much higher in effective Power production when he targets an opposing scaler, we’re finding that Red Guardian is simply too efficient given its flexibility.

We want the average 3 Energy card played to be more clearly stronger than Red Guardian except when he hits an important card in a matchup.

Next up, some more quick hits number changes.

Misery

• [Old] 4/8 – On Reveal: Repeat the On Reveal abilities of your other cards here, then destroy them.
• [Changes] 4/8 > 4/9

Absorbing Man

• [Old] 4/4 – On Reveal: If the last card you played has an On Reveal, copy its text. (if able)
• [Changes] 4/4 > 4/5

With the competition easing up at 4 Energy, we wanted to give a leg up on some synergy cards that are well loved.  Misery and Absorbing Man can engage in a variety of fun shenanigans, but have had middling numbers recently and we’d like to prop them up some more given that they ask you to pursue novel interactions and make exciting decks.

Wolfsbane

• [Old] 3/1 – On Reveal: +2 Power for each other card you have here.
• [Changes] 3/1 > 3/2

Rhino

• [Old] 3/6 – On Reveal: Add a Rock to your side of this location.
• [Changes] 3/6 > 2/5

Wolfsbane and Rhino are early Series cards that have struggled for a long time.  We did rework Rhino recently, but it turned out that we were a little conservative.  We’re taking a bigger swing here, largely because we think the pattern he encourages – turning a drawback into a synergy through creative deckbuilding, is really fun and we’d like to give cards like that a chance to shine.  While it’s true that we don’t think the Wolfsbane buff here is going to be blowing the doors off at the top of Infinite, we always want to make the early collector level experience a little smoother whenever we can as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of the new player metagame becoming unstable, and this is just another opportunity to keep tweaking that.

The Ancient One

• 3/5 – On Reveal: Add Tao Mandala to your hand.

Tao Mandala

• [Old] 3 – On Reveal: Copy the text of one of your Ongoing cards here onto your other characters here..
• [Changes] 3 > 2

This change isn’t purely fueled by win rate, although The Ancient One is underperforming, but similarly to our motivation for changing Captain Carter several OTA’s ago, playing with the Tao Mandala is just a little clunky.  Naturally, this will make the card stronger, but we also just hope that this will unlock interactions and increase the ease of play for sequencing your cards and executing on your synergies.  Ongoing decks have been considerable players recently, so we were hesitant to make a huge change before receiving more data, but we’ll keep making incremental changes as necessary.

Ironheart

• [Old] 3/0 – On Reveal: Give 3 of your other cards +2 Power.
• [New] 3/0 – On Reveal: Give 2 of your other cards +3 Power.

Speaking of early Series cards that we think are fun, we’re ever so slightly reworking Ironheart.  Savvy readers might gawk at saying that Galacta was blocking us building in more interesting Power synergies granting +3 Power while simultaneously pushing out this change, but the ask here in terms of both sequencing your cards and the potential for randomness means that we are more comfortable trying this swing vs Galacta’s guaranteed value.

Our hope here is that Ironheart can land in a more satisfying place given that you can more easily play her on curve and extract full value, which was previously very difficult to do without playing specific cards, as well as try to set up tricky combinations.

Professor X

• [Old] 5/2- Ongoing: Moving is the only way to add or remove a card from here.
• [New] 5/2 – Ongoing: Moving is the only way to add or remove a character from here.

This is a pretty small tweak, but the goal here is to give the game a little more flexibility with how to interact with this classic card and we’re going to continue to be on the lookout to tweak our cards to work with Skills as intuitively as possible.  For now, maybe Polymorph can provide some surprises in final turn scenarios, but as we introduce more Skill cards to the game, this subtle tweak might open up some more exciting possibilities for using Professor X!

Lockjaw

• [Old] 4/5 – After you play a card here, swap it with a card in your deck.
• [Changes] 2/2 – Activate: After you play your next card, swap it with a card in your deck.

Arguably our largest swing of the OTA, this is a pretty big change to Lockjaw.  Activate has given us the means to take more focused attempts at high synergy interactions that are naturally gated by their one time use.  Given Lockjaw’s current presence in the metagame, his textbox seemed like a great opportunity to try something new.

This might be a larger buff than we are expecting, but we also suspect that this will get the creative juices flowing and encourage some cool new decks, so we’re excited to see what players cook up.

That’s all for today, Happy Snapping!