Balance Updates: August 14, 2025

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!