Balance Updates: October 16, 2025

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!