Marvel Snap’s Latest Patch Finally Nerfs its Most Obnoxious Card, Brings Tons of Quality-of-Life Updates

We’ve seen tons of toxic cards in Marvel Snap over the past few months. Leader is the first one that comes to mind, and the meta slowly shaped itself around other cards like Sandman and Aero, but none have been as polarizing as Leech. This 5-cost card removes all abilities from the cards in your opponent’s hand, and it only became even more annoying to play against once it found a home in the Thanos-Lockjaw deck, which allowed players to drop Leech on turn 4 and before.

Second Dinner has just rolled out a major patch that finally knocks Leech down a peg. And not just that, Shuri has also received a slight adjustment, and we should hopefully start to see a healthier meta game in ladder matches now.

Here are the big card changes:

– Shuri:

• [Previous] 4/2 – On Reveal: Double the Power of the next card you play.
• [Update] 4/2 – On Reveal: If you play your next card here, double its Power.

Developer Comments: We considered a number of changes to Shuri, but they all tended to ruin her current decks. Some even theoretically risked making a new monster with different parts–that’s not a great risk to run when balancing a problematically strong card. The change we’re making today may seem small and subtle, but we expect it to be impactful and retain the same flow of play for her existing decks, which is a consistent goal in our balance philosophy. This nerf removes Cosmo’s protective capacity for her target, makes single-card answers like Valkyrie easier to aim, and indirectly buffs lane control elements like Professor X. We’re taking a risk here in that this nerf could leave Shuri still a strength outlier–if so, we’ll react quickly.

– Leech:

• [Previous] 5/3 – On Reveal: Remove the abilities from all cards in your opponent’s hand.
• [Update] 5/3 – At the start of turn 6, remove all abilities from cards in your opponent’s hand.

Developer Comments: It’s never been our goal for Leech to be a heavily-played card, and we understand that’s been a frustration lately. When it’s happening, it usually means a finisher is generically strong against pure Power (like Leech-Leader) and/or a deck can play Leech earlier than turn 5 too often (like Lockjaw-Thanos). We’ve tried in the past to weaken the stronger cards in those decks, but it’s been a balance and design obstacle. Thus, we’ve decided to remove the “early Leech” from the equation. Leech is designed to counter some powerful endgame cards and combinations from a unique angle without any setup, which is important to have around in the event those decks begin to overperform. This change should let him fulfill that role when necessary without ever making him a foundational piece of the metagame.

– Lockjaw:

• [Previous] 3/2 – After you play a card here, swap it with a card in your deck.
• [Update] 3/2 – After you play a card here, swap it with a card in your deck. (once per turn)

Developer Comments: Lockjaw’s a fun and exciting card, but each trigger of this good boy basically draws a card and “generates” up to 6 Energy at random. That’s a lot of variance to have in multiple competitive decks! As we add cards, new and improved ways to sidestep Lockjaw’s risks will also become available. Since we believe the most powerful and frustrating use of Lockjaw is triggering him multiple times in a turn, often with a snap along the way, we’re changing that. Limiting Lockjaw to one swap each turn forces the player to develop their board without letting them sprint ahead or spring a late surprise. This will make Lockjaw simpler to play against and less potent in decks incidentally playing lots of cheap cards, like Thanos.

– America Chavez:

• [Previous] 6/9 – You always draw this card on turn 6, and not before
• [Update] 6/9 – Starts on the bottom of your deck. Draw this on turn 6.

Developer Comments: Previously, if you were about to draw America Chavez, you would just draw your next card instead. This means that over the course of the game, she’s a lot more likely to be the top card of your deck. Thus far this has been largely unimportant outside of Yondu, but it does restrict our ability to print cards that interact with the top of your deck. We expect this update to have little impact on America Chavez’s functionality overall.

– Jubilee:

• [Previous] 4/1 – On Reveal: Add a card from your deck to this location.
• [Update] 4/1 – On Reveal: Add the top card of your deck to this location.

Developer Comments: Some of our players may remember a time where Jubilee had this ability! Back then, Jubilee would often be a 4/10 as she’d pull America Chavez very consistently. We decided at the time to change Jubilee’s effect instead of America Chavez’s, as the former was a much simpler change to communicate. However, we’re looking to design cards that interact with the top of your deck in the future, so we’re bringing this design back too! We expect this update to have little impact on Jubilee for the time being.

– Leader:

• [Previous] 6/7 – On Reveal: Copy all cards your opponent played to the location right of here, but on your side.
• [Update] 6/2 – On Reveal: Copy the enemy card(s) with the highest Power played this turn, but on your side.

Developer Comments: We were clearly too harsh on Leader with his previous nerf, and we’re dismayed that action became a go-to example for how ruinous a nerf can be. Our balance philosophy is to preserve as much playability as we reasonably can when weakening cards, and we didn’t succeed here previously. With this change, we’re aiming to bring his strength back up to a playable spot for a 6-Cost card, but still avoid the oppressive impact his original form had. We have erred on the cautious side with his Power for now because some previous defenses against the original Leader, such as playing weaker cards before a strong one, no longer apply.

Leader has also gotten a slight buff since the last balance change, and while he’s nowhere near as powerful as he used to be, he should at least be a little more playable now.

In addition to that, this patch also brings a bunch of other quality-of-life improvements to Marvel Snap, as listed below:

• Players that reach Infinite Rank will only match against other Infinite Rank players.
• When you tap on a card for more details in the Shop or Collection, the Card Detail screen now features Artist Credits, Card Series Label (ex: Series 3, Series 4, or Series 5), and Variant Rarity Label (ex: Rare, Super Rare or Ultimate).
• When inspecting cards in-game, you can now “flip” them to see the Card Back in full detail. We’ve also updated other areas of viewing Card Backs to show their 3D details.
• After roughly 10 hours of gameplay in a day, players will stop earning Season Pass XP from gameplay for the remainder of the day.
• Collection Level Track has been extended.

While I’m not quite sure how to feel about the Season Pass XP cap implemented here, having Infinite rank players only match up against each other will definitely help to make ladder matches feel more competitive. Previously, Infinite players could snap and throw away cubes without worrying about dropping ranks, which gave an unfair climbing advantage to other players who were still looking to climb.

The addition of artist credits also helps to add more flavor to the cards in Marvel Snap, and most crucially, new Series 5 cards will now be spotlighted in the Token Shop for a week when they release. This will make it so that players can immediately purchase the new card they’ve been waiting for instead of having to wait eight hours for a lucky rotation.

Marvel Snap is now available on PC and mobile devices.