Marvel Snap’s Latest Patch Tones Down Mr. Negative; Sera & Magik Left Untouched

If you’ve played Marvel Snap at all in the last month or so, you’ll quickly notice that the meta is currently getting dominated by the Negative Sera deck. This decklist combines the scary power of Negative, with Sera’s ability to reduce card costs by one, and Magik’s turn 6 surprise move of extending the game by one more turn.

Second Dinner has just released a new patch to re-balance a whole bunch of cards, and while Mr. Negative has gotten a power hit, Sera and Magik remain safe for now. Here are the changes:

• Arnim Zola: No longer adds copies of a card if his target was not destroyed.
• Baron Mordo: [2/3] On Reveal: Your opponent draws a card. Set its Cost to 6.

Developer Comment: Baron Mordo’s Cost increase tends to be very inconsequential in practice. We’re bumping his effect’s Cost markup to make it more impactful.

• Jessica Jones: [4/4] On Reveal: If you don’t play a card here next turn, +4 Power.

Developer Comment: Jessica Jones’ effect is one that was a bit too stifling to be reliant on turn 6. So we’re looking at a change similar to Rescue, where moving her to be a 4-Cost card will allow her effect to see more play.

• Lady Sif: [2/4] -> [3/4]

Developer Comment: Lady Sif’s effect in combination with many other cards is very strong, especially on a 2-Cost card with high power, so we’re moving her up to 3-Cost.

• Mister Negative: [4/4] -> [4/1]

Developer Comment: The Mister Negative deck is very strong, and tends to have an unhealthy play pattern of skipping your first few turns. We are taking Mister Negative’s Power down to tone the deck down. While this may seem like a big change, the power of the deck is largely in the cards hit by Mister Negative so we don’t forsee this being a massive hit to the deck’s overall power.

• Professor X: Ongoing: Lock down this location. (Cards can’t be added, removed, etc.)

Developer Comment: We’re making Professor X’s text more general, as the expectation for his effect tends to be more aligned with “This location is locked and nothing can happen” rather than “Only these effects in the parentheses are disabled”. Along with this change, Professor X will now prevent cards from switching ownership, like Hobgoblin.

• Spider-Man: [4/2] -> [4/3]

Developer Comment: Spider-Man is a bit weak right now, so we’re giving him an extra Power to help him out.

• Thor: [4/6] -> [3/4]

Developer Comment: Reducing Thor’s Cost should give players more flexibility when they play him, and also allow more time to draw Mjolnir.

5-COST CARD UPDATES

• Abomination: [5/8] -> [5/9]
• Aero: [5/6] -> [5/8]
• Black Bolt: [5/7] -> [5/8]
• Blue Marvel: [6/4] -> [5/3]
• Devil Dinosaur: [4/0] -> [5/3]
• Gamora: [5/7] On Reveal: If your opponent played a card here this turn, +5 Power.
• Klaw: [5/4] Ongoing: The location to the right has +6 Power.
• Red Skull: [5/14] -> [5/15]
• Ronan: [5/0] Ongoing: +3 Power for each card in your opponent’s hand.
• Spider-Woman: [4/4] -> [5/7]

6-COST CARD UPDATES

• Agatha Harkness: [6/13] -> [6/14]
• Hulk: [6/11] -> [6/12]
• Onslaught: [6/6] -> [6/7]
• Spectrum: [6/4] -> [6/5]
• Ultron: [6/8] On Reveal: Create four 1-Power Drones at each other location.

Developer Comment: Many of our 5 and 6-Cost cards don’t quite live up to their lofty Energy Costs. We’d also like to give our 5-Cost cards some more identity, as many of them at the moment have rather simplistic effects compared to many of the other cards in Snap. We’re making a suite of balance changes targeted at the 5 and 6 Cost range to help some cards that are underperforming, and provide some more interesting options at 5 Cost.

Thor has been seeing increased play recently, and his cost reduction should definitely help to make him even more powerful when used in Lockjaw cycle decks with Jane Foster as a follow-up. One of the bigger surprises here was the Lady Sif nerf, as she was one of the mainstays in discard decks, allowing you to reliably discard Apocalypse or your other large minions in a Hela deck on turn 2. With her cost getting bumped up to 3, she may be a little harder to use.

Baron Mordo is arguably the biggest winner of this latest patch in Marvel Snap, as he was previously widely regarded as the weakest card in the entire game. Previously, his ability forced opponents to draw a card and increase the cost by 1. His new ability now bumps that cost up to 6, which could potentially ruin your opponent’s entire game plan depending on the card they drew.

With this patch, several Pool 1/2 cards have gotten a nice buff as well, along with a few key ongoing cards. While Negative Sera decks will likely continue to play a large part in the Marvel Snap meta, we should start seeing more variance in played decks soon.

Marvel Snap is set to launch globally on Oct. 18.