Marvel Snap Patch Reworks Spider-Man & Clamps Down on Lockdown Decks

The Marvel Snap meta is in a pretty healthy place right now, but there’s no denying that control and lockdown decks have been running rampant for the past couple weeks. This week, Second Dinner pushed out a major patch for the game, and it comes with a huge change to Spider-Man, who’s been one of the biggest key pieces in the lockdown archetype.

Here are all the card balance updates and changes for the week:

CARD UPDATES

• Cable
• [Old] 2/2 – On Reveal: Put the bottom card of your opponent’s deck into your hand.
• [New] 2/2 – On Reveal: Draw the top card of your opponent’s deck.

Developer Note: The change to America Chavez starting on the bottom of the deck was predictably damaging to Cable, as drawing your opponent’s Chavez was usually good for them, not you. We didn’t value that too highly because Cable’s play rate was already low, but that was a mistake on our part. Conquest has shown that players really enjoy playing with cards that can give them an information advantage against their opponents. This is a simple enough change, just going to the other end of the deck, but we’ve also gone ahead and updated the template to reflect the action Cable is actually taking, which is drawing a card.

• Magik
• [Old] 3/2 – You can’t play this on turn 6. On Reveal: Change this location to ‘Limbo’.
• [New] 3/2 – On Reveal: Replace this location with ‘Limbo’. Doesn’t work after turn 5.

Developer Note: Our OTA on 7/20 mentioned this was coming, and here it is! This isn’t a large change to Magik, mostly just making her a legal card to play on turn 6. However, it’s worth noting that the VFX behavior has changed a little bit. She used to light up with fire on the last turn you could play her, but now that corona will indicate whether or not you’ll be able to create Limbo based on the turn count.

• Mister Negative
• [Old] 4/-1 – On Reveal: Swap the Power and Cost of all cards in your deck.
• [New] Gameplay Change: Caps Costs at a maximum of 6. (no text change)

Developer Note: This is a minor change to improve players’ quality of life by adding consistency to in-game interactions. The Peak location has this cap, which it needs because otherwise many cards would become literally impossible to play when the location appears. Mister Negative doesn’t expressly need it, because his decks are built to minimize Power in-deck. However, it’s intuitive for that location and this card to function the same, so we’re lining them up. Plus, it makes Jane Foster shells a little less risky.

• Rogue
• [Old] 3/2 – On Reveal: Steal an Ongoing ability from a random enemy card at this location.
• [New] Gameplay Change: Now triggers On Reveals if the copied Ongoing card had one. (no text change)

Developer Note: As mentioned when we changed Mystique in the previous patch, Rogue is receiving an update to bring players’ expectation around copying card text via On Reveal in line with the outcome. Moving forward, we expect cards that copy text when they Reveal to consistently trigger the On Reveals of cards they copy.

• Spider-Man
• [Old] 5/4 – On Reveal: Your opponent can’t play cards at this location next turn.
• [New] 3/5 – On Reveal: Move to another location and pull an enemy card from here to there.

Developer Note: All right, this is a big one. Let’s start on the mechanical angle: the previous Spider-Man incarnation was a polarizing card. It prevented your opponent from playing cards at a location, a frustrating experience. It was most popular following Wave into Galactus or in “lockdown” decks, which are both decks that use combinations of cards to reduce the total play space of the game for your opponent. We want some of that–the game needs a variety of strategies. But we don’t want those decks or even one of those cards to be the best in the game. Our best cards should be cool and awesome.

But you know who’s cool and awesome? Spider-Man!

There’s an irreconcilable dissonance in having one of the most popular characters in the Marvel canon attached to an effect we don’t want to be popular. Discovering Spider-Man in our game should be a great experience. Since launch, we’ve also added more Spider-Verse to the game and seen players enjoy the theme of movement for those cards. So we’re making a change and bringing Peter in line with the rest with a new ability. Will we return the old ability to the game on a new card? Maybe, but for now let’s go with no–it’s not been adding much fun.

We don’t take this kind of rework to a card lightly, so we’re happy to hear your feedback through all the usual channels. We don’t intend to start suddenly remaking tons of cards, but understanding your feelings may help us better understand the appropriate thresholds for this action in the future.

• “Evolved” The Thing
• [Old] 4/6 – On Reveal: Afflict a random enemy card here with -1 Power. Repeat this twice more
• [New] 4/6 – On Reveal: Afflict 3 random enemy cards here with -1 Power.

Developer Note: High Evolutionary has mostly landed in a healthy spot since we made the tweaks to Hulk and Wasp during the last patch, but this is one more small twist of the dial. Cyclops has been really strong still, but we like keeping him strong in High Evolutionary shells based on ensuring a character with his popularity has a solid and satisfying home. The Thing has actually outperformed Scott a bit lately, and this change also makes the afflict curve from Wasp into Cyclops into Thing more elegant, distributing -1 Power to one more card at each stop. It’s a slight buff to Abomination, but a slight nerf to The Thing’s strength as a single card attacking a location.

Spider-Man getting a change like this puts him more in line with the rest of the Spider-Verse characters in Marvel Snap. He’s become a new movement player, which should help make that archetype feel a lot more versatile now. The movement archetype has been languishing in Marvel Snap for ages, and while it’s seen some mild improvements over the past couple months, it’s still difficult to call it a truly competitive deck.

In addition to that, Cable is also finally seeing some love, especially with the release of last week’s Mirage, who’s basically a souped up version of Cable.

Outside of the card updates, Marvel Snap also now allows you to upgrade cards much quicker, and you can also spend Gold to upgrade them if you don’t have enough Boosters.

Marvel Snap is now available on PC and mobile devices.