Marvel Snap
Is Marvel Snap Kind Of A Bad Game?
So like many of you I swap cards games now and then.
Hearthstone -> gwent -> shadowverse ->mtg arena -> lor -> snap
Early impressions were good in pool 1 and 2.
I got to vibranium with an equal card pool and equal footing with opponents.
Just maximizing the gambling mechanic by knowing exactly every card the opponent could have because they had the same cards as me.
Then I got to pool 3 and the game changed. Instantly it just became about mashing as much math into the opponents face in the 6 turns alloted and nothing else mattered.
So very quickly I started to miss things like instant speed interactions, fast speed interactions, removal, board cleares, like actual "counter play" beyond location locking, movement and killmonger/chang chi which are the exception not the rule.
So for the first time ever I'm regressing back a game, I'm back maining LOR because I disagree with Mogwai I think Snap kinda sucks.
When Ben Brode took out everything in card games that was "anti fun" he also took everything out of card games that was "pro smart" and that kinda sucks.
So yeah Snap you have a lot of growing up to do in my mind to match the perfection of LOR
Just my 5 cents feel free to fight me in the comments.
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So like many of you I swap cards games now and then.
Hearthstone -> gwent -> shadowverse ->mtg arena -> lor -> snap
Early impressions were good in pool 1 and 2.
I got to vibranium with an equal card pool and equal footing with opponents.
Just maximizing the gambling mechanic by knowing exactly every card the opponent could have because they had the same cards as me.
Then I got to pool 3 and the game changed. Instantly it just became about mashing as much math into the opponents face in the 6 turns alloted and nothing else mattered.
So very quickly I started to miss things like instant speed interactions, fast speed interactions, removal, board cleares, like actual "counter play" beyond location locking, movement and killmonger/chang chi which are the exception not the rule.
So for the first time ever I'm regressing back a game, I'm back maining LOR because I disagree with Mogwai I think Snap kinda sucks.
When Ben Brode took out everything in card games that was "anti fun" he also took everything out of card games that was "pro smart" and that kinda sucks.
So yeah Snap you have a lot of growing up to do in my mind to match the perfection of LOR
Just my 5 cents feel free to fight me in the comments.
Fuk u dude your opinion sucks.
Just kidding lol. There's actually a lot more to expect when you start to dip at pool 3. The game is still at its infancy stages when it comes to deck building. It took people this long to realize that Leech is actually a pretty good card to counter against a sera deck or death wave. There are definitely counterplays in the game, it's just used much differently than LOR.
In LOR or magic, counterplays are like a debate. People exchange answers until one exhausts the other.
In Marvel Snap, it's like rock paper scissors with prior knowledge. You have to know on the spot what you're opponent is playing based on the given information throughout the game.
But at the and of the day, it's all based on preference really. I personally dislike LOR because it's so goddamn exhausting to play. Every game is too long and takes too much thinking for my small brain, I just want a quick dopamine hit but also still strategize at least a little bit.
I eat your fast food spare changes when you sleep.
No it's not a bad game. People having no idea how to properly play it doesn't make it a bad game. Of course you cannot counter each and every deck, but that's not the point. Play what you like - the paychology is much greater than in any other card game.
If i could count the number of games in which the opponent snapped on turns 1-2 then proceeded to concede... i'd be rich
I respectfully disagree that a game is good if it just boils down to Rock, Paper, Scissors. And you are correct that Snap does exactly that.
If I'm playing a turn-6 deck with important text, Leech really does just auto-win against me. If I'm playing a destroy deck and you have priority for the flip, I'm gonna lose when you drop Armor or Cosmo on my destroy location.
Having situations where one player instantly wins over the other before the end of the game is actively bad, not good.
Despite what some people might think, it's actually not a difficult game to play at all. The biggest problem is that most decks have a lot of flex spots in them. Even if you know your opponent's main game plan, you have no idea at all what tech cards they are running, or if they even drew them.
And most crucially of all - even if you correctly guess what your opponent can do to counter you, 9 times out of 10, you STILL CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT except quit the game and start another. I'm holding my Ultron and I guess my opponent has Leech. What can I do? Well, unless I have Cosmo AND I win my guess about which lane he will play Leech on AND I have priority on the flip, then I can do literally nothing about his Leech. And I auto-lose that game. And there are hundreds of other scenarios just like that one. Playing Sera and opponent has Wave? You lose. Playing Odin and opponent has Cosmo? Sucks to be you. Playing Deathwave and opponent has Armor or Cosmo or even Shang-chi - yep, you're screwed. Knowing what your opponent can do to stop you is nearly always useless knowledge, because there is nothing you can do to stop them (except in very niche situations, and most of those require luck to actually work).
At the end of the day, that's exactly what I would call a bad game.
I have to agree with this - I tried it with an open mind and for the first week, was so happy with it and barely touched Hearthstone. I thought it was going to be my new card game. But after a week and getting into pool 3 I became very disillusioned and stopped enjoying this kind of gameplay. Ended up quitting and deleting the game permanently about a month ago and don't have any desire to go back. I even bought the welcome bundle in Snap to have slightly better progression, but it really didn't fix the core gameplay issues that didn't let you feel like decisions matter that much. Sure there's snap/bluffing but as you said here that alone doesn't make for a good game when the gameplay for each individual game is so luck based, or random guessing.
And how is HS any better? Do you like losing to stupid discover chains which you also cannot counter? Or dying on turns 4-5, because again, you cannot counter this unless you play aggro? And the examples can go on. That game is so dumbed down (and also so dumb) that there is no predictibility about it anymore - either you play aggro or you're in for a lot of hurt. And it's been like that since beta - the difference being that all archetypes existed and cancelled each-other, thus making the game balanced (and boring for the twitchy teenagers from nowadays).
By your standards, HS is an incredibly bad game too. The saving grace for Snap is that you can really play whatever you want and so do your opponents. The decks are much smaller, which is a big PLUS. There are just enough disruption cards so that you can have a chance, even though that's not even the point.
The problem is that most players came from HS, which is extremely reactive. And they expected something similar from snap, which was not the case (and the moment it becomes like HS, i quit and f.k Ben Brode). Here, things are much simpler - usually the last 2 turns are swing or consolidation turns. E.g. playing Enchantress on turn 6 can be more impactful against an "ongoing" deck, rather than slapping a big minion - but not always and depends what you want to do - consolidate or disrupt. And this depends on what you did the first 4-5 turns.
Sure, you cannot win by some stupid discover and cheating 20 mana in one turn, but your opponent can't either. And it's better this way. For stupid shit we have HS. I for one am past that, for several years now - too frustrating and annoying. Snap is not like that for me. Locations can win you games you never thought possible. And at least you have the chance to always go up in rating, as opposed to HS.
Only one thing i'd change about snap - make cards with on reveal effects also affect the not-revealed ones from the opponent. A lot of the times going first is a disadvantage, and it doesn't make sense. At least alternate who goes first throughout the turns.
Tldr: having the HS mentality and expectations will never make Snap "feel good" as a game. Other than that, keep at it and L2P - most games there's something new to learn/realize.
I completely agree that disruption is not the point of Snap. But if you stick with it long enough, you will hit a point where everything you try to do gets countered by your opponent. Literally everything, no matter what deck you choose to play.
And as I said a couple months ago on these forums, that's what is going to ruin the game long-term. There is too much disruption. They should have printed extremely limited direct disruption (and I mean maybe only 2 or 3 cards), making the game entirely about whether you can execute your game plan better than your opponent, while also surprising them enough to max out your cubes.
Instead, we have more than enough disruption cards that you can just make a deck entirely out of them alone, and people actually do that successfully. Aero, Doc Oct, Leader, Debrii, Green Goblin and Hobgoblin, Cosmo, Armor, Iceman, Enchantress, Goose, Storm, Juggernaut, Magneto ... and those are just the ones I can think of without checking a list. Most of those cards are supremely un-fun to play against. Given that Snap is supposedly all about having crazy fun, they have clearly very much missed that mark.
Again, just give it long enough, and you'll find yourself getting increasingly frustrated about not being able to just play your cards, because your opponents keep disrupting you.
P.S. - I'm still playing the game a bit, to give it the best possible chance to prove me wrong. And I'm about to uninstall it again. Without any exaggeration at all, my funnest games are literally against bots. And that's just plain sad. I know immediately my opponent is a real person when they start dropping all of the disruption cards and ruining any chance I had of actually playing my cards and having fun. For reference, my current collection level is in the 2700s; so, I've played the game a LOT, and for a much longer period of time than just about anyone else on this site, since I started at the Philippines release in June.
I disagree with the notion that disruption is ruining the game. Without enough of them, the game will just turn solitaire and boils down to whoevers deck is better or whoever draws their cards better.
I understand that disruption is frustrating to play against, but it's definitely a necessary evil. The disruption cards that they printed are for the long run. They printed one for every situation where if it goes unanswered, it will turn the game into solitaire. Cosmo is there to prevent Wong from getting free value. Leech is there to prevent Sera from running away from the game easily. Armor is there to stop Bucky and Death from pretty much getting a free advantage.
Leader is bullcrap though, I can at least agree with you on that. But even then, he's there to check decks that depend on putting huge power out of nowhere at turn 6. Still needs a little power tuning though.
If anything, the most boring games to me are against the bots because if the games are easy then what is there for me to lose? 8 cubes from them feels like nothing. Outplaying another player around their disruption and plays feels absolutely fantastic.
I feel like some of you are just playing with the wrong mindset. Stop thinking about rank. Seriously, you will feel miserable if you do so. You will forget that you're playing the game for fun.
I eat your fast food spare changes when you sleep.
Yeah glad to know it's not just me with decisive feelings about Snap because of all the excellent points made above ^
Talking specifically about the slow pace of LOR its true. When I look back on particularly difficult to play around lists sundisc is a prime example.
Do a bunch of stuff that delays the game and doesn't matter, flip sundisc, win game. It's still very much a valid strategy.
But they also did a lot to speed things up with the Ionia nerfs without that the game would still be unplayable.
So maybe Snap will start to release more interesting archetypes and strategies with time who knows. Give us old school card players something to sink our teeth into.
Until then Mogwais still wrong, sorry Miguel :)
Well, the game is still like less than 5 months old so there most definitely will be more in the future.
Would be a shame if, you know, new cards are locked in a pool where the chance to get them is very low thus removing any aspect of hype for new card releases and having to wait a still unknown window of time in order to get them more reasonably (Potentially months after release) and thus making the card collection feels like absolute shite.
Oh wait.
I eat your fast food spare changes when you sleep.
I don't have that much issue with Enchantress, Cosmo, and Armor, because (as you said) they do serve to keep certain strategies in check. Probably Shang-chi is also fine.
Most of the rest of the disruption cards should never have been printed, IMO. To me, they are just there to prevent me from being able to execute my plan. In addition, disruption cards should have a decent chance of being dead cards (and Armor is a great example of this). It should be at least a bit of a risk to include them in your deck. But many of the disruption cards have a very low inclusion risk - they are just too good against nearly anything your opponent is doing. Both goblins are a fantastic example of this problem.
Two other examples: why would you ever not use Debrii if you're playing a zoo-type strategy? She causes a huge headache for your opponent, and she's neutral or even good for your own deck. And Daredevil? Literally every deck should have him in it. He gives an absurdly unfair advantage. (Incidentally, did you know that Daredevil reveals literally every card the person is playing, even if should be hidden otherwise? Whatever they do, you see it, even if it's behind the Invisible Woman.) I do own him, and I was using him often until I uninstalled the game again yesterday, but it felt super unfair to have such an enormous advantage over my opponent.
Anyways, bottom line - the game concept of Snap is fantastic, but I believe they made fatal errors in some of the cards they printed.
Both goblins actually do have some risk in them. If you play those two against a destroy deck (Which is very common in the current meta), they're just extra noms for Carnage and more reduction for Death. You're essentially spending resources helping their gameplan. They also can be sent back an opposing Odin, or blocked by a Cosmo, or they can just fill the location if they read your deck and come to a conclusion that you have a goblin in your deck.
I never thought Debrii to be that much of a headache though. Yea she's annoying, but not like escape worthy IMO. She's also not a neutral play. The base power for 3 energy cards is 4 power.
Daredevil is an interesting one, because yes you do get a big information advantage over your opponent, but it actually makes your plays a lot more predictable too. If you have daredevil on board, your opponent can prepare for the upcoming 5 energy plays (Prof-x, Gamora, Aero) from you and play around them.
I eat your fast food spare changes when you sleep.
So just played 2 games of marvel snap because I was stuck on a train.
1. Deck number 1 patriot mystique
2 deck number 2 cerebro
Effectively they are the same deck, they both provide aura buffs for units, or are "tribal" decks without any inherent synergies or intrigue beyond buff math because math wins
Even worse this is an evolution of the pool 1 Swarm decks that used blue marvel and Tarzan. But instead of having your big auras cost 5 and 6 they cost 3.
3 is better then 5.
Marvel snap is such an complicated and interesting game!
Yeah, Patriot and Cerebro are pretty much the same deck. The only difference is on the deckbuilding portion of it but playing against them are pretty much almos the same.
I don't take too much offense on it though, every card game has a strategy that is similar to one another.
And also to be fair to Patriot and Cerebro decks you should expect different things from them. When playing against a Patriot deck you should expect an Ultron coming at the final turn. You don't need to expect that in a cerebro deck because they can't run them unless some twisted maniac came up with Cerebro 8.
I eat your fast food spare changes when you sleep.
Fun fact - I had some success running Ultron without Patriot. Just Karzan and Blue Marvel was enough to make him work pretty well.
Dream curve is Patriot -> Karzan -> Blue Marvel -> Ultron. Even better if you can get Invisible Woman on 2 to hide almost everything else.
I personally think Marvel Snap is a great CCG game. They did all the core CCG things right. The main thing - the gameplay - it's addictive, it's fast, and it's complicated at the same time. The collecting aspect - again, it's also very addictive, good CCG should not allow you to gain your cards that easy, because where is the interest then? I quit LoR after two weeks because of how easily I can get good cards and decks - I lost interest in collecting them. That is not what collecting about. The cosmetics of cards, premium card upgrades - it's amazing. Again, I quit LoR also because of how bad the premium card upgrade looks. It's literally the same card. Why should I care about collecting them? But here, it's like collecting inside collecting. Millions of opportunities to show off one same card. Great idea. Great mobile client. It literally feels good to play the game on a smartphone. It's just I can't say what they did not right. I mean, I obviously, like most of us, I think, want at least a draft mode - that would be really amazing. But I'm sure we will get new modes in the future - the game just came out.
P.S. And yeah, why in the world do you want the game to be another Hearthstone in terms of playing your hand. We already have one. Variety is a good thing. This way more people will find the game they like.
P.P.S. I forgot one more advantage compared to other CCGs is that often in this game you have to think for yourself what to include in your deck. This is facilitated by both the randomness of receiving cards and the days of locations. And in our time, few other CCIs can boast of this. This game has a lot of good cards and interactions that can work under certain circumstances. Variety in many different aspects of this game is probably its main advantage for me.
This is true in Pool 1 - you can have success with a lot of variations in the deck builds. It's kinda still true in Pool 2. Not really true at all in Pool 3.
Sure, you can choose to create your own decklist of pool 3 cards, based on what you managed to open so far. (Hint: you can also do this in literally every other CCG ever. And the result is always the same in all of them. Read on.) But your list will always be inferior to the tested and proven lists for Pool 3 (same for whatever other CCG you want to talk about). "Homebrew" decklists are always inferior to the netdeck lists, regardless of game, and SNAP is absolutely, 100% not an exception to this rule once you get to pool 3. You play a highly competitive decklist or you have a losing record over time - there is no middle ground.
I mean, I've been playing with nothing but homebrew Galactus (low tier 2) and hazmat (not even on this tierlist) decks for a month or so now and I'm still able to climb the ladder with them. Knowing when and when not to snap is a important skill that you can generally transfer to all of your decks.
You can climb with a negative winrate in Snap, as long as you get a 8-cube win for every 7 or less 1-cube losses.
My point was that you will lose more than you win ... not that you can't climb at all.
Edit - also, you responded so absurdly fast that you're quoting the original version of my post, which was only up for less than 5 minutes before I edited it to be more precise, as follows:
"You play a highly competitive decklist or you have a losing record over time - there is no middle ground."
Nobody denies that.
My point is that as long as you don't have all the cards, you are forced to think for yourself how to replace them in the metadecks, based on what is in your collection. And the collections are different for everyone - that's the beauty, so primitive netdeking is impossible. Moreover, the collections are different for everyone not only throughout the entire third pool, but even after it, given how difficult it is to get cards from pool 4 and 5. Yes, at that point, there is already little diversity in the collections, but still. There are no such conditions in Hearthstone, or in Legends of Runeterra, or in Gwent, God rest his soul.
You are severely underestimating how long it takes to compile a full collection in Hearthstone, or even to build a specific deck on purpose. [EDIT - many people in HS, especially F2P players, have to build homebrew versions of meta decks because they dont have and cannot get all the cards, just like happens in Snap. The only difference is that Snap NEVER allows you to target a specific card you want, EVER.]
And of course, you are free to have your own preferences of what you want to do in a card game. Apparently you really enjoy a sense of accomplishment from collecting things that are hard to get.
In contrast, most people want to actually play the game with whatever cards they want to use at a given moment. Legends of Runeterra is perfect for that, since you can always target specific cards you want to get, and then you can build a deck with them and actually play it. And by the way, I have to call you out for your comment on LoR being so absurdly easy to get cards. Yes, it's very generous. But even with their generosity, it would still take the better part of a year to have a fully complete collection in LoR, as a F2P player. There are a TON of cards to collect. (When I started it took me about 9 months to fully complete my collection ... and there are a lot more cards now than when I started.)
There are a couple things going on this quote that are misunderstandings.
1) Literally everyone who hits collection level 486 has EXACTLY the same collection at that moment. Every single player, no exceptions. There is zero difference in their cards, just in their variants. Same thing for collection level 222 - every player at collection level 222 has identical collections with every other player at collection level 222.
2) Everyone in pool 3 has all of the pool 1 and pool 2 cards, guaranteed, no exceptions. This means that the only remaining variable is which cards your deck has that are exclusive to pool 3 or higher. This certainly allows for variations, but every deck will still contain a significant number of cards from pools 1 and 2.
3) Pools 4 and 5 are not actually separate pools. The only reason they are mentioned is because they have a different drop chance than pool 3. But you could theoretically get a "pool 5" card immediately after moving into pool 3 - anytime after collection level 486. You don't "move out" of pool 3 at any point, though I suppose you could say you're no longer in pool 3 if you manage to collect every single pool 3 card. But there is no collection level where you move from pool 3 to pool 4.
Okay...
1) 222 and 486. I mean, c'mon... Unless you want to stay a while at these CL, it's just two very short moments in time. That one core card of the meta deck might be the last card in your collection tree in that pool. Or two cards. Or three cards. So you play the whole pool 1 or 2 period with the substitutions you should think of.
2) The period you were saying lasts from 486 to 600. Not that long also. After 600 in pool 3 your opponents will be mostly with full meta decks. And pool 3 cards change the gameplay significantly. It's not fair to say that your deck will still consists of pool 1 and 2 cards. It will be a completely new game for you depending of what few pool 3 cards you will have. And you will think how to accompany them with cards you have in a best possible way. And this period lasts for a several months, until you have all the pool 3 cards.
3) And after that you will have probably 3-5 random cards from pools 4 and 5 and you start post-pool 3 period (doesn't matter how you name this period, I name it pool 4-5, why not, makes sense, you have all the pool 3 cards by now, now you get only 4's and 5's) with that and this period will last even longer than the previous one, I will say that it will last probably forever for 99% of the player base, because it is very hard to have all the cards from current pool 5 in any period of time.
Last two things. The difference is that Snap never allows you to target a specific card you want (well now it kinda allows, partially) is a very big difference. Being able to fully craft in other games a good meta-deck (you could craft good aggro deck pretty fast in any game) is a fundamental difference. It's not just "only" difference. And the second one, I wouldn't say anything about "most people" at all. It's still one person who expresses this point of view.
Peace.
Yeah like even Mogwai has been pretty quiet lately with his uploads and he was this games biggest cheerleader.
The problem is that the game just doesn't have "reactive plays."
Like if your opponent is playing patriot you could counter with enchantress. But that means you have to be playing that exact card.
There is no "removal" no "burst" no "combat phase" there's just tech cards really.
Ok. So, first we should establish that in NO CARD GAME should you expect to be favored in every single game you play. Variance - which cards you draw, which cards your opponent draws, which counter/tech cards you run (yes, tech cards do exist in other card games!) etc., will always have an impact on how the game plays out.
Secondly, let's talk about Snapping. Unlike Hearthstone (and most other CCGs with a ladder), in Snap, a player can make their wins count way more than their losses by knowing when they have the advantage and when they've been beat. No, you're not going to have a 75% winrate, no matter what deck you play - this is true of every card game (unless you're a Youtuber and you play four games with a deck). However, you can climb like you have a 75% winrate by retreating before you lose more than 2 cubes and snapping when you have a good chance of winning the game to increase your payout.
I also don't understand the argument that "homebrew" lists don't work in Snap because "everyone else" is running "top tier meta decks," especially when another argument being made against Snap is the lack of targeted card acquisition. How does everyone else have access to top tier meta decks if they also can't target every card they need for those decks?
Snap is NOT a perfect game, and if it's not the game for you THAT IS TOTALLY FINE. There are plenty of other games out there that can and will be your cup of tea. Don't act like a game is universally bad because you personally don't enjoy playing it, instead you should find a game you do enjoy playing.
In the end, I see this entire thread as a convincing argument that Snap is actually pretty decent, considering that one person is arguing that Snap is bad because it lacks reactive plays and another is arguing that Snap is bad because every deck you could play has an easy counter to it that any deck can run. Penalties offset, replay first post.
I don't want to cure cancer; I want to turn people into dinosaurs.
I agree, it would take several months of steady playing to collect the entire pool 3.
Just to remind you, your claim here has consistently been that Marvel Snap is better than LoR, because it's harder to get all the cards.
Now, to repeat my previous comment: it takes a full year of steady playing to collect complete sets of all of the cards in LoR.
Last I checked, a year is longer than a few months.
Edit - I should clarify that I don't think Snap is actually bad - it's mediocre at best, but with some cool new ideas. What I do think is that it's highly deceptive at the beginning - the player experience through pools 1 and 2 are not even remotely similar to the experience after entering pool 3. Which brings me to the crux of my issue with Snap - it's not nearly as good as the hype makes it out to be, and it definitely did not deserve to win game of the year. If the entire game experience was similar to the pool 1 and 2 experience, the game would be flat-out amazing. But pool 3+ completely ruins it for me. It's like they did a giant bait-and-switch.
I'm glad it made game of the year over any blizzard game. The lesser evil. Like in politics. Lo
I am well aware of how snapping works. My final collection level before uninstalling the game was around 2700-2800.
Defenders of the game keep talking about snapping and how you need to do it properly. But here's the thing - let's assume everyone in the game learns how to snap properly (and based on your comments and those from other people, that shouldn't take all that long, so it's a completely reasonable assumption). What happens at that point?
Scenario 1 - you're in a losing position, so you retreat. Your opponent gets 1 lousy cube. Yay for them sort of? No big loss for you.
Scenario 2 - you're in a winning position, so your opponent retreats. You get 1 lousy cube. Yay? Not really.
Scenario 3 - it's unclear who is winning, or you expect a surprise, but you think you have a chance. You don't snap, and your opponent doesn't either (because they are thinking the same as you are, since they also understand snapping). The game ends and someone gets 2 cubes. Clearly better than 1, but still not that exciting.
Scenario 4 - one of you is confident of winning and snaps. At this point, if the snapper was playing correctly (which we already assumed they are), they will win this game. That means the one who didn't snap will retreat. Snapper gets only 1 cube.
There are several other variations, but I think the point is quite clear by now - if everyone snaps properly, no one ever gets or loses more than 2 cubes, and they generally only get or lose 1.
But you forgot one little thing: pool 3 is not the last pool of cards that you collect. And 99% of the players will never have all the cards in the game at any point. I'm not saying that because of that, Snap is better than LoR of whatever. I'm just saying that it's different, and that's cool.
And btw, collecting in Marvel Snap is not only about cards. Variants and splits are a big part of this game, but this of course if you care.