The latest patch for MARVEL SNAP is now live, bringing with it some balance changes (including a nerf to a combo that's been popular since since beta), changes to Ranked Mode, and update to card acquisition, and a whole lot more!

Patch Notes - May 16, 2023

Quote From MARVEL SNAP

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS

Kitty Pryde Returns

Kitty Pryde returns to MARVEL SNAP with a brand new ability. We will grant Kitty Pryde base card to ALL players. For new accounts created after today’s patch, Kitty Pryde will be available in Series 5.

New Feature: Deck Cosmetics Customization

Cosmetic customizations by deck (card back, title, avatar) Avatars and Titles can now be applied to each deck separately!

Please Note: The first time you login this patch, your active deck will be changed to the first deck in your list. We apologize for this inconvenience!

Series Drop Updates: Some cards have dropped to a lower series!
Cards dropping from Series 5 to Series 4:

Master Mold

Negasonic

Nimrod

Cards dropping from Series 4 to Series 3:

Sentry
Silver Surfer
Dazzler
Shadow King
Sauron
Ghost

Cards staying in Series 4:

Darkhawk
Knull

GENERAL UPDATES

Ranked Mode

  • The number of Cubes required to Rank Up have decreased from 10 Cubes to 7 Cubes.
  • The number of Bonus Ranks gained when Tiering up has been reduced from 5 Ranks to 3 Ranks. (Example: When ranking up from rank 29, a player will go to Rank 33 instead of Rank 35.)
    • Developer Note: We’re continuing to make adjustments to Ranked Mode that will improve the overall experience for players. The changes coming with this patch feature some adjustments to the matchmaking algorithm and updates to the number of Cubes/Ranks while progressing through the season. There are more changes planned for future patches!
  • When purchasing an item from the shop, you must now Press and Hold the button to confirm your purchase. This should help reduce/remove any accidental purchases!
  • Added Series 1 and Series 2 labels to cards from those series

AUDIO

Voice Over Updates

  • Indonesian VO mixed & mastered
  • Thanos VO added for Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese & Korean

General Updates

  • Fixed bug which would over trigger card flare SFX in collection screen and in-game


Balance Updates
This is a light week relative to the excitement of recent patches. The metagame as April ended featured a diverse metagame with healthy win rates and cube gain rates, and only a couple small popularity outliers. We’ll have more news for you soon on the future of our OTA balance patches, but today is mostly just a couple card reworks.

CARD UPDATES

Kitty Pryde - Released with new design!
[Old] 1/0 - You can return this to your hand to gain +2 Power.
[New] 1/0 - When this returns to your hand, +2 Power. Returns at the start of each turn.
As we previously announced, Kitty Pryde will be returning to the game this week with her new ability. She’ll be Series 5 and awarded to all active accounts today.

Crystal
[Old] 4/4 - On Reveal: If this is at the middle location, shuffle your hand into your deck and draw 3 cards.
[New] 4/4 - On Reveal: Each player draws a card.
Crystal has been one of a handful of cards seeing incredibly low play and win rates for quite some time now, and an obvious buff candidate. We debated maintaining the direction of the current effect by removing the middle restriction, increasing the cards drawn, etc. But the tricky thing is that we don’t want an effect like Crystal’s to be strong. SNAP decks are only 12 cards and we don’t want those cards to play out the same every time, so we’re very careful about letting players draw cards. This rework aimed to make a simple, appropriate Crystal that could be fun alongside a variety of cards.

Wave
[Old] 3/3 - On Reveal: Next turn, cards in both players' hands cost 4.
[New] 3/3 - On Reveal: All cards cost 4 until the end of next turn.
Wave’s cost reduction occurs after other effects that reduce card costs.
In addition to a text update that clarifies when Wave’s effect begins, we’ve also made a rather large adjustment “under the hood.” Wave will now begin to apply after effects that reduce card costs, rather than before. That means She-Hulk, Death, etc. will always cost 4 while Wave is in effect. We don’t take lightly that this change kills a few decks, but Wave has been far too constraining on our ability to use cost reduction as a synergy reward in future designs. Leaning on Wave is just always better than dedicating your deck to the actual synergy–we’ve seen that with Death since both cards went live, and we’ll continue seeing it without this action.

Death
[Old] 9/12 - Costs 1 less for each card destroyed this game.
[New] 8/12 - Costs 1 less for each card destroyed this game.
As Death’s current performance is essentially dependent on Wave and Galactus, we wanted to improve her playability in other decks now that the interaction with Wave has changed. This may not be enough, and if we see Death take a huge dive we’ll come back and look at how these values can be adjusted further to ensure Death remains a meaningful card for dedicated Destroy decks.

White Queen (Text-only change)
[Old text] 4/6 - On Reveal: Draw a copy of the highest Cost card in your opponent's hand.
[New text] 4/6 - On Reveal: Copy the highest-Cost card in your opponent's hand into your hand.
This is just a text revision to resolve some ongoing confusion about what White Queen exactly does and how it interacts with cards like Widow’s Bite. In the future, we may pursue establishing some kind of shorthand for copying a card into your hand, but for now we’re just going with the clearest expression of the card’s function.

Bug Fixes

  • Retreating while Kang is rewinding should no longer cause an Aw Snap error.
  • Quake’s shuffling of locations should no longer prevent Shuri’s buff from being applied.
  • “Rare” and “Super Rare” labels on cards should now be properly translated.
  • Energy UI assets should no longer overlap when gaining extra energy.
  • Speech bubble UI should no longer be hidden by cards in hand.
  • Sandman and Electro should no longer show their VFX if they’ve been morphed into another card.
  • Playing Hulk Buster on Iron Fist should now correctly show the merged card move.
  • The “Set as Favorite” text should no longer overlap with the star UI icon in most languages.
  • Snowguard (Hawk) should no longer cause an Aw Snap to occur when played on Knowhere with other On Reveal cards.
  • Knowhere’s VFX for On Reveal cards should no longer display when the location is disabled by Snowguard (Hawk).
  • Unseen cards with reference cards (such as Snowguard) should now show their reference cards when viewed for the first time in the Token Shop.
  • Many localization adjustments to the size of text in Thai.
  • She-Hulk adjusted so her fist no longer obscures her power.
  • Spaces should be better handled by card search in the collection.
  • Cards that have had their power altered by other cards should show the proper adjustments in the card detail view.
  • The Season pass should now include the Mystery Variant reward on the Free Track.
  • The Weekly Spotlight should now update appropriately when new cards are released and previous cards move into the S4/S5 slot.
  • Player’s Token balance should be visible while viewing a card in the Token Shop.
  • Jeff should be able to move where he pleases after being returned to hand by Beast
  • [PC] Playing Sentry should no longer cause an Aw Snap error.

Card Acquisition Updates

The next few months are going to be truly epic for MARVEL SNAP! We have a new mode coming next month called Conquest, MARVEL SNAP on Windows continues to get polished and prepared for its global launch, and lastly, we’re dreaming up ways of improving the fun of getting new cards.

We’ve seen a lot of questions and feedback about how we introduce new cards to MARVEL SNAP. With our next patch on the horizon, we’d like to share some updates about our plans to improve how you acquire new cards. Our goal over the next few months is to find ways for more people to get the chance to play with new cards, more often.

Flexible Series Release
We've heard many players express that releasing every new card in Series 5 is interfering with their ability to get excited about those releases. We don't want you to feel pressured to wait for Series Drops in order to enjoy that content, and we'd like you to be able to play with more new cards each month. Our goal is to make all new card releases feel exciting, accessible, and impactful in MARVEL SNAP. In our future seasons, we’ll be experimenting with releasing some cards directly to Series 4 - starting with two cards released to Series 4 in June. We believe releasing some cards at lower Token cost will increase accessibility and excitement for new cards released each week. We’ll be listening to your feedback to find the right balance between Series 5 versus Series 4 card releases.

Flexible Series Drop
In addition to modifying the Release Series for some cards, we’ll also be taking a look at the Series Drop cadence for cards. Currently all cards are on the same schedule starting in Series 5, dropping to Series 4 and eventually Series 3. However, the reality is that not all cards are created equally appealing to players. Going forward, we’re going to exercise more flexibility in what cards drop series and when. Sometimes this means preserving the Series of a card, as is the case with Thanos and Galactus. Other times this means we may drop a card from Series 5 to Series 3 because we simply want more people to experiment with it. We may even skip a monthly series drop entirely when the meta looks fun and healthy. These decisions will be made on a card-by-card basis based on data and player feedback instead of applying a blanket rule to all cards.

In our upcoming patch, we’re dropping more cards into Series 3 than we ever have before. In addition, some of our more impactful cards are staying in their current series for longer than expected. There are some fun cards in this drop and we hope they inspire you to experiment with new decks!


Cards dropping from Series 5 to Series 4:

  • Master Mold
  • Negasonic
  • Nimrod

Cards staying in Series 4:

  • Darkhawk
  • Knull
  • Shanna
  • Stature
  • Zabu
  • MODOK

Cards dropping from Series 4 to Series 3:

  • Sentry
  • Silver Surfer
  • Dazzler
  • Shadow King
  • Sauron
  • Ghost

Series 3 Card Acquisition
In a previous patch, we made a few changes for Series 3 players that greatly increased their Token earn rate and introduced the free, seasonal Choose Your Card section. This made new card releases more accessible to these players and ultimately resulted in more cards being collected, but we’ve heard feedback that some players would still like the flexibility to use Tokens for Series 3 cards. In addition to the Choose Your Card section, we’re adding a new way to collect Series 3 cards. In our June patch, we’re updating the Token Shop to include a new section: Series 3 Mystery Card. This option will be available for 1,000 Tokens and can be purchased anytime you have enough Tokens and unowned Series 3 cards.

More Ways to Earn Tokens
Over the last couple of months, we’ve been making adjustments to increase the rate players are able to acquire Tokens. We think there are more improvements to be made here. In the next few patches, we’ll be introducing a couple more features that will reward more Tokens to more players. Our goal is that with these new features increasing the flow of Tokens, players will be able to purchase more new cards, more frequently! The first of these new features will be Weekend Missions.

Weekend Missions: Weekend Missions offer more goals and rewards for players, beyond their current Daily Missions and Weekly Missions. With the initial release of this feature, each weekend will have three Weekend Missions:

  • Win Games to Earn Credits
  • Win Games with Season Pass Card to Earn Gold
  • Win Games with Newly Released Card to Earn Tokens

Each of these reward amounts will vary depending on the difficulty of the mission. There will be Weekly Missions available for each new card release. Weekly Missions for a Newly Released Card are a great way to earn back Tokens with your new cards - essentially reducing the overall Token cost!

Thank you for all your feedback and patience as we’re continuing to make updates to MARVEL SNAP. We hope to make a game that we can all play together for years to come!

Have an opinion about any (or just one) of these changes? Share your thoughts in the comments!