Another OTA balance change for MARVEL SNAP dropped today, bringing with it two buffs to cards the developers thought weren't seeing enough play, and three nerfs to cards considered too prevalent.

We'll show the changes, then share our thoughts on what they mean for the game.

June 8 - Balance Updates

Quote From MARVEL SNAP

Happy Spider-Versus season! We’ve got 5 updates for you this week, including an update to a
starter card. Let’s hop right in!

Spider-Man
● [Old] 4/3 - On Reveal: Your opponent can’t play cards at this location next turn.
● [New] 5/4 - On Reveal: Your opponent can’t play cards at this location next turn.

Spider-Man performs very well in multiple decks like High Evolutionary lockdown and Galactus. We want to avoid these kinds of playstyles being too powerful as they are frustrating to play against, so we've decided to adjust Spider-Man to limit his play in combos like Spider-Man into Professor X. While this does put him at the same Cost as his lockdown peer Professor X, we think that their effects are distinct enough that they can both sit at 5-Cost.

Beast
● [Old] 2/2 - On Reveal: Return your other cards at this location to your hand. They cost 1 less.
● [New] 3/4 - On Reveal: Return your other cards at this location to your hand. They cost 1 less.

Bounce decks with cards like Kitty Pryde, Bast, and Hit-Monkey have been performing very well lately. Beast in particular stood out to us as a very powerful enabler in the deck. We want Beast’s effect to take more investment to get returns, so we’re adjusting him to be a 3-Cost card. This also helps give Falcon more room to spread his wings, as he often felt like a worse Beast without the cost reduction effect.

The Hood
● [Old] 1/-2 - On Reveal: Add a Demon to your hand.
● [New] 1/-3 - On Reveal: Add a Demon to your hand..

Many decks are able to take great advantage of the cheap 6-Power Demon while neutralizing The Hood’s negative Power. We’re making a small nerf to The Hood’s Power to make him more punishing to play if you’re unable to counteract his base Power. Notably, this is actually a buff to Viper decks that hand The Hood over to the opponent to deal with.

Rogue
● [Old] 3/1 - On Reveal: Steal an Ongoing ability from a random enemy card at this location.
● [New] 3/2 - On Reveal: Steal an Ongoing ability from a random enemy card at this location.

In a similar vein to our Enchantress buffs, Rogue is a card we’d expect to see more of to
counteract powerful Ongoing effects. While it's not surprising that Enchantress is more popular with her higher base Power, more universal coverage, and synergy with cards like Zabu and Lizard, we were surprised to see that Rogue performs poorly even in Silver Surfer decks. We’re giving her a small bump in Power to help her be a more viable tool to counter Ongoing cards.

Medusa
● [Old] 2/2 - On Reveal: If this is at the middle location, +2 Power.
● [New] 2/2 - On Reveal: If this is at the middle location, +3 Power.

Players move past many of the starter cards pretty quickly, but most of them make a comeback in a variety of later archetypes. For example, Quicksilver was in a Lockjaw deck for a while, Iron Man sees play in Thanos Ongoing and Mr. Negative, and just recently High Evolutionary brought back all the vanilla cards. Medusa however stands out as a card that sees virtually no play anywhere beyond the early stages of SNAP. Even though she’s consistently a 2/4 currently, her restriction makes her weaker than she may seem. We’re giving her a buff to allow her to better compete with other options at the 2-Cost slot.

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Thanks for reading! We’re continuing to keep a close eye on the game balance, and High
Evolutionary in particular. See you all next week for a new patch and the release of Conquest

All Your Friends Are Reading These Opinions, You Should Too

These changes should have a very real impact on the evolving meta, but we'll start with the buffs (which we don't expect to have too big of an impact).

The change to Rogue shouldn't boost the card's play rate by much, but it will give the tiniest of boosts to the depraved lunatics players who were already running her.

Medusa is one of those cards that most people forgot even existed; by making her a very real threat at the middle location we think that Seocnd Dinner has incentivized players at lower Collection Levels to continue running her, but don't think it will affect her play rate among players deep into Series 3. Perhaps Sera lists could be troubled to experiment with her.

We suspect that this nerf to Spider-Man is a preemptive move to alter the non-existent Conquest meta before it arrives on Tuesday, to keep Location control decks from being too prevalent in the format. This also hurts High Evolutionary decks that used Spider-Man on 5 to lock their opponent out of a location while still triggering their Unused Energy sinks like Evolved Misty Knight and Cyclops.

The Beast nerf makes Bounce decks less explosive, but still powerful. Honestly, we feel this a slight buff to Beast in decks that aren't all-in on Bounces, as the worst part of playing Beast was having his mediocre Power taking up a slot on a location; 4 Power for 3 Cost is a very acceptable rate in Snap.

The Hood is a lot less juicy for decks that can't get rid of him, but most decks that run The Hood (like Destroy and Clutter) have ways to get around the negative Power and are unlikely to change their ways. The nerf to Beast might have more of an impact on whether The Hood makes the cut in Bounce than this nerf to The Hood.

How do you feel about these balance changes? Share your thoughts in the comments!