The newest patch for MARVEL SNAP added the new Spotlight Cache system, brought a small batch of Balance changes, and some changes to the in-game Shop.

Patch Notes - July 12, 2023

Quote From MARVEL SNAP

PATCH HIGHLIGHT

• New Feature: Spotlight Cache
• Spotlight Cache is a brand new way to acquire newly released cards, Series 4 cards, and Series 5 cards. Spotlight Cache system will appear after you’ve passed Collection Level (CL) 500. A Spotlight Cache will replace Collector’s Caches and Collector’s Reserves every 120CL. This means that one in every 10 Collector’s Reserves are becoming Spotlight Caches. Read more in the Spotlight Cache blog.

GENERAL UPDATES

• Premium Mystery Variants: A new Mystery Variant type that only offers Rare or Super Rare Variants, and cannot contain Pixel Variants. Now available in the Daily Offer section in the Shop for 800 Gold.
• Daily Offer Rewards: When you make 10 purchases in the Daily Offer Shop, you’re now rewarded with a bonus 2000 Collector's Tokens and one Premium Mystery Variant. (Claimable once per week).

AUDIO & ART

• New visual and sound effects for the following cards:
• Shuri
• Infinaut
• Sabretooth
• Agent 13

BALANCE UPDATES

Other than High Evolutionary over-performing and being a bit too popular for its own good, we don't have a lot of pressing issues to address in the metagame at this time. Many of these changes are to improve clarity and expectations surrounding cards that can have unusual interactions.

 

CARD UPDATES

High Evolutionary

For the last month, High Evolutionary has proven itself strong enough to support three distinct decks within the metagame. Some are better than others, and none of the three are explicitly problematic in Ranked play on any of our metrics, but we think there's still room to improve diversity at the top of the metagame. Even if each High Evolutionary deck is different, it can feel monotonous to get paired against them in succession. To that end, we're shaving some Power off the two most-played cards in the kit.

"Evolved" Wasp

• [Old] 0/1 - On Reveal: Afflict 2 random enemy cards here with -1 Power.
• [New] 0/1 - On Reveal: Afflict a random enemy card here with -1 Power.

Developer Note: Pretty simple–Wasp is too good. Wasp is specifically fantastic in conjunction with Lockjaw and Jane Foster, playing a more like a +4 bonus on two Lockjaw rolls than just an 0/3. However, she's also winning more cubes overall than any other High Evolutionary card, so we're weakening her to meaningfully impact all of these decks.

"Evolved" Hulk

• [Old] 6/12 - Ongoing: +2 Power for each turn you ended with unspent Energy.
• [New] 6/12 - When you end a turn with unspent Energy, +2 Power. (if in hand or in play)

Developer Note: Similarly, Hulk appears in every High Evolutionary shell we've been monitoring, and Hulk strongest there is–even given the unfortunate bug that doesn't count the last turn of the game, should you happen to have an Energy to spare. This adjustment will remove that issue and also reduce the average Power of Hulk, especially in Lockjaw shells where players could often accumulate Energy without ever drawing Hulk at all.

We recognize these adjustments may not be as harsh as some players expected, and we'll continue keeping a close eye on High Evolutionary in the weeks to come.

Gambit

• [Old] 3/1 - On Reveal: Discard a card from your hand. Destroy a random enemy card.
• [New] 3/3 - On Reveal: Discard a card from your hand. Destroy a random enemy card.
• Now must discard a card to destroy anything (no text change)

Developer Note: For some time now, players have noted a confusing dissonance between Gambit's effect destroying cards whether you discard a card or not, while Arnim Zola must destroy his target in order to create copies of it. In addition to being inconsistent, Gambit's creative concept is "throwing" cards at your enemies–if you have no cards to throw, why would it work? Since this is a nerf, and Gambit's not a highly-played card, we're compensating him for that loss with +2 Power. The Wong combo decks will suffer a bit, and perhaps need to start including something like Apocalypse or Swarm if they want to blow up the board. However, using Gambit in more traditional decks might be an interesting option.

Mystique

• [New] Gameplay Change: Now triggers On Reveals if the copied Ongoing card had one (no text change).

Developer Note: Similarly, this is a change to better line up players' intuitions with outcomes. Whenever a card in our game copies an ability, it implicitly copies the whole text box. When Absorbing Man copies a card with an On Reveal and an Ongoing ability, like Soul Stone or Electro, he gets both, immediately. But when Mystique does, she gets the On Reveal ability without triggering it–even though she was just played, like Absorbing Man. This doesn't come up often, but we consider it a quality of life improvement. We'll also make this adjustment to Rogue, just trying it here first.

Nakia

• [Old] 3/2 - On Reveal: Give the 2 leftmost cards in your hand +2 Power.
• [New] 3/3 - On Reveal: Give all cards in your hand +1 Power.

Developer Note: Nakia has been underperforming for a while now, a far cry from her days of dominance during the game's beta period. In addition, her affect was a little complex, especially for a card debuting in Series 2. We're trying to address both of those issues with this change, making Nakia a stronger, simpler card to play with. Maybe she finds a new home in the competitive metagame, maybe not–time will tell.

Text-Only Updates

The below adjustments are just to improve how a few cards are worded, to better align with our learnings around what makes SNAP cards clear, consistent, and easy to read. We'll continue making updates in this vein over time.

Black Bolt

• [Old] On Reveal: Your opponent must discard the lowest-Cost card in their hand.
• [New] On Reveal: Discard the lowest-cost card from your opponent's hand.

Developer Note: There is an unresolved inconsistency present in this text regarding the capitalization of the word "Cost." We're continuing to look into that for other cards.

Black Cat

• [Old] If this is in your hand at the end of your turn, discard it.
• [New] If you end the turn with this in your hand, discard it.

Bucky Barnes

• [Old] When this is destroyed, create the Winter Soldier in its place.
• [New] When this is destroyed, replace it with the Winter Soldier.

Cerebro

• [Old] Ongoing: Your highest Power cards get +2 Power.
• [New] Ongoing: Your highest-Power cards have +2 Power.

Developer Note: This is standard language for passive Power increases.

Doctor Strange

• [Old] On Reveal: Move your highest Power cards to this location.
• [New] On Reveal: Move your highest-Power card(s) to this location.

Kraven

• [Old] When a card moves here, this gets +2 Power.
• [New] When a card moves here, this gains +2 Power.

Developer Note: This is standard language for triggered Power increases.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that was causing matchmaking queue times for the last rounds of Conquests to be excessive.
• Fixed a number of Conquest UI/UX issues and performance.
• Fixed an issue that allowed the Weekly Spotlight card to be purchased more than once.
• Fixed an issue with Mystery Series 3 Card purchases if you have collected all Series 3 cards.
• Fixed an issue that would see some cards target a specific card in hand/deck rather than at random.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a crash when Kang interacted with the Atlantis location.
• Removed a very unexpected third hand from one of Spider-Man's variants.
• Fixed an issue that prevented new users from getting 3 bonus ranks upon hitting level 10 for the first time.
• Fixed an issue where Living Tribunal would mishandle the max power cap and show locations with negative power causing the player to lose.
• Fixed an issue that was causing Living Tribunal to take effect before the card was revealed.
• Fixed an issue that was causing Black Bolt to always discard the leftmost card in the event that several cards of the same cost were targets.
• When an opponent's Maria Hill draws a card it now correctly has a card back.
• Updated Nebula's VFX to trigger before cards are revealed rather than after.
• Fixed an issue with Lockjaw overlapping with Ongoing cards.

How do you feel about Spotlight Caches? Will the nerf to High Evolutionary make decks built around him weak enough? Share your thoughts in the comments!