An exciting new game mode launches today. I'll tell you everything you need to know about the new mode! Team Clash will run from December 18th to 28th.
How does it work?
You can choose from among 5 teams, each with its own unique mechanic. You can stick with the pre-constructed decks, or you can build your own decks. You must include all 6 of the pre-designated characters for each team, but you can fill the remaining 6 slots with any cards, including the characters on that team's larger extended roster or not. Other than each team's unique mechanic and the new abilities on the pre-designated characters, the mode is like normal Marvel Snap — the winner of two lanes after 6 turns (unless that is modified) wins the game. However, there are no cubes or snapping in this mode, just wins and losses. Wins net you 10 XP and 10 Emblems, losses still get you 5 of each. Winning also gets your ticket back, just like in Sanctum Showdown, and tickets again have a soft cap of 9.
Avengers
The Avengers are built on stacking your Avengers together and getting added bonuses. You have a lot of options to go tall among the set Avengers, with Captain America and Hulk being big on points. Captain Carter and Iron Man will be core pieces from the extended roster. Getting the most out of Doctor Strange will be tricky. Adding in another nice playoff in Gwenpool could be the way.
Thunderbolts
The Thunderbolts mechanic means it's the deck most conducive to running tech cards and other cards with comeback potential. Unlike the Avengers and X-Men mechanics, it's not something that makes it especially important to be running as many Thunderbolts as possible, meaning we might get decks that have just the six core Thunderbolts. Hood and Viper are a nice package, and Viper can mitigate Valentina's negative power. There are a few ways to build around the Thunderbolts, with a clog and affliction sub-themes being possibilities, as well as decks built around swooping in late with either tech or power.
Guardians of the Galaxy
The key to notice about the Guardian's mechanic is that ALL cards reveal with +1 Power at the glowing location, not just your cards. Why wouldn't your opponent always avoid the glowing location? Well, they're giving up on free power if they do, and might be placing their cards sub-optimally to dodge you. Drax has the dreaded "double" on it, meaning there could be a way to abuse it by getting his ability to go off multiple times. The core 6 has a low enough curve that you can cover multiple lanes on some turns, ensuring that you hit a benefit. Groot has the most incongruous but interesting ability. He could be used as a zero downside 4/10, or you could use him as a reliable way to discard Proxima Midnight or the new card, Marrow. Nebula and Adam are great ways to step up the mind games and put your opponent in no-win situations.
X-Men
The X-Men mechanic asks you to get a lot of X-Men out as fast as possible. Unfortunately, there aren't a ton of inexpensive X-Men, despite an extensive expanded roster. The primary play line is to try to get Professor X on board as soon as possible and then leverage that extra energy for something big or to power your scalers. I like Jim Hammond and think he's a really underrated card, so he and Sunspot are key.
I'm looking forward to shenanigans that result in a giant Cyclops.
Spider-Verse
Just about everyone had the same reaction upon seeing the team-wide abilities. Spider-Verse is cracked! Getting two extra energy every turn appears to be easy, considering cards like Silk, Madame Web, and Ezekiel Sims are on the extended roster. X-Men will have to work for some extra energy, while Spider-Verse can get +2 just for doing the thing it wants to anyway. But energy doesn't win games, power does. Fortunately, the spiders also have a Merge sub-theme culminating in Man-Spider.
Rating the Rosters
So, who has the best extended roster? The Avengers and X-Men are easily the biggest, but the Avengers are more generally varied and powerful. The Thunderbolts and Guardians are quite small. The Guardians have multiple cards with a relatively cohesive theme (play here), but the Thunderbolts have a surprising amount of powerful cards for how small they are. The Avengers have a solid extended roster, but nothing really comes close to Spider-Verse. It's not quite as deep as the Avengers, but it's a very synergistic team that plays perfectly with the team mechanic.
Ranking the Pre-cons
Looking just to jam the pre-constructed decks? Here's my ranking of how I expect them to shake out without any modifications.
- Spider-Verse
- Avengers
- X-Men
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- Thunderbolts
Ban list
Mercury is banned. It's the right choice as it could just shut down an entire team, but that team is destined to dominate. Notably, cards that are NOT banned include Magik, Scream, Juggernaut, and Shang Chi.
But what about the rewards?
The rewards track looks reasonable. Getting Wild Child will be really easy for all players. Fastball Special is more difficult. Free-to-play players will have to focus their efforts on completing missions and spend most of their Emblems on him, but it's achievable. Missions are highly related to the teams. To maximize your mission earnings, you will have to play with each of the teams.
The event pass costs 1200 this time, but it makes getting both cards relatively trivial. It should be highly considered by anyone who doesn't plan to engage deeply with the mode (either because of time constraints or play preferences), as well as anyone who spends enough to have extra Gold on hand for all of the event passes. The top event prize is a pretty sweet Viktor Farro Black Panther, but I would still prefer these top prizes to be more thematically related to the mode.
Check out all of the rewards and prices here!
Hit the comments and let me know what you think about Team Clash once you try it! How is it going for you? What's your favorite team? How are you modifying the precons?