In the past week and a half, the game has experienced both an OTA and a patch and some massive bugs and game changes. So, let's look at the good, bad, and ugly of all that has been happening in Marvel Snap.
The Good
Baxter Building
The fact that they made Baxter Building give plus four on the 4th day of the 4th month of the year 2024 is funny and cool. Plus, it makes the location more helpful, so that’s in the excellent category for me.
Cosmetic Shop
There are a lot of people who are angry about the fact that emotes in the cosmetic shop are 2200 gold. I was a little annoyed as well, but honestly, the game does need to be profitable if we want to continue playing this game, so adding a portion to the shop that allows players who have been saving gold to use it for something other than converting to credits is not a bad thing at all. However, the price of a single emote could be lower. Second Dinner commented that they want the price point to feel equal to when you get an emote from an album, but honestly, those are two separate things, and the album emote doesn’t compare to the 2200 gold price-wise of the shop emote, so that's a little odd. Price points aside, these are purely cosmetic and do not affect card acquisition, so it's a personal choice whether you will partake in them at all. Although, I wish there were two separate sections, one for emotes only and the other for avatars.
Bonus Boosters
This is one of the best things to come out of the patch because instead of this section being a last-possible resort waste of credits, it's 100% better because it provides free boosters. There are ways to guarantee that the card you want will appear more often. It just takes more planning. This will be beneficial in the long run, and the newer players who start the game and have excess credits and not enough boosters will be able to progress slightly faster, which is excellent overall.
Angela
Angela is back! This change has led to a host of midrange low-cost scaling decks going back into the format, which has been a positive change for the game since it was becoming decently stale with the amount of Thanos or Combo running around. However, this change does not help the combo-type meta that we were in and will be in if midrange-type decks continue to try and make a comeback. Angela is just a fun card to play with and is very satisfying, so even if this doesn’t push an Angela-type deck to the top of the metagame, this is still a good change. The best part is that Angela doesn’t feel overpowered or overbearing on the game as a whole. She seems balanced within the current context of the game. Overall, that is a big win from both a balance and game perspective.
Here are some of the best-performing Angela decks currently:
Silky Smoove
Loki is back
Strong Guy
This is an excellent buff for a card that has seen fringe play for the longest time. It lessens the restriction or condition of its power and makes it contend with the other three cost cards that might want to take its place. At 9 Power, where you only need to have one card in your hand, this is a lot easier to accomplish, and especially if you are trying to get this to happen, it is a lot easier. Naturally, discarding does not need any help, and I don't know if discarding is the best place, but it is something to consider since you are typically left with only one card in hand. However, there are many other options to help fit in a 3/9, and even at high infinite, it has been doing well. I would rather see buffs like these to cards that have been around for a while than nerfs to any cards.
Here is a Strong Guy deck to try out if you want:
Strong Guy
Crossbones
There is not much to say about this change other than it is good that they are trying to balance cards that relatively do the same thing so cards are not power crept out of the game entirely. However, this change has mostly been irrelevant because the nature of the format is more combo than just raw stats. On the bright side, the fact that he triggers Skaar is more beneficial in the long run than most people realize. Another factor that makes this change not as impressive is that about six days after this change, Zabu also got changed, which hurts the four-cost card pool a lot more, so even though this was buffed, it was also followed by a quick sideways nerf.
Miek
Overall, this is a good change; they are trying to make things more balanced and not overbearing. I loved Miek, and most likely, one power will not do that much for this card. It does help lessen the power output of the main discard deck.
Lady Deathstrike
This is one of those changes that is not exactly a balance update but more of a change to the card in general. Instead of Lady Deathrike destroying cards based on her power, she is now a general lane destroyer for any three or less-powered card. This is an interesting change because she is featured in the next round of spotlights, so it's probably true that she was changed so more people could try out the new version when they open her up during the next round of spotlights. Overall, I think this is a good chance for the card. With the metagame positioned around low-cost cards that scale up, a lot of those enablers have less than three power, so there are a lot of targets running around. This means she is in a great position to make a bigger impact.
Here is a good performing deck featuring Lady Deathstrike:
Lady Deathstrike
Alioth
So, moving on from some of the much less controversial changes, let's talk about the change to Alioth. You are either on one of two sides with this card. You thought it was fine and didn't really need a change, or you pretty much loathed its existence. I was on the former, and Alioth was never really a problem. It felt a lot like a checkmate card, which made turns 1-5 a lot more interesting to plan out instead of them being set-up turns, and then both players just go for turn six, and we see what happens. Now, that is a pretty basic way of seeing the game, and many more interactions occur. Still, playing for priority on turn six was an interesting battle while Alioth was set up the way he was previously. This change lessens the battle that needs to take place for priority going into turn six, but it doesn’t diminish it altogether. That can seem bad for the game, but this is in a good category because it is a good change for the card. The main problem with most cards that anger players is that they have no way to interact with them meaningfully, and the previous form of Alitoh is one of those cards. This new form, though, has some play, which is more interesting for the game and players. Will there still be moments that you lose to Alioth? Yes, but there will also be moments when you account for the new version and have the agency to make a play instead of just retreating because the inevitable purple cloud will hit you. The more we play with and against the new Alioth, the more this will be easily identified as a good, healthy change for the game.
The Bad
Sandman
First, I want to say that this is not a balance update to Sandman's card; this is purely a change to the card to see how he functions differently within the context of the game and its current state. I have mentioned in the past that I don’t particularly appreciate how we are used as testers for some of the things they put out, but sometimes it is okay. In regards to Sandman, I think that this is a good change. However, before we talk about how this change has manifested, we need to take a moment and recognize that this change does get rid of the sandman ramp archetype. We will no longer see games where Electro is played on turn three, followed by a snap and sandman, locking both players into a one-card-a-turn game. I am going to miss that a little bit. Ok, moment over. Sandman is now a tech card and functions similarly to the former Wave before she was changed, and while I think this is a good chance for the card and, in general, makes him more useful, he is in a bad category because this doesn’t make the card any better. Just like the other 5-cost tech-type cards, there are times when he will win you those eight cubes or those four cubes, but generally, he doesn’t provide these things consistently. So, instead of getting a new card that hopefully performs better, we lost a deck many people enjoyed playing for a sometimes useful 5-cost tech card. I hope there will be time for Sandman to shine, but he isn’t as useful as he should be right now. Maybe once we leave this combo-heavy meta, which is ok with playing 1 card on the last turn, he will have his moment in the sun.
Nonetheless, here is a decent deck to try him out in:
Silky Sand
Thanos
Ah, how the mighty have fallen. Most people are celebrating this change, and then a handful of people absolutely love Thanos and are just crying because they think he is dead. Well, that technically is not true. This is a really interesting change because they are trying to make Thanos more about the actual card of Thanos instead of about the stones, which makes sense in theory, and he is a lot more interested in a design concept than where he was previously. However, this change falls a little flat because Thanos himself is still not good enough to be played to the board. Don’t get me wrong, ten power is great, but there are many better cards with the same power range as Thanos that I would rather be playing on turn six. This is frustrating because not only does this weaken Thanos as a deck, but the reason they are doing it isn’t fully fleshed out yet, so it's not even the best way to change him and keep him that viable. But this isn’t all bad. It does do the job of making him a lot less present in the metagame. However, he has still seen some success in high Infinite.
Check this out if you still want to play Thanos:
Thanos
The Ugly
Time Stone
The nail in the coffin, which is also supposed to be what is to come for all of Thanos stones, is the change to time stone. This is the first time we have seen a stone that directly interacts with Thanos to help you play him to the board. Power Stone doesn’t count because it doesn’t make you want to play him. It is a nice bonus if you have all the stones, but that is not always guaranteed. Either way, this destroys this stone's usefulness. It is no longer effective other than just replacing itself on any turn other than turn four, and that is if and only if you want to play Thanos on turn five, which, looking at the other cards that are in a typical Thanos deck, I would rather be doing something else. Does this help lessen the reliance and play patterns of what we expect from a Thanos deck? Absolutely, but it takes away a lot of the fun and consistency of the deck. In a meta-game with many combo-type decks, Thanos was one of the only midrange-type decks that could stand a good chance against the combo decks because it was also just as consistent. The active removal of this consistency is why Thanos has fallen out of favor. The other reason this is ugly is that it's one change in a batch of multiple changes that they will make, which is a really weird thing to experience because it's like eating a half-baked pie to test it instead of getting served a finished piece. Leaves a sour taste in your mouth.
Zabu
This is the ugliest change I have seen in a while, and even though a change to Zabu was probably warranted, this change seems out of place and out of touch with how the game is currently being played. Maybe a month or so ago, when Zabu was running rampant, this would have made more sense, but now it's just like kicking someone while they are already down. The developers even admit that this is a huge hit to Zabu, and the main reason this is here for me, other than it completely removes the card from being playable, is that their reasoning is such a feel-bad for everyone. This is a temporary rework so that we can be testers for a possible metagame not shaped by a card that lowers the cost of 4 cost cards. I get this because Zabu does provide a limit on certain things, and honestly, this isn’t the worst way to test what the game will feel like without Zabu looming over all four cost cards. However, this shines a very big glare on the main issue that underlies all of the problems with Marvel Snap, which is the scarce resource card acquisition problem. Zabu is a season 4 card, which means he is either in spotlight caches or has to be bought with tokens. Both of these resources are a high commodity in a snap that should not be thrown away lightly for the majority of players, so the idea that a card people spend hard-earned resources on is temporarily reworked or essentially removed so we can test the possibilities of the game is an ugly feeling for a lot of people. That can be said about many of the changes, but at least for a majority, these changes still allow the card to be decently playable. They even said it themselves for this one, and it's a huge hit. Hopefully, you weren’t saving up or had just spent tokens.
The Irrelevant
Sabretooth
This change added more power to a card that seemed to have been left behind. While it is admirable that they are trying to bring back some of the other destroy-type cards, Destroy has been a tight list of cards for a while, and this one power difference isn’t going to make that much difference, especially at the 3-cost slot.
Cerebro Watch
Sadly, these last few patches didn’t add anything great to any of the typical Cerebro decks, but we do have some new 7-powered cards to mess around with, so here is some fun for people who want to try out some C7:
C7
Overall OTA and Patch Feel
I will honestly say this was a hard one to write. On the one hand, all of the changes seem ok, and nothing is that crazy because they are fixing things and changing some stuff, and after a few days when emotions can settle, it isn’t that bad. But, on the other hand, it's head-scratching since many of the changes seem out of left field. My article only groups 4 of the 11 changes into either the bad or ugly categories; however, when thinking about the overall feel of these changes, the consensus is that this is all bad. The main reason is that this OTA and patch were accompanied by delays and bugs that riddled the game, making it useless for some and unplayable for a good portion.
Coupling that with the spotlight caches also falling apart, there were 24 hours that the game had a big patch of bad luck. If this batch of bugs was accompanied by a patch that hit things out of the park, that probably would have lessened the way this was viewed, but because the patch felt lackluster or outright angered many people, the bugs were icing on the cake. I have long said that the game needs a bug patch rather than a balance patch, and after this most recent fiasco, I think that is ever more apparent. The game must exist and slow down for a bit longer in a single state so the developers can get time to fix the numerous and ever-growing list of bugs rather than constantly trying to change the meta. This is even more compounded by the fact that the most recent OTA and Patch have led us into this heavy combo-type meta that can be frustrating because many of them have few points to interact with. Either way, I am hoping that things will turn out better in the long term. In the comments below, let me know what you think of these balance changes.