Hello and welcome back to Burning Questions, your weekly look at the hottest topics in the Marvel Snap community. This week we're talking about the new Dark Avengers season where Iron Patriot and Victoria Hand have been running rampant.
1) What cards are you planning to get this month?
I'm going to end up getting every card this month. Here's my personal ranking with a heavy emphasis on how interesting the cards will be to build around.
1
Once again the season pass card is a good one. Though it's only been a few days, so far he's felt smooth and extremely powerful. Check out the preview I wrote about it before it was released.
2
In certain decks, Victoria Hand will be a great unpredictable bomb to drop on turn 6. This is the type of card that gets better as more new synergy pieces are released. She's already felt very impressive so far. Check out Dualgloves’ preview.
3
Ares is an absolute flavor win. In addition to his mechanic essentially being to “play war” against your opponent it's also perfect for the comics version of Ares. Ares loves posturing and war for its own sake and is always down to take part in a good-old-fashioned d*ck measuring contest. Ares may be somewhat narrow in what decks he fits into, but big power is good power.
4
Moonstone will be best with Mystique as a way to copy the Ongoing abilities of high-cost cards. However, I'm excited to try her in a more “fair” or straightforward way with Spectrum and Zoo decks.
5
This is the one I probably shouldn't buy, but will. His best use is going to be with Swarm, Scorn, and other discard synergies, but I'm really excited to get my hands on him and make a bounce deck that plays as many annoying 1-Cost cards as possible and then machine guns them at the opponent at the end. I'll also play around with affliction builds.
2) How can I counter Iron Patriot?
We're just a few days into the new season and already Iron Patriot is everywhere. If you can't beat him, join him. Because the best way to beat out Iron Patriot is to play early power, the best way to counter him is with decks that play him. But on the odd chance you want to play something else (crazy, I know) here are a few ways you can try to deny Iron Patriot his discount.
In addition to just playing Hydra Bob or Mobius M Mobius, here are a few additional ideas of how to counter the new meta tyrant.
Get Out Early Power
Hydra Bob isn't the only way to push power early. Martyr is too much of a liability for most decks, but Zoo can negate that risk.
Martyr Zoo
Move the Location
Iron Patriot’s ability is tied to the location he is played at. If that location moves, your opponent may be stuck covering the wrong lane. Here is a Sera deck that has several incidental tools to stop Iron Patriot from getting his discount, while still being able to lie in wait against other decks.
Quake Control
Move their Iron Patriot (or Hydra Bob)
If you've managed to get some power in your opponent's Iron Patriot lane, sometimes all you need it to move the 3 power that Iron Patriot himself provides to get a lead in the lane. Here is a Scream list with a particular emphasis on early power. Try to get a Bob or Scream onto the lane you suspect your opponent is planning to play Iron Patriot (easier said than done).
Fast Scream
3) What’s going on in Chinese Marvel Snap?
I recently did a deep dive into the recently released Chinese version of Marvel Snap. The TL;DR is that they have a few things we don't, like cash tournaments and rental decks, but that the monetization is arguably worse than ours and they're having trouble attracting players who prefer to play the international version.
Check out the full thread here:
About 6 months ago Marvel Snap 漫威：终极逆转 launched in China. They have their own OTAs, variants, events, and acquisition systems. pic.twitter.com/qvvMTMa59S
— Scosco (@scodenim) January 4, 2025
Now let's find some interesting questions and answers from the ask-the-team channel on the official Marvel Snap discord.
4) Q: It is unclear on the marvel snap web shop if there were any changes made to the premium pass plus. Have there been any changes made, and if so, what are they?
A: We shared the changes in our previous patch notes:
Renamed from Premium+ to Super Premium
Includes:
- Instant 10x Season Pass Levels (already included in current Premium+)
- 3x Borders
- 1x exclusive Super Rare Variant
-Griffin
Author's note:
In addition to the Super Premium Season Pass being pretty bad value and a missed opportunity, it was indeed practically impossible to figure out what it included if you were only looking at it in the webshop.
5) Q: Hi, as the patch which should bring the update to the random cache (1000->2000 tokens) is scheduled for the 14th, and assuming it's live before the reset of that day, will the changes reflect on the current spotlight caches then (Victoria Hand week) or will they be in effect from the next set of caches (Moonstone week) that on average should come a few hours after the usual patch time.
Thanks
A: This is a great fringe case to note!
You are correct, there will be a small window on the Tuesday of the patch update where after you download it you could spend Spotlight Keys and earn the increased duplicate rate of 2000 Tokens before the Weekly Reset. We'll leave it up to players to make the call on if they want to wait for that chance or not.
An additional callout that we'll be sure to add to the patch notes as well: **players NEED to update to the new patch on the 14th BEFORE spending Keys in order to get the new duplicate rate of 2000 Tokens!**
-Griffin
Author's note:
This is important to note. If you haven't picked up Victoria Hand yet, it might be worth waiting for the small window after the patch ships but before the weekly reset.
That's it for this week! Come find me on Bluesky (@scosco) and Twitter! Let me know which Dark Avengers you are most excited for in the comments!