Welcome back to Burning Questions, where we investigate and speculate on trending topics in the Snap community. What will the new game mode be? What is up with Time Theater? Should you rush to upgrade to gold ASAP?
1) Will Marvel Snap get a draft mode?
On the recently released Marvel Snap development roadmap, a “new game mode” is listed under the in concept section. Currently we have the regular ladder and Conquest mode. A lot of players and content creators have been clamoring for a draft mode. Personally, I think it's my ideal style of play for a card game. Could draft be the next mode?
The answer is probably not. But not for the reasons you may think.
Way back on June 19th Ben Brode and Ken-Erik appeared on the Dekks and Dera podcast. And were asked about draft mode.
Kent-Erik led off by pointing out that there is a smaller audience for this type of mode:
“Draft mode tends to be more narrow of an audience that is wanting to participate in that kind of activity because it is very mentally taxing to figure out how to build a deck”
He added that they may be able to make a mode that borrows some concepts from draft but in a “more approachable” way. He made it clear they are most interested in doing something innovative rather than simply repeating what has been done before.
Ben Brode added that “a lot of community sites have popped up to allow people to have that experience” and that draft mode has “traditionally not been very popular from an audience percentage perspective” brode.
Both pointed to the unpopularity of draft mode in other games, rather than any technical challenges. I think this may come as a surprise to many players who love draft mode. When you are in a bubble of players who love drafting, it can be hard to believe it's not popular. Draft participation in Magic: The Gathering has been declining for years and was recently at risk of disappearing. As a lover of MTG drafting myself, I don't play it on their online client, MTG Arena, because there is no free way to play it without playing their other constructed modes. Hearthstone Arena possibly seems more popular than it is because content creators disproportionately like this type of gameplay experience. Hopefully the developers notice that both of these are behind a paywall and that perhaps that contributes to their lower engagement.
Queue times in Conquest mode rose dramatically after the first season. It's possible that mode isn't getting the number of players Second Dinner had been hoping for. It seems extremely unlikely that they'll make a game mode that they believe will not draw a sizable amount of players simply because it's fun. I think the best we can hope for is a mode with some “Draft-like” features. The good news is that the team seems committed to making innovative modes that focus on drawing new players to the game.
2) What is up with Time Theater?
Time theater was always destined to play a strange role in Marvel Snap. It accidentally began appearing a month before its intended release date. It was kind of a delightful mistake that really fit with the flavor of the location.
But even after release it's been bizarre. Here are a few of the stranger interactions we've noticed.
One reddit user was able to cause an infinite loop with Kang.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MarvelSnap/s/GiyO5zSNEH
If you play Legion onto Time Theater, you'll draw two of the last card.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MarvelSnap/s/6aBZ1rQWcZ
When Time Theater is the second location, you'll still draw Domino instead of getting a copy. However, you'll draw a Domino copy on the following turn. Just when we thought Domino couldn't get worse, she hits a new low.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MarvelSnap/s/BIzc3eGtxk
This reddit user drew a Sentinel instead of their last drawn card because the Sentinel was the rightmost card in hand.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MarvelSnap/s/5d1pYmm9zp
Time Theater seems to check which card had most recently been the rightmost card in hand. There are also reports of players drawing a Kitty Pryde in similar circumstances.
We were not able to independently confirm reports of drawing a buffed Wolverine instead of a 2/2 Wolverine or similar reports of drawing buffed versions of cards that had been played into Shuri's lab. It's not clear which of Time Theater’s odd interactions are bugs or which ones have since been fixed.
It's incredibly hard to independently verify each of these interactions when we don't have a way to guarantee that time theater will appear out of Snap's nearly 140 locations. It's probable that several of these were bugs that have been fixed. Here, we're going to enlist your help! Send me any screenshots of strange time theater interactions you happen across on Twitter!
3) Should you rush to upgrade to gold ASAP?
What are the odds of each split effect?
With the upcoming Custom Card feature, we'll finally be able to choose the borders that best go with our split effects. Will everyone be going for gold on gold and white border on inked or are there other sweet combinations? We also learned we will not be able to uncouple the particle effect from the background effect. So let's review the background and particle effect odds.
The four background effects are foil, prism, ink, and gold. You can only get ink starting from your 4th split and gold only from your 5th split. You only have a 10% chance at each of these.
The four particle effects are tone flare, glimmer flare, stardust flare, and (Kirby) Krackle flare. Stardust can only be obtained from the 4th split on, but is weighted equally to tone and glimmer from that point. Kirby Krackle flare is only obtainable starting with the 6th split and you only have a 10% chance of getting it.
Furthermore, it was previously confirmed that the colors for the flare effects have different odds. The most common are red, purple, blue, white, and green. Rainbow and gold are less common. Black flare effects are the most rare. So the rarest split in the game would be an inked or gold card with black Krackle flare, which has a less than 1% chance of appearing.
Yes! The inked Vision is my favorite and the.M black krackle is made for this split. https://t.co/Y8uNwGGDQ9
— Marvel Snap Variants (@SnapVariants) January 11, 2024
Black Krackle Doom is fitting https://t.co/sxFLIjrWSB
— Marvel Snap Variants (@SnapVariants) December 29, 2023
The tweets above are from SnapVariants on Twitter. Give them a follow if you want to check out some of the rarest and craziest splits around.
However, players have complained that the black particle effects aren't visible enough.
Stephen from Second Dinner said this about changing the black flare effects:
“We have talked about it a lot but haven’t come up with a great solution yet for all of the black flare mods. Once we hit a solution we like we will make a change.”
I expect the black effects and all of these odds to change with the promised new effects coming to the game soon. It stands to reason that as we get more possible effects the odds of getting the specific combination you want will be reduced. If you want to make an all gold deck you might want to get it done before the odds change!
That's it for this first edition of Burning Questions in 2024. Hit me up on Twitter or leave a comment below if you have a burning question.