Hello and welcome back to Burning Questions, a weekly rundown of the hottest topics in Marvel Snap. This week, we're doing a post-mortem on High Voltage, talking about the recent OTA buffs, and Chinese Marvel Snap!
1) Why did High Voltage come back so soon?
I saw a lot more negativity about High Voltage this time around. Complaints centered around having to endure opposing wacky combos, frustration with tech cards, and people taking too long to play their turns. Playing tech cards is interactive and if you don't want any interaction you are probably just bored with the mode and how it exaggerates the power of certain tech cards. If you're complaining about people taking up the turn timer to think through their plays in a mode that only lasts three turns, then you just simply don't like the mode. You'd be better off just paying gold to get Toxie Doxie in one day or just wait until she's in Snap Packs and get her pretty cheaply. I definitely agree that the “win all three locations" mission should get the boot next time, though.
However, my main point here is that people reacted more negatively to High Voltage this time around because it was brought back so soon after the last time. Regardless of what bans or changes they make, High Voltage, by its very nature, is going to be one of the easier formats to solve. And because winning essentially doesn't matter, only completing your missions, it's going to feel like a mindless grind for anyone just trying to optimize for the rewards. Bringing back High Voltage so soon was a mistake that took a mode that was relatively well-liked and made it into one that is much less loved now.
There's one simple reason High Voltage came back so soon: no one enjoyed Deadpool's Diner last time. Whether it was the time gate that locked people out of the mode, the grindy-feeling geometric progression system, or the careful Bub management required to progress optimally, people liked the second time around with Deadpool's Diner even less than the first. Taking the Diner out of the limited time mode rotation was the right choice, but it put more pressure on High Voltage. It highlights a basic issue with all of the modes they've managed to come up with so far: they are better in small doses and have diminishing returns each time they appear. This is the fourth time we've had High Voltage. How are people going to feel after the 10th version of High Voltage? If the modes are spaced out enough, they retain some of their novelty. Second Dinner needs to do one of two things—make modes that retain playability longer or make a lot more new modes.
2) Is the Infinity Ultron change enough?
Infinity Ultron needed a buff, but I've seen people propose some pretty aggressive buffs. If you make him a 4-Cost, that's going overboard, same with making all of the stones cost 2. Fundamentally, the difference between a 5/6 and a 5/8 is especially big because it's along an important breakpoint.
| Date | Cost | Power | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-06-03 |
5
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6
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On Reveal: Add 2 of Ultron's Stones to your hand.
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| 2025-04-24 |
5
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8
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On Reveal: Add 2 of Ultron's Stones to your hand.
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Released
2025-04-15
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5 | 6 | On Reveal: Add 2 of Ultron's Stones to your hand. |
| 2025-03-04 |
5
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6
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Curr: On Reveal: Add 2 of Ultron's Stones to your hand.
Prev: On Reveal: Add 2 Ultron Infinity Stones to your hand.
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| 2025-02-11 |
5
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6
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On Reveal: Add 2 Ultron Infinity Stones to your hand.
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Giving an extra two power is a good place to start. Infinity Ultron isn't that far off of being good, and those points will make a surprising difference. Playing a 5/6 is only ever worth it if you're getting massive extra benefits. Playing a 5/8 is fine if it provides nothing else occasionally, and Infinity Ultron has high roll potential on top of that. If necessary, the second change I would make would be to change the Soul Stone.
The Soul Stone is clearly the worst stone—it’s difficult to build around its synergy, it's rarely incidentally powerful, and it's the one you are generally least happy to see generated. I don't think adding points to this stone’s power or to the buff is the right answer. Sure, if you increase it to something like +4 or +5 buff, there is certainly a point at which it becomes good, but mostly I just don't like how this stone works with the decks and packages that Infinity Ultron has been best with. I would really prefer that this stone simply do something else. Maybe it could pull an enemy card to Ultron's location, afflict an enemy card, copy something to hand, or some other effect that synergizes better with Infinity Ultron or the other stones.
The Infinite Ultron buff will prove to be enough, unlike the Captain Carter change which is probably too much. We'll check back in on that change next week.
3) What is the Chinese Marvel Snap client really like?
You can come hear me talk about it in this video tour!
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Now let's check out a couple of answers from the ask-the-team channel of the official Marvel Snap discord.
4) Q: I want to applaud y'all for releasing more cards and using Series 4 to distribute support cards. But one thing I noticed is none of these new S4 cards don't have variants. I'm thinking of King Eitri, Lasher, Laufey, etc. I'm loving 1st Ghost Rider as a new combo piece. The default art for these cards is okay, but they stand out in my decks.
Personalization is a big part of SNAP to me so I'm wondering if this "no S4 variants" is a thing going forward?
A: We know that some cards over the past year have released with limited or no Variants. We have plans to release Variants for those Series 4 cards later in the year.
Moving forward, our goal is to have ALL new cards release with multiple Variants available in their launch season or in the couple of months following.
-Griffin
Author's note:
One of my primary hopes for the new acquisition system beyond improvements for players, is that lessening the load taken up by ensuring new Spotlight cards all have variants on day one allows the team to devote development resources elsewhere. Even a small buffer of a couple of weeks or months as mentioned above should help out.
5) Q: Is there any side of the marvel universe that the team isn't interested in adding cards from?
Particularly Street Level characters from more adult franchises like Daredevil or Punisher have a fraction of cards compared to a lot of other Franchises like the x-men or Spider-man.
This isn't meant to be an attack. The team has done a great job of highlighting different under explored areas of the marvel universe. More so I would be interested to see if these are areas that are intentionally being deprioritized (as this is a game meant for all ages), or just these characters are of less interest to the theme.
A: Our focus is on identifying characters and themes we're confident we can make into fun seasons. So we review the Marvel canon looking for what we believe players will be excited to see. We don't explicitly cordon anything off, we just look for good opportunities.
-Glenn
Author's note:
The premise of the question here is flawed. What street level characters are missing? The simple fact of the matter is that cosmic Marvel has a lot more characters than the so-called “adult franchises” listed above. As far as areas of the Marvel universe I want them to mine more, my personal answer is easy: more retro. I would love for more classic 60s through 80s characters to make their way into the game. I'm thinking of the types of characters you'd find in the original Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe or on 1990 Impel Marvel Universe cards. Give me the New Warrior and Alpha Flight. Where are Banshee and Quasar and Fin Fang Foom?
That's it for this week! Come find me on social media (@scosco on Bluesky) and check out the recent tour I did of the Chinese version Marvel Snap! Head to the comments and join the conversation!