Hello, and welcome back to Burning Questions, your weekly look at Marvel Snap’s hot-button issues. This week, we have questions about buffs, surprise cards, new villains, and the development timetable.
1) Which cards don't need to be buffed themselves but need changes to other cards to make them more viable?
There are plenty of cards in Snap that need a buff, but there are several that don't need a buff themselves to improve. Rather, they need the environment around them to change. The first one that comes to mind is Black Swan. At 3-5, she doesn't need a stat or ability change. Instead, she needs one-cost cards as a category to get better. If the balance team continues strengthening one-costs as promised, Black Swan will become more appealing. The same is true of Elektra. The proposal to make her destroy two-cost cards is intriguing — two-costs are a very impactful group.
However, I think that as one-costs get stronger, so will Elektra. Another low-play rate card that I don't think needs a buff is Black Panther. Okoye and Nakia are also lightly played, and I’d rather see buffs to those cards to make them stronger with Black Panther. He can be a bit awkward to play on turn 5, but if more cards are added that synergize well with him, like the upcoming Phastos, that would be a more clever way to improve him. Similarly, cards like Selene can improve as more cards that synergize with them are added or modified to work with her, as was the case with Ravonna, who continues to strengthen.
2) Why aren't cards like Heimdall and Arnim Zola used as surprise cards more often?
Having cards in your deck that your opponent is not anticipating can be very powerful in Marvel Snap. An unexpected Quake or Legion can often net 8 cubes. But why do some cards work as surprise cards while others don't? What makes a good surprise card?
The best surprise cards allow you to affect multiple lanes. This can mean they accomplish that themselves or are inexpensive enough to be played alongside other cards. Interesting, low-cost surprise cards include Quake, Scarlet Witch, Echo, Polaris, Doctor Strange, Ghost Spider, Rocket Raccoon, Juggernaut, and Negasonic Teenage Warhead. These are all flexible enough to work in a variety of decks, steal a game, and are fun to play.
Decks have become so synergistic in Snap that a surprise card has to be usable in enough games that it's worth playing over a more synergistic card. This is a higher and higher bar to clear as the game continues to max out on synergy. The game is suffering from synergy creep more than power creep per se.
This is why cards like Heimdall and Arnim Zola don't see more play as surprise options. On their face, they seem like powerful ways to spring a trap on your opponent. They can affect multiple lanes, and they'll be surprising unless your deck is built with them in mind. The problem is that, at 6-cost, they're not often usable enough to overcome the opportunity cost of playing a more synergistic card. A cheaper card can be played out for stats or fringe uses often enough that you can justify their role in a given list (though often by a small margin, even in these cases). When a card costs more, it is important that it actively helps you in more of your games. A card like Scarlet Witch can justify her place in a list, despite being suboptimal from a synergy standpoint, because she has enough games where she is neutral or better in addition to the games with which she is actively helping. The same is not true for Zola or Heimdall. In a small sample, a surprise Arnim Zola can feel extremely strong. In most cases, however, cards like Zola and Heimdall aren't strong enough as a “sometimes play” to justify their place outside of synergistic decks across larger sample sizes. Alioth struggles to carve out space as a surprise card for the same reasons.
3) What ability would you give to Cassandra Nova and Bastion?
It's been an epic month for modern-era X-Men villains. Cassandra Nova was revealed as the main villain in the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer, and Bastion is the menacing big bad in the X-Men ‘97 animated series. Both villains are well-known to hardcore X-Men comic fans, but neither has made a cultural impact outside the comics until now.
As for their roles in Marvel Snap, Cassandra Nova has been hiding in the datafiles for a while, and her ability has just been revealed.
I think the ability works well from a flavor perspective. For those unaware, Cassandra Nova is Professor X's twin parasite, which he battled in the womb. Her ability is delightfully parasitic, and she seems appropriately powerful.
Bastion probably isn't even in development yet, but given his star turn in X-Men ‘97, it seems he'll likely get his own Snap card at some point. Bastion is a cosmic brew of Master Mold and Nimrod, two characters we already have in Snap. Second Dinner has shown a proclivity for giving related characters related abilities. Just as the upcoming Nocturne has a mix of the abilities of her parents, Nightcrawler and Scarlet Witch, I expect Bastion to have an ability that finds a way to combine Master Mold and Nimrod in a powerful way. Here are three ideas I had for how this could be done:
- On Reveal: Destroy your highest power card here and add a copy of it to your hand.
- On Reveal: Destroy the lowest cost card here and add a copy to both player's hands.
- Add two Sentinels to both players' hands when this card is destroyed.
It would be nice if Bastion could be designed so that he somehow synergizes with Master Mold since that card doesn't see much play. Let me know if you think these abilities would make Bastion an interesting card, and please pitch your own Bastion designs in the comments!
Let's dive into the official Marvel Snap discord and find some interesting questions and answers!
4) Q: Do you think Cable, Valentina, and Mirage are too similar to each other?
Very long ago, in October 2023's patch notes, it was said that:
> [Mantis, Cable, and Maria Hill], along with Agent 13, Sentinel, and Snowguard... [are] all overlapping one another a fair bit, existing in a tight range of Cost and Power combinations. We'd like to break that up a little bit to build in some differentiation as to how they're used and where they might be played.
There are now four 2-cost cards with either 2 or 3 Power that add another card to your hand, three of which see mostly-interchangeable play in Loki decks (Mirage, Cable, and Valentina). Is "breaking that up" something you want to do, or do you think that the cards are fine in their current state?
A: No; these cards are all meaningfully different for both different decks as well as what players find appealing to do.
It's true that for Loki in particular they are fairly similar, but that's specific to what Loki's effect does. If you assume you'll always play Loki then Cable and Sentinel are the same card. Like other decks, the differences arise in what you think you'll want when you don't play Loki.
-Glenn
Author's Note:
**I think the effects of Cable, Valentina, and Mirage are distinct enough. However, because Loki exists, their balance will always be tied to him. Like Thanos before him, Loki may be approaching the point of being a design constraint. It is a shame that any card printed, past or future, that generates cards to hand will always be a Loki card first and must be balanced around him. I think that Mirage has a super cool design, and it would be fun to see her breathe outside of Loki, possibly with an extra point of power. Similarly, Snowguard is interesting, but she only sees play in Loki decks and took a nerf that essentially made her primarily playable with him. If Loki ever gets redesigned, it will be as much because of his pressure on design rather than his win rate.
5) Q: It's been a while since the change of Time Stone's ability and Thanos' statements. In the early April's OTA, The devs mentioned that infinity stones would be designed to interact with the Mad Titan himself more to narrow down Thanos decks' flexibility. Yet, we haven't seen any further adjustment to the stones for weeks. Could you briefly talk about the possible redesign of the stones, the release agenda or other related news? Thanks a lot.
Additionally, I'm also eager to know whether Sanctuary II would be reworked. Time Stone doesn't give any help while players play decks constructed without Thanos.
A: Because changing the Stones requires VFX work, it’s a patch change. The 4/30 patch was locked on design work before we made the initial change to Thanos himself, so there has not yet been a patch where it would’ve even been possible to make those changes.
We’ll talk about them when they go live; we don’t generally “preview” balance updates. We will also adjust Sanctuary II, although I wouldn’t say 1/1s that draw a card aren’t helpful—we’d never print such a card outright for strength reasons.
-Glenn
Author's Note:
**How the team has communicated about the changes to Thanos and Zabu has created unnecessary tension. While the design team may know the reasonable time expectation for the various planned changes to Thanos and his stones, the player base doesn't. The way the patch notes addressed him made it seem like a planned rework was underway with the Mad Titan, not that it was in its initial stages. Also, when I saw the team say that Zabu was not in his final form, I took that to mean he would be changed again a couple of months later, but I've seen content creators genuinely disappointed or surprised that he hasn't been changed again. The above response isn't likely to help.
People will read that and expect the Thanos rework to be in the next patch, but based on previous communication, I'd put my money on a patch or two down the line. The way character mastery was talked about really made it seem like it was imminent. Now, it seems several patches away. While I understand that the team doesn't want to make promises they can't keep, they're inadvertently causing similar tension already. Simply put, better communication about the time features take to implement will lead to less disappointment and less tension among players. We, as players, should learn to read between the lines and realize that soon (™) doesn't mean especially soon.
That's it for this week. You can find me on Twitter to ask your Burning Question, and then share your opinion in the comments!