Hello and welcome back to Burning Questions, your weekly look at the hottest topics in Marvel Snap. This week we're talking about Hela, Black Swan, and… Mantis?!
1) Is Hela back?
The change to Hellcow has brought the Asgardian goddess of death back in a big way. Because of the way Activate abilities can be sequenced, Hellcow gives the deck a safe way to discard multiple cards without relying on M.O.D.O.K. Most current Hela decks are playing the reliable and targeted pair of Blade and Lady Sif as the only other discarders.
Hela doesn't seem quite as prevalent or dominant as the last time she was the meta tyrant. Nonetheless, some people still find her frustrating to compete with. Aside from just retreating or waiting for Balatro’s mobile release next week, here are a few ways to cope in a Hela heavy meta:
Go taller
Hela’s lack of counters is her biggest weakness. Hela doesn't generally bring anything that can interact with you, so you're free to just go bigger than Hela with something that has more control over how its power is distributed. Zoo is a perfect example of a deck like this. Zoo can get huge across all three lanes and you can even pack a cheeky Cosmo to shut Hela down on occasion. Other decks that Hela leaves unbothered to just go over the top of her include big move combos (bounce, Heimdall, of Phoenix Force), Mr. Negative, and Namora.
ZooC
Shut her down
Hela has a predictable play pattern and a clear goal. That means you can disrupt her if you can fight and get priority. Clog and lockdown strategies are effective as are combos like Juggernaut/Cosmo. Individual cards that most profitably interact with Hela include USAgent, Cosmo, Moon Knight, and Leech.
Anti-Hela Darkhawk
Anti-Hela Spectrum
2) How is Black Swan doing now that she has the Activate keyword?
Black Swan has a reasonable 53.13% drawn win rate in the last seven days (filtered to rank 100+). Activate Swan hasn't been a hit right out of the gates. Personally, my initial experiments with Black Swan in bounce decks saw her falling short. She felt awkward to play and there were quite a few times I found myself wishing I could play her on turn 5 with her old effect. Beast just seemed to be superior in most situations and they had some trouble coexisting. It became clear that simply plugging her into established bounce decks wasn't the way to go. She needs a different kind of build that plays more to her strengths. Decks that benefit from playing a plethora of cards on the final turn seemed to work best for me. Strategies to build around with Swan include Hit Monkey, Werewolf by Night, or Dracula dump. Here is my favorite current spot for Swan:
Swan Disrupt
3) How would you buff Mantis?
On last week's episode of the Snap On This podcast the hosts were tasked with proposing a change to one of the least played cards in the game, Mantis.
They had some very clever ideas:
Ben
4/6 If your opponent plays a card here this turn, discard the highest-cost card from their hand.
Lauren
6/3 On Reveal: set all enemy cards played here this turn to 0 power (including unrevealed cards).
Rie
3/2 Recruit a random card with cost 3 or less from your opponent's lane to your side.
I think any of these would be compelling changes. These all do a great job of balancing Mantis’ lore, her ability to influence and control powerful beings, with the identity of the other Guardians of the Galaxy in Marvel Snap. Here's my proposal for Mantis:
2/3, return a card here to your opponent's hand, give it -1 cost.
It could be a devastating card when played on turn 6, or it could just be a bit disruptive otherwise. I think bouncing to your opponent's hand, with some benefit to them, is an inevitable mechanic and Mantis could be the first test case.
Plus, Mantis has some cool variants I’d like to play.
Now let's go over to the official Marvel Snap discord and check out some developer Q and As!
4) Q: Are we going to get new ones at all? Afflict X amount of cards, change X amount of locations, etc? Anything?
A: We definitely have new bounty types in the pipes (I know because my team's tested some), I think most recently we put out new ones for Activate. I'd imagine over time you'll see a wider array come your way. One thing that we're having to keep in mind is that we often have Alliances that have players on different client versions of the game, so handling the reconciliation between previous clients and new bounties is something we're trying to be careful with.
-Addison
Author's note:
The primary side effect of Alliances has been to infect Proving Grounds with players just trying to move seven cards, destroy eight cards, or fill every location. It would be nice to get some new bounties and I'd love to see some really creative, outside-the-box ones.
5) Q: In the 8/29 ota Beast was changed citing upcoming new cards and changed old cards. Glenn gave us an open invitation to poke him about getting some more context on this change later on.
Since the change was made to Beast there has been another ota as well as a new patch so I'm wondering if we can now get some expansion on why Beast was changed when and how he was as opposed to any of the new/newly changed cards.
A: I can in part, though not all of the causes are public.
We like to keep cards with overlapping effects spread around the Cost curve, to avoid creating too much redundancy and give players more interesting choices to make in deckbuilding and gameplay. We initially moved Beast back to 2-Cost from a successful rebalanced career at 3 in part because of Black Swan's release at 3/5. Given we're relocating her to 2/3, it made sense to similarly shift him back, and change the texture of the Bounce deck again.
One of our strongest decks in internal testing was also a deck using Beast with move cards and Human Torch. Giving Beast more Power but making him less efficient as an enabler directly impacted this deck, with minimal collateral damage to other strategies.
Which card we change is often a topic of debate. While we have an obvious incentive to release cards we know will create exciting gameplay, it isn't our default to change older cards. However, it's often correct because:
- Older cards and decks are prone to becoming stale, and changing them creates flux.
- New cards are developed with specific goals for gameplay, and they may not be able to easily adjust and maintain all of those goals.
- Older cards have tons of data informing how best to balance them, new cards don't.
- Our new card content is more frequent than other CCGs, but less voluminous; changes help make up for that.
-Glenn Jones
Author's note:
A thorough and honest answer from Glenn, as usual. Beast is solid at 3-5—the beefy body helps him a lot. I still disagree with the decision to make Beast 3-cost, though since 2-3 Black Swan with activate hasn't been especially compelling and it feels transparently designed to give Toxin space. The meta evolved in a way that Bounce move decks, while strong, have hardly been dominant or uncounterable.
That's it for this week. Come back next time for more Burning Questions!