Welcome to the final installment of Burning Questions for 2025! It's been an eventful year in Snap! What were the highlights? Let's remember some cards!
1) What was your favorite card released in 2025?
My criteria for this is how much fun I had with a card. Without a doubt, the winner is Batroc the Leaper. I had so much fun watching this dang weirdo jump all around. My favorite pairing is Silk, who has also been a pet card of mine since release, so getting to play the pair of them together has been a delight. Batroc is just the perfect pairing of character and card design, capturing the silly spirit of Batroc. Batroc is one of those Marvel Snap cards that just gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
Honorable mentions:
Jim Hammond would be my second place pick. I cannot believe how much I love that card. Iron Patriot might not be a popular choice because of his turn as the meta tyrant, but I really like the way that card tilts the dynamic of Snap. Merlin is another in a long line of cards with variable output like other personal favorite cards such as Kate Bishop and Nico Minoru. Galactus First Steps was the most surprising card. I thought I was going to hate it, but ended up having a blast play that card and like the way it shifts the game in a similar way as Iron Patriot.
2) What were the best variants released in 2025?
It's subjective of course, but out of the many amazing variants released this year, my favorite is Gurihiru’s Gwenpool.
For those who are unaware, Gurihiru is actually a duo of artists from Japan. They're known for their cute, cartoony styles and most famously helped solidify Jeff the Baby Land Shark's visual style personality alongside Jeff creator Kelly Thompson, with clear and tight silent storytelling in the It's Jeff digital comic. Before It's Jeff the pair worked on a variety of other comics, including The Unbelievable Gwenpool. This variant is from the cover of the first issue of that series. Gurihiru’s whimsical style perfectly captures the character and I even think there's some element of this image that evokes her Snap card's ability as well.
Honorable mentions:
Here are a few more of my favorite variants from this year. Feast your eyes!
3) What should I do this weekend?
There is a Marvel Snap tournament happening this weekend! KMBest is going to be running a tournament this weekend!
If you hustle you might still be able to register as a player! To register, join the tournament Discord server. Otherwise you can watch all of the action on his Twitch channel starting at 8:00pm Eastern on Saturday! I will be helping out with some judging behind the scenes, so be sure to say hi to me in the chat!
Now let's go over to the official Marvel Snap discord and grab some developer questions and answers!
4) Question:
When Spiderman: Brand new day, and Avengers: Doomsday movie release, are we getting new cards like fantastic first steps movie did to go along?
Answer:
We won't be giving a you a straight answer on this one. As you know, we've done things like this in the past and we'd love to keep doing them.
-Griffin
Scosco's Note:
When not giving a straight answer kind of means yes! In all seriousness, it would be more surprising if Snap didn't take advantage of (or be compelled by Marvel to take advantage of) these major blockbusters. I'm especially curious if we'll get some kind of new Doctor Doom card! We don't even really know what the “Doom” character played by Robert Downey Jr. is yet, and the Snap adaptation could go in any direction as well.
5) Question:
It's been discussed here before about how increasing a card's power to 10 is different from increasing it to 9 because of the existance of Shang-Chi.
I'm curious about any similar considerations for cards with 0 power vs 1 power. 0 has no effect on the game state on its own, whereas 1 has a potentially game-changing impact if it's the only card contesting, could flip priority, etc.
What factors other than cost contribute to the design team's decision about releasing a card at 0 power vs 1 power? What about -1 power?
Answer:
Generally, we simply avoid releasing at 0 Power. That's both an appeal element--having no Power makes a card harder to get excited about--and also a balance element. In balance terms, the "gap" between 0 and 1 is quite a bit larger than 1 and 2 when it comes to Strength, as you've noted. That's because it's a binary element--has Power or doesn't. You can see something similar manifest in chess, where the "value" of a piece that can checkmate alongside just the King is substantially higher (the Rook vs. the Knight/Bishop).
Negative numbers are more permissible to us, because they do contribute to the system, but they're even less appealing so we tend to rely on them in specific scenarios that make sense for balance and flavor. For example, Gorr's a bad dude afflicted with a curse; being able to use his base Power as a dial to weaken or strengthen his card makes sense, including going below 0.
Scosco's Note:
I love the idea of cards with Negative power and all of the quirky design space that unlocks. The zero I really want to see though is on the Cost side. I know designing any new 0-Cost cards is risky, hard to balance, and might not appeal to everyone. The Power would really have to be less than 2, unless there was some extreme downside. But I really think there's room in the game for at least one more.
That's it for this year! Have a happy new year! Come back next year for more Burning Questions!