Hello, and welcome back to Glenn Jones' Diary. This week, there are questions about variants, splits, and the Valentine's event. Also, should Alioth exist?
Q: Since January, cards are releasing with zero shop variants meaning your only option is the extraordinarily expensive spotlight variant. Personally, this feels very bad. I’m wondering if this is just going to forever be the case moving forward or if we are just in a period where this keeps happening as a coincidence.
A: We would love to include an additional variant in the shop for new card releases. This is a function of how quickly we can make variants and how many variants we need to make sure the Spotlight Caches work as expected. We hope to include more variants on initial card launch in the shop again over the next few months.
-Stephen
**This has been disappointing, but hopefully we're over the hump. Quite a few of the upcoming characters are more prominent in the comics than the members of The Black Order, so that should help since there will be more pre-existing comic covers to draw upon.
Q: Why did you make Alioth? Why give decks that can overpower initiative or put out massive stat points across the board with ongoings the ability to stop people from shutting them down? That doesn’t sound like a healthy card at all it just sounds awful and negates any downside of trying to build initiative…
Alioth might have initially seemed like a cool idea at first. But perhaps it’s gotten out of hand?
A: Prior to Alioth, the dominant strategies in SNAP were by far based around throwing priority and either Shang'ing all your opponent's big cards or attacking two lanes "from the shadows" with a lot of Power hiding in your hand. The most successful "proactive" decks tended to either be Lockdown, Shuri, or Galactus. Except for Galactus, even those decks would often prefer to throw priority.
We wanted to create more tactical diversity than that metagame offered, and Alioth was one of the ways we decided to do that. Alioth has had a massive impact, including preying upon some of the above decks and creating room for more decks based on strong 4 and 5-Cost cards, or even fragile synergies like Phoenix and Jane Foster.
-Glenn
**I get what Glenn is saying. I also don't want Snap to devolve into a game almost exclusively about throwing priority and responding with Shang Chi or massive uncounterable turn 6 combos. However, the issue still exists even with Alioth rewarding priority. Now it's split into two: if you lose priority, you must guess if your opponent has locked you out of the game with Alioth. If you gain priority, you have to guess whether the tech cards have checkmated you. I don't have a significant issue with Alioth since he's essentially doing what he was designed for; he seems to be an overly blunt and simplistic way of achieving that goal. We used to have another card that essentially performed the same task: the old Leader. Old Aero was often a similar game lock in the way Alioth is now. I'd much rather Glenn and the design team try to create new cards that reward priority in a more exciting way than Alioth. What would the game be like with old Leader, old Aero, and Alioth all in the game together? There should be several different priority payoffs that are different and creative. I'd also love them to design more cards that make Shang Chi less and less critical. Perhaps buff or create more cards competing with him as Shadow King did before all the most dangerous targets were nerfed. It's a design challenge, to be sure. If the goal was to create more “tactical diversity” than existed before the introduction of Alioth, I don't believe they've achieved that. For now, this is the bipolar world we live in, but I'm dreaming of a metagame where Alioth and Shang Chi aren't needed.
Q: The new Thanos spotlight variant is incredibly cool and I love that the Gold is used tastefully only in the title of the cover, but the cut of the lettering and visibility almost doesn’t seem precise enough. It just kinda looks like a gold rectangle. Any way the team could potentially update it to make the letters “pop” more and look more readable through the gold?
A: we do go back sometimes and re-adjust splits. we'll take a look at this one
-KentErik
**Wow, this is an amazing answer. They don't have much incentive to work in already released art, but it's nice to know they're willing to. Below is a picture of the Thanos split, courtesy of Paper on Twitter.
gold on the new thanos is... not great pic.twitter.com/tvKoiEEmj0
— pape (@PaperLOL) February 13, 2024
Q: Hello!! Absolutely LOVING the new event!! It's so cute and adorable while mixing up the meta in such a fun way! I noticed when a card gets its bonuses from their partner there's a small little vfx that plays to indicate it. Is there any chance future events like this one (which I rlly rlly hope come back!) can get a small lil custom vfx that matches the theme to go along with it? (So for example this event could have been little hearts popping out)
A: For this first event, we committed to a smaller scope in order to better evaluate arranging future events. Assuming we continue doing them, we expect to make them better experiences every time, including via VFX.
-Glenn
Q: The devs have expressed in the past some wariness regarding adding new keywords to cards. Obviously for this Valentine's Day event, a new keyword has been added, albeit temporarily. Could this be seen as a "test" for if new keywords to snap? I'm curious if these keywords are available to all players or if there were changes put in place so that these keywords wouldn't show up in the new players experience over fear of confusion.
A: The event is everywhere. We're going to monitor its impact for a variety of player cohorts, including newer players.
-Glenn
**I adore this event. LOVE it. I love it more for what it means for the future than what it is now. The developers had previously stated they were hesitant to make explicitly temporary changes, but I think it's a genius way to keep this game fresh long-term. I also like that they are willing to experiment with temp changes and keywords to see how casual players respond to them. I'm thinking we might get themed events around teams like the X-Men or the Avengers. I also hope we get weird experimental “Imbalance patches” that let us see the game in new ways. What if Zabu effects 6 costs for a week as an experiment? What if the bonuses from all the Guardians cards were boosted? What if Shang Chi just took a week off?
Q: It appears as though when the daily reset happened Yondu’s text changed to be “the lowest-cost card of your opponent’s deck”. Is this a new change or an error that you guys will be fixing?
A: The Power Couples OTA change appears to have pulled in flawed text strings for a few cards. We're looking into it.
-Glenn
**Several text-only changes to cards took effect alongside the Valentine's patch. These were errors, likely due to Second Dinner having multiple game versions at all times. We've seen errors with this several times before. I've seen some people speculate that these are potential changes. I doubt that and think it's far more likely a simple error in changing a huge and complex system.
Q: Have you considered adding Trigger as an official keyword to cards that have abilities that fall outside of ongoing and on reveal? So you could make cards that either double those effects or nullify those effects?
A: We have. One of the biggest reasons we've avoided it is that word doesn't align with our philosophy around accessible language that's easy for people who aren't already CCG veterans to quickly learn and understand.
-Glenn
**I sincerely hope they don't add the keyword “trigger.” Second Dinner will likely add additional keywords very sparingly, and wasting the effort and text on something unnecessary would be a shame. I want more exciting and fun keywords in the future, not clerical, overly explanatory keywords that paper TCGs need so that judges and at-home players can interpret the cards correctly.
Q: What was the inspiration for this season’s menu music?
I’m currently getting nighttime snacks ready for my toddler and decided to open up Snap so I could listen to this banger of a song. Props to whoever came up with this beat! Gives me Batman Beyond x Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibes
A: The art style for the season is where I start to come up with ideas. This season felt like it called for some heavy space synths, some kind of dark electro type stuff. This was the playlist I was listening to a lot while writing this season's music!
-TheChrisAlan
Q: I've got a few questions.
How do you decide what to make the new season music?
How did you get into making music?
What is your favourite instrument?
What instrument do you use the most.
A: I always start by taking a look at the art and style of the season, the new cards, cardbacks, everything really and just try to get a good sense of what the overall tone is. I'll then look for references, is this season a reference to a specific movie or does the season pass card have a show, stuff like that to see if there is any music I can reference. It's nice when there are references I can study and pay homage to as well, however that isn't always the case.
I have a background in guitar, but I learned piano as well, which is very important for writing these new songs! I use a lot of different instruments, whatever the music calls for! This season specifically felt like it called for some intergalactic synthesizers based on the visual stylings!
-TheChrisAlan
**The music has been excellent lately. I liked the Halloween music. After around nine months of the same music over and over, it's been a godsend. Shout-out to TheChrisAlan for keeping things fresh and stylish.
Q: Given the recent Beast change and how Black Swan works, is the team considering changing any existing cost reduction cards to 'On Reveal'? eg Zabu, Sera, Ravonna or Quinjet
Or is this more a going forward that's how it'll be for new cost reduction cards?
A: It's an available dial for cards. It's neither something we're updating all old cards to match nor something we expect to use exclusively in the future, just more often than we had.
-Glenn
**If Zabu gets a change, I'd target a different cost rather than being temporary. Playing a 4-cost on turn 3 and then two on turn 6 is a significant part of what has made the card so good. I'm not saying I think Zabu needs a change, but I certainly wouldn't oppose it just from a freshness perspective. He's certainly had his time in the sun.
Q: Okay so my opponent played Iron Man on an empty location, and had previously played Living Tribunal on another location who had split 8 Power to each location. However Iron Man did not double his location's Power out of the Power that LT gave that location.
Now yes, if Iron Man were to double the Power continuously, it'd cause a loop of 8 to 16, total Power 32 split into 11 each, 11 to 22 and total Power 44 split into 15 and so on... But how does Iron Man work here? Does the phrase 'this location's Power' intend that LT's split Power isn't of that location? Or should Iron Man double the Power the first time as in the 8 Power to 16, giving a total Power of 32 split into 11 and then stop?
A: Iron Man doubles before Tribunal applies. Tribunal (and Cerebro and Omega Red) all apply later than other Ongoings so they can account for them.
-Glenn
**It is interesting to note that certain ongoings logically have to be applied later, and it makes sense. Is there an order within this group? For example, I'm assuming Omega Red would check and apply after Cerebro.
That's it for this week. Head over to the official Marvel Snap discord and submit a question in the ask-the-team channel to potentially have your question answered here! As a reminder, we've been trying out a slightly different format here with less focus on covering all of the questions from the discord and more editorial comments. Let us know what you think, and join in the conversations above in the comments below!