Welcome back to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly! Since we last looked at the card changes, we have had an OTA and a patch. Both of these led to some interesting meta-changes throughout the last few weeks, so let's take a look at how good, bad, or ugly they were.
The Good
While the pre-OTA stats for Agatha were incredibly abysmal, being almost at the bottom for all categories, no one was calling for her to get buffed. She fits this role of being a fun meme card or experience farming card because she played the whole game for you. However, with this new change, she only takes over on the even turns but remains in your starting hand as an extra card. This change does a couple of things. First, it gives agency to the player and lets them guide the game a lot better in the direction they want it to go. Also, most of the cards used to remove Agatha from the hand are 3-cost cards, so it is now more guaranteed that you can remove Agatha since you have control of the 3rd turn. Secondly, it helps thin your deck slightly meaning you have a greater chance to draw the other cards in your deck than a deck without Agatha. While unexpected by the player base, it is a good overall change for the game and something new and exciting. It helped elevate Agatha from the lowest stat line to a meta-contending deck overnight. While some people don’t appreciate the change as much because they liked the complete autopilot function, this was a good chance to make a card more fun to play for everyone in general and give it a nice competitive boost. They may change her back, so I will play her in her new form when we can.
This is another unexpected change, but one that is good. As one of the least-played discard cards, Sword Master needed a little love to make him more playable. He isn’t immediately the best thing, but giving him a more targeted discard ability helps him out, especially staying at 7 power. There are a lot fewer targets at the odd cost mark for Discard but the change is a step in the right direction. Giving more agency to the player to make both deck-building and game decisions that are less based on random chance is a positive thing. Overall, good change.
Aero was a premium card in Marvel Snap but has fallen off since her ability changed. Since her ability changed, she has slowly gained power as the development team tries to fit her back into the game.
| Date | Cost | Power | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-10-14 |
5
|
10
|
On Reveal: Move the last enemy card played anywhere to this location.
|
| 2024-10-10 |
5
|
9
|
On Reveal: Move the last enemy card played anywhere to this location.
|
| 2024-09-13 |
5
|
10
|
On Reveal: Move the last enemy card played anywhere to this location.
|
| 2023-12-05 |
5
|
9
|
Curr: On Reveal: Move the last enemy card played anywhere to this location.
Prev: On Reveal: Move the last enemy card played this turn to this location.
|
| 2023-03-21 |
5
|
8
|
Curr: On Reveal: Move the last enemy card played this turn to this location.
Prev: On Reveal: Move all enemy cards played this turn to this location.
|
| 2023-01-10 |
5
|
7
|
On Reveal: Move all enemy cards played this turn to this location.
|
| 2022-09-21 |
5
|
8
|
On Reveal: Move all enemy cards played this turn to this location.
|
|
Released
2022-05-24
|
5 | 6 | On Reveal: Move all enemy cards played this turn to this location. |
While this is a good change, and I am happy she is receiving a slight buff, it will be irrelevant. In the balance notes, they mention her becoming another Skaar enabler, and while that is true, she is slightly too slow to fit perfectly in the established Skaar decks. However, with a nice buff and a unique effect, she has found some niche play, which is a good thing for her and the game in general.
The Good and The Bad
This is the first time I've combined some sections, but these next few cards have both a good and bad side to their changes.
Sandman, for a while, held the meta game as a slight hostage as the 5-cost card of choice for limiting players' ability to play the way they want. While this can be a frustrating experience for players, the metrics we have access to didn’t show that he was overbearing from a win or cube rate standpoint. So this change to his new ability feels slightly unwarranted when a lot of times his main deck wasn’t the most competitive option. However, the change to War Machine, which we will discuss a little later, makes this change feel a lot better when considering the game as a whole and not just one card's specific stats. If players had thought playing against Sandman before was frustrating, it would have been even more frustrating with the new War Machine. Now, Sandman has a different ability and different deckbuilding challenges that almost make him a new card. His stats are worse after the change, but more time is needed to see where he ends up.
Ever since the nerf to Hela, Black Cat has fallen out of favor because most decks don’t want to run a card that auto-discards itself if you don’t play it, and with cards at the 4-cost slot with higher power, any deck not running Hela or Ghost Rider has no use for Black Cat. Therefore, giving her a slight buff makes sense and is overall good. If you want to go that route, it makes her more valuable in Black Knight and Ghost Rider decks. It also makes her more useful in a Hela deck by gaining power back instead of being a 7-power card when she is returned. That all seems positive. However, after this most recent patch and the changes to some other cards, this change now feels a little off and one that was slightly unneeded. With the popularity of Hela now and some recent changes we will discuss later, this Black Cat change has felt a little on the bad side as an ill-considered buff too soon.
Mockingbird received a slight nerf in the last OTA and lost a point of power. There are a lot of players who cried that this was a buff because she is no longer able to be hit by Shang-Chi, but over and over again, the development team has said there is little correlation between putting a card outside of Shang range as a buff instead of a power decrease and nerf. For Mockingbird, this is nothing crazy and won't damage her play rate much since most of the decks running her are still happy with a low-cost 9-power card. Overall, that is a good change in my book, as it ensures the card is balanced and not overpowered. However, this inadvertently hurts Skaar decks by removing one of the easiest enablers to put on the board. Skaar decks were starting to make a name for themselves in the meta game, although the stats didn’t make them out to be overpowered. With Mockingbird removed as an enabler, these decks have fallen in popularity, and Skaar is again in an awkward spot. Overall, it is a good change for Mockingbird to make her more balanced, but with some bad collateral damage.
As one of the old cards that received the activate mechanic, many players had high hopes for this card because she has floundered a little as an on-reveal. However, she feels just about as awkward as she did before the change and hasn’t found her spot yet. It isn’t great when a card many players have hopes for ends up feeling just the same as before and sometimes even more awkward. On the bright side, though, she is now a more unique card that takes more thinking than her original ability, and I think with more time, she will find a spot that works for her.
The Bad
Many players hoped this change would be made because War Machine's stats pre-OTA were bad across the board. However, after the change, most players also thought this might be a mistake, and while we need more time to gauge this, other than a week, we can talk about the initial reaction and how it wasn’t the best change for the card. For some reason, many players do not like their opponent to play on turn six, so right after the OTA, there were a lot of decks trying to scam the opponent with Legion and Storm using War Machine to make sure they could still play on the last turn. This deck saw success even after the initial wave of players running it. However, it has slightly fallen off as more players become accustomed to the snap and play patterns. As I mentioned above, Sandman locking down the game on turn 5 can cause a lot of frustration for players, so introducing a new way to do this at the same time they try to get rid of one feels like the game is moving backward. Overall, they could have made a slightly better change than just making War Machine Ongoing to lessen the Turn 5 Legion scam. Still, it isn’t so bad to warrant an ugly response, and I think with more time, this change will ultimately be just a cause of frustration and not something that is taking over the whole game.
The Ugly
The card that most people have strong feelings about. While Hellcow itself isn't exactly a problem, this is a great chance for the card that saw very little, if any, play outside of discard that was suboptimally built due to either not having all the cards or because the player likes Hellcow. However, this change ushered in a meta of Hela again, causing many players a lot of frustration. Since the Hellcow change, Hela has jumped to 25% of the metagame. Players were waiting for the right moment to get back to playing Hela, and Hellcow offers the deck a consistent option to discard cards without running into the problem of actually discarding your Hela. Unfortunately, this led the game into a slightly more stale metagame than before the patch. Is Hela as dominant as she once was? Not precisely because she still has her slight nerf, and I think with more time, Hela will drop off a little bit, but with the way Hellcow is right now, Hela is too consistent and efficient at what she does to be balanced for the game. Ultimately, this change brings to the forefront everything players feel is wrong with the game and adds to the conspiracy theories that jump around after balance patches. Did the developers test this? How did they not see this coming? Other questions run rampant after changes like this that ultimately end up feeling uglier the more they happen. We even have some of the more prominent content creators in the game stating it might be the worst mistake in the game's history.
I think the Hell Cow change will be remembered as one of the worst card changes in SNAP's history.
— Jeff Hoogland (@JeffHoogland) September 19, 2024
It took us from one of the best metagames we've ever had into a Hela-Clog-Living Tribunal trifecta that is incredibly dry.
While I might not say the worst change in the game's history, this one is pretty ugly. For me, it shows a lack of foresight on Second Dinner's part to understand how players will use their cards. In the patch notes, they mention Hellcow and she new M.O.D.O.K synergy but don't mention Hela at all. Again, we have an instance of taking one frustrating thing away and bringing another back full swing. It's not balanced at all.
The Irrelevant
Both of these cards received a 1 power buff in the recent balance changes, and while this is great for them, it hasn’t translated into any meaningful difference for the cards. Ghost Rider still fits in the same place as before with just a slight buff in power, although when you are bringing back 20 power or 14 power cards, 1 power doesn’t make that big of a difference. While Moon Girl is a fun card with some cool decks running around, these decks have not drastically changed or even slightly changed with the small buff of one power. Unfortunately, the metagame has easier ways to outpower the ways the Moon Girl decks try to win the game.
Overall Patch Feel
The general feeling for these recent changes was negative because of the drastic meta-shifts caused by War Machine and Hellcow. In my recent Meta Monday article, I mentioned that the meta was pretty wide open, which was true before this more recent balance update. The meta has condensed slightly due to the Hellcow changes and some other bugs that have limited players' ability to use move cards. Because of these few things and the lack of new features in the update, there was a lackluster reaction to these updates, and most people disliked the changes. However, Marvel Snap has another set of balance updates scheduled for September 26th, so hopefully, that will change the feelings from bad to good. Let me know what you think of all the most recent changes in the comments below!