Spotlight CASH : September 2023
Welcome to Spotlight CASH, Snap.Fan’s monthly look at upcoming cash bundles and the role that money plays in Marvel Snap. In the ever-shifting in-game economy, Second Dinner can dial back the gold players receive, credits only stretch so far, and Token Tuesdays will come and go, but there is one currency whose flow the players–not Second Dinner–can control, and that currency is cash. Join us for a deep dig into the datamine as we preview September’s cash bundles. As always, bundle details are subject to change.
Hail Value!
If you are looking for a good return on your investment, Hail Hydraulics is the bundle to buy in September. For the $24.99 price tag, you get 4,000 credits, 1,000 gold, and... some mecha fascist cosmetics. This August season has been weird, y’all. Along with the avatar and variant come 465 boosters, enough to split the latter three times.
After a 4,000-credit spending spree, you can expect to be at least 80 collection levels higher than you started. For a series-3-complete player, that equates to roughly 6 ⅔ trips through the credits-booster-reserve cycle, for an expected value of 66.67 boosters, 722.22 credits, 148.15 tokens, and incidentals. If you convert the included gold into credits as well, this bundle should guarantee access to a new spotlight cache. For anyone still looking for Series 3 cards, this can be a chance to claim Red Skull early along with a good chunk of progression.
The catch? $25 is not chump change. If you are willing to lay out that much, the return is very good. For free and cheap-to-play players, though, this bundle might have a whiff of pay-to-win.
Hail Hydraulics
Credits per dollar: 160
Gold per dollar: 40
Mystery Machine
September brings us no fewer than six mystery bundles: three at the $4.99 price point, two at $9.99, and one at $19.99. The first, pictured above, offers the best value. If you were to spend that money on gold and convert that gold into credits, you would come away with half the 750 on offer here, to say nothing of the variant.
The two other $5 bundles break the long-running standard by lowering the credit count to 650. While that still beats the shop rate, it puts them in the middle of the pack in terms of return per dollar among historical bundles. Instead, it is Mystery Bundle 3, with its 1200 credits and 1000 tokens, that makes for the other good purchase among the mystery offerings.
The two remaining, at the $10 price point, offer a mere 1250 credits. Note that you could buy any two of the $5 versions and come away with more credits and an extra variant. Needless to say, the $10 mystery bundles are not recommended.
September 2023 Mystery 1
Credits per dollar: 150
September 2023 Mystery 2
Credits per dollar: 125
September 2023 Mystery 3
Tokens per dollar: 50
Credits per dollar: 60
September 2023 Mystery 4
Credits per dollar: 130
September 2023 Mystery 5
Credits per dollar: 130
September 2023 Mystery 6
Credits per dollar: 125
Those Golden Days
If you can get past the $29.99 price tag, Days of Summer Past is the best bundle source of gold this month. Unfortunately, it marries 3,000 bricks of the yellow stuff to a paltry 600 credits, making for a total package of good but not great value. For anyone in need of Agent Coulson, this is an opportunity to acquire one of Devil Dinosaur’s most potent enablers, and White Queen, of course, can be played right alongside it in the same deck.
Days of Summer Past makes an interesting comparison to the Trash Panda bundle from May. Both run at $30 and supply 3K gold, but this one substitutes a second variant and avatar for 400 credits. Of course that makes for less progression, but it is a pretty reasonable tradeoff for a variant compared to the 700 or 1200 gold in the shop, and it might—just might—represent a shift toward cosmetics as a driver of sales.
Days of Summer Past
Gold per dollar: 100
Credits per dollar: 20
Hey, Big Spender
Through the first nine months of its life after release, Marvel Snap shied away from high-dollar bundles. Sure, there were a few, namely the Pro Bundle, Positively Charged, and Beautiful Beyond Compare, all priced at a gobsmacking $99.99. That was it for releases above $50 until the start of August, but Aspect of Heimdall will make the third one since then. Not only did Second Dinner release the Pro Bundle Mk. II for $100, they rolled out two at a new price point of $74.99. All three have given a good rate of return. This appears to be a shift in strategy as Second Dinner courts the big fish who form the backbone of mobile-gaming profitability.
Aspect of Heimdall follows only three weeks after Death Becomes Her and, with 4,000 tokens, tracks pretty closely. However, Heimdall drops 2,000 gold for 2,300 credits, which is not a good trade. Both characters showcased here are in series 1, too, so there is no opportunity to grab an early series 3 the way there was with Death. On the flip side, they are both playable cards—and playable together—with Kraven presently enjoying a meta run in decks with Silk and Angela.
Aspect of Heimdall
Tokens per dollar: 53.33
Credits per dollar: 64
In Case of Emergency
Kitty Pryde is technically still a Series 5 card, making it, to the best of this author’s recollection, the first to ever appear in a bundle. If you didn’t get her for free and missed out when she appeared in spotlight caches, this is another opportunity to get your hands on a very winning card. The 900 credits and 1600 gold position it as a reasonable value, but September Mystery Bundle 3 (1200 credits, 1000 tokens) is probably the better buy at $19.99. Kitty is the main draw here, so if you’ve got the doubloons, go ahead and bring her aboard.
Emergency Pirate Outfit
Gold per dollar: 80
Credits per dollar: 45
Purely Cosmetic
Bringing the cosmetics of the September, 2022 beta season back for anyone who missed out, the Sword and Shield bundle offers variants and avatars including a Max Grecke Iron Man, a noir Nick Fury, and... an Agent 13 that looks straight out of Austin Powers. Apart from boosters, there is nothing spendable here, and, as datamined, the bundle does not include card backs as previous beta rewinds have. This is an opportunity for players who are not Series 3 complete to nab an early Nick Fury. Otherwise, whether this bundle is for you depends entirely on your taste for the art on offer.
Something to Celebrate
The next in the longstanding series of festival-themed $4.99 bundles showcasing characters of Chinese heritage, Festival of Unity offers a substantial return relative to its price. However, the 500 gold that we saw in Festival Fireworks and Festival of Flight have been dropped in favor of 400 additional credits. It is an unfortunate development, and part of a pattern we have seen since the introduction of spotlight caches. On its own merits, though, Festival of Unity is a good purchase.
Wong being a Series 3 card makes the $5 ask a bargain for anyone in need of him, and 900 credits at that price would be good by itself. Compare it to the $5 mystery bundles with their variants and 750 or 650 credits, and clearly Unity is cause for celebration.
Festival of Unity
Credits per dollar: 180
The Bottom Line
September’s bundles confirm the shifts in Second Dinner’s bundling strategy that we saw starting in August. Gold is less available, tokens are scarcer as well, and high-dollar purchases have begun to tower over the landscape. Although we did not look at it here, there are no bundles for gold giving great returns, either. All of this makes the bundle economy harder to optimize than in days past, especially for a player on a limited budget. And budgeting is key to not going broke playing a mobile game with in-game transactions like this. That is the most important thing to take away from this discussion: Set a budget that you can afford and stick to it.
The good news is that there are still some very good values to be had this month, even at the lower end of bundle pricing, and Second Dinner seems to have gotten a little wiser about bundling variants that can be played together in a cohesive deck.
Best Tokens per Dollar
- Aspect of Heimdall (53.33)
- September 2023 Mystery 3 (50)
Best Gold per Dollar
- Days of Summer Past (100)
- Season Pass Premium [if you reach at least 49] (90)
- Emergency Pirate Outfit (80)
- Hail Hydraulics (40)
Best Credits per Dollar
- Festival of Unity (180)
- Hail Hydraulics (160)
- September 2023 Mystery 1 (150)
- September 2023 Mystery 4 (130)
- September 2023 Mystery 5 (130)
Best Overall Currencies per Dollar**
- Hail Hydraulics (211.08)
- Festival of Unity (185.37)
- Season Pass Premium [if you reach at least 49] (160.16)
- Aspect of Heimdall (158.02)
- September 2023 Mystery 1 (155.31)
**Expressed as credits per dollar, valuing gold at 1.25 credits (shop rate) and tokens at 1.4 gold (modern Token Tuesday rate), and adding 25 credits for each new card and variant
Thank you for joining us on this journey, and we will see you back here for a look at the October bundles in a month!