Marvel Snap! (aka Fast Gwent by Hearthstone devs)

[Jason Liang]

I'm now at Collection level 142 and out of credits, so it's about time to buckle down and camp in Pool 1 until I have a healthy credit bank again. I'm not missing much in Pool 1 - as far as I can tell, the only noteworthy cards I'm missing are Spider-woman, Cosmo and Elektra.

Now that Bar Sinister absurdity is over, this is what I'm playing in Pool 1:

Honestly I'm not too happy with the Odin package, but he's comparatively better than the other 6 cost options in Pool 1.

Card by card:
Rocket Raccoon - The best 1 for a Wolfbane pile, and there's an off chance Odin can squeeze 2 more power out of him. I originally played Mantis in a Devil Dinosaur deck but Dinosaur is too much work for a fragile beater.
Angela - Not a 2 I care for much but she works in a Wolfsbane pile.
Forge - Again not a 2 I care much for but works well with Sinister, Wolfsbane and Namor.
Sinister - Amazing 2 cost for Pool 1. Good with Wolfsbane as well as any + power location, even good on Death's Domain/ Bar of No Name.
Colossus - The other great 2 cost. Colossus plays on so many locations and throwing him blind on the rightmost can payoff too.
Morph - Just steals matches. The potential to be unfair is high.
Wolfsbane - The Odin package payoff.
Namor - Not sold on Namor but I think he's a solid 4. Jessica Jones doesn't work with Odin so it's a toss up. Could be Enchantress or a 1 instead.
White Queen - I just like that she can give me a potential turn 5 or 6 play, even without a Devil Dinosaur payoff. I find she usually nabs Odin or sometimes Hulk.
White Tiger - I find her hard to use since often its a coin flip where the tiger ends up, but she's part of the Odin package. I don't have Spider-woman yet.
Gamora - I find Gamora much better than Devil Dinosaur, and she can certainly put away a lane with Odin.
Odin - Just think Odin is more effective than Spectrum, Onslaught, or not playing with a 6 at all.

 

[J1M]

This site has a decent database of other decks that you can filter based on your collection or tags like "Pool 1": https://marvelsnapzone.com/decks/

At a glance, I think you are undervaluing Hulk, Iron Man, Nightcrawler (statistically, the card with the highest win rate), and Professor X. Probably overvaluing Forge, Mister Sinister, Namor, White Queen, and "combo pieces" in general. When you get to pool 3 you start to have more pieces that can stand in for each other in a combo, making it less likely you'll have a dead card in your hand.

Deckbuilding idea if you are tired of Odin: Iron Man + Onslaught is 28 power at a location. Build a deck to win another location with turns 1-4.

 

[Grunker]

J1M what do you spend your free gold bars on?

If you like cosmetics, then save them to buy the art variants you like. Also note the 'rare' ones that cost 1200 gold cannot be obtained from loot boxes.

But if your goal is to grow your collection ASAP or if you are like me and think most of the variant art is worse than the base cards, here's how to be efficient.

1. If you aren't going to hit 25 completed daily missions for the week, use 120 gold to buy 2 extra missions. This is repeatable and the same gold to credit conversion rate as the shop.
2. If you want to unlock cards as fast as possible, purchase credits in the shop.
3. Diamond hands. Just stockpile the gold until they announce their plans for a new way to use it. In beta there was a fiasco involving gold and buying limited time loot boxes to get a specific card. It was done so poorly they refunded purchases and deleted the system.

Personally, I saved about half of my gold and spent the rest on credits.

Thanks a lot mate. Generally I'm kind of worried about their payment-model. I mean it seems kind of generous but the flipside is that it could hurt longevity? I hear Legends of Runeterra is having problems making money too, and I can imagine, because that game throws everything at you like candy. You never have to spend in that game unless you want to

 

[J1M]

J1M what do you spend your free gold bars on?

If you like cosmetics, then save them to buy the art variants you like. Also note the 'rare' ones that cost 1200 gold cannot be obtained from loot boxes.

But if your goal is to grow your collection ASAP or if you are like me and think most of the variant art is worse than the base cards, here's how to be efficient.

1. If you aren't going to hit 25 completed daily missions for the week, use 120 gold to buy 2 extra missions. This is repeatable and the same gold to credit conversion rate as the shop.
2. If you want to unlock cards as fast as possible, purchase credits in the shop.
3. Diamond hands. Just stockpile the gold until they announce their plans for a new way to use it. In beta there was a fiasco involving gold and buying limited time loot boxes to get a specific card. It was done so poorly they refunded purchases and deleted the system.

Personally, I saved about half of my gold and spent the rest on credits.

Thanks a lot mate. Generally I'm kind of worried about their payment-model. I mean it seems kind of generous but the flipside is that it could hurt longevity? I hear Legends of Runeterra is having problems making money too, and I can imagine, because that game throws everything at you like candy. You never have to spend in that game unless you want to

I think they will do okay.

https://marvelsnapzone.com/marvel-snap-hits-5-3-million-downloads-and-2-million-revenue-in-one-week/

The main risk is that the season pass cards and any future card purchases that take two months to cycle into the card pools are too dominant, which would force you to buy them to be competitive. The Wave season felt this way. I suspect the next monthly season card will be a lot stronger than Miles, but that may be less of an issue when you can play against friends.

 

[Jason Liang]

This site has a decent database of other decks that you can filter based on your collection or tags like "Pool 1": https://marvelsnapzone.com/decks/

At a glance, I think you are undervaluing Hulk, Iron Man, Nightcrawler (statistically, the card with the highest win rate), and Professor X. Probably overvaluing Forge, Mister Sinister, Namor, White Queen, and "combo pieces" in general. When you get to pool 3 you start to have more pieces that can stand in for each other in a combo, making it less likely you'll have a dead card in your hand.

Deckbuilding idea if you are tired of Odin: Iron Man + Onslaught is 28 power at a location. Build a deck to win another location with turns 1-4.

Yeah, I agree Iron Man and Professor X (and Klaw) are better 5s than Tiger and Gamora. I'd like to play them but not until I have Pool 3 6's. Just not a fan of Spectrum and Onslaught, I played the Ongoing effect deck to death the past couple of days during Bar Sinister. Also again, White Queen is getting me Odin very often.

https://snap.fan is an easy to use site.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Just started playing this... and it's surprisingly fun. Not to have to do booster to get cards helps too.

 

[Grunker]

Don't much like the snap-mechanic. It means the better you play, the less you get out of it (unless you define "playing well" as playing inefficiently to avoid retreats, but that's pretty boring)

 

[J1M]

Don't much like the snap-mechanic. It means the better you play, the less you get out of it (unless you define "playing well" as playing inefficiently to avoid retreats, but that's pretty boring)

You may just be snapping a turn late.

When I played a Mr. Negative deck I would snap as soon as I drew that card.

The variable outcomes are a big part of the game design. They make less consistent decks viable and soften the blow of seeing location randomness that heavily favors your opponent.

 

[Grunker]

Don't much like the snap-mechanic. It means the better you play, the less you get out of it (unless you define "playing well" as playing inefficiently to avoid retreats, but that's pretty boring)

You may just be snapping a turn late.

When I played a Mr. Negative deck I would snap as soon as I drew that card.

The variable outcomes are a big part of the game design. They make less consistent decks viable and soften the blow of seeing location randomness that heavily favors your opponent.

I was more talking about the agility to retreat. Means the harder you win the less likely you are to get higher rank for that win

 

[Jason Liang]

Don't much like the snap-mechanic. It means the better you play, the less you get out of it (unless you define "playing well" as playing inefficiently to avoid retreats, but that's pretty boring)

You may just be snapping a turn late.

When I played a Mr. Negative deck I would snap as soon as I drew that card.

The variable outcomes are a big part of the game design. They make less consistent decks viable and soften the blow of seeing location randomness that heavily favors your opponent.

I was more talking about the agility to retreat. Means the harder you win the less likely you are to get higher rank for that win

I'm in rank 40s, its pretty hard to get more than 2 cubes per win. I'm pretty conservative about snapping and so are my opponents. Usually snap = retreat = 1 cube won/ lost. Trying to snap before turn 6 usually gets the opponent to retreat = 1 cube, might as well not snap and play it out for 2 cubes. Still I'm making steady progress since I'm only losing 1 cube / loss.

 

[Grunker]

Don't much like the snap-mechanic. It means the better you play, the less you get out of it (unless you define "playing well" as playing inefficiently to avoid retreats, but that's pretty boring)

You may just be snapping a turn late.

When I played a Mr. Negative deck I would snap as soon as I drew that card.

The variable outcomes are a big part of the game design. They make less consistent decks viable and soften the blow of seeing location randomness that heavily favors your opponent.

I was more talking about the agility to retreat. Means the harder you win the less likely you are to get higher rank for that win

I'm in rank 40s, its pretty hard to get more than 2 cubes per win

Exactly (I'm in the 40s too). Your opponent (or you) have to be very stupid for anything but that. And the better you do, the more stupid they have to be.

It's not like Poker where it becomes part of the game and you can bluff your way to success with the bets alone.

I see what they were going for, but I don't think it works.

 

[Grunker]

Also - I like all of the locations, even the very random or swingy ones, but man Danger Room feels bad. The losing player will always go for a wild play on that at the end and it's a total crapshoot whether they're succesful. There's never a Danger Room game that doesn't come down to who is most lucky with a shot or not. I realize the intention is for players to work around that with movement and such, but that's just not the way it plays out in practice, because whoever can't play around it will risk it all on a big card and then the dice roll determines the outcome.

 

[J1M]

Don't much like the snap-mechanic. It means the better you play, the less you get out of it (unless you define "playing well" as playing inefficiently to avoid retreats, but that's pretty boring)

You may just be snapping a turn late.

When I played a Mr. Negative deck I would snap as soon as I drew that card.

The variable outcomes are a big part of the game design. They make less consistent decks viable and soften the blow of seeing location randomness that heavily favors your opponent.

I was more talking about the agility to retreat. Means the harder you win the less likely you are to get higher rank for that win

I'm in rank 40s, its pretty hard to get more than 2 cubes per win. I'm pretty conservative about snapping and so are my opponents. Usually snap = retreat = 1 cube won/ lost. Trying to snap before turn 6 usually gets the opponent to retreat = 1 cube, might as well not snap and play it out for 2 cubes. Still I'm making steady progress since I'm only losing 1 cube / loss.

If that's true and you are winning more than half your games then you should be snapping on turn 1.

 

[Jason Liang]

Also - I like all of the locations, even the very random or swingy ones, but man Danger Room feels bad. The losing player will always go for a wild play on that at the end and it's a total crapshoot whether they're succesful. There's never a Danger Room game that doesn't come down to who is most lucky with a shot or not. I realize the intention is for players to work around that with movement and such, but that's just not the way it plays out in practice, because whoever can't play around it will risk it all on a big card and then the dice roll determines the outcome.

Had a hilarious game where my opponent decided to Scarlet Witch the rightmost location into Strange Academy. The 2 other locations were Danger Room and Fisk Tower :D

I've found one of the benefits of White Queen is after playing her I can generally tell if I'm winning or not, since I know if they've drawn their 6 and if I should snap or escape. Also I can play Morph and escape if Morph bricks on 3. Also good to escape if you can't play in 2 of the locations.

Also I give up on Namor. He doesn't play well with White Tiger and he also gets Enchantressed. Now, he beats Enchantress 1v1, but not 1vX.

 

[Grunker]

Yir boi

I like this game. It's surprisingly deep even with my shoddy card pool. Still missing cards for both Dino and Zoo.

 

[Grunker]

The booster mechanic is really weird, though. I get that they need to have a bottleneck, in this case credits, but why even have boosters then lol

 

[J1M]

The booster mechanic is really weird, though. I get that they need to have a bottleneck, in this case credits, but why even have boosters then lol

Boosters are a result of evolution, not intelligent design. They did a few iterations, including an early one where there was a wild booster type that could upgrade any card.

From a design standpoint you have to understand they wanted another knob for progression tuning, card upgrades that don't provide power, a flashy but effectively worthless reward to pad loot boxes, a soft time gate to make it technically impossible to buy a full collection in one day, and an incentive for people to try underplayed cards in their collection. Boosters are meekly serving all of those goals and they don't have any better ideas to replace them with.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I'm now at collection rank 280 and class rank (or whatever they call the ladder mechanic rank) 45. I still like the game, but some flaws are definitely becoming apparent.

1: Locations are too swingy.
As Grunker noted Danger Room feels notably bad, but there are a few others that I am extremely not sold on. Death's Domain is just implemented to give a random gimmick deck the occasional easy win, and when they reveal on turn 3 Mindscape, Weirdworld, Spacethrone, and World Ship all have the capacity to feel deeply unfair. Sure, rng is an element of any decent deckbuilder, but so is risk mitigation, and I'm not convinced that any of those locations allow for it in a reasonable way.

2: Card-cost parity, particularly among 1 and 5 cost cards.
This is a hard one to fix. Turns 1 and 5 are the turns that are going to decide the game roughly 60% of the time. Even a relatively strong 3-cost card like Cosmo can't match the success rate of being able to play strong 1s&5s on curve. Nightcrawler and Spider-Woman are particular offenders here and IMO should probably be slightly nerfed (Nightcrawler as a 1-1 still seems pretty decent).



Still having fun though. Hopefully Brode doesn't tank this one into the shitter the way he and his team did with HS.

 

[Jason Liang]

2: Card-cost parity, particularly among 1 and 5 cost cards.
This is a hard one to fix. Turns 1 and 5 are the turns that are going to decide the game roughly 60% of the time. Even a relatively strong 3-cost card like Cosmo can't match the success rate of being able to play strong 1s&5s on curve. Nightcrawler and Spider-Woman are particular offenders here and IMO should probably be slightly nerfed (Nightcrawler as a 1-1 still seems pretty decent).

I disagree about needing to play a 1 drop on curve since they often end up getting murdered by Killmonger anyway. Having a 1 drop that is useful on 4 and 6 (to pair with a spare 3 or 5 if need be) is fine. For example, Squirrel Girl and Elektra can often steal games on 6.
Playing 4+ 2s is really effective, since you can drop two 2's (like Forge + Sinister for 9 power, which is better than JJ) on 4 if need be. You can also play a 2 on 6 with Enchantress or Shang Chi to steal games. Enchantress and Shang Chi nuke so many 5s and 6ses.
This is before Wave, Negative and Sera completely destroy curves in Pool 3.

 

[Jason Liang]

First match this evening - Well, that was satisfying. I guess Enchantress is how you make 8 cubes a game. Looks like a streamer too!

He Morphed my Odin and I Morphed his Quicksilver. The lesson is: Decks with Odin beat decks with Quicksilver.

Confirmed: Enchantress *is* by far the most effortless way to hornswoggle opponents out of 8 cubes in Pool 1.

 

[J1M]

I'm now at collection rank 280 and class rank (or whatever they call the ladder mechanic rank) 45. I still like the game, but some flaws are definitely becoming apparent.

1: Locations are too swingy.
As Grunker noted Danger Room feels notably bad, but there are a few others that I am extremely not sold on. Death's Domain is just implemented to give a random gimmick deck the occasional easy win, and when they reveal on turn 3 Mindscape, Weirdworld, Spacethrone, and World Ship all have the capacity to feel deeply unfair. Sure, rng is an element of any decent deckbuilder, but so is risk mitigation, and I'm not convinced that any of those locations allow for it in a reasonable way.

2: Card-cost parity, particularly among 1 and 5 cost cards.
This is a hard one to fix. Turns 1 and 5 are the turns that are going to decide the game roughly 60% of the time. Even a relatively strong 3-cost card like Cosmo can't match the success rate of being able to play strong 1s&5s on curve. Nightcrawler and Spider-Woman are particular offenders here and IMO should probably be slightly nerfed (Nightcrawler as a 1-1 still seems pretty decent).



Still having fun though. Hopefully Brode doesn't tank this one into the shitter the way he and his team did with HS.

The meta will shift as your collection increases. Many decks I play don't even have a 1 or 5 cost card. The only constant at all levels of play is Angela. She's able to easily be 2/5 or 2/7 without any significant downside.

What I love about this game is that if you really think you are in a strange place where turn 1 curve play is deciding games then you can put Quicksilver in your deck and test that theory.

Since we are talking about proposed card changes I will share my thoughts on how to buff move decks.

-First, reduce Vision's cost and power, possibly very significantly, so his ability to move multiple times can actually have value.

-Make it possible for more move actions to activate on one turn instead of two. Such as a card that moves when you play it.

-Make Heimdal move cards away from himself instead of only left.

 

[Jason Liang]

My changes so far:
#1. Captain Marvel should let you manually move her to a different location at end of Turn 6, not automatic.
#2. Morph needs to be nerfed or radically changed. Play Morph on 3, retreat if brick is pure cheese.
#3. Enchantress is meta- warping, at least in Pool 1. She just trashcans so many beaters on turn 6 especially Namor, Dino and Iron Man. Yes, Cosmo exists, but I still would never play those cards if I need to draw a 2 card combo to wear protection from butt-rape. I play Enchantress - I AM the One Who Knocks.

Heimdall *is* cool (and Bifrost has the same ability). I would lower his cost to 5 and make it so that he moves left if played right, and right if played center or left.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Is the card variety pretty large with obscure characters or are they all characters about to get a movie soon?

 

[Jason Liang]

Is the card variety pretty large with obscure characters or are they all characters about to get a movie soon?

There are some obscure characters. Most are familiar if you follow the comic books. I didn't know who Debris was, for example, and Sera is obscure for a lot of people (I knew her from Battleworld).

Lots of well known characters don't have cards yet. Kamala Khan, T' Challa, She Hulk, Kate Bishop, Jean Grey, Loki, Kate Pryde, Exodus and Sebastian Shaw (who are on the Quiet Council) are not in yet. None of the Eternals have a card yet.

Characters that have cards -
All 4 Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom
All 4 male original X-Men, all of the Giant-sized X-Men besides Sunfire, Professor X, most of Claremont X-Men, the X-Men TAS X-Men including Morph, and Magneto.
All of the original MCU Avengers and most of the later ones besides Rhodey, as well as Ultron.
All of the MCU Guardians of the Galaxy as well as Yondu and Ronan.
Some of the Asgardians, including Odin, Heimdall, Sif and Hela as well as Jane Foster Thor.

 

[Bigg Boss]

My autism is triggered by that roster. Then again I guess they will keep adding cards...might try it. Thanks Jason.