Patch Notes - Dec 05, 2023

PLEASE NOTE: If you haven’t updated your game yet, get the latest in the App Store![h2]New Features[/h2]

• Deck Builder - Building new decks just got easier.
• Albums - Collect Variant Sets for exclusive rewards.
• New Emotes - Collect emotes via Albums.

Due to the upcoming holiday and new year shenenigans, we'll be making some timing adjustments to what you might expect for upcoming MARVEL SNAP patch updates. For everyone's awareness and visibility, the next TWO patch updates are tentatively scheduled for 12/5/2023 and 1/9/2024. We hope everyone understands, takes this time to enjoy the season however they'd like, and has fun snapping. Cheers! [h2]FEATURES[/h2][h3]Deck Builder[/h3]

• Acquired a sweet new card or variant, but not sure what Deck to make with it? Use our new Deck Builder to have a deck built for you!
• Deck Builder analyzes vast amounts of Data and Statistics from Live Games, taking your collection into account, to build an incredible deck for you to use.
• Deck Builder can be used in the following ways:
  • Upon acquiring a card or variant -> it will build a deck that uses that card
  • While building a new deck in the Collection, it can finish your deck for you.
    • This works with any number of cards already in the deck (from 0 to 11!)
• The data that Deck Builder uses is updated regularly, so you can always count on it giving you a quality deck based on your collection.

[h3]Albums[/h3]

• Ever wanted to show off a complete variant set? Well now you can with Albums!
• Albums are sets of variants that offer up unique exclusive rewards for collecting them.
• Earn rewards upon obtaining 3, 6, 9, or 12 variants in an Album.
• Variants in an Album have an indicator in the Shop.
• Four Albums will be available at the launch of this feature, including:
  • Venomized Villains
  • Dan Hipp
  • Jim Lee X-Men
  • Hellfire Gala (will launch shortly after!)
• More albums will be released in the future!

[h3]Featured Mystery Variants[/h3]

• When a new album launches or an album is featured, the Premium Mystery Variant in the Daily Offer section of the shop will change to a Featured Mystery Variant
• Featured Mystery Variants provide a Premium Mystery Variant, with an increased chance to provide a Variant for a given album.
  • E.g. the Venomized Villain Featured Mystery Variant offers an increased chance to provide a Venomized Villain Variant.
• You can purchase these to help get variants for a specific album.
• Featured Mystery Variants are only available for limited times and may change to feature different albums or content each time it shows up in the Daily Offer Shop

[h3]Emotes: Players can now collect and equip new emotes.[/h3]

• New Emotes have been added to the game!
• Four new emotes have been added to the game (each of these Emotes is an Album reward).
• The Emote selector in-game now scrolls between pages to allow players to see all their available Emotes.
• Players can assign Favorite Emotes.
• Players can set, per-deck, which 3 Emotes are always listed first.
• More emotes will be available in the future!

[h3]Spotlight Avatar Frame[/h3]

• Spotlight Avatars have a new, unique Avatar Frame.
• This also applies to previously-earned Spotlight Avatars.

[h3]Auto-Pick Favorites for New Decks[/h3]

• When you make a new deck, its Cosmetics (Avatar, Card-back, and Title) are automatically chosen from among your Favorites.

[h2]AUDIO[/h2]

• New Voice Over Dialogue for:
  • Hela
  • Ultron
  • Apocalypse
  • Infinaut
  • Onslaught
  • Arnim Zola
• Swarm has new Sound Effects.
• Updated America Chavez’s Sound Effects.

[h2][/h2][h2]ART & VISUAL EFFECTS[/h2]

• Swarm has new Visual Effects.
• Improved and sped up the Visual Effects for Mjolnir.
  • No more waiting around forever when one Mjolnir affects multiple Thors!
• Updated America Chavez Visual Effects.

This is a "big patch" for design, as we're integrating work across a few months and trying to set everyone up for an exciting holiday SNAP season. Let's jump right in!

• America Chavez
  • [Old] 6/9 - Starts on the bottom of your deck. Draw this on turn 6.
  • [New] 2/3 - On Reveal: The top card of your deck gets +2 Power.

Developer Note: We know that America Chavez has been a beloved card to many, dating back to beta, and this rework is a major change. However, the previous functionality for America Chavez was troubling and we're changing it in the interests of better aligning with our philosophy for the game and the kinds of things we want to be strong, interesting, and healthy for deckbuilding.Philosophically, America Chavez doesn't behave the way we want cards to. She most often isn't played or even used for fun synergies, just for percentage increase on drawing other cards, making "an 11-card deck." That's not to say no use met our standard–the Dracula decks were cool. We respect that many players enjoy the concept of deck-thinning or "fixing" draws, but it's dangerous to metagame health that America Chavez does this too freely for too many decks. In fact, she's often the most popular card in the game on a given week. But most of the time, that means she's pushing the 12th-most interesting card for a deck out of it.We're sure some players worry that their deck won’t work without America Chavez. Put simply, this is very unlikely–deck-thinning, while strong, is often overestimated. Plus, she made a lot of your opponents' decks more consistent too. However, if a deck is meaningfully weakened, this change also frees us up to buff them or aim more designs at specific archetypes.So why this design? Well, we wanted something simple and clean, because America Chavez is still a Series 1 card. Something we value in those cards is creating moments of discovery by offering players a wide variety of small "combos," and this fits the bill. The new card is a competitively rated card as a "technical 2/5" and we're curious to see which of the many cards that love a +2 buff she ultimately sees play alongside.

• Alioth
  • [Old] 6/3 - On Reveal: Destroy ALL enemy cards played here this turn. (including unrevealed cards)
  • [New] 6/2 - On Reveal: Destroy all unrevealed enemy cards here.

Developer Note: Alioth has enjoyed an interesting position in SNAP as a card with acceptable winrate and cube rate, but a bad reputation. We've monitored the latter alongside performance, as we expected time and experience would help. However, he's become more commonplace and remained frustrating, so we're taking action. This changes Alioth from a catch-all endgame threat that's especially good when revealing first to absolutely requiring it.

• Luke Cage
  • [Old] 2/2 - Ongoing: Your cards can't have their Power reduced.
  • [New] 2/3 - Ongoing: Your cards here can't have their Power reduced.

Developer Note: When Luke Cage debuted, cards that reduced Power weren't popular–Scorpion was played more than any of the other options! We've since added more and made balance adjustments, thus Luke's effect is much stronger. We've also seen him in good decks combining multiple low-Cost "tech" cards to turn off a variety of enemy routes to victory. We've reevaluated the kind of impact low-Cost cards should have, and ultimately don't feel it's healthy for them to shut off multiple higher-Cost investments regardless of their location. In the future, we'll more often "localize" abilities like this one.We're also aware that Luke's prominence affected other balancing, and that some Power-reducing cards may become too strong without Luke to rein them in. We'll be monitoring them closely.

• Shadow King
  • [Old] 2/3 - On Reveal: Set all cards here to their original base Power.
  • [Change] 2/3 -> 2/2

Developer Note: One of the cards benefiting most from Luke's change will be Shadow King. When we last buffed him from 3/3 to 2/3, we thought that might be too aggressive but wanted to be sure he became a meaningful card against powerful decks like Shuri. We're glad we took that chance–it seemed strong, but the metagame also had a lot of Power buffs flying around. However, just facing a lot less Luke and avoiding Luke's location is probably worth a Power, so we're deducting it.

• Elsa Bloodstone
  • [Old] 2/2 - If you play another card to fill a location, give it +2 Power.
  • [New] 2/3 - After you play a card that fills this location, give it +2 Power.

Developer Note: There are two major changes here: one to how Elsa is triggered, and another to where. We previously placed Elsa's effect in the same timing window as Shuri because we thought it would pair better with some lesser-played cards. However, we saw early after her release that players mostly found this confusing when a location was filled via On Reveal or an "After" trigger. So, we're changing her timing to use the "After" window like Angela and line up with expectations.Similar to the philosophical decision for Luke Cage, we've also decided Elsa's multi-location buff was an element of her strength as a 2-Cost we didn't want. The new timing is a buff and her strength was mostly focused on a single location, but we didn't want to accidentally over-nerf her, so we're adding a Power for compensation.

• Kitty Pryde
  • [Old] 1/0 - When this returns to your hand, +1 Power. Returns at the start of each turn.
  • [Change] 1/0 -> 1/1

Developer Note: We're also returning Kitty Pryde to 1 Power. Kitty and Elsa often feel inseparable, given how synergistic their abilities are. Plus, we prefer cards to have base Power when they can. The combination of Elsa's changes, Kitty's buff, and Luke Cage's adjustment muddies the water a little bit on exactly how strong Elsa will be after this patch. However, we're confident that we can use OTA to adjust this package further if necessary.

• Ebony Blade (Black Knight)
  • [Old] 4/0
  • [New] 4/0 - Ongoing: Can't be destroyed and its Power can't be reduced.

Developer Note: Black Knight released a little weaker than we aimed, though the card seemed pretty fun. We played around with a lot of "proactive" abilities for the Ebony Blade in playtesting because we liked the idea of making the sword itself feel mighty, but nothing clicked. However, we also didn't have 2/3 Shadow King while testing it, because that was an OTA balance change made after we finalized the season. Shadow King being a lot more popular was bad for the Ebony Blade, so we're hitting both goals with one change by bolstering the Ebony Blade against its primary predators.

• Ravonna Renslayer
  • [Old] 2/1 - Your cards with 1 or less Power cost 1 less. (minimum 1)
  • [Change] 2/1 -> 2/3

Developer Note: Our internal playtesting evaluations for Ravonna clearly missed low, as she's failed to find a secure home in the metagame. We likely underestimated the amount of splash damage she'd take from Ms. Marvel creating more incentive to counter Ongoing effects. We'd like to push her strength to the limits and see what she can really do. In addition to just being a lot more efficient, moving her to 3 Power also opens up the possibility for her to supercharge one of the better Cerebro decks, and that's an archetype we generally enjoy helping out.

• Mind Stone
  • [Old] 1/1 - On Reveal: Draw 2 Stones from your deck.
  • [New] 1/1 - On Reveal: Draw 2 1-Cost cards.

Developer Note: Bet no one claims "called it" on this one! Some design ideas we've played around in for future effects involved granting a player a random Infinity Stone, which was really fun–unless you got Mind Stone. While we like a bit of high variance every now and then, this frustration was worth solving. We're making this change ahead of the effect in order to see if/how it affects Thanos decks.

• Move Update: Unrevealed Cards (Mostly) Can't Be Moved

One of the "default" rules is that unrevealed cards are generally immune to being destroyed, bounced, or referenced for effects–they're not considered to have been played. That wasn't true for movement effects, however. Initially we decided to go that way on newer content because the two most prominent "mover" cards at the time, Aero and Juggernaut, both necessitated moving unrevealed cards for their effect. We've since seen this inconsistency causing more confusion than we feel it's worth. So, we're standardizing move to only affect revealed cards by default, with anything that moves unrevealed cards explicitly saying so.Some cards have been functionally affected by this update, but their text won't change:

• Spider-Man
  • 3/5 - On Reveal: Move to another location and pull an enemy card from here to there.
• Stegron
  • [Old] 4/5 - On Reveal: Move an enemy card from here to another location.
  • [Change] 4/5 -> 4/6

Developer Note: Stegron's been out for a while now, and he's had the occasional week of performance now and then. Overall however, he's remained fairly stagnant on both winrate and play rate. One of the things we believe we underestimated with Stegron was the frequency with which the effect could be negative, randomly tossing enemy cards into hard-to-reach locations or risking freeing up an extra slot at a location you're contesting late in the game. Given that, we're trying out a Power buff to this card to see how that changes his role in the metagame.What about Juggernaut and Aero? Well, they're going to change a bit more.

• Juggernaut
  • [Old] 3/3 - On Reveal: If your opponent played cards here this turn, move them randomly.
  • [New] 3/3 - On Reveal: Move away all enemy cards played here this turn. (including unrevealed cards)

Developer Note: For the most part, Juggernaut is exactly the same card. We've updated his text to clearly indicate that he can affect unrevealed cards, and rephrased it a little for fit. However, we've also made one small functional change, which is that Juggernaut only moves cards that are still under your opponent's control. That means something like a Green Goblin won't move if it's already revealed and changed sides. It's minor, but it's part of an effort on our end to make that also a default when affecting enemy cards.

• Aero
  • [Old] 5/8 - On Reveal: Move the last enemy card played this turn to this location.
  • [New] 5/9 - On Reveal: Move the last enemy card played anywhere to this location.

Developer Note: Not so for Aero–she's been reworked more substantially. Aero is joining most other move cards and will no longer affect anything unrevealed. However, to accommodate that change we've lifted Aero's restriction to target the last card your opponent played regardless of what turn it was played on. This effect is fairly different, and it played out like a bit of a nerf for us, so we're compensating Aero with an additional point of Power that still keeps her under Shang-Chi's new radar. Keep in mind that the same way Taskmaster won't copy the Power of a missing card, Aero won't move one.

• Bugfix: Phoenix Force Copies Can Move
• Phoenix Force
  • 4/5 - On Reveal: Revive one of your destroyed cards and merge with it. That card can move each turn.

We usually call out our bugfixes at the bottom of the patch notes, but we're doubling up on this one because it's fairly impactful to gameplay. When you make a copy of a card merged with Phoenix Force now, such as when you play Phoenix Force to Sinister London and revive a Multiple Man, you'll be able to move the original and the copy. [h3]Non-Functional Text Updates[/h3] Alongside all of these balance changes, we've made a number of minor text updates to cards in the pursuit of further clarity, consistency, and brevity. These changes include:

1. Reducing the frequency of the word "random." Most of our card-affecting abilities have some potential randomness built into them, and using the word "random" inconsistently leads to confusing assumptions. We're restricting it to instances where we felt it addressed specific potential for confusion.
2. Shifting to using the word "to" on dependent effects. Cards like Gambit will now read a little more clearly with regard to which effect depends on which.
3. Reducing word count on "discard effects" like Helicarrier. We need "from your hand" on cards like Blade so that players learning the discard mechanic know cards are always discarded from the hand. But for cards that reward discarding, that's redundant since the card doing the discarding already says it.
4. Shortening "this location" to "here." We've made the opposite shift for cards like Hawkeye and Shuri to help players understand their VFX will follow the location, not their card, so this change shortens other card text and helps create that distinction.
5. Standardizing the use of the word "enemy." This was just a small number of cards with variations in their text.
6. Some other stuff, just because we liked it better.

None of these changes affected the functionality of any cards. The following cards have changed text:

• Apocalypse
• Armor
• Arnim Zola
• Beast
• Brood
• Cable
• Captain America
• Cosmo
• Dagger
• Deathlok
• Doctor Octopus
• Elektra
• Enchantress
• "Evolved" Wasp
• "Evolved" Misty Knight
• "Evolved" Cyclops
• "Evolved" The Thing
• Goose
• Hela
• Helicarrier
• Hulkbuster
• Iceman
• Iron Man
• Ironheart
• M'Baku
• Magneto
• Mister Sinister
• Morph
• Nico Minoru
• Odin
• Onslaught
• Polaris
• Punisher
• Red Skull
• Rogue
• Scarlet Witch
• Shang-Chi
• Snowguard Hawk
• Stature
• Swarm
• Ultron
• Valkyrie
• Venom
• Werewolf By Night
• Wong
• Yellowjacket

[h2]Card Logic Fixes in 22.x[/h2]

• Cleaned up an interaction that prevented Phoenix Force’s power from being merged with a card that was already merged with Hulkbuster
• Fixed an issue that prevented a card copied from a merged Phoenix Force from moving.
• Fixed an issue that was preventing players from viewing unrevealed cards with Daredevil in play.

[h2]VFX & SFX Fixes in 22.x[/h2]

• Resolved an issue that prevented Kingpin and Kraven’s VFX from playing under certain circumstances
• Fixed an issue where Shadowland flipping while Invisible Woman is active could cause an endless VFX loop.
• Resolved an issue that prevented SFX from playing properly when retreating from a friendly battle
• Fixed an issue that saw Nico Minoru’s VFX move on the card and obscure information
• Fixed Shuri’s VFX to no longer display for all cards hovered over the location, just the first
• Fixed an issue with Mysterio's VFX not displaying correctly on some Android devices
• Intro animations should no longer overlap between Thanos and High Evolutionary
• Fixed an issue with Ongoing abilities delaying the merge VFX for Klyntar.

[h2]Other Fixes in 22.x[/h2]

• Player Names should no longer be occasionally missing from Friendly Battle and Conquest UI elements
• “Hold to Open” and “Hold to Confirm” text should no longer overlap card and reward descriptions and assets
• Fixed some text strings related to Mission Completion that weren’t properly localized in all languages
• Card upgrade UI should now be properly scaled to fit the screen when upgrading post-match
• Resolved and issue with Card Upgrade preview not showing for Infinite rarity
• Resolved some minor UI elements that were clipping behind the spotlight cache carousel banner
• Cleaned up some elements of the splash screen that were visible across adjacent screens
• Tapping on the empty space on either side of the Avatar and Title select screen should no longer open those objects into their detail view
• Fixed Weirdworld’s background
• Resolved some overlap issues with card touch region sizes in the collection screen
• Fixed an issue that was causing Titles and Avatar assets claimed from Collector’s Caches to be duplicated and overlapping
• Fixed an issue that could cause the Hotel Inferno location to appear during the tutorial.
• Addressed a typo in the Artist information for one of Ghost Rider’s variants
• Cleaned up some of the background shader work for one of Taskmaster’s variants
• Resolved an issue with one of Scarlet Witch’s variants that caused some visible distortion at 3D and higher rarities
• Mission timers should be once again refreshing appropriately in the client
• Adjusted some FTUE and informational popups to display correctly for devices with a notch

[h2]PC Fixed Issues in 22.x[/h2]

• [PC] Signing out and then back into the same Google account on PC during the same session should no longer result in various UI issues
• [PC] When going to the Shop from the Collection Screen, the reward previews for bundles should no longer show duplicate assets
• [PC] Scrolling between decks should now function correctly when changing between Landscape and Portrait in the session
• [PC] The booster logos should no longer be blurry at the post-match results screen
• [PC] Card series labels should no longer be missing from the Collection view

[h2]New Feature Known Issues in 22.x[/h2]

• VFX are missing for album progression
• The transition is abrupt and the screen flickers when opting to go view a deck created by the Smart Deck builder from the Collection Track
• The “Nevermind” button will return you to the collection screen rather than the card detail view when opting to not make a deck with smart deck builder
• Reward assets may be visible behind the banner images for Albums
• The “Make a Deck” VFX won’t play properly if used on an Album reward
• There’s a superfluous tab indicator on the new emotes panel that isn’t accessible
• Emote assets blink into existence when viewing Album rewards
• Clicking on the “Go To Deck” button after using the Smart Deck builder can briefly display the main menu before transitioning properly to deck edit
• The edit deck button collider when selecting a deck isn’t large enough making the right side not responsive
• Spotlight caches will not become available after claiming a spotlight key as an album reward while under CL 500

[h2]New Known Issues for Existing Features and Content in 22.x[/h2]

• The arrow for previewing a spotlight cache’s associated avatar can be obscured if the card has associated token cards (ex: Thanos)
• Previewing the Infinity border of a variant in the shop and then tapping the purchase button without completing the purchase will prevent previewing other rarities until closing and reopening the card detail view
• The arrows for scrolling between rarity previews don’t grey out when there are no more options in either direction
• An On Reveal card played before Wong will see an icon in the card detail view that implies it’s affected by Wong when it hasn’t been
• Card ability text overlaps the upgrade text when upgrading during post-match
• Symbiote VFX for cards being merged by Klyntar flicker briefly as each card is merged
• The asset for some boosters on the Season Pass aren’t rendering in the proper color
• Nico Minoru’s VFX aren’t displaying properly when she’s initially drawn to hand
• Occasionally cards drawn from the Mind Stone will flicker briefly in hand
• Spotlight Cache preview assets are occasionally failing to load on the main menu carousel
• The favorites button on the collection screen is sometimes improperly highlighted
• On very rare occasions the Shop button on the navigation bar may become unresponsive (restarting the app should correct this)
• If you earn enough tokens to purchase something from the token shop, the purchase buttons do not become clickable until you’ve restarted the game

[h2]Localization New Known Issues in 22.x[/h2]

• The string for “Nowhere to Play” extends outside of the UI panel in Japanese
• Some VO lines in certain languages are playing at too low of a volume or in the wrong language
• The string for “Starter Deck” isn’t properly localized in most languages
• In Russian and French, 4+ digit quantities for credits and gold are missing their notation

[h2]PC New Known Issues in 22.x[/h2]

• [PC] Deck names in the collection screen can occasionally overlap
• [PC] The loading splash screen briefly displays on screen when completing a purchase from the shop
• [PC] Assets may layer or display oddly at the top of the Collection Track for players who have not unlocked Spotlight Caches
• [PC] The red notification pip may be missing from the Collection Level tab when there are rewards to claim
• [PC] Some cards viewed from the Albums UI are missing their series label