February 29th, 2024 - Balance Updates

We've enjoyed a diverse metagame in February, with every week featuring more than ten decks above a 50% winrate but none of those decks crossing any of our balance thresholds. That's actually kind of incredible, as we expect ebb and flow across those numbers to occur naturally. Other card games might stand pat here as long as they could, but we manage MARVEL SNAP a little differently. We believe a core part of our fun is solving a metagame that's on the move every week and exploring revisions to existing cards. That means we'll pursue change for its own sake occasionally, and this week is such a case. 

• Adam Warlock
  • [Old] 2/0 - After each turn, draw a card if you’re winning here.
  • [Change] 2/0 -> 5/4

 Whenever we're developing an OTA, we always check in on cards that have been languishing, which has included Adam Warlock for quite some time. We want every card to succeed somewhere, but Adam Warlock is a special case given how powerful the character is creatively. And make no mistake, this effect is very powerful–drawing a card is one of the strongest things you can do in SNAP, as decks are only 12 cards. Consequently, the card is designed to make that fairly difficult to do.We've considered reworking Adam Warlock, but like Spider-Man 2099 last time, we're going to try something else first. As a 2-Cost card Adam needs to be dramatically more limited, because even 1 Power could help draw multiple cards. As a 5/4, you have to jump through more hoops to accomplish that. That said, drawing one card is a fair bit easier, as Adam carries a chunk of Power to compete for the location. That's why we're staying conservative on Power here–the effect isn't one we want to make commonplace for a lot of decks, especially given it can fuel combo decks. But if you want to work for it, there are cards to be drawn, and maybe this is enough to get it done. 

• Darkhawk
  • [Old] 4/0 - Ongoing: +2 Power for each card in your opponent’s deck.
  • [Change] 4/0 -> 5/4

 This change has been in and out of our builds for several months now, as Darkhawk has consistently flirted with individual performance rates at the top of the metagame and fueled multiple decks to similar heights. We resolved to wait and see what happened after Blob and, well, it looks basically the same. Darkhawk has spent a long time at the top of the mountain as an individual card, so we're making this change to freshen the landscape. There's every chance we'll revert this down the road, in a different metagame.We do also recognize that Zabu is a huge part of Darkhawk's strength, of course. But it's not all on Zabu, and there are other decks with the cat that are fun and healthy. Let's see what Zabu looks like with a new best friend in March. 

• Forge
  • [Old] 1/1 - On Reveal: Give the next card you play +2 Power.
  • [Change] 1/1 -> 2/2

 Funny enough, this is the exact Forge change we started internally all those months ago. It's been a wild ride, but Forge is a great case study in what we like about OTA balancing–things can ebb and flow. For the last few months, Forge has been a lynchpin card for multiple decks and (more importantly) really dwarfing the influence of other 1-Cost cards. In fact, Forge has appeared among the top five most-played of all cards in the game some weeks! It's been a bit much, so we're dialing Forge down to reduce that impact. We expect to improve a few more 1-Cost cards to compensate for this loss in the near future. 

• Ant-Man
  • [Old] 1/1 - Ongoing: If your side of this location is full, +3 Power.
  • [New] 1/1 - Ongoing: If your side of this location is full, +4 Power.

 And we're starting with this one! Ant-Man's one of our favorite cards, playing well for new players while maintaining some longer-term use thanks to Spectrum and Ka-Zar, among others. Given the inherent disadvantages of being a 1-Cost card, putting a little extra Power into Ant-Man's conditional shouldn't shake things up too much but is a meaningful amount of additional strength. 

• America Chavez
  • [Old] 2/3 - On Reveal: Give the top card of your deck +2 Power.
  • [Change] 2/3 -> 1/2

 As we're sending Forge to 2-Cost, it made sense to swap America Chavez down to 1-Cost. These effects are similar enough to seem like they overlap, but America has proven slightly too weak at 2-Cost while Forge was very strong at 1-Cost. Both changes together should leave us with two reasonably healthy cards. 

• Lockjaw
  • [Old] 3/2 - After you play a card here, swap it with a card in your deck. (once per turn)
  • [Change] 3/2 -> 4/5

 Hela and variations on Thanos have both been leaning heavily on Lockjaw lately, and while the decks are fair on performance the card is a bit of an outlier. Lockjaw is fairly clearly a design risk, as a card that "cheats" Energy and kind of draws cards. However, Lockjaw is also a blast to play with! We've tried to maintain a good balance around the effect, but in the last few months it's been a growing concern that even affected future design work. Moving Lockjaw up to 4-Cost takes away an entire turn of swaps, which is a big loss but reins in the raw potential quite a bit. We're compensating that with a healthy amount of extra Power. 

• Sword Master
  • [Old] 3/6 - On Reveal: Discard a card from your hand.
  • [Change] 3/6 -> 3/7

 It's fairly clear that our "simpler" discard enablers struggle to remain competitive, as we've made many strong options in recent seasons. However, even in smaller collections Sword Master is struggling to become a reliable option, which is indicative that the card could improve. This buff makes Sword Master a more reasonable substitute or a complementary card in Discard decks looking for robust amounts of Power. 

• Vulture
  • [Old] 3/3 - When this card moves, +5 Power.
  • [New] 3/3 - When this card moves, +6 Power.

 This increase to Vulture's move ability is another instance of an ongoing trend we're enjoying, which is adding a little bit of strength to some older cards that have narrowed as the game grows. There was a time when playing Vulture was nearly synonymous with playing a Move deck, but that hasn't been the case for a while now. With Shang-Chi now eliminating cards with 10 or more Power, single-move Vultures are also safe at 9 Power, which is a nice bonus for players trying to set up something like Heimdall. — That's all for this week. Until next time, happy snapping!