MARVEL SNAP News

Some people would get a new haircut or update their wardrobe to reinvent themself, but this season, we’ve got to go bigger. Like… replace the Avengers level of big. We’re talking about fresh new abilities, new suits, and an all-new group of superheroes. This isn’t just roleplay, these former villains are suiting up to be the new good guys Fresh off his victory over the Skrulls, Norman Osborn is strapping on his shiniest suit of armor to play the good guy. Introducing… Iron Patriot![h2]NEW CHARACTER: Iron Patriot[/h2]
On Reveal: Add a random 4, 5, or 6-Cost card to your hand. If you’re winning here after next turn, give it -4 Cost.
 [h2]SEASON REWARDS[/h2]
 Fake it until you make it. This new group of characters are doing their best “Hero” impersonation to gain the trust of the world as the new Avengers. It’s time to see what they’ve got.[h3]SERIES 5[[/h3] Ongoing: Your cards that were created in your hand have +2 Power.
[h3]SERIES 5[[/h3] Ongoing: Has the Ongoing effects of your 1, 2, and 3-Cost cards here.
[h3]SERIES 5[[/h3]


Activate: Discard all cards that cost 1 or less from your hand. Afflict that many different enemy cards with -2 Power.
[h3]SERIES 5[[/h3] On Reveal: Compare the Power of the top 3 cards of both decks. If your total is higher, +6 Power.
 [h2]So, when can you expect new cards in the Token Shop?[/h2]You can expect new cards to be released weekly - the previous month’s Season Pass Card, Galacta, will be released as a Series 5 card on January 14th.

• Jan 7th: Victoria Hand - Series 5 Release
• Jan 14th: Galacta - Series 5 Release
• Jan 14th: Moonstone - Series 5 Release
• Jan 21st: Bullseye - Series 5 Release
• Jan 28th: Ares - Series 5 Release

New Series 4 and Series 5 cards appear in the Token Shop and the Spotlight Cache. As you level up your Collection Level, Spotlight Caches become available for you to unlock a Series 4, Series 5 card, Spotlight Variants, and more. [h2]Jan 7th:[/h2]

• Victoria Hand
• Grand Master
• Kate Bishop

[h2][/h2][h2]Jan 14th:[/h2]

• Moonstone
• Black Swan
• Nocturne

[h2][/h2][h2]Jan 21st:[/h2]

• Bullseye
• Marvel Boy
• Caiera

[h2][/h2][h2]Jan 28th:[/h2]

• Ares
• Misery
• Ms. Marvel

  

• Asgard Besieged: After turn 3, add The Destroyer to the winning side.
• The Peak: Steal the leftmost card from your opponent's hand.

 Get all new Avatars, Variants, and Emotes by completing two new albums!Vibrant, dynamic, and instantly recognizable. The Rose Besch album drops on January 7th.

• Collect 3: White Widow - Rose Besch Avatar
• Collect 6: 2000 Collector’s Tokens
• Collect 9: Nightcrawler Emote
• Collect 12: White Widow - Rose Besch Variant

 A Pantheon of Pantheon Variants! Collect them all on Jan 28-29th.

• Collect 3: Hela - Pantheon Avatar
• Collect 6: Premium Mystery Variant
• Collect 9: 2 Distressed Blue Card Borders
• Collect 12: Hela - Pantheon Variant

  This season we’re bringing two takeovers with some incredible NEW Variants!FOUR new Rose Besch Variants will be featured over two days, Jan 7-8th. If you love Pantheon Variants like we do, this is the time to collect them all! Pantheon Variants will be taking over the shop from Jan 28-29th. Make sure you watch your favorite MARVEL SNAP Twitch streamers to earn Boosters, Credits, and a Premium Mystery Variant! Drops will be available from January 14-20th. Don’t miss out!

• Watch 2 hours to earn: 65 Random Boosters
• Watch 4 hours to earn: 250 Credits
• Watch 6 hours to earn: Premium Mystery Variant

 Will these new Heroes step up and be the new Avengers that the world needs? Or will they stick to their roots, as the Dark Avengers? Let us know what new ways you find to use them, and we’ll see you out on the battlefield! 

Similar to last month, December features time off for our staff, so we're only planning one OTA for the month again. The metagame is in healthy shape–there's a clear best deck in Surtur, but tons of other viable strategies can win at the highest level. Today's OTA will shave a little strength from the top dog, and shake up a few other things along the way. 

• Arishem
  • [Old] 7/7 - At the start of the game, +1 Max Energy. Shuffle 15 random cards into your deck.
  • [New]7/7 - Game Start: Shuffle 12 new cards into your deck. On turn 3, get +1 Max Energy.

Since release, Arishem has been among the most played and discussed cards in the game. After some early balance, the archetype's winrate and cube rate both settled into a competitive but acceptable range. However, its play rate has continued to crest above our preferred threshold for metagame diversity. That band is a little more lax in Arishem's case–the deck itself adds a lot of variety to the gameplay experience–but we've reached its limit. So, we're adjusting Arishem to start giving additional Energy on turn 3. In addition to removing two Energy overall, this changes how aggressively the deck can deploy pressure. Since this is a solid nerf, we're also reverting to 12 random cards.However, in reading through frustrations around Arishem, one element that came up often was playing against cards created randomly that were also in Arishem's starting deck. Predicting Arishem is already hard, but accounting for "doubles" tends to make it even harder. That aspect isn't crucial to Arishem, so we've adjusted the effect to only add cards that didn't start in your deck.Lastly, you'll see above that we updated the text's structure. We'd planned to make this change in 2025, shortening "start of game" triggers into a keyword, but we're previewing it a bit early since Arishem's change was ready to go. 

• Typhoid Mary
  • [Old] 4/10 - Ongoing: Your other cards here have -1 Power.
  • [New] 4/10 - Ongoing: Your other cards here have -2 Power.

Since we shifted Typhoid Mary to focus the drawback on one location, Mary's seen a big surge in play and winrate, fueling variations of the Surtur shell. Surtur is still the clear best deck, so we want to weaken some of its core slightly–but many of the cards don't have "wiggle room" given the significance of 10 Power and specifics of their effects. We could revert Typhoid Mary, but chose to pursue this middle ground instead given the new design was more fun to play with. 

• Alioth
  • [Old] 6/10 - On Reveal: Remove the text from all unrevealed enemy cards here.
  • [Change] 6/10 -> 6/9

Similarly, Alioth is unnecessarily providing some extra tools to a strong Surtur strategy. We use Alioth as a fairly specific kind of tool, and churning its strength is one of the ways we can create fluctuation within the metagame. It doesn't need any special help to earn the right slots. 

• Enchantress
  • [Old] 4/5 - On Reveal: Remove the abilities from all Ongoing cards here.
  • [Change]4/5 - 4/6

Since the last time we experimented with this improvement to Enchantress, a fair bit has changed–including how often people play Enchantress. That's noteworthy because several strong Ongoing cards are current pillars of the metagame: U.S. Agent, Darkhawk, Quinjet, Gorr, and Morbius, at least. Rogue has been doing a lot of heavy lifting lately, and we do want Enchantress to also serve as an effective dial, so more Power is warranted. 

• Black Widow
  • [Old] 3/4 - Activate: Add a Widow's Bite to your opponent's hand.
  • [Change]3/4 -> 3/3

Shifting Black Widow to Activate didn't weaken her as much as we expected–it's possible the Grand Master shenanigans were a distraction, and these decks are better when they're more focused. Since we did still want to wind up with a Black Widow nerf, we're reverting the stats back to 3/3. 

• Frigga
  • [Old] 3/3 - On Reveal: Add a copy of the last card you played to your hand. (if able)
  • [Change]3/3 -> 3/4

We were conservative with Frigga, because cards that copy other cards can multiply other buffs in unpredictable ways. Given Frigga has turned out to need some more strength, some extra Power may help Frigga find a more consistent home. 

• Shuri
  • [Old] 4/1 - On Reveal: If you play your next card at this location, double its Power.
  • [Change]4/1 -> 4/3

How the times have changed! Once a metagame tyrant, Shuri fell to the bottom range of our winrates for individual cards last week. Given the card supports unique gameplay flows, we wanted to restore a bit of glory to it now that a range of archetypes are capable of competing with its Power output. 

• Lockjaw
  • [Old] 4/4 - After you play a card here, swap it with a card in your deck.
  • [Change]4/4 -> 4/5

Uncapping Lockjaw's swaps brought Lockjaw back to life, but there's room for a little more. One major element holding Lockjaw back has been the continued success of Darkhawk decks, which threaten to incidentally shut Lockjaw down, but that's not the only bad matchup. A point of Power will help Lockjaw more often hold its own. 

• Stormbreaker
  • [Old] 0/1 - On Reveal: Double Beta Ray Bill's Power.
  • [Change] 0/1 -> 0/3

The "Asgard deck" that leans on Jane Foster to consistently buff Thor and Beta Ray Bill to new heights is one of our more novel and creatively satisfying decks. As such, we want it to be a solid contender in competitive metagames. However, the deck has fallen on hard times, and Beta Ray Bill was one of the weaker pieces. A 7th Power for Bill would buff the base rate while also being doubled alongside Stormbreaker, which is a bit more strength than we want to add right now. Distributing some Power to the axe is a nice middle ground. 

• Cerebro
  • [Old] 3/0 - Ongoing: Your highest-Power cards have +2 Power.
  • [Change] 3/0 -> 2/0

We love Cerebro–it's a novel deck that challenges deckbuilding prowess. But with the recent uptick in strategies using strong Ongoing cards, it's suffered a bit of splash damage along the way. OTA changes also often impact Cerebro, forcing the deck to adapt constantly. This is a pretty big change, but it might be just what Cerebro needs. 

• Elsa Bloodstone
  • [Old] 3/3 - Each card you play to fill your side of a location gains +2 Power.
  • [Change] 3/3 -> 3/4

Last but not least, we're giving Elsa Bloodstone an additional point of Power. There's a lot of competition among 3-Cost buildarounds right now, and we want Elsa fighting on even ground. Happy Winterverse to all! —That's all for this week. Until next time, happy snapping!

PLEASE NOTE: If you haven’t updated your game yet, get the latest in the App Store![h2]Introducing Super Premium Season Pass[/h2]

• Launch with the upcoming Dark Avengers Season
• Renamed from Premium+ to Super Premium
• Updated Purchase Screen
• Increased Price from 14.99 to 19.99
• Includes:
  • Instant 10x Season Pass Levels (already included in current Premium+)
  • 3x Borders
  • 1x exclusive Super Rare Variant

[h2]Series Drops[/h2]

• While these Series Drops will help many players along their journey, it’s not intended to fix the core issues we are all feeling around Card acquisition. The team remains focused on a larger, long-term solution. We’re planning for an even bigger Series Drop in the first quarter of 2025 which is faster than our previous Series Drop schedule.
•  To Series 4:
  • X-23
  • Iron Lad
  • Sasquatch
  • Beta Ray Bill
  • Grand Master
  • Phastos
  • Pixie
  • Supergiant
  • Valentina

•  To Series 3:
  • Jean Grey
  • Kitty Pryde
  • Snowguard

  [h2]Season Pass Caches are now capped at Season Pass level 100[/h2]

• Having unlimited Season Pass levels caused a niche issue that encouraged exploitative behavior.
• Over 99% of players won’t be impacted by this change.
• This change was implemented in a previous patch but was missed in the Patch Notes.

[h2]Return to “Normal” Infinity Split Rates[/h2]

• When Character Mastery debuts (date TBA), Split rates will again be changing alongside a slew of updates to how you can better customize your favorite cards, including many new Finishes and Flares.

  [h2]Card & Location Fixes in 35.x[/h2]

• Fixed an issue that prevented cards added by Malekith from revealing if Malekith were played in a way that caused him to reveal when the game ended (ex: Dark Dimension)
  • Note: This was fixed server-side for previous versions as well but required us to disabled his VFX, just wanted to call this out officially in the notes and we’ll note when the VFX have been re-enabled in the future!
• The F.E.A.S.T location should no longer hitch and throw an exception when revealed
• Madame Web should no longer hitch and throw an exception when triggering her VFX
• Super Skrull when copying Jean Grey’s ability should no longer throw exceptions and potentially crash the client

[h2]Card and Location Art Fixes in 35.x[/h2]

• Nico Minoru’s VFX and SFX should no longer repeatedly trigger while in-hand
• Kim Jacinto’s Dr. Doom variant should no longer be missing split finishes at Common and Uncommon rarities
• The logo for Demon should no longer briefly overlap with and clip through cards currently in hand
• Arnim Zola’s Chibi variant should now display splits properly
• Resolved some asset clipping issues that was occurring for Cards & Locations that show multiple reference cards
• The Evolved VFX should no longer repeatedly trigger off and on after High Evolutionary is played on Deep Space

[h2]Other Fixes in 35.x[/h2]

• Fixed an issue that was causing Custom Cards to occasionally show incorrect Album progress
• Addressed an issue that was causing News items to occasionally crash the game on some Android devices and OS versions
• Album icons should now appropriately display for variants shown on the main menu carousel
• Fixed an issue that was causing High Voltage assets to display through different carousel images when the event is live
• Resolved an issue that was causing some assets to not display correctly on the Collection Track
• Fixed some font size discrepancies between Custom Card UI elements
• Continued cleanup on ensuring different SFX are associated with the correct volume sliders in Settings

[h2]Alliance Fixes in 35.x[/h2]

• Bounty rarity text should no longer perpetually display on the bounty card itself
• Continued improvements to how card assets are loaded in order to reduce or prevent crashes when scrolling through chat that is populated with many deck lists

[h2]PC Fixes in 35.x[/h2]

• Carousel images should no longer be blurry
• The backgrounds of cards and variants shown on the carousel should properly render no

[h2]Localization Fixes[/h2]

• In Vietnamese the“New Avatar” tag should no longer clip into the avatar UI frame in the Cosmetics shop
• Tooltip strings for Activate should be properly translated to all languages once again
• Deadpool’s VO in Deadpool Diner should be properly restored for a variety of languages in future Diner events

This season is directly inspired by Marvel Rivals, the brand new Super Hero Team-based PVP Shooter that launches on December 6th. Who better to oversee all of the action than Galacta, daughter of Galactus? Unlike her father, who consumes entire worlds to sustain himself, Galacta prefers to protect sentient life forms on Earth.[h2]NEW CHARACTER: Galacta[/h2]
Each turn, the first card you play at another location reveals with +3 Power.
 [h2]SEASON REWARDS[/h2] It’s time to assemble your team. Introducing a new set of Super Heroes with amazing new abilities! [h3]SERIE 5[/h3] On Reveal: Add an Ice Cube to each side of this location.
 
At the start of each turn, get +1 Energy. Then destroy this if your side is full here.
[h3]SERIE 5[/h3] On Reveal: Add SP//dr to your hand. When this merges, you get +1 Energy next turn.
  On Reveal: Merge with one of your cards here. You can move that card next turn.
[h3]SERIE 5[/h3]
After each turn, add a DoomBot 2099 to a random location if you played (exactly) 1 card.
  Ongoing: Your other DoomBots and Doom have +1 Power.
[h3]SERIE 5[/h3]
When you end a turn with unspent Energy, 25% chance to HULK OUT!
[h3]SERIE 5[/h3]
You can move this once. After your opponent plays a card here, steal 1 Power from it.
Our next character is available exclusively through High Voltage! Lasher can be earned FOR FREE by completing missions and winning SUPER fun games. Want more info on High Voltage? Keep reading below![h3]SERIE 4[/h3] Activate: Afflict an enemy card here with negative Power equal to this card's Power.
 [h2]So, when can you expect new cards in the Token Shop?[/h2]You can expect new cards to be released weekly - the previous month’s Season Pass Card, Surtur, will be released as a Series 5 card on December 10th.

• Dec 3rd: Luna Snow - Series 5 Release
• Dec 10th: Surtur - Series 5 Release
• Dec 10th: Peni Parker - Series 5 Release
• Dec 17th: Doom 2099 - Series 5 Release
• Dec 24th: Bruce Banner - Series 5 Release
• Dec 31st: Rocket Racoon and Groot - Series 5 Release
• January 11th: Lasher - Series 4 Release

New Series 4 and Series 5 cards appear in the Token Shop and the Spotlight Cache. As you level up your Collection Level, Spotlight Caches become available for you to unlock a Series 4, Series 5 card, Spotlight Variants, and more. [h2]Dec 3rd:[/h2]

• Luna Snow
• X-23
• Lady Deathstrike

[h2][/h2][h2]Dec 10th:[/h2] 

• Peni Parker
• Sasquatch
• Gladiator

[h2][/h2][h2]Dec 17th:[/h2] 

• Doom 2099
• Daken
• Miek

[h2][/h2][h2]Dec 24th:[/h2]

• Bruce Banner
• High Evolutionary
• Ravonna Renslayer

[h2][/h2][h2]Dec 31st:[/h2]

• Rocket Racoon and Groot
• Selene
• Blob

  

• Spider-Island: After you play a card here, move it.

• Tokyo 2099: Cards can't be discarded.

  December 28th - January 4th!
 The game mode that was so electrifying, it demanded an encore. High Voltage is a limited-time mode that makes the world’s fastest collectible card game even faster! In this mode, there’s no snapping, just 3 turns with more energy and more cards to make even BIGGER power swings. In High Voltage, you will start the game with 2 cards, and draw 2 new cards each round. On each of the 3 turns, you and your opponent will gain the same amount of randomized energy to try and play out your best strategies. And to make sure it stays fast, certain locations and characters will be restricted, so no playing Magik to slow things down! And don’t forget, playing High Voltage during the event is the ONLY way to unlock our newest card, Lasher, for FREE! The event ends on January 4th at 10:59am PST so don’t miss out or you’ll have to find Lasher in the token shop as a Series 4 card, available after the event ends on January 4th.  Get all new Avatars, Variants, and Emotes by completing two new albums! 

 Collect an album that has no… RIVALS! Get all of your favorite Marvel Rivals art on December 10th!

• Collect 3: Doctor Doom - Marvel Rivals Avatar
• Collect 6: 2000 Collector’s Tokens
• Collect 9: Rocket Racoon and Groot Emote
• Collect 12: Doctor Doom - Marvel Rivals Variant

Look in my face, stare in my soul, I begin to Knullify. Get down with some sick new variants in The Nightmare before Knullmas album. Check it out on December 24th!

• Collect 4: Knull - Tyler Kirkham Avatar
• Collect 6: 2x Red Snowflakes Card Border
• Collect 8: Knull - Tyler Kirkham Variant
• Collect 10: Daredevil Emote

  This season we’re bringing two takeovers with ALL NEW variants! 14 amazing new pieces of art to fill up your new albums.

An epic collaboration requires epic variants, that’s why you’ll find 14 brand new Marvel Rivals variants in the shop from December 10-11th to fill out the incredible album.‘Twas the night before Knullmas and all through the house, not a Hero was stirring, not even a Knullified mouse. Tune into the shop this holiday season from December 24-25th to see what presents Knull has delivered. 
The holidays are a time for celebration! Make sure you login between December 19th and January 3rd to claim all FOURTEEN of your free login presents. Day 7 features an amazing Series 5 Variant: Elsa Bloodstone - Winter Vacation variant!

• Day 1: Title: Happy Holidays!
• Day 2:150 Credits
• Day 3:2 Ice Blue Card Borders
• Day 4: Elsa Bloodstone - Winter Vacation Avatar
• Day 5: 155 Elsa Bloodstone Boosters
• Day 6: 200 Gold
• Day 7: Elsa Bloodstone - Winter Vacation Variant
• Day 8: 200 Credits
• Day 9: Premium Mystery Variant
• Day 10: 250 Credits
• Day 11: Title: On The Naughty List
• Day 12: Premium Mystery Variant
• Day 13: 400 Credits
• Day 14: 3 Snowflake Blue Card Borders

 
Make sure you watch your favorite MARVEL SNAP Twitch streamers to earn Boosters, Credits, and an exclusive Magneto - Marvel Rivals variant! Drops will be available from December 10th-17th. Don’t miss out!

• Watch 2 hours to earn: 155 Magneto Boosters
• Watch 4 hours to earn:500 Credits
• Watch 6 hours to earn:Magneto - Marvel Rivals Variant

 Strap into your favorite mech or grab some extra Doom Bots because this will not be an easy fight. We’re excited to see all the creative new moves you’ll be making with these new abilities, so get out there and play! Check out our Discord and socials to let us know what you think about the new season! 

A company holiday overlaps what would be the next OTA for November, so this week's update will be something special. Rather than shoehorn in a make-up update, we're planning to take a "balance break" and make this week a supersized OTA. Our goal is to knock a few of the top decks back down to Earth and provide some interesting tweaks to keep you all occupied in the coming weeks. Along with one big change to a particular snap-happy villain…

• Agent Venom
  
  
  • [Old]2/4 - On Reveal: Set the Power of all cards in your deck to 4.
    
  • [New]2/5 - On Reveal: Set the Power of all cards in your deck to 3.
    

Agent Venom's gameplay goal was to fuel a variety of interesting decks, ideally by aiding a few cards that were struggling to find their place. In practice, that didn't quite work out–4 Power was high enough to be a gain (or at least not a loss) to many existing strong cards, and we saw a number of Agent Venom variations of previously strong strategies emerge. This would mostly be fine, except that as the season ended these decks were growing their metagame share and becoming more dominant, while the decks we'd hoped to spawn are largely not competing.
To correct in the direction of those goals, we're tightening the reward to narrow how many cards it can positively impact. Since we expect this to be meaningfully more restrictive to build around, we're compensating Agent Venom's base Power a bit.

 

• Surtur
  
  
  • [Old]3/5 - After you play a card with 10 or more Power, this gains +3 Power.
    
  • [Change]3/5 -> 3/4
    
  
  
  

For the bulk of Surtur's internal development, the "Skaar deck" revolving around cards with 10 or more Power wasn't a strong performer. We wanted Surtur to be enough of a boost to push it into the competitive limelight, and tuned accordingly. However, in the weeks after we finalized the card but before release, we saw the deck grow into its own quickly.
This sort of thing happens sometimes, and more often than you might realize. It's a core challenge of coordinating fast-moving internal playtest environments alongside OTA balance updates to forecast dual outcomes. However, in this case it led to Surtur's play rate exploding outside our tolerance for healthy metagame diversity almost immediately. We're making a couple of tweaks to reconcile that and ensure that the Season Pass is fueling a fun deck that's competitive without drowning out other enjoyable strategies.

 

• Skaar
  
  
  • [Old]6/11 - Costs 2 less for each of your cards that has 10 or more Power.
    
  • [Change]6/11 -> 6/10
    
  
  
  

Interestingly, Skaar has been a bit scary internally from time to time, but rarely made big waves in the live metagame. However, before Surtur's debut Skaar was far and away the best card in that deck, and it's still a fairly tight race between the two of them now. Trimming down a little Power here will similarly weaken some of the strongest draws.

 

• Silver Sable
  
  
  • [Old]1/1 - On Reveal: Steal 2 Power from the top card of your opponent’s deck.
    
  • [Change]1/1 -> 1/0
    
  
  
  

Over the last couple months, Silver Sable became one of the more dominant 1-Cost cards in the game. Our target was a good card, but we weren't aiming to supplant as many other 1-Cost cards as Sable seems to have. The most popular and successful Silver Sable deck has been Bounce, so we've decided to go in this direction rather than with a 1/2 that steals 1 Power.

 

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

We made this change to Shadow King with the last OTA to ensure that any deck could justify including this tech card, given the strength of Agent Venom and with Surtur incoming. That went fine–in fact, Shadow King's actual win rate took a meaningful dip as the play rate grew. However, given the changes we're making above, we're hopeful it's not necessary to maintain Shadow King at an above-average rate. Doing so could have a negative impact on some other strategies, thus we're reverting that change today.

 

• Black Widow
  
  
  • [Old]3/3 - On Reveal: Add a Widow's Bite to your opponent’s hand.
    
  • [New]3/4 - Activate: Add a Widow's Bite to your opponent’s hand.
    
  
  
  

We actually considered this change for Black Widow when we introduced Activate, as one of the issues we saw with Black Widow when the card was 2-Cost was how strong it was to return to hand and replay. While Activate solved this Bounce issue, it turned out that 2-Cost Black Widow was still stronger than we wanted to cost the effect and the 3-Cost version didn't have a lot of upside at the time. Since then, we've seen a deck coupling Grand Master and Misery with Black Widow to make a lot of Bites become fairly prominent. We don't want that deck to be an ongoing "fun risk," so the Activate change now lets us make a slightly improved Black Widow on rate.

 

• Destroyer
  
  
  • [Old]6/14 - On Reveal: Destroy your cards at other locations.
    
  • [Change]6/14 -> 6/16
    
  
  
  

We misjudged the impact of changing this On Reveal effect previously, as it added less strength than expected in the lower-Series metagame. We're aware that this change also made Destroyer a bit weaker with Nimrod, but we're seeking to balance the uses of Destroyer in multiple decks and metagames, and higher-end competitive play has a number of options on that front. We're going to stick with the changed effect for now, and experiment with pumping in a little more Power to ensure Destroyer rivals some of the other big 6-Costs.

 

• Valentina
  
  
  • [Old]2/3 - On Reveal: Add a random 6-Cost card to your hand. Give it -2 Cost and -3 Power.
    
  • [New]2/3 - On Reveal: Add a random 6-Cost card to your hand. Give it -2 Cost and -2 Power.
    
  
  
  

Speaking of 6-Costs, we're enhancing the one generated by Valentina slightly here by reducing how much Power gets taken from the generated card. Valentina's a risky card to play with, but pretty fun for players who enjoy adapting to their circumstances. We like to position those cards as strong enough to be viable.

 

• Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes)
  
  
  • [Change]2/6 -> 2/7
    
  
  
  

Bucky Barnes is a fun card in the early Series metagame, and has some particularly nice variants to boot. It has struggled to find a home lately in the most competitive Destroy strategies, so we're adding a bit of extra Power to the darker half of the duo to reward successfully destroying Bucky.

Admittedly, that new Thunderbolts* trailer has us hype.

 

• Jessica Jones
  
  
  • [Old]4/5 - On Reveal: If you don’t play a card at this location next turn, +4 Power.
    
  • [New]4/5 - On Reveal: If you don’t play a card at this location next turn, +5 Power.
    
  
  
  

Similarly, Jessica Jones is a straightforward and fun early Series card we don't mind making a bit tougher. It might seem strange to buff another 4-Cost card into the 10-Power range given Surtur, but Jessica won't trigger that card's Power bonus and shouldn't add any more strength to Skaar beyond being a viable alternative to existing cards.
To head it off at the pass, the answer is no–Shang-Chi doesn't make having 9 Power better than having 10 Power. It's true that the win rate difference between 9 and 10 may be smaller than 10 and 11, but it's still an improvement to get the extra Power in every case we've measured.

 

• Heimdall
  
  
  • [Old]6/9 - On Reveal: Move your other cards one location to the left.
    
  • [Change]6/9 -> 6/10
    
  
  
  

Speaking of going to 10 Power, here's Heimdall! Heimdall's an exciting card and a pillar of "big mover" strategies, which makes it an ideal candidate to reward with a little more strength.

 

• Crystal
  
  
  • [Old]3/3 - On Reveal: Each player draws a card.
    
  • [Change]3/3 -> 3/4
    
  
  
  

Crystal has been a low-performing card for quite a while. However, we do like having some of these simple cards with "puzzler" effects available for players at weak rates, so we're not keen to rework the card (again). We always want to tread carefully with drawing cards, because it can remove too much variance from the game to have it readily available, but a single Power on Crystal doesn't seem like much of a risk.

 

• Agatha Harkness (text only)
  
  
  • [Old]6/14 - Agatha starts in your hand. She plays your cards for you on even turns.
    
  • [New]6/14 - At the start of the game, draw Agatha. She controls your cards on even turns.
    
  
  
  

This isn't a functional change to Agatha–we're just updating the card text for clarity, so that players can more easily realize Agatha doesn't work like Quicksilver and that Agatha may move or activate your cards.
Admittedly, we weren't sure about keeping the "evens only" effect for Agatha following the conclusion of Agatha All Along–as we said at the time, the change was primarily to celebrate the show. But it has made the card more fun and a more useful card for players, so we've decided to let it ride for now.

 

• Thanos
  
  
  • [Old]6/10 - Starts in your opening hand and shuffles the six Infinity Stones into your deck.
    
  • [New]6/10 - At the start of the game, draw Thanos and shuffle the six Infinity Stones into your deck.
    
  
  
  

This, however, is a functional change! Thanos will now no longer "take up space" in the player's opening hand and instead becomes an extra card, like Agatha. We considered removing a draw from one of the Stones to soften the strength of this change a little, but our testing didn't make it clear we needed to do that, so we're going to let live play be the judge. Similarly, we have some buffs for a couple Stones we're trying out in playtesting, but we didn't want to change too much about Thanos given we're skipping our next OTA. The real world is going to find a better Thanos deck than we will internally, so we'll see what it looks like first and then add more once we have a clearer sense of what's needed.

 

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That's all for this week the month of November. Until next time, happy snapping!