Now that the latest season, Loki for All Time, has landed in Marvel Snap (Free), it’s time for the customary big update that tends to follow. This is a fairly significant one, and indeed it is big enough that I’m holding off posting our newest deck-building guide until I can make some adjustments to take these changes into account. The promised changes to Infinite Rank are here, along with a bevy of improvements and (ominous chime) balance changes. Let’s break it down and see what we’ve got.
First off, the revamp to Infinite Rank. It used to be that once you got Infinite Rank, there was no real incentive to keep playing in the standard mode. Nothing to gain, lots to lose. Well, that’s now fixed. Once you reach Infinite Rank, your rank will be replaced with a leaderboard standing. Winning Cubes from that point on will give you SP, which determines your place on the leaderboard. Now you can see where you really stand against others who have achieved Infinite Rank, and have a reason to keep playing once you do. Very cool, I like it.
Conquest Mode has had some changes to its UI/UX to improve the flow after finishing battles. You don’t have to wade through so many screens now, and that’s a great change because it did feel like a mild slog. Other little touches include your mute setting persisting across multiple battles with the same opponent, and some improved visual effects for the Infinite Avatar border. Outside of Conquest, seasonal audio is now a thing, and Agatha has some cool new sound effects. Okay, over to the cards. That’s the real meat, isn’t it?
As usual for a capital-U Update, the changes here can and mostly do change the text on the cards rather than just hitting the numbers. First up is Blade, who has a nasty habit of cutting up useful cards like Hela instead of more preferable choices like Apocalypse. Well, he no longer causes you to discard a random card from your hand. Now he discards the rightmost card in your hand, so you can kind of plan around him a little better. This should make him more viable again.
Thanos gets a nerf here, and while I’m not sure it was needed, it is what it is. The Soul Stone used to allow you to draw a card and had an Ongoing ability to inflict -1 Power on enemy cards at the same location. It still has the latter ability but no longer gives you the free draw. This is going to make it a lot harder for Thanos players to get all the stones into play, but I’m sure they’ll figure things out somehow.
In the “look how they massacred my boy" department, Spider-Ham has been turned into sausages with this extra nerf. He was previously moved from being 1-Cost 1-Power to 2-Cost 2-Power, but now his ability is changed too. Instead of turning the highest Power card in the opponent’s hand into a Pig, he hits the leftmost card in their hand. I’m going to have to go over this with a fine tooth comb tonight, but I think this basically ends Peter Porker’s usefulness in the game. At least drop him back down to 1-Cost 1-Power, devs!
Let’s get the final nerf out of the way before we look at the big buff for this update. Absorbing Man has been a shining star in the last week or so, and I guess he’s been a bit too bright because he has had his stats adjusted. He was 4-Cost 5-Power and now he’s 4-Cost 4-Power. I think he’s still got a lot of value for the way most players use him, but he’s definitely not as much of a heavyweight now.
Okay, I suppose these kinds of sandwiches usually end with something nice. Snowguard is a complicated card and she just hasn’t found any real place with most decks. Basically, she was a 1-Cost 2-Power card who would transform alternatively on each turn into a Bear or a Hawk with the same stats, and it was up to you when you wanted to play her. The Bear had an On Reveal ability to ignore all Location abilities next turn, and the Hawk had an On Reveal ability to trigger the effect of the Location she was played at. As of this update, Snowguard has an On Reveal ability that adds both the Hawk and the Bear to your hand. They now have stats of 2-Cost 3-Power, but their abilities effectively remain the same. This is a big buff to this card, so we’ll have to see where it goes from here.
That’s all for this update. See you, Spider-Ham. You were a real one. As mentioned, I will have to make some adjustments to the September deck guide, but you should see it posted in the next day or two. What do you think of these changes? Do they affect any of the decks you use? Hit the comments section with your thoughts if you want to share them!
