It’s been a busy week over in the world of Marvel Snap (Free). Following on from last week’s big update, this week saw a major new card introduced, a handful of significant balance tweaks over the air, and a new update schedule from the team. I figured we’d take a look at all of that now while the news is still hot, so let’s get our hands dirty, friends!
So, first up, this week saw the release of a monumental new card. There is a small club within Marvel Snap known as the Big Bads. These are notable Marvel villains and are so powerful they are essentially permanently assigned to the extremely rare Series 5 pool of cards. Thanos, Galactus, and Kang have been the sole members of that group up until now, but they’ve now been joined by the High Evolutionary. You might have seen him pop up in the recent Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which is a great movie that you should watch if you haven’t.
On his face, the High Evolutionary isn’t a very powerful card. He’s a 4-Cost, 4-Power character, which aren’t the best stats. But the magic of him is that if he is in your deck at all, cards that previously had no abilities will now have some. Wasp, Misty Knight, Shocker, Cyclops, Thing, Abomination, and Hulk all gain abilities that either beef them up or power their opponents down. This is a real game changer of a card, and I’ve been rolled over by a few players using some mix of these cards and The High Evolutionary already. You can grab him for 6,000 Tokens this week if you feel like giving me a good kick, too.
Next, let’s hit those balance changes. The nerf bat has struck, and it hit a combo that I only just became aware of recently. Black Bolt has always been a relatively unpopular card, but he’s been seeing play recently teaming up with Stature. He makes the opponent discard their lowest Cost card, and that makes Stature cost just a single Cost point to play. A nice one-two punch. Well, they’ve both been tossed in the sin bin for their crimes. Black Bolt goes from 5-Cost 8-Power to 5-Cost 7-Power, and Stature goes from 5-Cost 7-Power to 5-Cost 6-Power. Oof.
On the buff side, Negasonic Teenage Warhead goes from 3-Cost 4-Power to 3-Cost 5-Power. Given she usually blows herself up anyway, I’m not sure how much of a difference this will make. Guess we’ll see. Invisible Woman has also been beefed up, going from 2-Cost 2-Power to 2-Cost 3-Power. She’s already been part of a couple of popular decks, and this should see her pop up even more. Aside from these card tweaks, three locations have been temporarily disabled: Plunder Castle, Milano, and Sandbar. They were particularly restrictive locations, and if more than one appeared in a game, things could get funky. The team will be coming up with new effects for these before bringing them back.
Finally, the future update schedule has been amended following this May test run for weekly updates. From here forward, the team will be taking a week off between over the air updates. That’s both for their sake (these weekly updates have probably been rough) and to let changes breathe before they jump into the next set. So what we’ll be seeing now is a rhythm of a full patch, then the next week some over the air tweaks, then a week off, then some more over the air tweaks, then back around to a full patch. That means we won’t be seeing any changes next week unless something seriously breaks.
Anyway, that’s it for the latest Marvel Snap happenings. Snappenings? What do you think of these changes? Have you been enjoying the game more this month after the consistent updates? Did any of your favorite decks get smacked upside the head? Are you with me that Galactus is a jerk and needs some kind of nerf ASAP? Feel free to comment below and let us know your Marvel Snap opinions. Snapinions? No. No, I will stop that now and never do it again.
