New ‘Marvel Snap’ Update Includes Balance Changes for The Collector and More – TouchArcade

New ‘Marvel Snap’ Update Includes Balance Changes for The Collector and More – TouchArcade

Time Stamp: September 15, 2023 6:58 AM
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Okay, it’s been about a week or so since I last wrote about Marvel Snap (Free). I think I’m allowed to have another go now. Especially since we’ve got an update to look at, one that is at least in part aimed to indirectly cool off the extremely hot Loki decks that have been popping up since the card was added in the Loki for All Time season’s first week. Don’t worry, it’s not all sad news. In fact, if you enjoy some of the more unusual cards in the game, a couple of nice ones have gotten some love here. Let’s look at the details!

So yes, Loki. He’s a pretty good card, I would say. What better hand could you have to counter your foe than one drawn from the cards in your opponent’s own deck, playable at a cheaper Cost? The side effect of this card is that it adds more cards to you hand, and veteran players know the chocolate that goes perfect with that kind of peanut butter: The Collector, a 2-Cost 2-Power card that gains one point of Power for every card that enters your hand from any source apart from your deck. And indeed, he’s become quite the popular guy of late. So popular that he aggro’d the nerf bat, and is now a 2-Cost 0-Power card. He’s still pretty strong, but those two points of Power are a meaningful chop.

Speaking of chops, Spider-Ham. You know, pork chops. Pork. He’s a pig. Please clap. Spider-Ham has had a rough life since he was introduced to the game. First he got kicked up to being a higher Cost card. Then he had his ability rewritten in a way that makes it much less useful. Well, there’s finally some good news for Peter Porker. He’s moving from being a hard-to-justify 2-Cost 2-Power card back to being a slightly more useful 1-Cost 1-Power card. His ability remains the same, so he’ll only whack the leftmost card in your opponent’s hand with his Pig hammer. But hey, small improvements matter.

In the small improvements department, Shadow King has a little buff that might help him out. I’m somewhat fond of this card, but only in my Surfer decks. He absolutely destroys Destroy decks, and that makes him worth bringing along if you can find room for him. That’s easier to do now, because he’s moving from being a 3-Cost 3-Power card to being a 2-Cost 3-Power card. This means he misses out on Surfer’s buff, but the added versatility more than makes up for that. I hope he sees more play now. The same goes for Lady Sif, who is moving from being a 3-Cost 4-Power card to being a 3-Cost 5-Power card. She pairs well with Apocalypse, and that extra point of Power might get people to try her elsewhere too.

The last adjustment I’m less sure about. Black Cat is one of those cards that seems neat but in practice is really hard to make use of. Basically if she’s in your hand, you have to play her in the same turn or discard her. I’ve seen some folks use her in decks that use discards to power-up, and she can be a fun surprise in decks that bring back discarded cards, but she’s so incredibly situational that almost no one uses her. This update moves her from being a 3-Cost 7-Power card to being a 4-Cost 9-Power card, which actually makes it less likely you’ll be able to play her if she’s in your hand. But that extra punch of power might make her more enticing for clever thinkers. We’ll have to see how it shakes out, but I doubt this is the last we’ll be seeing of Felicia.

That’s it for this update. No changes made to any locations, so presumably the new ones are working out well enough. No cards pulled, and that’s always lovely. And neither of the new cards seem to need any tweaks yet either. With that in mind, we probably won’t see any updates to the game for a couple of weeks. What do you think of these changes? Are you adjusting any of your decks for them? Let us know in the comments below!

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