January 16th - Balance Updates

We're back! Welcome to the first OTA of 2025. Since we know it's been a minute, we have a solid set of changes today aimed at shaking up the metagame you've all been enjoying over the last month. We've got a few nerfs, a few buffs, and a rework for one of SNAP's most dangerous divas. Check it out!

• Scream
  • [Old] 2/3 - When an enemy card moves, steal 2 Power from it. (once per turn)
  • [Change] 2/3 -> 2/2
  • [Bugfix] Scream will no longer gain Power if it can't be taken, such as due to Luke Cage.

Let's hit the bugfix first: our intent for the "steal" game action is that if Power isn't taken, it also isn't gained. That's a clean line to draw, and brings Scream in line with cards like Rocket & Groot.The sonic symbiote here has quietly dominated our internal winrate metrics for a few months now. That might be surprising to hear as the deck isn't perceived as being dominant, but that's because Scream is kind of like Mister Negative–drawing Scream gives you a massive advantage, while games without Scream are a struggle. Given the deck's position we decided to let Scream run wild for a little bit, but now we'd like to try and distribute a little of that strength more uniformly among the deck's other cards to create a more balanced play experience. To that end…

• Spider-Man
  • [Old] 3/5 - On Reveal: Move to another location and pull an enemy card from here to there.
  • [Change] 3/5 -> 2/4

This is a simple buff for the Scream decks to counterbalance some lost Power, but it also makes Spidey a stronger potential option for some other decks that could use the buff, like more traditional Move decks. As one of our most popular characters, we also want to keep Spidey positioned at an exciting rate for gameplay.

• Luke Cage
  • [Old] 3/3 - Ongoing: Your cards can’t have their Power reduced.
  • [Change] 3/3 -> 3/2

Luke is in an interesting spot, serving as a release valve against cards like Hazmat, a precaution for decks like Cerebro, and a combo piece for cards like Anti-Venom. That's a lot of hats, and Luke's frankly very good at wearing all of them. This has the added side-effect of making decks that want to play with afflict or Power-stealing abilities weaker, because Luke Cage just happens to be in some decks using the effect for their own reasons. We're going to work toward finding a better division of labor for some of these roles in the future, but until then we'd like to weaken Luke Cage a little bit and see how the metagame shifts in the wake of that change.

• U.S. Agent
  • [Old] 2/3 - Ongoing: 4, 5, and 6-Cost cards here have -4 Power.
  • [New] 2/3 - Ongoing: 4, 5, and 6-Cost cards here have -3 Power.

With Luke Cage losing a point of Power, we perused some of the stronger cards doing Power reduction to see if any stood out as potentially needing a nerf in a world with less Lukes. U.S. Agent has been one of the strongest cards in that category, and it's also contributed to a general reduction in the play rate of higher-Cost cards. Beyond that, we've had plenty of great decks that could easily play U.S. Agent without directly aiming to leverage the effect, just as a free card, and we're expecting more to start showing up. Given all of the above, weakening the effect is appropriate.

• Ka-Zar
  • [Old] 4/4 - Ongoing: Your 1-Cost cards have +1 Power.
  • [Change] 4/4 -> 4/5

Classic strategies like the "Zoo" deck that floods the board are strategies we always want to support. In addition to being fun, many of these decks give players aspirational goals to pursue for new gameplay, helping players grow their collections and transition towards higher-Series play. However, we've seen the winrates of these decks wane over the last few months. As a lynchpin of these decks that's available early on, Ka-Zar's a good option for a buff.

• Hydra Bob
  • [Old] 1/5 - After each turn, this moves if a player Snapped.
  • [Change] 1/5 -> 1/4

Speaking of 1-Cost cards, we've decided to try reverting Hydration Robert back to 1/4. This statline landed lukewarm on release, but we believe part of that may have been players taking some time to see how strong Bob could be, whether a deck was leveraging the snap effect or not. Bob hasn't been as problematic as Silver Sable was, but still did also represent a "default strong" 1-Cost for a lot of decks, so this change will also create a little more diversity within the metagame among 1-Cost cards. Generally, we're most happy when different decks want different cards at each Cost.

• Sentry
  • [Old] 4/8 - You can't play this at the right location. On Reveal: Add a -8 Power Void to the right location.
  • [New] 4/9 - You can't play this at the right location. On Reveal: Add a -9 Power Void to the right location

• The Void
  • [Old] 4/-8
  • [Change] 4/-8 -> 4/-9

Speaking of Roberts, we're also buffing Sentry. The days of Annihilus terrorizing your rightmost location have long passed, and Sentry has a few solid applications outside of that combo as well. We're not particularly keen on increasing the options for Surtur, so trying Sentry at 4/9 will create a large card that's immune to Shang-Chi while also having some different hooks for synergy thanks to the Void.

• Onslaught
  • [Old] 6/7 - Ongoing: Double your other Ongoing effects here.
  • [Change] 6/7 -> 6/8

Nothing much to see here–Onslaught is just a fun, exciting card that's fallen on some hard times. An extra point of Power is often welcome under such circumstances, and given Onslaught's express use in the Living Tribunal deck it's even more important.

• Mister Fantastic
  • [Old]3/2 - Ongoing: Adjacent locations have +2 Power.
  • [New] 3/1 - Ongoing: Adjacent locations have +3 Power.

Mister Fantastic is a classic card in early collections, one of the few that can threaten multiple locations. However, as players' collections grew and the game's diversity of effects widened, Reed has simply been outclassed. This is a small buff overall–just 1 Power net–but it has enough small gains that we didn't want to push much more. That 3 Power is good at beating Nightcrawler in early Series play, gets doubled by Onslaught, and we're still talking about a 3-Cost that has some synergy with Silver Surfer's swarming strategy.

• Hela
  • [Old] 6/7 - On Reveal: Resurrect all cards you discarded to random locations with -3 Power.
  • [New] 6/9 - On Reveal: For each different Cost among them, resurrect a card you discarded to a random location.

Last, but certainly not least, this might turn a few heads. While Hela had found an appropriate balance point with the previous design, as a team we weren't thrilled with it. The -3 debuff wasn't an elegant solution to the one-sided gameplay, and as we continue to create strong cards it would likely inevitably merit change again. We decided to approach the Hela from the angle of making an "interesting" reanimator deck, where the challenge wasn't necessarily how to best discard the biggest cards but rather which cards you were trying to discard. This quest has proven fairly difficult in playtesting, so we're starting from a generous position. We expect Hela's own Power has likely become a meaningful dial with this effect, which is the ideal outcome.

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That's all for this week. Until next time, happy snapping!