In this week’s balance update, we’ll be re-tuning the Hela archetype after its incorporation of Skaar, adjusting Dr. Doom 2099 to be more in line with other four cost options, and fixing an outlier interaction with Sam Wilson.
Additionally, we’ll be buffing some iconic favorites that have fallen out of favor, as well as trying to get Bruce Banner into a more acceptable long term power range.
Let’s start with Hela:
Hela
- [Old] 6/9 - On Reveal: For each different Cost among them, resurrect a card you discarded to a random location.
- [Change] 6/9 > 6/6
Swordmaster
- [Old] 3/7 - On Reveal: Discard an odd-costed card from your hand.
- [Change] 3/7 > 3/6
Hellcow
- [Old] 4/7 - Activate: Discard a card from your hand.
- [Change] 4/7 > 4/6
Black Cat
- [Old] 4/10 - End of Turn: Discard this from your hand.
- [Change] 4/10 > 2/6
Last OTA, we took some large steps to wrangle the Surtur strategy into a spot that will allow it to exist as a part of a healthy metagame for the long term. Now the Surtur deck is still enjoying success, but at a much more manageable play rate on the ladder.
A consequence of that, and the movement from 6 to 7 cost with Skaar, is that Hela got a large strength injection, by giving it another unique-cost-high-power card.
Before the Skaar change, Hela was a balanced, sometimes slightly under performing strategy, but giving it the means to generate an additional 12 points with its best draw has taken it to strongest-deck levels.
Sometimes the consequences of changes to solve problems cascade into other problems. It was possible to predict that Hela would be an issue with the Skaar changes, but given where it was on the ladder, we would rather let things play out naturally than try to map out all the implications of a large scale change, especially one on the magnitude of shaking up Surtur’s stranglehold on the metagame.
So where does that leave us? For now, we’re comfortable accepting that Skaar and to some extent Thaddeus Ross are buffing the Hela strategy. If anything, it’s good that Skaar has another home after we nerfed it, but Hela’s point generation is just too large relative to the effort asked of you. As a result, we’re downward adjusting it in other ways.
From Hela, Sword Master, and Hellcow we’ve naturally cut 5 total points of power, just from the set up and payoff cards in the deck you want to play. We suspect that this is likely to leave the deck still in a stronger position than pre-Skaar to 7, but does trim some of the incidental power the strategy generates just from naturally playing enablers and its namesake, which should bring the win rate down.
Those are pretty straightforward changes, Black Cat is the trickier one.
Before this OTA, Black Cat didn’t have much of a role anywhere except being a “free” stat stick for Hela. She was just too unreliable to play in most normal decks as an above-rate card.
We’ve tried her at 3/8 in the past, but that didn’t do enough to move the needle on her “normal” playability, so rather than just adjust her again to that stat line with the goal of just simply nerfing Hela, we’re trying a sideways experiment here.
2/6 is pretty impressive and we’re interested to monitor her appeal in other decks as a risk/reward card.
We’ll both be monitoring how she performs as well as how large an impact on Hela this set of changes makes and adjust accordingly in the future.
Doom 2099
4/3 - End of Turn: Add a DoomBot 2099 to a random location if you played (exactly) 1 card.
We’re adjusting Doom 2099’s DoomBots.
DoomBot 2099
- [Old] 4/1 - Ongoing: Your other DoomBots and Doom have +1 Power.
- [Change] 4/1 > 4/0
The package of Zabu, Psylocke, and Doom 2099 have been incorporated into a variety of winning strategies for some time now. We’ve made some adjustments to Doom99, but none have been substantial enough to decrown him as the de facto strongest four cost card in Marvel Snap.
Much of Doom’s potency being tied to the strength of ramping him out has made him tricky to manage relative to other 4’s. We debated knocking his power again, but he only has one real adjustment left, as moving to 4/1 would arguably make him stronger by allowing Ravonne Renslayer to interact with him.
Ultimately we decided that wasn’t a large enough change, and we’ve settled on removing a power from his Doom Bots. This should be an average adjustment per game of about 3 total power and our hope is that will get him closer to the correct spot.
We still want Doom99 to be a strong card, but hopefully now he won’t be so clearly out competing other 4 cost options, particularly when he asks little of you in deckbuilding.
Sam Wilson Captain America
2/3 - Game Start: Add Cap's Shield to a random location. Ongoing: You can move Cap's Shield.
We’re adjusting Sam Wilson’s Shield.
Cap’s Shield
- [Old] 1/1 - Ongoing: This can’t be destroyed. Give your Cap +2 Power when this moves to Cap’s location.
- [Change] 1/1 > 0/1
Sam has shown up successfully in a variety of strategies and had a generally positive play pattern that folks have enjoyed. As a result, we’re happy to mostly keep him in his current state, which is quite strong.
However, there’s one little problem.
His interaction with Cull Obsidian is really more of a bug than a feature. Cull’s inclusion in decks that don’t even play 1 cost cards is very much against the spirit of Cull’s design and draw-back. Being able to sport an undercosted 10 power card is a huge boon to any deck that is at all interested in playing Sam, further improving his win rate in a way that we aren’t happy with as well as contributing to a homogeneity in Sam decks despite his representation across a variety of archetypes.
We’re changing the cost on Cap’s shield to cut out this interaction, and will see how Sam’s win rate evolves as a result.
Loki
- [Old] 2/2 - On Reveal: Replace your deck with your opponent’s starting deck. Give those cards -1 Cost.
- [Change] 2/2 > 1/2
As a massive fan favorite, we haven’t been quite satisfied with Loki’s position in Marvel Snap in recent times. This is an attempt at a half step between his current version and his previous iteration where he drew a card, now enabling you another turn of drawing your opponent’s cost reduced cards, but at a weaker overall rate than before. We’re open to further iteration if this isn’t a large enough adjustment.
Thanos
6/10 - Game Start: Draw Thanos and shuffle the six Infinity Stones into your deck.
We’re adjusting Thanos as well as his Space Stone.
- [Change] 6/10 > 6/12
Space Stone
- [Old] 1/1 - On Reveal: Draw a card. Ongoing: Nothing can stop you from playing or moving Thanos.
- [Change] 1/1 > 1/2
In a similar vein to Loki, Thanos has been in a slump for a while. We believe there’s an opportunity to improve him without a full reversion to the metagame menace that he has been in the past.
Thanos has two primary weaknesses, one being that he himself is much less appealing to play than using his Stones, and that his Stones can quickly take up a considerable amount of real estate. We’ve aimed to help both of those issues, by both increasing Thanos’s base power as well as increasing the power of the Space Stone - one of the Infinity Stones that you often feel the worst about leaving on the board if you can’t blow it up yourself.
Wolverine
- [Old] 2/2 - When this is discarded or destroyed, regenerate it with +2 Power at a random location.
- [Change] 2/2 > 2/3
We’ve been monitoring the traditional destroy deck and found it lacking for some time. As an iconic Marvel Snap strategy, we want to make sure that Destroy can remain a healthy part of the metagame, particularly given how accessible it is.
The latter point is always something we do want to be careful of, as a change like this does have the potential to dramatically skew the new player experience. That said, we think it is worth it to give some help to the strategy, and we’ve chosen Wolverine given how the strength of other two energy characters has steadily increased since the release of the game.
Bruce Banner
- [Old] 2/1 - End of Turn: If you have unspent Energy, 25% chance to HULK OUT!
- [New] 2/1 - End of Turn: If you have unspent Energy, 33% chance to HULK OUT!
Additional change not reflected in text: Bruce will keep his power modifiers after HULKING OUT.
Players have been disappointed in the state of Bruce Banner since his release, and his play rate reflects that, so we’re taking a dramatic swing here. In addition to going from a 1/4th chance to 1/3rd chance to HULK OUT, we’re also allowing the Hulk to keep any bonuses he might receive in Banner form. These pair of changes will not only give him a substantial increase in expected point generation, but we hope will make him a lot more fun to play with as well.
Temporary Location Removal
Deep Space
Deep Space is bugged with Iron Patriot and will be temporarily removed from the location pool until fixed.