Patch Notes - September 17, 2024

PLEASE NOTE: If you haven’t updated your game yet, get the latest in the App Store!

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS

Activate more Activate!previously announced, we’re updating two older cards to now feature the new Activate mechanic: Black Swan and Hellcow. The Balance section below will cover this in more detail.

• Black Swan
  • [Old]3/5 - On Reveal: Until the end of next turn, your 1-Cost cards cost 0.
  • [New]2/3 - Activate: Until the end of next turn, your 1-Cost cards cost 0.

• Hellcow
  • [Old]4/8 - On Reveal: Discard 2 cards from your hand.
  • [New]4/6 - Activate: Discard 2 cards from your hand.

GENERAL UPDATES

Changes to Gold offers:

• We're evolving our Gold bundles to bring you more frequent, balanced, and exciting deals on the Webshop.
• The current Bonus Double Gold offers will be phased out 30 days after this patch, so if you've been waiting to take advantage of these offers, now's the time!
• While we know these offers have been popular, they've also had unintended effects on the overall balance of the game's economy. That's why we're making this change to ensure a healthier economy moving forward.
• New players will no longer see these offers, but they'll have access to the new offers.

BALANCE UPDATES

• Black Swan
  • [Old]3/5 - On Reveal: Until the end of next turn, your 1-Cost cards cost 0.
  • [New]2/3 - Activate: Until the end of next turn, your 1-Cost cards cost 0.

We revealed earlier that Black Swan and Hellcow would be changing to Activate as a bit of an experiment in seeing how the mechanic could be used to freshen up some older cards where On Reveal wasn't quite getting the job done. We didn't reveal that doing so would also come with some stat updates. Making an effect an Activate can be riskier, because it requires playing the card earlier in the game to time it properly. For Black Swan that's extra true, because playing Swan on turn 5 still won't be fast enough to get the Cost reduction–remember, Activate resolves with your other plays, so you can't activate for a same-turn Cost discount. So we're dropping the Cost to ensure more opportunities to get Black Swan into play.It's possible this update won't land Black Swan in a better position, and we're open to a reversion in that case. However, the risk seemed appropriate given Black Swan has been languishing on multiple metrics.

• Hellcow
  • [Old]4/8 - On Reveal: Discard 2 cards from your hand.
  • [New]4/6 - Activate: Discard 2 cards from your hand.

So if we moved Black Swan down to 2-Cost, why are we shrinking Hellcow? Well, not all effects are created equal! Being able to time the discard on Hellcow makes it substantially stronger than the On Reveal in a couple of key ways, not the least of which is you can now curve Hellcow into MODOK without risking losing your MODOK. To reflect that shift in strength, we weakened Hellcow a little bit while we see how strong it proves to be.

• Sword Master
  • [Old] 3/7 - On Reveal: Discard a card from your hand.
  • [New] 3/7 - On Reveal: Discard an odd-costed card from your hand.

Similar to how we updated Moon Knight, we've decided to create an alternate option with Sword Master. We did debate changing the stats–and yes, it does look weird that Moon Knight is a 3/3 and Sword Master is bigger. However, in addition to discarding an enemy card, Moon Knight just has more and stronger synergies: Apocalypse, Proxima Midnight, Stature, and even Wolverine. Sword Master has X-23, Ghost Rider, and maybe a different kind of Hela deck? Given the gap and our Sword Master decks not feeling too scary, we decided to wait and see rather than preemptively adjust the Power down.

Bug Fixes

Card and Location Logic Fixes in 32.x

• Restored the check order of cards like Mystique hidden behind effects such as Invisible Woman or Dark Dimension to its former behavior
• Players now can properly retreat from a match on Turn 6 if Mount Vesuvius is destroyed
• Players now can properly retreat from a match on Turn 6 if Mount Vesuvius is disabled by an effect like Snowguard Hawk
• Resolved an issue with Forge that could cause an infinite looping Fast Forward to play under certain circumstances

Card and Location Art Fixes in 32.x

• Fixed an issue where one of Cannonball’s variants didn’t display split backgrounds properly in-game
• Cleaned up Namora’s VFX timeline to be a bit snappier
• VFX for The Ice Box should no longer display differently between players
• Hand Full VFX should display properly when Black Knight is in play but Ebony Blade can’t be added to hand upon discard (ex: Helicarrier discarded)
• Nocturne’s VFX now plays properly when moved to another location by another card
• Resolved an issue that could result in Professor X’s VFX being removed from a location if he was forcibly moved
• Fisk Tower’s VFX no longer triggers inadvertently when cards move away from the location
• Fixed an issue that was causing Mockingbird’s VFX to trigger at the start of a match before any other cards were in play
• Silver Samurai’s base card art no longer loses its split background when upgraded to Frame Break quality
• Copycat’s SFX should no longer trigger for the opposing player when drawn
• Blue Stardust no longer has green particles
• Sakaar’s art asset has its background returned
• Fixed a rare issue that could result in Foil finishes displaying as Gold or Prism on occasion
• Copycat’s VFX no longer displays an exclamation point

Other Fixes in 32.x

• Fixed a number of asset related exceptions that were occurring and causing noticeable performance issues and Aw Snap errors
• Resolved an issue that could result in a perpetual loading spinner when you restarted the app after a League had ended
• League-related toast messages should no longer occasionally appear at the start of matches
• Card Effects and Flares should no longer occasionally be over-sized when viewed in certain Card Detail and Reward Detail views
• Displayed Card Backs no longer revert to the default in Conquest after the first round
• Fixed an issue that was causing the “Hold to Confirm” text prompt to only display if the player was already holding on the button and not when they tapped
• Upgrading a card in the post-match screen and then clicking on a card in play from post-match should no longer result in overlapping card detail views

Alliance Fixes in 32.x

• Players should be able to properly search for Alliances even if they do not meet the requirements to join the Alliance
• Fixed a timing-related issue with completing Alliance bounties that could result in a single bounty being claimed more than once
• Cleaned up some clipping and z-fighting issues for Bounty icons
• Alliance descriptions with multiple line breaks no longer causes the roster to be unable to scroll to the bottom
• Member icons and avatars no longer clip into the surrounding UI when the roster is scrolled through

PC Fixes in 32.x

• [PC] Fixed an issue that was preventing card backgrounds from displaying for cards shown in the carousel

Existing Known Issues Fixed

• Fixed the volume of some VO lines in certain languages that were too low
• Text descriptions for some custom borders no longer have overlapping text in Vietnamese
• The infinity split button should now be properly disabled when all possible splits for a card have been unlocked
• Emote assets should no longer blink into existence when viewing Album rewards