Marvel Snap - Catch-all

same here. stopped consuming any content around the new cards. it’s best if I just don’t know they even exist until I encounter them in game. only exception is the season pass card because that’s something I could acquire without summer gacha bullsh*t. Surfer was really worth it. Still on the fence for Zabu.

I got Gambit from my last box and had fun trying to build a deck where I play wong into mystique and then gambit and surfer on 6. I lost 4 or five rangs putting it together and only managed to make it work 2 or 3 times but atm it‘s the most enjoyable way to play the game for me. If I focus on the missions I get stuck on win with one card or win with less than 10 power for what feels like forever and it‘s just annoying. If I focus on climbing ranks I feel like I every second match is a wong or patriot mirror with the worst locations turned in their favor until I hit rank 40 and then top three meta decks to infinity. Maybe the game also matches you with similar decks if it can?

So, I’m a Timmy when I play Snap even though I used to be a casual or budget Spike in Magic. I build my own decks once I have 2 or 3 grey boarder cards and and goof around with stupid combo decks. Usually the grey cards end up in the same shells though. It’s fun for now. Not sure it will still be fun in another months or two.

I guess content creators are feeling the complains all the time. Either through “play this” requests for cards they don’t have or through “how can I replace that” questions from viewers that don’t have all the cards.

Really curious what this game will look like in 3 to 6 months. The devs have the tools ready to make some easy changes if they want to listen to the complaints. I imagine they are watching some of the metrics like daily users and bundles sold closely. Let’s see what they make of it.

My impression is that most people playing are fine with the way the game’s economy works and it’s mostly Spikes that complain.

I'm not a streamer by any means, and I've so far put no actual money into the game, but I'll complain about the economy. In the doldrums of pool 3, post CL 1k, where I am, it takes a lot of saving and effort to get even the chance to get a new card, or token shop credits. I likewise don't have much interest in staying on top of Pool 5 Metas, good thing, because the idea that I could is laughable--there are plenty of key pool 3 cards I still lack, and at this current rate, it will be months before I'm close to what current is right now. After my drought ended with Mr. Negative, I got Titania on the very next box, and then opened 3 more, so we'll see if the Rule of 4 holds, but we can't right now, because I'll be 1 CL short if I spent what credits I have now anyway (admittedly, I could use some gold for credits, but I'd rather save them for the variant shop). Additionally, I pinned Magik on Friday night at 700 tokens, and I'm still 100 short on Tuesday night--anecdotally, an associate has said they had Rogue pinned for weeks, and was just barely able to buy that card today. It's frustrating because while we don't care much for Being Competitive, we do care much for having fun and getting cards of characters we like. Whatever changes they're considering for the Pool 4 and 5 streamers are all well and good, but we plebs desperately need changes to that system, too. Actually playing is great, but I've started to dread actually opening crates, which I don't think is what you want people saying about your upgrade path.

Also, the cash money prices on bundles are grotesque. I just bought an entire run of comics about Rogue and Gambit for less than the Rogue and Gambit bundle.

That feels like kind of a BS support response because I’ve heard of cards getting unpinned by many people.

Could have been me writing that a couple of weeks ago.

I decided to view Marvel Snap as a "glass half full" thing: The half-full is the game itself, which is fun if you can ignore the half-empty glas which is the predatory bullsh*t dark design patterns 101 f2p economy.

It works for now but all I currently want out of the game is a time waster during lunch break and before breakfast and maybe doing a mission while watching tv in the evening.

The worst thing is actually spending money on the game. When I became aware that you could pay for gold on their website instead of buying it in the ingame shop (which adds around 30% to the price tag even though it's in EUR not in USD here in Germany) I bought the gold I was "missing" to buy one of the bundles they had before christmas inlcuding Tokens and the Silver Surfer season pass because the price of that felt actually reasonable. Turns out it doesn't feel worth the price once you buy the stuff.
In say Magic Arena you get to open a ton of packs and are showered in Dopamin when opening them and seeing all the new cards you can play with. Here you get to spend your credits on boosters which feels like a chore and that will reward you with a loot box that holds mostly crappy sh*t that is there just so they can twist your brain into coming back.

I'll think twice before I spend another cent on the game now.

I've been having a lot of fun with a shield-centric deck I threw together, because I managed to pull Coulson, Maria Hill and the helicarrier. I also put in a quinjet, Ghost Rider (along with Infinaut and Devil Dinosaur), Nick Fury and Lady Sif to destroy whichever high power card is in there and yoink it back into whichever lane can benefit most. Finally put mystique in to duplicate devil dinosaur. It is loads of fun and can be very unpredictable with the random draws. Quite a few opponents withdraw when I drop Infinaut in round 4. Sometimes I'll put mystique in after the quin jet and my card draws end up super cheap.

My biggest issue is that I constantly forget to hit Snap, so it's taking forever to go up ranks. That said, I'm not super excited about ranking, or the rewards past 50, so I guess that's ok. I'm having fun this way, which is what counts, I suppose.

As someone who's bought the last two season's passes and might buy this next one too if I reach BattlePass 50, is quite happy messing around with fun decks and perpetually hovering around mid-30's rank, I couldn't disagree with this statement more.

While I strongly disagree with F2P games that employ predatory practices to suck people who can't afford to be whales dry and I could see an argument that Marvel Snap's price point of $120/year for every BattlePass seems a bit steep, I can't get behind the "HOW CAN THEY CHARGE $100 FOR A BUNDLE!?!?!?!?!" complaint. They can charge whatever they want and you can decide to pay or not. A long long history of economic research has shown that whether a bundle was $100 or $20 or $10 the incremental value of paying customers at different price points does not even come close to covering the value of the 0.1% of whales who will pay $100, especially in a mobile phone gaming environment where the monetization expectation is F2P.

But besides that point I have zero regrets for spending $20 so far on Marvel Snap. I haven't even used Black Panther yet. Every week I'm trying out some new deck with some new card I got, not worrying about the meta (I play an Orca ongoing deck right now, have seen exactly zero opponents play a deck any way similar). And even this BattlePass I'm kind of waffling on whether I want to get it or not because I don't find the art that interesting and am not super keen on trying a Zabu deck right now.

I understand the criticisms of the game's financial model, except the prices for everything are so ridiculous they aren't even tempting.

A season pass is effectively 3 times the price of an Apex Legends season pass. It's a silly way to spend money IMO. And that's the least ridiculous charge they have.

In a way it seems less predatory. They don't nickel and dime players. They put their prices upfront and only people who really want to spend money will.

I just play the game, use gold for extra missions and play with what I get.

I'm mostly with you. I almost like that the expense is so great that I've tossed away the idea of buying something nearly completely. I'd like to support them but $100 for a bundle? I'm not your target audience. The folks gambling on something showing up in a magic box? I don't really care too much if folks want to define it as predatory or not. Sounds awful to me.

Back to the game. My deck is really reveal driven. I need some more variety.

Beast lets you double-dip with on-reveal cards. There’s also a couple cards with abilities that proc on cards being returned to your hand, like The Collecter. Spider-Man prevents your opponent from playing a card in the same lane on the next turn, so returning him with Beast would let you lock down a location for two whole turns.

Spidey is also part of a three-card combo with Zabu and Absorbing Man that is really popular at the moment- Zabu halves the cost of Spidey and Absorbing Man, letting you play them in the same turn and locking your opponent out of 2 lanes on the next turn. If you lack Absorbing Man you could also duplicate Spidey with Moon Girl before playing him.
If your opponent is self-discarding a lot watch out, though- if they’re playing a Hela deck her ability is immune to lane denial.

Thanks for the advice on Beast and Spider-Man!

Any cards that have effects that are worth the trouble though? My presumption was that ideally it's a one cost card that you get to replay for free but it's not worth it for more expensive cards like Spider-Man. I might be wrong though?

So the only thing I can currently think of would be Iceman, maybe Scorpion or Yondu. Going the Collector route Agent 13 and Cable. Collector doesn't seem to be worth it in comparison with cards like Dino though?

Fun fact: So far I've encountered Zabu maybe 4 or 5 times in about 50 games. To the point where I wasn't even sure what I should expect from a Zabu deck. Seems like it's similar to Sera decks that flood the board last turn with the difference that they will drop 3 4 drops instead of 3 drops.

I think I only lost one of the games where a Shang Chi destroyed couple of Hulks from the Gamma Lab. The other times their 4 drops were no match for my Patroit and Mystique team-up or the tigers White Tiger had called with the help of Wong and Odin.

This is why I enjoy the game so much more since I stopped watching deckbuilding and meta related videos on youtube. Might be because I'm still at rank 32 and probably won't climb past 40 this month, so I might not see all the shiny most effective combo decks.

Uh, that's a nice one! I see a Daredevil, Spidey and X-Men team up coming up in which Spidey and Icemen battle the Juggernaut that the Kingpin lured to Manhatten with the help of Daredevil. This also draws in the X-Men so Storm, Professor X and Nightcrawler do their best to contain the Juggernaut who gets help from Magneto.

This is really where the game is most fun to me, when it triggers the decades of Marvel stories I consumed.

"I Hit Infinite Rank and All I Got Was This Stupid Title"

This morning I hit Infinite Rank. Was it worth it? No, not really. Is that a surprise to me? Not at all. Alas, I got a bit fixed on achieving this goal, regardless.

The things I had heard held true. It took a lot of time. Apart from the skill of knowing when to snap and when to retreat, I'd say it requires time more than skill. The last couple levels were sort of annoying as retreating—both your own and your opponents—happen so often. Overall on the climb I retreated 25% of the time.

I wouldn't say I regret it. I enjoyed the experience mostly. What I like best about being Infinite is being able to play fun decks without losing rank below 100. Secondly, probably is starting at rank 70 next season. But I can't say it's "worth it."

If you just want to complete that mission all you have to do is retreat when you have one card winning an area. Literally, turn one play Antman on the right. Retreat. Repeat. Profit? A more legit way, Professor X. Just use cheap high power cards to try to get them to focus on one or 2 areas before turn 5. Maybe use Polaris to clear a lane before you play him.

I'm currently bouncing between 79 and 75. I doubt I will hit 80. My ongoing Meta deck got me into the 70's pretty easy but the 70's have been arduous.

Who the hell is this dev who keeps saying "You know who needs more love? Death! Let's add another location that helps that card!"?

I’m just waiting for the inevitable day when I get a match where all three locations destroy your cards or prevent you from playing there, I’ve already had several with only a single playable location.

Main use would be with cards people use Zero on right now like Ebony Maw, Typhoid Mary, Red Skull, etc.