Snap Packs Guide: Analysis and Preparation

It only took minutes after the Snap Packs announcement for somebody to light the Bat-Signal asking me to come math it out (in the form of a gif on Twitter). There’s a new card acquisition system — of course I was gonna come back to analyze it.

This isn’t The Ultimate Guide to Snap Packs. Not yet, there’s just too much we don’t know. But there’s plenty that we do know. I’ve compiled information from the new What If…? Season announcement video, an official blog post, and answers from the devs on Discord. I’m going to review it (so you don’t need to go read the blog if you haven’t already), do some early analysis, and make some educated guesses.

Introducing… Snap Packs!

Snap Packs are a completely new card acquisition system. In short, they’re a big upgrade to the existing Token Shop. Spotlight Caches and Keys will soon be a thing of the past.

Snap Packs are planned to go live with one of the upcoming patches, on April 29th or June 3rd.

We know they’ve been working on a new card acquisition system for a while. There’s lots of pressure for it to be good, especially after the reception Spotlights received in mid-2023. When it was launched, the Spotlight system made cards cheaper and acquisition faster… but it was widely criticized and low-rolling felt horrible. That’s the worst-case scenario for Second Dinner: to make cards cheaper and simultaneously decrease player sentiment.

In the new video, puppet Brode makes a bold statement: “[Snap Packs] will allow you to unlock the cards that you want faster than ever.” Sounds awesome if it’s true, right? It reminds me of bold promises surrounding Spotlights like, “More Cards for More Players” and, “Get ready to grow your collection FASTER THAN EVER!”

Pain Points & Solutions

Quite frankly, Spotlights delivered on those promises. We got cards faster, even with changes that made it harder to maintain a full collection. Even so, Second Dinner identifies problems with the current system:

• Returning players are way behind
• New players struggle to catch up
• Card cost has high variance (will the new card cost 1 or 4 Keys?)

Snap Packs have been designed to address all three of those. They claim to:

• Improve card targeting
• Speed up and reduce the cost of catching up
• Smooth out cost variance

Making Tokens Primary Again

The existing features of the Token Shop are staying the same. Cards still rotate and you can still pin them. The prices of buying a card directly aren’t changing.

The Token Shop’s been playing second fiddle for a while. I’ve always tried to be careful with my Tokens — I try to always keep 6,000 on-hand in case some card I skip turns out to be better than I expected (or gets buffed!). Your Gladiators, U.S. Agents, and Hydra Bobs.

It’s entirely normal if you haven’t been engaging with the Token Shop much lately. Ever since Keys became the primary currency for card acquisition, the flow of Tokens has been turned down to a trickle. That’s all about to change. Every Key in your collection and on the Collection Track will be replaced with 3,000 Tokens. There’ll also be free Tokens to claim on a daily basis. We don’t know how many, but I expect 25–100.

Finally, the shop will feature Snap Packs you can buy with Tokens to acquire new cards and other goodies.

How Snap Packs Work

Snap Packs let you draw one unowned card from a set at a discount. You’ll get a couple bonus rewards each time, too. We don’t know what those reward tables look like yet. The blog lists these examples: Cards, variants, cosmetics, and “currencies like Tokens, Boosters, and Credits”.

There will be 5 Packs at launch, with more to follow. The Collector’s Packs contain older cards and will be priced “at a significant discount”.

New Series 5 Pack

• Contains every unowned Series 5 card from the current season and the season before
• Includes the Season Pass card from the previous season
• Updated weekly

New Series 4 Pack

• Contains every unowned Series 4 card from the current season and the two seasons before
• Includes the event cards from the previous two seasons (assuming those continue to go straight to Series 4)
• Updated monthly

Series 5 Collector’s Pack

• Contains every unowned Series 5 card NOT in the New Series 5 Pack

Series 4 Collector’s Pack

• Contains every unowned Series 4 card NOT in the New Series 4 Pack

Series 3 Collector’s Pack

• Contains every unowned Series 3 card

Future Packs

Various future Packs were teased, such as cards arranged by archetype (Discard) or Marvel faction (X-Men), or even Packs curated by creators (Deck of the Week).

Ramping Up Releases

Finally, the blog mentioned they’re planning to release more cards every season.

What it Means

It’s easy to be optimistic about Snap Packs. Improved agency and lower, more consistent costs are both wonderful additions if they can be delivered. Those are exactly the improvements I’d prioritize if I were designing the system. We’ve got to wait and see if it can deliver.

Key Conversion Rate

We can do some analysis now, though. Like, is the conversion of Keys to 3,000 Tokens happening at a fair rate?

We can look at their value in the current system. It’s a little simplified, but I’ll calculate the average value. That’s dynamic depending on how likely you are to get a dupe from the 4th prize slot. I’ll just break it down into two sections: always dupe and never dupe.

The numbers are gonna get dense for the next few sections. It’s fine if you skim over them — I’ll discuss the results — but I want them available for anybody to reference. I’ll be using these numbers to compare Spotlights to Snap Packs. I’ll also return to these numbers to estimate the cost of Snap Packs.

Current Value

Let’s look at a Spotlight week where you’re only targeting the brand-new card and the 4th prize always gives you a dupe. On average, you’d get 1 card and 1,000 Tokens for 2.5 Keys. That’s 7,000 Tokens of value per 2.5 Keys, or 2,800 Tokens per Key. (Note: dupes are converted into 2,000 Tokens, but you would only get the dupe before your target card 50% of the time. Hence, 1,000 on average.)

Converting to “Tokens per Card” is helpful for comparing to Snap Pack prices. I’m gonna hand-wave the calculation itself to end up with 6,428.57 Tokens per Card.

I have personally found it helpful to also look at “Collection Level (CL) per Card” when comparing Spotlights to Snap Packs. I find it easier to feel this number than the Token price. Plus, Token income will be changing while CL rate should stay basically the same, so it makes for a fair comparison. I’ll assume you spend spare Tokens on Series 5 cards. Here it’s 1 Series 5 card and 1,000 Tokens for 300 CL. That’s 257.14 CL per Card. (Note: it is optimal to spend Tokens when it would let you skip a week of spending Keys. While Tokens go further when spent on Series 4 cards (at half the price of Series 5 cards), it is far more likely that buying a Series 5 card would let you skip a week of spending Keys.)

This scenario (targeting 1 Series 5 card) and the others are below, in a tighter format. Again, they’re here for reference and it’s totally chill if you just skim them.

Spotlight Scenarios (4th Prize Always Dupe)

Target: 1 Series 5 (S5)
Average: 1 cards + 1,000 Tokens for 2.5 Keys
Tokens per Key: 2,800
Tokens per Card: 6,429
CL per Card: 257

Target: 1 Series 5 + 1 S4
Average: 2 cards + 1,333.33 Tokens for 3.33 Keys
Tokens per Key: 3,100
Tokens per Card: 5,806
CL per Card: 180

Target: 2 S5
Average: 2 cards + 1,333.33 Tokens for 3.33 Keys
Tokens per Key: 4,000
Tokens per Card: 4,500
CL per Card: 180

Target: 1 S5 + 2 S4
Average: 3 cards + 1,500 Tokens for 3.75 Keys
Tokens per Key: 3,600
Tokens per Card: 5,000
CL per Card: 138

Target: 2 S5 + 1 S4
Average: 3 cards + 1,500 Tokens for 3.75 Keys
Tokens per Key: 4,400
Tokens per Card: 4,091
CL per Card: 138

Target: 3 S5
Average: 3 cards + 1,500 Tokens for 3.75 Keys
Tokens per Key: 5,200
Tokens per Card: 3,462
CL per Card: 138

Spotlight Scenarios (4th Prize Never Dupe)

The random card in the 4th prize slot has an average value 4,000 Tokens — because it rolls Series 4 twice as often as Series 5 (67% vs. 33%).

Target: 1 Series 5 (S5)
Average: 1.5 cards for 2.5 Keys
Tokens per Key: 3,200
Tokens per Card: 5,625
CL per Card: 200

Target: 1 Series 5 + 1 S4
Average: 2.67 cards for 3.33 Keys
Tokens per Key: 3,500
Tokens per Card: 5,143
CL per Card: 150

Target: 2 S5
Average: 2.67 cards for 3.33 Keys
Tokens per Key: 4,400
Tokens per Card: 4,091
CL per Card: 150

Target: 1 S5 + 2 S4
Average: 3.75 cards for 3.75 Keys
Tokens per Key: 4,000
Tokens per Card: 4,500
CL per Card: 120

Target: 2 S5 + 1 S4
Average: 3.75 cards for 3.75 Keys
Tokens per Key: 4,800
Tokens per Card: 3,750
CL per Card: 120

Target: 3 S5
Average: 3.75 cards for 3.75 Keys
Tokens per Key: 5,600
Tokens per Card: 3,214.29
CL per Card: 120

Value Comparison

3,000 Tokens gives Keys 7% more value than they have in 1-card Spotlight weeks. If you’re collection complete, or a veteran player who’s close enough that most Spotlight weeks are 1-card weeks for you, Snap Packs make cards cheaper for you.

It also values them lower compared to any 2- or 3-card Spotlight week, but that’s not a call for pitchforks yet. Just like the past acquisition systems, there will be ways for players to optimize Snap Packs, too.

I know there are players who never spent Keys unless the Spotlight featured 2+ cards they didn’t own. That’s some dedication, and certainly required patience. Consider skipping a new release you want when it’ll take 5+ months for it to be featured a second time. We can look at CL per Card to look at the savings they were getting. 180 for a 2-card week vs. 257 for a 1-carder — a savings of 30%.

One Series 5 + One Series 4

The Token Shop has one big, baked-in advantage over Spotlights. Series 4 and 5 cards cost exactly the same when you’re buying them with Keys. Series 4 cards are half-price when you’re buying them with Tokens.

So it’s 180 CL per card via Spotlights regardless of what Series they are. Tokens can tie the S5 + S4 price without. 9,000 Tokens to buy both cards outright. That’s 360 CL in the new system — or 180 CL per Card. (Note: it’s actually a little lower, because you will still get 100–200 additional Tokens every 120 CL, but that applies equally to both systems.)

Two Series 5

What about 2-card weeks where both cards are Series 5? That would still be 180 CL per card via Spotlights. Buying them outright with Tokens would cost 12,000 Tokens, or 240 CL per Card in the new system. That’s where we’d have to look at Snap Packs. The first S5 would be new, and in the New Series 5 Pack. The second S5 would be from 5+ seasons back, so it’d be in the Series 5 Collector’s Pack. We can look at Tokens per Card to see the price to beat.

That’s 4,500 Tokens if the 4th Spotlight prize is a dupe, or 4,091 if it isn’t. I think that’s within the realistic range for the Series 5 Collector’s Pack, but almost certainly too low for the New Series 5 Pack.

If those Packs cost 4,500 and 5,500 Tokens, respectively, the average price would be 5,000 Tokens and Snap Packs are too expensive to compete with a 2-S5 Spotlight week.

If they cost 4,000 and 5,000 instead, the average price would be 4,500 Tokens — comparable to the 2-S5 Spotlight week with dupes.

By the time you consider that Snap Packs include two prizes on top of an unowned card, I can’t see them hitting a lower price (more on that later).

The Long Game

There’s another option we need to consider — what if our patient player who’s trying to optimize card cost waits for the new S5 to drop to the Series 5 Collector’s Pack?

If that Pack cost 4,500 Tokens, they’re tying the 4th-prize-is-dupe scenario.

If it costs 4,000 Tokens, they’re beating the 4th-prize-is-not-a-dupe scenario.

But now we need to talk about agency.

Card Targeting

If our hypothetical player is pulling from Snap Packs, they’re not guaranteed to hit the card they want unless they own each other card in that Pack.

In the Spotlight, they know they can spend 4 Keys max to get every card that’s featured. There’s agency in choosing when to spend your Keys — but not in choosing what cards are featured. And, of course, the 4th Spotlight prize is always random.

We could rank how much agency each acquisition method has:

1. Spending Tokens on a card
2. Spending Keys on a featured Spotlight Card
3. Spending Tokens on a Snap Pack
4. Spending Keys on the 4th Spotlight prize slot

Cost Variance and Consolation Prizes

Snap Packs share some DNA with Spotlights. They both feature a limited prize pool; you could hit the last card if you draw enough cards. In this way, they both feature cost variance.

If Scorn is featured in a Spotlight Week, she might cost me 1–4 Keys. If I’m pulling from the Series 5 Collector’s Pack instead, the maximum cost for Scorn depends on how many cards I’m missing from that Pack. Say it’s 10. She might cost me 1–10 Packs.

That means Snap Packs might feature higher cost variance than Spotlights for a specific card.

But let’s look at what else you get along the way. If Scorn costs me 4 Keys, then I might have ended up with Scorn, the new card of the week, a Spotlight Variant, and a dupe worth 2,000 Tokens.

If Scorn cost me 10 Packs, I got Scorn, 9 other unowned Series 5 cards, and 20 other Snap Pack prizes. The variance is higher, but the “misses” are better and the overall price per card is consistent. Depending on the price of the Snap Pack, the price per card is cheaper, too.

There are a lot of trade-offs. Whether or not they’re worth it depends on the price of Packs and how good the extra goodies are.

Avoiding Variance

There are two ways to buy a card without any cost variance in the new system:

• Buy it directly
• Buy it from a Snap Pack when it’s the only prize left in that Pack

The value of buying a card directly can’t be understated. You know exactly what you’re getting. For many players, that agency will be worth skipping any Pack discounts. This is a real, meaningful way the new system improves card targeting for players.

You’ll now be able to get a Series 5 card of your choice every 240 CL. You’ll have to wait for Token Shop rotation, but that’s dramatically faster than waiting for the card you want to rotate back into the Spotlight feature. Plus, that card might cost anywhere from 120–480 CL’s worth of Keys.

If you’re collection-complete on a Pack, you can get every card added to it at a discount as soon as it’s added. That may sound like something for whales, but I think it’s quite possible that a Season-Pass-only player could keep up with the Series 5 Collector’s Pack. By my estimate, that’d net you a permanent 17–33% discount at the cost of getting cards 5–9 weeks late.

Weaker Rubber Bands

Spotlights featured a really strong rubber-banding component. That is, you got the best prices when you owned zero Series 4/5 cards, and every one you acquired made the next one slightly more expensive.

A quick look at Spotlight Scenarios outlined above explains why. Cards are cheaper when you’re missing two or three of the featured Spotlight cards. They’re cheaper when the 4th prize gives you a new card instead of a dupe.

Pulling up players who are behind and pulling down players who are ahead is called rubber-banding (the opposite is snowballing).

Snap Packs still features rubber-banding, but it’s significantly weaker. Of course, there’s still the element that players who haven’t finished Series 3 will get those cards right from the CL track.

For Series 4 and 5, though, somebody who’s missing every card in a Pack pays the same price as somebody who’s only missing one. You don’t lose access to a price point until you complete the respective Pack.

Expected Pack Costs

I’ve estimated how much I expect each Snap Pack to cost. I used four guiding principles to do so — they’re all assumptions:

• Comparing to Spotlight prices/discounts
• Discounts will be proportional to the base cost of that Series (e.g., if Series 5 is discounted by 500, Series 4 will be discounted by 250)
• Collector’s Pack discount will be double the New Pack discount
• Series prices will NOT overlap (the cheapest Series 5 will cost more than the most expensive Series 4)

The Snap Packs system has to be able to compete with Spotlight prices if it’s really going to help get cards into players hands faster. Especially new and returning players, who enjoy the biggest discounts with the Spotlight system.

• New S5: 4,750–5,500
• New S4: 2,375–2,750
• Collector’s S5: 3,500–5,000
• Collector’s S4: 1,750–2,500
• Collector’s S3: 575–850

Accounting for Additional Rewards

We can’t stop there, though. Every Pack includes two additional prizes. We know from the blog that those prizes could be significant — Credits, Tokens, or even additional Cards. We need to bump up the Pack prices accordingly.

Guessing the Goodies

In order to know how much to increase the Pack cost by, we need to know how valuable the additional prizes are.

I looked at the prize pools of Season Caches as well as the daily Galactus Spin featured on the webshop as a basis. I also wanted the progress values of the Packs to be proportional to the Series cost. That is, 6x value for Series 5, 3x for Series 4, and 1x for Series 3. I used progress value instead of cosmetic value. While cosmetic value is important to many players, it’s sort of the point of cosmetics like Borders to feel valuable while actually not giving you any progress towards new cards. Their value is subjective.

Here’s my guess. Remember each Pack has two additional prizes. The last two columns show the chance of drawing one or two of a specific prize. With my numbers, there’s a 1-in-33.6 chance that a S5 Pack will contain two cards, and a 1-in-8,000 chance it’ll contain three.

Adjusting Pack Costs

Okay, so now we bump the price of Packs up a bit to account for the extra value they give in rewards. I don’t see the ceilings going up (specifically, New S4 won’t cost more than 2,750), so I’m only bumping the floors.

Two rewards, so we double the Weighted Token Value.

• New S5: 5,000–5,500
• New S4: 2,500–2,750
• Collector’s S5: 4,000–5,000
• Collector’s S4: 2,000–2,500
• Collector’s S3: 650–850

More Cards, Again

The news that they’re ramping up the card release rate again came in a single paragraph at the end of the blog, but it might be the single most influential change to card acquisition.

I’ve seen a lot of mixed responses to the announcement of more cards. It depends a lot on whether you care more about [having more cards] or [missing fewer cards].

There are pros and cons to each.

Having more means you have more game pieces to play with, and you get new ones more often.

Missing fewer means you’ll experience the disappointment of seeing a cool deck you can’t play less often.

Having More or Missing Fewer?

Last time I wrote about this dynamic, I leaned toward Team Minimize-Missed-Toys. I ultimately landed on a middle ground, where I was cool with maximizing owned toys until I was missing an abritrary too many.

I’ve sort of softened on my stance. I’m still in the middle, but I’m leaning towards Team Maximize-My-Toys these days. Before Sanctum Showdown, I had more missing cards than I’d had since Spotlights were introduced — about a dozen. Quite frankly, I wasn’t really missing them emotionally. There were only a few I’d play at all, and even then, I wouldn’t play them often. They just weren’t my… Speed. 😎

I’d been making decisions about which cards to get or skip the whole time, and it turned out I didn’t really care about the ones I’d skipped. I skipped them for a reason! I’d gladly take them for free, but I wouldn’t spend Keys or Tokens on them.

I think they’re adding more cards so that each card can be cheaper, and that’s a GOOD trade-off.

Collection Completion

While individual card cost goes down, I expect the cost of maintaining a 100% collection to go up, a little.

I personally gave up on Collection Completion at the end of 2023. When it was clear Direct-to-S4 was dead and they were going to start adding an extra Series 5 card every month (on the same week the Season Pass card launched). Before that, Spotlights let you maintain 100% for only the cost of the Season Pass.

Increasing the card release rate is the most effective way to increase the cost of 100% collections. This round should be no different. Those of you who have been maintaining 100% are gonna have to decide if the new price is worth it (we won’t know that price until we know the price of Snap Packs, and how much they’re increasing the card release rate).

I’m not here to defend SD on that. Just to speak to my experience. I enjoyed collection completion for about four months. It was hard to give up. I didn’t like that the game was getting more expensive.

Fast forward to Sanctum Showdown and I was missing 12 cards, but none of them were very important to me. I think this is a fine place for most Season-Pass-only players. You can stay meta-complete. You can get every card for your favorite archetypes. You do have to make good calls to skip cards you’re realistically not gonna use much anyway.

The Return of Direct-to-S4

I called the removal of Direct-to-S4 cards in July 2023, and I’m happy to call the revival of Direct-to-S4 today (even if it’s a much less impressive call).

The New S4 Pack is the biggest hint. It contains S4 cards from the current season (there are currently none) and the two previous seasons (that’d be Gorgon, Laufey, and Uncle Ben).

That’s a tiny-ass Pack.

Also, the New S4 Pack is updated each season (while the New S5 is updated each week).

So: I think we’re gonna see an extra set of new releases launch at the beginning of each season, directly into Series 4. I expect it’ll be 4–5 a month, matching the number of weeks in the season.

The Impact of Direct-to-S4

I expect these cards to be similar to the event cards we’ve seen after Cassandra Nova. Not very flashy. Niche. Simple.

I’ve seen both concerns about running out of characters and concerns about running out of interesting abilities. I’m 0% concerned about either. There are tens of thousands of Marvel characters. Even if they are releasing 150 cards a year, they’ve got some runway.

I think there’s tons of game space to explore, too. Have you ever looked at all the custom cards made by the community? Not that they’re all great, but it’s a little window into all the places Marvel Snap hasn’t gone yet. Plus, I’m sure Glenn would say something if he didn’t think Design could keep up.

Stressing the System

I admit I’m a little concerned about other teams’ ability to keep up with more cards. While I’d like to think they’d speak up, too, we saw the art pipeline struggle to keep up with Spotlight Variants.

None of the past seven event cards have variants yet (Agony, Eitri, Lasher, Gorgon, Laufey, Uncle Ben, and First Rider). Three of them are missing reaction sets (not that anybody’s taken them to Character Mastery 30). Maybe that’ll change, or maybe that’s just how direct-to-S4 cards are going to be.

Senior QA Manager Addison gave a recent answer on the official Discord indicating QA is ready for the increased pressure, and will adapt as needed

Optimizing Right Now

I’ve got a really simple plan for how to handle your resources before Snap Packs launches.

1. Prefer spending Tokens on Spotlight Weeks with 1 target
2. Prefer spending Keys on Spotlight Weeks with 2+ targets

Keep in mind that variants count as targets, too. I’ll totally be going for Gurihiru Gwenpool.

There’s a separate conservative option for the serious minmaxers: DON’T spend until Snap Packs launch. Once they launch, you catch up right away at a discount using the New S5 Pack. I don’t think I can be that disciplined, but more power to you if you can.

Optimizing Snap Packs

Optimizing Snap Packs isn’t the most straightforward thing. You have to pick which balance of cost, agency, and patience is right for you. Basically, though, I see five core strategies.

1. Targeted Only

For players who care about agency above all else.

• Always buy cards at full price, directly with Tokens

2. Random Only

For players who care about card quantity above all else — I think this’ll be a lot of casual players.

Some portion of these players will benefit immensely from Snap Packs, because they’re also the players who spending their Spotlight Keys as quickly as possible. They blow Keys on weeks where they miss the new card.

• Always buy Snap Packs
• If you’re optimizing for quantity, complete Collector’s Packs, first

3. Hybrid

For players who care about agency, but have resources to spare. That could be either because they’re not very picky (don’t often see cards they “critically need”) or because they’re injecting more money into the game.

• Buys the cards they value most at full price, directly with Tokens
• Spends any spare resources on Snap Packs

4. Collection Complete

For players who value maintaining 100% collections, or else spend so much they have tons of resources to spare.

• Alway buys Snap Packs
• Stays complete on Collector’s Packs
• Stays complete on New Packs (so nothing ever drops to Collector’s Packs)

5. Delayed Collection Complete

For players who care about price optimization, above all else.

• Always buys Snap Packs
• Only buys Collector’s packs, essentially staying Collection Complete 2–3 seasons behind

Conclusion

Card acquisition is critical to Marvel Snap. It’s a big part of how it makes money, and it’s how we all get the game pieces we play with. There’s a ton to digest and analyze any time card acquisition changes.

There’s a lot we know already. Here are the changes I expect through educated guesses (none is certain until we have more info):

• If you usually have 1-card Spotlight weeks, this is a win — cards are just getting cheaper
• If you usually have 2- or 3-card Spotlight weeks, individual cards will either cost a little less or about the same
• Tokens becoming the primary acquisition currency means it’s easier to target specific cards (at full price)
• More cards released each season (my guess: 4–5 S4 cards released at the start of each season)
• 100% collection gets more expensive
• Easier to target specific cards

Keep an eye out for my Ultimate Guide to Snap Packs, once we get more info, like:

• How many free daily Tokens are offered
• How much Snap Packs cost
• What the additional rewards are in Snap Packs
• How many new cards will be released every season

After going through all of it, I remain cautiously optimistic. I am a little concerned that Snap Packs can’t actually compete with Spotlights for players who are new, returning, or aggressively optimizing. I’ll retain final judgment for now, though.

I’ll be active in the comments below for a while, or you can reach me at Discord, Twitter, or BlueSky. I’d be happy to field your questions, comments, and ideas. If you’re interested, you can catch my podcast Snap On This!! weekly on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.