The March 12, 2024 patch update introduced the Custom Card feature to Marvel Snap. This is one of the first features from the latest Development Roadmap to go live. We’ll be looking at what it does, how it works, and some of the ways it will be improved later.

What’s A Custom Card?

Largely, it’s what it sounds like. It lets you adjust the cosmetics on your cards. It’s quite limited in its current interaction, essentially just letting you change the border on your cards. In fact, the patch notes wisely described the feature as “Custom Border”.

It’ll be easiest to just demonstrate how it works. I’ve got a great example in Black Swan. I like my Black Swan exactly how she is. The base art is great, and I like that the red border matches her environment, eyes, and name.

When I look at my list of variants, there’s the new “Custom Card” slot, as well as the variant from hitting level 50 in last month’s Season Pass. Every character has a “Custom Card” slot now. You’ll notice mine for Black Swan is locked. I can unlock it by fully upgrading any Black Swan variant. I’ll do that right now.

A booming voice announces, “INFINITY!” and… uh, it’s still locked, despite the in-game message. Turns out, you actually need to split a card. Hang on…

There it is! Fully unlocked. Let’s look at what you can do with the Custom Card.

Customizing a Card

When you’re looking at a custom card, the upgrade button in the lower right is replaced by an edit button. We’re gonna hit that and see what we can do!

We get tabs to pick a variant, a border, and a combination of finish and flare. I can bring her right back to the red Ultra border I prefer for her.

You can use Custom Card to display any of your existing splits and variants with any border. For example, I could give an Infinity border to either the In-Hyuk Lee variant, or my brand-new prism split. Since I’m not actually upgrading these cards, it doesn’t cost any Credits or Boosters.

It’s worth noting that custom cards always are shown with the full effects of Legendary rarity. That is, frame break, 3D, animated, and shiny logo. You can see the frame break and shiny logo on this custom card despite its gray border. You’ll have to trust me that it’s 3D and animated, too. This looks killer with ink finishes!

The Limitations of Custom Effects

You can only choose a combination of finish and flare that you have already unlocked for the variant you’ve selected. I’ll be using Valkyrie instead of Black Swan in this section. I have a lot more Valkyrie splits, so that’s helpful here.

The Peach Momoko variant at the end (featuring the pegasus, Aragorn) has a single split. If I try to use that variant with Custom Card, I only have two options for finish and flare: none with none, or gold with gold glimmer.

By comparison, I have tons more options for my (clearly) beloved Pixel Valkyrie.

As you can see, finishes and flares are tied to specific variants. They’re also a package deal — you can only use the combinations you’ve unlocked by splitting. You can’t mix and match. For instance, I can’t use rainbow Krackle with any other finish. I’ve only unlocked it for use with the prism finish.

The Future of Custom Card

Though it’s launched as “Custom Border”, Custom Card is a feature that will expand over time. Here are some of the features we know are coming. This information comes primarily from answers by Stephen Jarrett on the official Marvel Snap Discord server.

1. More split types. We know some new split types will be tied to the upcoming Character Mastery feature. Stephen also said that one future surface effect would essentially be “none”, so that you could use flare without affecting a card’s background.
2. Collectible borders. These will be a new cosmetic type that you can acquire then apply to a character to unlock that border for that character’s Custom Card. I expect you’ll be able to choose which character you apply it to. I’m personally hoping for one that’s slick and black (how good would that look with ink splits?!), and another that’s cute and pink.
3. Unlock combinations at the character level. It’s only for now that finish and flare combinations are tied to specific variants. In the future, they will be tied to characters instead. Like, I could immediately apply all my pixel Valkyrie combinations to my unsplit Artgerm Valkyrie. I’m thrilled by this, and think it’s an excellent compromise (versus full mix-and-match with finishes and flares).

Why not full mix-and-match? I know people can be cynical of official answers, but I think Stephen’s is spot-on. Splits would be so much less meaningful if you could just unlock 4 finishes and 32 flares to make any combination.

Using Your Custom Card

Make sure to hit the star on your custom card to swap it into your decks!

If you’re not aware, the specific copy of a card you’re using in your deck can affect its chance of getting Boosters after a match. The short version is: if you don’t have enough Boosters to upgrade that specific copy, it has a higher chance to get Boosters. Infinity borders also get this bonus, until you have 50 Boosters. The long version is in my Ultimate Guide to Boosters.

It’s my best guess that custom cards work just like Infinity borders. You get the extra Booster chance until you have 50 Boosters. There are several hints that this might be the case, but we won’t know for sure until we get an official answer, or somebody tests it and collects a significant sample size.

The hints:

1. Custom cards have all the visual effects of a fully upgraded card
2. Custom cards are sorted with your Infinity-border cards when you sort your collection by Quality
3. Tokens generated by custom cards (like Korg’s rock or Mister Sinister’s clone) appear to have Infinity borders when you tap to examine them

Conclusion

Custom Card is an exciting feature, and it’s off to a good start. While it’s pretty much limited to customizing borders for now, it has a bright future of new features and customizations. I’ve already had a lot of fun with it! I really appreciate being able to continue upgrading cards I’d paused on because I wanted them at a certain border color (and to “fix” the cards I regret upgrading)! Custom Card is a great new tool for further personalizing and showing off your unique collection!