
Marvel Snap March 21, 2023 Patch Notes – Version 13.13
Table of Contents
Here are the patch notes for Marvel Snap’s latest update for March 21st, 2023! The patch features the Series Drop, a handful of card balance updates to shake up the meta, card acquisition changes, and bug fixes! The Steampunk Variant Rush event is now live, as well as the new Series 5 card Negasonic Teenage Warhead!
You can also check the datamining going on for future content here – but warning – spoilers ahead!
Patch Highlights
- MORE TOKENS: Players who have not yet finished Series 3 will now earn 4x more tokens than before.
- SHOP UPDATE: Cards can now be acquired from the Shop in two different sections:
- CHOOSE YOUR CARD: Series 3 cards have been separated into their own shop section. Instead of purchasing one Series 3 card a month with tokens, players can now choose one Series 3 card to unlock each month for free! So, save those tokens for Series 4 and Series 5!
- THE TOKEN SHOP: The Token Shop now contains only Series 4, Series 5, and Ultimate Variants.
General Updates
- Seasonal Series Drop: Some cards have dropped down to a lower series!
- When you tap on a card for more details during a match, the big card detail screen now features Artist Credits and Card Mods.
Audio
- New Card Sounds for:
- New Location Sounds for:
Art & Visual Effects
- The almighty Thanos now has VFX along with all of the Infinity Stones.
Balance Updates
The unscheduled changes to Zabu and Silver Surfer made the metagame shifts for the last month more difficult for us to predict, and we weren’t able to make timely adjustments for technical reasons. In that time, Thanos became one of our most dominant decks yet–his weak matchups vs. Zabu and Surfer had really been holding the Mad Titan back. Shuri-based decks were another big winner here, and both of these archetypes have exceeded our tolerances for game balance. This patch’s adjustments are aimed at restoring order and weakening each of them.
We’re continuing to explore updates and improvements to both our balance technology and our philosophy around scheduling changes, and we look forward to sharing that with you soon.
Card Updates
- Thanos: 6/11 -> 6/10
Developer Comments:
We increased Thanos’s Power in a previous patch that was built during a time when Zabu and Silver Surfer were suppressing the success of Thanos-based decks. We’re happy to keep him at 9+ Power for Shang-Chi’s sake, but given his recent success we thought it appropriate to pull back on that buff just a touch. This change won’t dramatically impact the success of Thanos decks, as most of the strength is in the Stone interactions.
- Space Stone: On Reveal: Next turn you can move 1 card at this location. Draw a card. -> On Reveal: Next turn, you can move one card to this location. Draw a card.
Developer Comments:
This is among the strongest Stones in Thanos decks due to its ability to create bonus Lockjaw triggers and disguise where strong cards might move. This change reduces its efficacy with Lockjaw by removing the incentive to play Space Stone itself for a Lockjaw trigger, flattening the number of bonus trigger opportunities for Lockjaw, and restricting the strategic options for late-game movement. We expect this to reduce the tactical flexibility of Thanos decks and make them more fun to play against.
- Quinjet: Now reduces costs to a minimum of 1.
Developer Comments:
Cost reduction is powerful, and Quinjet was one of very few cards capable of reducing multiple cards’ Energy cost to 0. While we’ve enjoyed this interaction in some cases, such as The Hood’s Demon, ultimately it creates both an ongoing risk for future design space as well as fueling the dominant Thanos decks of today. This change should be a meaningful net reduction in strength to Thanos decks across the board.
- Red Skull: 5/15 – Ongoing: Enemy cards at this location have +2 Power -> 5/13 – Ongoing: Enemy cards at this location have +1 Power.
Developer Comments:
This change is singularly aimed at reducing the strength of combining Red Skull with Shuri and Taskmaster. Outside of those interactions, this change is mostly a buff to the base case usage for Red Skull, giving you 9 or 10 Power at crowded locations rather than 7 or 9.
- She-Hulk: 6/10 -> 6/9
Developer Comments:
She-Hulk is a key component in the strongest Shuri decks, but it sees widespread play in various decks thanks to its strength alongside Sunspot, Wave, and Moon Girl. We mostly think that’s cool, but that she’s more powerful than she needs to be for those combos. In addition, we want to encourage playing actively to locations, rather than holding cards for explosive turn 6s, so we’re continuing to weaken a few of the best cards for the latter.
- Aero: 5/7 – On Reveal: Move all enemy cards played this turn to this location. -> 5/8 – On Reveal: Move the last enemy card played this turn to this location.
Developer Comments:
Aero is a tricky card for us. The actual game balance for Aero has been healthy, and she fulfills a vital role in our game by providing interaction, especially against dangerously polarizing cards like Galactus. It’s important for Aero to be versatile and strong in order to be a widely playable “tech card,” but we don’t want her pushing the majority of other 5-Cost cards out of decks. Unfortunately, that’s the behavior we’re seeing. Aero can also be frustrating to see, denying players the option to play their own endgames. This change seeks to keep Aero strong where she’s needed, foster more competition among 5-Cost cards, and add counterplay to make her more fun to play against.
- Mystique, Absorbing Man, and Taskmaster – These cards now require the previously played card to be in play in order to copy its attributes. Here are their updated templates:
- Mystique: On Reveal: If the last card you played has an Ongoing, copy its text. (if it’s in play)
- Absorbing Man: If the last card you played has an On Reveal, copy its text. (if it’s in play)
- Taskmaster: On Reveal: Set this card’s Power equal to that of the last card you played. (if that card’s in play)
Developer Comments:
This adjustment is part balance, part matching expectations. A meaningful chunk of Taskmaster’s strength in Shuri decks is his ability to copy a card’s Power even if it’s been destroyed by Shang-Chi or similar, an interaction that somewhat often gets reported as a bug. Hopefully this change weakens Shuri decks slightly and more cleanly matches players’ intuition when they see these cards for the first time.
Developer Comments:
We previously adjusted Morbius’s Power to update when he wasn’t in play to simplify calculating his future Power. However, this has proven a bit confusing in comparison to similar cards, and also unnecessary given Morbius is often played very early in the game and isn’t very hard to calculate. We’re reverting this change, but we expect to add future functionality to Morbius and all cards with Ongoing buffs to their own Power that communicates their Power, in order to make these cards simpler to play with.
Developer Comments:
The future improvements discussed above will also apply to Knull, but until we make them he will continue to function differently relative to Devil Dinosaur and others. The reason for this is that it’s very important for Knull players to be able to quickly and precisely calculate his Power while making endgame decisions about their 6-Cost card. As a placeholder adjustment, Knull will no longer update his Power in your deck, so his functionality with Mister Negative will be the same as his fellow Ongoing cards. Notably, he will use his potential Power for effects like The Peak location until we’re able to make our desired improvements–that’s a trade we’ve decided to accept for improving the general use cases of Knull.
- Widow's Bite (text-only): While this is in your hand, cards in your deck cannot be drawn. -> While this is in your hand, you can’t draw cards.
Developer Comments:
Widow's Bite inaccurately described its in-game effect. While we considered updating the effect of Widow's Bite to only prevent drawing your own cards and effects like Cable from drawing your cards, we ultimately decided it was a better experience to just simplify the text and keep the current effect rather than create these edge cases.
Bug Fixes
- Cards created by The Sacred Timeline no longer retain power/energy alterations when copied to the player’s hand.
- Fixed an issue that would cause some players, who had not played for several months before updating to the latest build, to see Battle Mode as locked.
- You can no longer see un-owned cards’ abilities when toggling the artist view in the Collection.
- You can no longer click objects behind the Retreat UI.
- When inbox messages are long, characters no longer disappear.
- Fixed another instance of Attilan VFX getting stuck on screen when it activates.
- The end of round UI/VFX now plays in the correct order when an opponent retreats.
- SFX now appear when collecting a card from a Collector’s Reserve.
- Clicking Gold/Credits from within the card detail view now take you properly to the shop.
- X-Mansion and Nova Roma now have text when they’re featured on the Carousel.
- Jessica Jones’ VFX should move with her now when she moves to another location.
- The Raft’s card VFX no longer goes towards the player who did not receive the card.
- Fixed an issue that would cause card descriptions to disappear when focusing a card in Fast Upgrade then one in the Collection screen.
- Cards that lose their ability due to Leech no longer get that ability back if they’re pulled back in play by another card.
- Daredevil VFX no longer gets stuck on screen if a player retreats during turn 5.
- Claimed text UI banners no longer overlap with Season Caches.
- Increased the size of some fonts in Thai that were too small in certain UI elements.
- [PC] Collection Sort/Filter options no longer disappear when resizing the client.
- [PC] Improved the scroll on the Collection Level Track
Known Issues List
- The game can crash on some Android devices when switching languages.
- If Morph spawns randomly (eg: via X-Mansion) and copies Kang, there is an infinite loop.
- It can be difficult to interact with the emotes in-match on some devices.
- The Season Pass spotlight card text is too large in some languages.
- Set as Favorite icon overlaps with the text icon in some languages.
- The Series 3 Token Shop does not display properly when you have collected all Series 3 cards.
- If you have the Series 3 card focused when the shop rolls, the screen will be blank for a moment.
- Tapping duplicate Kang’s in play while the turn is rewinding will cause that card to disappear.
- Banner VFX displays the wrong turn timer when Kang rewinds time.
- It can be hard to add or delete letters in the deck name on Android.
- Spotlight cards in the Season Pass UI can only be focused by tapping on the lower-left of the card.
- Reconnecting text doesn’t show all the time when Reconnecting to a Friendly battle.
- Credit/Gold deep linking does not navigate to the shop from the Reward/Mission detail view.
- Two players snapping on the same turn can cause the displayed energy pips to be incorrect.
- Several UI elements display with empty info for a brief moment when switching to the shop screen.
- Sandman and Electro may not visually show the power on a location if the location is locked down.
- Some text is hard to read/missing in Russian language.
- [PC] The Carousel can be hard to scroll.
- [PC] Switching languages after switching between Windowed and Windowed Fullscreen can cause text elements to disappear in the UI.
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That all looks like very well thought out adjustments that might hit the right balance, and also make the interactions more consistent.
This reminded me how bad balance was in Hearthstone in Brode’s era (not saying now it’s good, but definitively better)
Hitting Quinjet is stupid. Issue with this deck is Space Stone. Why hit that much Bounce archetype (which was going to be a thing with Monkey) because only of that interaction? Broken thing of the deck is being able to pull multiple Lockjaws…
Apart from that, Red Skull change is bad. That card is OK. Issue is Shuri at 4-cost. It allows such a braindead game-plan and many toxic interactions. Set her to 5 as a EOG big dump and it’d be an OK card.
The other changes are OK, but damn… It’s like they don’t play the game at all.
I can not understand why Aero’s power is being increased. Shuri Zero looks to take 2 lanes by 5 then Aero into the one you are already losing. This gives a new target for Shuri.
I am not a fan of these changes.
1) Thanos – No. They buffed Thanos and now they nerfed it. Thanos was played due to madness of in-game economy, it was the best in-game purchase with tokens and people bought it. This card is totally destroyed by Killmonger. So, I don’t think that it is op. And, no refund. So, this really pissed me off.
2) Quinjet – No. There were many opinions to not touch this card.
3) Red Skull – No. The issue is not Red Skull, but Shuri. Shuri is broken. You simply need to give +6 power with Shuri to the next card, and you did a decent tempo (you paid 4 mana for 8 stats divided). Shuri is broken.
4) She-Hulk – Yes. No issue. She-Hulk is strong and overplayed.
5) Aero – No. She deserves a nerf, she was the best card in the game, but now, she is mediocre.
Widow’s Bite and Weird World seems like if my opponent plays Black Widow on 2 and Weird World appears on 3, they are never drawing another card because I am keeping it in my hand while drawing cards.
I was expecting the Quinjet change, because it was the only card that dropped costs to 0. But if they made that change to address Thanos decks, wouldn’t a better solution be to change the Thanos text so that the infinity stones aren’t considered cards that didn’t start in your deck? That way Quinjet has no effect on them.
The Taskmaster change makes a lot of sense. I always thought it was weird that I could Shang Chi the 30 power Red Skull but Taskmaster still copied its power.
Beast can reduce a card’s cost to zero.
Good point, forgot about Beast
If it didn’t Beast would be probably useless (if they ever do that it should come with a power buff).
Quinjet is still interesting, but it has lost a lot, I think the fact that it was a 1-cost card and all the 0-cost created cards being an easy target of Killmonger was already enough.
I agree the stones should be considered “deck cards”, except if duplicated by Moongirl or coming back to deck with Falcon.
0 mana/energy in any game causes problems at one point or another, so a blanket “Minimum 1” is a good idea on reduction.
Aero was going to go one of two ways: keep the ability, drastically reduce power; or change ability to first/last card played, keep or gain +1 power.
She still disrupts endgames, because there is a certain order some decks want to play cards, most notably Destroy decks. Meaning she seems like an absolute counter to Zola now, as he’s usually the only thing getting played in the final two turns (depending).
I think they’re hitting these changes and see how it goes the next month. I can fully expect changes to Shuri (cost or ability) and Lockjaw (ability) sitting on a balance list while they keep testing it internally, but likely very ready to go in a hotfix or next big patch. They did mention word was coming soon™ for 1 and 2 costs and other things, very interested to see.
Only nerfs this time, wish we had gotten a few buffs to underpowered cards.
Nice they gave series 3 their own rotation in the shop I was getting tired of having seen every ultimate variant series 4 and 5 multiple times before seeing a full rotation of series 3. But they fucked up and also reset what you seen allready I still have 40 series 3 to collect and the change just reset my rotation I’m just seeing ing cards I allready seen right before the change