Marvel Snap May 7, 2026 OTA Card Balance Updates

This time the OTA update brought us nothing but buffs: Ares, Silver Samurai, Starhawk, Kraglin, Zombie Captain Marvel, Spider-Man Noir, Major Victory and Agent Coulson got a nice boost to their power.

Check out the full OTA update details below, as well as our analysis and breakdown of the changes that includes decks for you to play!

Marvel Snap Balance OTA Analysis and New Decks to Play – May 7, 2026

May 7th – Balance Updates

Hey folks! Given how much last week’s OTA shook up the meta, this will be a pretty straight forward update.

We’ll just be making some simple buffs today. We expect that the metagame is going to take some time to settle, but it’s likely that things will return to more standard fare in a few weeks.

Ares

• [Old] 4/6 – On Reveal: Compare the Power of the top 3 cards of both decks. If your total is higher, +6 Power.
• [Change] 4/6 > 4/7

Likely our largest potential shake up this week. Ares and Surtur haven’t been strong for some time given the more combo nature and over the top potential of the last few months. We expect Surtur can naturally reappear in the metagame given recent nerfs and this is a small nudge towards those decks. While we also generally don’t like Surtur decks being one of the strongest strategies, we think this is a reasonable place to put a Power given our suppressed they’ve been for some time.

Silver Samurai

• [Old] 4/5 – On Reveal: Each player discards the lowest-Power card from their hand.
• [Change] 4/5 > 4/6

Similarly, this is a fairly modest upgrade to the symmetrical discard decks with Black Bolt and Stature. Those decks haven’t had any kind of metagame presence in some time, so this is another opportunity for players who enjoy those strategies to re-engage.

Starhawk

• [Old] 2/2 – On Reveal: +1 Power to your cards at the left location if it’s an odd turn, otherwise give to the right location.
• [Change] 2/2 > 2/3

Kraglin

• [Old] 3/3 – On Reveal: Banish the top card of your deck. If it was 4-Cost or higher, +2 Energy next turn, otherwise give this +4 Power.
• [Change] 3/3 > 3/4

These are a couple of recent releases from the Guardians season that haven’t gotten a lot of love. We want to make sure that as many of our cards as possible can be competitively viable, so given the gap between now and their release we feel comfortable giving Starhawk and Kraglin both a point of Power.

Zombie Captain Marvel

• [Old] 4/4 – Activate: Destroy your other cards here to get +3 Power for each. Move to a location you’re losing.
• [Change] 4/4 > 4/5

Spider-Man Noir

• [Old] 4/4 – On Reveal: Set the top card of your deck’s Power to 8. If your other cards in play cost exactly 8 total, add it here. (0/8)
• [Change] 4/4 > 4/5

Both of these cards ask quite a lot of you and again given their prolonged lack of play, we are happy to give them another point.

Major Victory

• [Old] 3/4 – On Reveal: Add 2 members of the Guardians crew to your hand.
• [Change] 3/4 > 3/5

Agent Coulson

• [Old] 3/4 – On Reveal: Add a random 4-Cost and 5-Cost card to your hand.
• [Change] 3/4 > 3/5

Rounding things out, these are both some of the weakest card generation cards currently. 3/5 should help both of them get close to the average rate of cards that see typical play in decks.

Alright that’s all! We know that this was a short and sweet one, but we’re optimistic that there are plenty of metagame shifts still in flux and strategies to explore for folks as players navigate the game after the last OTA.

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We’ll see you back in a few weeks where we’ll be retaining a more normalized schedule. Until then, happy Snapping!