Marvel Snap Balance OTA Analysis and New Decks to Play: Power Is NOT the Problem!

If Second Dinner announced they were giving everyone 10,000 Collector’s Tokens to celebrate an event, we would love it. And if rewind a bit and say “sorry, there’s a problem with 5 digits numbers so we can only give 9,500 tokens,” we would probably still love it.

That basically sums up how I feel about the Zabu and Bullseye nerfs in this OTA. Their power has never been anything but a nice upside; both cards are played for their abilities first and foremost. I think neither change will have any impact whatsoever, nor does either one deserve more than three lines of text.

Some other cards do deserve our attention, so I want to focus on them.

Card Reviews

This is a natural change considering a new type of card joined the game recently. This is great news for the Wiccan Control deck, or pretty much any other build running Negasonic Teenage Warhead.

The competition to see play as a 2-Cost card is absurd. Unless Second Dinner is willing to nerf all the cards being played in the vast majority of decks, they will have to buff some niche cards to give them more appeal. Mirage can see play in Iron Hand, so that deck just gained a new option to consider, but it’s also a great replacement for anyone missing a staple from that deck.

This is a great buff, especially in the current meta with High Evolutionary as a high profile synergy. I don’t expect The Thing will appear in the Fantasticar deck, simply because “End of Turn” isn’t written on the card. However, in the Ajax, Abomination build The Thing should be a great replacement for anyone who is missing either Laufey or Man-Thing.

Alright, put your tin foil hats on for this one. I think Second Dinner is telling us they want to help the Zoo archetype in order to make sure “classic strategies remain as viable as possible”. I agree with and share that vision. But isn’t it convenient that they buffed the only “End of Turn” card from that deck? You know, the only one that synergizes with their Premium Season Pass card Fantasticar.

I just checked the stats, and the High Evolutionary plus Fantasticar build didn’t need any help at all. Quite the opposite, actually; new releases will make it even stronger in the near future. It kind of feels like there were plenty of targets Second Dinner could have picked to help Zoo, many of which were not Series 5 cards or did not make the paywalled Fantasticar better.

An extra power can never be bad, but I don’t think any deck was passing on Jennifer Kale because it was a [2/2]. This buff is probably only useful for decks that were already using the 2-Cost. It’s not much, but it’s honest work.

I’m not a fan of this change, which I feel is mostly a result of the card not being playable during the Merlin era. The former Season Pass card still exists in a few decks, so Green Goblin will remain a risk to run. When it pays off, the card will be slightly better, which is probably good news for Galactus and Clog.

Considering the amount of energy cheating in the current meta on top of Enchantress being a very popular card, I don’t really understand why Second Dinner would be “a little nervous” about this one.

Doctor Doom 2099 isn’t a bad design, but it tends to be very annoying as soon as it becomes the best synergy to build around. Still, I have nothing against making it good enough that those who enjoy the card can play it and have a shot at winning.

This buff likely won’t change much for Doctor Doom 2099 in the higher ranks, but it could help the card’s popularity below infinite—and that’s completely fine.

Maybe they are nervous about Doctor Doom 2099 in the Fantasticar deck. Wait, no, if that were true they would have never buffed Marvel Boy.

New Decks

Nearly all the changes in this OTA are an extra power, so there isn’t really a need for a long analysis. These decks all have decent results right now, and they’re all probably a little better thanks to that extra point on one of their cards:

Closing Words

I’m afraid the meta won’t change much with this OTA. In the end, none of the best cards were really impacted, and I don’t think an extra point will be enough for Mirage and Jennifer Kale to compare to Surge and Mister Fantastic First Steps.

Don’t get me wrong, I like seeing multiple changes. I don’t think anything is inherently wrong with the OTA. It will just take much more than these small changes to create any sort of movement in the current environment.

This is a step in the right direction (not you, Marvel Boy, I’m talking about the other changes), but we need to be making leaps at this point.

That’s it for this OTA review. You can find everyone from the Marvel Snap Zone team in our community discord, alongside plenty of people to share your excitement about those changes.

Good Game Everyone!