The Ultimate Guide to the Grand Arena Economy

Grand Arena is a big, exciting new event with a long two-week runtime: from July 24th to August 7th, 2025. Like each new mode before it, Grand Arena brings both new gameplay and new monetization. This article will be focused on Grand Arena’s economy. If you’re interested in other Grand Arena coverage, you can check that out here.

Grand Arena – Full Event Details & Rewards

I’ll be breaking down and analyzing all of Grand Arena’s resources and prizes. This guide should help you plan and optimize so that you can get what you want from the new mode. Is the Premium Event Pass worth it? How much do you need to play, win, and spend to get Mole Man and Mad Thinker? All that and more, below!

For Glory!

Grand Arena’s gladiatorial setting brings a fitting new event currency with it: Glory. The main way you get it is simple — play games for Glory. 10 if you win. 5 if you don’t.

Every time you get Glory, you also get XP in equal amounts. The XP helps you gain levels in the Event Pass, where assorted prizes await: Credits, Tokens, Grand Arena Tickets, more Glory (and XP!), a variant, an emote, and of course — everybody’s favorite — heaps and heaps of Boosters. Yay.

The Arena Pass prizes are split between two separate tracks: Free and Premium. Each track has its own prize at every level between 1 and 50. And, yes, XP being on the prize track means you get XP for getting XP. That makes things a little funky (and I’m not convinced it’s intentional), but more on that later.

Admit One

The Tickets work just like Scrolls in Sanctum Showdown. It costs 1 Ticket to play a game of Grand Arena. If you win, you get your Ticket back.

You’ll start with 8 Tickets and regenerate 3 more every 8 hours. They won’t regenerate above 12, so you’ll have to play fairly actively to avoid burning free resources. The Free track and Premium track each offer 16 additional Tickets.

In total, that’s a max of 147 free Tickets (or 163 if you get the Premium Pass).

Additional Tickets have a base cost of 10 Gold each.

Event Pass

Grand Arena introduces Marvel Snap’s first Premium Pass for an event. I imagine most of you are familiar with the dual-track format it uses. I mean — the Premium Season Pass kind of uses the same format. It’s extremely common in the industry, and used by many big-name games including Fortnite and Rocket League.

The price tag is 1,200 Gold. That translates to $15–20 USD, depending on how big the packs of Gold you buy are. Of course, you can acquire Gold for free, too. That’s about 3 weeks of free Gold for players who reach Rank 90 or higher, or 4 weeks for players who don’t.

I want to emphasize how cool it is for the Premium Event Pass to charge Gold instead of money. It means more player agency. It means you could save up free Gold to buy the Pass (which makes the price more palatable). It all seems reasonable to me — certainly in comparison to Kid Omega’s monetization — but we’ve also got to look at what’s in the Premium Pass!

Free Pass Rewards

Here are the total rewards from levels 1–50 on the Free Pass track:

Credits: 200
Tokens: 200
Tickets: 16
Glory + XP: 1,400
The Thing Variant: 1
Boosters: 720

Premium Pass Rewards

Here are the total rewards from levels 1–50 on the Premium Pass track:

Credits: 200
Tokens: 200
Tickets: 16
Glory + XP: 1,800
The Thing First Steps Emote: 1
Boosters: 1,200

So the Premium roughly doubles all your Pass rewards. At first glance, that doesn’t really seem worth $15 (unless you really like the emote). However, cards are expensive in Marvel Snap. As Series 4 cards, Mole Man and Mad Thinker are worth 2,500–3,000 Tokens each! The Premium Event Pass could be a good deal if it helps you get a new card or two. We’ll have to dig further.

Pass Rewards Table

Just to be thorough, here is the full table of rewards from the Free and Premium Pass tracks.

Level	Total XP Needed	Free Track Rewards	Quantity	Premium Track Rewards	Quantity
1	5	Mr Fantastic Boosters	60	Glory + XP	500
2	25	Tickets	2	Tokens	25
3	50	Credits	25	Mr Fantastic Boosters	90
4	75	Glory + XP	100	Random Boosters	60
5	225	Random Boosters	30	Credits	25
6	250	Tokens	25	Tickets	2
7	275	Human Torch First Steps Boosters	60	Glory + XP	100
8	300	Glory + XP	100	Tokens	25
9	425	Credits	25	Human Torch First Steps Boosters	90
10	450	Tickets	2	Random Boosters	60
11	475	Random Boosters	30	Credits	25
12	525	Tokens	25	Tickets	2
13	600	The Thing First Steps Boosters	60	Glory + XP	100
14	650	Glory + XP	100	Tokens	25
15	775	Credits	25	The Thing First Steps Boosters	90
16	825	Tickets	2	Random Boosters	60
17	900	Random Boosters	30	Credits	25
18	975	Tokens	25	Tickets	2
19	1,050	Invisible Woman Boosters	60	Glory + XP	200
20	1,125	Glory + XP	200	Tokens	25
21	1,250	Credits	25	Invisible Woman Boosters	90
22	1,325	Tickets	2	Random Boosters	60
23	1,400	Random Boosters	30	Credits	25
24	1,475	Tokens	25	Tickets	2
25	1,550	Mole Man Boosters	60	Glory + XP	100
26	1,625	Glory + XP	100	Tokens	25
27	1,750	Credits	25	Mole Man Boosters	90
28	1,825	Tickets	2	Random Boosters	60
29	1,900	Random Boosters	30	Credits	25
30	1,975	Tokens	25	Tickets	2
31	2,050	Dr. Doom Boosters	60	Glory + XP	100
32	2,125	Glory + XP	100	Tokens	25
33	2,250	Credits	25	Dr. Doom Boosters	90
34	2,325	Tickets	2	Random Boosters	60
35	2,400	Random Boosters	30	Credits	25
36	2,475	Tokens	25	Tickets	2
37	2,550	H.E.R.B.I.E. Boosters	60	Glory + XP	100
38	2,625	Glory + XP	100	Tokens	25
39	2,750	Credits	25	H.E.R.B.I.E. Boosters	90
40	2,800	Tickets	2	Random Boosters	60
41	2,850	Random Boosters	30	Credits	25
42	2,925	Tokens	25	Tickets	2
43	3,000	The Mad Thinker Boosters	60	Glory + XP	100
44	3,125	Glory + XP	100	Tokens	25
45	3,200	Credits	25	The Mad Thinker Boosters	90
46	3,250	Tickets	2	Random Boosters	60
47	3,300	Random Boosters	30	Credits	25
48	3,350	Tokens	25	Tickets	2
49	3,425	The Thing – Greg & Tim Hildebrandt Masterpiece Variant	1	Glory + XP	500
50	3,500	Glory	500	Emote – The Thing First Steps	1

Going Shopping

Before tying it all together, we need to look at how to get the other prizes from Grand Arena. The event will have a shop where you can spend your Glory, just like Sanctum Showdown and High Voltage: Overdrive.

Reward	Glory	Gold	Limit	Gold per Glory
Portal Pull †	1,800	1,440	3	0.80
Mole Man + Champion Variant	2,000	3,800	1	1.90
Mad Thinker	2,000	3,800	1	1.90
Human Torch Variant	1,200	1,176	1	0.98
Mister Fantastic Variant	1,000	700	1	0.70
Human Torch First Steps Emote	3,000	2,130	1	0.71
Mister Fantastic First Steps Emote	3,000	2,130	1	0.71
Border ‡	800	744	Unlimited	0.93
Mystery Border	700	~609	Unlimited	0.87
Premium Mystery Border	1,000	~870	Unlimited	0.87
Premium Mystery Variant	1,100	~786	10	0.71
Title	100	~80	2	0.80
Avatar	300	~215	5	0.74
1,500 Credits	1,600	~1,184	1	0.74
500 Credits	550	~407	2	0.74
100 Credits	120	~89	3	0.74
50 Credits	60	~45	4	0.74

† Buying a Portal Pull randomly gives you one prize from a pool of three: specifically, the Champion variants for Invisible Woman, Mister Fantastic, and Doctor Doom.

‡ The Borders you can buy directly are all new types: Fire, Blue Fire, Rainbow Refraction, and Cosmic Purple.

Daily Offers

The shop additionally features three slots that rotate daily.

• One half-off bundle of Tickets: 10 for 50 Gold
• One variant
• One other cosmetic

Reward	Glory
Super Rare Variant	1,700
Rare Variant	1,000
Avatar	300
Emote	3,000
Border	600

Inconsistent Gold Conversion

Just like past events, you can spend Gold in the shop to cover any event currency you’re missing. However, past events offered a consistent conversion rate for how much Gold it took to buy Charms or Volts. Grand Arena seems to be different. You may have noticed in the first shop table that the “Gold per Glory” rate changes based on what you’re trying to buy.

I find this extremely weird. Could it be evidence of last-second changes to the mode’s monetization? I certainly prefer that explanation over dark patterns (intentionally deceptive design).

Anyway, it’s important to be aware of if you’re going to spend any Gold in the shop. Yet another thing to optimize. Your Gold goes a lot further spent on cosmetics than Mole Man or Mad Thinker.

Getting the New Cards

This is why we’re all here, right? Okay — maybe not all of us, but for most players, new cards are the grand prize. Each card costs 2,000 Glory or 3,800 Gold (~$47.50 USD). That means you’ll need 4,000 to get both.

Free or Premium, it’s a little tricky to figure out how far you need to get on the Pass to afford the cards. This is because the tracks not only reward Glory, but XP, too.

Like… the Premium track gives you 500 XP at level 1. That means you play a single game (win or lose) and end up at level 18. Funky.

So, here’s how much Glory/XP you’ll need to earn from playing the mode in order to have the track Glory/XP take you the rest of the way.

XP Goals

Free Pass players need to earn 1,400 Glory/XP from playing games to afford a single card (2,000 total), or 2,600 to afford both cards (4,000 total).

Premium Pass players need to earn 400 Glory/XP for 1 card, or 1,225 for both.

Win Rate is King

Is it doable? Yeah! But like the official blog warns, players will need an elite win rate to get both cards for free. It’s extremely doable to just get one for free, though.

Your win rate is super important! Wins give double Glory AND reimburse your ticket. Here’s a table showing how your Glory-per-Ticket ramps up with your Win Rate.

Win Rate	Avg. Games per Ticket	Avg. Glory per Ticket
35%	1.54	10.38
40%	1.67	11.67
45%	1.82	13.18
50%	2.00	15.00
55%	2.22	17.22
60%	2.50	20.00
65%	2.86	23.57

Glorious Plans

Here’s the breakdown of how much you’ll need to play, win, and spend to acquire one or both cards:

Free Player / 1 card / 0 Paid Tickets
Earned Glory: 1,400
Track Glory: 600
Games Played: 211
Games per Day: 15.0
Free Tickets: 141
Paid Tickets: 0
Minimum Ticket Cost: 0 Gold
Minimum Win Rate: 33.02%

Free Player / 1 card / 50% Win Rate
Earned Glory: 1,400
Track Glory: 600
Games Played: 187
Games per Day: 13.3
Free Tickets: 94
Paid Tickets: 0
Minimum Tickets Cost: 0 Gold
Win Rate: 50.00%

Free Player / 2 cards / 0 Paid Tickets
Earned Glory: 2,600
Track Glory: 1,400
Games Played: 334
Games per Day: 23.8
Free Tickets: 147
Paid Tickets: 0
Minimum Ticket Cost: 0 Gold
Minimum Win Rate: 56.00%

Free Player / 2 cards / 50% Win Rate
Earned Glory: 2,600
Track Glory: 1,400
Games Played: 347
Games per Day: 24.8
Free Tickets: 147
Paid Tickets: 27
Minimum Ticket Cost: 150 Gold
Win Rate: 50.00%

Premium Player / 1 card / 0 Paid Tickets
Earned Glory: 400
Track Glory: 1,600
Games Played: 80
Games per Day: 5.7
Free Tickets: 80
Paid Tickets: 0
Minimum Ticket Cost: 0 Gold
Minimum Win Rate: 0.00%

Premium Player / 1 card / 50% Win Rate
Earned Glory: 400
Track Glory: 1,600
Games Played: 54
Games per Day: 3.8
Free Tickets: 27
Paid Tickets: 0
Minimum Tickets Cost: 0 Gold
Win Rate: 50.00%

Premium Player / 2 cards / 0 Paid Tickets
Earned Glory: 1,225
Track Glory: 3,200
Games Played: 204
Games per Day: 14.6
Free Tickets: 163
Paid Tickets: 0
Minimum Ticket Cost: 0 Gold
Minimum Win Rate: 20.10%

Premium Player / 2 cards / 50% Win Rate
Earned Glory: 1,225
Track Glory: 3,200
Games Played: 164
Games per Day: 11.7
Free Tickets: 82
Paid Tickets: 0
Minimum Ticket Cost: 0 Gold
Win Rate: 50.00%

You may notice the Premium Player ends up with 4,425 Glory if going for both cards. This is because there’s a lot of Glory/XP at the end of the tracks. As soon as they get to 3,425 total, they instantly get 1,000 extra from the tracks.

Dodge the Burn

I used a really simple calculation in the previous section to get “Games per Day”: divide the games you need to play by 14 days. Easy. I included it because it’s easier to grasp “about 12 games per day” than “164 games over two weeks”. However, this number needs to be an average.

You generate 14 Tickets on the first day, and 9 on each other day — to say nothing about the 16 extra Tickets on each Pass track. Some days, you’ll need to play more games just to ensure you’re not wasting any of your free regeneration. Remember: Tickets won’t regenerate above 12.

Summary of Requirements

There are a few key takeaways from the previous section.

First and foremost, that players have the option to play a lot of games with their free tickets, and that that’ll be enough to make both cards quite affordable.

Second, that Free players will probably need to spend a bit of Gold in order to get both cards. You could do it for free with a win rate of at least 56.00%. That’s pretty high to sustain over 334 games. However, a 50% win rate only demands 27 paid tickets — which you could acquire for 150 Gold total using the half-price Ticket bundle in the Daily Offers. Notably, that 150 Gold is only 12.5% of the cost of the Premium Pass.

Pay to Accelerate (or for Clobberin’ Time)

Third, that the Premium Pass is really about acceleration. You can get both cards cheaper by staying on the Free Pass (even if you end up having to spend some Gold). However, your journey will be way more chill on the Premium Pass. You won’t need to play as many games, and your required win rate will be well below 50%. I’m sure $15 of Gold is worth that relaxed vibe for some players.

Don’t forget: the Premium Pass includes 200 Credits, 200 Tokens, and the emote. The Credits and Tokens aren’t worth the extra 1,000+ Gold — but that’s a pretty good deal for an emote if you like it. Personally, I don’t know when I’d ever use it.

I think the best plan for any player who might spring for Premium is basically to wait and see how much you like the mode. If you like it enough to play ~350 games over two weeks, you could save yourself a decent chunk of Gold by staying on the Free Pass. On the flip side, if you don’t especially like the game mode, you pay up and cut the number of games you need to play roughly in half. There’s no downside for waiting a few days to buy the Premium Pass.

Whoops…

Finally, I think these numbers are evidence that the Pass tracks weren’t supposed to reward XP. Both iterations of Sanctum Showdown seemed to reward XP when they were only supposed to reward Charms. Makes me think this is the same bug, and Second Dinner just hasn’t been able to squash it yet. I appreciate the transparency of putting the XP on the prize tables in the Grand Arena blog! I just don’t think the numbers I’m calculating can possibly align with this paragraph from the blog:

As for Premium Event Pass players, ~75% can expect to earn enough Glory for one new Series 4 card while ~50% can earn both new Series 4 cards without needing any extra Tickets while maintaining an average win rate.

They expect 25% of Premium players to be unable to earn 400 Glory to buy a single card? Something that would only require 54 games with a 50% win rate? Nah. I mean, maybe I’m overestimating the casual player, but that’s less than 4 games a day!

Beyond that, I calculated the minimum win rate for a Premium player to get two cards if the Pass did not give XP: 49.76%. That seems a lot more like an “average win rate” than 20.10% — the actual minimum win rate because the Pass does give XP.

Pass Comparison Overview

Free maxes out at 147 free Tickets, while Premium can get 163.

If you use every Ticket and maintain a 50% win rate, Free ends up with 3,005 Glory and Premium ends up with 5,645. Notably, that means Premium finishes the Pass (hits level 50) and Free doesn’t.

Free only needs 27 extra Tickets to hit the 4,000 Glory needed to afford both cards. The cost would be as low as 150 Gold if you bought 3 half-off Ticket bundles from the Daily Offers.

If you bought every Ticket bundle from the Daily Offers, you’d get 140 extra Tickets for 700 Gold. At a 50% win rate, those are worth an extra 2,100 Glory. That helps Free finish the Pass, so it closes the gap some. A total of 5,705 Glory for Free and 7,745 for Premium.

Notably, that means Free + 140 extra Tickets ends up at roughly the same amount of Glory as Premium + 0 extra tickets. Free would play 574 games with 287 Tickets. Premium would play 326 games with 163 Tickets. They’d both end up at ~5,675 Glory. Essentially, that means Premium costs 500 extra Gold for 200 Credits, 200 Tokens, the Thing emote, and the ability to play 248 fewer games. Not bad at all, especially if you don’t have the time to grind so many games.

It largely comes down to what you want to buy. If it’s only the cards, you can save a lot by sticking with a few Ticket bundles from the Daily Offers. If you’d be spending extra on cosmetics anyway or highly value cutting the number of games you need to play in ~half, the Premium is a good deal!

Progress Tracking

I’ll leave you with a table to help you tell if you’re on track to get the cards.

I don’t think Premium players need to worry about it at all. It’s useful for Free players who want both cards to keep track, though. They’ll probably need to buy some extra Tickets — and they’re half-off through the Daily Offer, but only once per day.

The numbers in the table represent the total amount of XP you should have by the end of the day.

Days Remaining	Free: 1 Card	Free: 2 Cards	Premium: 1 Card	Premium: 2 Cards
13	200	286	1,029	1,288
12	400	571	1,457	1,775
11	500	857	1,486	1,863
10	600	1,043	1,514	1,950
9	800	1,429	1,543	2,038
8	900	1,614	1,771	2,325
7	1,000	1,900	1,800	2,413
6	1,100	2,086	1,829	2,500
5	1,400	2,371	1,857	2,788
4	1,500	2,557	1,886	2,875
3	1,600	2,843	1,914	2,963
2	1,800	3,029	1,943	3,250
1	1,900	3,314	1,971	3,338
0	2,000	4,000	2,000	4,425

Conclusion

In short — I find Grand Arena’s monetization way more tasteful than High Voltage: Overdrive’s. Granted, I have concerns that the mode is accidentally more generous than Second Dinner meant. But, hey, maybe Kid Omega was accidentally more greedy than they meant…? Right? Right?! 😭

Personally, my plan regarding the Premium Pass is to wait and see how much I like Grand Arena’s gameplay. 25 games per day to get both cards on the Free Pass is a lot to ask, but I’ll gladly put the time in if I’m enjoying it! If not, I’ll be considering a 1,200-Gold fee to cut my time in half, or else just abandoning the mode entirely.

Getting two cards for a couple hundred Gold is a great deal if you’re willing to put the time in. Even if they’re “just” Series 4 cards. On the other hand — and this isn’t really the article for it — neither card seems especially good. Is it possibly worth chasing them just to keep them out of your Snap Packs?

I’m excited to play around with the champions! See you in the Arena!