Right click and save image or click the button

Tracker App
Tracker App
Colossus Phoenix Five Variant

Top 5 Reasons to Buy the Rise of the Phoenix Season Pass: Is It Worth It?

We rationalize the top 5 reasons why purchasing a Marvel Snap Season Pass might be the best value for your money.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Top 5! I’m Glazer of Snap Judgments: The Official Marvel Snap Zone Podcast, and every week, we’ll be counting down a different Top 5 things you need to know in, around, and about Marvel Snap! Sometimes this will be silly in nature, but we’ll always have some pearls of wisdom to help make you the best (and best adjusted!) Marvel Snap player you can be! This week? The Top 5 Reasons to Buy the Rise of the Phoenix Season Pass!

Rise of the Phoenix – The Phoenix Force: Marvel Snap July 2023 Season Pass
Our hub on everything you need to know about the July 2023 season!

5. You Get SO Many More Variants!

Without the Season Pass, you get one free Mystery Variant from the Season Pass track. That’s it. With the Season Pass, you get two more Mystery Variants.

“So what?,” you may be asking, “I only get Pixels!” Well, In addition, there are no free planned Season Pass variants, but by buying the Season Pass you get three of those as well. That’s three exclusive variants you won’t be getting elsewhere:

The Season Pass is $10. A variant costs about $10 and an exclusive variant costs more. Here, you get 5 variants and two Mystery Variants. There is nowhere in the game you can get variants for nearly that cheap.

4. Gold is Now at a Premium

With the new patch releasing on July 11, Gold will no longer be available in Season Caches or even the brand-new Spotlight Caches. This cuts a major source of Gold off from players that the Season Pass helps replenish.

Without the Season Pass, players will still get a solid 300 Gold from the free path. However, with the Season Pass, that’s 900 more Gold for a total of 1200 – nearly enough for the new Token Tuesday or savings on your way to a huge bundle.

Marvel Snap July 2023 (Rise of the Phoenix) Bundles Guide – Value and Comparison Chart

Heck, with the Season Pass, it’s possible to actually come out ahead of the old system thanks to Weekend Missions. By winning 15 matches per weekend, you get 150 Gold. There are 5 weekends in this season, so that’s another 750 gold, putting those who buy the Season Pass at plus 1650 as compared to those who don’t. How much is 1650 gold in the shop? More than $20.

Huge thanks to WolverThor for help with that information. Check his content out!

3. The Season Pass Can Get and Keep You Collection Complete

Our own Brilliant LaurenWhatever is spending, well, way too much of her free time working on the math for the new Spotlight Caches. Unlike me, she’s a math person, as anyone who has read Snapalytics can attest to. She assures me that if you spend Credits strategically, this new system is extremely generous. How generous? Well, you read the title of this section, right? That fundamentally means for the low price of $10 per month, players can have every, or nearly every card in the game. That’s insane. No other card game gives that value.

Lauren will have a Spotlight Cache Master Guide coming soon to Marvel Snap Zone wherein she will go over all the math, so keep your eyes on this very site for it.

2. Support Second Dinner

I know that they mess up a lot, whether it be technical issues or seeming greed, but it surely seems like Second Dinner is trying really hard. Heck if you’re reading this, you probably know that and almost certainly love the game. If the game is going to survive, let alone thrive, then it needs to be profitable. Given how great of a deal the Season Pass is, buying it is the single most affordable and economical way to support this great game.

Further, given #3, the Season Pass operates almost as a subscription system to having a very high majority, if not actually all of the cards. You can skip a month sure, but all that does is put you behind in your collection, meaning you’ll have more and more cards to get. Unless you’re extremely lucky and those start showing up in the same Spotlight Cache groupings, getting ahead of the curve with the Season Pass is a win-win.

The game is great. I want the game to live for a long time. Ten dollars on a Season Pass really does help that happen.

1. The Season Pass Card is Almost Always Worth it

Look, I’m a content creator. I make about as much content for the game as anyone and know 3/4 of the big names in the community. I tell you this as seriously as I can – we all suck at evaluating cards before release. Next to no one thought Darkhawk was any good, but we all went and immediately bought Ghost. At first, the consensus was that Howard the Duck was great, then it was that Howard was only good with Iron Lad, then it was just that he was bad – though there are still holdouts.

Howard the Duck
Howard the Duck
Ongoing: Tap this to see the top card of your deck.
Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)
view card details Decks with Howard the Duck

The lesson? No one knows for sure if The Phoenix Force will be good. So why should you buy it, beyond that it’s a Series 5 card (currently worth 6,000 Collector’s Tokens) and even not counting that, the season pass is a 93% discount on all the other stuff you get?

The Season Pass cards since global release have basically all proven to be worth it:

  • Miles Morales – Seemed like he’d be bad, and right at global launch, they clearly didn’t have their strategy down, but he ended up meta in the Darkhawk Stature lists, a key component to the best deck in the game.
  • Black Panther – At first, Black Panther was everywhere, as people discovered the joys of Wong/Panther/Arnim Zola. This was countered relatively quickly by opponent’s going with Cosmo, Shang Chi, and Aero but had an immediate and fun impact on the meta. Panther was fringe for awhile after, but now again has a home in various ramp decks.
  • Silver Surfer – He was a meta card at 3/0 giving plus 3 to everything, and for 2.5 months was one of the dominant forces in the metagame. He’s since been nerfed, but remains a really strong card that is the centerpiece to a top 10 deck in the game.
Silver Surfer
Silver Surfer
On Reveal: Give your other 3-Cost cards +2 Power.
Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)
view card details Decks with Silver Surfer
Zabu
Zabu
Ongoing: Your 4-Cost cards cost 1 less. (minimum 1)
Series 4 Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 4)
view card details Decks with Zabu
  • Zabu – as a 3/2 who gave -2 to all 4-cost cards, he was the most busted card in the history of the game. Now, a 2/2 that gives -1 to 4s still, he’s just one of the best cards in the game, not clearly #1.
  • MODOK – This card has been up and down. Upon release it was swallowed up by the overpowered cards above, then Thanos Lockjaw and Shuri Zero decks. Since then, however, the card spent several months making Apocalypse Discard one of the most consistent decks in the meta, and has made Hela a real deck that people reach Infinite with, not just a meme.
  • Nimrod – The one miss. This card seemingly never really went anywhere – at least until now as a recent buff has made it appear in numerous destroy builds as a major card. Oh, and we’ll all pretend there weren’t really high win rate Turn 6 Galactus decks built around abusing Nimrod, too.
  • Hit Monkey – You mean the next card to be nerfed? The Monkey is one of the key cards in Bounce, the current best deck in the game.
Nebula
Nebula
Each turn your opponent doesn’t play a card here, +2 Power. (except the turn you play this)
Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)
view card details Decks with Nebula
  • Nebula – Only overshadowed by Kitty Pryde, likely the best card in the game right now, Nebula is a crazy strong 1-drop and basically single handedly took Lockdown decks to Tier 1 for awhile and somehow also made Guardians of the Galaxy decks, of all things, playable at a competitive ladder level.
  • Ghost-Spider – This card has thus far been on the lower half of the power curve for Season Pass cards – it’s only a role player, not a build around, but it has a place in both tournament winning and meta breaking decks.
The Phoenix Force
The Phoenix Force
On Reveal: Revive one of your destroyed cards and merge with it. That card can move each turn.
Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)
view card details Decks with The Phoenix Force

That brings us to The Phoenix Force. Within a month of release, every single Season Pass card but Miles Morales had a home in meta decks. Every time, most notably with Hit Monkey, who rose to power at the height of Sandman play, people who didn’t buy the card complain they didn’t realize how powerful it was. Well, The Phoenix Force is likely to be that powerful.

Go buy it, and while you’re at it, try out these decklists from our other great Marvel Snap Zone articles:

Enjoy our content? You can Support Marvel Snap Zone and your favorite content creators by subscribing to our Premium community! Get the most of your Marvel Snap experience with the following perks for paid membership:

  • No ads: Browse the entire website ad-free, both display and video.
  • Exclusive Content: Get instant access to all our Premium articles!
  • Meta Reports: Exclusive daily meta reports, such as the Top 10 Decks of the Day, Top 30 Cards, and Top Card Pairs tailored for you!
  • Team Coaching: Join our free weekly team coaching call sessions on the Discord server. Claim your Premium role and gain access to exclusive channels where you can learn and discuss in real time!
  • Premium Dashboard: Get full instant access to the member-only dashboard, the all-in-one page for all your benefits.
  • Support: All your contributions get directly reinvested into the website to increase your viewing experience! You get also get a Premium badge and border on your profile.
  • Special offer: For a limited time, use coupon code SBYREX4RL1 to get 50% off the Annual plan!
Subscribe now!
PulseGlazer
PulseGlazer
Articles: 71

More Articles

16 Comments

  1. I did not need to read this to know that, if you’re spending money on this game, the season pass is the place to do it. Very thorough analysis, though.

  2. I am at a crossroads with this game, where I do not know if I have fun anymore or just going through the motions.

    Currently it feels “If you don’t play perfect decks, you won’t be happy.”This in turn means more or less either spending money or a lot of time, which I just don’t have at my hands. Currently I am still holding off with the Season Pass. I might purchase it later down the road, but as of now, not really.

    • Ladder can be like that – depending on the time of day/week and your deck choices, matchmaking luck, the current meta, or even state of mind: you can hit your win streak and feel great, feel horrible after a losing streak, or end up not really making much progress cube-wise despite investing a good chunk of time. Not very exciting.
      I do appreciate Conquest for the reason that it feels a lot more relaxing, ironically, because there isn’t such a high cost to losing games.

  3. i totally agree with number #3. I left out the season pass with Hit Monkey. And then everyone got Kitty. Now i dont have Hit Monkey for Bounce. 🙁
    So i regret not buying it.

  4. I have bought the pass every month since January, I do it for reason #2, I like the game and want to support SD. You mentioned in that section #2 two reasons I have been considering discontinuing my support: 1) Every patch is full of bugs, some have been a problem across several seasons (Lockjaw overlap). The continued roll out of new features that are bugged out (Kitty Pryde, High Evo, weekend missions, even conquest has some minor bugs) makes me question what I am really paying for. 2) They are getting to be too stingy with free resources. The seasonal series drop is basically gone, replaced by this new cache system that gives you the same cards without any gold or tokens. The conquest shop is just another resource grind that is especially painful for those of us that don’t like conquest. Think about how many resource tracks and currencies we have to deal with now, it’s ridiculous.
    I will probably buy the season pass this month, but it is really getting hard to justify. I like the game and want SD to make money and want the game to survive, but I think some decisions that seem like they will generate more money will end up doing the opposite in the long run.

  5. I’ve been getting the season pass each season, but different times during the season.
    Zabu was middle of the season; MODOK (for sure) and Nimrod were start of season; Monkey, Nebula and Ghost were all end of season.
    Phoenix, well probably going to be near mid season, since we have a patch next Tuesday, and then an OTA the following Thursday.
    See how things shake up.

  6. I haven’t bought any Season Passes to date (perhaps if I were to discover the Nuverse shop option sooner), because $10 is actually not so cheap or little for certain regions of the world. If your currency doesn’t have a great exchange rate against the dollar/the rest, you are basically out of luck – there’s no regional price adjustment to count upon.
    This one was pretty tempting at first, but so far the reports about the Phoenix Force’s power levels and usefulness do not feel me with confidence.

    It’s undoubtedly a good to decent value in terms of Marvel Snap’s often ridiculously high bundle pricing, but I certainly disagree with the assertion that “No other card game gives that value”. I come from Hearthstone where you can grab a Season Pass for $20 (not even considered terribly cheap within that context, as Activision is greedier than Second Dinner) which then covers 4 freaking months (!) of one expansion’s lifespan; and it’s certainly far better value than Snap’s in the long run. I’m pretty certain Runeterra is way more generous too, and there might be others.
    For a monthly subscription system it’s also way too pricey, if compared to any MMO game and the kind of content that can be found there on a regular basis. Marvel Snap and card games are more repetitive/stale in general when it comes to grinding their ladders or modes every season, all things considered.

    About point #4, did we always use to get only 300 gold from the free Season Pass track, or was that reduced too for this season? I swear I thought it used to be better, but one’s memory can be fallible.

    I did enjoy the brief history of all SP cards (minus the beta) in the #1 section!

    Last but not least, I do agree with the #2 and the need to support the things we like (I’ve grabbed a couple of the cheapest bundles at least). Just wish the Second Dinner actually made it easier for us to do so, and remembered there is a huge wide world out there outside of the North America or the richest countries in Europe/Asia. Too often it feels like they don’t.

    • Getting EVERY card for just the Season Pass price is what I was referring to.

      We did always get 300, I think.

      I wish I knew how to get them to realize the rest of the world should be able to afford the game, too!

  7. Right. It is a trickier comparison. This game has a smaller subset of cards you don’t really need or which aren’t too impactful when compared to something else with dozens of semi-regular card releases (but also various classes or heroes, etc.).
    I know there were F2P players with stellar collections competing in major official tournaments in Hearthstone for example, something which hasn’t really been possible in Snap (especially when some of the Season Pass cards you described became immediate ‘must haves’ at the highest level).

    I see. So 300 gold on the free SP track suddenly feels like very, very little. I guess I never really pondered how disappointing that is when we could’ve relied on a steady (and much more generous) gold income from Collector’s Reserves.

Leave a Reply