Marvel Snap: Got to snikt them all, bub

[Olli]

There's a new Free to Play deckbuilder game with Marvel Comics branding called Marvel Snap. It's surprisingly decent - the monetisation is not obnoxious, the art is pretty, and the mechanics offer a lot of variety.

The basic idea is that you assemble a deck where each card has a cost, a power rating and most of the time some special ability. The playing field contains three random locations which reveal one at a time during the first three turns. Each location has a special feature, such as "you can't play cards here on turns 3, 4 and 5" or "when this location is revealed, a 1/1 squirrel appears in every location". Each location can hold a maximum of 4 cards. The player who has most power in a single location controls it, and the player who controls at least 2 out of 3 locations wins after 6 rounds. The primary hook of the game is (ab)using the location powers and the card powers to gain advantage. Sounds complicated, but it's dead simple and you get the hang of it after a game or two.

Anyway, I'm hooked and I want to play more. Anyone else into Snap?

 

[Octopus Prime]

Been playing it non stop; love it

 

[smacketh]

It's so addictive, I've been playing it a ton.

 

[lincolnic]

I played it in the closed beta and really liked the gameplay, but I stopped after a week or two when it became apparent how absurdly difficult it would be to acquire new cards for a deck. I didn't like how quickly I got to a point where I'd have to play for 3-4 days just to unlock one random new card that I may not even want to use. As a result I felt like I was just playing the same exact game with the same deck over and over, so I just stopped playing. I would've liked if they'd given you a bigger card pool from the beginning so that you could actually try out some different strategies. Is this any better in the full release?

 

[Violentvixen]

My spouse got this a while ago, was playing for a bit and I asked him how it was, he said he was still figuring it out. A few days later I noticed he was still playing and said "oh, is it fun?". His response was "not really but I keep winning." So it clearly has some sort of hook, but that amused me.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

This reminds me of Bart playing triangle wars.

 

[smacketh]

I played it in the closed beta and really liked the gameplay, but I stopped after a week or two when it became apparent how absurdly difficult it would be to acquire new cards for a deck. I didn't like how quickly I got to a point where I'd have to play for 3-4 days just to unlock one random new card that I may not even want to use. As a result I felt like I was just playing the same exact game with the same deck over and over, so I just stopped playing. I would've liked if they'd given you a bigger card pool from the beginning so that you could actually try out some different strategies. Is this any better in the full release?

Yeah, it has definitely slowed down a lot on unlocking cards.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Really happy with my current team

 

[Olli]

I'm still lacking Squirrel Girl! Grrr!

 

[jpfriction]

Doesn’t seem fair to have a character that is literally unbeatable.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Cloning Vat, The Peak and Iron Heart at the same time...

I was too giddy to even think to Snap

 

[Olli]

I was slightly disappointed that clearing all the season missions gave no extra reward. I spent a long time working on that 20/20 win a location with a single card

 

[Daikaiju]

Been at it since launch. Tis fun

 

[pudik]

love how quick these games are. I think a lot of tcg get it so wrong because they aren't really designed for it. shadowverse is quick, but when i stopped played felt almost uninteractive because it played towards gigantic game ending plays out of hand. hearthstone feels bad for most mobile purposes (and their monetization is getting worse). It's nice to play this for 5 minutes at a time

 

[Olli]

I've got a decent idea of some of the synergies; there are a handful of obvious abilities to build a deck around.
Destruction
Destroying your own cards is usually quite easy, both with locations (Death's Domain, Danger Room, Murderworld, Hala) and card abilities (Carnage, Deathlok, Killmonger, Venom...). At the same time, many cards give bonuses on destruction (Nova), regenerate (Wolverine, Sabertooth), or resist destruction (Colossus). Combining cards with these abilities gives you a way to sacrifice cheap or regenerating characters, or just ignore the destructive properties. As a downside, anything that benefits from filling the location (Mojoworld, Gamma Lab,...) is going to be harder to take advantage of.
Buffing/debuffing
This approach is dead simple: combine cards that give plusses to your cards and minuses to the enemy. This usually works quite well on average, but it's not going to trounce any deck unless you get lucky with locations. I find these decks are quite good starting points for experimentation (can I get to an endgame where Infinaut or Galactus becomes the winning play?).
Discarding
Apocalypse grows stronger the more times you get to discard him. This is most easily achieved with Lady Sif, but there are plenty of cards that make you discard cards from your hand. There are also other cards that can benefit from or deal with discarding, such as Morbius (the more you discard, the more power you get) or Wolverine (gets placed in a random location when he's discarded from your hand). If you can reliably empty your entire hand, Strong Guy gets a nice bonus to his power.
Moving
A moving deck relies on cards that either get bonuses on being moved (Vulture, Multiple Man), when others move (Kraven), move themselves (Vision, Nightcrawler), or move others (Heimdall, Iron Fist). It requires a bit more planning to be successful with moving since you can't just play cards where they will give the most points to the location, and you need to be careful you don't fill the place where the cards would want to move.

Some cards and combos are pretty useful helpers on most decks:

• Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur are a devastating combo if you manage to land them both. Moon Girl doubles your hand and Devil Dinosaur gets stronger the more cards you have in your hand. Thus Devil Dino is often a 15-17 power monster, which is nuts, especially considering he only costs 5 energy. In the best case scenario, you get to play him twice.
• Shang-Chi is the antidote to that tactic. Shang-Chi is fairly weak by himself, but he'll destroy any opponent with 9 or more power at his location. He's not a bad choice to put in your deck if you have room. I once wiped out an entire Gamma Lab full of Hulks with Shang-Chi; that felt pretty good.
• Killmonger destroys every 1-energy card in play. This is pretty brutal to anyone who's relying on small cards, and combining this with Nova to power your own cards is especially neat.

 

[pudik]

before starting it's useful to know the card getting system as well. People point out the crawl that getting new cards is, but it's also important to realize the order they are gotten in. You have three tiers of cards (we'll call them 1,2,3). Tier 1 is starting cards, and cards you get while your collection level is under some amount (200ish iirc). Then tier 2 until collection is up to 400 something, then you get tier 3. The cards you get within tiers i believe is completely random. It's fun, because it does give some gacha element to a game without packs, but it also means you can have a strong deck, but miss out on the one piece that it works around for weeks and weeks

let me add on that a little with my experience:
Destruction: from what I understand, and with where I'm at (I'm a little bit into tier 3 pulls), this is one of the strongest archetypes. Destroyer and Death (both tier 3 cards i do not have!) are extremely huge bonuses that have little downside when the entire deck is made to be blown up. I don't think anything in the game is too oppressive, but this is a really good deck that just doesn't have that much counter (shang chi can destroy big plays, and armor or x can shut down a lane, but you have to be able to play your own deck while doing that)
Buffing: Usually this comes in the form of Ongoing effects, and this is probably the most consistent through tiers. Kazan (buffs all 1 cost cards) and Blue Marvel (buffs all cards) are good at any time and both are tier 1. As you move up you just get more tools and and directions to go (i think Patriot/Ultron decks tend to be the best in tier 3). A lot of counters, but it's hard to draw poorly and really there's still going to be stats if they shut down ongoing effects or kill cards.
Discard: A lot of fun, but probably too inconsistent. I've enjoyed a little pseudo combo deck with discarding big cards like Infinaut or Hulk and then pulling them back with Ghost Rider, but I think in general it's a weak archetype
Moving: Really strong in like, tier 2ish area, but I don't think you get too many more things in tier 3. Actually get more stuff for moving opponent cards (like a combo for Kingpin and Aero where you move anything your opponent plays on turn 6 to Kingpin's location and kingpin destroys them, both also tier 3 cards i don't have). Probably can always steal games if you get good buffs/hulk buster on Multiple Man though.
Devil Dinosaur: can be more or less shutdown with one of two cards (Enchantress and Shang Chi), but it's a really strong deck if you get the moon girl play in. It's also got nice supporting pieces with Collector and cards that add to your hand.
Shang Chi/Killmonger/Counters: I love how good it is to add "tech" cards to decks. Maybe it's the small deck size, but this makes "disruption" decks a lot of fun to play and really able to steal wins.

but honestly, the most fun I've had and I don't even have a "complete" version for it, is with
Mister Negative: 4 cost -1 power, with the reveal effect of swapping costs and power of all cards in your deck. Extremely inconsistent, obviously, but way better than it sounds. I need Magik (turns a location into Limbo, which adds a turn 7 to the game), but even without you get really great swing plays on 5 and 6, which means SNAP wins and lots of interplay. Can be burnt off with just not having things to do early (I think my deck has 3 1 costs and zero 2 costs), but when you can play a zero cost Iron Man or a 1 cost White Tiger, there are crazy shenanigans. Highly recommended, because if I didn't try it out I would assume it's unworkable outside of extreme luck.

 

[Octopus Prime]

This… might be the nastiest card I’ve yet seen

 

[Daikaiju]

Damn straight. Can really kill your setup at a node

 

[pudik]

i've messed around with making a deck specifically to be a jerk. cards like that, cosmo (turns off on reveal effects), enchantress (turns off ongoing effects), destroy cards like elektra/kilmonger/shang chi. it's not great, but it's a lot of fun to play.

 

[Olli]

One deck I've tried recently is a "draw cards" deck:

• Quinjet gives everything that didn't originate in your deck a one-point smaller energy cost
• The Collector (2/1) gets +1 power whenever a card enters from your hand from anywhere except your deck
• The Sentinel finally makes some sense now
• Agent 13 adds a random card to your hand
• Nick Fury (5/7) adds 3 random 6 power cards to your hand
• etc

It's pretty fun, especially given how you can get a lot of random cards to puzzle over.

 

[ShakeWell]

I've built a deck around Infinaut and it seems borderline broken.

Hot Set Ups for Infinaut: First and foremost is Sunspot who gets extra power when you don't spend energy. Since The Infinaut requires you to not play a card the turn before you use him, this gives Sunspot a +5 buff in the penultimate turn (in most games). Second: the Storm/Jessica Jones combo. Infinaut basically wins a location for you, so the goal in your setup is to win another one before he comes out, an easy way to do this is with Storm and Jessica Jones. Since Storm kills one location with a final turn to play cards, there's no danger of accidentally nerfing your own Jessica, and it's unlikely your opponent will be able to move fast enough to overcome the two ladies.

It's not foolproof, of course, there will always be games where you don't draw the Infinaut, but in most games where he's in your hand before turn 5, it's close to a guaranteed win because I don't think there's another card with a base power as high as his, and even stuff like Devil Dinosaur can't get enough power with a full hand to overcome him. Plus, if you're lucky you can pull him with a Jubilee and not have to worry about the downside. I keep an Iron Man in my deck for just such an occasion.

 

[Daikaiju]

Doc Ock is underwhelming.

 

[Daikaiju]

The TVA node will override the Limbo node. Be warned.

 

[Olli]

I've built a deck around Infinaut and it seems borderline broken.

Hot Set Ups for Infinaut: First and foremost is Sunspot who gets extra power when you don't spend energy. Since The Infinaut requires you to not play a card the turn before you use him, this gives Sunspot a +5 buff in the penultimate turn (in most games). Second: the Storm/Jessica Jones combo. Infinaut basically wins a location for you, so the goal in your setup is to win another one before he comes out, an easy way to do this is with Storm and Jessica Jones. Since Storm kills one location with a final turn to play cards, there's no danger of accidentally nerfing your own Jessica, and it's unlikely your opponent will be able to move fast enough to overcome the two ladies.

It's not foolproof, of course, there will always be games where you don't draw the Infinaut, but in most games where he's in your hand before turn 5, it's close to a guaranteed win because I don't think there's another card with a base power as high as his, and even stuff like Devil Dinosaur can't get enough power with a full hand to overcome him. Plus, if you're lucky you can pull him with a Jubilee and not have to worry about the downside. I keep an Iron Man in my deck for just such an occasion.

I tried this and couldn't make it work. I did manage to pull a few wins, but getting Storm and a 4-cost heavy hitter (Typhoid Mary works too) AND Infinaut just didn't work out that often. A single 20 power card wasn't enough to win a location reliably, either. Maybe I was missing some glue cards.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I’m really liking Ebon Maw; his shortcomings are a definite concern, but there’s lots of ways to work around them, significant as they are

 

[ShakeWell]

Ebony Maw was in my deck for a while, but his locking the location is just too much.

In other news, I finally got a Bucky for my Discard/Destroy deck which really took it to the next level. Hoping to pull a Venom for that deck soon, Carnage is good, but Venom is next-level on that.

@Olli Jubilee really helps, if you haven't pulled Infinaut by your fifth turn, but have her in your hand, you have pretty good luck pulling him out without penalty. I also like to keep Hobgoblin handy for that occasion, as well.

My current Infinaut deck is:
Sunspot
Iceman
Angela
Scorpion
Armor
Lizard
Morph
Storm
Jubilee
Jessica Jones
Hobgoblin
Infinaut

 

[ShakeWell]

I have wrestling Taskmaster. Repeat, I have wrestling Taskmaster.

 

[ShakeWell]

Anyone else still playing this? I got Knull and Galactus back-to-back and they're downright fucking nasty in the same deck. I'm climbin' those ranks.

Also: They finally made it so Wolverine doesn't suck ass, and a datamine found a variant based on "sad in bed Logan looking at a picture of Jean Grey," which is amazing.

 

[Felicia]

Anyone else still playing this? I got Knull and Galactus back-to-back and they're downright fucking nasty in the same deck. I'm climbin' those ranks.

As a Swede, I congratulate you on getting Knull. It's always nice getting a good Knull.

 

[estragon]

I started this recently. I think the balance of the Pool 1 cards makes for a really fun game. Some of the cards in later Pools seem like they might ruin the balance, but at some point the opportunities for collector level increases are bottlenecked by the trickle of credits from a few daily missions unless you're paying real money, so I don't have to worry about that for a while still. If I ever get to the point of Pool 2 I'll have gotten more than enough enjoyment out of the thing, so I'm not particularly worried about that happening.

I had heard that monetization is not too bad, but as someone who typically does not play games with this structure at all I have to say that it looks really bad to me! You can definitely ignore it and enjoy the game, and that's what I'm doing. But the whole game is definitely designed structured around creating the feeling, "I've earned all these boosters that I can't use unless I pay real money for credits, and it would be so easy to just buy some credits and get a ton of new cards, right now." I know that it's standard for the genre and not unique to this game, and maybe it's much less bad than it's peers—but it's extremely exploitative/manipulative judged on its own merits.

At least during Pool 1, the game itself has a really strong balance of elements from engine building games and CCGs with just enough interaction between players to keep it from being multiplayer solitaire in parallel and just enough randomness enabled by it being a video game to keep it from feeling rote, but not so much that it feels like the winner is totally arbitrary.