Since the release of the wildly successful Hearthstone in 2014, we’ve seen numerous digital collectible card games (CCGs) hit our devices. GWENT (2018), Magic The Gathering: Arena (2019), and The Elder Scrolls: Legends (2017) all looked to capitalize on the blossoming digital card game genre with varying success. I was an enthusiastic player of Hearthstone in the early years, and I’ve dabbled in other card games, but this year’s release of Marvel Snap brought me back into the genre with delight.
Marvel Snap removes the bloat that vexes many collectible card games by streamlining the entire process, from building your deck to playing matches. Each deck consists of 12 cards with no duplicates, so once you’ve found a couple of cards to build your strategy around, filling out the rest is a breeze. Games consist of six rounds and often end earlier, thanks to the titular Snap action. I found myself whipping through four or five games in under an hour, making quick tweaks to my deck as I went. Marvel Snap is a breath of fresh air that’s a must-play for all CCG fans.
Marvel Snap: Rapid-fire, strategic CCG gameplay
Matches in Marvel Snap are straightforward on the surface but offer players multiple avenues to success. At its core is a simple Energy/Power mechanic. After each round in Marvel Snap, your max energy pool increases by one and then refreshes at the beginning of each new round.
Cards cost energy, with the most expensive cards boasting high power levels and game-changing abilities. However, what keeps each match fresh is the board’s division into three unique locations, all hidden at the beginning of the game. Each location has a randomized ability chosen at the start of the game — and revealed one by one over the first three turns. Players win by having the largest power in at least two locations.
Marble Snap is a game of bluffing at heart, so predicting your opponent’s actions and leading them into traps is essential to reaching victory.
Before each round, players decide where to play cards and then confirm their choice. Once both players have confirmed, cards are placed face-down simultaneously, with the player currently winning the most locations revealing their cards first. At any point during the game, a player can Snap, doubling the stakes. Each game of Marvel Snap is played for Cosmic Cubes, which determines where you stand on the ranked ladder. Initially, one cube is up for grabs, but this is doubled in Turn 6 and when either player Snaps. This move can bring the pot up to a massive eight cubes.
What if your opponent Snaps early, and you’re not confident? You can retreat and avoid giving up too many of your precious cubes. The ranked ladder is divided into 100 tiers, each requiring ten cubes to rank up. A loss of 8 cubes is a significant loss, so walking away early from a game helps losses become more palatable.
I’m usually a strict casual gamer, so the lack of alternate game modes initially put me off. However, Marvel Snap made me realize this reaction resulted from years of intimidating deck-building mechanics in other CCGs. It’s easy to identify strong or weak combos with a limit of 12 cards per deck and digestible card abilities.
Cards in Marvel Snap can be divided into groups with a shared ability. There are five main types at the time of writing, each unique. The most common abilities are Ongoing cards, where these abilities persist for the entire game, and On Reveal, which can be triggered only once. More dramatic traits include Discard and Destroy, which remove cards from your hand or board, respectively. Many powerful decks can be built by grouping cards with shared abilities, which is a reliable strategy until you get to higher-level play.
Fortunately, this simplification of cards and decks doesn’t make the gameplay boring, thanks to the varied locations. The three locations in each game are randomly chosen from a pool of over 50 unique options based on Marvel locations such as Oscorp Tower and the Dark Dimension. You won’t see all of them until Turn 3.
Having a core strategy in mind is vital, but locations can force you to rethink your plan entirely. While some won’t be massively impactful initially (e.g., increasing the power of all cards in your hands by one), correctly utilizing these effects can turn a slight advantage into a crushing landslide. On the other hand, some locations cause a dramatic shift in gameplay, such as preventing cards from being placed for the rest of the game.
But managing your cards and your locations is only half the battle. Marble Snap is a game of bluffing at heart, so predicting your opponent’s actions and leading them into traps is essential to reaching victory. With only 150 cards available, it doesn’t take long to pick up common strategies and identify what your opponent is planning.
Having a core strategy in mind is vital, but locations can force you to rethink your plan entirely.
The disruption caused by locations may be unwelcome for those who prefer honing a strategy to perfection and obliterating opponents with flawlessly timed card draw. To an extent, I sympathize with this. Having a consistent strategy is challenging when each match is entirely different, but Marvel Snap is a game of adapt or die.
Building a deck that accommodates change and includes backups (challenging when you’ve only got 12 cards to play with) lets you play with the locations rather than against them. Still, there are regular “featured locations” where a specific location will often appear, so building a deck isn’t the worst decision to make. It adds consistency to matches without removing Marvel Snap’s special chaos.
Marvel Snap: Collecting cards is fair but slow
Of course, what happens outside the match in a CCG is just as important. This might be where Marvel Snap falters slightly with its simplistic approach to everything, which takes a little of the excitement out of collecting cards. It’s one of the fairest games regarding monetization, though. Yes, paying real money will speed up your card collection; however, it won’t take long to build a decent deck through gameplay.
Unlock cards in Marvel Snap by upgrading your existing ones. Each card offers a few variants with different art styles upgraded with in-game currency, universal Credits, and card-specific (not variant-specific) Boosters. When you complete a match, you are rewarded with Boosters for one of your cards, and Credits are earned by completing daily missions and increasing your collection level. Upgrading a card changes its visuals, including 3D effects and subtle animations. And the upgrade raises your collection level. It’s an amusingly circular process but satisfying enough to make it worthwhile.
You can buy Credits to upgrade your cards, but there’s a limit on how many times you can do this, so you’ll mostly be earning your way to unlocking different cards. Also, there are no packs here; you’ll unlock cards one by one through the collection track.
Cards within the collection track are split into three pools to help ease new players into the game. Each pool contains the same cards, but the order in which players unlock them is random. Cards in Pool 1 are straightforward, offering easy-to-understand synergies for beginners. Pool 3 cards, on the other hand, provide high-level players with powerful cards that can unlock truly devastating combos.
Unlocking all the cards in Pools 1 and 2 took me just under 40 hours, but my pace has slowed to a glacial crawl. Cards in these pools are unlocked at specific collection levels, but these cards are replaced by “Collector’s Caches” in Pool 3. Collector’s Caches have the chance to unlock either a new card, Credits, or Boosters.
Pool 3 starts at Collection Level 486, but it will take a long time for you to collect all the cards. One Reddit user unlocked their final card at collection level 3,233, with commenters mentioning they were missing many cards while in the 2,000s. With the best meta decks revolving around specific Pool 3 cards, you can expect a significant grind before you’re able to compete with the best.
The latest game grind is a shame, especially compared to the rapid advancement in the earlier collection levels. This isn’t as big of an issue as it sounds, as Pool 2 decks are varied and competitive enough to keep things interesting, but you’ll get whiplash from how quickly progression changes. A planned “Collector’s Tokens” feature will allow you to buy individual cards, but there’s no release date for the tokens yet.
Ironically, despite the only playable game mode being ranked, Marvel Snap feels like the most beginner-friendly CCG I’ve ever played. Despite the glacial progress at the higher collector levels, it rarely feels like a significant problem. Keeping the most competitive cards at higher collection levels ensures that those who unlock them will likely be playing in the higher ranks. Beginners have plenty of time to learn the game’s mechanics before encountering these formidable meta decks.
Marvel Snap: Easy-to-swallow monetization
Marvel Snap’s approach to monetization is far better than most of its brethren. Not once have I felt vital content was locked behind a paywall, as playing the game regularly unlocked all the content I wanted. The only two things to spend money on are Gold and the season pass.
Gold is used to purchase card variants or credits. You can only buy variants of cards you already own, and credits are purchasable a limited number of times a day. Each day, you’ll have a selection of cards you can upgrade exclusively with Credits, but it’s recommended to skip it. Overall, it’s a fair system that discourages abuse.
The season pass can only be bought with cash and comes with an array of card variants, boosters, icons, gold, and credits. None of this will significantly change your gameplay, but the variants and icons are worth it. Also, there are free rewards within, and you can always buy the season pass later.
Overall, Marvel Snap’s monetization is fair and not pointless. It would have been easy for the game to go down the predatory route and lock many individual cards behind paywalls. Instead, daily missions reward you with credits and season pass points, which are refreshed every eight hours. Additional season pass missions offer more points, which are gradually unlocked over the weeks the season pass is around.
The future of Marvel Snap
A plethora of features are on the way, such as unranked modes, private games, guilds, and additional competitive modes. I can’t help but worry that Marvel Snap will lose its magic in a year or two with too many upgrades.
Overall I’m completely hooked on Marvel Snap’s rapid-fire strategic gameplay that keeps me playing long after I’ve completed my missions. Brevity is Marvel Snap’s strength, and while I’m concerned for its future, I still have high hopes.
