Marvel Snap - The new highly addictive mobile card game

Marvel Snap came out of beta a couple weeks ago for Android, IOS, and Steam and I am hopeless addicted. The game play itself is fairly simple: You build a deck of 12 cards, each having their own energy cost and power. Over six turns, you play your cards at one of three random locations. Your energy you can spend is equal to each turn (so 1 energy on turn 1, 2 on turn 2, etc.) with no rollover. Meaning, in general, you playing weak cards upfront and your strongest cards at the end. You win a location by having the most power there, win 2 of the 3 locations, and you win the game.

That’s where the game starts, but there’s a number of reasons of why I can’t put it down.

  1. The wide variety of different card and location abilities. Some cards let you move other cards, some add power depending on how many cards are on the board or in your hand, some destroy other cards, and so on. And there’s a good amount of theming. For example, Venom and Carnage both eat your other cards, adding power in different ways. The Guardians of the Galaxy cards all increase their power if you play them at the same time and place as your opponent. The new Wakanda Falls location has all cards literally battle each other there, destroying the weakest ones.

  2. The SNAP system. The way ranking works is that the winner of each games gets 2 points, and the loser loses 2 points. You go up in rank every 10 points you earn. If you think you aren’t going to win, you can retreat early only losing 1 point. But, if you’re confident (or if you want to bluff) you can hit the SNAP button doubling all points there on. Of course, your opponent can to, meaning the final round could be worth up to 8 points.

  3. The games are fast, 6 rounds, with a 30-ish second timer each round, meaning you’re never stuck in a game for more than a few minutes. And so far, I haven’t run into any delay finding a game.

  4. The big one here: It’s not pay-to-win. All cards are separated into 3 tiers. As you complete missions and (cosmetically) upgrade your cards, you randomly unlock the cards from one tier. You won’t go onto the next tier (and play against people from that tier) until you get all the cards. You could theoretically pay money to get more cards faster, but that would do is bump you up against players with those cards. And I’ve never once felt like “Oh, I had no chance of winning because my opponent had some super-powerful card that I don’t have.”

One of my kids recommended Snap to me and, so far, it’s pretty fun and addictive. As a veteran of Hearthstone, I like that I’m generally going up against players with the same skill/card power level. And the anticipation of getting new cards is actually fun, as is deck building.

I can see, however, the reasons I’ll likely put it down in a month or so: 1) It has a very high variance (some games are all but done after the first couple rounds), 2) The card getting progression is seriously slowing down and is much more random, 3) there is a predictablely to the decks I’m beginning to face.

Still, the ability to escape and the backgammon esque snapping make it interesting.

Although I will say the “Congrats you hit your combo” losses make it a lot less fun.

Thanks for the review! I’ve looked at it, but hadn’t decided whether or not to play. That third point is the selling point for me.

It’s excellent for a free-to-play, progression is paced well without having to spend any money. Money will let one progress a bit faster to collecting cards, getting special ‘seasonal’ cards, or getting cosmetic items…but definitely doesn’t seem to give much, if any, playing advantages against free players. Overpowered “I win” cards don’t seem to be a problem.

I like that card decks are small, so it is easy to build or tweak decks without spending hours of head-scratching. My only complaint is that the decks are a bit too small and the games a bit too simple, so I don’t know if it has legs for long-term interest. It’s seems to be about an even 1:1:1 ratio between Random Draw : Deck Strategy : Playing Tactics so frustration level against other players with better decks isn’t too bad and I can still win regularly just by experimentation.

You do hit (slam into, really) a progression wall as you move up the collection track, but I saw that they’re going to be adding a crafting component to allow players to work towards specific cards. I’ve been enjoying the game enough to even consider some real-money purchases, but the dollar:progression ratio seems extremely inefficient if you’re deep into the track.

Otherwise the game is awesome per the reasons in the OP. The small decks mean every card choice counts. You can run Killmonger and Shang-Chi to protect against several types of decks, but that’s also ~15% of your space filled by cards that are dead weight if they don’t get to do their thing. But man does it feel goooood to play a single card and completely wreck somebody’s board.

I’ve got the pieces to build several deck archetypes (move, discard, destroy, etc), but my best one is still a super standard “on reveal” deck.

I’m having pretty good success right now running a ‘spoiler’ deck with Elektra, ShangChi, Yondu to disrupt opponent’s deck, Scarlet to disrupt the board play, and the rest a mix of random ‘on reveal’ cards with Odin to stuff points on the board.

I run Yondu, Killmonger, Scorpion, and Shang-Chi for spoiler mechanics. Most of my point potential is from Morph, White Tiger, and Odin.

I actually think my deck is a little too spread out. I rarely see “kazoo” decks (one-drops plus Ka-zar) anymore and could probably drop Killmonger. Scorpion/Morph is a combo that actively works against itself because you can end up copying a debuffed card.

Plus, Morph is in that “terrible except when he’s amazing” category and I probably shouldn’t rely on that kind of rng if I want to try and climb ranks.

Nothing quite like seeing him copy a card like Infinaut, though!

I’ve been running a destroy deck (Venom, Nova, and Bucky) with the Wakanda Falls as the current “chosen” location. But I’ve recently unlocked Cloak and Vulture, so I might update my Move deck and try it again.

Morph is my “Well, I don’t really have a chance to win this, but no one’s snapped, so I might as well play it.” card. And then he usually turns into a rock.

Against most decks he’s definitely best on turn 5, when you hope your opponent’s hand is mostly high-value cards.

But I love randomness and can’t resist playing him on 3 and hoping for a blowout.

But yeah, those fucking rocks.

One thing I’m noticing as I climb the ranks is that there are a ton more retreats and snaps if a single thing, whether it’s a bad draw on the first location or a well placed Cosmo, goes wrong. Its kinda annoying, because every other game is over before Round 4.

I had a fun game last night where the opponent and I played the exact same cards in the same locations turn for turn through turn 5. He snapped at the end of turn 5. I had a feeling he was going to play Heimdall and win (both playing move decks and I didn’t draw him), but I still didn’t retreat because I had to see how it would end. He won, we fist-bumped, and moved on.

I know there’s going to be a “friends” mode coming soon. I hope you get to send friend events to people after you play them.