Marvel Snap’s Latest Patch Tones Down Mr. Negative; Sera & Magik Left Untouched

If you’ve played Marvel Snap in the last month or so, you’ll quickly notice that the meta is currently dominated by Negative Sera decks. This deck combines negative terrifying power, Sera’s ability to reduce the cost of cards by one turn, and Magik’s unexpected turn 6 move to extend the game by one turn.

Second Dinner just released a new patch to rebalance a whole bunch of cards, and while Mr. Negative took a hard hit, Sera and Magik are still safe for now. Here are the changes:

• Anim Zola: A copy of the card is no longer added if his target is not destroyed.
• Baron Mordo: [2/3] When the cards are revealed: Your opponent draws a card. Set its cost to 6.

Developer Comments: The cost increase of Baron Mordo tends to be very inconsequential in practice. We’re increasing the cost marker of his effect to make it more impactful.

• Jessica Jones: [4/4] On Reveal: +4 Strength if you don’t play a card here next turn.

Developer Comments: Jessica Jones’ effect is a bit too suffocating to rely on turn 6. So we’re working on a variation similar to Rescue, where turning her into a 4 mana card would make her effect more useful.

• Mrs Sif: [2/4] -> [3/4]

Developer Comments: Mrs. Sif is very powerful in combination with many other cards, especially on high-strength 2-cost cards, so we’ve bumped her up to 3-cost.

• Mr. Negative: [4/4] -> [4/1]

Developer Comments: Mister Negative decks are very powerful and tend to have an unhealthy game mode of skipping your first few rounds. We’re reducing the power of Mr. Negative to tone down the deck. While this may seem like a big change, the power of the deck is mostly in the cards that Mr. Negative hits, so we don’t think it’s going to be a huge blow to the overall power of the deck.

• Professor X: In Progress: Lock this position. (Cards cannot be added, removed, etc.)

Developer Comments: We’re making Professor X’s text more general, as expectations for his effects tend to be more in line with “this location is locked and nothing happens” rather than “only these effects in parentheses are disabled”. With this change, Professor X will now prevent cards from switching ownership, such as Hobgoblins.

• Spiderman: [4/2] -> [4/3]

Developer Comments: Spider-Man is a little weak right now, so we gave him extra power to help him.

Developer Comments: Reducing Thor’s cost should give players more flexibility when playing him, and also allow more time to draw Quake.

5-Cost Card Update

• disgust: [5/8] -> [5/9]
• aviation: [5/6] -> [5/8]
• black thunder: [5/7] -> [5/8]
• blue wonder: [6/4] -> [5/3]
• Demon Dinosaur: [4/0] -> [5/3]
• Gamora: [5/7] On Reveal: If your opponent played a card here this turn, +5 Strength.
• Crowe: [5/4] In Progress: The right position has +6 Strength.
• red skull: [5/14] -> [5/15]
• Ronan: [5/0] Ongoing: +3 Strength per card in the opponent’s hand.
• spider woman: [4/4] -> [5/7]

6 Cost Card Update

• Agatha Harkness: [6/13] -> [6/14]
• Hulk: [6/11] -> [6/12]
• onslaught: [6/6] -> [6/7]
• spectrum: [6/4] -> [6/5]
• Ultron: [6/8] On display: Create four 1-Power drones in place of each other.

Developer Comments: Many of our 5 and 6 cost cards don’t live up to their high energy costs. We also wanted to give our 5-Cost cards more identity, as many of them currently have fairly simple effects compared to many other cards in Snap. We’re making a bunch of balance changes for the 5- and 6-mana ranges to help some underperforming cards, as well as some more interesting options at 5-mana.

Thor has seen more play lately, and his lower cost definitely helps make him stronger when used in a round-robin deck with Jane Foster as a follow-on Lockjaw. One of the biggest surprises here is Ms. Sif nerf, as she’s one of the mainstays of discard decks, allowing you to reliably discard other large minions in Apocalypse or Hela’s deck on turn 2. As her cost goes up to 3, she might be a little harder to use.

Baron Mordo is arguably the biggest winner in Marvel Snap’s latest patch, as he was previously widely regarded as the weakest hand in the entire game. Previously, his ability forced the opponent to draw a card and increased the cost by 1. His new ability now increases the cost to 6, which can disrupt your opponent’s entire game plan, depending on the cards they draw.

Several Pool 1/2 cards are also getting nice buffs in this patch, along with some key work-in-progress cards. While Negative Serum decks will likely continue to play a big role in the Marvel Snap meta, we should start seeing more changes to played decks soon.

Marvel Snap will launch globally on October 18th.