Patch Review
The Marvel Snap patch on Tuesday brought some expected changes, some surprises and plenty of interesting future content! We'll help you make sense of it all and highlight the important information from the latest patch.
Banish
The new keyword banish was finally put onto some cards and locations. We already knew Agamotto's Ancient Arcana would have the banish text, but Yondu was a surprise! On the surface this may seem like a small change to Yondu, but he loses his synergy with Fenris Wolf, Knull, and, most importantly, Death. Personally, I'll be replacing Yondu in my “mill” decks with something like Nico Minoru, Iceman or Spider-Ham. He was already the weakest card in the deck and now he's… banished from it.
Hotel Inferno also got changed to banish. Like Yondu, Hotel Inferno doesn't currently have VFX, so be sure to check the game log to see what was banished.
Tool Tips
A great new feature that will allow Marvel Snap to stay accessible, even while it grows in complexity, the new tool tips are an unexpected but welcome quality of life addition. This should open up design space for the development team since they know whatever complicated and interesting designs they come up with are aided by this new feature.
What If…? Season
Several of the April cards received text changes.
Captain Carter got an extra point of power, as did Hydra Stomper, and Dum Dum Duggan (who doesn't have a release date or method). Strange Supreme got a much needed extra two points. I still don't know if Strange Supreme will merge with a card from any location (or even your hand) or not, so he's a little harder to evaluate. We also have clearer text for Infinity Ultron’s Stones. This looks to be a really fun card.
We also got a minor change to the card that is scheduled to be available from High Voltage near the end of the season. The First Ghost Rider would probably have been my pick for the strongest card of the season at 2/6, but he's still quite good at 2/5.
New X-Men Season
May's season looks like it will be themed around the New X-Men! This is a bit of a surprise since we had no prior indications! Second Dinner is getting better at hiding from us. It seems to be a mix of characters that featured heavily on Grant Morrison's classic New X-Men run and the later, unrelated, 2004 series with a solid rub by Kyle and Yost.
Upon first glance, these cards all seem interesting and particularly spot on from a flavor perspective. Esme Cuckoo is similar to Agent Venom in some ways and will be great with cards like Gorr, Iron Man, and Arnim Zola. Surge looks great and should fit in perfectly into a deck like Wiccan or anything that is happy to chain cards in the way she requires. Elixir is perfect for combo shenanigans. Prodigy is our next card to reference board placement, and Mercury finally gives us a one-card tech move decks. I'm not super convinced by Xorn from a power level perspective, but he's perfect from a lore/flavor perspective. Hellion appears simple but he is an excellent card that will allow certain midrange decks to dominate games. Lastly, Kid Omega is the best of the bunch, though I wish they'd titled the card Quentin Quire. There are quite a few combos I can already see for him, but as a baseline he might just help classic destroy decks return to the meta after a rough couple of months. Here's a quick, off-the-cuff ranking (remember, card this far out are highly subject to change):
- Kid Omega
- Hellion
- Esme Cuckoo
- Surge
- Prodigy
- Elixir
- Mercury
- Xorn
Cobra has a variant with a release date of May 15th, so he could be a card given out in a May Limited Time Mode.
Randomly generated Variants!
Another surprise (and accidental???) addition was the introduction of themed variants among created cards. Playing Dan Hipp Shanna? Now she'll make Dan Hipp 1 drops! Have a Pandart Iron Patriot? He makes Pandart variants! This seems to apply to Hipp, Pandart, and Pixel variants so far. It's been a pleasant surprise, but was it intentional?
Second Dinner had this to say:
Bundles of Interest
The newly datamined Gold bundles don't have prices attached, but there are some interesting paid bundles.
Final Thoughts
This patch brought a couple of very welcome surprises in the form of tool tips and variants of created cards. April looks like an interesting season, and I'm super pumped for the New X-Men cards in May. We don't have any strong indications about June and July, but the magical characters found in the datamines last month and a Fantastic Four themed season to coincide with the new film are safe bets. As always, you'll find out about new upcoming content here before anywhere else. Let me know which new X-Men cards you're most excited for in the comments!