Yes, the much-awaited Battle Mode update for Marvel Snap is finally here.
Developed by Second Dinner and published by Nuverse, Marvel Snap is a digital collectible card game where players build decks of 12 cards and battle against other players. The Battle Mode update allows players to challenge their friends as opposed to going up against random opponents. Second Dinner's chief development officer, Ben Brode, spoke about the new update, saying:
Since the start of our Beta Tests, players have been asking, 'When can I play against friends?!' And so we are stoked to announce that the ability to Battle against friends is finally live for players worldwide.
We’ve been testing Friendly Battles for literally years, whether by running internal tournaments or just testing our favorite decks against colleagues. Now that it’s in the hands of players, I can’t wait to see where it’ll go from here.
Besides the new Battle Mode, the update also features the first Series Drops, wherein extremely rare cards are released every month, becoming more available to players in the game. Since cards in a higher Series are difficult to acquire, the update will periodically drop a limited number of popular cards into the next lower series to even out the chances of players acquiring these particular rare cards. On January 31, the first Series Drop saw nine cards move down a series.
Here is a breakdown of the first Series Drop:
Cards moving from Series 5 to Series 4 are:
- Bast
- Black Panther
- Shuri
- Super Skrull
- Valkyrie
Cards moving from Series 4 to Series 3 are:
Most players looking to see the Silver Surfer and Zabu season pass cards dropped will be left unsatisfied with the first Series drop. According to a tweet from Second Dinner's Principal Game Designer, Glenn Jones, the two cards "started overperforming" after the developers locked the changes in the update.
The new patch includes balance changes, but not to Surfer or Zabu. They started overperforming after we locked the changes a few weeks ago. Fortunately we now have the ability to adjust balance without a new patch, and we are planning to adjust those cards in a week or so.
However, the Leader and Wolverine cards received considerable changes.
Here are the outlined updates:
Leader: [6/7]
- On Reveal: Copy all cards your opponent played to the location to the right, but on your side.
- Dev Note: Leader is a prominent "finisher" in the current Snap meta, and we’re not happy with some of the card choices and play patterns he encourages, especially his strength against other cool 6-cost cards.
- We’re changing Leader to only copy cards played at the location to his right, with more base Power to compensate. We hope that this change will reward clever predictions and reduce the frustration of playing against him.
Wolverine: [2/2]
- When this is discarded or destroyed, regenerate it at a random location with +2 Power.
- Dev Note: Wolverine sees virtually no play at the moment, which is a bummer given how iconic he is. We’re giving him a substantial buff to reward players for activating his effect and create new deckbuilding options at both low and high collection levels.
- Note: We have updated his text from "play" to "regenerate" to better reflect his gameplay functionality. This is purely a flavor and clarity choice.
