Marvel Snap OTA Balance Updates – June 22nd 2023

One of the advantages of a digital card game is that balancing of the cards can be done on-the-fly, or as it’s called in Marvel Snap, On the Air. With a lot of data from thousands upon thousands of matches, the developer can fairly easily spot the culprits of the staleness of the meta, as well as the “imbalanced” cards that should be dealt with. While the balance team of Second Dinner has had some hits and misses regarding their actions (and timing of them), I am fairly certain that you will love this OTA balance update. So, let’s see what Second Dinner’s balancing team has thought of for the June 22 Balance Patch for Marvel Snap.

Marvel Snap June 22, 2023 Patch Nerfs and Buffs

Not many cards have been changed but this will certainly shake up the meta a bit. In fact, I can’t wait to finish posting this article and try out some new decks. I will bring you the changes below, along with the developer commentary, and my own commentary.

Doctor Doom Nerf

[Old] 6/5 – On Reveal: Add a 5-Power DoomBot to each other location.
[New] 6/5 – On Reveal: Add a 4-Power DoomBot to each other location.

Doctor Doom is our most-played 6-Cost card by a large margin and for good reason. His ability to spread power and bypass restrictive locations makes him an excellent card in many past and current top decks like Lockdown, Electro Ramp, and Lockjaw. In fact, he’s so good at contesting “closed” locations that he actually encourages decks to be built around doing so more often. By taking 1 Power off his DoomBots, we’re looking to tone down his overall strength and improve the diversity among our 6-Cost cards in top decks. While we’re sad to lose the symmetry between Doctor Doom and his DoomBots, we hope this will bring his decks more in line with the rest of the competition–besides, Doom’s tougher than a Doombot.
Second Dinner

This was a long-time coming change. I can’t even tell you how many games I’ve lost with 1 or 2 Power differences just because my opponent managed to “fish out” a Doctor Doom with Lockjaw on the last turn when it’s the only mathematical way out of a loss (and I, logically, take the chance of going through with playing out instead of retreating). It will still be a powerful card, you can still ramp Doctor Doom up on Turn 4/5 and then repeat the effect with Odin later, but it will be much less prevalent.

Red Skull Buff

[Old] 5/12 – Ongoing: Enemy cards at this location have +1 Power.
[New] 5/14 – Ongoing: Enemy cards at this location have +2 Power.

Red Skull terrorized our meta for a while in a strong partnership with Shuri. Now that Shuri has been nerfed, we felt it was a good time to restore Red Skull to a higher value. Red Skull is a more interesting card with more base Power and a more detrimental Ongoing effect. This has helped him perform well in decks with cards like Enchantress, Sauron, and of course Shuri. We hope powering up Red Skull will give these decks a boost and create more meta diversity. Sorry, Cerebro.
Second Dinner

Yes, we all remember the Shuri partnership and the time it took to address the issue. Red Skull was curb-stomped way more than it was justified. Let’s have fun with some Zero and Sauron decks now, shall we? And yeah, Red Skull is a peak anti-Cerebro card.

Nimrod Buff

[Old] 5/5 – When this is destroyed, add a copy to each other location.
[New] 5/6 – When this is destroyed, add a copy to each other location.

This one’s been on our wishlist for a while, but we’d been wary of it for fear of making Galactus more popular as a consequence since that was the most popular Nimrod deck. Now that we’ve shipped our Galactus Nerf, we’re confident in giving Nimrod a small boost that will hopefully make him more promising fodder for Forge, Shuri, and Venom. We’ve also got some upcoming cards we expect to reward destroying cards even more, so stay tuned for those synergies!
Second Dinner

I… am not sure if this is right. But hey, give the Nimrod Destroy Decks some love after DeathWave has died.

Nick Fury Buff

[Old] 5/7 – On Reveal: Add 3 random 6-Cost cards to your hand.
[New] 4/5 – On Reveal: Add 3 random 6-Cost cards to your hand.

Nick Fury has never quite found a place to shine. As a 5-Cost that grants 6-Cost cards, there’s not much time to take advantage of the cards he spawns. By bumping him down to a 4-Cost, effects like Titan and Quinjet give players the opportunity to play two of his reinforcements on turns 5 and 6. Plus, it gives Agent Coulson the ability to give Nick a call when he’s in a jam and could use some avenging. We’re excited to see what you’ll assemble with Nick Fury’s new stats!
Second Dinner

They’re correct. Nick Fury seems to have been a utility card that served to expand your hand for Devil Dinosaur, or maybe a part of a convoluted combo that discards your entire hand full of those high-cost cards, only to have them restored by Hela later on. Right now, Nick Fury is a 4-cost card, which allows interactions with Zabu, and you will manage to use Quinjet better.

Pig Nerf

[Old] 4/0 – “oink!”
[New] 0/0 – “oink!”

Spider-Ham’s token wasn’t meant to consider its own base cost to be 4, and that has some interactions with cards and locations like Zabu and Asteroid M that just isn’t intuitive to play with. We’re adjusting it to 0-Cost to avoid those interactions.
Second Dinner

You probably had question marks above your head when you saw me adding “Zabu” as a counter to Spider-Ham.

Bonus OTA: KrakoNAH

With this update, we’re also taking Krakoa out of the game to be redesigned at a future date. Turn 5s everywhere rejoice!
Second Dinner

I support the removal of all restrictive, fun-killing locations.

That’s it. The next update is scheduled for July 11 and will be a major patch day in Marvel Snap according to the schedule. I can’t wait to see what Second Dinner will do with the balancing. In the meantime, check out Everything You Need to Know About Conquest Mode in Marvel Snap and How to Get to Infinite Rank in Marvel Snap: Complete First-hand Experience Guide From a Card Game Enthusiast, as well as our other content for Marvel Snap under the game tag below.

Marvel Snap