TL;DR: Marvel Snap is both an incredible digital collectible card game AND the worst game I've played for the past 12 months since it's global release.
Confused? Allow me to explain.
Marvel Snap is a free-to-play game design around building a deck of cards, with individual cards being designed around the abilities of their retrospective characters within the Marvel universe. With an initial "easy to learn, hard to master", each player in the 1v1 arena can bring with then 12 cards from their respective collections of digital cards, earned through progression of the players "collection level".
The game board upon which our players dual houses three "locations" which like the cards of the game have their own relevant influences over the game's state based upon the marvel universe.
Each location is typically revealed after each "turn" of the game. Each game, again typically, is played out over the course of 6 turns, with each turn allocating each player an additional point of "energy" which allows a number of cards to be played again based on their amount of energy said cards cost to play. The goal is to win two out of three locations, the winning condition (again, typically) being the player with the most "power" at that location.
Consider everyone's favourite Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man: a 3 energy cost card with 5 power. This is a card that, again typically, cannot be played on turns 1 or 2, given that turn 1 only allows for a single point of energy to be played and turn 2 allows for two. If you were to play the Spider-Man card on turn three on a location occupied by a card of the opposing player, the Spider-Man's card has the unique ability of moving to a random location other than that they were played upon AND using it's iconic web-shooters to drag an opposing card to the same location that card moved to. Not only is Spider-Man a relatively powerful card, being both 3 energy to play but putting 5 power on your side of the board, it adds an additionally technical element in that it disrupts whatever plan the opposing player may of had for the card they played across from the location you played your own card.
That simple illustration above helps paint a picture of how seemingly simple choice of picking 12 cards for your own deck can be, and part of what makes Marvel Snap such a good card game on the surface: do you pair Spider-Man with Angela, a card that gains 2 power for every card played at that location, to allow for both a buff from Spider-Man being played there as well as freeing up a space for another card to be played at that location, further buffing Angela? Or do you pair Spider-Man with the notorious Kraven the Hunter, a card that gains power for every card that moves to it's location, meaning you may power both from Spider-Man moving to that location AND the card he pulled over with his web-shooters?
"Deck building" or "theory crafting" around how these cards interact is one of the best parts of Marvel Snap, and yet... sadly the completive nature of the game does not reward this kind of ingenuity in deck design to it's detriment.
Sure, you could be that guy that recognizes that if you lockdown other locations via cards such as the powerful X-Men characters "Professor X" or "Storm" (or even the abilities of the locations themselves preventing the play of cards there), forcing your opponents to play in a particular location that you can target with powerful cards like "Alioth", which destroys any cards played at that location leading to an almost guaranteed win.
The sad truth is that regardless if you came up with thee idea first or not, this is 2023. We have the internet. These ideas are quickly distributed to the world and EVERYONE quickly learns of the new hotness, the new "meta", and the wonderful world of unique deck building is quickly shoved to the side. This is a competitive game at it's core, and people have little incentive to play other than to win.
The passed two "seasons" (the inverted commas being necessary, as each "season" last a month) of Marvel Snap have seen incredibly powerful cards being tied to the "season pass" card, the new card players can obtain by spending money on the game (10USD to be precise). So not only are you pushed towards playing the same decks everyone is playing to try and be competitive, but you're now pushed into buying said "season" passes to remain competitive in the space. An added wrinkle? Those incredibly powerful cards have lead to absolutely debilitating nerfs that a lot of free-to-play players have been using to try and remain competitive, further encouraging people to buy those powerful cards.
Consider the most recent release: Elsa Bloodstone. Elsa's unique ability adds a +3 power buff to any card that fills hour a location. Coupled with cards like Kitty Pride, which returns to your hand each turn after being played, lead to a pre-emptive nerf to Kitty's previous 1-energy 1-power, +2 power on return to your hand, to a 1-energy 0-power, +1 power on return to your hand nerf. A heavy-handed approach to a card which, really, wouldn't have been a problem if Elsa's power had been kept in check (but hey, that wouldn't push season" pass sales, would it?).
This isn't the first time Marvel Snap has dealt with this kind of power creep: gone are the days of the initial Zabu and Silver Surfer releases and their inevitable nerfs early in 2023. However the game has grown since then, and the developer's ability to pivot in adjusting powerful cards quickly has long since been established. Elsa's ability to buff a card by +3 power when filling a location could very easily be adjusted to +2 as a quick band aid solution. A more long term solution of making Elsa's ability something that could be targeted and removed by "tech cards", such as making it "ongoing that could be removed or stolen by other cards may require more nuance, but do I see either of these happening within the current season to curb the cards power? Fuck no!
Two things I feel explain Marvel Snap's current knife edge of powerful card's being tied to the game's season pass: either there are separate teams at play designing the cards, and the current teams are the same that introduced the previous Zabu/Silver Surfer era of brain-dead pay-to-win decks. Or, Marvel Snap simply isn't doing well financially and making those "season" pass cards both desirable and behind a pay wall is in hope of keeping the game afloat. Both of which hard push me hard away from continuing to play, despite the manipulative and predatory design of the game to keep players logging in and playing every day, as is the way of any "free to play" game.
Is there a solution? Not one that I feel will appeal to both casual players of the game or the money-hungry execs at the top that want big returns on their investment.
The "Season" passes cost of 10USD each month and that already makes a mockery of the profits seen from the recent 70USD per game standard established since the release of the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series of consoles.
An "annual" pass for a years worth of content for the equivalent cost of a new Triple-A release, or A cheaper "Season" pass offering of say 5USD which could possibly offers players access to the "Season" pass card but less of the added value the 10USD pass currently offers may encourage more players to spend, but is still less than the 120USD they'd be making from every whale who religiously buys the pass. And a system that allows the use of premium currency, akin to the likes of juggernauts in "live game services" like Fortnite? Forget it.
Marvel Snap is in a bad place. I feel bad for the developers who have designed an incredible game in a genre I never would have bothered to dabble with. At the same time, I have hated my time with Marvel Snap for about as long as I can remember: I hate the incentive to play lest I lose out on being able to make progress toward my collection; I hate being forced in competitive scenarios every time I log on, meaning I can never log in just for fun or to play around with an idea for a deck that will punish me for not playing something competitive; I hate that my rank is constantly under threat, which in turns impedes the progress I would otherwise be making towards rewards I can earn in the following season.
And I can only assume this is all by design: to keep me playing, despite my desire to do anything else with my free time; to not divert my attention to things more deserving of my attention. What probably isn't intended by design is my reluctance to spend money in support of a game I actually *want* to play. For it to die a death and for me to never spend a moment more thinking about how I miss building decks I want to play, just to see how they work or could be improved.
Marvel Snap is int he worst place it's ever been. And I couldn't be happier.
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