Brace yourselves, buffs and nerfs are coming to Marvel Snap. Not a lot of them, but they are truly important for the meta, and will once again influence the shape of it. In this article, as always, we’ll make comments about these changes. So, let’s see what Second Dinner has done and what they have to say about these Marvel Snap OTA Balance Updates for May 11, 2023.
Buffs and Nerfs in Marvel Snap – OTA May 11 2023
Here’s the recent history of these changes if you want to have a recap:
Another week, another OTA balance patch! In addition to 4 new card updates, we have some location frequency updates this week! Let’s get right into it:
Drax Buff? Nerf? Change?
[Old] 4/5 – On Reveal: If your opponent played a card here this turn, +3 Power.
[New] 4/6 – On Reveal: If your opponent played a card here this turn, +2 Power.
The Guardians can create some of the most exciting gameplay in SNAP with their predictive playstyle. While they’ve been doing better with the release of Nebula, they’re still performing poorly overall at the moment. Out of all the Guardians, Drax stood out to us as the clearest buff candidate. Compared to other cards like Rockslide and White Queen with good stats and a guaranteed upside, Drax had below average stats for a very inconsistent upside. We’re giving him a small buff by moving some of his Power from his ability to his base stats to improve his baseline performance.
Drax is, I believe, still 4/8 if you play it right. However, now they reduced some of the risks of playing Drax in the Location where your opponent hasn’t played anything. But, on the other side, some On Reveal duplication effects will have less effect on Drax right now. This leads me to believe that this is a slight buff in the majority of the cases where you drop the card.
Rockslide Nerf in Marvel Snap
[Old] 4/6 – On Reveal: Shuffle 2 Rocks into your opponent’s deck.
[New] 4/5 – On Reveal: Shuffle 2 Rocks into your opponent’s deck.
Rockslide’s viability took a leap forward with the release of Darkhawk and Zabu, so it’s easy to look at this nerf and assume that we’re targeting Darkhawk by weakening one of his support cards. And sure, you’d be right–Darkhawk has been one of the 10 winningest cards in the game since release and featured in multiple strong decks. In fact, Rockslide often mirrors (or improves upon) Darkhawk’s stats, as they’re both in the top-performing “DinoHawk” deck. Since Rockslide’s easier to adjust, we’re making this tweak with the aim of weakening that deck slightly.
Good thing I used that deck to get to Infinite last season. It’s a well-deserved nerf. There’s no other way to nerf Darkhawk, really. Bumping its cost to 5 wouldn’t help at all. Now that I’ve mentioned the Infinite rank: If you need help to improve your game and reach the Infinite rank, I have a big chain of guides for you that will certainly help, especially if you’re starting out in Marvel Snap.
Enchantress Nerf in Marvel Snap
[Old] 4/6 – On Reveal: Remove the abilities from all Ongoing cards at this location.
[New] 4/5 – On Reveal: Remove the abilities from all Ongoing cards at this location.
Enchantress has grown in popularity since our buff to her two weeks ago, which was expected. While we’re excited by how much more she’s affecting the meta, she’s become one of the most played cards in the game, which is a bit over a mark. We’re optimistic that a small nerf to 4/5 will put her in a good position going forward. But hey, it was fun while it lasted!
Yup, they did overextend this buff. 4/5 Should be very fair. And no, it was not fun while it lasted, Second Dinner.
Venom Nerf (Trust me, it’s a Nerf) in Marvel Snap
[Old] 3/1 – On Reveal: Destroy your other cards at this location. Add their Power to this card.
[New] 3/3 – On Reveal: Destroy your other cards at this location. Add their Power to this card.
Venom has been the worst destroy enabler for a while now, averaging lower Power in destroy decks than his peers Deathlock and Carnage. While he’s seen fringe usage in decks with Taskmaster, we haven’t seen any of them really take off. We’d like to give one of Marvel’s most iconic anti-heroes space to shine, so we’re feeding him a hearty +2 Power buff.
So imagine running a Mr. Negative deck, and getting a 1-Cost Venom to clear one of your Locations, 0-Cost Knull, and then a 0-Cost Arnim Zola to duplicate this Knull. If you’re running a casual Destroy/Deadpool/Deathwave deck then yes, this is a buff, but in general, they did away with an insane combo potential that’s not healthy for the game.
Bonus OTA: Location, Location, Location
As our library of locations increases, we’ll be making ongoing adjustments to hit the sweet spot we like for dynamic games. To that end, we’re reducing the appearance weights on a few of our existing locations, which means they’ll show up less frequently in your games. It’s unlikely you’ll consciously observe these changes, but we thought you’d like to know.
- Attilan – Worked only for low Energy cost decks that can shell out their hand by the end of Turn 3
- Krakoa – Bye, nobody’s gonna miss you
- Lechuguilla – Lmao nerf to Patriot and Darkhawk
- Morag – Bye, nobody’s gonna miss you
- Plunder Castle – Bye, nobody’s gonna miss you
- Sanctum Sanctorum – Bye, nobody’s gonna miss you
- Subterranea – Lmao nerf to Patriot and Darkhawk
Let the bottom situation never repeat.
Second Dinner has started inserting a lot of new Locations that forbid you from playing cards there rather than innovating with something that might be fun, chaotic, or at least interactive! The community was very displeased and discontent about the influx of these new Locations and finally, they decided to listen to the community. This is a small Nerf to Jeff, but he’ll make it. We just want to play our cards, not look at them. Finally, here’s their final comment:
That’s all for now, thanks for stopping by! This is the second to last week of our OTA trial period, with a full-sized patch coming next week and the final May OTA coming on 5/25. While we’re not yet set on a plan going forward, we know that we want to continue doing regular OTA balance updates, just at longer intervals between changes. We’ll let you know when we have more to share!
Check out the rest of our content for Marvel Snap at the tag under this article. See you soon at Prima Games!
