Last season, we saw the release of Conquest mode in Marvel Snap. This is a tournament-style mode where players duke it out with each other, using the same deck, and with 10 points of health. The mode gives you the chance to earn Medals, which can then be used to purchase Credits, Gold, variants, and boosters.

This week, Second Dinner has launched a new event called Conquest Frenzy, which makes it easier for players to rack up Gold Conquest Tickets. Basically, you’ll be able to claim one Gold Ticket per day after winning 10 matches in either Ranked or Conquest. This event will run till July 24, and should make it much easier for players to accrue Gold Tickets, as you won’t need to grind through Proving Grounds or Silver Conquest for them.

The Spotlight Cache system was announced for Marvel Snap a while back, and we’ll finally see it get implemented in-game this week. Second Dinner has announced via their official Discord server that they’ll be pushing out on a patch on July 12, which should include some major card balances and updates as well.

The new Spotlight Cache system will feature four different cards each week, and when you open the Cache, you have a chance of getting one out of those four cards. The newly released card for that week will always be included. Second Dinner has also announced all cards for the rotation for this season, as listed below:

This season of Marvel Snap is an exciting one for a couple of reasons: all of the new card releases are actually exciting and have a ton of potential, and two out of three cards will be releasing directly to Series 4, which means they’ll only cost 3,000 Tokens to purchase. Spider-Ham was the first of these direct-to-Series-4 cards, and he’s just dropped this week, but there’s an issue. If you’ve been hoarding your Collector’s Caches and Reserves and you’re close to opening another Series 4 card, and you’re hoping to pull Spider-Ham from one of these boxes, you’re out of luck.

Second Dinner has since announced on their Discord server that there’s currently an issue preventing Spider-Ham from showing up on the Collection Track. Here’s the full statement:

Ever since its global launch, Second Dinner has started releasing various cosmetics and cards bundles in Marvel Snap. Most of these bundles are generally pretty good value, allowing you to get a bunch of Tokens, Gold, Credits, and sometimes cool new variants to add to your collection. There have been pricier bundles as well, but generally, these bundles also offered decent value, such as the Flaviano Collector package, which offered a whole ton of Tokens to help you nab whatever card you wanted in the Spotlight shop.

However, the latest bundle featuring Darkhawk has drawn a ton of ire from the player base. Right now, the Darkhawk bundle comes with a new variant, an avatar, 310 boosters, and 1,000 Credits. Priced at $29.99, this bundle has also been advertised with a small banner that states “3x value”, when in actuality, this is one of the worst deals we’ve seen in Marvel Snap so far.

Marvel Snap gets a lot of things right. The frictionless deck-building, the gorgeous 3D animations and art, the fast-paced, snappy matches that you can knock out in five minutes or less… Marvel Snap stands out from the competition because of how quickly you can get through a match, making it the perfect pick up and play game, while also retaining a sense of depth that’s crucial for its longevity.

Enter Conquest Mode, which is Marvel Snap’s brand new game mode that allows players to battle each other, tournament-style, to earn new cosmetic rewards and farm Medals, which can be used to purchase more rewards and currencies. Conquest Mode is based off the previously released Battle Mode, which were friendly battles that locked you into one deck, and you had to continuously battle the same opponent with the same deck until your health was depleted.

First there was Magik. Then there was Negative. After that, we had Leader and Leech, followed by Aero. And for a spell there, Thanos and Shuri also took the spotlight. Throughout all of this, though, Galactus has somehow remained untouched since the introduction of the Token Shop, and that archetype has been so polarizing among the Marvel Snap player base that Second Dinner has finally decided to do something about it.

In this week’s major patch, we’re getting Conquest Mode, Weekend Missions, along with a few store updates. We’re also getting big balance changes to Galactus, who’s finally getting a much-needed nerf to circumvent the polarizing and, honestly, emotionally damaging play style of destroying all other locations to force you into a single lane.

We’re finally getting even more new competitive modes in Marvel Snap. Conquest Mode was announced a while back, and the team at Second Dinner finally has a firm release date for it. The new mode will go live in the game on June 13, and you can check out the announcement video made in collaboration with YouTuber ProZD down below:

This is a single-loss, elimination style tournament mode that’s meant only for the most hardcore players. Everyone will be able to participate in the Proving Grounds for free, where they can win a Silver Ticket. This will get them into Silver Quest, where they can win a Gold Ticket, which will get them into Gold Conquest. Finally, winning in Gold Conquest will give them an Infinite Ticket.

Cyclops is one of the most iconic characters in the Marvel comics world, and in the X-Men series. And yet, in the context of Marvel Snap, he’s been relegated to being one of the least used vanilla cards in the game. As a 3-cost, 4-power card, he’s rarely seen in Patriot or Silver Surfer decks, as the player base has gradually found ways to optimize those archetypes without ever touching Cyclops. It’s a shame, considering how popular he is as a character.

With the release of High Evolutionary, however, it’s finally time for Cyclops to shine.

It’s not a stretch to say that ever since the introduction of Series 4 and 5 in Marvel Snap, the new weekly card releases have felt rather underwhelming because of how long it takes to accrue Collector’s Tokens. Not to mention the fact that many of these cards are mediocre at best and rarely ever worth the Tokens.

This week, however, Second Dinner was poised to release High Evolutionary, a new big bad that was slated to stay in Series 5 indefinitely alongside Thanos, Kang, and Galactus. High Evolutionary is a very exciting card for the sole reason that he unlocks hidden abilities for all cards in the game that previously had no abilities. This means that cards like Cyclops, Wasp, and Abomination would all get new abilities, giving them more utility outside of just being slotted into a Patriot deck.

The card acquisition process has been Marvel Snap‘s weakest point since the beta days. Progressing through the Collection track was arduous and oftentimes disheartening, and ever since the introduction of Series 4 and 5, things have only gotten worse.

Alongside the new patch release today, however, Second Dinner also announced that they’d be making some key changes to how card acquisition works in Marvel Snap. Most notably, they’re planning on adopting a more flexible card release format, where not all new cards have to be released as Series 5 drops. Going forward in June, the team will be experimenting with releasing some cards directly in Series 4, while also being flexible with Series drops as well, where some cards may drop directly to Series 3 from Series 5.

A new season of Marvel Snap has just begun. Titled Guardians Greatest Hits, this season is themed around the Guardians of the Galaxy, which ties in nicely with the new movie release as well. Nebula has been revealed as the featured season pass card, but there are four other cards to look forward to in Series 5 as well.

We’ve got Iron Lad, with an On Reveal ability that allows him to copy the ability of the top card of your deck, as well as Howard the Duck, who shows you the top card of your deck. But after that, we’ve also got High Evolutionary and Living Tribunal, and these are pretty crazy.

We’ve seen tons of toxic cards in Marvel Snap over the past few months. Leader is the first one that comes to mind, and the meta slowly shaped itself around other cards like Sandman and Aero, but none have been as polarizing as Leech. This 5-cost card removes all abilities from the cards in your opponent’s hand, and it only became even more annoying to play against once it found a home in the Thanos-Lockjaw deck, which allowed players to drop Leech on turn 4 and before.

Second Dinner has just rolled out a major patch that finally knocks Leech down a peg. And not just that, Shuri has also received a slight adjustment, and we should hopefully start to see a healthier meta game in ladder matches now.

Kitty Pryde is one of the more exciting new card releases we’ve seen in Marvel Snap in recent weeks; it’s just a shame that she happened to be completely broken the day she launched. This was a card that was supposed to synergize well with other cards like Collector and Beast, but the interactions were completely broken and even caused the client to crash.

Since then, Second Dinner has pulled Kitty Pryde from Marvel Snap to sort out all those issues. The team issued a statement on their official Discord server today, stating that in order to fix all the issues they would’ve had to make fundamental changes to the game engine. Instead of doing that, they’re opting to rework Kitty’s design instead, and here’s her new ability text:

April 2023’s Marvel Snap Season Pass highlighted the animals of the mobile card game. The Season itself added some new animals and Variants. While not all the cards have been released yet, here’s how you can get ready to build them and how you can use the cute new Variants once you get them. 

Jeff

The adorable baby landshark, Jeff, has an ability that lets the card be moved one time without any kind of restriction – from the way the ability is worded, it should be able to be moved into things like Flooded locations of Professor X’s lockdowns. The 2-cost 3-power Jeff won’t be available until April 18, 2023, but it seems like he’ll thrive in decks with Kraven.

If there’s one major complaint to be had about Marvel Snap (that isn’t about the glacial pace at which you accrue Collector’s Tokens and get new Series 4 and 5 cards), it’s that Second Dinner can be really slow in rolling out balance changes, causing the meta to feel incredibly stale. This was most noticeable last season, when the ladder was dominated by Thanos-Lockjaw and Shuri decks.

Having to wait a month between balance changes can make the game feel stale, but all that’s about to change, as Second Dinner has committed to rolling out small updates each week. These are changes that don’t require a downloadable patch, but they will be very small adjustments, such as number tweaks on various cards.

The new season of Marvel Snap is now live. Titled Animals Assemble, we’re getting a new season pass card in the form of Hit-Monkey, with the following ability: On Reveal: +2 Power for each other card you played this turn.

You can check out the new developer update video down below:

Every week, Second Dinner drops a new card in Marvel Snap. Over the past two weeks, we’ve had Master Mold and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, both of which have been pretty solid additions to the game. This week, we got Kitty Pryde, who is absolutely busted in more ways than one.

Not only is she a pretty damn powerful card, her interactions with other synergistic cards are also completely broken. Returning her to your hand doesn’t buff the Collector, she isn’t affected by any cost altering abilities like Wave or Beast, and just today, Second Dinner has announced that they’ve temporarily pulled Kitty Pryde from the game until further notice while they iron out all her issues.

Second Dinner could probably be quicker on the draw with their balance changes for Marvel Snap, but it’s always satisfying to finally see some concrete changes that shake up the meta game on the ranked ladder. For the past few weeks, Thanos Lockjaw decks have been running rampant all over the ladder, and it’s certainly been annoying, to say the least.

This latest balance patch brings Thanos down from 11 to 10 power, but more importantly, the Space Stone has been adjusted, as has Quinjet, a card that’s been a big proponent of the deck’s strength. Here are all the card changes:

The next season of Marvel Snap is going to be themed around the iconic X-Men, and the latest developer update video has just given us a first look at the upcoming season pass card: Nimrod. Nimrod has an On Reveal ability, where copies of the card will spawn at the other two locations once destroyed. You can check out the video for yourself down below:

Nimrod is primed to slot in well with the destroy archetype, which was already pretty stacked on its own, but it’s about to get even more tools at its disposal.

Marvel Snap’s meta game hasn’t been in an entirely great place for the past couple months. The meta has seen multiple shifts, from the annoying Leech-Leader combo to the Silver Surfer combo, then to the Zabu–Darkhawk combo, and now we’re back to even more Leech with Thanos, Galactus, and Shuri sprinkled in.

Previously, I’d expressed concerns about Zabu being a meta-defining card in Marvel Snap, especially since it was locked behind the season pass paywall. And guess what? Zabu did indeed become a meta staple that season, enabling plenty of shenanigans like Spider-Man and Absorbing Man locking you out of the game entirely on turn 5, and Darkhawk, Moon Girl, and Mystique just ruining your day with ridiculous 1-cost point slams on turn 6.