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.

This should help alleviate the major concerns that fans have long had with Marvel Snap’s collection system. In addition to that, Second Dinner also stated that they’d be introducing more ways to help players accrue Tokens, making it easier for everyone to save up for the cards they want.

As for this week’s patch itself, it’s a pretty major shakeup. First off, Kitty Pryde is back and has been given out to all active accounts for free. Wave has been nerfed pretty heavily and no longer interacts well with She-Hulk and Death, dealing a huge blow to the Deathwave archetype. Here are the balance changes:

Kitty Pryde – Released with new design!

• [Old] 1/0 – You can return this to your hand to gain +2 Power.
• [New] 1/0 – When this returns to your hand, +2 Power. Returns at the start of each turn.

As we previously announced, Kitty Pryde will be returning to the game this week with her new ability. She’ll be Series 5 and awarded to all active accounts today.

Crystal

• [Old] 4/4 – On Reveal: If this is at the middle location, shuffle your hand into your deck and draw 3 cards.
• [New] 4/4 – On Reveal: Each player draws a card.

Crystal has been one of a handful of cards seeing incredibly low play and win rates for quite some time now, and an obvious buff candidate. We debated maintaining the direction of the current effect by removing the middle restriction, increasing the cards drawn, etc. But the tricky thing is that we don’t want an effect like Crystal’s to be strong. SNAP decks are only 12 cards and we don’t want those cards to play out the same every time, so we’re very careful about letting players draw cards. This rework aimed to make a simple, appropriate Crystal that could be fun alongside a variety of cards.

Wave

• [Old] 3/3 – On Reveal: Next turn, cards in both players’ hands cost 4.
• [New] 3/3 – On Reveal: All cards cost 4 until the end of next turn.

Wave’s cost reduction occurs after other effects that reduce card costs. In addition to a text update that clarifies when Wave’s effect begins, we’ve also made a rather large adjustment “under the hood.” Wave will now begin to apply after effects that reduce card costs, rather than before. That means She-Hulk, Death, etc. will always cost 4 while Wave is in effect. We don’t take lightly that this change kills a few decks, but Wave has been far too constraining on our ability to use cost reduction as a synergy reward in future designs. Leaning on Wave is just always better than dedicating your deck to the actual synergy–we’ve seen that with Death since both cards went live, and we’ll continue seeing it without this action.

Death

• [Old] 9/12 – Costs 1 less for each card destroyed this game.
• [New] 8/12 – Costs 1 less for each card destroyed this game.

As Death’s current performance is essentially dependent on Wave and Galactus, we wanted to improve her playability in other decks now that the interaction with Wave has changed. This may not be enough, and if we see Death take a huge dive we’ll come back and look at how these values can be adjusted further to ensure Death remains a meaningful card for dedicated Destroy decks.

White Queen (Text-only change)

• [Old text] 4/6 – On Reveal: Draw a copy of the highest-Cost card in your opponent’s hand.
• [New text] 4/6 – On Reveal: Copy the highest-Cost card in your opponent’s hand into your hand.

This is just a text revision to resolve some ongoing confusion about what White Queen exactly does and how it interacts with cards like Widow’s Bite. In the future, we may pursue establishing some kind of shorthand for copying a card into your hand, but for now we’re just going with the clearest expression of the card’s function.

Marvel Snap is now available on PC and mobile devices.