We’ve got another week down the can in Marvel SNAP’s War of the Nine Realms Season, and a major OTA update to go along with it! But how has this update shaken up the game? And how has Malekith fared amidst the sea of other changes? Read on to find out this and more in this week’s edition of the Snap Back!
Malekith: Magical Maniac Makes for Mystifying Card
This card might be one of the more confusing cards to release this season. Theoretically, Malekith is an incredibly good card. Though it’s nominally a 4-Cost, 6-Power card, its ability to add another card from your deck to its position when played means that it’s effectively always punching well above that 6-Power benchmark. A Malekith that draws a Gladiator just became a 4-Cost, 14-Power card, but even grabbing a 2-Power addition immediately vaults Malekith from having decent stats to being among the strongest cards at its cost. Furthermore, Malekith’s ability to pull a 1-, 2-, or 3-Cost card from your deck, played on turn 4, means that you have one fewer low-end card to draw, allowing you to dig one card deeper into your deck to make sure you get the tools you need.
Malekith has also immediately seen play in a number of strong decks, and, perhaps more importantly, immediately vaulted some less-powerful decks into the limelight. One notable example is the Discard deck archetype. Discard decks used to live and die by the deck-thinning capabilities of America Chavez before she was reworked, and Malekith now gives them both a slightly higher chance of seeing their Apocalypse every game, as well as a good chance of discarding it one last time before the end of game Dracula absorbs its energy. As a result, Discard is seeing a major resurgence in both play rate and win rate at the moment.
All that said, however, Malekith still feels like less of a ‘must-have’ and more of a solid addition. He hasn’t really created any new archetypes unto himself, and other than Discard decks, every other list he’s been featured in was already a powerfully performing deck before his inclusion, and likely would not become all the more worse for his not being there. Long story short: You’d be happy to have Malekith, but you’re probably not going to be completely left in the cold for skipping him, either.
Snap Back Verdict: Mild Recommendation!
A Major Update Brings Sweeping Changes
In preparation for Thanksgiving week, in which Second Dinner canceled a previously scheduled update, the developers of Marvel SNAP decided to push out an extensive OTA to shake things up over the holiday season. The update brought with it a number of fairly expected changes, including nerfs for Agent Venom and Surtur, but also some unexpected ones, like a buff to Thanos, and some dark horse changes, such as Black Widow’s new identity as an Activate card.
The Agent Venom nerf was a long time coming, and feels like a proper balance to the card. He gained a point of power on his face, now clocking in at a pretty hefty 5 points of power for his 2-Cost body, but now only sets the power of every card in his deck to 3 instead of 4. This is as many as 6 points of power being removed from Agent Venom decks, after taking into account his own personal stat boost, which is pretty significant. Surtur, meanwhile, received a much smaller nerf, losing only a point of power off the top (just as I predicted last week, actually). Both cards have immediately seen drops in play as a result, but from what I’ve seen, both cards still remain very powerful, viable means of competition. Surtur and Skaar in particular still reign as one of the top duos in Marvel SNAP even still, though their grip on the metagame is more tenuous than it had been last week.
Thanos is the real winner of the OTA, with a change to his functionality that means he is drawn into your starting hard on the first turn, as opposed to merely starting there. This may sound like a distinction without a difference, but now Thanos, like Agatha, is now an extra card drawn into your opening hand. Where most decks start with 3 cards and draw their 4th on the beginning of turn 1, Thanos players start with 3 cards and Thanos before drawing their 5th card. In a game with decks of only 12 cards, every card matters that much more, and extra draws are even more important in a deck like Thanos that already adds 6 more cards of its own to your list.
Looking Ahead
While some worry about the newfound power of Thanos, Marvel SNAP is looking to be in a better spot than ever, balance-wise. The OTA seems to have done its job of shaking up the metagame quite effectively, and in its wake, we are experiencing one of the more open states of play that the game has seen in quite some time. Mid-range “good cards” decks are beginning to shine as the heavily-focused gimmick decks that could easily put massively-inflated power onto the board are falling off. It really feels like the kind of metagame that anything can shine in with a bit of effort.
Later this week, Marvel SNAP will be re-opening Deadpool’s Diner for business once more. This high-stakes mode was somewhat controversial last time around, but the card reward for this iteration does not feel as immediately important as Cassandra Nova did in the time of Arishem. Whether this tempers expectations and frustrations remains to be seen, however. I vastly preferred the High Voltage game mode to Deadpool’s Diner, but I also think that I’ll be going into the mode with a much better understanding of how to manage my “bubs”.
How are you enjoying the metagame this week? Are you excited for Deadpool’s Diner, or dreading its return? What will the future bring Marvel SNAP? Will we get series drops soon? Come back next week for my takes on everything Marvel SNAP in the next edition of the Snap Back!
