At the sight level, Marvel Snap is a very simple game that makes it easy to get started with no prior knowledge: you just need to win at least two spots out of three on the board by moving the numbers up. If you play cards in a location with higher attack counts than your opponent, you win that location. In addition to this simple premise, Second Dinner has cleverly wormed its way into complexity, slowly introducing players to more complex maps and mechanics. I was amazed at how quickly I started feeling like a card-carrying mastermind.
The way Second Dinner does this Marvel snap is to use hours of bot play, at least up to level 30, to introduce new mechanics. You start with a pre-made deck, relatively small at 12 cards, and you earn more cards as you play. It’s easy to win in these early games, even if you’re just paying attention to the power levels, which are the numbers that add up to give you a win in each of the three locations on the board. It’s important to have a space to play with simpler cards and learn how they work through trial and error – without much consequence – and it feels like you’re skipping the tedious steps of learning because you just Play games. And the games are fast-paced at only six moves per round, meaning you can play plenty of games in the early stages before progressing to human players.
Occasionally, new cards will appear in your opponents’ decks as you progress towards unlocking your own as well. It’s an easy pace to learn about cards and what they do before playing them yourself. There’s a lot of variance within the maps themselves, and the playable locations also expand the strategic possibilities. At their core, however, each of these cards share one important commonality, which is that they all share power and energy requirements. In addition, cards can have different abilities or special effects, which are listed below. It’s easy to understand how these cards work; The harder part is learning how to get them to win.
Marvel snap removes much of the excess in card games and hits right where card games are fun. At the second dinner there was a lot of thought about what to leave behind. Developer Ben Brode, best known for his work on Blizzard Entertainment’s hugely successful card game HearthstoneShe discussed the decision to hold Marvel snap easy. One of those ways was to keep decks small.
There is no “pace” in Snap. You don’t “lose board control” by not playing a card early. It might not be the best, but you’re certainly not doomed. But this feedback that there was nothing to play in Round 1 was so common that we knew it was going to be a problem.
– Ben Brode (@bbrode) October 25, 2022
“Deck building is one of the hardest things for players to do in card games.” Brode wrote on Twitter. But, he added, a smaller deck usually means less variance. The team removed the option for a “mulligan” that allowed players to draw a new hand to fix this – you must play the cards you start with. This makes you think creatively, especially when you are locked to some turns due to energy levels.
“There’s no ‘tempo’ in it snap” Brode continued. “You don’t lose control of the board by not playing a card early. It may not be for the best, but you are certainly not doomed.”
With Marvel snapBecause of his small hands and lack of mulligans, positions on the board are particularly important – they create unbiased mayhem. It’s a matter of luck, which means things still feel fair when stacked against your particular deck. Not much is lost by losing a game, which encourages you to play around with how maps work with each other and with those locations. The worst that could happen is you lose a few minutes and maybe a few dice. (Dice are used for leveling up, but they only enter after you’ve played the game a bit.)
I’ve never been this interested in a card game before, and that’s because I really learn something from every game – a new way to play a card I hadn’t considered, or how to make a place my own Advantage can be taken even if these lessons come at a loss. Losing doesn’t feel bad because I know I can easily play a few more games without it being a huge investment of time. The thing is, however, that it does Feel really good when you win, especially when you pull off a weird move that shouldn’t have worked. I can well imagine my opponent marveling at how clever my moves were, even if it’s only in my own head.
