It’s a bit cliche, but a good rule of thumb is that if a game makes you forget what time it is and ends up staying you up well past your usual bedtime, it’s probably something special. Marvel snap, a new digital card game available to everyone today on iOS and Android, has been keeping me up way too many nights over the past few weeks. The game has a fantastic mix of fast-paced action, short matches, cool maps, and clever ideas that help make each round feel different.
Released yesterday for mobile phones and tablets, Marvel snap is a free-to-play card game developed by Former Hearthstone Director Ben Brode and his new game studio Second Dinner. At first I was nervous that Brode and his crew would develop a new card game since I was feeling so bored and tired Hearthstone and other similar games, all modeled after Blizzard’s popular deck builder. Matches took forever, deck building was tedious, and often the meta settled in a certain way and every match felt the same. Luckily, with this new superhero deck, Brode and Second Dinner have created a deck that’s intentionally designed to solve all of these problems.
in the Marvel snap, matches only last six rounds and often last less than six minutes depending on how fast the players are. They don’t take turns either. Instead, you play a few cards, and once both players are ready, the game turns all the cards over and chaos ensues. To keep things moving, decks are only 12 cards, so you’re not sitting there trying to draw something with 30-40 cards. In fact, in most games you will see almost all of your cards, allowing you to plan different strategies. After all, you don’t attack other cards Marvel snap. Instead, it involves controlling two out of three areas on the board with up to four cards, each with a power level. The highest combined power level after six rounds wins that zone and if you win two zones you win the entire match.
While it may sound like 12 decks of cards, six round games and no rounds could result in a chaotic and easy game, the actual experience is the opposite. You quickly learn what your deck and its cards can do, so you can focus more on playing and not learning. I had a few decks built within a few hours, and I was having a lot of fun finding ways to synergize my deck. With pretty much any other card game, building decks and thinking about synergies is like doing homework for me. Deck building is great here, as the smaller number of cards and simple focus on building your combined power makes it easier for everyone to get on top of things.
I appreciate that too Marvel snap is a very fast and aggressive game. They don’t discard trap cards or large tanks that absorb damage for 5 turns. Very few cards in play can remove cards from your board, and without the ability to attack directly makes the game more forgiving. Even a lousy, weak card can be useful and won’t be wiped off the board two turns later. Marvel snap makes it fun to fill up your board and play more cards. And if you screw up any of it, don’t worry. Even a bad game can’t last that long.
I had the most fun this year in close matches of Marvel snap. For example, watching the other player lose by just one point. Or take a small lead and “snag” to put pressure on them.
G/O Media may receive a commission
Oh yes, snap! The whole reason why this game is called Marvel snap! With this mechanic, you can risk some of your cosmic dice (aka ranking points) to challenge your opponent. If you feel like you’re going to win, or are unsure and want to bluff, you can snap. This instantly doubles the bet, and if the other player doesn’t take the bet, they lose, but also save some cosmic dice for salvation in the process. However, people can snap back after you snap and double it again, forcing you to reconsider how secure you are in your position. It’s a simple and easy-to-use system that adds that wonderful layer of psychological warfare Marvel snap. Plus, it’s just plain fun to snap at someone when you’re screwed up and watch them stop. It’s like winning a pot in poker without having anything in your hand. Good stuff.
Something that helps make every game feel fresh is that there are three zones that you must control to win, which are randomly swapped out for different areas with different bonuses and disadvantages on each game. So a deck built around low-Energy cards and cluttering the board with small heroes could flop hard if one of the zones prohibits you from playing low-Energy heroes there. Or a board gives bonuses to your weaker cards. Or it could just give everyone worthless bricks or powerful dinosaurs. It’s always a new, different combination of zones, and Second Dinner will add more over time, so no match is ever the same.
The other thing I appreciate Marvel snap is that cards are not bought with money but are earned through in-game events, rewards or missions. While you can buy cosmetics and premium Battle Passes, you can’t just drop $500 and suddenly have all the great cards in play.
It’s a bit of a shame that in its current state, there’s no way to play around with friends or create a guild just for fun. But developer Second Dinner says things are coming soon, along with a more PC-friendly interface for the recently released Steam port of snap.
Even with a few missing features and modes, the core gameplay of snap is so good that I play it every chance I get. I recently traveled to Las Vegas to get married and brought my Steam Deck with me. But I just played Marvel snap whenever I had a few minutes to kill. And now I want to stop writing about it snap and play it, so… bye!
