Marvel Snap September 2023 patch notes buff Snowguard, nerf Absorbing Man

Published , by Donovan Erskine

Today marks the beginning of Marvel Snap’s Loki-themed season. Alongside it, developer Second Dinner has also dropped a hefty new patch. There are a lot of changes and updates, so let’s dive right in.

Marvel Snap September 2023 patch notes


Source: Second Dinner

The patch notes for Marvel Snap’s September 2023 patch notes were shared on Marvel Snap’s Steam Page by Second Dinner today.

General Updates

New Feature: Infinite Rank Revamp

Conquest Mode Improvements

Audio

Balance Updates

We have another handful of card updates with this patch! We also wanted to clarify expectations around patch changes to cards. Our goal on "patch day" is to make the adjustments we can't make via OTA. That often includes changes with balance impacts, but it just as often includes interesting changes we want to try out. When they intersect, such as last patch's Spider-Man update, that's great too! Our OTA releases remain our primary tool for balance, as we lock patch changes to cards at least two OTAs ahead of the patch's release. This gives us the most flexibility to react, and keeps things as fresh as possible for all of you.

Card Updates

Blade

Developer Note: A solid card in early discard strategies, Blade has dropped off in both popularity and win percentage. As we examined weaker cards that could use a little love, we'd also been thinking about ways we could give a little push to some discard synergy cards, like Hela, Ghost Rider, Swarm, and of course Apocalypse. Because Blade is a card players acquire early on, a change accomplishing both of these goals needed to be clean and simple, and we think this fits the bill. It might not be enough to breathe new life into the daywalker, but we like to find opportunities for small changes with the potential to make some interesting waves.

Soul Stone

Developer Note: It took players a few months to fully grasp the might of Thanos, but since then he's been a metagame mainstay with multiple stints at the top of the heap. We love Thanos, but his combination of flexibility and powerful synergy enablers has proven to be a bit dangerous over time. We decided we wanted to shave a piece of strength out of the kit, and decided to hit two birds with one stone by simplifying the only card in the kit with two abilities. We understand this is a bit ironic, considering the recent changes to Mystique and Rogue to copy the Soul Stone's draw effect, but oh well. While a meaningful loss of Power, we don't expect Thanos to fall out of favor once the dust settles.

Spider-Ham

Developer Note: As we mentioned in the OTA that adjusted Spider-Ham from 1/1 to 2/2, we weren't happy with how damaging his effect was to a few of our cooler 6-Cost cards, especially Apocalypse. However, we liked that Spider-Ham hit a solid sweet spot of disruption without fully denying you the card, and even had some risk due to Destroyer and Infinaut. This change aims to retain those positive elements without applying it exclusively to higher-Cost cards, and also makes the effect a lot easier to play around if you suspect Peter Porker might be paying you a visit. The trigger will still hit 6-Cost cards slightly more often, since they'll tend to migrate leftward in your hand as you wait to play them, but Apocalypse will safely hide on the right if you can keep discarding him.

Snowguard

Developer Note: It feels like every patch includes at least one wacky, unexpected card change these days, so here's one for today! Snowguard has turned out to be a largely unsatisfying card for players, posting poor stats on both popularity and actual wins. Our goals for Snowguard were to create a novel tool for Hot and Featured locations that might also see some play in Conquest decks looking to surprise the enemy, but we fell short. In revising the design, we aimed to:

1. Make her stronger. Granting both the Hawk and the Bear is more total Power on-curve, and decreases the variance around whether either is useful.

2. Give her deckbuilding identity. A few decks (and more to come) already care about adding material from outside your starting deck to your hand.

3. Reduce confusion. Results weren't matching intuition around the Hawk, so we extended the window to start after it resolves. We also added text clarifying the effect won't last through the end of the game, even if you Hawk on the final turn.

4. If possible, let her variants stay in play. Leaning into summoning instead of transforming cleanly solved this.

Absorbing Man

Developer Note: What is this, an OTA patch? After last week's balance updates were locked, but before they went live, we saw a huge surge in the strength and popularity of decks based on the Forge + Brood + Absorbing Man curve. We knew our changes weakened other top decks, and that the new kid was already becoming a Big Deal in ranked and Conquest. We're often happy to let things breathe for a minute when a new deck appears, but this case was unique because it risked an especially dull metagame to let it ride until our next OTA. We decided to make a change now, and we'll evaluate it again with the data gathered from the most recent weekend post-OTA.

Bug Fixes

Previous Release Bugs Fixed (Not Caught in 18.x Notes)

New Bug Fixes (19.x)

That’s everything in the September 2023 Marvel Snap patch. For all your Marvel Snap news, stick with Shacknews.