Why You Should Play MARVEL SNAP
2025 Review and Introductory Guide
2025 Review and Introductory Guide
Marvel Snap is the best digital card game I have ever played and it might even be my favorite card game of all time. I might not have the most card game heavy background, but I’ve played a bit of Magic the Gathering, both with the physical cards, and the digital game. I’ve played Hearthstone, Runeterra, Pokemon TCG, and the “new” Gwent for a few hours a piece. While enjoyable, these digital card games just don’t STICK like physical Magic the Gathering or Witcher 3’s version of Gwent (both of which are near perfect card games for me). That is, until I started playing Marvel Snap.
I get it! Some of you are groaning because of Marvel burnout, but here’s a point of comparison that may excite you: This, for all intents and purposes, could very well be the spiritual successor to Hearthstone. And I say that because Ben Brode, the original Creative Director for Hearthstone, is the lead once again here in Snap. And he’s brought with him everything he’s learned there, and improved on it here for Snap. So keep “Hearthstone 2” in mind if that’s exciting. If you’re just not interested in general because it’s a card game, well… I guess you can just like and subscribe to my YouTube channel, and wait for my next video or something. Or follow me here on Medium to get more game reviews in the written blog form!
Why Do I Recommend MARVEL SNAP?
Three statements:
Matches are quick
The game is simple but has a lot of depth
You can actually play for free (yes, really)
I’ll broadly touch on each of these as I go through my thoughts and we’ll come back around to it at the end. To start, we’ll dive into the obvious:
How to Play
If you’ve played anything adjacent to Snap, gameplay should sound very similar. You play with a deck of 12 cards against an opponent over the course of 6 turns. There are 3 lanes, or locations you can play cards at, where (typically) the highest power wins. Every turn gives you energy equal to the turn number, which is spent on cards, and usually increase your power at the location they’re played at. Whichever player is winning two or more locations claims victory after turn 6. This all takes place over the course of 5 minutes or less! Which makes it so easy to just pop open on your phone and play a quick game anytime, anywhere.
Types of Cards
So let’s break down the cards a bit more. All cards are existing Marvel Characters, and are designed such that their ability (or lack thereof) embodies the “power fantasy” of that Marvel Character, for example, Wolverine instead of being destroyed and removed from the game, REGENERATES after being destroyed, and increases in power.
Many, if not most cards also have alternative artstyles, called “Variants” that you can collect, which may capture a certain version of the character in their history, or could just be a cool version from one of Snap’s artists. Many of these are absolutely phenomenal, and capture each character perfectly. But we’ll touch on these again later.
Mechanically speaking, there are, in essence, 5 types of cards. On reveal, which happens as the card reveals on the board, so here’s an example of that. Ongoing, which is active so long as the card remains on the board. Activate is a new card type that is like a delayed on reveal type card. Then there are cards whose text fits into neither category but does a thing, and then there are cards with no ability text at all.
To go along with this, there are, let’s say, sub-types of cards that easily synergize with one another. Think cards that are built to destroy, and BE destroyed. Cards that move and cards that are built TO move. Some cards synergize best with on-reveal or ongoing type cards, and other cards can be viewed as direct opposition to some sub-types of cards.
This sounds like a lot on paper, but Snap doesn’t drop everything on you all at once. When I started out, I had two decks of cards. One for all my favorite on-reveal cards and one for all of my ongoing cards. As you slowly grow your collection, you’ll find great satisfaction in swapping cards in and out of your decks, which effortlessly eases you into the deck-building process. Eventually, you’ll have collected enough cards to make decks based on sub-archetypes or synergies you find yourself enjoying. I can’t say it enough: When you only have 12 cards to worry about, swapping cards in and out of your deck to see what works is super easy, and I find that to be a deeply satisfying part of the gameplay loop.
Locations
Locations may as well be just as important as cards. Many (if not all of them) are based on existing locations in the Marvel Universe and more or less have abilities that embody them, just like character cards. In each match, there are 3 locations, and they reveal one at a time up through turn 3. There are around 200 of these and DRASTICALLY change the nature of every game.
For example, two huge locations are Kamar-Taj makes it so your On-Reveal cards are played twice. Combined with Wong, who has the same ability built into his card, you can play on-reveal abilities four times from a card. But so can your opponent.
Some will just reduce the power of your cards, others will spawn in a random card from the game, or give you a card when you play a card. One location swaps your hand with your opponents on the last turn! The variety and creativity of the locations are absolutely astounding and without them, Snap would not be as replayable as it is.
Locations are a big part of the randomness life blood of Snap and they enable you to play the same deck of 12 cards across an infinite feeling number of matches because you never know what you’ll encounter. Adapting to them is a part of the fun!
All that said, like many other card battlers, part of your skill in matches comes from knowing how to combo the cards in your hand with each other and with the locations revealed on the board, the luck of the draw, and your ability to predict what your opponent’s cards may do and how they may interact with each other.
Snapping
A unique mechanic that really expands the depth of Snap, is the Snap mechanic, and here’s how that works: if you think you’ll win, it’s wise for you to SNAP by tapping or clicking the cube, which doubles the amount of cubes shown at the top. Cubes, is the “win” resource, which are lost or gained at the end of a match depending on if you win or lose. If you don’t think you’re going to win you can “retreat” where you only lose the current amount of cubes on the table. The fewest cubes you can lose or gain, is 1 via you or your opponent retreating, 2 on completion of a non-snapped game, 4 with one player’s snap, and the most is 8, only possible, if both players have doubled down and snapped.
Every 7 cubes gained increases your rank by 1 level, and every ten levels you gain, gives you a ranked reward. Your rank is also used in matchmaking, and Snap will attempt to pit you against players at a similar rank. Every player dreams of hitting Rank 100 for the current month’s exclusive card back, and bragging rights, so obtaining as many cubes as you can after every match is a must, which makes Snapping essential if you want to get to rank 100 as fast as possible.
The Snap mechanic brings an almost poker-like element to the game, making Marvel Snap feel like “SUPER poker” because of your ability to leverage snapping and the cubes to bluff, or double down, just like you would in poker. If I truly believe I’m going to win, I can debate snapping to double my rewards. But there’s a mind game to it, because I have to consider, if the other player isn’t confident in their game at that point, they could retreat on my snap, and reduce what could have (prior to snapping) a 2 cube reward, and turn it into to a 1 cube reward. I could have a similar thought process if I think I’m losing! Would they retreat, and give me once cube instead of me losing one by the end? Do I want to risk losing another one in attempt to bluff? It’s such a simple mechanic that adds so much depth to an otherwise very simple card game. And The more you play, the more confident you can feel about snapping to get four or even 8 cubes.
And how long will it take you to get confident playing Marvel Snap? Not nearly as long as it would if you were playing a similar game, that much I can tell you. But before we get into the next section explaining why, I’d like to run you, play by play, through an entire match of Marvel Snap to give you an idea of how the game plays.
The Marvel Snap Low Card Count Advantage
In my opinion, Marvel Snap’s greatest feat, as compared to other card games on the market, is that you actually have a chance at memorizing what every card in the game does, which can lead to some exceptionally fun strategy that you normally only get in high level, high commitment play in other card games. The fact is this: other mainstay digital card battler games have in the least 1000 cards in circulation. Hearthstone gains over 300 new cards per year. Physical card games are worse, as you can imagine, with mainstays like Magic and Pokémon containing over 10,000 cards a per each. But Marvel Snap? We’re looking at just under 300 cards by the end of 2024. Even if we include Locations, which I argue alter gameplay just as much as any card does, that’s still under 500 items to memorize.
Even by the numbers alone, if you were to get into Marvel Snap, theoretically it would not take you NEARLY as much time to get familiar with all the cards in the game. Further, it would not take you nearly as much time to begin recognizing popular decks and card combos, as it’s simpler to recognize how 12 cards may interact with each other, rather than similar games with larger deck sizes, not to mention an even larger pool of available cards to collect. With an average of only 60 new cards introduced each year, you can imagine how easy it is to upkeep the knowledge of all the cards in Snap with a fraction of the effort as compared to any other card game.
Shifting gears slightly, the way you collect cards is a brilliant system. You unlock cards as you increase your Collection Level, which occurs as you spend two resources, credits and boosters. These are used to upgrade the art effects of any particular card, and I’ll go over that more in a bit. Then, every so often along the Collection Level track, you get a “collector’s cache” which has the chance of being a new card that you do not yet own.
What I find brilliant, is that getting cards in these caches is actually a linear experience. To break that down, the developers have grouped certain cards together, in what they call pools. You’ll chip away at earning all the cards in a pool from collectors caches, each with just as equal an unlock chance as any other in the pool, until you’ve earned them all. At that point, you move into collecting the cards in the next pool. Which means that for many players their core experience, as they gain collection level, is going to be very similar. And from what I read online the matchmaking system attempts to have you face off against players of similar collection level, in tandem with your rank, so you’re not often going to be battling people very far off from where you’re at in your Marvel Snap journey.
Side tangent, another incredible thing about Snap, is that even in those rare circumstances you face off against someone with cards from a higher tier pool, you still have a chance to win. Because the honest truth is, Snap is a really well-balanced game across all pools. And when it’s not, and the devs notice these outlier cards and combos outperforming, or underperforming, and they change them. Rookies can still give long-time players a run for their money if they know their deck and play smart, and have a bit of luck of the draw, and that’s something I hardly see in literally any other card game I’ve ever played. And not to mention, even in these circumstances, if you ever feel out of your element, you can just retreat, and only lose a single cube.
Back to my original thought: There’s some true genius in having players collect just one card at a time. My collection of cards started out, same as everyone else, even as yours will. A mere handful. Under 20. But as I unlocked ONE card at a time, it was not hard to weigh the value of the card in terms of replacing it with something I already had in my measly 12 card deck. Not to again make mention, that matches are so short I may as well swap the card in somewhere just to see how it plays. By the time I’ve experimented enough, I get another new card and start the process over. I’ve done this for over 200 cards now, and I feel pretty confident with my collection and the decks I’ve created because of this. In no other game have I ever been more eager to experiment and deck-build, and I attribute it to the Snap’s low card counts and overall dedication to simplicity.
Even if you’re not jazzed about the concept of deck-building, or don’t feel confident about what you have created, or just want to check in on “the meta” — there are boundless community resources at your disposal. For example, if you like a card but don’t quite know what kind of deck to build around it? Easy. There’s a bunch of websites that can help you build a deck with that card, using just cards you own. Snap boasts a “Copy/Paste Deck” feature where all you do is click a button, and it will import, or export a deck just like that which makes sharing decks with other players an absolute breeze.
If you’re in an Alliance in game (Snap’s version of clans), you can share your decks in that in-game Alliance chat easily as well. And if it’s enabled, the game will automatically share decks that your Alliance members are winning 8 cube games with. It’s pretty neat! My clan is mostly empty, so if you care to join, you’re more than welcome to while slots are available. Just search for TMD — ToxicMinds.
Microtransactions
Let’s get one thing out of the way. Marvel Snap is free to play. You can earn every card without paying a dime, and it won’t take too long before you’re unlocking cards in higher tier pools. Daily missions, and weekly rewards from those missions, plus the boosters you earn from caches and events, will be enough in freebies to move you up the collector level track at a very good pace, and that all takes just 20 minutes or less every day.
But, as much as it pains me to say so, the microtransactions in Marvel Snap are some of the most egregious of any game I play.
Seasons are one month long and cost 10 bucks for the season pass. They give you fun cards, and tons of resources, which make them valuable buggers, but let’s take a step back and realize that no game (to me), is worth 120 bucks a year. So for me I pick and choose seasons if I think the featured card is fun. But if you skip it, the cards in the pass are thrown into a high tiered pool, so there is the chance to earn it, just much later than if you pay upfront.
You can indeed outright purchase cards, even those outside of the current card pool you’re working on, and you can do this in more ways than one, but it will cost you. And you’re probably thinking, eh, a couple bucks. Try ten bucks. some are twenty, I’ve even seen Fifty. even Ninety nine ninety nine USD in some cases. For a single card and some resources. It is absolutely insane. And people go for it. I have interacted with players who have spent thousands, and even, over ten thousand dollars on their account in the game. Those insanity deals are for them, I guess.
And sometimes it’s not even for a new card, but rather, alternate art of a card that you can use to create a custom version of that card. More on custom cards in a minute, because hoooo boy, style, flair, and customization is the end game of Marvel Snap.
So you might be wondering if there even is a good deal, or if any of it is worth it, and I hate to say it, but it’s not like the value of the bundles can be ranked one over the other or anything. It’s completely personal preference.
Oh what’s that? The community has ranked the value of every existing bundle based on the purchase price and the goods obtained? Oh…
So if you have some money burning a hole in your pocket, and you want to min-max your in-game purchases. My opinion? Just do whatever you find the most fun. I like picking up a season pass or two a year, just when the featured card sounds fun, and they come with plenty of rewards along the way, which lets me peruse the shop for variants often enough. But do whatever is fun for you.
None of this is to mention the price of emotes, the webshop, card border prices, and the upcoming DELUXE season pass, all of which, I think is priced astronomically high for a mobile card game, especially when your whale players are putting gargantuan truckloads of money into the game annually… It just makes me tired man. It’s still fun though! And it’s all still balanced, DESPITE the existing whale spenders, and here’s how:
Custom Card Creation
The true endgame of Snap for most players isn’t necessarily getting to 100 in the ladder. Or winning infinity conquest (a mode I’ll lightly go over later). It’s custom. Cards.
Once you upgrade a card’s art completely, it hits “infinity rank” which gives it a fancy purple border, as well as the effects of all the other ranks, and you’re given the option to then “split” the card. Splitting the card, for your first time, gives it either a prism background, or a foil background. That split card with the new effect is put into your collection, unranked.
So what happens if you upgrade THIS new prism card’s rank to infinity and then split again? It has a small chance of obtaining the OTHER foil background, OR gaining a number of “flair” type effects. This is, of course, at random.
So let me show you the money hole. Here’s a complete breakdown of all the effects. What many, very rich players, shoot for is a community dubbed “GOD” level split — either gold background or inked art. As you may expect, they want this on every card in their favorite deck. The amount of resources you need to do this, is for me, unfathomable. As a player who has played on and off for over 2 years, I literally, cannot comprehend how many resources you need to dump into the game to accomplish this task. I do not even have a single card with a background that is not prism or foil. Iron man may be the closest I have, with 5 splits completed.
Math time.
Omitting boosters for simplicity, It takes 1525 credits to take an unranked card to infinity aka to split.
Being generous, if you complete all of your weekly missions, you can expect to have earned about 2000 credits by the end of a week. We’ll say that with you on the free track of the season pass, and obtaining collection level rewards, or stuff through random events, you can maybe squeeze out an extra 500 weekly. That’s still only 2500 credits. Just enough to upgrade a card to infinity rank card and then some. Let’s say I get lucky with Iron Man, and I get a fabled “god split” on my next infinity rank there. At six total splits, That’s still 9,750 credits. To do that with 12 cards in a deck? 117,000 credits. At this free to play pace, we’re talking about playing every day for over 300 days. Almost 45 straight weeks of consistency.
Keep in mind this is only possible if we have enough boosters to sustain this, of which, you earn on average 6 per match for a random card in your deck. With 155 boosters needed to go from unranked to infinity split, we’re talking about 11,160 boosters, or 1860 matches played in the very least, and that’s if you’re incredibly lucky and get an even distribution across your deck.
All of this can be bypassed by being a big spender. Credits especially so, but boosters, on occasion as well. I almost feel like, you would NEED to start paying the big bucks in order to get a full, matching deck. Even more so, if you want everything to have matching borders, and variant artists, and effects or whatever else.
So you might be worrying about this type of player because if you remembered, upgrading a card’s rank increases your collection level, which gives you the chance at new cards for your collection… I can see the question forming in your mind, and I’m going to answer it now. No. Marvel Snap is not pay to win.
I know it seems like I just described pay to win, and in a way I certainly agree. Payment of money will unlock cards faster than if you did not. Sure. But I stand quite firmly by this, and for two reasons — Matchmaking for one, which takes your collection level into account when matching you with other players. Balancing, though, is the huge thing. Every card has its counter. Every deck, an anti-deck. Even the best destroy decks are hampered by Armor, the best on-reveal card by Cosmo, etc. The whales may have MORE ways to play the game, with pretty cards, sure. But this does not mean that it is always the “end all be all” of the overall meta and health of the game for normal players like you and me.
Conquest
I’ve neglected to mention the conquest game mode and the reason for that is because I don’t like it! Or I haven’t given it the time it needs for me to like it. I’m just not a fan of the commitment if we can call it that. The difference is that you face off against the same opponent over several rounds, attempting to win 10 non-ladder cubes from your opponent. The stakes are a little higher, so it feels soul crushing when you lose here, which makes me sound like a wimp but here’s why:
You need to first, beat the initial conquest, which is always free. On winning, you obtain a ticket which allows you to play the next round of conquest, against another player, who also redeemed their ticket. and you must beat several conquest opponents in that bracket to advance to the next bracket, and the next, and the next, up until the infinity conquest. If you lose at any point, it’s typically back to the beginning, unless you’ve stockpiled tickets (or unless you’re a BIG spender because the infinity ticket can be bought with gold!).
So I dunno. Sometimes the unique variant art that’s on offer is cool enough for me to endure sandpapering my mind in conquest mode. I just enjoy the lack of anxiety in the regular ladder, but that’s just me. Conquest could be your favorite! Doesn’t make a difference to me.
I’ll tell ya that I have enjoyed the few limited time modes, like the recent “high voltage” or “deadpools diner”, it’s just conquest is no good. I will add though! It’s probably a fun mode to play with your friends. You can do friendly matches of conquest against your friends and for me that’s about the only value I get out of conquest.
Mobile / Desktop Versions & Performance
Performance in both the mobile and desktop clients is flawless! I have no complaints from using either and I’ve done so for 30 hours in the desktop application via steam, and boy. It’s probably double or triple that on my phone.
I really need to mention that Initially, what made me so excited about Marvel Snap is that it is designed around mobile platforms first and foremost, the immediate benefit of which is a fantastic portrait mode experience. It is so perfectly crafted to be played on the phone it’s nuts.
Other digital Card games are generally landscape to begin with and start on PC, so it’s only natural that they opt for their mobile ports to be in landscape mode, and to me, landscape just feels sad on a smartphone for these types of games. Cards are practically the same aspect ratio as a phone screen, and to me has always felt like such a missed opportunity. But Snap takes full advantage and it’s wonderful. Runs like a dream at 60 fps on my Pixel 7 Pro, 60 fps, no lag.
The desktop client is even smoother, FPS wise, and I haven’t suffered from any glitches or crashes, but it is a bit quirky… Likely as a result of it being a port of the mobile app. Some menus you have to scroll through as though your mouse was a finger. But it works!
Overall Conclusion
At the Game Developers Conference last year, Ben Brode, the creative Director for Marvel Snap (who is also the previous creative director over Hearthstone) spoke about the process of developing Marvel Snap with his team.
His talk is excellent, and I recommend those of you interested in learning more about Snap’s development to watch his talk as a chaser to this review. If you really need proof that this is basically the spiritual successor to Hearthstone, it’s in that video. I wanted to link more of what he talked about in my video, but I can’t really tie it into any specific point of mine, so I’ll make one by inference now:
All of what he says on stage, you can tell, Marvel Snap wasn’t just made because Disney has deep pockets, or because they wanted to take advantage of weak-willed mobile game spenders. At every stage of his presentation you can feel the passion he has for the game, for his team, and for the players, and it’s a passion that seeps through down to my gameplay experience as a player. It really goes to show that this is a game made by people who love working on it, and really believe in it.
So let’s drive it home. Remember, at the start of this video, I recommended Snap for 3 reasons:
The matches are quick
The game is simple but has a lot of depth
And you can actually play for free
In the video runtime since I’ve mentioned those:
I’ve said many times how matches are quick, and even provided an example of a match to prove that.
I’ve explained why I think the game is simple, and how its mechanics contribute to its depth, which hopefully shows that the game really is committed to being as mechanically simple as possible, yet still retain depth and variety through several means.
And I’ve talked about how you can actually play for free, and have a fighting chance to win matches, despite the exorbitantly priced microtransactions.
So hopefully you can now understand some of the love I have for this game, and why I recommend it, and classify it as a Name Brand product. I think it’s the best digital card game out there, and really believe more people should give it a chance. So hopefully, you were convinced at some point in this video and you do! Don’t forget to join my alliance if you feel so inclined, and I’ll see you out there!