The December 2023 update for Marvel Snap’s Hellfire Gala season, due to go live in a few hours, might be the most meta-changing patch in the game’s history.
Second Dinner posted the patch notes a bit early today, and it contains changes to some of the game’s most powerful and popular cards. If you’re sick of Alioth ruining your games or America Chavez being too boring, you’re in luck because this update has big changes for both of them.
Alioth, one of the current meta’s biggest offenders, has had his power and text changed. He’s been nerfed from three power to two, and his card text now reads “On Reveal: Destroy all unrevealed enemy cards here.”
“Alioth has enjoyed an interesting position in Snap as a card with acceptable winrate and cube rate, but a bad reputation,” Second Dinner said. “We’ve monitored the latter alongside performance, as we expected time and experience would help. However, he’s become more commonplace and remained frustrating, so we’re taking action. This changes Alioth from a catch-all endgame threat that’s especially good when revealing first to absolutely requiring it.”
America Chavez, meanwhile, has received a full rework. The former six-cost, nine-power card that always drew on turn six has been changed entirely. She is now a two-cost, three-power card, with the text “On Reveal: The top card of your deck gets +2 Power.”
“Philosophically, America Chavez doesn’t behave the way we want cards to,” Second Dinner said. “She most often isn’t played or even used for fun synergies, just for percentage increase on drawing other cards, making ‘an 11-card deck.’ That’s not to say no use met our standard–the Dracula decks were cool. We respect that many players enjoy the concept of deck-thinning or “fixing” draws, but it’s dangerous to metagame health that America Chavez does this too freely for too many decks. In fact, she’s often the most popular card in the game on a given week. But most of the time, that means she’s pushing the 12th-most interesting card for a deck out of it.
Arguably the other biggest change in the patch is to Luke Cage, who will now only prevent power reduction at his location, instead of all three locations. To compensate, he’s gotten a buff to three power.
Several other cards have been changed, including Shadow King, Elsa Bloodstone, Kitty Pryde, Ebony Blade, and Ravonna Renslayer, and there’s been a big tweak to movement-based cards. Now, unrevealed cards can’t be moved, unless stated otherwise.
The new seasonal update also adds the Deck Builder feature, Albums to collect variants and earn new emotes, and other changes. The full list of patch notes can be found on Marvel Snap’s website.
Published: Dec 5, 2023 11:08 am