Marvel Snap July 12 patch notes: 2 of High Evolutionary’s creations just got nerfed

The major patch for July is now live in Marvel Snap. Here, some card balance changes were implemented to keep the meta healthy, as well as the introduction of a major feature which can make the lives of players easier when it comes to acquiring new cards.

Marvel Snap Wasp and Hulk nerfs

High Evolutionary is a plain card on its own. But what makes him a force to be reckoned with are his so-called “creations.” These cards are those without abilities when they were first released. But with the arrival of High Evolutionary on May, these vanilla cards’ secret abilities can be unlocked. And two of these creations saw a lot of high game volume on some meta decks, namely Wasp and Hulk.

Wasp nerf

Wasp’s ability went from being “On Reveal: Afflict two random enemy cards here with -1 Power” to “On Reveal: Afflict a random enemy card here with -1 Power.” The change is not that huge, to be honest. But there may be times where Wasp saves a player during a match, especially with her zero-cost stat line and possible plus three overall bonus (one-Power and maximum of minus two Power to the opponent) which Second Dinner dubbed as “too good.”

Hulk nerf

As for Hulk, his original ability which reads “Ongoing: +2 Power for each turn you ended with unspent Energy” has now been changed to “When you end a turn with unspent Energy, +2 Power (if in hand or in play).” Second Dinner cited Hulk’s contribution as a major game-changer in most decks, especially with Lockjaw shells since he can stack Power even if it is in the deck. Now, players would need to have him in their hand or in a location to gain Power every turn there is unspent energy for his user.

Related: 15 best looking card variants in Marvel Snap, ranked (July 2023)

Other Marvel Snap July 12 update nerfs and buffs

As for the buffs in the recent patch, Gambit and Nakia both received an added plus one Power each. Mystique, on the other hand, now copies the On Reveal ability of an Ongoing card if there is one.

Text changes for cards such as Black Bolt, Black Cat, Bucky Barnes, Cerebro, Doctor Strange, and Kraven were also implemented.

Spotlight Caches goes live

Spotlight Caches are also part of the newest patch. The highly anticipated feature is now live, and players now have a new and easier way to get new cards, as well as new variants featured in a weekly pool of cards. Players can get one of the four cards or variants every 120 Collection levels, so it is best to spend the credits if you are targeting to have any of the Spotlight Cache cards for the week.

In addition to the Spotlight Caches, players may now be able to get a daily offer reward if they can purchase 10 cards from the Daily Offer shop. This will be available on a weekly basis. The Daily Offer Shop will now also offer a Premium Mystery Variant for 800 Gold, guaranteeing that it will not contain a Pixel Variant.

Here is the full list of the Marvel Snap July 12 patch notes, including card changes and more.

Full Marvel Snap July 12 patch notes

Patch Highlight

New Feature: Spotlight Cache

• Spotlight Cache is a brand new way to acquire newly released cards, series four cards, and series five cards. Spotlight Cache system will appear after you’ve passed Collection Level (CL) 500. A Spotlight Cache will replace Collector’s Caches and Collector’s Reserves every 120CL. This means that one in every 10 Collector’s Reserves are becoming Spotlight Caches. Read more in the Spotlight Cache blog.

General Updates

• Premium Mystery Variants: A new Mystery Variant type that only offers Rare or Super Rare Variants, and cannot contain Pixel Variants. Now available in the Daily Offer section in the Shop for 800 Gold.
• Daily Offer Rewards: When you make 10 purchases in the Daily Offer Shop, you’re now rewarded with a bonus 2000 Collector’s Tokens and one Premium Mystery Variant. (Claimable once per week).

Audio and Art

• New visual and sound effects for the following cards:
• Shuri
• Infinaut
• Sabretooth
• Agent 13

Balance Updates

Developer note: “Other than High Evolutionary over-performing and being a bit too popular for its own good, we don’t have a lot of pressing issues to address in the metagame at this time. Many of these changes are to improve clarity and expectations surrounding cards that can have unusual interactions.”

• High Evolutionary

Developer note: “For the last month, High Evolutionary has proven itself strong enough to support three distinct decks within the metagame. Some are better than others, and none of the three are explicitly problematic in Ranked play on any of our metrics, but we think there’s still room to improve diversity at the top of the metagame. Even if each High Evolutionary deck is different, it can feel monotonous to get paired against them in succession. To that end, we’re shaving some Power off the two most-played cards in the kit.”

• “Evolved” Wasp
• [Old] 0/1 – On Reveal: Afflict two random enemy cards here with minus one-Power.
• [New] 0/1 – On Reveal: Afflict two random enemy card here with minus one-Power.

Developer note: “Pretty simple–Wasp is too good. Wasp is specifically fantastic in conjunction with Lockjaw and Jane Foster, playing a more like a plus four bonus on two Lockjaw rolls than just an 0/3. However, she’s also winning more cubes overall than any other High Evolutionary card, so we’re weakening her to meaningfully impact all of these decks.”

• “Evolved” Hulk
• [Old] 6/12 – Ongoing: Plus two-Power for each turn you ended with unspent Energy.
• [New] 6/12 – When you end a turn with unspent Energy, plus two-Power. (if in hand or in play)

Developer Note: “Similarly, Hulk appears in every High Evolutionary shell we’ve been monitoring, and Hulk strongest there is–even given the unfortunate bug that doesn’t count the last turn of the game, should you happen to have an Energy to spare. This adjustment will remove that issue and also reduce the average Power of Hulk, especially in Lockjaw shells where players could often accumulate Energy without ever drawing Hulk at all.”

“We recognize these adjustments may not be as harsh as some players expected, and we’ll continue keeping a close eye on High Evolutionary in the weeks to come.”

• Gambit
• [Old] 3/1 – On Reveal: Discard a card from your hand. Destroy a random enemy card.
• [New] 3/3 – On Reveal: Discard a card from your hand. Destroy a random enemy card.
• Now must discard a card to destroy anything (no text change)

Developer Note: “For some time now, players have noted a confusing dissonance between Gambit’s effect destroying cards whether you discard a card or not, while Arnim Zola must destroy his target in order to create copies of it. In addition to being inconsistent, Gambit’s creative concept is ‘throwing’ cards at your enemies–if you have no cards to throw, why would it work? Since this is a nerf, and Gambit’s not a highly-played card, we’re compensating him for that loss with plus two-Power. The Wong combo decks will suffer a bit, and perhaps need to start including something like Apocalypse or Swarm if they want to blow up the board. However, using Gambit in more traditional decks might be an interesting option.”

• Mystique
• [New] Gameplay Change: Now triggers On Reveals if the copied Ongoing card had one (no text change).

Developer Note: Similarly, this is a change to better line up players’ intuitions with outcomes. Whenever a card in our game copies an ability, it implicitly copies the whole text box. When Absorbing Man copies a card with an On Reveal and an Ongoing ability, like Soul Stone or Electro, he gets both, immediately. But when Mystique does, she gets the On Reveal ability without triggering it–even though she was just played, like Absorbing Man. This doesn’t come up often, but we consider it a quality of life improvement. We’ll also make this adjustment to Rogue, just trying it here first.

• Nakia
• [Old] 3/2 – On Reveal: Give the 2 leftmost cards in your hand plus two-Power.
• [New] 3/3 – On Reveal: Give all cards in your hand plus one-Power.

Developer Note: “Nakia has been underperforming for a while now, a far cry from her days of dominance during the game’s beta period. In addition, her affect was a little complex, especially for a card debuting in series two. We’re trying to address both of those issues with this change, making Nakia a stronger, simpler card to play with. Maybe she finds a new home in the competitive metagame, maybe not–time will tell.”

• Text-Only Updates

The below adjustments are just to improve how a few cards are worded, to better align with our learnings around what makes SNAP cards clear, consistent, and easy to read. We’ll continue making updates in this vein over time.

• Black Bolt
• [Old] On Reveal: Your opponent must discard the lowest-Cost card in their hand.
• [New] On Reveal: Discard the lowest-cost card from your opponent’s hand.

Developer Note: “There is an unresolved inconsistency present in this text regarding the capitalization of the word “Cost.” We’re continuing to look into that for other cards.”

• Black Cat
• [Old] If this is in your hand at the end of your turn, discard it.
• [New] If you end the turn with this in your hand, discard it.
• Bucky Barnes
• [Old] When this is destroyed, create the Winter Soldier in its place.
• [New] When this is destroyed, replace it with the Winter Soldier.
• Cerebro
• [Old] Ongoing: Your highest Power cards get plus two-Power.
• [New] Ongoing: Your highest-Power cards have plus two-Power.

Developer Note: “This is standard language for passive Power increases.”

• Doctor Strange
• [Old] On Reveal: Move your highest Power cards to this location.
• [New] On Reveal: Move your highest-Power card(s) to this location.
• Kraven
• [Old] When a card moves here, this gets plus two-Power.
• [New] When a card moves here, this gains plus two-Power.

Developer Note: “This is standard language for triggered Power increases.”