Marvel Snap streamer has a simple fix for one of the game’s most toxic cards

The March 21 update to Marvel Snap features the same focus as the Marvel franchise’s Infinity saga: stop Thanos. But a number of players were surprised to see another overpowered card not get touched at all and a little disappointed that the devs appear to disagree.

Many fans were dismayed to see that Leech went untouched, and actually got a small indirect buff. Leech is a five-cost, three-power card that removes the abilities from all cards in your opponent’s hand on reveal. This makes it an extremely viable card for control decks, and when combined with Thanos like it frequently is, Leech can be played on turn four in some instances.

Principal game designer Glenn Jones responded to concerns about Leech on his Twitter account, claiming “there’s only been one strong deck using Leech, and nerfs to Thanos decks weaken him too.” But many of the replies to his statement show that fans don’t think that’s true, and upon further inspection of the comments on the Marvel Snap subreddit’s patch notes post, it shows that a huge amount of fans can’t believe that Leech didn’t get touched.

Marvel Snap streamer MegaM0gwai, in response to the new patch, took issue with Jones underselling how powerful Leech is: “This is a problematic card, and it’s honestly not true that it’s only in Thanos decks.” MegaM0gwai then suggested that Leech’s ability should be limited so that it only takes away abilities from the enemy hand for one turn. He argued that it would keep the card viable but prevent the “devastating” method where it’s played on turn three or four and impacts the rest of the match.

While MegaM0gwai is technically correct that Leech isn’t solely used in Thanos decks, several of the best “meta” decks according to sites like Snap Fan and Marvel Snap Zone feature both Leech and Thanos in them. In fact, the winningest meta deck on Snap Fan is the Thanos Lockjaw deck which requires Leech.

But a bug fix introduced in this patch makes it so “cards that lose their ability due to Leech no longer get that ability back if they’re pulled back in play by another card.” This means cards like Lockjaw, Quantum Tunnel, and Hela won’t give abilities back to cards that get leeched.

The lack of Leech nerfs is especially frustrating to players given that the changes to Aero were made specifically because that card (which previously moved all enemy cards played that turn to a single location on reveal) was “denying players the option to play their own endgames,” according to the devs.