I don’t play too many video games or app games. It’s not that they are bad, often times they just eat up a lot of time. Especially, I feel, a new app game. A good app game is going to get you hooked on doing some small things every day until it’s a routine. But often they start out with wanting to eat up more of your time before you settle in. Marvel Snap is a new app game that’s come out. Is it a flash in a pan or one that will get worked into an everyday routine.

How To Play Marvel Snap

Marvel Snap is a combination of two different things. It is deck construction and then lane battling. In a lot of ways, it is as much of a board game as it is an app game. We’ll talk about the app features and if they are worth it later.

In this game you create a deck of heroes ranging from 1 to 6 energy cost to play with. Then you take that into battle against other players. You try and gain majority of power, each character has a power, at two of the three locations out there. Many of the locations offer specific powers that bolster or hurt characters at the location, or change up how you can play characters. At the end of six rounds, gaining an additional energy per round, the person who controls the most locations wins.

The Heroes

Let’s start out by talking about the heroes in this game. I didn’t mention it, but a lot of the heroes have powers. For example, Quicksilver, a 1 cost card, always starts in your hand, because he is fast. Scarlet Witch swaps out a location after a specific round. Hulk just has a ton of power so he smashes.

I think that Marvel Snap does a good job with the characters. They all make sense with their powers, and some of them just don’t have special abilities. Generally if you have a power your cost and power are at a 1 to 1 ration or worse. If you don’t have a special ability you have more power. Hulk, for example, costs 6 and has 12 power.

Now, not all special abilities are created equal, though, those that aren’t tend to be more powerful. Some characters, Rocket, Star Lord, Gamora, all gain attack based off of the other player playing a card at their location. But not just at the location, but at the location the turn that character comes out. Others, like Captain America, give more generic on going abilities, like +1 power for each other card at his location.

The Locations

The other important factor in the game are the locations. I like them a lot in the game because it changes up each battle. Some of them are simple, every hero here gets +5, that’s not really anything special. Another, when it’s flipped, gives you a copy of another players card. Of course, they get a copy of one of yours.

One thing that is interesting is how the locations reveal throughout the game. On turn one, only the first location is known. Then turn two the next one flips and the final one on turn three. Yo can play blind to them, but it might mess up your plans if you aren’t careful. Or you might sneak a 1 cost card onto a location that only can have four or higher cost cards. There is a risk to placing it down blind, but sometimes that risk is worth it.

The Deck Construction

Deck Construction is a very important part of this game. You have a limited number of cards to put in a deck and a limited number of them that you can see. It is like Magic: The Gathering, in that you want enough low cost cards to get them them out early game, but not too many that you never draw your bigger more powerful cards. It is about find that balance.

The app makes deck construction fairly easy. But it does fall into an issue I have with digital Magic: The Gathering. When you are on an app, you can’t see all your cards as easily. Granted, with Magic, I used their database and a site you can build decks in conjunction with each other when I had decks for it. But with the digital deck building, it is a bit trickier.

It offers ways to search and filter cards. But until there is a nice built up database with search features, deck construction is going to be a bit slow. It isn’t bad early in the game when you don’t have many characters, but you add in characters quickly as you go.

The App

So, Marvel Snap, is an app game. That means it is going to do a few things. Firstly, it’s going to try and sell you stuff. Right now, there are not ads that pop up for other things. I doubt there ever will be. But there are adds to get people to buy in game things. The most notable is a season pass. It isn’t a bad price and does offer more unlocks and new characters. But if you don’t do it, it means that you likely are falling behind a little bit in collecting characters.

One important question I have is how those characters then will be released. In an app game I play a lot, Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, characters can be bought before they become farmable. What is that time table for Marvel Snap? If I miss out on Miles Morales now, do I need to wait a year to get him later? Or is it that I’m getting him a month earlier with the season pass? There is a balancing act for the company to get people to buy, but also not turn people off from the game.

And finally the unlocks or upgrades to characters. One of the ways you push up in the game and get more and new things is upgrading your characters. But are you really? Your character doesn’t get better, it just gets more “rare”. It’s an artificial thing in the game that only matters if you want fancier artwork, it is cool. But mechanically it doesn’t matter, it mainly just unlocks more things as you go.

Final Thoughts on Marvel Snap

Now, I say final thoughts, this probably more initial impressions. Why, because I wasn’t in the beta and the app just released yesterday. But I do have some concerns with the app. It is a game about getting characters you want and then deck construction. Most likely some characters, especially early on characters will lose value over time to play with. And the whole, unlock a 3D picture of what is already solid artwork isn’t reason enough to play with them.

I also really want to know the cadence of how characters are released. I bought the initial Season Pass, but I doubt I will buy anymore. It is a situation where I was curious about it to start and I wanted to know for coverage. But I try not to spend much if any money on app games. So now that Miles Morales or the next season pass character, when can I see them. Or are they always kept behind that season pass? If they are, that’ll kill the game.

But my concerns are more app based and how the company wants to make it’s money. The game play itself is a lot of fun. I liken it to Smash Up, but I think that other things, Land, Air, and Sea, for example are also good examples of a lane battler. It just has some of the randomness in powers that Smash Up has. But I like it much better than Smash Up, because I curate my deck.

The final thought is that I’m glad it is an app game not a physical game, but I wish it was a physical game. As an app game, I can most likely free to play eventually get most everything. But I’d love to get this to a physical table. I’d love to have the cards and build the decks. It’d just cost me more money because, well, it’d be a TCG (Trading Card Game) and buying blind packs would cost me money.

Have you tried Marvel Snap? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below or over on Twitter.

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