The newly-released Marvel Snap offers many creative and unique design decisions, including extremely small decks that consist of twelve singleton cards, with just six turns of play in total. One of the biggest elements is the absence of the mulligan phase, the option to swap your starting hand for a different set of cards.
As Ben Brode explained on Twitter, getting rid of the mulligan phase was a core part of their design goals from the beginning of the process.
The initial feedback from Marvel Snap playtesters was extremely negative, but one small change to a single card was enough to alleviate all the testers’ concerns.
By changing Quicksilver, a one-energy, two-power unit, to read “Starts in your opening hand”, the Marvel Snap dev team was able to remove players’ frustrations about this aspect of the game, which was mostly an emotional reaction considering how missing your first turn is actually a lot less impactful than it would be in more traditional card games.
Marvel Snap also features other cards of this ilk, neither of which seem top-tier competitively but they all serve as excellent teaching tools for newer players.
Domino, a two-energy three-power unit reads, “You always draw this card on turn 2, and not before,” while America Chavez is a six-energy nine-power unit, a relatively weak finisher with a similar text: “You always draw this card on turn 6, and not before.”
Marvel Snap arrived on Oct. 18 and immediately hit number one on the Apple store.
