Marvel Snap will speed up card progression on January 31st
You'll be able to battle your buds, too
Marvel Snap is excellent, and when you first start playing it chucks new cards at you faster than a confused magician. That slows down once you've got a few hours under your utility belt, but developers Second Dinner have some changes in the works that should make rarer cards easier to snag. If you're saving up for a particular card from the Token Shop, it's worth checking whether it's one of 9 cards that are about to get cheaper.
The first "Series Drop" is due to land in an update on January 31st, which will also add a mode that lets you battle your buds.
For those that already know what this means: Luke Cage, Absorbing Man, She-Hulk and Titania are dropping from Series 4 to Series 3, while Valkyrie, Super-Skrull, Bast, Shuri and Black Panther are dropping from Series 5 to Series 4. You can see the rest of the planned changes in a post on Snap's website.
The game never explains what's going on with the Series system (or Pools, as the community calls them), presumably because its fiddliness runs counter to the quick and breezy cardplay Snap champions elsewhere. Deep breath, everybody.
As you unlock new cards and visually upgrade old ones, your collection level increases. Once your collection level hits 486 you start unlocking generally more powerful (and more complicated) cards from Series 3, with a 50% chance to acquire them from Collector's Caches and a 25% chance to find them from the Collector's Reserves that replace Caches at collection level 1,000. When you up your collection level to 500, you also have a 2.5% chance to unbox a Series 4 card and a 0.25% chance to unbox a Series 5 card instead.
Collection level 500 is also when you unlock the Token Shop, where you can spend Tokens gained from Caches and Reserves to unlock specific cards. Only one card is available at a time, but you can reserve a card if one pops up that you want to save for. Series 3 cards cost 1,000 Tokens, Series 4 cards cost 3,000, and Series 5 cards cost 6,000.
So! Dropping a card down a Series makes it ten times more likely to appear in yer boxes, and much cheaper in the Token Shop. My commiserations to anyone who just wasted thousands of Tokens on a card that's about to drop a Series.
Second Dinner say nearly every card will see a Series Drop eventually, apart from Galactus and Thanos, who they've deemed too badass to cheapen. If you acquire a card before it Drops, it'll come with a special "First Edition Badge". They also say they're "starting to experiment with changes" that make it easier to unlock cards from Series 4 and 5 before you've nabbed all the cards Series 3.
Yesterday's update brought some balance changes, along with the welcome addition of artist credit tags. None of the balance changes resembles a major upheaval, to me, but the meta-dominating Leader card did have its power reduced. Developers Second Dinner say they'll make more balance tweaks in the coming weeks.
Marvel Snap is free on Steam, though it's better on your phone and perfect for your tablet.