Marvel Snap’s New January 2024 Balance Update Tweaks Loki, Kingpin, and More

The Planet Hulk season of Marvel Snap (Free) has had a week to settle in now, and that means we were about due for another update. And hey, it’s here! How about that? As usual, it’s mainly wrapped up in balance tweaks, adjusting various characters to react to the state of the meta. There are a few other things in here, and we’ll go through all of them as we always do. It’s a bit of a bloodbath for some recently dominant cards, so let’s check out the damage.

First up is Loki, who has been pretty strong ever since his debut a few months back. There have been tweaks to other cards to try to curb him a little and his stats were even hit a bit, but the time has come for his ability to get adjusted. It’s a very minor change, but one that will affect his synergy with The Collector considerably. Basically, he still fills your hand with cards from your opponent’s deck at a -1 Cost, but instead of replacing your hand (which would add to Collector’s Power), it now transforms it (which does not). There’s a bit of a change behind the scenes to facilitate this, but it’s a bit in the weeds to explain and doesn’t affect many other cards for now. Loki is still powerful, but the easiest deck with him up until now is going to need a bit of tinkering.

Another recent card getting a bit of a nerf is Ms. Marvel. She’s another one that has quickly found a place in many of the best decks, and I suppose it’s no surprise the bat has come for her. First, she’s losing a point of power, going from 4-Cost 5-Power to 4-Cost 4-Power. Next, her ability has been tweaked. It now requires at least two cards at a location with no repeated costs for the +5 Power effect to kick in. Not too serious, but again certain decks might have to rethink things.

We’re not done with nerfing recent cards yet, I’m afraid. Annihilus decks have been causing plenty of trouble, and that means even he isn’t safe. Like Ms. Marvel, he’s dropping a point of Power. His 5-Cost 7-Power is now 5-Cost 6-Power, which is a small change. His ability now only affects your cards with less than 0 Power, too. He’ll still be useful for mailing negatives to your opponents, but that’s where the line is drawn for now.

Over to the buffs, we’ve got Dracula going from 4-Cost 0-Power to 4-Cost 1-Power, Angel’s ability now allowing him to fly out of your hand in addition to your deck when a card is destroyed, and Quake now swapping the positions of the other two locations regardless of where she is played.

Kingpin has received some changes, along with his associated location at Fisk Tower. Neither will destroy cards to move to their location anymore. Kingpin goes from 3-Cost 4-Power to 2-Cost 3-Power, and his ability now afflicts any card that moves to his location on any turn with -2 Power. Fisk Tower similarly afflicts any card that moves there with -4 Power. In some cases, this might be worse than destruction.

As usual, there are a pile of bug fixes and other behind-the-scenes adjustments in this update, but that stuff is less sexy so I’ll leave it for you to look up if you’re interested. What do you think about these latest balance changes? Do you have to re-do any of your decks? Let us know in the comments below, if that’s a thing you feel like doing.

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