Marvel’s supplemental nutrition assistance program? No! Marvel’s collectible card game. It’s free to play, with the monetization coming from buying credits for cosmetics and to free up timers. The only pay to win element that I can see would be I guess you could get some cards faster, but since the cards are released randomly, I’m not sure how much that would help you.
Each card is a hero from the Marvel Universe, kind of like a bubblegum card. The art is cool and fun, which is good because this is a superhero game. Each card has a cost to play, a power value, and then a power or action, though some don’t.
The playing field is divided into three zones, and each player can place up to four cards on their sides of each of the zones. The zones also have random powers assigned which are gradually revealed through turns 1 through 3.
The object of the game is to get control of two of the three zones by having the highest total power value in each zone.
Each player makes a deck of 12 unique cards. You start with three cards, and then draw a card each turn, including the first. Each game takes 6 turns, and each turn you get that many points to play cards; on turn 1, you get 1 point, and on turn 2, you get 2 points, and so on. You play your card, wait for your opponent to play their card, and then you flip the cards, sort out the different actions, and add up the power values. You can play multiple cards during a turn if you have enough points to spend, but unspent points do not carry over to the next turn.
Each player also has a seasonal pass rank, and the rank is determined by how many energy cubes you’ve accumulated. The game gives you some to get started, and holds your hand through rank 10. After rank ten, each player antes an energy cube at the start of the game, and normally then the winner of the game takes both. Every ten energy cubes gets you a rank, and every ten ranks gets you some sort of seasonal bennie, up to rank 100. If you lose, you lose a cube. You can lose ranks, too, but you don’t lose the bennies you gained, and you can’t go below ten.
Remember the supplemental nutrition assistance program? Here’s where it comes in. At any point in the match, either player can “snap”, which is essentially doubling down on the bet. To snap, you tap the energy cube pot at the top of the screen, which lets the other player know you intend to snap. The other player has the option to retreat now, which means they forfeit and you each get your cubes back, or retreat later, which I’m not sure about because I’ve never tried it.
When you snap, you double the pot. Each player puts in two cubes instead of 1, and you win 4 instead of 2, and you lose 2 instead of 1. Overall in the game, the rewards for trying something usually outweigh the penalties if it fails. There is a timer for each turn, but it’s pretty generous. You can play around with which cards you play before you hit the end turn button, so if you make a mistake, you’ve got a chance to catch it.
As with most of these types of games, the fun comes in the synergy between cards. Different cards work together in different ways, and finding a cool way to make two cards interact with each other and the board is pretty neat. With only 12 cards and 6 turns, it’s easy to tinker and experiment with a deck. Making a new deck is incredibly simple, and you can share decks with a simple text string. Here’s my Silver Surfer based deck:
# (1) Elektra
# (1) Quicksilver
# (1) Uatu the Watcher
# (2) Medusa
# (2) Colossus
# (3) Ironheart
# (3) Silver Surfer
# (3) Wolfsbane
# (3) Mister Fantastic
# (3) Punisher
# (3) Storm
# (3) Cyclops
#
eyJDYXJkcyI6W3siQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiU2lsdmVyU3VyZmVyIn0seyJDYXJkRGVmSWQiOiJJcm9uaGVhcnQifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6IldvbGZzYmFuZSJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiTXJGYW50YXN0aWMifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6IlB1bmlzaGVyIn0seyJDYXJkRGVmSWQiOiJDeWNsb3BzIn0seyJDYXJkRGVmSWQiOiJRdWlja3NpbHZlciJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiQ29sb3NzdXMifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6Ik1lZHVzYSJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiU3Rvcm0ifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6IlVhdHUifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6IkVsZWt0cmEifV19
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in Snap.
You progress through the game by playing cards. As you play with a deck, the cards gain experience and eventually you can upgrade their appearance. While this doesn’t actually change anything about the play features of the card, it does make the art cooler each upgrade. More importantly, upgrading cards gives you collector’s ranks. Every couple of ranks gets you a bennie, and about half the time, it’s a new card. The cards are handed out randomly, but if you get a duplicate, you get a variant, which is neat.
To upgrade cards, you need boosters, which are what the cards are rewarded at the end of the game. You also need credits, and each time the card gets upgraded, it costs more. You can buy credits with real world cash, but you can also earn them in the game, mainly through the in-game daily missions and seasonal pass missions.
Matchmaking is simple and easy, and since the matches take about five to ten minutes, this has become my go to time waster when I’ve got little bits of time to kill. The gameplay itself is smooth and enjoyable, though it feels like the game’s back end infrastructure isn’t that robust; the game frequently pops up disconnect errors, and sometimes it feels like turns take too long, especially when the opponent ends up passing or something, which feels like some packets got lost in transit along the way.
I really like the game, and would be grinding it constantly, but the daily missions are time-gated. There are six daily missions each day, two doled out every eight hours. For about 2 dollars, you can pay to get the next couple of missions early. What I’ve found as a free to play player is that you will eventually hit a point where all you are doing is acquiring boosters and action cubes. Action cubes do give you seasonal ranks, and every ten seasonal ranks will get you a bennie which might be credits or something that you can use to upgrade a card, but it takes a hundred cubes to earn ten ranks. That’s fifty matches, more or less, and say at 10 minutes a match, that’s 500 minutes, or eight hours, twenty minutes.
So, while I enjoy the game enough that I would sit there and grind all day if I had something to work towards, it does get a little old if you’re working towards something. It is perfect for pulling out of your pocket while you’re waiting for something else, and for that, I’m grateful. It’s also sparked my interest in collectible card games. I’ve made a couple of runs at trying to figure them out, only to find the gameplay too opaque, or the game requires too much investment of time and/or money for me to learn. Marvel’s supplemental nutrition assistance program is a great, engaging way to play for few minutes while standing on the shoulders of giants. I’ve gotten very attached to my little card-sized heroes, and we are ready to take you on any day (note: all matchmaking is random. If I see you, I see you.)
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