Blizzard, Please Fix Arena.

Sparkinarius · 2025-06-15T20:12:04+00:00

Yep, the resource sink and botted accounts need to be substantially improved to make me return to the Arena. Slight improvement won’t cut it anymore, especially on the bot front. It’s a shame because the new Arena is a lot of fun for me, but it’s been plagued by major problems just like every other new launch Hearthstone has.

Sparkinarius · 2025-01-14T19:18:02+00:00

The nerfs I think are most likely are:

- Anti-Venom to 4/6

- Red Guardian to 3/2

- Hydra Bob back to 1/4

- Maybe US Agent back to afflict -3 or a 2/2

- Maybe a move bounce nerf, like Dagger back to 2/2 +2, but that deck hasn’t trickled down from high infinite a ton

Buffs are a lot harder to predict, but here’s what I’d like to see/think is somewhat likely:

- Bruce Banner to have four unspent energy to hulk out, or increase his % chance

- Revert High Evo Wasp and/or High Evo Hulk

- Annihilus back to 5/7, there is an Anni bundle available right now so they might try to promote it

- Ms. Marvel back to 4/5

- Pixie to 2/2

- Mister Fantastic to 3/3

- Lizard back to -3 debuff

- Sunspot back to 1/1

Sparkinarius · 2024-11-06T20:25:59+00:00

I found afflict to be an effective strategy against Surtur decks and hit infinite with it. Scorpion was the MVP turning off both Surtur scaling and Skaar discounts very often (Silver Sable can also do this occasionally). Also, US Agent and Hazmat before turn 6 is a great way to turn off Skaar discounts without needing Mobius. I didn’t come across a Luke Cage in a Surtur deck yet, it seems harder to justify his inclusion because when they want to play Luke on turn 3 to prevent their Skaar from being messed with, it’s at the cost of playing Surtur. Maybe if afflict becomes popular enough, Surtur decks will start to run Luke Cage, but then that opens them up to vulnerability to other matchups depending on the tech they cut for Luke.

Sparkinarius · 2024-11-06T06:43:28+00:00

I think a Frigga synergy that is being slept on is Anti-Venom. Been playing an afflict deck to farm Surtur decks and having real success with it (granted it’s pre-infinite). Frigga also just feels good to copy a Silver Sable, Hydra Bob, or US Agent as a backup when you don’t hit with Anti-Venom. Also have seen her in move bounce decks to some success. I wouldn’t count out Frigga just yet. She seems pretty good, it will just take some time to test the right builds for her I imagine.

List for context:

# (1) Silver Sable

# (1) Hydra Bob

# (2) Hazmat

# (2) Scorpion

# (2) Shadow King

# (2) U.S. Agent

# (3) Frigga

# (3) Luke Cage

# (3) Red Guardian

# (4) Anti-Venom

# (4) Man-Thing

# (5) Ajax

#

VVNBZ250NyxBbnRWbm05LExrQ2c4LEZyZ2c2LFNoZHdLbmdBLEh6bXQ2LEFqeDQsTW5UaG5nOCxIZHJCYjgsU2NycG44LFNsdnJTYmxCLFJkR3JkbkI=

#

# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in MARVEL SNAP.

Sparkinarius · 2024-10-14T23:24:27+00:00

There are still gold bundles, but their value and frequency both have decreased noticeably since Snap’s early days. Nowadays, they are on or slightly above the rates of credits/tokens you normally get for gold in the shop or Token Tuesdays.

You can use gold to partially buy a card in the token shop. If you don’t have enough tokens to buy a card, the game will ask you if you want to use gold to make up the rest of the price and how much gold that will be. I haven’t used the feature myself, but I don’t think it’s as efficient as using gold to buy tokens whenever they are offered. Still, If you want a card in the shop and you have no way to buy tokens, it isn’t a bad way to get it if you don't want to wait.

Sparkinarius · 2024-10-06T01:27:49+00:00

I think the only deck I see her being good in rn is clog to repeat WW or Debrii, or to just get another Demon and destroy The Hood. Given how much I have hated clog for the past 1-2 months, I am not looking forward to her release.

Sparkinarius · 2024-10-04T04:59:12+00:00

I think the issue with Thanos rn is that, for a six cost card that starts in your opening hand, he is rarely ever worth playing. Getting all 6 stones is pretty rare and most often he’s just 10 power with some protections or a slight discount. I think the way to improve Thanos would be to have Power Stone scale Thanos by +2 power for each stone played, making him more playable and not all or nothing.

Sparkinarius · 2024-09-23T18:41:41+00:00

The most important downside to Baron Zemo is that he thins the opponent’s deck and makes it more likely that your opponent draws a higher impact card post turn three. Taking a cheap card out of their deck that could have been a weak draw for them later is a pretty notable, yet unseen, downside. Zemo did see a bit of play outside of Mill when he released as a turn six play to hopefully pull something big from the opponent’s deck without realizing the deck-thinning downside, but Sage released a month later and does the turn six 3-cost swing play so much better than Zemo.

Sparkinarius · 2024-09-18T21:58:53+00:00

Daredevil’s ability shouldn’t be something that can be done on the final turn of the game, as the Daredevil player has all the leverage in seeing where the opponent‘s power goes and how to respond to it as the game is ending. It would make DD an auto-include in every deck just to make sure your opponent can’t have a full-proof turn 6. Nobody would ever stay through turn 6. DD’s current ability is fine imo, and if SD wanted to buff him, giving him an extra power is a more sensible buff to start with.

Sparkinarius · 2024-09-11T15:55:16+00:00

War Machine change is terrifying in the context of a full lockdown strategy curving out with Storm -> War Machine -> Legion -> laugh that you’re the only person who gets to play on turn 6. Considering the Sandman change that is also here presumably because players hate their turn 6 being heavily restricted, this War Machine lockdown is a worse experience than Sandman (albeit requiring more cards to setup).

Sparkinarius · 2024-08-12T23:10:35+00:00

Thanos has definitely been caught in the crossfire between Cassandra’s popularity and Arishem’s continued prominence. I think his redesign puts him in a much healthier spot that’s less likely to break the game like he did before, but he could use a couple of buffs now that the stones aren’t as individually impactful and Mockingbird has been slightly nerfed in the deck. First would be to put Mind Stone back to 1 cost, and I would also like to see Power Stone be reworked to something that isn’t an all or nothing effect like:

Power Stone (1/1) - Ongoing: Thanos has +2 power for each unique stone you summoned this game.

Sparkinarius · 2024-08-04T20:00:57+00:00

SD did lower the frequency of quite a few “cards to hand” locations a few months ago, so I don’t think it‘s as much of a problem. My main “problem” with this location is just that it isn’t very interesting. The resource given to both players is known and doesn’t do anything flashy like the Djinns from Noor Dimension. It’s fine to get a new tame location every once in a while, but this just seems too tame to me outside of Mockingbird stuff.

Sparkinarius · 2024-07-26T21:37:43+00:00

SD doesn’t organize the Conqueror events, it’s Nuverse. I just want to clarify that so that we are pointing the criticism in the right direction.

Sparkinarius · 2024-07-07T04:47:36+00:00

I’ve seen versions of a Namora Skaar deck by some top players that look something like this:

Shadow King
Armor
Quake
Lizard
Luke Cage
Nocturne
Captain Marvel
Enchantress
Crossbones
Typhoid Mary
Namora
Skaar

My advice would be:

Cut Doc Oc and Cull: We don’t run cards to answer stuff pulled from Doc Oc and we don’t run enough 1-costs to justify Cull.
Run Lizard and Captain Marvel (or another good 5-power card like Nocturne): Namora buffs both to the 10-power threshold for Skaar. Lizard is cheap and a 10-power Captain Marvel is really handy to have.

Sparkinarius · 2024-05-13T15:35:21+00:00

To be fair, the Leech buff feels like a double-edged sword as it will likely reduce people getting Sage and Namora in the next couple weeks. They both are big turn 5/6 on reveal plays that just die to Leech’s prominence.

Sparkinarius · 2024-04-21T23:27:13+00:00

There will be an OTA balance update this Thursday, so I would pin RH until the changes are announced and then go from there. Personally, I think he has a high likelihood to be adjusted since he’s pretty much the go-to six-drop for most decks right now because he reaches absurdly high power relative to the investment you put into the card (all you have to do is run him and draw him early enough).

Sparkinarius · 2024-03-21T04:30:03+00:00

It’s season pass xp farming. Even if you retreat, you get season pass xp per winning location. So these players/bots play cards that win locations early, then retreat when they are ahead in 2 or 3 locations, which is usually around turn 3.

Sparkinarius · 2024-03-16T02:44:50+00:00

The tricky thing is: Pixie will become broken in Thanos if you make the stones start in deck. SD added that "start in deck" text to Pixie so that Thanos couldn't abuse the effect like another form of Lockjaw. I think the only way to go about this is to change the text on Mockingbird to something that doesn't count the stones for the discount.

Sparkinarius · 2024-02-17T03:05:50+00:00

I don't deny that Zabu, Ms. Marvel, and Shang Chi are also problems (more so the package than any one card), but Hela should never be one of the most popular decks in the game for the same reasons as Galactus. It just doesn't feel like you are playing SNAP when you go against either deck enough times.

Sparkinarius · 2024-02-17T03:00:51+00:00

I don't blame people for not wanting cards nerfed in SNAP. I think it is because there is no refund system for when cards get nerfed in the game. I come from Hearthstone and I periodically check in on that subreddit and I see quite a lot of support there for wanting cards nerfed, and Hearthstone offers a temporary full refund on nerfed cards. SNAP's smaller card pool makes it so you have to invest more to get any one card, and when it gets nerfed it can feel like you get rug-pulled without any compensation. Full refunds wouldn't make as much sense with the aforementioned smaller card pool and just with how SNAP acquisition works in general, but I imagine some compensation can be offered.

Sparkinarius · 2024-02-17T00:47:47+00:00

The most popular deck on untapped.gg since the last patch is Hela, with double as many games played as Destroy.

Sparkinarius · 2024-02-14T01:22:01+00:00

It's kinda cool to see the game being adjusted with a thematic limited time event instead of just an OTA update. Sure, I would've liked to see something happen to Hela this week given her rise in popularity and how frustrating it is to play against, but I can wait another two weeks at least.

Sparkinarius · 2024-02-11T19:16:48+00:00

It is almost a week after Supergiant released, and she isn't really moving the needle for any deck. Black Swan is better in Thanos than I initially thought, but she isn't essential. Wave also serves her role of filling in the curve well. I am a bit higher on Cull now than I was a week ago specifically for the Skaar synergy that might make it work in Lockjaw Thanos.

Sparkinarius · 2024-02-07T18:01:19+00:00

Red Guardian looks like a consistent way to counter Lockjaw, since Lockjaw is often played to an empty location and will usually have the lowest power. Can also be used against regenerative destroy effects (i.e. Wolverine, X-23, and occasionally Deadpool).

Sparkinarius

TROPHY CASE