YMMV / MARVEL SNAP

• Accidental Innuendo: Pixel M.O.D.O.K.'s artwork depicts his chair launching him upwards with a rocket blast... which given the art style and position of the thruster looks like a thunderous fart.
• Awesome Art: The visual effects in this game are downright gorgeous, to say nothing of the card art, which includes cards drawn by notorious artists like Kim Jacinto and Ryan Benjamin.
• Awesome Moments: The animated Steam release trailer, which features Deadpool and Ghost Rider fighting over a cube while changing into alternate versions of themselves when they touch it. Then the cube is picked up by a Zombie Squirrel Girl (later becomes a card variant in time for halloween), who then transforms into a Sailor Senshi before all three of them get jumped by Mecha-Devil Dinosaur.
• Awesome Music:
  • The remix of the main menu theme for the season "Loki For All Time" that coincides with season 2 of Loki (2021) perfectly captures the tone of that show's theme song.
  • Halloween 2023 has a spooky remix of the main menu theme, perfect for the season.
  • The "Higher, Further, Faster" main menu remix perfectly fits Ms. Marvel's Pakistani roots.
• Broken Base
  • Galactus has been one of the most polarizing cards Second Dinner has ever put out. Many people despise his High-Tier Scrappy status and his game-warping ability (destroys the locations he's not in and everyone on them, if he's your only card on a location on reveal) that could be cheated out earlier through cards like Wave and Electro. This lead to many calling for a nerf to the devourer of worlds, which eventually happened — twice. When Second Dinner announced they were looking in to balancing Galactus, his supporters rushed to his side, saying that Galactus decks, while frustrating, were easily telegraphed, allowing people to set up the proper countermeasures to combat him.
  • The nerf to Mobius M. Mobius (changing his Ongoing ability to an On-Reveal) caused intense fighting within the community. One the one side, there were people who said his nerf would allow the already strong Loki decks to surge back into the spotlight while others were happy to see him go as it meant freeing up other cost reduction decks like Sera. The fighting only intensified when Second Dinner walked back those changes, instead increasing Mobius' cost to three.
  • Spotlight Keys and Caches have been hotly debated since each were implemented. One side enjoys the more straightforward path to card acquisition, meaning they will eventually get every card even if it takes some time and the fact that keys can be stashed away in order to target out a card when it appears in rotation. The other side hates its RNG aspect of the caches, with it more often than not taking 3-4 keys to get the actual card you wanted and the fact the keys have led to mass hoarding and FOMO, something that Second Dinner doesn't want you doing with the keys.
  • The April 10th, 2024 Balance patch practically set the fanbase on fire after nerfs to cards like Zabu and Sandman but the center of the storm sat Alioth, whose On Reveal now removes text from unrevealed cards rather than destroying them. Some fans cheered Alioth's demise while others complained that this was the worst set of balance changes Second Dinner has made and that Alioth was already in a healthy place.
• Funny Moments:
  • Several locations have effects that affect characters regardless of how powerful they are in canon. Cue cosmically powerful entities like Galactus, Death, the Phoenix Force, Thanos with all the Infinity Stones, Knull, Alioth, or the Living Tribunal being kicked out of Luke's Bar or falling off a rickety wooden bridge and dying.
  • The fact that Rickety Bridge doesn't discriminate who it kills regardless of their flight capability or power levels. If there's no immunity to destruction, they're all fair game when a second character steps on it. One could have the aforementioned cosmically powerful characters die because a squirrel or a rock got placed on said bridge, which is hilariously absurd.
  • The hot location screen describes Kamar-Taj as "Odin's vacation home".
  • There is a special interaction for when M'Baku is unable to be played due to no more available board space: his flies out of the corner of the screen and shouts "NO ROOM FOR M'BAKU!" with all the same energy as "Toasty!"
  • If a player has Luke Cage and an opponent plays the Thing (evolved via High Evolutionary), the animation for the debris the latter throws just bounces off and flies away.
  • Spider-Ham's on-reveal ability turns the opponent's leftmost (formerly highest-cost) card in their hand into a pig with no abilities. The visual effect has him smack said card with a huge wooden mallet. Even funnier is that there's no cards immune to it, meaning that cosmically-powerful characters are all fair game for being piggified.
  • Tarnax IV is often a location goldmine in hilarity. Any card you play there will turn into a random card of the same cost (after triggering on-reveal abilities first). Cue things like players' cards turning into stuff that unexpectedly grant them an advantage like Infinaut, or turning into an unplanned M.O.D.O.K./Destroyer and ruining their game. One can even make some (usually self-detrimental) fun by using Green Goblin/Hobgoblin, which goes to the opponent's side then transforms (especially the latter, which can turn into M.O.D.O.K.). It's even funnier if Legion is played on the location, turning all locations into Tarnax IV and the rest of the game into a gamble.
  • For the holidays, the rock cards that spawn on locations, get added to decks, or added to decks by a special variant of Korg, or Rock Slide are lumps of coal.
• Game-Breaker: Considering that the game is still quite young and actively being balanced, this has to be expected. Notable examples include:
  • Cards:
    • Okoye, which adds 1 Power to every card in your deck, was an extremely powerful opener for a 1 Energy, 1 Power card, which led to it being nerfed early on the game's life, becoming a 2/2 card.
    • Strong Guy offered a ton of power for very little investment, gaining +6 Power if your hand was empty. His unintended synergy with low-cost decks led to the card receiving a massive nerf, going from 2/3 to 4/4, forcing players to invest on him with specialized discard decks to get the most of his power.
    • Mister Negative is notorious for being nerfed multiple times before the global version launched. His On Reveal effect swaps the Power and cost of all cards in your deck, turning some high-Energy low-Power cards into serious powerhouses. His overall power was reduced twice, going from a 4/4 card to 4/2, to then 4/-1 Power, in an attempt to balance his incredibly powerful effect.
    • Magik was a very potent 5-cost card but turn 6 drop, turning the game from 6 turns into 7 and changing a location, surprising an opponent and giving its own player total control of the flow of the match (to be more specific, most players will play out their hands to their apex on Turn 6 as they expect it to be the final turn, Magik gets played on 6 and now the opponent has near perfect information on what they need to do to win). As such, the card received a nerf that prevents it from being played in turn 6, giving the opponent a bit more time to prepare. A later buff would reduce Magik's original cost of 5 (For turn 5 plays) to 3, which would end up giving the opponent more time to prepare
    • Silver Surfer was a 3-cost 0-power card added in the Power Cosmic Season Pass that boosted the power of all friendly 3-cost cards by 3 on reveal. He was often played in decks with cards like Bishop, Brood, Mr. Fantastic, and Maximus, and had a high potential to completely turn a game around if he was played on turn 6. He became even more powerful if used in conjunction with Mr. Negative, turning him into a 0-cost 3-power card, as well as making several 3-cost cards similarly stronger with low costs. He was eventually nerfed to 2 Power to remove his synergy with Mr. Negative and also his buff was lowered to a more reasonable +2.
    • Zabu is another Season Pass card that became extremely common in the meta thanks to his powerful ability; He's a 3-cost 2-power card with an ongoing ability that decreased the cost of all 4-cost cards by 2. This allowed for potent control decks with cards like Spider-Man, Absorbing Man, Shang Chi, and Moon Girl being played in great numbers in later turns. When combined with Sera, those former 4-cost cards become 1-cost, making them even easier to play. He was nerfed in the same patch as Silver Surfer, lowering his cost reduction to only -1. He's since been nerfed again, with his ongoing being changed to a 1-turn On Reveal.
    • In a similar vein to Thanos Lockjaw, you have Shuri decks, which punishes people by using Shuri to double the power of cards like Typhoid Mary or Red Skull, which can help offset their drawback effects.^note  (Typhoid Mary gives all your cards -1 Power while Red Skull gives opposing cards at the same location +2 power) Couple that with either Taskmaster or Arnim Zola and you can easily swing 2 locations no problem. Red Skull received 2 nerfs to try and curb the power, first going from 5/15 to a 5/13 and then down to 5/12, and the deck still manages to remain dominant. A nerf to Shuri makes it so that you need to play the next card's power you want to double there.
    • The interaction between Kitty Pride and the Shuri's Lab location can break the game in half. Kitty returns to your hand at the beginning of every turn, gaining +1 Power every time, and Shuri's Lab doubles the Power of every card played there. By playing Kitty on Shuri's Lab multiple times, the former can turn into a 1-Energy, 94 Power monstrosity (for reference, the single card with the highest base Power in the game is the Infinaut, with 20 Power). To add insult to injury, since Kitty returns to its player's hand at the beginning of their turn, her asinine Power doesn't count towards priority, helping her to reveal last and therefore be protected from Killmonger and Shang-chi.
    • The combination of Storm, followed by Legion. Storm turns her location into Flooding, which becomes Flooded at the end of the next turn and prevents cards from being played there. Legion turns the other two locations into the one he's on. Legion can be played on Flooding, which prevents anyone from playing anywhere on subsequent turns^note unless a player has Jeff the Baby Land Shark, who can be played anywhere regardless of lockdown, and most Storm Legion decks will have him to add extra power. If you're winning more locations before this happens, you've sealed your victory unless the opponent has Jeff or characters that passively gain power without other cards being played.
    • Quinjet + Collector + Loki used to be ridiculous. Collector gets +1 Power every time a card (re)enters your hand except from your deck; Loki switches your whole hand with cards from your opponent's starting deck and makes them 1 cheaper; and Quinjet makes all cards that didn't start in your deck 1 cheaper (although with a minimum cost of 1) and it stacks with Loki! A good Loki player would most likely begin Turn 6 with a ridiculously buffed Collector and a hand full of dirt cheap cards. It's telling that Collector got nerfed one week after Loki was introduced, which could well be the quickest nerf in the history of the game. Loki later on got nerfed to 4 cost to further mitigate this playstyle.
    • When Revealed, Blob gobbles up your entire deck, gaining the Power of all those cards combined. This is most effective with "ramp" style decks, which tend to include many high-Power cards and have ways to play expensive cards earlier than it should be possible (with Wave or Electro). This routinely results in 30-40 Power Blobs that can then be copied by Taskmaster or duplicated by Zola. This is usually more than enough to win games. It also helps that by absorbing your deck, Blob also hard-counters another meta staple in Darkhawk, whose power is equal to twice the opponent's deck size. Tellingly, Blob got harshly nerfed by making his on-reveal stop gobbling cards once he gains 15 or more power, thus limiting the amount he can grow.
  • Locations:
    • Bar Sinister fills itself with copies of any card you play there. By itself, this can potentially be very strong, but it's not usually broken, especially since both players can do it. The trick is that some cards (e.g. Nightcrawler or Vision, the former if played before the location is flipped) allow you to "block" a slot that can be later filled with another card. Cue triple Onslaught + Blue Marvel, resulting in obscene power increases across the board.
    • Speaking of Bar Sinister, another game-breaking combo (possible only with a destroy deck) is Death+Venom. Death will be quadrupled by Bar Sinister, then Venom will eat the three Deaths, getting ridiculously powerful... and then Venom will be quadrupled, and each Venom will devour the previous one, adding their Power together for an asinine 154 and allowing more cards to be played on Bar Sinister! Toss in a single Arnim Zola and watch Venom's power exponentially rise.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • Wong is almost universally reviled as one of the most broken cards in the game. He has a very simple Ongoing effect: every friendly On Reveal effect on Wong's location happen twice. Some abilities are asinine playing against multiple times. The number of combinations with this alone means you'd do well to either have it, or a counter to it.
    • With Wong, Odin's ability^note Trigger On Reveal abilities again will happen twice. Each individual pulse occurs twice. Meaning a single ability could have occurred 6 times.
    • Adding Mystique^note Copies the Ongoing ability of the last card you played if it has one on top of your Wong makes On Reveals happen 4 times. Making Odin's happen 4 times, with 4 pulses each. Some relatively basic cards turned monsters with any level of this sort of combo include: Ironheart^note +2 power to 3 random friendly cards Gambit^note Destroy an enemy card after discarding a card in your hand Black Panther^note Double its own power and Hazmat^note -1 power to ALL other cards
    • Wong + White Tiger + Odin fills the entire board with 7-Power cards, all but guaranteeing victory, and Thanos forbid you also played Ironheart there too. The combo is considered overly powerful for several reasons: it's hard to counter (Cosmo or Enchantress make Wong useless, but you need to have those cards in your deck, and Wong is a 4-Energy card, meaning he'll probably be played after Cosmo and on the same turn as Enchantress, who might be revealed before Wong and therefore not counter him); it requires exactly one Series 3 card (Wong), meaning that it's a no-brainer to put it together once you unlock Wong; and if the opponent pulls it off, there is basically no way to win the game back.
    • Wong + Mystique + Odin played at Onslaught's Citadel (doubling Wong's ability and therefore Mystique's) is a spectacularly unlikely combo, but if pulled off, it will trigger a 4th card's On Reveal ability 128 times. Hazmat or Ironheart will produce scores that nearly break the game.
    • Things got so bad with the ludicrous combos that the April 2023 update added a "Fast Forward" feature that would skip past such mega-combos and straight to the end of the turn.
  • Dracula is a 4-Energy, 1-Power card, but at the end of the game, a random card is discarded from your hand and Dracula acquires its Power. With a discard deck, it's quite easy to end up with a single, powerful card in your hand (say, a boosted Apocalypse) and have it empower Dracula. What makes Dracula quite powerful is that its effect is not Ongoing (and therefore cannot be removed) and happens at the end of the game, so Shang-Chi won't be able to destroy Dracula (since Shang-Chi only works against cards with Power 9 or higher and Dracula will still be Power 1 when Shang is revealed). In the hands of a competent player, Dracula can hold a lane virtually on its own.
  • Patriot decks are sometimes dubbed "Easy Mode" for a very good reason: they tend to play a lot of high-Power Cards (thanks to boost from Patriot, Mystique, Blue Marvel and such) and, given that most of said cards have no abilities, Patriot players don't have to worry about strategically playing their on-reveal or ongoing effects, since they don't have any. Patriot became especially common in late April 2023 following Shuri's nerf that many began running Super Skrull for the purpose of countering the many Patriot mirror-matches they would encounter, though this dominance was short-lived after Enchantress (who removes all ongoing abilities at her location) received a power buff.
  • Shuri was widely regarded as one of the top cards in the game. She doubles the Power of the next card you play, which can then be copied by Taskmaster or doubled by Arnim Zola. The so-called "Shuri Zero" deck was at the top of the meta for several months until an April 2023 nerf changed her ability to only apply if the next card was played at her location. This prevented protecting a card via Cosmo and removed Arnim Zola's ability to reliably destroy cards for the purpose of cloning them to the other two locations, ending her reign as the top deck.
  • Aero used to be included in about every deck, due to her On Reveal ability being an effective replacement for the old Leader's ability: by moving every card the opponent played this turn to Aero's location, you were all but guaranteed victory if you were already ahead (just like Leader used to do). Aero was eventually nerfed to where she's now, only moving the last card the opponent played.
  • Hit Monkey is a 2-Energy, 0-Power card that gets +2 Power for every other card you played in the same turn. The card quickly became a stable of "bounce" and Sera decks, allowing for a huge last turn where a boosted Hit Monkey is played in one lane and a bunch of other cards (usually enhancing an Angela) in another one. He got nerfed to becoming 3/2, making it harder for more cards to be played alongside him at one go.
  • Spider-Ham was a 1/1 whose on-reveal ability turned the opponent's highest-cost card in their hand into a Pig, rendering it basically a Vanilla Unit drop and nullified its powers. Naturally, he was a staple in bounce decks where he would be played and bounced often to keep turning whatever strongest cards the opponent drew into pigs, causing massive disruption and ruining entire strategies that depended on 6-cost cards. He got nerfed into becoming a 2/2, making it harder to play him every turn, and further nerfed by making his ability now affect the opponent's leftmost card instead.
  • The Devourer of Worlds himself, Galactus and his deck, garnered a lot of hate. While his cost was meant to make sure his location destroying effect wasn't used before turn 6, people found you could circumvent it by using cards like Wave^note Setting his cost to 4, Electro^note Gave you +1 Energy, meaning you could play him a turn earlier. or even Mr. Negative^note Turns him into a 2/6, giving him a power boost in the process.. Combine him with cards like Spider-Man, Death, or Knull, and you could easily lock your opponent out of the game entirely. Galactus ended up taking a nerf, now requiring him to be the only card at a location you're currently winning. In return, his power has been upped to 5, which gives him a better chance at winning the location he's played at.
  • Post-buff Magik can be considered this, if only because of how common she's become after her cost was reduced from 5 to 3. Previously, her Energy cost and the fact that she could only be played before turn 6 meant she only had a place in a very limited selection of decks (basically, Mr. Negative and Cerebro 3); now that she's much more playable with a cost of 3, it turns out that a lot of decks can benefit from the game lasting one more turn, to the point that it feels like Marvel Snap is a 7-turn game that's sometimes shortened to six turns, instead of the opposite.
  • Alioth is a 6/5 with a deadly ability — on reveal, any opposing cards that were played on their location on the same turn are destroyed, even face-down ones. They're thus often used in decks that either restrict card placement (Storm, Professor X, Galactus), or allow them to pull off said ability again (Absorbing Man, Odin, Anrim Zola), easily turning the tide — especially if the Alioth player was in the lead, allowing them to reveal first and potentially completely invalidate the opponent's turn. This caused both Galactus to be nerfed to 6/5 and Alioth themselves to be nerfed to 6/2, and Alioth got a further nerf to only affect face-down cards. However, this still doesn't detract Alioth from being a powerful card, especially when they cause Unstable Equilibrium once their player is winning to help them reveal first and obliterate would-be attempts from the opponent to make a comeback. Alioth finally seems to be reeled in with another nerf, now only removing the text of unrevealed cards.
  • Elsa Bloodstone used to be a staple in most high-tier decks, especially those with cards that can move (such as Nightcrawler, Jeff the Baby Land Shark or Vision). The reason? She gives +3 permanent Power to the last card played to fill a location... and since the aforementioned cards can all move, they can and will leave the last spot in a location open for another card that can get buffed by Elsa. For a mere 2 Energy, Elsa can reliably generate 6 to 9, sometimes even more Power per game! This was nerfed to +2 power to make her ability less broken, and her cost increased to 3.
• Hype Backlash:
  • The Token Shop was heralded as a way for players to get those specific cards they needed. However, when the shop was finally implemented, it turned out that tokens were actually quite hard to get (players have a 25% change to earn 100 tokens from Collector's Caches and Reserves) and that cards were quite expensive to buy with tokens (the cheapest ones go for 1,000 tokens, while Series 4 and 5 cards cost 3,000 and 6,000 tokens respectively. Yes, per card). To make things worse, shortly after the shop was implemented, a "holiday bundle" was put on for sale in the shop, which, among other things, included 3,000 tokens... meaning that people spending actual money in the game could basically buy cards.
  • Speaking of bundles: they tend to be ridiculously expensive, and prices vary hugely depending from where you're buying them. Also, due to a supposed bug, the "Hearts Wild" bundle was way cheaper if you bought it on Steam. That being said, more bundles have more reasonable prices such as Token Tuesday and, much later, a daily bundle.
  • The new Spotlight Cache system has been reviled immensely. While it does allow for greater card acquisition, the caches originally had no protections for duplicates^note (Yes, it is possible to pull a card you owned from the mystery slot, in which case it turned into a random variant.) plus the 120 CL spacing means sinking a ton of credits to reach it. It's possible where people have enough to get one cache and not open the card they want, meaning they give up, or spend money on gold to buy more credits. People have straight compared it to a gacha system, something SD prided Marvel Snap not being at the start. SD has tried to alleviate it by replacing the random variant with 1000 collector's tokens.
    • Coupled with that is the changes to the cache system in general, which removed gold and the 200-600 token reward to replace it with 50 and 100 tokens, which everyone considered a major slap in the face as it bottlenecked people into trying to press their luck with Spotlight Caches. Gold was moved to the Weekend missions which requires you to play with cards from the season pass and token shop, something many free to play players can't do. Second dinner tried to fix this by replacing the 50 token reward with 100 tokens and changing the 100 token reward into a 50-50 shot at another 100 tokens or a gold Conquest Ticket, which only infuriated fans further as the changes come off as tone deaf.
  • Mobius M. Mobius was released as a strong counter to Loki decks (a 2/3 that stopped your card's cost from being increased while preventing your opponent from discounting their cards). However, Second Dinner nerfed Mobius, turning his ongoing into an on-reveal and revealing they always intended to change him, using his ongoing as a test bed. The community was less than pleased, especially after Mobius was sold in a $100 bundle. The backlash was so immense, Second Dinner walked back their changes, instead changing him to a 3/3.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Has it's own page
• Memetic Badass: The Rickety Bridge location, despite being an ordinary wooden Rope Bridge, is capable of destroying reality warpers and cosmically-powerful entities such as Galactus (who's often a go-to play on it) or Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
• Memetic Loser:
  • M'Baku has the misfortune of being not just a bad card, but a goofy bad card. The juxtaposition between his rarely-useful ability and his pitiful power level against his bombastic battle-cry art has led to him being seen as a blowhard who's useless in a team.
  • After his nerf in November 2023, Shang-Chi experienced a mild amount of this when his destruction effect was tweaked to only hit 10-Power and above cards, allowing the likes of America Chavez (before she had her stats lowered to 1/2 with an On Reveal ability), the Abomination, and the Living Tribunal to be played without fear.
  • Martyr. In exchange for a powerful 1/5 statline, her detrimental ability is made to literally lose the game for her player. At the end of the game, if moving to another space would cause her side to lose, she will do so. Players tried to find ways to either win with her, or find ways to trigger her and lose on purpose.
  • America Chavez after her December 2023 rework had many players mourn her as if she'd been removed from the game entirely rather than reassigned to a new gameplay function.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Ben Brode loves rocks." ^ExplanationWhen a fan on Discord asked if Second Dinner had any intentions to nerf troublesome locations like Subterranea (It adds 5 rocks to each player's deck upon reveal), Ben Brode replied that one of his favorite things to do is to Snap with a hand full of rocks to trick the opponent into retreating.◊ This has become an Ascended Meme with a bundle that has an avatar of a rock and the title "I Got A Rock".
    • "Ben Brode would be proud." ^ExplanationThe above exchange led to many players posting pictures of themselves losing games after snapping with handfuls of rocks, or successfully getting their opponents to retreat, prompting this response from commenters.
  • "[character name], I've come to bargain." ^ExplanationWhen Kang the Conqueror (on reveal, restarts the turn, but removes himself from your hand) first released, there were various exploits capable of preventing his removal from the game, thus creating an infinite loop that would ultimately force the opponent to retreat. Whenever one of these moments is posted, expect a comment to invoke the climax of Doctor Strange.
  • The most exciting man in Marvel Snap! ^ExplanationA sarcastic nickname to M'Baku, for reasons already detailed in Funny Moments, Low-Tier Letdown, and Memetic Loser above.
    • No room for M'Baku!/There IS room for M'Baku! ^ExplanationM'Baku's possibly unintentionally funny notice when he can't jump to any location quickly became a meme, and screenshots where he actually helps win (or lose) a game will have commenters pointing out that there was, in fact, room.
  • On Reveal: Discard Hela^ExplanationCrovus Glaive's on reveal discards 2 cards at random from your hand. People who run it in Discard decks have noticed that Corvus seems to always favor tossing Hela, your win condition, out of your hand more often than not, which lead to many jokes about Corvus having a secret on reveal that makes sure this always happens when you want it the least..
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Magik used to not see much play outside of a few specialized decks. Being a 5-cost card that made the game last a turn longer, but couldn't be played on Turn 6, she had a very narrow window in which she could be played. She was eventually patched to become 3-cost, allowing players to play her earlier and creating synergies with other decks.
  • Snowguard used to be regarded as one of the worst cards in the game, due to her ability being random, extremely situational, and not so useful. In September 2023, she was reworked so that she now generates two cards that allow her players to ignore location effects for one turn (including potentially ending a game prematurely by deactivating Limbo) or trigger a location again, creating synergies with Collector, Loki and Quinjet and making her insanely useful. This in fact went horribly right to the point where the Hawk and the Bear auras got a cost nerf.
  • Negasonic Teenage Warhead used to be a 3/5 that destroyed herself and the next card played in her location — which can also be your own. She was a card that didn't see much use due to being extremely situational. She got reworked into a 3/2 with the ability to destroy the next enemy card played in her location without destroying herself (once per game), making her into a more reliable deterrent.
  • Quake was a very unreliable and Low-Tier Letdown card as she swapped all the locations randomly when revealed, making her a Luck-Based Mission as to where locations would end up. She got reworked to swapping the two locations she wasn't revealed on while keeping hers intact, giving her player much more control over the battlefield and making her far more viable.
  • Zoo decks in general were very much a Skill Gate Archetype: spam 1-cost cards and buff them up with both Ka-Zar and Blue Marvel. The trouble with this was Killmonger being a meta staple who would instantly destroy any 1-cost cards on the field when played, making him not only good at removing one's low-power cards (like Nova or Infinity Stones), but also a hard counter to opposing zoo decks, making them nearly worthless in higher-tier play. The release of Caiera (prevents your 1-cost and 6-cost cards from being destroyed) made zoo more viable again, as it immunized against Killmonger.
  • Lady Deathstrike's On Reveal ability destroys every card weaker than her at the location she's played to. The problem? At release, she was pathetically weak with Power 3, meaning that she couldn't destroy almost anything useful (outside of fringe cases like Iron Man, a card with 0 Power and a very powerful Ongoing ability). She was soon buffed to Power 4 but still didn't see much play. An April 2024 patch turned her into a 5/7 that destroys all cards with 3 or less power, finally turning her into an effective anti-tech card but removing the ability to widen her range by increasing her power beforehand.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The card acquisition system in once you reach Series 3. Instead of a guaranteed card unlock every few levels, you now get Collector's Caches or Reserves, which only have a chance to give you a new card, and give you credits, gold, or other cosmetics otherwise. With a massive selection of cards available, and with progress from credits coming to a halt, it becomes very hard to get a card you desire, which is particularly damning if your initial drops lack any synergy. It was eventually announced that an upcoming feature, Collector Tokens, would allow for players to have another chance at getting a card they need for their deck far more easily.
  • The "Featured Location" and "Hot Location" mechanics will make extremely likely for a given location to show up in every game for a 24-hour long period. Sometimes, this is refreshing, forcing people to change their game and play decks that synergize with the location or counter those that do; the problem is that some locations are extremely synergic with a very narrow set of decks (e.g. The Needle is awesome for Mr. Negative and bad for pretty much everyone else), which leads to everyone playing very few, or just one deck, which will make mirror matches of most games.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • As cool as the game's graphics are, the 3D effect on some cards leaves a lot to be desired. It doesn't take much tilting the screen around to make it painfully obvious those are just flat images.
  • The "animated" effect is also surprisingly awkward at times, with hair and clothes rippling in a very unnatural way... or close to nonexistent (case in point: Warpath's card has a couple of tassels moving slightly as in the wind and that's it).
• That One Attack:
  • Shang-Chi's on-reveal ability destroys all opposing cards in his location that have 9 or more power. Every player with high-power cards or buffing cards must always be on the watch out for him as he can easily and reliably remove a massive amount of power on a location, often turning the tide. He got nerfed to destroying 10 or above power, but that doesn't diminish his threat to anything overbuffed. If that's not enough, he also can be played before Grandmaster to remove power from the middle lane after that.
  • Shadow King's on-reveal ability is a Status-Buff Dispel that can turn the tide in his player's favor by reducing overbuffed cards into non-threats. Unlike Shang-Chi, Shadow King's ability has no power restriction, far fewer ways to defend against, and he's cheaper at 2-cost as compared to Shang-Chi's 4. While Shadow King's ability also affects his player's side, one will more often than not use naturally high power cards or ongoing power providers like Cerebro to avoid the dispel. Like Shang-Chi, Shadow King also can be played before Grandmaster to remove power from the middle lane after that.
  • Legion's ability to turn the other locations into his current one can be this on certain locations to greatly hamper the opponent^ExamplesBar with No Name to turn an unsuspecting opponent's winning run into a losing one, Central Park/Savage Land to remove playing space by flooding both sides with 1-power squirrels/raptors, Collapsed Mine to flood both sides with useless rocks that can only be removed on turn skip, Luke's Bar/Space Throne/Kyln/Death's Domain/Altar of Death/Morag/The Vault to prevent cards from being properly played, Rickety Bridge to destroy almost everything and make subsequent plays risky.. His ability is especially this if he's played after Storm, who turns her location into "Flooding", then "Flooded" at the end of the next turn and prevents all cards except Jeff from being played there. If played on Flooding, Legion turns the other two locations into Flooded at the end of the turn, preventing any plays for the rest of the game except Jeff (which the Storm+Legion user is very likely to play/move), and often forcing opponents to retreat.
  • Annihilus' ability sends all 0 or negative power cards on your side over to the opponent's side, destroying those that can't move. They'll often be used in junk decks that use or spawn such cards (Debrii, Hood, Sentry) or lower their power (Hazmat) before chucking those over to your side, clogging up location space and/or lowering power there. A number of these cards also can't be mass-destroyed via Killmonger as they aren't 1-cost. It also counters most attempts at playing Goblins, which get returned to sender or removed. It got nerfed to only affecting negative power cards, preventing easy clogging of the enemy's side with 0-power Rocks.
• That One Level: There are several locations that can greatly mess around with a player's strategy and are often despised by players:
  • Danger Room has a 25% chance to destroy a card played there. This tends to happen a lot more often than not, costing several players the game if it destroys an important card, or if it destroys all their cards played there in quick succession. Unlike Death's Domain/Altar of Death where players know that their non-invulnerable cards will always be destroyed there and thus play around it, there's not much one can do to play around Danger Room's dreaded 25% if they lack Armor.
  • Subterranea shuffles five 1-0 Rocks into each player's deck when revealed. It's massively despised by players because of how easily it can mess with the flow of a deck, and how useless Rocks are as a draw. The location also shows up very frequently, leading to serious cases of brick hands and overall frustration. The location has been nerfed slightly, now only adding 4 rocks to the deck.
  • Ego causes the AI to play for both sides until the location is changed/destroyed or until the game ends. It's fortunately very rare.
  • Lamentis-1 makes you draw three cards, then destroys your entire deck. It makes Death free to play from turn 1 (good if you have her in your deck, pretty bad otherwise) and, depending from which cards you drew, can totally ruin your game.
  • Few people are fond of Rickety Bridge, a location that makes several others look safe. If there's more than one card here (counting both sides), all cards on the location get destroyed. Unless you're playing specific decks that take advantage of its effect, it can easily mess with the players' strategy.
  • Collapsed Mine fills itself with rocks^note 0 power, effectively useless, the only way to get rid your own rocks is to skip a turn. A quick and easy chip in the shoulder for any player's plans. Or for some decks, a godsend. Either way, losing a turn or being forced to play every turn with only 2 locations can choke any player out. Unless they draw Armor. Or Death.
  • The Great Web can be incredibly frustrating. At the end of every turn, including the last one, a random card belonging to either player is moved there. Given that Snap is basically an area control game, in which the position of every single card is fundamental, this can be devastating, literally deciding victory with a coin toss. The only way to avoid this is to fill your side of the location earlier... but that's not always possible, and it probably means giving up on that location.
  • Krakoa is fairly terrible: basically, the game will play your cards randomly on turn 5. Given that turn 5 is possibly the most important one in the game, setting up your final play on turn 6, this can really screw you over. The worst part is that you have to wait until the game is almost over to see whether or not the RNG will see it fit to screw you over. Krakoa has since been reworked entirely, now adding the power of the first card you play there to your next card.
  • Quantum Tunnel basically forces you to play like you have Lockjaw there... without the benefit of a deck made to take advantage (and compensate the randomness) of Lockjaw. It can flat out ruin certain decks (where you HAVE to play your cards in a certain order, and playing a card on Quantum Tunnel screws that up) while giving away a free victory to others (got cheap cards in hand and expensive, powerful ones in your deck? Have fun!).
  • Warrior Falls is a lesser, but still annoying version of Rickey Bridge: If there's more than one card in that location, they "fight". All cards with the lowest power level there are destroyed. Even if they're ALL on YOUR side.
  • Worldship can be considered by many as a headache when revealed if not prepared for Galactus as it reduces the playing field to 1 location. Like Ego, this is also fortunately very rare.
  • Mount Vesuvius deactivates the Retreat button after Turn 5, forcing both players to stay in the match until the end... meaning that, if one of the players pulls out a surprise move on Turn 5 that will guarantee them victory, they get to Snap for free without the opponent being able to cut their losses and run.
  • Some locations are fine by themselves, but turn into a massive headache when combined with each other. For example, "Space Throne" ^note Can only control 1 card in this location and "Central Park" ^note Add a Squirrel (1 Power) to each location reduces interaction to two locations, while combinations of "Transia"^note  Swap the positions of each location and "Mirror Dimension"^note  Turn into another existing location on turn 4 with locations like The Bar with No Name ^note  Whoever has less Power in this location wins or the aforementioned Space Throne and Rickety Bridge tend to massively mess with the flow of a match, if not make a player lose on the spot.