Images courtesy of Second Dinner/Marvel Snap
Today Marvel Snap developers Second Dinner announced their much-awaited Series Drop, which aims to make rarer, hard-to-acquire cards more accessible to the player base.
In Marvel Snap, cards are sorted into different Series (or Pools). When you’re just starting out, players will rapidly acquire cards from Series 1 (such as Captain America and Devil Dinosaur). After some progress in the reward track (also referred to as Collection Level or CL), players will eventually complete Series 1 cards and move on to Series 2 cards, with tech options such as Killmonger and Shang-Chi.
The final pool for Collection Level-related acquisition is Series 3, where there are currently 112 cards. These cards are drip-fed to players at higher CLs, with around four new Series 3 cards per week (which was just recently changed from two per week), assuming one completes their dailies and weeklies.
In the past, Series Drops were supposed to happen frequently. Second Dinner even previously said “We look forward to doing a Series Drop every month!” Though that hasn’t been the case in a long while now, with drops happening every five to six months or so.
The Problem with Series Drops
New cards are released weekly either through the monthly Battle Pass or through the gacha-like Spotlight Cache system, which requires players to spend hard-earned Spotlight Keys to open. These cards are all released as Series 4 and 5 and are the only ways to acquire them, outside of waiting and spending 6,000 Collector’s Tokens on the randomly-rotating tokens shop.
Rarely, the game also gives out free cards or makes new cards earnable through special events, but this does not detract from the previously-mentioned weekly schedule of new cards.
This means that in a full month, the card pool will expand by up to four to five Series 4 and 5 cards, while players will only be able to acquire maybe one or two of them a month, due to how Spotlight Keys are portioned out in the Collection Track.
Ultimately, this results in an over-inflation of unobtainable Series 4 and 5 cards, of which there are a combined 114 now (and counting!), which makes players unable to acquire the specific cards they need for their decks.
Beginner-Friendly Decks for New Drops
With that said, let’s go over the most hyped-up drops for this batch, specially for new players, and decks that can be built for cheap.
Knull
The cornerstone of Destroy decks, Knull was long overdue to be dropped to Series 3. He grows in power the more cards we Destroy, and has insane synergy with Death, another Series 3 card. Nimrod is also a great drop, although it has its own separate Destroy archetype.
Cannonball and Annihilus
A staple of Junk or Clog decks, Cannonball has solidified itself as a late game bomb to secure a location. Though Annihilus has fallen off in the optimized Junk lists, early CL players can take advantage of the insane Annihilus and Sentry interaction by sending the Void to the other side of the board.
Hercules, Ghost Spider, and Silk
These three cards give a huge buff to the Move package in Series 3, especially when cards like Human Torch, Iron Fist, and Cloak are already in the pool. Here’s a deck that can be further improved by Araña and Madame Web, or Heimdall and Multiple Man can also be a consideration.
Mobius M. Mobius and Sebastian Shaw
Both these cards already saw play in classic Sera–Silver Surfer decks, dropping to Series 3 and Series 4, respectively, makes the deck so much more accessible. The deck’s curve revolves around Brood into Absorbing Man, and ending the game with Surfer to buff up the entire board. Sera lets us throw priority on turn five so we can counter the opponent with Rogue and Shang-Chi as well.
Corvus Glaive
Although a bit underwhelming, as Proxima Midnight is still in Series 5, the loyal Discard players may want to try out Corvus Glaive in a Discard shell just to get more energy per turn.
Zabu, Skaar, and Cull Obsidian
One of the earliest Season Pass cards, Zabu will finally drop to Series 3. The saber-toothed cat can discount our four-cost cards, which incentivizes us to play several of these in the deck. Together with Skaar and Cull Obsidian, who both dropped to Series 4, a 10-Power deck might be viable even for lower CL players (just make sure to add a few more one-cost cards to account for Cull Obsidian). The deck can be further upgraded with Surtr and the current Battle Pass card, Sam Wilson Captain America.
Other Standouts
Blob has been a meta menace for a long while, so seeing him drop to Series 4 is welcome. Loki is also a fan favorite, though he has been adjusted several times already, which makes building around him difficult and unpredictable (flavor win, perhaps?).
Lady Deathstrike and Black Knight see play in niche decks, so it’s welcome to see them drop. Although Ms. Marvel‘s time in the limelight is over, some players may still want to toy around with her.
A Step in the Right Direction?
With the release of Pokémon TCG Pocket and the general unrest of the Marvel Snap community about the difficulty in card acquisition, this Series Drop still feels underwhelming for what was promised to be a “huge” one. While it’s understandable that archetype-defining cards such as Arishem didn’t drop, several tech cards such as Red Guardian and U.S. Agent are still locked behind Series 5.
This Series Drop is scheduled for March 4, 2025. Make sure to update the Marvel Snap app before opening your Collector’s Reserves!
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