If you’ve ever played a digital CCG or card battler like Hearthstone, you’re likely familiar with the mulligan. This is a mechanic that allows you to reshuffle cards in your hand on the opening turn for a chance at a better draw. Nothing stings quite like having absolutely nothing to do on your first few turns because you happened to get an awful opening hand. The mulligan is in almost every card battler out today, but Marvel Snap doesn’t need it.
In a Twitter thread, Ben Brode explained the thought process behind removing the mulligan in Marvel Snap and all the feedback Second Dinner got from their focus groups with this decision.
As you might expect, most folks hated not having a mulligan. While the decks in Marvel Snap are much smaller than you’d normally expect (matches last for six turns, and each deck is made up of 12 cards), it can still be game-ending if you draw into all your 4 or 5-cost cards in your first couple turns and end up not having anything to do.
Brode goes on to explain the design of the snap system, and how this unique system in and of itself is meant to remove the need for a mulligan. After all, if you get a bad hand, you can always just retreat from the game and lose one cube. One cube isn’t a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, and ultimately allows players to climb the ranks even with a sub-50% win rate. As long as you know when to snap and retreat, you can pretty much climb all the way up to Infinite rank with any deck.
Even with this system in place, however, Brode stated that testers were still asking for a mulligan. To get around that issue, Brode then reveals that this led to them including Quicksilver into the starter card collection that every player begins with.
The great thing about Quicksilver’s ability in Marvel Snap is that he will always appear in your starting hand, no matter what. As a 1-cost, 2-power card, Quicksilver is a reliable 1-drop that you know you’ll always be able to play on turn one, thus removing the complaint that it hurts not having anything to do during your early turns in Marvel Snap.
Brode then reveals that once they made this simple change, all requests for a mulligan immediately dried up.
It’s incredibly ironic, considering that Quicksilver is now widely regarded as a rather lackluster card by beta players who have played the game for months at this point. In fact, Quicksilver is rarely included in any of the meta decks in Pool 3, for the sole reason that he reduces the chance of you drawing into your other key combo pieces required in whatever deck you’re playing.
The same logic applies to Domino, who’s a 2-cost, 3-power card that you’ll always draw on turn two. Both Quicksilver and Domino serve the purpose of giving players something to do on turns one and two, but are also criticized for reducing a player’s chances of drawing more useful cards.
Rather poignantly, Brode also mentions this in his Twitter thread. Eventually, players begin to move away from Quicksilver as they build other decks, but at this point, the player is actively choosing to give up the mulligan for increased variance and a more powerful starting hand, but with the risk of having nothing to play on the first turn.
At the end of the day, Marvel Snap has become this incredibly innovative card game because of all the subtle little ways it differentiates itself from the competition. Not having a mulligan is just one of those ways, but more crucially, it’s the fact that decks are so small. In Marvel Snap, you can make a single card change in your deck, and immediately feel the impact of that change as you play your next handful of games.
And because matches go by so quickly, you’re able to adjust your deck on the fly and instantly figure out what’s working for you, and what isn’t. Pair that with the snap system, and you’ve pretty much got a perfectly balanced card game that allows virtually any player to climb with any deck, as long as you’re well aware of how powerful your starting hand is, and what your deck can handle.
Marvel Snap is now available on PC and mobile devices.
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