It makes perfect sense that Kotaku’s new obsession, Marvel Snap, would tie itself into the major events of the rest of the Marvel universe. Today, as the deckbuilding strategic card game enters its second season, the theme is Wakanda, just in time for this week’s release of the MCU’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Warriors of Wakanda replaces season one’s Symbiote Invasion, that saw Miles Morales’ arrival into the game, and Carnage’s infection of the various Spidey cards. Today that’s all over, so hopefully you got all those unlocks beforehand. Now we welcome Black Panther to our decks, with a very simple, yet very effective On Reveal effect where his power immediately doubles. While he costs 5 energy, Black Panther could make for a great play on zones like Kamar-Taj, which double reveal effects, or Sinister London, which adds a copy to the card at a different location. The process of the card’s creation is discussed in this video. Turns out, they developed a special technique for that 3D effect on all the cards.
The new season pass comes in at $10, just like the last season. For that you will immediately get the new Black Panther card, along with new thematic card backs, and the ability to unlock various variants and avatars of other Wakandan characters. The most interesting being an excellent Okoye variant at level 40, for those who’ve not been lucky enough to have received her card already. Many of the variants are pixel variants, though, which aren’t quite as attractive as some of the other art options.
Four new locations are also now added, called Shuri’s Lab (doubles a card’s power, so amazing for Black Panther), Warrior Falls (cards fight each turn, destroying the weakest!), Vibranium Mines (shuffles three Vibranium into your deck), and Wakandan Throne Room (highest Power cards have their Power doubled).
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Nakia can boost the two leftmost cards in your hand by +2 power when played, while Okoye adds +1 to every single card in your deck. That could see Black Panther as high as 7 before you even play him, then 14 on reveal. This is going to be bonkers in the new Shuri’s Lab location.
Combine all that with Odin, the 6-cost finisher that refires all the On Reveal abilities of other cards at the same location, and suddenly Black Panther is up to 28. Have Ironheart in there too, and you’d have cards on other locations re-boosted too, totally turning the tables against an over-confident opponent who might have already Snapped. Or, what about Wong and Taskmaster...
It’s certainly got me fired up to design some better decks for what I believe the young people call “the new meta.” Although, man-alive, $10 on some some tiny jpegs and some pretend in-game currency. I’m not convinced I’ll feel compelled to keep shelling that out every month. Although I already did it twice... No wonder the game made $2 million in its first week.