Another week, another new Marvel Snap location. And sadly, it’s becoming a trend that a lot of these new locations are just really annoying and bad. The latest awful Snap location is Rickety Bridge, a frustrating spot that destroys cards faster than an angry kid who didn’t pull anything good from a dozen packs of Pokémon cards.
Marvel Snap, released last year, is a free-to-play mobile card game built around fast matches, small decks, and lots of chaos created by rotating locations that randomly spawn each time you play. Every match is a little bit different because of these random zones and while some of them are basic and boring, others are fun or stressful, adding cards or powering up or down heroes and villains alike. And then there are the Marvel Snap zones that just suck. Case in point, the newest location: Rickety Bridge. Oh, how I hate Rickety Bridge.
Added to the game yesterday, this new zone is simple and a bastard. When more than one card is played on the bridge, all cards on both sides of that zone are destroyed. Thematically, I love it. One too many people trying to fight on an old rope bridge that can’t support all the weight and falls apart, dropping everyone to their doom is a funny visual. But it’s a pain in the ass to deal with in most matches.
Now sure, there are some clever folks out there who are building decks around this new zone, as it will appear more often until tomorrow as part of its debut, and that’s fine. In fact, I’ve seen people using Deadpool, Nova, and Wolverine at the Rickety Bridge to good effect, as these are all cards that synergize nicely with being destroyed. Deadpool will go back into your deck powered-up, Wolverine will respawn elsewhere, and Nova will soup-up your entire playing field. You can also skip the Rickety Bridge headache altogether with cards like Armor, which prevents card destruction, Rhino, which destroys the location before it can delete you, Scarlet Witch, which can alter the location, or Storm, which will briefly, but safely, let you play cards.
The main problem I’m running into is that this location bundled with some of Snap’s other annoying spots can turn matches into shit shows that nobody wants to deal with. I’ve gotten the Rickety Bridge, Space Throne (which only lets you play one card), and Sanctorum zones (which prevents you from playing anything there) in a match and at that point, the game crawls to a halt. Conceptually having difficult boards can switch things up a bit and make you flex your skills, but the challenges themselves aren’t fun. More often than not both you and the other player end up with a dead card. Worse, some players have found ways to troll on the zone:
Most people seem to hate it, though, judging from the responses on social media. And I don’t blame them. We already have so many bad zones at this point, locations are just the worst and can make matches miserable or ruin popular decks, that I really would like a break from any more being added to the game.
I already deal with stuff like District X’s funky deck-swapping shit and Danger Room’s annoying card destruction roulette. Don’t add more things that make me and other players grumble and slam our heads against our phone screens. Instead, maybe new zones could be more relaxed or chill. Like a napping zone where cards just unwind and nothing bad happens for two turns. Or a boring store zone where you have to pay one power to play anything there but that’s it. Not everything needs to be so damn annoying and mean, Marvel Snap. Geeze!
It makes me wonder if Snap needs more neutral zones or boring zones to help offset all the annoying nonsense, like the Warrior Falls (which destroys the weakest cards each turn, but can break easily) and Vormir (which destroys the first card you play), added to the game in recent months.
Looking ahead at the next new zone, Collapsed Mine, which fills the board with rocks that can only be cleared by skipping your turn, I’m actually kind of excited about it. Sure, it can be annoying, but at least it shakes up a match without just destroying everything, nor does it block you from having fun.