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2 Are you excited about the Marvel Snap PvP Mode? Comment down below

Marvel Snap PvP Mode is Coming Soon

After weeks of playtesting, theorycrafting, ladder-climbing, and a bunch of shit-talking, I am ready to face my friends in Marvel Snap’s PvP mode. Marvel Snap associate design director Kent-Erik Hagman has posted a blog on the website of the Unity developer tools outlining what players can anticipate from Battle Mode when it is set to debut on January 31.

Marvel Snap PvP Mode

With one important exception, Marvel Snap’s Battle Mode will function much like a regular match. Instead of betting with winnable cubes, you’ll gamble with your health. Each participant starts the game with 10 health, and the winner deals damage according to the number of health bets at the conclusion of the game. We don’t yet know if bets would immediately double at the conclusion of a Battle Mode round since Hagman wasn’t certain if betting health will function the same way as betting cubes. However, if it operates in the same way as conventional matches, a bout in which both competitors “snap” may cause the victor to sustain an incredible eight damage.

Hagman claims that the limited health pool will increase the excitement of even the low-stakes games since every point of damage counts when a player has just 10 health. Players are limited to using one deck in Marvel Snap PvP Mode while the game is in progress. Hagman said that being able to anticipate your opponents’ actions will give an extra element of tension to a head-to-head contest.

We also recognized that throughout a number of games, the mental exercises of figuring out and anticipating what cards were in your opponent’s deck and their particular play style would provide a lot of enjoyment, he added.

Although it makes sense for decks to be locked in at the beginning of a match, since decks are so small — 12 cards as opposed to 30 in Hearthstone and possibly even more in Magic: The Gathering, depending on the format — it will be fairly simple to parse what an opponent is carrying in the early going. Therefore, I’m hoping that Battle Mode will include the ability to add a sideboard with a few more cards that you can swap in and out between each game.

If my deck isn’t strong enough to stop it or at least slow it down, playing against example, the Bucky Barnes/Carnage/Nova combo would be really irritating. Head-to-head play may be more exciting if I could insert utility cards that I could subsequently employ to thwart an opponent’s combination (and vice versa, of course).

Hagman estimates that a Battle Mode battle should last about 20 minutes. However, in the early days of testing, players would purposely lose the first two rounds, putting their health in danger and lengthening games by a significant amount. This was done in order to get a feel for their opponents’ decks.

“We introduced ‘High Stakes Rounds,’ which begin in Round 5, to keep Battles at 20 minutes. High Stakes Rounds begin with a stake of two damage, making them significantly more lethal, according to Hagman.

The limitation that prevents players from risking more health than they have is another characteristic of the battle mode. Because Marvel Snap matches may swing widely on the final round, I think this is a wise move. I would never play Battle Mode again if I kept winning rounds until I had reduced my opponent to one health, only to lose the match because my opponent placed a large bet on a moonshot.

Not everything included in the next Snap patch is Battle Mode. They’re set to become more accessible if you missed out on buying Black Panther during its season or still haven’t opened a She-Hulk. (In a roundabout way, we still need to talk to Second Dinner about how it distributes its cards in collector tiers. When I haven’t gathered all of a series’ base cards yet, it makes no sense for caches to give out variations for cards I already own.)

The stakes in High Stakes Rounds start at two damage, making them considerably more lethal.

Marvel Snap is essentially introducing a “series drop,” in which cards go from a higher, more uncommon tier to a lower, more common one. The cards that will be falling can be seen here, and Second Dinner’s has also stated that it aims to add badges that will indicate if a card was acquired before it dropped. LOL, Second Dinner. Thanks to their $99.99 player avatars, we already know who the cool kids are.

Despite my complaints about card advancement and bundle price, I’m excited about the Battle Mode. I’m particularly looking forward to all the community tournaments that are likely to arise when Battle Mode hopefully becomes online on January 31st. I can’t wait to torture all my friends and Snap-playing coworkers.