Video Game / MARVEL SNAP

"Oh, SNAP!"^note  Clockwise from top right: Baby Groot, Black Panther Hulk Buster, Ironheart, Venom, America Chavez, Wolverine, Spider Man (Miles Morales), Doctor Doom, Chibi Galactus.

MARVEL SNAP is a free-to-play online Card Battle Game developed by Second Dinner (a company largely made of former Hearthstone developers) and published by Nuverse, based on the Marvel Universe. It was first released on October 18th, 2022, and is available on Android, iOS, and Steam.

The game focuses on heavily streamlined, fast, and flashy gameplay. Players build decks consisting of 12 different characters from across Marvel's roster, ranging from the most famous characters to C-List Fodder. Characters have an Energy cost to play and add Power to their location through their Power stat and special abilities. Players face off in 1v1 matches to control locations. Each game has three random locations that are revealed to players on turns one, two, and three respectively. Each location has its own special effect, often a game-warping one, ensuring every match will always be different. Whoever has the most combined Power at a location wins it, but locations can only fit four friendly characters. Games last six rounds and turns are taken simultaneously, with all actions made by both players revealed at the end of each round. Whoever controls the most locations at the end of the game is the winner.^note In the case of a tie, it goes to whoever has the most total power. If that is tied, the game is a draw.

Players are playing to take each other's Cosmic Cubes, a resource used to rank up and earn cosmetic awards. Normally the winner steals one Cube from the loser. However, that's where the title comes into play. At any time, either player can choose to Snap, doubling the amount of Cubes up for offer. The opponent then has a window to retreat without an increased penalty if they're certain it's a loss, or stick it out and try to play for a bigger reward. Snapping can and should be used for all sorts of mindgames, to try to scare an opponent into thinking you have a combo play or perhaps punish an overconfident opponent and snag a few extra Cubes.

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MARVEL SNAP contains examples of:

A-L

• Adaptation Distillation: Although the game is primarily based on the comics, more than a few elements from the Marvel Cinematic Universe have made their way into the game. One of the most obvious things is Westview, Sokovia and Vormir appearing as locations, with Westview even having the red Hex around it. More subtle things include Agatha Harkness, Korg, and Ebony Maw being in the base set, who are minor at best in the comics but Breakout Characters for the MCU. Carol Danvers' pet flerken is called Goose, instead of Chewie. A more infamous instance of this occurred during the Valentine's Day 2024 week where certain couples got power bonuses if their partner was also in play. Rather than have him get a bonus with his more famous paramour Elektra (which was even shown in one of the game's animated trailers), Daredevil got one with She-Hulk as a reference to her 2022 live-action show.
• April Fools' Day: For April 1st 2023, a bundle was created for an avatar based on the rock card and a title: "I Got A Rock". This was compounded with the description stating that it was celebrating the rock card (which clogs decks and restricts card placement). Additionally, the Bar With no Name (High score loses) became the hot location.
• All or Nothing: Playing Galactus normally and triggering his ability by having him be your sole card winning that location upon reveal destroys the other two locations, meaning that victory hinges on the one remaining location Galactus is in. Considering that Galactus is a 6-cost, 5-power card, you had better make sure you have a way to win that final location at the end of turn 6 or you'll lose the game.
• All Your Powers Combined:
  • Super-Skrull gains the Ongoing effects of all enemy cards.
  • Knull's Power is based on the Power of any cards when they were destroyed.
  • Blob formerly merged with the remainder of your deck, adding the base Power of all cards therein to his own. An unfortunate Game-Breaking Bug on his release also caused him to try and play any existing Infinity Split Particle Effects of the merged cards all at once.
• Alliance of Alternates: The Thunderbolts season Development Update Trailer features various evil Ben Brodes from across the multiverse meeting up at a community center to talk tough and discuss the game's new releases.
• Anti-Debuff:
  • Luke Cage's ongoing ability prevents your cards from having their power reduced.
  • Black Knight's Ebony Blade cannot have its power reduced in any form.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If you have Agatha Harkness in your deck, all boosters for the match will be assigned to her, meaning you don't need to play the Joke Character long to get a good amount of boosters to upgrade her card.
• Anti-Hoarding: You can only hold up to 10,000 credits in reserve, so you'll have to upgrade your cards eventually.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • When the AI takes over play (via Ego, Krakoa or Agatha Harkness), it prioritizes playing as many cards as possible, then card power. Card abilities are completely ignored. It will also play cards when the clear smart move would be to hold and play stronger cards later.
  • Parodied in the trailer for the Days of Future Past season pass where the Sentinels keep making horrible misplays right after assuring the viewer that they can quell the mutant menace.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • A lot of decks that would be great in ranked mode are this in Conquest. To elaborate: in ranked mode, you can have an absolute powerhouse of a deck that's highly vulnerable to a few counters (say, a Negative Surfer deck that gets destroyed by control decks), because if you meet your counter, you can just retreat with a minimal loss. In Conquest mode, while you can retreat, you'll have to keep facing that same opponent until one of you wins the battle, and losing a battle ends your Conquest. Strong Conquest decks are well-rounded, reliable creatures with little or no glaring weakness.
  • The Infinaut is a monstrous 20 Power card for 6, but he has the downside where he can't be played if you played a card last turn. This means you'll have to give up your entire turn 5 just to get him in play, and 5 + 6 can often get more than 20 total Power. Although this deficiency can be compensated for by playing Sunspot, a 1-Energy, 1-Power card that gets +1 Power for every unspent energy at the end of your turn, ensuring at least +5 Power if you don't play anything on turn 5. This is also why he is slotted into discard decks too.
  • Agatha Harkness has a somewhat impressive 14 Power for 6... but has the horrendous downside where she starts in your opening hand and plays the game for you. Complete with Artificial Stupidity that's deliberately worse than the actual in-game bots. That being said, like The Infinaut, this can also be built around by using her in a special version of a discard deck, or ensuring that she can play important cards in a deck.
  • Patriot decks are based on playing a bunch of suboptimal cards, then boosting them with Patriot (whose ongoing effect gives +2 Power to cards without any ability). While this might surprise your opponent, and Patriot-boosted cards are admittedly very strong, any effect that disables Patriot or prevents his player from spamming cards will cripple their game.
  • Super Skrull has the Ongoing effects of all enemy cards... including detrimental (Red Skull, Ebony Maw, Typhoid Mary) and useless ones (Patriot when you don't have cards it can boost). It's impossible to build a deck around Super Skrull, since you don't know what Ongoing cards the opponent is going to play, and by itself, it's just a weak 4-cost, 2-Power card, making it a dead draw in many cases.
  • Thanos can become an impressive Power 18, 6-Energy card... provided that you have played all six Infinity Stone and the Power Stone is still in play and functional. Oh, and you better have some way to destroy the other Infinity Stones, because otherwise you'll have 6 slots occupied by 1-Power cards. Thanos can be powerful, but the amount of setup required makes him basically a meme card. Tellingly, his base power was buffed from 8 to 10 to make him more powerful even without the full Infinity Stone set.
  • "Toxic" decks are based on filling your opponent's slots with crap (Goblin, Hobgoblin, rocks from Debris, a Hood courtesy of Viper...) and then lowering the (most often already negative) value of said crap with Hazmat, while having Luke Cage protect your own cards from the latter. While this combo looks good on paper, it relies on several key cards, and it's useless against decks that play few, powerful cards: sure, your Hazmat might give -1 Power to all my cards... but my Shuri-enhanced Red Skull is still more powerful than most of your cards put together.
  • Stature is a 5-Energy, 7-Power card, which would normally be quite a bad ratio; however, its cost is reduced to 1 if the opponent has discarded any card during the game, making Stature an amazing deal. The problem? If you're not up against a Discard deck, there's a grand total of three cards that force the opponent to discard and all of them have significant downsides: Moon Knight and Silver Samruai also discard a card from your hand, while Black Bolt has low Power and always discards the cheapest card in the opponent's hand.
  • A whole archetype example: Move decks. They are incredibly versatile and can reach very high Power thresholds... in a perfect world. More often than not, the player will be screwed by bad draws (some cards move other cards, some cards get boosted when moved; drawing one without the other results in a big fat nothing) or negative locations (anything that inhibits moving or playing cards will deprive Move decks of vital space). All without mentioning that Move decks are hard-countered by Galactus (hard to move stuff around when there's only a single Location to play in) and lockdown decks, two of the most popular archetypes in the game.
  • Doctor Octopus is a 5 energy, 10 power card that automatically drags down enough of the opponent's cards to fill the location. In some situations, he can completely destroy an opponent's turn 6 play by yanking down someone out of order (like Venom, Destroyer, or Heimdall) but he can also screw over his player by dragging down cards the opponent otherwise wouldn't be able to play (Infinaut, Death, etc.), or pull out the cards in the right order.
  • It's possible to get a free draw with Kang if you play him on your very first turn (as players start with three cards in their hands by default, so once he's taken out of play from using his effect, his user will start with a new card in their opening hand) or as soon as you draw him. This is usually facilitated by energy cheat locations like Project Pegasus and Tinkerer's Workshop, but even if those bother to show up during a game, it's an incredibly situational move.
  • Havok gains a huge +4 power while reducing your Max Energy gain by 1 at the end of the turn. This means you effectively hard-cap your Max Energy by playing them, in exchange for an increasingly powerful card who's liable to be destroyed by Shang-Chi.
  • Ghost's Ongoing effect always makes her player's cards reveal last during a turn, permitting them to spread power across the board without gaining priority. The core benefit of this ability allows a player to dodge large scale counter cards such as the Shadow King or Valkyrie, limiting the ones they hit while allowing their own tech cards to operate to a greater degree. However, knowing when to keep or give away priority is a core part of the game, and sometimes a player will want their cards to be revealed first to get ahead or to circumvent a thread. The Ongoing also allows an opposing Galactus to be played easier, and unrevealed cards combined with the deferred priority make for an easy target for an enemy Alioth.
• Back from the Dead: Besides the cards that can restore themselves upon being destroyed or discarded, there are cards that can restore destroyed or discarded cards:
  • Ghost Rider will bring back one of your discarded cards and place it in his location.
  • On reveal, Hela places all of your discarded cards in random locations.
  • The Phoenix Force will revive a destroyed card and merge with it, giving it +5 power as well as the capability to move each turn.
• Bad Boss: During the end of the Black Order Developer Update, Thanos disintegrates his cultists (Ben Brode among them) after they're done hyping up him and the new cards from the titular set.
• Badass Boast: A select number of cards say these when their effects activate.
• Battle Couple:
  • Thor is a 3-Energy card whose ability shuffles a 0-Energy Mjolnir into the deck, which buffs him when played. Jane Foster is a 5-Energy card who will automatically pull any 0-Energy cards to your hand, guaranteeing you the chance to play Mjolnir.
  • Ka-Zar boosts the power of all in-play your 1-Cost cards by one. Shanna (his canon wife) summons a random 1-Cost card to each location (if there's room).
  • Jean Grey's ongoing ability forces each player to play their first card each round in her location. Cyclops (in his Evolved version) debuffs two enemy cards in his location each round with unspent energy. Jean's presence guarantees that cards will be present for Cyclops to debuff.
  • Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight have abilities that complement each other — Corvus discards two random cards in your hand in exchange for giving you +1 Max energy, while Proxima jumps to your lowest-power location (that isn't full) when she's discarded.
  • For Valentine's Day 2024, the game introduced buffs for playing specific power couples (She Hulk and Daredevil, Ghost Spider and Miles Morales, Black Panther and Nakia, etc) that triggered even if their powers were otherwise not harmonious.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game:
  • Super Skrull has the abilities of all opposing ongoing cards, allowing a player to copy an opponent's strategy that relies on such cards and turn it against them.
  • Loki's ability invokes this, changing the cards in the player's hand into copies of the cards from the opponent's starting deck, but costing 1 less. The cost can be further decreased by other cards too, possibly allowing the player to play their opponent's combo even faster.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • At the end of the game, Captain Marvel goes to another location as long as her being there would be enough to win, emulating her swooping in to save the day at the last minute.
  • If M'Baku is in your deck at the end of the game, he jumps to a random location.
  • Inverted with Martyr, who goes to another location at the end of the game if it would cause the player to lose.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The Vanilla Units (e.g. Cyclops, The Thing, Hulk) have no special abilities, but have good stats for their cost, making them easy to slot into a deck and play.
  • Nightcrawler is a 1-Energy card with 2 Power and the ability to move once. It may not seem like much, but he can fit into most decks and easily work around troublesome locations such as Death's Domain. The single move can add a lot of uncertainty to the opponent's calculations as locations are commonly won or lost by a couple of points.
  • Quicksilver will always be in your hand when starting, so you'll always have an opening move, particularly useful for decks with few or no 1-cost cards otherwise.
  • Among the various single location changer cards in the game, Rhino is the most underwhelming in terms of his ability which just ruins the lane he's on into one with no effect. It's not exciting as Scarlet Witch's, the Reality Stone's or Nico's, but it's also not as random, making it a safe play to neutralize an unfavorable location. He also has a bit more Power than Storm and he won't lock the location, and unlike Magik he can still be played on Turn 5+.
  • Echo is a 1-Energy card that disables the effects of any opposing Ongoing cards that are played at her location, potentially safeguarding it from tech cards like Cosmo or powerhouses such as Devil Dinosaur. While devastating against certain decks, if your opponent doesn't rely on Ongoings that much, her ability will be of little use. In spite of that, she has decent stats for her cost.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Reaching Infinite Rank just gives players a new version of one of the current season's card backs (usually made by placing additional gold on it somewhere) and puts them on a new leaderboard (with no milestones apart from the ranks themselves) with fellow Infinite Rank players. Additionally, they won't have to climb as much to reach it again after ranks are rolled back the following month. Surmounting Infinite Conquest will give them a new border for whatever avatar picture the deck they used to do that had at the time.
• Brainwashed:
  • Viper sends one of your cards in her location to the opponent's side with the animation involving dosing them with HYDRA brainwashing gas. This is typically used with negative-power cards like The Hood or Void (spawned by Sentry) to sabotage the opponent.
  • After turn 3, all cards on Oscorp Tower will switch sides, the animation of which involves pumpkin bombs containing brainwashing gas launched at both sides.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • Penny Arcade's variant of the Deadpool card has him stretching his hands out◊, if you look closely he is actually holding his own cost and power values
  • If Agatha Harkness is in your deck, she will take all the boosters awarded after the game and directly address the player about it.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Downplayed compared to most mobile games—most of the purchases are cosmetic. Upgrading cards doesn't make them more powerful, it just unlocks better art. However, it also increases your collection level, which unlocks more cards at certain points. You can speed this along somewhat by purchasing card upgrades (but there's daily purchase limits) or buying a season pass or various bundles (potentially giving players powerful and rare Series 4 and 5 cards on their very first day of play) offered in the store. Everything that makes you more powerful is available to free players, it just takes them longer to acquire.
• Came Back Strong:
  • Bucky Barnes is just a 2 cost card with 1 Power, but when destroyed he turns into The Winter Soldier, who has 6 Power.
  • Every time Deadpool is destroyed, he returns to your hand with doubled stats. Destroy him consistently, and he can easily be 1 Energy for 16 Power.
  • Apocalypse gains +4 Power and returns to your hand every time he is discarded, potentially ending up with 14 or more Power in a discard-themed deck.
  • The reworked Wolverine now gains +2 Power whenever he's discarded or destroyed, meaning he can potentially turn into a late game threat if you destroy and bounce him to the correct location.
  • On reveal, Phoenix Force revives one of your destroyed cards and merges with them, giving them +5 power and the ability to move each turn, while still keeping their original ability.
  • Swarm and Nimrod don't gain any power, but instead make 2 copies of themselves when they're discarded/destroyed respectively.
• The Cameo: As a number of variants are just repurposed old comic book covers, sometimes featuring more than one character, this happens occasionally. Such as both Johnny Blaze and Robbie Reyes both being on the "Fantasy" Ghost Rider card. Or Amadeus Cho acting as Enchantress' foot stool from his time as the Totally Awesome Hulk.
• Cannibalism Superpower:
  • Venom and Carnage both destroy all friendly cards at their location when they're revealed. Venom copies their power while Carnage gains a flat +2 for each destroyed.
  • Dracula discards a random card from your hand at the end of the game, gaining its Power without the downside. It would be pretty good to eat that Infinaut you're stuck with...
  • Being the creator of the symbiotes, Knull trumps both Venom's and Carnage's abilities by gaining the combined power of every card destroyed over the course of the game.
• Casual Video Game: MARVEL SNAP is intended as a casual-friendly game that's easy to pick up and not too big of a time commitment. Decks are only 12 cards and a game lasts maybe five minutes. That's not to say it's easy or lacks depth, but it is highly streamlined compared to other CCGs (even Hearthstone, which itself was billed on its simplicity).
• Cap:
  • Held credits max out at 10,000, forcing players to upgrade their cards eventually.
  • With few exceptions, a location can only have four cards per player.
• Card Cycling: Loki's ability replaces all the cards in your hand with copies of cards from your opponent's starting deck, and makes them cost 1 less.
• CCG Importance Dissonance: Some of Marvel's most famous Heroes and Villains are... not great cards. Captain America's effect is too minor, Spider-Man and Wolverine's effecs are too niche, the Hulk is too inflexible, Galactus and Doctor Octopus are incredibly high risk, etc. Many top-tier decks are built around more obscure characters like Angela, Devil Dinosaur, Darkhawk, Aero, Wave, and Dracula.
  • This was discussed in the decision to buff Wolverine, noting he was used very little for a character of his importance.
  • Likewise this was discussed when the devs completly overhauled Spider-Man, noting that his original ability was polarizing and unpopular, and they didn't want Spider-Man to be saddled with an ability like that.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Titania switches sides whenever a card is played at her location.
• Circling Birdies: A card struck by Red Guardian will have letters and numbers blasted out of them, briefly forming a halo of text resembling these.
• Combat Clairvoyance:
  • If you played him, Daredevil lets you see where your opponent plays on turn 5 before you play your own cards.
  • Similarly, Kang's card text reads "Look at what your opponent did, then restart the turn. (without Kang)"
  • Uatu the Watcher shows you the rightmost location if he's in your deck.
  • Howard the Duck allows you to see the top card of your deck if you tap on him after he's been played.
• Company Cross References: The seasons' themes or card releases will often coincide with the characters in Marvel's major release schedule, such as a Guardians of the Galaxy themed season arriving with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, a Spider-Man season alongside Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and a Loki season to promote Loki season 2.
• Cosmetic Award:
  • Ranking up will allow you to earn holographic effects, frame breaks, and alternate artworks for your favourite characters. These don't increase the power level of your cards, they're just for cosmetic flair.
  • Once you get all of the Series 1 and 2 cards, Collector's Caches and Reserves appear on the collection level track, which have a small chance to give you an avatar or a title.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • The currently unreleased Surtur card is a 5-cost 0-power card that gains +10 power whenever the Human Torch is moved to his location, making the former completely useless if you haven't unlocked the latter.
  • "Kazoo" (a portmanteau of "Ka-Zar" + "zoo") decks are based on playing lots of low-cost cards and making said cards stronger with Ka-Zar (+1 Power to all 1-cost cards) and Blue Marvel (+1 Power to every card), among others. They are very effective at low levels of play, where people do not know how to counter them. At higher levels, where cards that destroy low-cost cards are abundant (especially Killmonger), playing Kazoo is basically suicidal. However, with the release of Caiera (who protects 1-cost and 6-cost cards from being destroyed, thus nullifying Killmonger's ability) this strategy has started to become viable again.
  • Patriot decks. Patriot's Ongoing ability boosts the power of cards without abilities by two, so this deck involves playing cards that have no abilities, such as Misty Knight, Cyclops, and the Hulk, or cards that generate other cards with no abilities, like Debrii, Brood, Mister Sinister, and Doctor Doom. This deck is severely hampered by cards that can eliminate other cards' abilities, such as Enchantress or a pre-nerf Leech.^note However, if your opponent plays Leech after you have played Patriot, you now have an entire hand of cards capable of being boosted...
  • Mister Negative decks are heavily reliant on drawing and playing him on the first four turns, and tend not to have secondary win conditions since the cards in them are heavily reliant on becoming inverted.
• Death-Activated Superpower: Several cards have abilities that only take effect when they're destroyed and/or discarded, which pairs them well with Team Killer cards.
• Death by Origin Story: Referenced with the currently unreleased Uncle Ben card. When Uncle Ben is destroyed, he adds a copy of Spider-Man to your hand.
• Determinator: Jeff the Baby Land Shark can be played or moved anywhere, with the only thing capable of stopping him being the 4-card limit on most locations.
• Deck Clogger: Aside from cards that place junk into an opponent's deck, players have a maximum Hand Size of 7 and there are cards that clog the opponent's hand to restrict its size. Darkhawk even relies on this trope, as his power is equal to twice the number of cards in the opponent's deck:
  • Rocks are 1/0 cards that are either forced into the deck by an opposing Korg or Rockslide, or from locations like Subterranea or Lechuguilla. They can also be added to locations by Debrii, and certain locations add rocks to their positions such as Collapsed Mine.
  • Vibranium is a 1-cost card that gets shuffled into the deck via playing on Vibranium Mines, but are marginally more useful than Rocks as they also have 4 power and cannot be destroyed.
  • Black Widow's ability puts a Widow's Bite into the opponent's hand. It costs nothing to play and has -1 Power, but as long as it's in a player's hand, that player can't draw cards.
  • Master Mold's ability makes the opponent receive two Sentinels in their hand. Sentinels summon another Sentinel to the hand when played, which cuts an opponent's hand size for their own cards by 2.
• Developer's Foresight: Some of the rare interactions are accounted for. For example, if Elektra has a valid target that is immune to being destroyed, she still throws the sai, and it will bounce off with a funny noise.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Galactus is usually a very risky card to play, given that he downsizes the game to a single location, his ability can only be activated if he's the only card played there and the player is winning that location, but he only brings a Power of 5 to win said location. However, if you can get extra Energy (from Psylocke, Electro or locations), to play Galactus early on a location where your opponent is weaker. This ensures you can dominate the game by playing strong cards in subsequent turns. This is still a pretty risky move since your opponent can have stronger cards in their hands, but it can also totally surprise them. Not to mention, you get to see Galactus' world-destroying animation, which is pure Awesome. It's even more rewarding if you play Death^note 8 cost 12 power, costs 1 cheaper per card destroyed and/or Knull^note 6 cost, ongoing ability makes his power equal to the total power of all destroyed cards afterwards, after Galactus' ability should give them a massive cost decrease/power boost respectively.
  • The "Wong Exodia" is a combination of cards that relies on using Wong, Magik, Onslaught, and Mystique + a 4-cost or less card to activate their on-reveals a practically infinite number of times, easily outdoing anything the opponent builds up. Popular choices for the final card are Ironheart (+2 to three random cards, seeing your side of the board reach obscenely high numbers) and Gambit (discards a card to destroy a random enemy card, effectively wiping out the entire enemy board). The problem is that the odds are already incredibly low to have all the necessary cards to pull off the combo, and is countered by almost every tech card in the game: Cosmo disables on-reveals, Enchantress removes ongoing abilities while Rogue outright steals them, Sandman reduces players to one card a turn, Armor prevents cards from being destroyed, Aero moves a card played to her location, etc., and when the opponent can't counter the combo, they can almost always see it coming and immediately retreat. When the combo is pulled off it makes for a very satisfying screencap to see your locations go into triple-digit power or the entire enemy board disappear, but the rate of games it can be pulled off is in the single-digit percent.
  • Cerebro decks depend on fielding multiple cards that precisely hit, through base or effect tweaks, an exact uniform power value so that they all receive Cerebro's +2, which can be further boosted with Mystique. If all goes well, you'll have an unbreakable board that fiercely contests in all locations, but it's an easy combo to screw up if you accidentally play or are accidentally given a card whose power exceeds that planned power threshold, not to mention how certain locations can mess with a card's power. Cerebro is also, understandably, vulnerable to Enchantress like most lynchpin Ongoing cards. Additionally, builds are vulnerable to balance patches which can increase or decrease the power of certain cards.
  • Living Tribunal Decks focus on The Living Tribunal, who spreads your total combined power across all three locations. This requires lots of buffing setup in order to have a massive amount of power spread out across all three locations, while needing to prevent cards from being neutralized by Shang-Chi, Shadow King, Rogue, or Enchantress. It's also vulnerable to Super Skrull if ongoing power methods were used, who can beat this deck at its own game. However, if pulled off properly, the power spread out will become so high that the opponent can't do a thing to win any one location.
  • Bounce decks focus on recycling low energy cards to reuse their effects and to synergies with buffs associated with the likes of Angela, Bishop, Hit Monkey, and Elsa Bloodstone. It requires a considerable degree of planning and forethought, especially in hand management.
  • Lockdown decks that focus on moving the opponent's cards with cards like Aero, Juggernaut, and Spider-Man can disable combos and toss all enemy powerhouses into a single location while you easily take over the other two. To maximize their effectiveness, someone playing them will have to be experienced with multiple opposing play styles and have good judgment as to when to disrupt them. They've become even trickier to use due to how Juggernaut is the only one among them that can move unrevealed cards after the December 2023 patch.
  • The Grandmaster is a bit more unwieldy than other cards that can cheat out On Reveal effects multiple times. He doesn't have Iron Lad's amount of Power, he's not as reliably precise as the Absorbing Man, he doesn't activate all of the ones on the location he's on like Odin, he doesn't create duplicates like Zola, and he's restricted to moving and triggering his target to the middle location, which means a Cosmo in the middle lane counters most of his effect. However, he has a lower cost than any of his counterparts, and a shrewd player can exploit this to pull off some devious combos such as having Shang-Chi destroy enemy cards in two different locations on the same turn. Or they could play Wave on Turn 5, and space willing, the Grandmaster can do this trick with the Alioth on Turn 6.
• Dirty Coward: Crossbones is an 10 power card, with the limitation that he can only be played on a space where his side is currently winning.
• Disc-One Nuke: Morph is a risky yet sometimes mighty On Reveal character that can transform into a copy of a card in your opponent's hand. In earlier Collector Levels, rankings, and card pools, he has a high likelihood of mimicking a powerful enemy unit due to how most decks in these ranges are constricted to playing on curve, making it more likely that there will be a viable roster of reliably strong cards for Morph to imitate for relatively modest cost (ex. The Infinaut). As decks, cards, and their tactics and abilities get more diverse, the chances of Morph doing this start to slim, as he might just imitate a situational combo piece or a powerful card whose abilities present a typical drawback outside of specific play styles (ex. M.O.D.O.K.).
• Doppelgänger Spin: Mysterio is a 2-cost 4-power card that, when played, disguises itself as a 0-power card and creates two other 0-power cards at the other two locations, with the "real" card only revealed at the end of the game, preventing the opponent from accurately guessing where they should focus their attack.
• Energy Absorption:
  • Whenever Sebastian Shaw gains permanent power from another source (even if he's in the deck or hand), he also gets an extra +2 power.
  • Havok reduces your Max Energy by 1 each turn in order to gain a huge +4 power every time he does so.
• Evil All Along: The Radio DJ Ben Brode seen in the Guardians Greatest Hits Developer Update is among the assembly of malevolent Ben Brodes featured in the Thunderbolts Developer Update trailer.
• Evil Knockoff: Unlike those made by the Daily Bugle, Mirage, or White Queen, the card replicas that Loki transforms a player's hand into aren't exact copies of an opponent's as they use the base artwork of each character rather than whatever variants or effects that exist in the opposing deck.
• Evil Laugh: Certain characters such as Agatha, Annihilus, the Goblins, and more give out throaty cackles as they activate their effects.
• Evolutionary Levels: The cards affected by the High Evolutionary are supposed to evoke this as they rank from the conventional card Energy costs from 0 to 6. Playing them in sequence is incentivized as they have bonus buff and debuff effects from having leftover energy each turn, potentially allowing a player to cap off a game with an "evolved" Hulk with 24 Power.
• Exact Words: One of the game's core tropes, which can add to the chaos:
  • Destroying and Discarding are two different ways to remove cards. Generally, cards on the field (and deck, in the case of Yondu's ability and Lamentis-1) are destroyed, while cards in the hand are discarded. Cards that are immune to or return from being destroyed can still be discarded, and cards that can come back from being discarded can still be destroyed. Wolverine and his relatives have abilities that explicitly involve both, and can be used in both discard and destroy archetypes. Cards that have an effect when destroyed don't work when destroyed in the deck as they aren't in play.
  • Limbo adds a seventh turn to the game. If you destroy Limbo or deactivate its effect on turn 6, the game ends on that turn.
  • For the purposes of the game, "playing" a card means the player specifically drags the card from their hand and places it in that location. Meaning the player can get around the restrictions of something like Death's Domain (Destroys any card you play there) by moving cards there via Iron Fist or Heimdall, or even by playing Bucky Barnes (since the Winter Soldier card is created when Bucky is destroyed, not played). When destroyed, Wolverine "Regenerates" at a random location, including Death's Domain. Jubilee will also "Add" a card from your deck, and since you only played Jubilee, only she gets destroyed.^note Originally, Wolverine and Jubilee's effects read "Play" instead of "Regenerate" and "Add", but even then, Wolverine played itself, and Jubilee played a card for you, so they still got around "Play" restrictions. Baron Zemo will "Recruit" a card from your opponent's deck.
  • Mysterio must be played to create his illusions. If brought out into the field without being played, then he'll do nothing. In turn, his illusions do count as played cards, unlike most cards that spawn other cards.
  • Kingpin's old card effect read: "When a card moves here on turn 6, destroy it.". Strange Academy's location effect reads: "After turn 5, move all cards here to other random locations." If both are in a game, multiple cards may move to Kingpin's location by turn 6, but since the move happened after turn 5, but before turn 6, they aren't destroyed.
  • Thanos and High Evolutionary have effects that only trigger at the start of a game if they were in a player's deck to begin with. If they were brought into the fold by the likes of District X or the Triskelion, the player who got them won't receive the Infinity Stones or the Vanilla Unit enhancements.
  • The game tends to refer to cards by their cost as "X-Cost card(s)" or "Card(s) that cost X". This is very intentional, as these refer to cards by their base cost and cards by their actual cost (including effects that increased/decreased the it) respectively.
  • Attuma's effect reads "If you have another card here at the end of your turn, destroy this." This means any effect that happens "after the game ends" will not trigger him, as that happens after every turn has already ended. This includes if he reveals after the end of the game via Dark Dimension or Invisible Woman, or if Captain Marvel or M'Baku move to his location.
  • A key subversion is that many "On Reveal" abilities trigger based on cards at a location. A card only exists at a location once it is face-up, and they reveal in the order that you play them. For example, Carnage destroys all of your other cards at the same location. If you play Carnage and a second card at the same location on the same turn - Carnage will eat the other card only if it reveals first. One exception is Galactus — if you play Galactus then a second card on his location on the same turn, he'll be prevented from triggering his on-reveal ability even if he revealed first.
  • If an ability doesn't say "Ongoing" or "On Reveal", then it doesn't count as either, even if the effects behave like one or the other. However, there are certain abilities and locations that affect the text of the card, which will affect such cards. Red Guardian's ability to remove the text of the lowest-power enemy card in his location is one such example, as does Deep Space's effect of disabling all text in the location.
  • Captain Marvel will fly to a location only if "she" can win the game for you. However, if multiple Captain Marvels are in play, they won't move (though they will fly around) if they could collectively win the game for you.
  • Shuri will double the power of the next card if it is played "Here." This refers to the named location where Shuri is revealed. If she is moved after being revealed, the next card must be played where she started. If the location itself moves, then the effect follows it.
  • Cards like Electro that have both an Ongoing and On Reveal ability count as both types of cards. Sauron removes all the abilities from Ongoing cards, so an Electro affected by either will do nothing once played, neither giving extra energy nor restricting how many cards his user can play on a turn. Absorbing Man and Mystique copy the text of their player's last On-Reveal/Ongoing card played respectively, which means that both will also gain both of Electro's Ongoing and On-Reveal abilities.
  • Iron Lad copies the text of the top card of a player's deck. Even after Sauron removes the abilities of all Ongoing cards in the player's hand and deck, Iron Lad will still gain the card's ability as it copied the text, not the nullified ability.
  • The Hulkbuster card can be used to boost cards (in locations) that only gain a bonus if they are the only card in the space. The Hulkbuster card combines/forms around other cards, so technically the end result is a character wearing it, and thus the game considers the original card to still be alone.
• Excuse Plot: Dimensional rifts are opening all over the universe this game takes place in, bending locations together. So now... Bucky Barnes, Carnage, and the Enchantress have to team up to fight for Cosmic Cubes? Don't think about it too hard.
• Face–Heel Turn:
  • Viper's on-reveal ability makes one of your other cards in her location switch sides.
  • Annihilus' on-reveal ability makes all your 0 or negative power cards switch sides, and destroys those that can't move due to lack of space.
• Forced Transformation: When Spider-Ham is revealed, he turns the opponent's leftmost card in their hand into a pig with the same stats, but no ability. This can backfire though, if the targeted card had a detrimental ability (such as Infinaut's inability to be played if you played a card the previous turn).
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • Kitty Pryde's original ability (You could return her to your hand whenever you wanted to increase her power by 2) ended up causing such immense problems with the gameplay that Second Dinner had to resort to outright disabling her from being added to decks until they could fix her.
  • The location "Deep Space" stated that any text on a card played there was disabled. For many cards with Ongoing abilities (such as Colossus), the location would disable the card text, but then the card would re-activate, triggering a loop.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Has it's own page.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • In the comics, the Super Skrull was created to imitate the powers of the Fantastic Four. In the game, his card has the Ongoing abilities of all enemy cards... which means he can imitate Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman, but not The Thing (has no ability, and even if given one by High Evolutionary it's an On-Reveal, not Ongoing) or the Human Torch (whose ability is not Ongoing).
  • Despite being the owner of it, Luke Cage can and will be kicked out from his own bar into his player's hand if he's played there, which also anti-synergizes with his Ongoing ability that needs him to be on the field to work.
• Game Plays Itself:
  • One of the possible locations is Ego, the Living Planet. Once he is revealed, he plays the cards for both players. Unless the Ego location is swapped for another, your only decisions for the match are restricted to retreat, snap, and end turn. Krakoa has the same effect, but only on the fifth turn rather than for the entire game.
  • Agatha Harkness is a card that has this same effect, but only for the player whose deck she's in. She starts it your hand, plays the game for you, and will always play herself at the earliest possible opportunity.
• Getting the Boot: Luke's Bar is a location that returns any card played there to your hand, complete with an animation of the card (as well as a barstool) getting chucked through a window. Hilariously, Luke Cage himself will be kicked out of it, as will any cosmically-powerful character.
• Gotta Catch Them All: Albums give rewards for collecting a certain number of specific variants.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Whether a card or location effect pertains to a character's base or current Energy cost requires some experimentation.
  • The game has a multitude of opaque potential interactions that are not readily apparent with the card/location text or the basic rules taught at the start. Cull Obsidian, for instance, cannot be played on a lane that doesn't have a 1-cost card, but he can be put onto a location on the same turn as a 1-cost card is placed there provided a player has enough energy and that they put that 1-cost card there first.
• Hated by All: Invoked with Red Skull. While he has a massive 14 power for his cost of 5, his ongoing ability makes all opposing cards in his location have +2 power. Even if they're squirrels, Infinity Stones, rocks, or chunks of Vibranium.
• Healing Factor: Represented with Wolverine's, X-23's, Sabretooth's, and Deadpool's effects. Wolverine regenerates to a random location after being discarded or destroyed with +2 Power, X-23 does the same but gives the player +1 energy next turn instead of increasing her power, Sabretooth returns to your hand and becomes zero cost, and Deadpool returns to your hand and doubles his power.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Red Hulk is a 6/9 card that gains a whopping 4 extra power in your hand or on the field if your opponent has leftover energy at the end of a turn. As an interesting drawback, if he's in your hand and his effect activates, your opponent will be presented with a special animation where the Red Hulk will appear on their screen and gain power, alerting them to his presence and allowing them to plan counter plays or simply start spending energy less frugally so as not to juice him up further.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: There are interactions where playing a card to debilitate or one-up the opponent can backfire heavily on the player:
  • Cosmo and Enchantress affect both sides, also preventing the On Reveal and removing the Ongoing effects of the player's cards respectively. Forgetting about this can spell defeat especially if a powerful On Reveal/Ongoing card is nullified by their own Cosmo/Enchantress.
  • Green Goblin and Hobgoblin both have negative power and will move over to the opponent's side upon reveal, sabotaging them. However, if there's any card or location that makes on-reveal effects happen twice (i.e. Wong, Kamar-Taj, Odin), this will make the Goblins end up on the player's side. Also, if the opponent fills the location on the same turn, the Goblins have nowhere to go. If played on Tarnax IV, the Goblins will go to the opposing side... and then turn into a card of the same cost, often giving your opponent a free card (unless Hobgoblin turns into M.O.D.O.K, who proceeds to discard their hand).
  • Leader is normally a powerful card that allows you to play the highest power cards your opponent played that turn on the location, on your side. This can backfire horribly if the copied card is the 15-power Destroyer which destroys your cards on the field or the 8-power M.O.D.O.K. which discards your hand, whereas your opponent will have a deck centered around self-destroying or discarding.
  • Baron Zemo is similar to Leader in that he "recruits" the lowest-Cost card from an opponent's deck to his side of the location he's played at. Theoretically, even if he pulls a weak card like Howard the Duck, he'll still effectively be a 3/7 drop at the cost of some space, but against certain archetypes like Discard and Destroy, he could pull a Blade that would discard a card from his player's hand with no way to benefit from that or a Carnage that would destroy him and any other cards on his side of a location.
  • Venom can consume a card with negative Power, typically doing him no favors. Similarly, if most of the destroyed cards in a game had negative Power through base stats or effects, Knull's will be insanely low for his cost since he only gains Power based on what a card had the moment it was destroyed (ex. a Devil Dinosaur destroyed while a player had four cards in hand would grant Knull 11 additional power instead of 3).
  • Super-Skrull copies all of the Ongoing abilities of your opponent's active cards, including harmful ones like Ebony Maw's, the Lizard's, or Electro's to name a few.
  • Mistiming playing Nico can result in her casting spells that can lose you a location, like turning your 10+ Power character into a 6 Power Demon.
  • Man-Thing is technically not inherently immune to his own location debuff. It's just that it misses him due to his being a 4-cost card. Should a Mystique copy his Ongoing effect for whatever reason, she will immediately be struck with -2 Power due to being in the range of what it can affect (1, 2, and 3-Cost). Inversely, if Super-Skrull or Iron Lad copies U.S.Agent's effect (which debuffs 4, 5, and 6-Cost cards with -3 Power), they will be similarly afflicted with -3 Power so long as they imitate the ongoing.
  • U.S.Agent's effect animation is similar to Captain America's in the way he throws his shield, but it will ricochet off his head as well, eliciting a grunt of pain before it returns to him.
• I Work Alone: All Atlanteans have this as their gimmick. Namor and Orka have +5 power if they're the only card on a location. Attuma has it even worse, destroying himself if there's another allied card at his location.
• It Was His Sled: Important concluded storylines and developments for certain characters are spoiled during Development Update trailers as they introduce their cards. The mystery surrounding the Red Hulk's real identity was a major part of Jeph Loeb's Hulk run, but it's casually revealed that he's actually a transformed General Thaddeus E. "Thunderbolt" Ross.
• Kill the God: The currently unreleased Gorr The God Butcher's ability destroys all 6-cost cards, no matter where they are — not even hands and decks are safe.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Unlike most other collectable card games, the Retreat mechanic is not merely a way to get the game over with, but it minimizes the amount of ranking cubes lost. A player aiming for a high rank must have the foresight to Retreat from lost causes rather than play every single match to the end.
• Large Ham: Despite not having a voice line, the Grandmaster has a fittingly ostentatious effect animation, beginning with him wreathing himself with playing cards, laying down an illuminated checkerboard on his player's side of the field, moving the affected character to the middle location with cosmic energy, and then shining a humongous spotlight on them from the heavens.
• Last Breath Bullet: Provided they are not prevented from doing so by another card or Location's effect that prevents them from triggering, On Reveal cards with conditional effects will resolve them even if they're taken off the field. For example, the next card played after Forge activates will receive the attack buff he provides even if he's destroyed or turned into a symbiote. Likewise, in neutral circumstances, when Gladiator pulled an opponent's pre-nerf Alioth from their deck, he would get destroyed, but his effect would also destroy the Alioth immediately afterwards as it resolves due to him having greater power than it.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Gambit discards a card from your hand to use his ability in the same manner as his kinetically charged cards.
• Let's You and Him Fight: There's an Avengers vs. X-Men season, though as some in its developer update trailer pointed out, much like the comic that inspired it, its focus is skewed more towards the X-Men as their group gets three new cards to the Avenger's two, and the new locations are both mutant sanctuaries (Krakoa and Utopia).
• Leeroy Jenkins: Martyr is a 1/5 that, at the end of the game, will move to a location that LOSES you the game if possible.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: If Baron Zemo uses his On Reveal while your opponent has no cards left in their deck, his typical trumpet sound effect will crumble as he lets out a pitiable, "Nobody...really?"
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards:
  • The contrast between Ongoing cards Captain America and Iron Man. While Steve is a 3-Power, 3-Energy card that gives +1 Power to the other cards in his location, that's at most +3 Power without some kind of modifier like Onslaught's Citadel or Onslaught himself. It's best used to barely edge out a location an opponent has already filled up while still theoretically leaving a player some leftover Energy to play cards elsewhere. Tony is a 5-Energy card that provides no Power on his own, but he doubles a player's Power at the location he's played in. To illustrate, if an opponent has four Hulks at a Gamma Base while a player had three Hulks with a Captain America, the player would lose that location at 48 Power vs 42 Power (36+3+3). If the player had an Iron Man there in place of Captain America instead, it would raise that 36 Power to a whopping 72 Power, handily winning them that area.
  • Zig-Zagged with Carnage and Venom. Both destroy all your cards on a location, but Carnage gets a flat +2 for each card destroyed while Venom adds their power to his. While Venom usually ends with much higher power than Carnage, he can also be harmed by negative power cards (i.e. the Goblins, The Hood, or Void) while Carnage's flat +2 always ensures he'll gain power instead of losing it and also benefitting more from 1- or 0- power cards. This makes both usable for different situations, with Carnage better for removing low/negative power cards and junk, and Venom excelling at eating high-power cards.
  • Wolverine and Deadpool have a similar relationship. While Logan gets a flat +2 Power boost whenever he's destroyed, Wade's Power doubles, so he can reach potentially absurd heights for a 1-Energy cost card when used in combos with the likes of Forge and the Hulk Buster, which Wolverine can benefit from but not as sharply. Like Venom, however, there's a tricky way to counter this. If Deadpool's Power is brought down to zero (ex. Spider-Woman's On Reveal) and he's destroyed, then he'll gain nothing; if it's reduced below that (ex. Selene's On Reveal if he's in your hand), then his negative Power will double. It's possible to bring his strength back up to par with other cards, but it's usually more practical to shift your attention's elsewhere. If Wolverine is similarly struck, it's much easier for him to recover just from being destroyed.
  • Thor and Beta Ray Bill have a similar dynamic to Captain America and Iron Man. Thor is a 3/4 who shuffles the 0/0 Mjolnir into the deck, and gains +6 power when it is played. Beta Ray Bill is a 4/6 who shuffles the 0/1 Stormbreaker into the deck, and doubles in power when it is played. If both gain the same amount of power and their respective hammers are played after, Beta Ray Bill's power will increase much more compared to Thor, due to being multiplied by 2 instead of having a fixed amount added.
• Loophole Abuse: Several.
  • Locations like Luke's Bar and Death's Altar will bounce back or destroy cards played on them. But cards brought in by say Mister Sinister, Brood or Jubilee will stick around as they don't count as being played.
  • Conversely, Mysterio and his illusions all qualify as being played in all three locations (if possible) at once. This gives him great synergy with Bishop, and Hit-Monkey, who can have their effects triggered for each of them, as well as Elsa Bloodstone, who will buff him and/or his illusions that happen to fill her location. It should be noted that this means that unlike Squirrel Girl or Doom, the cards that Mysterio creates cannot go into locked locations like the Sanctum Santorum or Kyln after turn 4.
  • Luke's Bar cannot return a card to your hand if it's full, which isn't a reliable exploit unless you're running Sentinel(s) or discarded Swarm with what you just played.
  • Cards played after destruction-based ones like Carnage and Deathlok on the same location and turn as them won't be destroyed by their effects as they're unrevealed and thus can't be targeted. Unrevealed cards are still vulnerable to Alioth, whose ability explicitly targets them, and Galactus' location-destroying ability will remove all cards on them, including unrevealed ones.
  • Black Knight's Ebony Blade generation restriction is a soft "once per game" as it only pertains to that particular copy of him. If there are multiple Black Knights in play due to effects like the Cloning Vats, Bar Sinister, or Sinister London, multiple Ebony Blades can be generated "once per game" depending on the number of active Black Knights.
  • Typically, the Space Throne location can only have one card in it for each player. But if a player put multiple cards in it before it was revealed, or disable the location with the Snowguard Hawk, then those cards will remain there.
  • Giganto can only be played normally on the leftmost location. However, he can be brought out in the center and right locations through alternative means such as through Jubilee or Ghost Rider's abilities.
• Low-Level Advantage: It's entirely possible for a new player at a low Collection Level to achieve Infinite Rank as they'll either be matched against only players on similar tiers with comparable cards at their disposal or bots emulating the same, allowing them to more easily anticipate and challenge the narrower strategies found in Series 1 and 2. Once they reach Infinite Rank, they will only be able to challenge fellow Infinite Rank holders who consist of low CL players who did what they did and players who have much larger (and oftentimes more powerful) collections with which to make their decks.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • Every game has a random set of locations, all with wildly different rules. You could get a location that fits your deck perfectly or one that totally screws you over. Or even three locations that don't really do anything at all. It ensures that no one deck will ever be the king of the meta. In addition, hot locations appear more frequently.
  • The Danger Room location has a 25% chance of destroying a card played there. If luck isn't on a player's side, it can destroy the card they needed to win.
  • Speaking of literal missions, some dailies are totally independent of player actions, such as "force your opponent to retreat". You will do them eventually, but when? That's a good question.
  • Morph turns into a random card in your opponent's hand, making him a very risky gamble that depends entirely on what your opponent has.
  • "Lockjaw Roulette" decks are made of this. When you play a card on Lockjaw's lane after the card is revealed, it goes back into your deck, and another one is randomly pulled out of the deck and played in its place (the second card is not swapped out). This can gift you multiple expensive cards for a very low cost... or fill up a lane with garbage.
  • On reveal, Doctor Octopus will pull out up to four of the opponent's cards from their hand into his location on the opposing side, for free. Depending on what gets pulled out, you can either disrupt your opponent's combo hard and put them at a disadvantage, or give them the exact power/combo they needed to win.
  • Playing Scarlet Witch or the Reality Stone to switch locations. You're just as likely to draw one of the really bad location (like Bar With No Name or Joutenheim) as one of the really good ones (like Shuri's Lab or The Nexus).
  • On reveal, Gambit discards a card from your hand and uses it to destroy a randomly-targeted opponent. Depending on luck, you can snipe off a high-power or combo card, hit something with low power, or worse, hit one that is currently indestructible or locked down.
  • Loki replaces the cards in your hand with copies of cards from your opponent's starting deck, with 1 less cost. The cards you get are all randomly selected from their deck, so you may or may not have the cards needed to pull off the opponent's combo. Of note, this won't copy decks with special properties that trigger at the very start of the game. So doing this against a deck centered around the High Evolutionary could just leave the players with a bunch of slightly cheaper cards with no real effects.
  • Nico Minoru's ability cycles to a different one each turn while she's in your deck or hand. Which effect appears next is random, although it doesn't repeat. Her player can be lucky and get the desired effect on the turn they want it, or they might never even see that effect throughout the game.
  • Gladiator pulls a random card from the opponent's deck onto the opponent's side of the field, and destroys it if their power is lower than his rather high 8 power. If he pulls a card that's equal to or higher than his power, he's just given the opponent a free play and a possible net power gain in his location. If he pulls an On-Reveal card, it will still use its ability regardless of being destroyed. If it's neither, then his effectiveness still depends on whether he pulled a threatening card or not.
  • Baron Zemo "recruits" the lowest-cost card in your opponent's deck onto his side. Not only does the player not know which cards the opponent still has in their deck (or if there even is a card in their deck), the card pulled may also be a detriment (such as Carnage or Deathlok who proceeds to destroy Zemo and anyone else on his location).
  • The Tarnax IV location turns any card played onto it into another card of the same cost. What you get is normally completely random.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Some cards are guaranteed to be drawn at certain points in the game, letting you mitigate the randomness of the draw to an extent. Examples include Quicksilver (always drawn in your opening hand), Domino (always drawn on turn 2), and formerly America Chavez (always drawn on turn 6).

M-W

• Made of Indestructium:
  • Vibranium obtained from the Vibranium Mines location cannot be destroyed. They can still be discarded, however.
  • The Ebony Blade has an Ongoing effect that not only makes it impervious to direct destruction but also prevents its Power stat from being decreased.
• Man of Kryptonite: Certain cards have overwhelming advantage against not only particular opposing cards, but entire play styles. There are obvious examples, like Mobius M. Mobius hard-countering cost-manipulation decks like those that use Mister Negative, Pixie, and Sera. Others are less direct but still devastating; Red Skull's ongoing that gives opposing cards at his location +2 power would be a liability in most situations, except against Cerebro decks which rely on a majority of a player's cards having the same base power stats.
• Mana Meter: You have an Energy meter from which to play cards. Energy works pretty much identically to mana in Hearthstone: you start at one and gain one additional maximum Energy each turn, with all Energy being refilled and unspent Energy from the last turn simply being wasted (barring certain cards that interact with unspent Energy). Some locations and cards provide you with extra energy as well.
• Manipulating the Opponent's Deck:
  • Korg shuffles a Rock into the opponent's deck, which is a 1-cost card with 0 Power.
  • Rockslide shuffles two rocks into your opponent's deck.
  • Yondu destroys the top card of the opponent's deck. Given how small each deck is, this has a good chance of sniping one of their crucial combo cards.
  • Mantis will steal the top card from the opponent's deck and add it to your hand if they play a card at the exact location on the same turn.
  • Cable will move the bottom card from your opponent's deck into your hand.
  • Baron Mordo will draw a random card from your opponent's deck and place it into their hand, setting it's cost at 6.
  • Gladiator will draw a random card from your opponent's deck and play it at their location on the opponent's side. If it has lower power than Gladiator, it gets destroyed.
• Mass Resurrection:
  • On reveal, Hela restores all of your discarded cards and places them at random locations.
  • The location Valley of the Hand will resurrect up to four destroyed cards on Turn 5.
• Mecha-Mooks:
  • Sentinel will add another Sentinel to your hand when played, allowing you to keep piling on an endless army of robots.
  • Doctor Doom comes into play by putting a Doombot in both other locations.
  • Ultron fills each location he's not in with 1 Power Drones.
  • Arnim Zola destroys a random friendly card at his location and adds a copy to each of the other locations.
  • Nimrod adds copies of himself to the other locations when he's destroyed.
  • Master Mold adds 2 Sentinels to the opponent's hand when played. Considering that Sentinels will add a Sentinel to the hand when played, this makes the opponent effectively have a maximum hand size of 5 instead of 7 if they lack ways to discard the Sentinels.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter:
  • Kang the Conqueror functions more like a one-use action than a proper character, since he resets the turn (but without him in your hand) when he is revealed.
  • So long as there's a location to go to, Jeff the Baby Land Shark can be played or moved into it. This includes bucking a Sandman or Electro's restrictive "only play 1 card a turn" ongoings, allowing his user to play him and another card during the same turn provided they have enough energy. He can also move into and out of locations where cards can't be added nor removed, such as the locations where Prof. X is.
• Meta Mecha: A Hulkbuster can merge with another Hulkbuster. If one alone is played in Bar Sinister, this will happen thrice, resulting in three vacant slots in the location, and a very beefy merger of four Hulkbusters.
• Metagame:
  • Conquest allows for potential multi-part duels between players, necessitating the construction of versatile (if still themed) decks, and strategies that can not be used in ladder matches like playing conservatively in the first round(s) to observe opposing tactics while concealing your own, and once both players know the contents of one another's decks, trying to deduce what they'll play and at which location.
  • Hot Locations are Locations that appear more frequently in regular matches for 24 hours, so choosing to use decks that synch well with them can net a player big advantages during these periods.
  • Snapping before Turn 5 is a powerful skill for a player looking to climb the ranks quickly. An opponent who sees that they're at an obvious disadvantage on Turn 5 will usually respond to a Snap by retreating, leaving the player with only a single cube as a reward. Opponents are more likely to stick around if a Snap occurs before that, netting a player at least two cubes even if the competition gets cold feet. Knowing when to take this chance requires sound judgment based on what cards a player has in their hand, what's on the board, and what locations are active.
  • Managing priority (through controlling more locations at the end of a previous turn) depending on whether it would be more desirable for your cards to be revealed first or last is another nuance to the game.
• Microtransactions: Gold bars are this game's premium currency, which you can use to purchase variants, get credits, and refill missions. You can get some gold bars while staying free-to-play, and the amount of premium things you can get with them is limited per day.
• The Millstone: Martyr downplays this, while she does have a high power-to-cost ratio (1/5), her ability causes her to move to another location if doing so will lose her player the game, pretty much guaranteeing a defeat if it happens^note unless Captain Marvel or M'Baku jump into the location she left and manage to tip the power in her player's favor.
• Mirror Match: Invoked with Loki, whose ability replaces the cards in your hand with cards from your opponent's starting deck, and gives them -1 cost.
• Misère Game: Normally, you win a location by having the most total Power at it at the end of the game. However, you win The Bar With No Name by having the least Power there instead.
• Mister Seahorse: If they copy the abilities of Mister Sinister or Brood, Iron Lad and Absorbing Man will create a Sinister Clone or have two Broodlings burst out of them, each sharing the same power they have.
• Mood Whiplash: The Planet Hulk main menu track starts heavy and grand until a canned "OH SNAP!" is thrown in a third of the way through.
• Mythology Gag: As a nod towards an infamous comic fight - Squirrel Girl and Dr. Doom have the same ability (albeit at different power levels)
• Never Trust a Trailer: Some of the variants featured in the animated trailers did not exist in the game when they were shown.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Colossus' Ongoing ability prevents him from being destroyed, moved to other locations, or having his power lowered. It however doesn't protect him if Galactus destroys the location he's on.
• No Ontological Inertia: Luke Cage does not technically prevent cards from being affected by negative Power debuffs. They still hit those cards, they brought their Power down, it's just that his Ongoing effect prevents them from being calculated and affecting scores. If his ability is nullified or stolen, then all those debuffs will reassert themselves all at once where applicable.
• No Saving Throw:
  • Unrevealed cards are normally invulnerable to being destroyed or targeted, with a few exceptions. Alioth can remove the effects of unrevealed cards played on the same turn on their location, Juggernaut can knock away unrevealed cards played at his location if he reveals first, and Galactus/Worldship destroying an unrevealed card's location will destroy them.
  • Any cards on the locations that Galactus or his Worldship destroys will be destroyed, even if they're unrevealed, invincible (Colossus, Armor) or on lockdown by Professor X. The only way for a card to survive is by having an ability to regenerate/clone itself on the board or hand upon destruction.
• Non-Action Big Bad: High Evolutionary is one of the game's Big Bad cards (alongside Thanos, Galactus and Kang) and if he starts in your deck, he unlocks powerful abilities on the seven Vanilla Unit cards. However, High Evolutionary himself is a 4-cost 4-power card with no ability once the game starts, meaning High Evolutionary decks will rarely actually play him.
• Not the Intended Use:
  • America Chavez' original power would cause her to always be drawn on turn 6, providing players with a decent last-turn card to fortify or potentially turn a location. However, since she couldn't be drawn before, it also means a higher chance to draw one of the other 11 cards. The developers found that America was not added to the deck for the power but instead to make the rest of the deck a little more consistent. She was also much more likely to be destroyed by Yondu or stolen by Cable while in the deck, which allows her to act as a sacrificial target to protect your more valuable combo cards from being sniped. This ultimately resulted in a complete rework of her kit, turning her into a 2/3 (later 1/2) On Reveal character that gives +2 power to the top card of your deck once played.
  • Similar to how it is with the High Evolutionary, Thanos doesn't necessarily appear that often in decks with him in it. The Infinity Stones are capable of generating advantage and field presence with their variety of functions including extra energy and location changing, while most of them also keep card advantage. This allows them to be splashed into almost any deck. The Mad Titan getting a massive Power boost is usually just a nice bonus.
  • Apocalypse is a 6/6 that immediately returns to your hand with +4 power when discarded, and is intended to be played on the final turn as a massive power card. Certain discard-based decks don't actually play him, as he can be used as reusable ammo for Wong+Mystique+Gambit (which needs to discard a card to destroy an enemy card), or become the sole target for Dracula (who discards Apocalypse, boosts him, and then gains his immense power at the end of a game).
• Person of Mass Destruction:
  • The Destroyer destroys all other friendly characters when he comes into play. This is normally pretty terrible, but there are ways to mitigate it (for example, protecting some of your characters with Armor or playing Destroyer in the same location as Cosmo) and there are cards that benefit from being destroyed.
  • Galactus' ability destroys the other two locations and all cards on them (including those with "can't be destroyed" effects) except the one he's played on. However, as he's a 6-cost 5-power card whose ability only triggers if he's your sole card on the location and must be winning the location upon reveal, you need to make sure you can actually win the remaining location, or you lose the game.
  • Worldship is the location version of Galactus, being his ship and all. Once it's revealed, it destroys the other two locations, leaving it as the only playable area for the remainder of the game.
  • Killmonger, which wipes out all 1-cost cards, can be this, especially if locations that place cards for you are involved.
  • Rhino "destroys" the location he's played at, transforming it to Ruins, a location with no ability.
  • Storm causes a flood at the location she's played at, giving both players one last turn to play cards there before the location removes the ability to do so for the remainder of the game.
  • M.O.D.O.K. discards every card in your hand when he's revealed, complete with an animation of him blasting them all with a giant laser. This normally sounds terrible, but synergizes perfectly with Hela, who can bring all your discarded cards onto the board in a single turn.
  • Alioth's on reveal ability removes the text of all enemy unrevealed cards at its location on the turn it's played.
• Planet Eater: Galactus' on-reveal ability outright destroys the two locations he's not in if he's a player's only card on a location, removing all cards from them and making those locations permanently unusable for the rest of the game.
• Play Every Day: The token shop and fast upgrade sections rotate their selection, and two missions are added every eight hours, and the variant offers rotate daily, encouraging you to check in at least once a day.
• Point of No Return: Card upgrading used to go exactly one way. If there was a combination of borders and effects that a player takes a liking to, it wasn't recommended (though the game never communicates this) that they go any further. The game would eventually add customization options for the upgrade effects.
• Power at a Price: A number of characters have very high power for their cost, but come with a huge drawback to offset it. Of course, these drawbacks can be worked around via Power Nullifier abilities or with a deck based around the drawback:
  • The Infinaut is a 6/20 that cannot be played if you played a card the preceding turn. He can still enter the field via other means to bypass the drawback.
  • The Destroyer is a 6/15 which destroys all your other cards in all locations. Of course, this can help with Death-Activated Superpower cards.
  • Red Skull is a 5/14 who has an ongoing that gives +2 power to every opposing card in his location.
  • Typhoid Mary is a 4/10 with an ongoing that lowers the power of all your other cards by 1.
  • Sentry is a 4/10 that cannot be played in the rightmost location and also spawns a -10 power Void on the rightmost location when played.
  • Titania is a 1/5 who switches sides after any card is played in her location.
  • Ebony Maw is a 1/7 that cannot be played after turn 3 and has an ongoing ability that prevents any more cards from being played at his location.
  • Martyr is a 1/5 which is a great cost-to-power ratio. At the end of a game, if she can lose the game for you by moving to another location, she will.
  • Havok gains a huge +4 power at the end of every turn... and also permanently decreases your maximum energy gain by 1 each time he does so.
  • Electro's On Reveal effect gives his player an additional Energy per turn for the rest of the game/round, but at the cost of having an Ongoing effect that restricts them to only playing one card per turn.
  • Corvus Glaive has a similar effect to Electro's, but he requires that you discard two random cards from your hand to reap his benefit.
• Power Copying:
  • Absorbing Man copies the On Reveal effect of the last card you played.
  • Morph turns into a random card in your opponent's hand, and gains their power if they have one.
  • Mystique copies the Ongoing effect of the last card you played.
  • Iron Lad copies the text of the top card in your deck. This even works if the top card had a ongoing ability nullified by Sauron.
• Power Creep: Cards typically have a baseline power for any given cost, with cards of lower power having powerful abilities while cards of higher power having drawbacks, and the baseline is represented in the Vanilla Unit cards. Over time, however, the baseline power for a card of any given cost has slightly increased, a fact that developers have openly acknowledged. Compare Black Swan (a 3-cost, 5-power card that turns the cost of all 1-cost cards to 0 the following turn) to Cyclops (a 3-cost, 4-power Vanilla Unit card with no ability of its own) or Mockingbird (a 5-cost, 9-power card that becomes cheaper the more cards that didn't start in your deck are in play) to Abomination (5-cost, 9-power, no ability).
  • This can also be seen with cards of similar use, such as Crossbones (a 4-cost, 8-power card that requires you to be winning a location to play him) compared to Cull Obsidian (a 4-cost, 10-power card that requires you to have a 1-cost card in a location to play him). This was addressed in a balance patch that set Crossbones to a matching 10-power card.
• Power Creep, Power Seep: Due to being an inter-company crossover, this was bound to happen to several characters:
  • A rather hilarious example is the Rickety Bridge location — if there's more than one character on the location, all characters on it are destroyed. Almost all characters are equally affected by this, even the cosmically-powerful ones, which means it's possible for Death, Galactus, Knull, the Living Tribunal, or Thanos (with all the Infinity Stones) to fall off an ordinary wooden bridge and die.
  • Rhino's ability "destroys" his location by turning it into Ruins, a location with no effect. It's capable of affecting higher-dimensional/metaphysical spaces like the Superflow or the White Hot Room, which are normally far beyond his canon power level.
• Power Nullifier:
  • Cosmo prevents On Reveal effects from activating at his location.
  • Enchantress removes Ongoing effects from all cards at her location upon reveal.
  • Echo removes Ongoing effects from opposing cards that get played at her location, but won't nullify those played before her.
  • Leech removes the abilities of all On-Reveal cards in your opponent's hand. He used to remove all abilities period.
  • Sauron removes the Ongoing effects of all cards in your hand and deck. This is a slight departure from his portrayal in the comics, where he was a Power Parasite. While this normally sounds like a massive detriment, it also removes negative ongoing effects like Ebony Maw's, Typhoid Mary's, and Red Skull's.
  • Zero removes the ability of the next card you play.
  • Spider-Ham turns your opponent's leftmost card in their hand into a pig with the same stats but no ability.
  • Red Guardian not only gives -2 power to the lowest-power enemy card ins his location but also removes its text, disabling all that card's abilities.
  • Among the Locations, Knowhere and Isle of Silence prevent On Reveal and Ongoing effects from activating there respectively, while Deep Space disables all card text, not just abilities that are On Reveal or Ongoing.
• Power Parasite: Rogue steals the Ongoing effect of an enemy card at her location.
• Pyrrhic Victory: If Carol Danvers is in play and the game ends with it being absolutely impossible for a player to win no matter where she goes, she will fly to a location that will bring the player as close to victory as possible if not outright winning that singular lane, giving them a smidge more rewards (Boosters and Season Pass points) than they would have gotten otherwise.
• Race Lift: Downplayed. Certain cards are shared among characters of multiple ethnicities that possessed the same moniker such as the Ghost Riders or Nick Fury Sr. and Jr. Similarly, there are iterations of that person from different mediums, like in the case of Ravonna Renslayer's regular (which resembles the version of her from Loki) and her "Terminatrix" variant that more closely adheres to how she looked like in her original comic book appearances.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Mixing characters from various factions to find effective synergies is heavily encouraged as fielding pure decks of a particular team or archetype is rarely viable as seen with the likes of the Fantastic Four among others.
• Random Effect Spell:
  • Nico Minoru's ability cycles through a spell list every turn she's in your hand or deck, the effects of which are varied. When she's revealed, all but one affect your next played card^note turning it into a 1/6 demon, replacing the location it's played in, giving it +2 power, adding a copy of it to your hand, destroying it and drawing 2 cards, moving it one location to the right, or doubling Nico's power. The player cannot choose what the next spell will be, but they know the outcome of the current spell if they play her. Returning her to your hand from the field will resume her spell cycling again.
  • Pixie's On Reveal shuffles the costs of all the cards that started in your deck (read: cards like the Infinity Stones, Rocks, Mjolnir, and Stormbreaker are unaffected). Maximizing the benefits of this with Mobius (which prevents cards from having their costs increased) can reap huge rewards with powerful cards like the Hulk potentially costing 0 energy to play if Wasp and/or Yellowjacket is in the deck. However, it should be noted that costs don't necessarily swap, they just get shuffled among the pool of possible values already in the decks. So you can have multiple heavy hitters getting their costs brought down or none at all.
• Readings Are Off the Scale: Location scoring used to be susceptible to integer overflow, turning a positive score negative if the power there goes over 500,000,000. Which, while extremely rare, can happen. Now, power at a location caps off at a maximum of 715,827,882.
• Reality Warper:
  • When Scarlet Witch enters play, she transforms the location she's placed in into another random location.
  • The Reality Stone, shuffled into your deck by Thanos' effect, does the same thing.
  • Legion transforms the other two locations into the one he's played on.
  • The Living Tribunal spreads your total combined power across all three locations.
• Reduced Resource Cost:
  • Death is an 8/12 that initially cannot be played, but her cost goes down by 1 for each card destroyed on either side.
  • She-Hulk is a 6/10 that costs 1 less for each unspent energy last turn.
  • When Swarm is discarded, he puts two copies of himself that cost 0 into your hand.
  • Sabretooth respawns in your hand at 0 cost whenever he's destroyed.
  • Wave makes all cards cost a maximum of 4 until the end of the next turn.
  • Zabu makes all your 4-cost cards cost 1 less.
  • Loki replaces your hand with cards from your opponent's starting deck, and makes them cost 1 less.
  • Sera makes cards in your hand cost 1 less.
  • Miles Morales is a 4/5 that costs 1 if a card moved last turn.
  • Stature is a 5/6 that costs 1 your opponent discarded a card.
  • Mister Negative goes both ways — he swaps the power and cost of all the cards in your deck. Those with low power but high cost thus get their costs decreased, but the inverse happens to those with high power and low cost.
  • Quinjet's ongoing ability makes cards that didn't start in your hand or deck cost 1 less.
  • Ravonna Renslayer makes your cards with 1 or less power cost 1 less.
  • Skaar is a 6/11 that costs 2 less for each of your cards that has 10 or more power.
  • Mockingbird is a 5/9 that costs 1 less for each card that didn't start in your deck on your side.
• Removed Achilles' Heel: Having effects disabled due to Locations or other cards is usually bad for most characters, but for others like the Lizard, Sentry, and Red Skull, this just turns them into low-cost beatsticks, and it allows Infinaut to be played even if a card was played the previous turn.
• Rewards Pass: A season pass is available each month, that provides rewards as you level it up by completing challenges. While you can get some rewards for free, opting for the paid version can earn you early access to a new card, several card variants, and other cosmetics as well.
• Rivals Team Up: Ironically, the way some cards work makes some characters, who would normally be rivals or even enemies, work pretty well with each other. Examples include:
  • Morbius (a vampire) gets stronger when you discard cards. Blade (a half-vampire and vampire hunter, who hates vampires) discards a random card from your hand when he's revealed.
    • Similarly, Lady Sif forces a discard of the highest power card when she is played, which ensures at least one strong card is available for Hela to resurrect.
  • Namor becomes much stronger when he's alone in a lane, which means he benefits greatly from cards that give strength bonuses to cards in other lanes. One such card is Mister Fantastic, one of his biggest rivals in the comics.
  • The Hood is a -3 power card whose value is in generating a 6 power demon when played. Deathlok, whom The Hood stole and tried to use as an assassin, is useful to play on the same location to kill The Hood and clear the penalty.
  • Shuri has the ability to double the power of the next card played, synergizing well with several high power, 5 and 6 cost villain cards like Red Skull.
  • Cerebro-based decks often focus on having all their cards with the same power, so they share in Cerebro's bonus. One of the best cards for this is the 3-power Sentinel, which can endlessly replicate itself.
  • Gambit's on-reveal effect requires the player to discard a card from their hand to destroy an opponent's card. The X-Men nemesis Apocalypse returns to your hand with +4 power every time he's discarded, allowing Gambit to always have a card to discard especially in decks focused around triggering his on-reveal effect multiple times.
  • Jean Grey's ongoing ability forces both players to play the first card of each turn into her location. A great way to exploit this is to quickly fill Jean's lane , freeing yourself to play in other lanes. Two cards that help a lot towards this are Mister Sinister and Brood... aka two historical X-Men nemeses.
    • To add insult to injury, being a 3-cost card, Jean Grey naturally fits into Silver Surfer decks, a stable presence in which is... Shadow King, another X-Men foe.
  • Loki, the antagonist of The Avengers (2012), replaces your hand with copies of cards from your opponent's starting deck while reducing their cost by 1. He works extremely well with the Avengers' Quinjet, which decreases the cost of cards that didn't start in your deck by 1, as well as Agent Coulson, Maria Hill, and Nick Fury, who add cards to your hand for Loki to replace.
  • MODOK forces a player to discard their entire hand, Hela resurrects all the discarded cards. The only way to make this play reliablie is to hide them both behind the cover of Invisible Woman.
• Rock Beats Laser: A rather literal example. For a time before he was reworked, Galactus decks were extremely prominent in the meta. The common counter was a character called Debrii, who would dump Rock cards on both sides that aren't on her location, preventing Galactus' ability from triggering as he would not be alone at any location.
• Rope Bridge: Represented by the location Rickety Bridge. It destroys all characters there at the end of the turn if there is more than one (counting both players), which implies that too many people try crossing the rickety bridge and end up breaking it and plummeting to their deaths. This effect affects all characters, which can get downright absurd when otherwise cosmically powerful or flight-capable characters fall off the bridge to their doom.
• Self-Duplication:
  • Mister Sinister creates a Sinister Clone at the location he was revealed at. The clone has the same power, but lacks his cloning ability.
  • Multiple Man leaves behind a copy of himself whenever he's moved to a different location.
  • Swarm spawns two 0-cost copies of himself in your hand whenever he is discarded.
  • Whenever Nimrod is destroyed, they spawn a copy of themselves in each of the other locations.
• Set Bonus: Thanos gets a huge +10 power if all the Infinity Stones have been played and the Power Stone is on the field and functional.
• Shared Signature Move: Some characters that are associated with specific teams, organizations, or countries have similar abilities.
  • Characters commonly associated with the Guardians of the Galaxy (Star-Lord, Rocket, Groot, Drax, Gamora, and Mantis) all have On Reveal effects that only activate if the opponent played a card at the same location on the same turn.
  • Members of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Agent Coulson, Agent 13, and Helicarrier) all have abilities that add random cards to your hand.
  • Asgardians all have "On Reveal" effects with Top God Odin's causing all the spent On Reveals of the active cards on his location to trigger again.
  • Characters hailing from Atlantis (Namor, Orka, and Attuma) all have abilities that require them to be the sole card at their location to get the most out of them.
  • Citizens of Wakanda (Black Panther, Okoye, Nakia, Shuri, and Bast) have abilities that alter their own power or the power of other cards. M'Baku is the only Wakandan who deviates from this pattern, which is fitting since he's a member of the unintegrated Jabari tribe.
    • Additionally, Shuri shares a similar ability to Forge (increasing the power of the next played card). Both are gifted inventors who make tools and weapons for other characters.
  • Sentinels (Sentinel, Master Mold, and Nimrod) have abilities that spawn self-replicating units.
  • Symbiotes and their creator (Venom, Carnage, and Knull) have abilities that revolve around gaining power from destroyed cards.
  • Vampiric characters (Blade, Morbius, Dracula, Hell Cow) have abilities based around discarding cards from your hand. This is also true of sword-users (Sword Master, Lady Sif, Colleen Wing, Silver Samurai, Daken, Black Knight), with Blade fitting into both groups. Gambit is neither, but he throws kinetically-charged cards to attack. Additionally, necromancers Ghost Rider and Hela both bring back discarded cards. The black sheep of the discard family is M.O.D.O.K, who has nothing to do with any of the aforementioned categories.
  • Crystal and Medusa (Inhuman sisters) both have abilities that will only activate in the center location.
  • Most of the Spider-Men (Spider-Man, Ghost Spider, Miles Morales, Silk and Spider-Man 2099) have powers based on moving. Conversely, many enemies of the same have abilities that punish, inhibit, or benefit from movement (Kraven getting more power when a card moves to his location, Doctor Octopus clogging up an entire location provided an opponent has a big enough hand, Kingpin debuffing enemy cards that move to his location by -2 power, etc).
  • Members of the MCU's Time Variance Authority (Loki, Mobius M. Mobius, Ravonna Renslayer) have powers based around cost manipulation.
  • Mister Fantastic and Ms. Marvel both have Rubber Man abilities and both give Power to adjacent locations.
  • Wolverine and his relatives X-23 and Daken all have abilities based on discard and destroy.
  • Many villains (Red Skull, Ebony Maw, Typhoid Mary, Destroyer, Lizard, and Agatha Harkness, to name just a few) have a hefty Power compared to their Cost combined with a risky or outright detrimental ability.
  • The Hulks interact with energy in some form (Evolved Hulk, She-Hulk, and Red Hulk).
• Skill Gate Characters: A number of Series 1 and 2 cards, sometimes through no fault of their own, become less optimal and consistent as a player's card collections grows.
  • Quicksilver and Domino guarantee that a player will always have something to play on turns 1 and 2, but they take up hand space and a draw respectively that could have been occupied by stronger cards that either fit into greater combos or are just better on their own, so these two tend to be put aside as a player enters Series 2 and beyond.
  • For Discard decks, Sword Master was initially a powerful 3-Energy card with a whopping 6-Power that discarded a random card from your hand, making him a stronger version of Blade who did the same, a less risky alternative to Hell Cow who shared his power in her first two iterations but was riskier to play as she discarded two random cards instead, and put out more power on the board than Lady Sif or Colleen Wing, who could be counted on to discard the highest or lowest energy card from your hand but only had 4-Power each. Almost everyone in this group received a major adjustment, with Blade getting an errata that made it so he always discarded the rightmost card in your hand, Hell Cow having her power buffed to 8, and Lady Sif having hers increased to 5. Sword Master remains an asset for Discard decks in Series 1 and 2, even getting an additional point of power in 2024, but rarely sees any action in higher levels of play where targeted discards are sometimes more desirable.
  • Angel would fly out onto a location where one of your cards was destroyed, maintaining field presence despite the sacrifice of cards used to play Carnage or Deathlok. Unfortunately, he has to be in your deck for this to happen. So if he's in your hand, then he's just a cheap, weak card taking up a draw that could've been occupied by a more useful character, alternatives Destroy decks have a lot of in Series 2 onward. Even his ability buff that lets him fly out from a player's hand only improved his viability somewhat.
  • Apocalypse starts out as the big boss card for joint Discard and Destroy decks at lower collections levels due to how Wolverine initially ties both archetypes together, swarming the field with relatively high power destroy and discard cards which could potentially buff him for a big final turn play. As the play styles inevitably diverge, he vanishes from Destroy decks altogether, replaced with more appropriate heavy hitters like Death and Arnim Zola.
  • Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur never stops being a good duo, but as collections increase, Moon Girl finds more targets to combo with her effect like She-Hulk whilst Devil Dinosaur can function perfectly well on his own or with other allies to buff him such as the various SHIELD characters.
  • Colossus is a stalwart addition to any deck at low Collection Levels as his Nigh-Invulnerability allows a player to put solid power on locations that destroy cards or debuff their Power. His modest stats prevent him from being as universally desirable as an account advances through Series 2 and 3, with Colossus feeling out of place beyond specialized Ongoing decks.
• Status-Buff Dispel: There are a few cards that can dispel power buffs on cards:
  • Valkyrie sets the power of all cards on her location to 3, dispelling any increased power above 3 or even weakening characters further than their base power.
  • Shadow King sets the power of all cards on his location to their original base power.
• Super-Deformed: Some of the variant artwork for each character includes chibi versions of them. Also, a chibi version of Galactus attacks in the game's announcement trailer and the loading screen.
• Super-Empowering: If the High Evolutionary is placed in your deck, all cards with no abilities will have a special ability unlocked for them at the start of the game.
• Swiss-Army Superpower:
  • Snowguard summons two auroras, the bear and hawk, which can be used to affect locations.
  • Nico Minoru cycles through seven spells she has in her repitoire, all relying on a card played after her, and the accompanying animation with the Staff of One is always the same when you use her.
• Symbol Swearing: Gladiator does this if his effect fails to destroy the card it pulled out of an opponent's deck.
• Symmetric Effect:
  • Armor protects all characters at her location from being destroyed. This can be used to both disrupt an opponent that wants to destroy their cards as well as defend key cards against your self-destruction effects.
  • Cosmo prevents On Reveal effects from triggering at his location. This can be used to either prevent your opponent from capitalizing on the effects of cards like Shang-Chi, Wong, or Odin at that location or to prevent negative effects from your Power at a Price cards like Destroyer. Enchantress serves the same function for Ongoing abilities.
  • Storm floods the location she's played on, preventing either player from playing more characters there after the next round. This can be used to lock in a winning spot or force your opponent to divert resources to hold that location.
  • Scarlet Witch transforms the location she's played at into another random location. Magik transforms the location she's played on into Limbo, making the game last 7 turns instead of 6. Rhino removes the ability from the location he's played at. Legion transforms the other two locations into the one he's played on. These impact both players equally, but you have the upper hand in knowing when it's coming.
  • Killmonger destroys all friendly and enemy 1-cost characters on reveal.
  • Galactus destroys the other two locations and all cards on them if he's a player's only card on a location upon reveal.
  • Hazmat lowers the power of every card on the field by 1.
  • Shadow King sets every card at his location back to its original power.
  • Moon Knight discards a card from each player's hand when played.
  • Valkyrie sets all cards powers in her location to 3.
  • The Snowguard Bear aura can retrigger the location it's played on, often locations that aren't tied to the game state, whilst the Hawk aura disables all locations for the turn it's played and the next turn.
  • Selene reduces the power of both players' lowest-power card by 3.
• Taking You with Me: Before her rework, if any card on either side is played after Negasonic Teenage Warhead, she will destroy both it and herself. She now averts this as she was reworked to destroy the next opposing card played on her location, without destroying herself.
• Team Killer: There are several cards that will destroy or discard your own cards as their effect. While this sounds bad, there are several cards that benefit from the destruction/discarding of themselves or your own cards, and there are entire decks based around doing so. Destroying cards on your side also helps to free up space taken up by weak, detrimental, or junk cards.
• Time Rewind Mechanic: When Kang the Conqueror is revealed, he restarts the turn but without Kang in your hand. This lets you see what your opponent was planning and play around with it, although your opponent can adjust their strategy as well.
• Title Drop: The announcer calls out "Oh, SNAP!" whenever somebody Snaps.
• Too Dumb to Live: Not only do Ego the Living Planet and Agatha Harkness have very poor strategic AI, but they might do things that are directly harmful to themselves. Ego can place the likes of Scarlet Witch and Rhino on his lane, and Agatha may very well play herself on locations that will outright destroy her ala Altar of Death.
• Uniqueness Rule: The game allows no duplicates, period, unless the duplicate comes from a card or location effect causing you to draw a card from your opponent's deck, or a card can create duplicates (e.g. Sentinel, which respawns itself into your deck when played).
• Unstable Equilibrium:
  • Alioth's original ability invokes this. When revealed, Alioth would destroy all opposing face-down cards in their lane. Barring special cases like Invisible Woman, Ghost, or Dark Dimension, the only way for opposing cards to be face-down when Alioth reveals is for their player to be winning. This allowed Alioth to destroy potential comebacks the opponent tried to play in the final turns of the game.
  • Booster farming. Usually, each card has an equal chance of getting boosters at the end of a match, but there are hidden modifiers that lean hard into this trope. On the more fair side of the process, cards that are of lower rarities and need just a few more boosters to upgrade have a slightly higher chance of gaining them at the end of a game; so a player could organically control the flow of boosters by upgrading a card so it becomes a likelier recipient again or leaving it with an excess so other members of the deck can get some. However, Infinity rarity variants (and Custom Cards) are given double weight with these chances by default, a quirk programmed under the assumption that a player wants more boosters to create more Infinity splits with a card they liked enough to fully upgrade. This can be guarded against by putting a lower rarity variant of the same card or a recent Infinity split of the same in place of the Infinity border or custom card version. None of this is communicated in-game.
• Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: Can be invoked between Juggernaut and Blob. Juggernaut moves all cards (including face-down ones) played on the same turn in his location, while Blob's ongoing ability prevents him from being moved. The winner in this case is "whoever reveals first" — Juggernaut will move an unrevealed Blob whose ability isn't active, but if Blob reveals first then Juggernaut cannot move him. Against Cannonball though, Blob loses if he's revealed first.
• Vanilla Unit: Wasp, Misty Knight, Shocker, Cyclops, The Thing, Abomination, and Hulk are pure stat plays with no special ability. This is subverted with the High Evolutionary, who unlocks these cards' secret abilities at the start of the game, making them no longer this trope if they're in your deck. The High Evolutionary himself is a Virtual Vanilla, since he has no abilities that trigger during the course of the game itself.
  • Some cards (Squirrel Girl, Mister Sinister, Brood, etc.) and locations (Central Park, Savage Land, Monster Island, Shadowland, etc.) also generate cards without card ability text.
• Variable Mix: The music during matches is more passive while you're deciding where to play your cards and switches to a more uptempo tune when the cards are being revealed.
• Vocal Dissonance: Voicelines don't change with variants, so characters will sound the same regardless whether they've been turned into mechs, children, or whatever else.
• Voice Changeling: On Reveal cards that copy abilities will duplicate the visual effects and voice lines (if any) that come with them.
• Weak, but Skilled:
  • After a number of balance patches, the 6-Energy cost Alioth has become this. It can remove the text (and associated effects) from an opponent's unrevealed cards played in the location it's played at that turn, but it only has 8-Power and requires priority to actually work.
  • Cards that have significantly meagre base Power (less than, equal, or barely exceeding) respective to their Energy cost usually have potent effects to compensate.
• Whammy:
  • Pulling Agatha Harkness on a random draw. Harkness takes over your hand and will make moves for you unless and until it's played or discarded. And since the AI is a rather poor player, an unplanned Harkness is almost always a loss.
  • District X (replaces both decks with 10 random cards), Ego (takes over play for both players), Lamentis-1 ("Draw 3 cards. Destroy both decks.") and Weirdworld (draw from opponent's deck) are Whammy locations, especially for players running decks that depend on playing particular cards in a particular order. The Bar With No Name (lowest power wins the location) is often another Whammy, especially if you have a non-negative power character on it before it is revealed.
  • Tarnax IV turns any card played on it into another card of the same cost. Woe betide the player whose 5-cost card turns into M.O.D.O.K. (who proceeds to discard their hand) or whose 6-cost card turns into Destroyer (who proceeds to obliterate their cards on the field).
• Wimp Fight: The Planet Hulk Developer Update mostly consists of Ben Brode having one of these with the Second Dinner mascot until he tells Fud to "show (him) what (he's) got", causing his opponent to lay him out with a single punch.

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