Marvel Snap: Zabu and Silver Surfer Balance Changes - February 8, 2023

February 8, 2023 saw nerfs to two high-usage/popular cards in Marvel Snap--Zabu and Silver Surfer. The card balancing reveals how the game's developers are now able to implement some "over the air" (i.e. without a patch) card content changes.

Given the changes, it looks like "over the air" changes amount to changing the numbers on the cards such as cost, power, and power/cost increases/decreases as it relates to abilities.

As far as Zabu goes:

- He went from:

• 3/2 - Ongoing: Your 4-Cost cards cost 2 less. (minimum 1)

to

• 2/2 - Ongoing: Your 4-Cost cards cost 1 less. (minimum 1)

So basically, they decreased his Cost by 1 and decreased his effect by 1 Cost.

The result is Zabu becomes more of a tempo card rather than a key card (a card to build a deck around) now.

According to the developers:

"Moving Zabu’s cost reduction from 2 to 1 reduces the potential Energy reduction of the cat, making it harder to hide game-winning amounts of Power until turn 6 or empty your hand for Dracula. It also breaks up the Spider-Man/Absorbing Man combo, which was stronger than we’d like. Sliding him down to 2-Cost hopefully refunds enough tempo to retain the fun of building around various 4-Cost cards. We expect Zabu decks to look a bit different, but still have competitive builds.'

As far as Silver Surfer goes:

- He went from:

• 3/0 – On Reveal: Give your other 3-Cost cards +3 Power.

to

• 3/2 – On Reveal: Give your other 3-Cost cards +2 Power.

The +2 Power can make him more useful on the location you play him but the 1 Power lost from his On Reveal makes him less useful for last turn surprises. Still, as long as you have at least two other 3-cost cards on board, he makes for an efficient play of 3 cost for 6 or more Power. He also still works well with Sera.

Photo via Marvel Snap.