Marvel Snap: The Alioth Problem

Vuk Radulovic
Alioth card on marvel snap backround

Last week was a bit hectic for Marvel Snap players; On April 10th new patch landed, making significant changes to the meta. There were issues with spotlight cashes (Agent was bugged) at the same time and even the app was a bit buggy after the update. However, all of this would go unnoticed and everyone would forget about it after a few days if only the notorious Alioth nerf (or re-work) wasn’t included in the aforementioned patch. As Alioth was a huge part of meta and one of the most hot topics in Marvel Snap universe for almost 6 months now, I would like to discuss the problem that I see with these kinds of changes as well as potential solutions to it. 

The history of Alioth 

Alioth card changes shown, 4 cards 

Alioth was introduced in second week of September 2023. You can say that he was one of the low-key meta change cards; in fact he was in the same week on spotlight as when Hit Monkey and Snowguard were! And oh my, was he OP back then: 6-cost, 5-power with on-reveal that obliterates all opponents cards played in that field on the same turn. I remember seeing every single deck running him or a counter for him at that time. It was obvious that Alioth will be nerfed – and the first nerf came after 2 months. In late 2023 Alioth was nerfed several times – first, he got his power reduced and then his effect got restricted to only unrevealed cards.

To be honest I thought that the nerfing was over – Alioth became a tech card which was used with priority decks. However, the recent patch last week changed all that and Alioth was re-worked this time; his on-reveal changed completely to “Remove the text from all unrevealed enemy cards here.” and his power was pumped to 8. That’s when the whole hell broke loss as many players pointed out that this change basically destroyed Alioth, making him more like a bad version of Leech. Let’s if this change was fair and why so many players felt that this change was not necessary. 

Alioth re-work analysis 

New Alioth Card

I’m just going to say this, Alioth is now pretty much useless. And I know, there are situations that he might come in handy like countering Doctor Doom, Taskmaster in Shuri decks or various Sera decks. However, do you really need a counter for those decks? Most of ongoing decks are not in meta at the moment and all on-reveal effects can be countered differently and much more efficiently. This is why I am saying that Alioth is done for. Nerfing a card like this is not now and it’s not even that surprising – however, I see a problem in re-working the card that was in spotlight cashe. Let me clarify. 

Cards in spotlight cash, as well all know, are the ones that are most difficult to get. Tokens are super rare nowadays and paying for them is really pricy. I am a completely F2P player but the reason why that’s the case is exactly this type of situation – I think that rare cards that are paid for should never be re-worked. I mean, what’s the point in buying something if it can change into something completely different after a few months? I get the nerfing part, Marvel Snap is not the only game that does that but re-working a card is something completely else. 

Whoever bought Alioth in September 2023 (or after that), didn’t buy a tech card that Alioth is now. The explanation that I saw on discord was pretty much something like “well you had your fun with it” is very troublesome. The fact is that the devs seem to often put cards that are obviously too strong (BLOB!) so that people spend their tokens on it, only to nerf it a few months later is not something that I would consider a good strategy. 

So, what can be done in the future to prevent this from happening? Well, for starters, players should not rush to get a card that is obvious to get nerfed, especially not by spending tokens on it. Secondly, I think that Second Dinner should be more careful when releasing new cards – as I’ve said, and I think we all know this, sometimes those new spotlight cash cards are just too OP. I am not saying this as a major critics to the company – I do feel that the game is well balanced and that everyone, including F2P players, can play the game equally. That’s another reason why cards like Alioth should never see the light of the day – the game feels like pay-to-win although it actually isn’t. 

Conclusion

Alioth card before the change

There’s not much to go for when it comes to Alioth future. The card was dead the moment it was released – I am surprised it took them so long to re-work it. What happened last week was a good thing for the meta of the game but a bad one for overall player experience. The rarest cards in the game should never be rework, only balanced, in order to keep the game fair and in order not to cheat the players by offering cards that will get reworked. Thank you for reading and happy snapping! 🙂 

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