Marvel Snap, Marvel’s latest foray into mobile gaming, is a bold new entry in the card-battling genre that features classic Marvel characters and locations. It’s a highly strategic game that requires deft use of both card and location abilities, but there’s one strategy that has the potential to break the entire game. It revolves around the location Bar Sinister, and it basically ensures a complete and total victory.
How To Begin The Bar Sinister Strategy
The first step for this strategy is to make sure you have these three cards in your deck: Nightcrawler, Blue Marvel, and Onslaught. If even one of them is missing, you won’t be able to get the maximum amount of power out of this technique.
Each match sports three, randomly chosen locations where players can place their cards. Some might affect the power level of cards placed there, while others can affect the entire board. Bar Sinister has one of the more unique effects of any location in the game, in that it duplicates any card placed to fill the other three spaces. This also duplicates any card abilities like On Reveal or Ongoing effects. This bit of information is key to maximizing the effects of Bar Sinister.
On your first turn (or whenever you draw his card), play Nightcrawler at Bar Sinister. This will give you four total Nightcrawlers, each with the ability to move to another location one time. Leave your army of Nightcrawlers where they are for the time being, as you won’t need to do anything with them until toward the end of the game.
Blue Marvel and Onslaught
Play the other two locations as much or as little as you like, but make sure not to play any cards that might affect the Nightcrawlers’ position or cards in your hand or deck. Cards like Blade and Swordmaster destroy a random card in your hand, which will throw off the whole strategy.
On Turn 5, move one of the Nightcrawlers off Bar Sinister and play Blue Marvel in its place. Blue Marvel’s Ongoing effect is to grant all your other cards an additional point of power. It’s this power boost coupled with its status as an Ongoing effect that makes this strategy so game-breaking.
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On Turn 6, move the other three Nightcrawlers to other locations and play Onslaught at Bar Sinister next to Blue Marvel. Onslaught has an Ongoing ability that doubles the effects of other Ongoing effects at the same location. When Bar Sinister duplicates your Onslaught card, it will create a looping effect that continually doubles each Onslaught’s doubling power. This loop also includes Blue Marvel’s power boost effect, which will continuously grant all your cards additional power until they’re all in the thousands.
Counters
While the Bar Sinister strategy all but guarantees victory, it is challenging to pull off. You need the right location and the right cards at the right time. If you find yourself in need of a counter, though, there are a few ways to shut the strategy down within the first few turns.
The most immediate counter to the Bar Sinister strategy is to play Elektra on Bar Sinister after your opponent plays Nightcrawler. Elektra’s On Reveal ability destroys any opposing 1-energy card, and four of her will obliterate every Nightcrawler present.
Another strategy that adds a bit of chaos into the mix is to play the Scarlet Witch. Her On Reveal ability changes the location on which she’s played, removing Bar Sinister from the equation entirely. This is a more complete approach to shutting down the Bar Sinister strategy, though you’ll have no idea what new location will pop up in its place.
Marvel Snap is available now for free on iOS and Android and in Early Access on PC.
Related: How Variants Work in Marvel Snap
Published: Oct 30, 2022 03:50 pm