War Banner
The score is how far up the ladder you got.
Marvel Snap is the card game that took everything slow out of a card game. Six turns, three places to fight over, and the whole thing is over in four minutes — because the clever part was never the combat, it was the wager. Both players commit face down, both reveal at once, and at any point either of them can double what the match is worth, which turns every turn into a question about the other person rather than about the board.
This is that shape, dressed in the thing the group is actually counting down to: World of Warcraft: Forever on 4 November. The grounds are Azeroth's, the cards are its bestiary, and the ladder is the old Horde PvP one — fourteen rungs from Scout to High Warlord, and the rung you reach is the score.
It is an homage and it says so. Nothing is lifted: every card, every ground and every noise here was written from scratch, and it is not connected to Second Dinner, Nuverse or Marvel in any way. The dressing is fan-made and unofficial; Blizzard has nothing to do with it either.
1–7 pick a card from the hand · ZXC put it at the left, middle or right ground — or just click the card and then the ground · Backspace take the last one back · Enter end the turn, and again to run the reveal through · B plant your banner · R retreat · G the four pages of rules · M sound · Esc pause
- Common a body at a ground, and nothing written under the name
- Uncommon one small rule, usually about itself
- Rare a rule about the ground it is standing on
- Epic a rule about the whole board, and the reason a deck has a shape
- Legendary catches the light as it turns. Usually the biggest number in the duel and usually with a price on it
A duel is six turns#
Everything on this cabinet falls out of three numbers: three grounds, six turns, and energy equal to the turn you are on.
- Turn N gives you N energy. One on turn one, six on turn six. Nothing carries over unless a card says it does, so a turn you underspend is a turn you threw away.
- Four cards a side at each ground, and the grounds flip one a turn — the left on turn one, the middle on turn two, the right on turn three. The third one is a rule nobody planned around, which is the point of it.
- Nothing you play is on the board until the turn ends. Then both sides flip together.
Whoever is ahead on total power reveals first. That sounds like a reward and it is usually the opposite: the side that goes second is the side that gets to answer. A big board on turn five is a lead and a liability at the same time.
At the end of turn six each ground goes to whoever has more power standing there, and the duel goes to whoever holds more grounds. A tie on grounds falls to total power.
Honor is the stake and the ladder#
There is one number in this game and it does both jobs.
The ante
Every duel opens at an ante set by your rank — one honor at the bottom of the ladder, ten at the top. That is what makes a duel at High Warlord matter as much as a duel at Scout felt like it did.
Plant your banner
Doubles the ante. So can they, and either side may do it once. A duel with both banners up is worth four antes going into the last turn.
Play it out
If nobody walks away, the stake doubles once more when turn six resolves. That is the tension the whole genre is built on: the best duels are the ones where neither side blinked.
Retreat
Pays the stake as it stands, before that last doubling. It is not a punishment, it is the move — a duel you have clearly lost costs you a quarter of what playing it out would.
The opposition retreats too, and that is the difficulty. A Warsong Recruit will sit there and lose to you. A Warlord of the Arena watches the board, works out that the duel is gone, and rides off — so the duel you won handsomely pays you one ante instead of eight. Nothing up the ladder cheats: the cards stay fair, the opponent just gets harder to take honor off.
The ladder#
Fourteen rungs, each one a threshold on your honor, and the rank you reach is the rank you keep — spending honor back down does not put you in front of an easier opponent, so there is no farming the bottom.
Reaching rank R pays R × 240, which makes the ladder a triangular score that swamps everything else by about rung six. A duel won pays a little on top, scaled by what it was worth, so that a rank taken the hard way is worth more than the same rank taken on ones.
There are two ways a run ends. Honor reaches zero, or you make High Warlord — which finishes the run rather than leaving you somewhere to sit forever. The ladder is the whole game, so the top of it is the ending.
The deck#
Twelve cards, and every duel you win is a card offered: take one of three, and choose what it replaces. Twelve in, twelve out. A deck that only grows is a deck that dilutes.
The cards are cut in five rarities and the key for them is under the screen. A Common is a body at a ground. An Uncommon has one small rule about itself. A Rare has a rule about the ground it is standing on, an Epic has one about the whole board — and a Legendary is usually the biggest number in the duel with a price attached to it, which is why the Firelord burns everything you had standing beside him.
Three kinds of ability and no more, so a card can be read at a glance:
- On Reveal fires once, when the card flips, and then it is over.
- Ongoing is true for as long as the card is standing there — take it off the board and its blessing goes with it.
- End of Turn fires every turn after the reveals, which is how a four-power Barrow Horror is a sixteen-power Barrow Horror by the end.
Posting a run#
Sign in with Discord and the run posts itself the moment the honor runs out or the ladder tops; play as a guest and it is kept as a personal best on this device instead. The board ranks on score and shows the rank you reached beside it, which is the only thing anybody is going to quote at each other anyway. The arcade page has the longer version of how the boards work, and the other cabinets.