Spotlight Cache: More Cards for More Players!

We’re excited to announce one of the biggest changes to MARVEL SNAP since its launch – the Spotlight Cache. Spotlight Cache means more cards, including brand new cards, for more players than ever before! We think this will make every card release more exciting, impactful, and accessible to everyone. Get ready to grow your collection FASTER THAN EVER!

What is the Spotlight Cache?

Spotlight Cache is a brand new way to acquire newly released cards, Series 4 cards, and Series 5 cards. Spotlight Cache system will appear after you’ve passed Collection Level (CL) 500. A Spotlight Cache will replace Collector’s Caches and Collector’s Reserves every 120CL. This means that one in every 10 Collector’s Reserves are becoming Spotlight Caches.

Why are Spotlight Caches so exciting? The answer is the CARDS! Each week, three different Series 4 and 5 cards will be featured – including the new card released that week! When you open a Spotlight Cache, you’re guaranteed to open one of those three cards, or a random S4/S5 card. If you already own one of the featured cards, the Spotlight Cache will instead feature a time-exclusive variant for the featured card.

The Spotlight Cache reward pool changes each week and features 1 brand new card, 2 existing Series 4/5 cards, and a Random Series 4/5 card.

More Cards for More Players

You might be asking, “Why are you making this change?’. We want to bring more cards to more players – and this system helps make that possible for all players, no matter where they’re at in their journey. Whether you’re still working through Series 3 or you have nearly all Series 4/5 cards, you’ll see an increase in cards earned with the change to Spotlight Cache. If you’re a free-to-play player that completes your Daily Missions, you can expect to get a Series 4/5 card from your Spotlight Cache almost EVERY WEEK – this is a huge increase from having to grind 6000 Tokens to get a single Series 5 card all month in the old system!

Every Card Release is Impactful and Accessible

One of the main feedback topics we’ve seen is that players didn’t feel they were able to enjoy or engage with new card releases each week. We definitely want to address this! Previously, we saw a very small portion of players able to get the new card each week. But, with Spotlight Cache, ~25% of players who finish their Daily Missions can get the new card each week – for free! This is going to bring more diversity to the decks you’re playing and seeing each week. Get ready to experiment in the Proving Grounds, build brand new decks, and face off against new cards while ranking up!

Your Collection, Your Way

We know you like to target which cards you’ll add to your collection – this isn’t being removed. Featured Series 4 or Series 5 cards in Spotlight Cache give you the perfect opportunity to add cards you’ve been looking for to your collection. Have you been hoping to get the mighty Thanos to lead your growing army of heroes and villains? When Thanos is being featured in the Spotlight Cache, opening one that week gives you 1 in 4 chance to earn Thanos! Opening another one will give you 1 in 3 chance, and if you open 4, you are guaranteed to get all the featured Series 4/5 cards that week – including Thanos!

While the Collection Level Track and Spotlight Cache system will be your primary source for new cards to add to your collection; Collector’s Tokens and Token Shop will still exist as a back-up support system for unlocking targeted cards. As part of this change, we’re increasing the overall availability of cards, decreasing the emphasis on Token Shop, and decreasing the Collector’s Tokens that players receive in other ways. If a card has been eluding you in the Spotlight Cache, spending Collector’s Tokens in the Token Shop is another path to target the exact card you want. But, these won’t be your primary card acquisition tools, so spend them carefully and wisely!

Upgrade Cards to Get More Cards

We want to continue the excitement of progressing your Collection Score through the early Collection Level Track. For many established players, they missed the excitement of earning new cards in the Collection Level Track. So, we’re going back to our roots: upgrade cards to get more cards. We think this will be a much more enjoyable experience, provide clear goals, and again… bring more cards to more people!

We think the Spotlight Cache system will be a huge improvement to card acquisition for all MARVEL SNAP players. We’ve been talking about card acquisition changes for a while now and you’ve probably noticed a few changes while we’ve been exploring how to make this a better experience for all players. As always, this is an iterative process… and we plan on continuing to change things up and improve the system! Please keep sharing your thoughts and feedback so we can deliver on the forever game we believe MARVEL SNAP can be!

• What happens to saved Collector’s Caches and Collector’s Reserves when the change happens?
• Any saved Collector's Caches or Collector's Reserves will be turned into Spotlight Caches at the appropriate rate once the new system is live.
• How are Collector’s Caches and Collector’s Reserves changing?
• Every 4 Collector’s Cache now contain:
  • 2 x Series 3 or below cards
  • 1 x 100 Tokens
  • 1 x Credits Box that can contain 150 or 200 Credits
• Every 9 Collector’s Reserve now contain:
  • 2 x Series 3 or below cards
  • 1 x 100 Tokens
  • 3 x Credits Box that can contain 150 or 200 Credits (more chance of 200 compared to Cache)
  • 3 x Cosmetic
• Will Series 4 and Series 5 cards still appear in Collector’s Reserves?
• All Series 4 and 5 cards are moving into the Spotlight Cache. Spotlight Cache replaces the current system and results in more cards for more players.
• Are there fixed odds of finding a Series 4, Series 5, or Spotlight Variant in Spotlight Caches?
• Think of the Spotlight Cache like a bag of four items. You pull out one at a time at random, each item having equal chance to be picked. You’ll have a 25% chance to get one of those, then a 33% chance to get one of the remaining options, then a 50% chance to get one of the remaining options, and finally a 100% chance to get the last item. Once the bag is empty, we fill it back up with four items. With Spotlight Cache release, whether something is S4, S5 or is a variant does not impact their drop chance. We want to see how this system plays out and continue to improve the system!
• Will I know about Spotlight Cache rewards ahead of time?
• We plan to announce the weekly Spotlight Cache reward pools at the start of each season. We hope that this will allow you to plan ahead and get excited for what’s coming in each season of MARVEL SNAP.
• How does this interact with Flexible Series Drops?
• This feature requires a healthy supply of Series 4 and 5 cards to function—more than our previous system could maintain over time. The recent reduction in Series Drop frequency for cards from Series 4 to Series 3 ensures that we can continue giving away this many cards through Spotlight Caches at this pace. We will announce any Series drop at least two weeks in advance of it happening. Since each of these announcements will precede a patch by two weeks, that’s a 6-week “safe” window to spend tokens on a card without it dropping.

I wanted to get an idea of what combinations of wins at what tiers of conquest were needed to get the 1550 medals required to get the exclusive variant from the conquest shop (assuming you get the 9 cheapest purchases).

In the process, I ended up computing all combinations of matches that get you there. I figured there may be others that were interested in that info, so here it is!

There are a couple assumptions baked in to the computation:

1. It assumes you stop playing games once you get passed 1550 medals
2. It assumes that if you earn a ticket, you always use that ticket. Since you get a medal reward from just entering Silver+ this is a significant source of medals even if you never win any games in that tier.
3. The tickets that you will buy from the shop on your way to 9 purchases was not taken into account.

Interesting snippets:

• A straight shot from Proving Grounds to winning Infinity will give you enough medals
• It takes 45 Proving Ground wins to get enough medals (assuming you never win a silver game, but do use all your tickets)