Chances are, if we’ve chatted about most-played video games of the past few years, I probably mentioned Marvel Snap. While Marvel’s free-to-play trading card game (TCG) is available on Steam, 99% of my play time has been on my iPhone. My go-to devour of a handful of minutes (OK, sometimes more than a handful) each day has seen many updates and additions since its Fall 2022 release.
But a recent update has me hooked on Marvel Snap like it’s a brand new game. And it’s all thanks to one character card: Arishem.
You won’t lose any nerd cred with me for not knowing who, or what, Arishem is. If you’ve seen Eternals, you’ll probably recognize this villain…or, you may recognize Arishem as the same type of being that torments riders throughout Walt Disney World’s coolest attraction. If not, fear not, because you don’t need to know anything but how to play Marvel Snap to have a lot of fun with this character in the game.
What the Arishem card does is give you an extra point of energy each turn (so you can play 2-cost cards on turn one, 3-cost cards on turn two, etc.) and add in twelve randomly selected cards to your current deck.
With Arishem, every single game is now a fun surprise of mystery cards that can be played at a slightly accelerated pace…just for including Arishem in your deck. The (slight) downside is that you have no control over what 12 cards are picked and sometimes Agatha (who takes over and plays your cards for you) is one of them. But most of the time you won’t have to deal with her showing up.
I call it Arishem Roulette and this single card has breathed some major energy into my enthusiasm for Marvel Snap.
