Ben Broad of Second Dinner is on a mission with Marvel Snap. His ultimate goal is to turn enthusiastic Marvel fans who have never played card games or been intimidated by the genre into avid digital CCG fans.

Brod calls Marvel Snap the "perfect card game" for those who have never played card games, and after speaking with him briefly at New York Comic Con, and with his background as game director during what is widely considered the golden age of Hearthstone considering that he may be on to something.

What sets Marvel Snap apart from other games like Hearthstone and Runeterra is how quick and easy the matches are. With a snack food-like approach to battles, one match can quickly turn into ten if you're not careful.

Snap's core gameplay has changed little since we checked it out earlier this summer. Using a deck of 12 cards depicting your favorite Marvel heroes and villains, rivals fight each other for control of three random battlefields over the course of six turns. The objective is simple: finish the match with the most points in two of the three locations. Brode noted how the team designed Marvel Snap's low barrier to entry when comparing it to their work on Hearthstone." It's challenging to create a game that is so simple and yet has so much depth." He joked that creating a game with depth is easy. You just "keep adding rules," which eventually becomes "overwhelming" for new and lapsed players.

Broad chose to make the cards as simple as possible without sacrificing the depth necessary to remove anything that would scare away new players and ensure long-term enjoyment. 'There are fewer numbers on the cards than in any other card game. Fewer card types than in any other card game. There is only one type of card. Cards, that's it."

Brod said he did a lot of playtesting to get Marvel Snap just the right length. He said, "We tried every option: turn five, turn six, turn seven. We even tried skipping turn one and playing turns two through six. In the end, he said, turn 6 became the magic number because it gave players "the perfect blend of a fast game with a cool combo." He said he wanted players to feel "smart and clever" in every game.

As for cards, he discussed how Marvel Snap handles card collections and plans to keep things fair and balanced for players with less competitive decks, especially after Snap's controversial previous monetization strategy was scrapped. Unlike other CCGs, there are no card packs to purchase or unlock here. New cards will be gated behind the progression in a version of Battle Pass.

You can pay for boosts that unlock cards on that track faster or fun variants that change the look of the cards. In other words, you can transform your Kang The Conqueror cards into Kang the Cosmic DJ or my personal favorite, Baby Doctor Doom (opens in new tab).

All cards can be unlocked by simply playing the game. Brod wants people to "earn cards," but he also wants them to feel that they can build powerful decks with the cards they already have. 'It doesn't mean that the cards that will be unlocked down the road will be more powerful; they will simply be different. There will be more choices.

The scary part for new players is that they will be matched up against opponents with much better decks with cards they have never seen before. Brod explained that Snap's matching system only pits you against opponents with similar card collections in order to maintain an even match. This means that your and your opponent's 12-card decks will be made from roughly the same pool of cards that you have already unlocked.

Now that Marvel Snap is about to leave beta and be released globally, I asked Brod how excited he was. He said, "I think Marvel Snap is going to be the biggest card game ever. He followed that typically confident statement with, "I have a lot of experience in scaling the card game genre... This team that worked on Marvel Snap is the best in the industry and [Marvel Snap] is going to be huge."

Will Marvel Snap live up to Ben's high expectations, we will find out when it is released on PC, iOS, and Android on October 18.