Games

Published December 7, 2023

New Season of 'MARVEL SNAP' Invites You to the Hellfire Gala

Get ready to dazzle in an all-new season of 'MARVEL SNAP'!

You are invited...to a glittering gala! MARVEL SNAP is back with a new season, and this time it's none other than the Hellfire Gala!

This month, the stars of Marvel descend on Krakoa to walk the red carpet and shine. Get ready for our most stylish season yet!

SEASON PASS

This month’s season pass brings us a man of humble origins and extremely powerful influence. Welcome to the Gala, Sebastian Shaw!

NEW CHARACTER: SEBASTIAN SHAW

MARVEL SNAP Sebastian Shaw — [3/4] When this card permanently gains Power, gain +2 more Power. (wherever this is)

Sebastian Shaw was born to a poor family in Pittsburgh, but by this twenties has built a was financial empire. Shaw Industries enjoyed many ties to the U.S. government, producing weapons for the military agencies. Among the company's defense contracts was the assignment to upgrade the Sentinel robots.

The tycoon was invited to join the elite Hellfire Club and quickly worked his way into a position within the Inner Circle. Shaw ousted the White King, then-current leader of the Circle, when the King failed in his plans to use the Circle to back Dr. Stephen Lang's first creation of the mutant-hunting Sentinel robots. Shaw became the Black King and leader of the Inner Circle and Hellfire Club. He was always accompanied by Tessa, his loyal and enigmatic aide, although in recent years she was revealed to have been a plant used by Professor X to keep tabs on Shaw and the developing Sentinel technology.

Sebastian kept the mutant nature of the Inner Circle secret from the rest of the Hellfire Club. Along with Emma Frost, the White Queen, Shaw used the organization's connections to further his goals of world domination through political and economical means. Shaw Industries even began a relationship with the United States' covert Project: Wideawake, manufacturing and developing Sentinel technology. Shaw had to overcome many attempts to usurp his leadership, including a challenge from renegade White Bishop (Donald Pierce), the infiltration of the Club by the X-Men, and overt hostility from Selene, the Black Queen.

SEASON REWARDS

NEW CHARACTERS & MORE!

Next on the guest list and dressed to impress, brand new cards are releasing throughout the month!

SERIES 5

BLOB

Believing himself a freak following the manifestation of his mutant nature, Fred Dukes used his newfound abilities as a carnival performer, earning him the nickname “the Blob.” Detecting Dukes’s mutant status, Charles Xavier sent his X-Men to invite Dukes to meet with him and he accepted, mostly due to an attraction to the beautiful young X-Man Jean Grey. While visiting the X-Men’s mansion home, Dukes was invited to join the team; but he arrogantly refused, believing himself superior to them. Xavier decided to wipe the knowledge of the X-Men from Dukes’ mind, but Dukes escaped back to the carnival, took it over, and led his fellow performers to attack the X-Men. They were defeated, and Xavier wiped their memories of the incident as well as the Blob’s knowledge of the X-Men.

SERIES 4

HAVOK

Alex Summers is many things. Mutant. Survivor. Space pirate. Freedom fighter. X-Man. Able to release plasma energy from his body in a powerful force, his ability to wreak havoc earns him the name.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Alexander “Alex” Summers is the second son to his parents Christopher Summers, a United States Air Force Major and test pilot, and Katherine Anne. He spends his childhood growing up alongside his older brother Scott. When Alex is young, he and his family fly back from a vacation in his father’s vintage airplane, though a scout ship from the intergalactic Shi’ar Empire sets the wooden plane ablaze. Their mother pushes Scott and Alex out of the burning plane with the only available parachute, enabling the children to escape while she and Christopher are captured by the Shi’ar. Since their overburdened parachute could not slow their descent safely enough, the two boys sustain injuries and are hospitalized. Scott and Alex both suffer traumatic amnesia regarding the plane incident. After two weeks, Alex is sent to an orphanage in Omaha, Nebraska that is secretly run by geneticist Nathaniel Essex, AKA Mister Sinister. Alex is soon adopted by the Blanding family, whose son Todd had died in a car accident; however, still traumatized by their loss, the Blandings treat Alex as if he were Todd.

Sinister monitors Alex while he lives with his foster family, and noticing when Alex’s latent mutant powers begin to emerge, Sinister incites the local school bully Vincent—who had caused Todd’s accident—to attack Alex. When Vincent threatens to blow up the Blandlings’ house, the stress causes Alex’s mutant powers to manifest and he incinerates the bully with a plasma blast. Sinister then intervenes, placing a genetic lock upon Alex to curtail his powers’ development, and imposes psi-blocks that remove Alex’s memories of these events. As a result, Alex does not become aware of his mutant abilities until after graduating from college. Meanwhile, his brother Scott develops mutant energy powers of his own and becomes a founding member of the heroic X-Men as Cyclops.

SERIES 5

SELENE

The long-standing Black Queen of the Hellfire Club's Inner Circle, Selene Gallio professes to have lived for several millennia, and to have been a foe of the ancient sorcerer, Kulan Gath. In past ages, she was renowned as a sorceress whose power was feared and respected by other magic users. She eventually came to live in the ancient Roman Republic. At some point, Selene established herself as the Goddess of the Moon of Arthurian legend. Perceived by various sources as being a powerful sorceress, Selene is actually one of the long-lived mutants known as the Externals, possibly the oldest. Over the millennia, her worshippers grew into a world-wide cult.

In her efforts to obtain power, Selene was responsible for the establishment of the hidden Amazonian city Nova Roma. These supposedly Roman citizens were said to have fled the first century B.C. Italy and lived there for roughly two thousand years, and was supposedly where Selene first founded her Cult of Fire as its Black Priestess. (However, it has been since revealed that Nova Roma was a massive illusion maintained by Selene and her minion, the mutant known as Empath, to hold its citizens, really, kidnapped British and American tourists, captive.) Prior to this revelation, however, Selene posed as the wife to Nova Roma Senator Marcus Domitius Gallo, whose plot to abolish the republican Nova Roman government led to her to first encounter students of Charles Xavier in the form of the New Mutants.

Selene soon after traveled to New York, where members of her world-wide cult had a church. The leader of the cult, Friedrich von Roehm, was also a member of the Hellfire Club. With Von Roehm's help, Selene entered the Inner Circle of the Club and rapidly rose to the high rank of Black Queen. As the Black Queen, Selene had tried numerous attempts to overthrow her current leader, the Black King Sebastian Shaw. One such attempt brought Jean Grey (in reality, the Phoenix Force,) into the Inner Circle, which led to the intervention of the X-Men in the Club's plots.

So, when can you expect new cards?

You can expect new cards to be released weekly - starting with last month’s Season Pass Card, Ms. Marvel, releasing as a Series 5 card on December 5th.

December 5th: Ms. Marvel - Series 5 Release
December 12th: Blob - Series 5 Release
December 19th: Havok - Series 4 Release
December 26th: Selene - Series 5 Release

New Series 4 and Series 5 cards appear in the Spotlight Cache and the Token Shop. As you level up your Collection Level, Spotlight Caches become available for you to unlock a Series 4, Series 5 card, Spotlight Variants, or more.

SPOTLIGHT CACHES!

December 5th:

December 12th:

December 19th:

December 26th:

BRAND NEW LOCATIONS

White Palace: Copy the highest-Cost card in your opponent's hand.

Castle Blackstone: The player winning here gets +1 Energy each turn.

BRAND NEW VARIANTS

There are 50+ New Art Variants coming to the game this season—including 10 brand-new Hellfire variants in this month’s shop takeover!

Shop Takeover: Hellfire Gala - December 11th

TWITCH DROPS

Watch your favorite MARVEL SNAP Twitch streamers to earn Boosters, Credits, and a sweet Mystery Variant! Drops will be available from December 20th through January 2nd—don’t miss out!

Watch 2 hours to earn: 65 Random Boosters
Watch 4 hours to earn: 350 Credits
Watch 6 hours to earn: Mystery Variant

Head over to marvelsnap.com/twitchdrops to link your accounts today.

DECK BUILDER, ALBUMS, AND MORE!

New Feature: Deck Builder

Building new decks is about to get much easier! Whenever you earn a new card or variant, you’ll be able to build a new deck with the tap of just one button. The feature analyzes vast amounts of data and will build a deck with your collection in mind. Every time you earn a new card you’ll see a button that says “Make me a Deck.” Just tap that button and you’ll have a new deck. You can also access this feature when building a new deck in the Collection. Deck Builder works with any number of cards already in the deck, from 0 to 11.

New Feature: Albums

Ever wish you could show off a complete set of variants? Now you can! And that’s not all, as you collect the variants you’ll unlock rewards along the way. You’ll earn rewards when you collect 3, 6, 9, and 12 variants in an album. Four albums will be available this month, with more coming in the future.

New Feature: New Emotes

You can now collect and equip new emotes. Four new emotes will be added this month as an Album Reward and we’ll have more emotes available in the future. Can’t wait to show you all the ways you’ll be able to express yourself during games.

… And we’re not done yet. Later this month we’ll have 14 consecutive days of daily login rewards that we’re calling WINTERVERSE! We’ll have more details ready for you the closer we get to December 20th.

We hope you enjoy this jam-packed month and we can’t wait to see all the new decks you experiment with!

Get in on the action now! MARVEL SNAP is available in 13 languages across the world and available for download now on mobile and PC: www.MarvelSnap.com.