Marvel Snap – what are Friendly Battles? New PVP mode explained

The latest Marvel Snap balance patch is officially live, and the most important feature coming with it is Friendly Battles. This brand-new game mode allows players to directly challenge other players, opening up an entirely new way to play Marvel Snap. However, there is much more to uncover in this new game mode, and the details can be found below.

Marvel Snap Friendly Battles, explained

First off, to access this new game mode you need to update your Marvel Snap client. On Steam, the client will update automatically, but on the phone, you need to go to the app store, find the Marvel Snap app, and press Update.

Once this is done, Friendly Battles will appear as a new tab at the bottom of the game's main menu. It will be the box directly to the right of the Main box. Here, you'll find a new tab called Game Modes.

Within, you will find the Friendly Battles menu. This menu has two options: one for creating a lobby and one for joining. If you press create, the game will form a lobby and give you a code to copy and paste. You need to give the code to the person you're challenging so they can hit the join option and use your code to join the lobby.

The Friendly Battles menu also contains a set of rules to explain the game mode to players. The rules are as follows:

• Each player starts with 10 health that needs to be depleted to zero to win.
• Winning a round deals damage to your opponent's health.
• The game mode uses the Snap Cube system as its source of damage, meaning whoever loses takes damage equal to the cube amount wagered.
• If a game goes to Round 5 or higher, the Snap Cube will start pre-snapped and will go to fully snapped if one player presses it. This serves to up the game's ante and speeds up its conclusion.
• You cannot swap decks mid-game and must finish with the deck you started with.
• You cannot wager more health than you currently have. For example, if you have six health left and both players snap, the Snap Cube can only go to six cubes, not the normal amount of eight.

Related: Marvel Snap Credit Limit and Pro Bundle, Explained

Some other important characteristics to note is that PC players can challenge phone players and vice versa. Also, cross-region matchmaking works, meaning that players can play with friends from other areas of the world.

Is Marvel Snap's new Friendly Battles mode important?

To date, the Friendly Battle mode is probably the most important update the game has received. Not only does it allow for friends to play against one another, but it also indirectly introduces a tournament format to the game. While you can't host tournaments directly using the client, the community will surely start hosting tournaments themselves with this new ability to directly challenge opponents.

Want more information on Marvel Snap? Check out How to build a Shuri deck in Marvel Snap and The best Destroyer deck in Marvel Snap from Pro Game Guides!