Technologies

Marvel Snap: Beginner’s Guide and Top Tips to Get Cards and Win Games

Just starting out with Marvel’s new mobile card game? Here’s what you need to begin.

On the surface, Marvel Snap is a mobile card game with simple mechanics. But with hundreds of different heroes to play with, the game can get complex. Our Marvel Snap beginner’s guide will get you started and take you through higher competitive tiers.

Developed by Second Dinner, a studio filled with veterans from Blizzard’s successful digital card game Hearthstone, Marvel Snap is a refreshingly streamlined game that’s built to play well on smartphones. It plays in a vertical orientation and its quick match times typically last as long as a pop song. The mechanics are easy to learn, but there’s enough variability to keep things fresh.

Marvel Snap is downloadable from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, or on PC via Steam if you prefer. (To make it easier to port your collection between phone and desktop, sign up with your Google login when making an account.) It’s free to play, with microtransactions, but you can’t buy your way to the top in this game — everyone has to play a lot to grow their collection of cards.

Snapping superheroes down to card size

Each card represents one hero, and most of them have a special ability. In addition to snazzy comic book art, cards have an energy cost in the top-left corner and a power level in the top-right corner. Each deck you bring into a match must have 12 cards, and outside of rare cases, matches last six rounds. You start matches with one energy point per round and gain another each turn, with more powerful cards costing more energy. The goal is simple: Play your cards into three locations (each with four card slots), and the winner is whoever controls at least two locations at the end of the match.

Plenty of factors can complicate a match. Locations are randomly assigned and each has special rules, while unique hero abilities change how the match plays. Players start with three cards and draw another every turn, so you won’t get to play your whole deck by the end of the match. This randomness keeps the game fresh and can occasionally hand you victories, though it can also ruin your chances to win.

Bluffing with cubes

This uncertainty raises the stakes for the final mechanic, a pokerlike betting system around cubes (of the Cosmic variety). Marvel Snap pits players against each other as they climb the competitive ranks and earn rewards; to climb, you need cubes, which are awarded to the winner of each match and subtracted from the loser. If a match isn’t going well, you can retreat early and lose only one cube to avoid the two-cube toll when you’re defeated. But you can manually raise the stakes by tapping the cube icon at the top — now the game is worth four cubes, and your opponent can tap it again to raise it up to an eight-cube game. Yikes!

Much like in poker, you can aggressively tap the cubes (called Snapping in a reference to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s big baddie Thanos’ famous act, hence Marvel Snap). This can intimidate opposing players into retreating, though some will call your bluff. You may be confident in your hand of cards, but you have to wait to see which cards opponents play (and where) to understand their strategy and estimate whether you’ve got a winning chance. That’s the risk and the thrill — but don’t worry if you take a hard loss, as matches last only three to five minutes, making it easy to shake off losing and breeze right into the next potential win.

First steps for Snap

Don’t worry about knowing all these rules up front, as Marvel Snap has a generous tutorial. The first matches are against computer opponents who aren’t too tough to beat, offering space to learn the ins and outs of the match flow before going up against human players.

You’ll start with some basic cards, and playing matches (win, lose or tie) earns boosters, which are a currency to enhance the appearance of cards, making them look even more like they’ve sprung out of a comic book. While boosting a hero grants purely cosmetic upgrades like moving backgrounds and shiny hero names, it also ratchets up your overall collection level — which is the way you get more cards.

For the first several collection levels, you’ll get a preset series of cards that are key to simple yet powerful strategies; like silver-age hero Ka-Zar, who powers up your smallest one-energy cards, or Wolfsbane, who gains power based on how many cards are already at her location. These early cards fit into a handful of different deck strategies, from empowering minions to repeating the «on reveal» abilities with the late-game Odin card for a dramatic finish.

On reaching collection level 18, you’ll move on from the beginner slate of preset cards to a wider set. At higher collection levels, you’ll be rewarded with a random card from the first pool and face opponents with access to the same card group. You’ll enter the second card pool at collection level 222, and the third pool at 486. As time goes on, even more cards will be added to this last pool, with newer cards showing up more rarely.

Upgrading cards requires spending the in-game currency credits (which are different than boosters), gained through daily missions that typically involve playing cards of a certain cost, earning wins, or drawing cards. You can either wait to earn enough boosters for cards or head to the in-game shop and pay extra credits to upgrade cards early. Later on, you’ll also be able to gain ‘collector tokens’ to buy single cards showcased one at a time in the in-game shop.

What’s the fastest way to get more cards?

Marvel Snap is geared toward granting players new cards as rewards for playing, though the rate of new cards slows in higher collection levels. There are only a couple of ways to buy new cards with real money: buying very pricey seasonal bundles that include specific cards, or paying for in-game currency to indirectly boost your collection level.

The latter is a slightly complicated sequence. You can pay real money for gold, a secondary in-game currency mostly used for buying variant versions of cards you already own, but that can also be used to buy credits. As previously mentioned, credits can be spent in the in-game store to rapidly upgrade cards to bypass boosters and climb the collection level, which earns you new cards. It’s a hassle, and you don’t get much currency for your hard-earned real money — best to save it for bundles that offer more value.

It may be disappointing to hear, but simply playing more matches is the best way to get cards.

Tips for winning matches

Winning in Marvel Snap seems simple — just secure two out of the three locations — but wild swings can happen in any of the six turns (or seven, on rare occasions). As you play, you’ll get a feel for what kind of decks you’ll face and the best strategies to counter them.

But there are several basic things about the game that aren’t immediately obvious. In a match, see whether your player handle or an opponent’s is ringed with light — that’s who’ll flip cards first next turn, which can matter if an «on reveal» effect relies on opponents having certain cards in play. Also, tapping your or your opponent’s player portraits opens up a dropdown status menu showing how many cards each has in hand and in the deck, along with how many have been destroyed or discarded during the game — key info for certain card abilities.

To win matches, you want to control locations. You probably won’t have enough power to win all three, so you’ll want to focus on the two you’re most likely to win. This might change as location abilities are revealed and your opponent plays cards, so remain flexible for the first few turns to see how the board plays out. You can even deceive your opponent by looking like you’re going to invest in one location and abandon it for the two others in later turns.

Keep refining your decks. If you’re losing, go back to the collection and see whether different cards might fit your strategy better, especially new ones that haven’t been tested yet. Remember, the worst that can happen is losing cubes and rank progress — but you can gain that back later with strategic Snapping.

Speaking of, the last tip is to know when to Snap and when to retreat. There’s no shame in ducking out if it looks like you’re not going to win. A good rule of thumb is that if you aren’t winning at least two of the locations going into the sixth and/or final turn, you might want to back out — it’s going to take too much power to flip multiple locations.

On the other hand, if you have more power in two or three locations and have a strong final play, you might want to Snap to increase your winnings, which could scare the opponent off to retreat. Like in poker, a win is a win, whether you’re bluffing with weaker cards or the opponent is too intimidated to play cards that actually would’ve beaten yours.

That’s it for now, so get out there and start building your collection. If you’re struggling, look online for guides on popular decks made of cards in your collection. And don’t be afraid to experiment, as there are many, many interactions that aren’t clear until you slam down your cards — just look at this recent combo that skyrockets a single card from four to over 600,000 power. Excelsior!

Technologies

MWC Barcelona 2026: All the New Tech, Phones, Wearables and AI We Expect to See

This year’s Mobile World Congress starts Monday and will be packed with reveals from Xiaomi, Honor, Nvidia and more.

Every year, the moment we witness the very earliest signs of spring, CNET takes its cue to decamp to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress.

This is the world’s most important mobile show, and one of the most exciting events in the tech calendar. This year, we’re sending a bigger team to bring you all the news from the show as it happens.

It’s set to be a bonanza of new phones and wearables, with the odd robot thrown in for good measure. Sure, some of the fun tech we see at MWC never makes it out into the wider world, but we’ve also seen some of our most beloved tech debut at the show over the years — so expect a little of both.

Big themes are set to include AI and 6G, and with keynotes from SpaceX and Qualcomm, we’ll no doubt get a solid glimpse of the future of mobile. With Gemini in everything and satellite dominance on the horizon, it’s an exciting time for the industry.

Here’s more of what we expect to see.

What are the key dates for MWC?

MWC 2026 is set to run from March 2 to 5, although we’ll be in town a couple of days beforehand to report on some of the big launch events scheduled for this weekend. Don’t miss Xiaomi’s launch event on Feb. 28 and Honor’s event on March 1.

How to watch along

No matter how far away you live from Spain, there’s no need to feel like you’re missing out. The best place for all the latest MWC news is on our CNET live blog.

We’ve been attending this show for decades (this is MWC’s 20th year in Barcelona, by the way), and we have a team of experienced reporters and reviewers on the ground.

We’ll show you everything we deem interesting and important, and we’re not just admiring new products from afar. We’re touching, tinkering with and trying not to drop them, so be sure to follow us across Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube, too.

What phones to expect at MWC 2026

For the past few years, Chinese phone-makers have dominated MWC, and 2026 looks to be no different.

The first big phone launch event is scheduled for 6 a.m. PT Saturday, Feb. 28, when we expect Xiaomi to unveil its latest camera-focused flagship. We loved the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, and the 14 Ultra before it, so we’re excited to see what the company has in store for us. A teaser image hints at its partnership with premium camera brand Leica and promises a «new wave of imagery.»

Next up, we have Honor on Sunday, March 1, when the company has said it will unveil its Magic V6 phone, alongside the MagicPad 4 and MagicBook Pro 14. Perhaps more exciting still, Honor has said it will give us a first glimpse of a working version of its Robot Phone, and will also unveil a humanoid robot at its event.

For other phone-makers, MWC is likely to serve as more of a victory lap for its existing devices — particularly Samsung, which held its own event in San Francisco this week to unveil the flagship S26 series. Motorola will be in town, likely showing off its Razr, which just like the Samsung Galaxy TriFold, has yet to be seen much in Europe.

On the whole, MWC 2026 is likely to be a big show for foldable phones, which, according to Ben Wood, CMO and chief analyst at CCS Insight, «is now becoming quite a mature category.»

Another major trend in the phone space is likely to be a focus on batteries, particularly silicon carbon-based tech, Wood said in an MWC preview session. «We’re expecting to see phones with some of the biggest batteries we’ve seen for a long time, [with] fast charging — perhaps 300-watt charging — being introduced,» he added.

MWC 2025: The Coolest Phones We’ve Seen at the Show

+7 More

See all photos

What other tech to expect at MWC 2026

After the early flops that were the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1, we’re seeing more companies moving to jump on the wearable AI bandwagon. We expect to see a number of devices and demos pop up at MWC — perhaps trying to beat OpenAI and Jony Ive to the punch.

This will include AI- and AR-based glasses, said CCS Insight analyst Ben Hatton during the firm’s briefing session. «We are expecting to see a huge number of glasses on show this year, not just from Meta, but also from the smaller players, [like] TCL and Oppo, looking to take a slice of the pie,» he said.

One of the key challenges for these companies will be differentiation, Hatton said. «Ultimately, there’s still a long way to go before these become generally mass market products,» he added, pointing out that at this stage, compelling use cases are still a bit thin on the ground.

It’s been two years since Samsung launched the Galaxy Ring at MWC, and smart rings have been fairly thin on the ground ever since — although Oura CEO Tom Hale is slated to speak at the show. We’re not necessarily expecting to see any new rings this year, but there’s always an outside chance.

Much more likely to show up are a slew of new laptops and tablets. They rarely get top billing at MWC, but we’ll keep an eye out for the most exciting launches. There’s also likely to be some intriguing concepts on show from the likes of Lenovo and Samsung Display, which is responsible for the tech behind the new Galaxy S26 Ultra’s scene-stealing Privacy Display.

The big themes: AI, 6G and beyond

No surprises here that AI will, of course, be a major theme at MWC. For the past few years, Google has dominated the AI conversation at the event by showcasing Gemini’s capabilities and its widespread integration. Will this year be any different? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean the AI conversation has stalled.

We expect to see more sophisticated AI agents that are more deeply integrated into wearables, offering live translation, more actionable health insights and more personalized experiences. Some of the biggest players in the AI game will be present, including Nvidia and Qualcomm, on the hardware side. They’ll likely have saved some juicy announcements for the show and, hopefully, have some exciting demos we can try out.

Wind the clock back a decade, and everyone was talking about 5G and what a dramatic difference it was going to make to our lives. Now that 5G is old news, we’re looking forward to 6G. Most discussions about 6G so far have focused on its impact on the industry, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be excited about.

At the Web Summit in November, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told me that 6G will make our phones faster than ever and connect us to an «always-sensing network.» This could include wearables, smart devices, cars and even robots. No doubt, Amon will expound on this subject further during his MWC keynote, which is all about 6G and AI.

Another theme likely to be prevalent at the show is the role of satellites in enhancing network connectivity. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell will be on stage to talk about Starlink, and all the world’s biggest carriers will have their own booths where they’ll show us what they’re doing to tap into the latest network technologies.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Saturday, Feb. 28

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Feb. 28.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? As is usual for Saturday, it’s pretty long, and should take you longer than the normal Mini. A bunch of three-initial terms are used in this one. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Rock’s ___ Leppard
Answer: DEF

4A clue: Cry a river
Answer: SOB

7A clue: Clean Air Act org.
Answer: EPA

8A clue: Org. that pays the Bills?
Answer: NFL

9A clue: Nintendo console with motion sensors
Answer: WII

10A clue: ___-quoted (frequently said)
Answer: OFT

11A clue: With 13-Across, narrow gap between the underside of a house and the ground
Answer: CRAWL

13A clue: See 11-Across
Answer: SPACE

14A clue: Young lady
Answer: GAL

15A clue: Ooh and ___
Answer: AAH

17A clue: Sports org. for Scottie Scheffler
Answer: PGA

18A clue: «Hey, just an F.Y.I. …,» informally
Answer: PSA

19A clue: When doubled, nickname for singer Swift
Answer: TAY

20A clue: Socially timid
Answer: SHY

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Morning moisture
Answer: DEW

2D clue: «Game of Thrones» or Homer’s «Odyssey»
Answer: EPICSAGA

3D clue: Good sportsmanship
Answer: FAIRPLAY

4D clue: White mountain toppers
Answer: SNOWCAPS

5D clue: Unrestrained, as a dog at a park
Answer: OFFLEASH

6D clue: Sandwich that might be served «triple-decker»
Answer: BLT

12D clue: Common battery type
Answer: AA

14D clue: Chat___
Answer: GPT

16D clue: It’s for horses, in a classic joke punchline
Answer: HAY

Technologies

Ultrahuman Ring Pro Brings Better Battery Life, More Action and Analysis

The company’s new flagship smart ring stores more data, too. But that doesn’t really help Americans.

Sick of your smart ring’s battery not holding up? Ultrahuman’s new $479 Ring Pro smart ring, unveiled on Friday, offers up to 15 days of battery life on a single charge. The Ring Pro joins the company’s $349 Ring Air, which boosts health tracking, thanks to longer battery life, increased data storage, improved speed and accuracy and a new heart-rate sensing architecture. The ring works in conjunction with the latest Pro charging case.

Ultrahuman also launched its Jade AI, which can act as an agent based on analysis of current and historical health data. Jade can synthesize data from across the company’s products and is compatible with its Rings.

«With industry-leading hardware paired with Jade biointelligence AI, users can now take real-time actionable interventions towards their health than ever before,» said Mohit Kumar, CEO of Ultrahuman.

No US sales

That hardware isn’t available in the US, though, thanks to the ongoing ban on Ultrahuman’s Rings sales here, stemming from a patent dispute with its competitor, Oura Ring. It’s available for preorder now everywhere else and is slated to ship in March. Jade’s available globally.

Ultrahuman says the Ring Pro boosts battery life to about 15 days in Chill mode — up to 12 days in Turbo — compared to a maximum of six days for the Air. The Pro charger’s battery stores enough for another 45 days, which you top off with Qi-compatible wireless charging. In addition, the case incorporates locator technology via the app and a speaker, as well as usability features such as haptic notifications and a power LED.

The ring can also retain up to 250 days of data versus less than a week for the cheaper model. Ultrahuman redesigned the heart-rate sensor for better signal quality. An upgraded processor improves the accuracy of the local machine learning and overall speed.

It’s offered in gold, silver, black and titanium finishes, with available sizes ranging from 5 to 14.

Jade’s Deep Research Mode is the cross-ecosystem analysis feature, which aggregates data from Ring and Blood Vision and the company’s subscription services, Home and M1 CGM, to provide historical trends, offer current recommendations and flag potential issues, as well as trigger activities such as A-fib detection. Ultrahuman plans to expand its capabilities to include health-adjacent activities, such as ordering food.

Some new apps are also available for the company’s PowerPlug add-on platform, including capabilities such as tracking GLP-1 effects, snoring and respiratory analysis and migraine management tools.