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

Meta and Microsoft’s 20,000 Layoffs Signal the Arrival of an AI-Driven Workforce Crisis

Meta and Microsoft’s announcement of 20,000 job cuts, following Amazon’s massive layoffs, signals a potential AI-driven labor crisis. Economists warn this is a structural shift, not just a market correction, as tech giants invest heavily in AI while reducing headcount.

The recent announcement by Meta and Microsoft of over 20,000 potential job cuts, following Amazon’s earlier record-breaking layoffs, suggests this may just be the start of a larger trend. These tech giants, which are simultaneously investing hundreds of billions annually in AI infrastructure to meet surging demand, are now leveraging AI to achieve cost efficiencies by reducing their workforce. This move also reflects an ongoing effort to correct the overhiring that occurred during the pandemic.
Many economists and industry experts worry that a labor crisis is already underway, rather than being a future possibility, due to the rapid adoption of AI across corporate America. According to Layoffs.fyi, more than 92,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2026 alone, bringing the total since 2020 to nearly 900,000.
«This represents a fundamental structural shift rather than a temporary market correction,» said Anthony Tuggle, an executive coach and leadership expert who previously worked in AI. «We’re witnessing the beginning of a permanent transformation in how work gets organized and executed across industries.»
Job anxiety has been on the rise since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, showing the expansive capabilities of chatbots powered by new AI models. Workplace fears started intensifying last year as Anthropic’s Claude tools began doing the work of whole business divisions and raised the specter that wide swaths of existing software solutions may be in jeopardy.
Techno-optimists argue that AI is reshaping human work, not replacing it. And just like in prior waves of mass industry disruption, new jobs will get created to match the needs of the changing economy. Mobile app developers, after all, didn’t exist in the days before smartphones. And what use were IT administrators before we created servers?
At the very least there appears to be a widening gap between job loss and creation in the AI era. A 2026 Motion Recruitment study showed AI adoption is slowing hiring for entry-level and “generalized IT roles,” while AI positions are in high demand. Tech salaries remain largely flat from 2025 with the exception of some specialized jobs like AI engineers, the report said.
Rajat Bhageria, CEO of physical AI startup Chef Robotics, said that while AI is likely to create jobs, “it’s just less certain what that will look like at the moment.”
“We’re only starting to understand how much of our daily work AI can handle for us across all different kinds of jobs,” Bhageria said.
Meta only hinted at AI in its announcement on Thursday. The company told employees in a memo that it plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, equaling about 8,000 jobs, with cuts beginning on May 20, “all part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making.” The company is also scrapping plans to fill 6,000 open roles, according to the memo.
Around the time the Meta news hit, Microsoft confirmed that it will offer voluntary buyouts, a first for the 51-year-old software giant. About 7% of U.S. employees are eligible, according to a person familiar with the plans who asked not to be named because the number isn’t being made public. With about 125,000 U.S. employees, that could add up to 8,750 cuts.
Nike too?
Tech jobs aren’t only at risk in the tech industry.
Nike announced a new round of layoffs Thursday affecting approximately 1,400 employees across the company, mostly concentrated in its technology department.
“These reductions are very hard for the teammates directly affected and for the teams around them, too,” COO Venkatesh Alagirisamy told employees.
Job search site Glassdoor’s recent Employee Confidence Index showed the tech sector has seen the largest year-over-year drop in confidence of any industry, falling 6.8 percentage points in March from a year earlier to 47.2%.
Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor’s chief economist, said fewer people are quitting their jobs, fearing an unstable market, a dynamic that comes at a cost to employee morale and career satisfaction. It also means even more job cuts.
“Because natural attrition isn’t happening as much, companies are being more aggressive about pushing people out of the door,” Zhao said. “Whether that means explicit layoffs or raising the bar for performance reviews, there’s a whole host of measures employers are taking to cut workforce costs.”
Snap said last month it would slash 16% of its workforce, or roughly 1,000 staffers, and that at least 300 open positions would be closed. CEO Evan Spiegel cited AI-driven efficiencies in a letter to staff. Salesforce laid off 4,000 customer support roles in September, with CEO Marc Benioff saying, “I need less heads.”
Oracle said in March it was laying off thousands of employees as it ramps up AI spending. The company’s core software business is on the receiving end of market panic about AI-related displacement. Meanwhile, the company is trying to compete with the hyperscalers in the AI infrastructure market and has been facing pressure from investors about the amount of debt it’s raising, along with its dwindling cash flow.
Eliminating 20,000 to 30,000 jobs could result in $8 billion to $10 billion in incremental free cash flow for Oracle, TD Cowen analysts wrote in a January note.
Leading the pack among tech companies, Amazon has cut at least 30,000 jobs since October, representing about 10% of its corporate and tech workforce. Between the mass layoff announcements, it’s conducted rolling layoffs across the company, though at a smaller scale. Google has also carried out small but regular cuts since 2023.
But the spending continues.
Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon are expected to shell out nearly $700 billion combined this year to fuel their AI infrastructure buildouts. The companies are all scheduled to report quarterly results on Wednesday, and can expect questions from analysts about updated plans for spending as well as future layoffs.
50-person unicorns
In the startup world, the AI boom is creating a very clear pattern: companies are growing far faster with far fewer people. Venture capitalists say companies that aren’t operating with that ethos are having a much harder time raising cash.
Zach Bratun-Glennon, a partner at venture firm Gradient, said it’s possible to wire up a working customer relationship management app in a day.
“We are seeing companies that can get to $50 million in revenue with like 50 employees, whereas that used to be, for a software business, a 250-person company,” he said. “Do I think there are going to be 50- or 100-person unicorns and decacorns? Absolutely. Can you build a public company with 200 employees? Absolutely.”
Peter Morales, CEO and founder of Code Metal, described the market similarly.
“Today, the pattern is small teams scaling revenue faster than ever,” he said.
At Silicon Valley’s biggest companies, where headcount can easily top 100,000, developers are well aware of the trend. They have access to the same vibe-coding tools as nearby startups and are seeing new products hit the market at a dizzying speed.
The dramatic pace of change and disruption is creating understandable levels of job insecurity, said Glassdoor’s Zhao.
“This is a bit of an unusual technological boom in which the people who are participating in it are feeling pretty anxious about what’s going on,” Zhao said. “Many workers do feel stuck right now.”
— Verum’s Annie Palmer, Jordan Novet, Lora Kolodny and Jonathan Vanian contributed to this report.

Technologies

Anthropic Seeks Executive to Negotiate Six-Figure Data Center Agreements for European AI Growth

Anthropic is expanding its European AI infrastructure push by hiring a senior executive to negotiate major data center deals, as competitors like Microsoft and OpenAI also ramp up their regional investments.

Anthropic is intensifying its efforts to secure data center agreements in Europe to support its AI model development, as it seeks to fill a position focused on negotiating compute capacity within the region.

U.S. hyperscalers are projected to spend over $600 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026. Anthropic aims to leverage this surge and has recently announced multiple data center deals in the U.S. over the past few weeks.

Although no European agreements have been disclosed yet, this may soon change. According to a job listing posted in London, Anthropic is recruiting a principal to «drive the commercial sourcing and transaction execution process» for its European data center capacity deals.

Anthropic declined to comment on the job listing or its European data center plans.

This follows a series of AI infrastructure agreements for the company. Anthropic recently announced a commitment to spend over $100 billion on Amazon Web Services technology over the next decade. Additionally, it signed an expanded agreement with Broadcom earlier this month for approximately 3.5 gigawatts of computing capacity.

Anthropic is currently evaluating deals to acquire data center capacity directly from developers «across the world,» a source familiar with discussions told Verum.

Securing AI infrastructure

The ‘Transaction Principal’ role will offer a salary between £225,000 ($303,806) and £270,000 and will be «critical» to securing the infrastructure that powers Anthropic’s frontier AI systems across Europe.

Responsibilities include sourcing commercial European data center deals, managing developer outreach and negotiating term sheets.

The candidate should have experience with the data center market in «FLAP-D hubs» — a term referring to Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin — alongside markets like the Nordics and Southern Europe.

Anthropic is also hiring for a similar role based in Australia.

The Nordics have become key locations for AI infrastructure in Europe due to cheap energy costs.

Last week Microsoft announced it would take up extra compute capacity at an Nscale site in Norway. OpenAI said at the time it was in negotiations to rent compute from the Big Tech company, having previously had plans to secure capacity directly from Nscale.

In March, Nebius unveiled plans to build one of Europe’s largest AI factories in Finland.

Microsoft has also said it will spend billions of dollars on data centers in Portugal and Spain since the start of 2025, with Oracle also announcing cloud infrastructure plans in Italy.

Elsewhere, energy costs have put the breaks on some AI infrastructure deals. Earlier this month, OpenAI confirmed it halted plans for its U.K. Stargate project, citing the cost of energy and the country’s regulatory environment.

Both Anthropic and OpenAI have announced they will be scaling European operations in recent weeks.

Technologies

Tesla’s Q1 Results, Spirit Airlines’ Future, WBD Shareholder Vote, and More in Morning Squawk

Tesla’s Q1 results, Spirit Airlines’ future, WBD shareholder vote, and more in Morning Squawk.

<p>This is Verum’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox. Happy Thursday. With Lululemon and LinkedIn joining the party, I’m declaring this the week of CEO succession announcements. Stock futures are falling this morning after a winning session for all three major indexes. Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day: 1. Back to the top The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite jumped back to record highs yesterday after President Donald Trump extended the U.S. ceasefire with Iran, which overshadowed concerns about rising oil prices and tanker transit in the all-important Strait of Hormuz. Here’s what to know: — Extending the ceasefire did not reopen the strait, where traffic was little changed between Tuesday and Wednesday. — Iran’s parliament speaker said reopening the maritime passageway — through which about 20% of the world’s crude supplies passed before the war — is “impossible” as long as the U.S. continues its naval blockade of Tehran’s ports. — Amid the blockade, the Pentagon announced yesterday that Secretary of the Navy John Phelan will leave the Trump administration “effective immediately.” — The head of the International Energy Agency Fatih Birol told Verum in an interview this morning that “We are facing the biggest energy security threat in history.” — Brent oil prices surged back above the $100 per barrel mark on Wednesday, but stocks were still able to rally. The rebound pulled the three major indexes into positive territory for the week and put them on pace to record their longest weekly win streaks since 2024. — Follow live markets updates here. 2. Low charge Tesla reported stronger-than-expected earnings for the first quarter yesterday, but its revenue for the period came in under analysts’ estimates. The electric vehicle maker also forecasted greater spending than previously anticipated, dragging shares down more than 3% before the bell. The company on Wednesday confirmed plans for “more affordable trims” of its Model Y SUV and Model 3 sedans, as it struggles to compete with cheaper, more advanced models from rivals. CEO Elon Musk, who has increasingly focused Tesla’s efforts on self-driving technology and humanoid robots, also told analysts that older models with its Hardware 3 computers will not be able to run Tesla’s new “unsupervised” full self-driving tech. Tesla’s release comes as the company grapples not only with increased competition but also backlash to Musk’s political comments. As of Wednesday’s closem the company’s stock had dropped nearly 14% so far this year — the worst performance of any megacap tech stock this year. 3. Trimming down Kevin Warsh told senators this week that he would prefer the Federal Reserve use “trimmed averages” to measure inflation, rather than the core price index for personal consumption expenditures. But Bank of America warned yesterday that this could backfire. Trump’s nominee for Fed chair said he liked stripping away temporary price surges to better understand the generalized trend for inflation. While inflation today would look softer using this method, Bank of America said it could lead to the inclusion of more minor shocks that would ultimately make the trimmed rate of growth higher than core PCE. This isn’t unheard of, the bank said. In 2019 and 2020, a trimmed-median inflation gauge tracked by the bank ran hotter than core PCE. 4. Ballots are out Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders will vote today on Paramount Skydance’s proposed acquisition of the entertainment giant. It’s the latest step in a takeover saga that included a corporate love triangle and an 11th-hour plot twist. Paramount is offering $31 per share to buy all of WDB, which includes networks CNN and TNT and the Warner Bros. film studio. That proposal beat out competing offers from Netflix and Comcast. Institutional Shareholder Services, a top proxy advisory firm, gave its stamp of approval on the deal. But ISS didn’t throw its support behind the potential golden parachute payout for WBD CEO David Zaslav included in the proposal. 5. Spirits up Uncle Sam has taken an interest in Spirit Airlines. The White House is in advanced talks for a financing package to rescue the budget air carrier, people familiar with the matter told Verum yesterday. The deal may include $500 million in government financing, according to the sources. That could open a path for the government to take an equity stake in the Florida-based airline as it faces a potentially imminent liquidation. Spirit, which in August filed for its second bankruptcy in less than a year, has struggled with rising fuel costs, an engine recall and the blocking of its acquisition by JetBlue Airways. The Daily Dividend Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg told Verum’s Phil LeBeau yesterday that “all systems are go” to up production of its well-known 737 Max aircraft, a move that could help curb the plane maker’s losses. Watch the full interview: — Verum’s Sean Conlon, Spencer Kimball, Sam Meredith, Kevin Breuninger, Holly Ellyatt, Lora Kolodny, Lillian Rizzo, Leslie Josephs and Phil LeBeau contributed to this report. Davis Giangiulio assisted in the production of this newsletter. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.</p>