Deadpool’s Diner Economy Guide - Oct ‘26

Deadpool’s Diner has been closed for six months, and now it’s back with (even more) renovations! The September 2025 run was arguably the most generous event in the history of Marvel Snap (with Draft being the other contender).

When Diner returned in April 2026, it was dialed back a bit, but I was “surprised how little they reined it in”.

Honestly, a lot has changed about the Diner economy since the last run. How generous is it this time? Read on to find out!

Interested in strategy and decks? Don’t miss Scott’s guide.

Deadpool's Diner: Optimization and Gameplay Guide

From October 27-November 3, Deadpool's Diner is back. But is it better than ever? We’ll walk you through what to expect from the changes, the silliness, and how to get the most out of the mode! The Basics Each table has a minimum bet that can be

Fourth LocationScosco

Event Overview

Dates: October 27th – November 3rd (with the Shop open an additional 48 hours)

Economy Key Features:

• Dual prize tracks you climb with event currency (Bubs) (Free Pass + Premium Pass)
• Shop where you can buy prizes with event currency (Nachos) and Gold

Primary Goal: Get to the top Table (Mercenary Fuel) and stay there as long as possible
Secondary Goal: Win games with three Snaps to earn Nachos

Tips & Tricks

Some of the best Diner advice is the same every single time it runs. That sort of advice lives in a different article so that this one can focus on what changes between runs. My "recurring tips" guide is always free and has great info for each event. If you want a refresher on those tips, check out the article and read the sections with the Deadpool’s Diner logo.

Event Economy: Tips & Tricks

Tips to get the most from Marvel Snap’s various events.

Fourth LocationLaurenWhatevs

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The rest of this guide breaks down the economy of Deadpool’s Diner. Premium members had early access to this guide. It became free ~66 hours after the event began.

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Grand Prizes

The Free Pass rewards the new card, Vampire America Chavez, at 23,000 Bubs. She doesn’t look particularly strong, but she’ll help Vampire Deacon Frost meet his Objective!

The Premium Pass offers this exclusive Vampire Chavez Variant by Divebound Studio. You can see her absorbing Power and standing in one of her star portals.

Bubs

Diner uses two different currencies – Bubs and Nachos.

Bubs serve two roles. First, they are what’s at stake in the games you play – just like Cubes in Ranked mode. Second, the Bubs you win (or buy) contribute to your Pass progress.

Diner doesn’t use Tickets at all, but you have to meet a Bub balance requirement to be allowed to start a game.

If you don’t have enough Bubs to start a game, you can wait for them to regenerate over time, or buy more with Gold.

Each player can snap up to three times (once per Turn). Your stakes only increase when you snap. You have full control over whether a game’s stakes are 1x, 2x, 4x, or 8x.

As you progress along the Free Pass, you will earn Bub Refill Upgrades that increase your Bub regeneration rate. Note that you can win and buy Bubs beyond the cap – you just won’t regenerate Bubs on an hourly basis if you’ve reached the cap.

Starting Bub Refill Level: 1
Starting Bub Balance: 1,500

Compared to past runs of Diner, the hourly rates are the same, but the caps have been bumped (in a really weird, uneven manner). Previously, the caps were always 8x the hourly rate.

Additionally, you can buy Bubs with Gold through the Bub ATM. Its rates are based on your current Bub Cap. That means the weird, uneven cap bumps affect these numbers, too. The level 3 ATM is twice as good as in past runs, while the level 5 ATM is nearly the same.

Bubs bought through the ATM contribute to both your balance and your Pass progress – but it’s generally a poor use of Gold. To be really frank, if you aren’t good enough to climb to the top Table, you aren’t good enough to stay at the top Table.

Nachos

Nachos are the currency you spend in the Shop.

You earn Nachos every time you build up three Snaps in winning games at the same Table. Your progress towards three Snaps is tracked at each Table. If you go over three Snaps, the extras do not contribute toward your next three.

Note that Nacho income has been hit pretty hard. Previously, Snaps in losing games (and ties) also gave you progress.

Tables

There are six Tables to play at. Each progressive Table has a higher required Bub balance to play a game at that Table. You want to work your way towards the higher Tables because there are more Bubs and Nachos available.

We need to talk about how these Tables have changed, and it’ll help if you can see the past Tables at the same time. Those are below.

The new set has two additional Tables. Look at how the previous top Table (Hell Burger) compares to the new Tables. If you’re looking at the Bubs, it aligns with Chips-N-Guac (Table 4). If you’re looking at the Nachos, it aligns with Mercenary Fuel (Table 6).

The most Nachos you can earn per game is unchanged (150), but you have to put 5x as many Bubs at stake.

Higher stakes for Bubs should help complete the Pass faster. Once you complete the Pass, the only reason to care about Bubs is to ensure you can keep playing for more Nachos.

Notably, even with increased Bub caps, there’s no way to access Mercenary Fuel with regenerated Bubs alone. The old max cap was 60,000 Bubs – enough to play at least two-and-a-half games at Hell Burger (and earn 300+ Nachos, even if you lost).

Now, the max cap is 70,000 Bubs. You need 2.6x as much for a single game of Mercenary Fuel, and you won’t get any Nachos if you lose.

Players who are good at managing their Bubs should be able to stay at the top Table in the long run. Of course, they’ll still be earning significantly fewer Nachos because losing games don’t give Nacho progress.

Other players will see a huge hit. If you struggle to stay at (or even reach) the top Table, you’ll be snapping for fewer Nachos – and also getting no Nachos from your losing games.

⭐️ Recommended Table Progression

While you’re trying to reach the top Table, you should be playing pretty conservatively. Have lots of 0-Snap games – but be sure to triple-snap on the games you’re pretty sure are winners. Scott covers this more in his guide, but you should be playing a deck with clear and early Snap signals.

I know it can be hard to be that patient – but a single triple-Snap win balances out eight zero-Snap losses!

Here are my recommendations for which table you should play on based on your current Bub Balance.

These numbers are based on a pretty simple model and strategy:

• 25% of games are clear losers (20% win rate): don’t Snap
• 50% of games are ambiguous (50% win rate): don’t Snap
• 25% of games are clear winners (80% win rate): snap three times
• when you’re above the “Recommended All-In” threshold, snap three times in any game that’s not a clear loser

Historically, I’ve recommended bigger buffers before moving to the next table. This time, I ran thousands of simulations and discovered these numbers resulted in a high average of Nachos/game while also minimizing how much bad luck hurts you.

Passes

For the first time, Deadpool’s Diner gets a Premium Pass. It costs 800 Gold and comes with a few instant prizes whenever you buy it. Here's everything you can find on the Passes (with the instant prizes shown at 0 XP):

The Premium Pass comes with 23,000 Bubs – enough to instantly unlock Vampire America Chavez. This is actually a great part of adding a Premium Pass. It used to cost 3,000 more Gold for a player to skip to the new card without playing the event. It’s nice to have that option at a significantly more reasonable price.

Also positive – the Pass is much easier to complete. It has the same number of milestones as before (25), but it took one million Bubs to reach the end before. It’s now 40% shorter.

It’s sadly not all roses, though. The free Pass gains 125 Nachos, 21 Cubes, and a Split Reroll Coin at the cost of 300 Credits, 100 Tokens, 3 Borders, a Mystery Variant, a Premium Mystery Variant, and an event-exclusive Variant. That’s a poor trade if you ask me.

Premium Value

In terms of progress value (progress toward acquiring another card), this Premium Pass is the worst we’ve seen this year, coming in at 57.07% value.

Notably, this is the first time we’re seeing Split Reroll Coins in an event Pass. Here, there’s one in the Free Pass and three in the Premium. Those don’t offer any progress value, but they’re cool prizes. I’d only count them as “300 Gold value” for players who are already spending Gold on rerolls.

The Premium Pass has bad progress value, but can be a great purchase if you have other priorities. If you either want to get the new card ASAP or want to snag extra cosmetics (especially the exclusive Vampire Chavez), it’s a fine way to spend 800 Gold.

Time Investment

A lack of Tickets and multiple Tables make it tricky to predict how long it will take players to reach certain progress milestones.

I modeled 20,000 runs using my simple model and recommended strategy from above.

Free Pass

• Unlock Vampire America Chavez: 52 games
• Finish Pass: 124 games

Premium Pass

• Unlock Vampire America Chavez: 0 games
• Finish Pass: 66 games

The Premium Pass saves about 52 games if all you care about is snagging the new card, or 58 if you want to complete the Pass.

Exponential numbers are unintuitive to human brains. It might feel like Vampire Chavez is far away on the reward track. Trust the process. 52 games to a new card is actually a bit less than most modern events require of users without the Premium Pass.

The Shop

Here’s what you can buy with your Nachos!

The Shop has a massive selection, but these three variants, the Nick Fury emote, J. Jonah Jameson, and all the Avatars are re-runs.

That’s not at all an indictment – just something to be aware of. I think it’s super cool to make previous exclusives available to players who missed them the first time.

Draft was the first event to change the rotating portion of the shop to refresh daily instead of every eight hours. I’m extremely disappointed to see this change spread to other events.

Variant Series

If you grab a Variant for a card you don’t own, you get the base card, too. Here’s which Series each offered Variant and card falls into:

Shop Priorities

It’s up to your own personal taste how much any cosmetic item is worth to you. If you’d like to focus on progress value, here’s what you should prioritize buying. Ellipses represent big gaps in value differences.

1. J. Jonah Jameson (unowned)
2. …
3. Collector's Series 4 Pack
4. Credits
5. …
6. All other cards and Variants

Series 3 Cards: I credit them with some value (24.19 Credits) for a new gray card, plus the average value of the goodies for the Snap Packs. I do not credit them with the cost of buying a Series 3 card (1,000 Tokens) or Pack (650 Tokens). It is a better use of your resources to get Series 3 cards for free from the Collection Level track. I would only suggest buying these to unlock new cards if you have a surplus of Nachos or are trying to complete Series 3 as fast as possible (even if it hurts your progress towards Series 4 and 5).

Shopping with Gold

If you try buying something when you’re short on Nachos, the game lets you spend Gold to cover the gap. This is an inefficient way to spend Gold, but if you're going to do it – note that each item has its own Nachos-to-Gold conversion rate (which is obnoxious at best). That means there's a strategy for which items you spend Nachos on vs. which items you spend Gold on. The higher Nachos per 100 Gold in the purple Shop tables above, the better deal you’re getting.

The Bub ATM lets you buy Bubs for Gold. At the top Bub refill level, you can get 35,000 Bubs for 100 Gold. While this can technically convert to lots of Nachos with good Bub management – that’s true of your Bubs at any level. If you have enough time to grind games and enough skill to manage your Bubs, you shouldn’t ever need to buy from the ATM.

Shop Side-By-Side

Let’s look at how the Shop has evolved from one Diner run to the other (reverse chronological order).

This is a great way to compare how Diner has changed from the most generous event ever to… whatever it is now.

Keep in mind that Nacho income has been nerfed in two different ways – the 150-Nacho table being less accessible, and losing not giving progress towards Nachos.

The clearest win is how much easier it is to get the new card. It’s acquired early on the Free Pass instead of being in the Shop. While it’ll take some games to earn (for free), it doesn’t cost any Nachos at all. It’s also nice that the price of Emotes in the rotating Shop has dropped significantly.

The biggest loss is Borders – which have both gotten more expensive and been even further restricted in how many you can buy (with the rotating shop going from 12 Borders per eight hours to three per eight hours, and now just one per day).

It’s certainly harder to farm the shop for Borders, Avatars, and Emotes when it refreshes a third as often.

Average games to buy a Border from the Shop (for players who can stay at the top Table):

• Sep. ‘25: 1.33 games (main Shop), 1.00 game (rotating Shop)
• Apr. ‘26: 1.33 games (main Shop), 1.33 games (rotating Shops)
• Oct. ‘26: 4.67 games (main Shop), 5.33 games (rotating Shop)

It stinks that Borders have gotten so much more expensive, but to be realistic – these are still probably the cheapest Borders in the game. Where else can you convert five games into a Border?

Expected Nachos

Considering Diner doesn’t have Tickets, it’s tricky to say how many Bubs and Nachos you can expect to earn. Careful Bub management will let you eventually stay at the top Table indefinitely.

Here’s how many Nachos you can expect after certain milestones, using my simple model and recommended strategy from above.

Relative Pricing

Some events are prizier than others. Draft and Diner tend to be the more generous events, while High Voltage: Overdrive always feels particularly dry. This is an arbitrary method I use to compare how much prizing “active play” translates to across various events.

• Take the event currency you'd have by clearing every Mission and spending every Ticket, with a 50% win rate (as applicable for each event)
• See how many Portal Pulls, S4 Packs, Emotes, or Credits could you buy from the event's Shop if it had unlimited stock?

And… that leaves me with no solution for Diner since it has neither Tickets nor Missions. I’m gonna average how many games you could play in the last three events.

That’s AVG(196, 223, 298) = 239 for Free and AVG(224, 277, 352) = 284 for Premium. That’s arbitrary, but it’s hard to perfectly compare events.

And there you have it. Diner’s Shop is still the undisputed king of event Shops. These tables don’t capture Draft’s run bonuses, so Draft is still in contention as Most Generous Event Overall.

Conclusion

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen an event’s economy change so much between runs. Last time Diner ran, my conclusion focused on two key points:

1. They nerfed Diner a bit, but not as much as I expected – it was still clearly the most generous event
2. It sucked that the new card cost 3,800 Gold for players who wanted to skip the event

Regarding point #1, they hit Diner a lot harder this time, and it’s still a generous event anyway. Critically, I think it’s good for players who have the strategy and skill to reach the top Table and stay there. I expect the double-hit of Nachos (you need to risk more Bubs to earn 150 Nachos, and you can’t earn Nachos from losses) will hit reckless and casual players very hard. Players who need to stick to lower Tables will find the Shop feels significantly more expensive.

I feel for players who’ll be harmed most by the Nachos changes – and I have an additional beef with the changes! I loved how casual Diner was. Asymmetrical Snaps go a long way toward making a mode feel like it’s just for fun. It removes most of the incentive to retreat, so more games get to play out. It’s still true that there’s little reason to retreat in Diner, but removing the ability to earn Nachos from losses will make it so much sweatier. It incentivizes playing the best deck instead of being alright with a deck that’s just good enough.

As for point #2, the introduction of the Premium Pass solves this problem. Vampire America Chavez costs at most 21% as much Gold as Askani’son did (and that doesn’t account for any other rewards from the Premium Pass).

It really just seems like a mixed bag of changes. I understand making the generous Diner Shop more expensive, even if it’s disappointing. The event doesn’t run very often, anyway. The inclusion of past exclusive prizes in the Shop is cool, and I hope we see more of it. The weird, uneven bump given to Bub refill caps feels totally arbitrary and careless. I’d really like to see Snap’s events given the kind of care that makes each run feel crafted instead.

Anyway, it should be a good time overall. Stay frosty as you climb your way to the Mercenary Fuel Table. Save your Snaps for the winners (and then go all-in)!

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Special thanks to SnapComplete for providing our blue-bordered card art. Additionally, their data mines are critical for filling in certain economy details in a timely manner. Please go support them!