MARVEL SNAP Explained: What Is The Bar With No Name?

A key to winning at MARVEL SNAP is having a good strategy for the various locations that can come up in a game, especially during Featured Location periods, when one place will appear more frequently than normal. However, there’s no location that can gum up a player’s plans quite like The Bar With No Name, a comics-accurate location that, in theory, emphasizes peace over violence. With that in mind, here’s what you need to know about playing on The Bar With No Name in MARVEL SNAP and the location in the comics.

Playing on Bar With No Name in MARVEL SNAP

In a general, a player wins MARVEL SNAP locations by having the most Power at them. However, The Bar With No Name turns that goal on its head, as the player with the least Power wins there. A common and valid strategy for when The Bar With No Name comes up is to avoid putting cards on the location entirely. Still, there are a lot of ways players can turn the place to their advantage. 

In terms of winning The Bar With No Name in a straightforward way, any card with a negative Power can put the player ahead at the location. The Hood is specifically valuable in that regard, as he has -2-Power, meaning that low number is actually a boon. Hazmat can also work well, as her On Reveal ability reduces the Power of all friendly cards by one. That means placing a 0-Power card like Adam Warlock or Cerebro on The Bar With No Name and then playing Hazmat will bring them down to a negative Power, thus winning the location. Those two cards have the added benefit of giving their player extra draws and boosting the Power of other cards, respectively. 

There are several tricky cards that work wonders on The Bar With No Name. The 2-Cost, 3-Power Viper, for example, has an On Reveal ability that causes another friendly card at her location to switch sides. As such, a player can put down a card with more than 3 Power on The Bar With No Name followed by Viper. This will move the stronger card to the opponent’s side, potentially locking up the location. Quake and Juggernaut can also be used to force an opponent’s cards onto The Bar With No Name with their On Reveal abilities, which move locations and other cards, respectively.

Another great strategy when it comes to The Bar With No Name is using a card that can change the location. The best cards for that are Scarlet Witch, who changes the location to a random one; Storm, who changes the location to Flooded; and Rhino, who ruins the location. However, it’s best to play those cards a bit later in the game, when an opponent is less likely to be able to react and take the spot instead.

There are a few other locations that can make The Bar With No Name a bigger hazard. The Mirror Dimension can potentially transform into The Bar With No Name on Turn 4, which can cause major problems if a player has built up on it, while the Starlight Citadel will move the locations around. On Turn 5, Strange Academy can also move all the cards on it to other locations. If those locations come up in a game with The Bar With No Name, players should exercise caution. The best way to mitigate those effects is to either avoid playing on those locations, or to remove The Bar With No Name sooner rather than later.

The Bar With No Name in the Comics

Created by Mark Gruenwald and Paul Neary, The Bar With No Name debuted in CAPTAIN AMERICA (1968) #318. The location was originally intended as a peaceful place for villains to hang out. There’s even a policy against fighting, which has been on several occasions been enforced against heroes trying to bust villains. For example, in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (1999) #563, Peter Parker entered The Bar With No Name in search of a villain. The location’s bartender stopped a fight and made clear that Spider-Man was welcome to drink at the establishment, provided he didn’t start any trouble.

In practice, though, violence almost always breaks out at the The Bar With No Name. In the arc which the aforementioned CAPTAIN AMERICA story was part of, the Scourge of the Underworld attacked The Bar With No Name, killing many of its patrons. Additionally, in THE PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL (2006) #4, Frank Castle launched an attack on The Bar With No Name during a gathering to mourn the recently deceased Stilt-Man.

Considering the location’s rules in the Marvel Universe, The Bar With No Name’s ability makes a lot of sense. After all, the place is fundamentally one that emphasizes peace and not having to fight. However, MARVEL SNAP still captures that problem of violence breaking out at the location anyway. After all, taking The Bar With No Name potentially means winning cubes, and that’s a very good incentive to break the location’s rules.

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