It Was Her All Along
A Guide to Agatha
Agatha has always been the ultimate meme card in Marvel Snap. She takes control of your deck and plays it in your place. But with recent newly released cards and changes to the meta, could she be evolving into something more?
We'll look at some proven strategies and some fundamental principles to getting the most out of the premier booster Hoover, Agatha Harkness.
The Basics
First, let's take a look at how Agatha works. Let's brush aside any conspiracy theories about Agatha making particularly good or bad plays. Second Dinner has confirmed that the AI behind Agatha is completely random.
However, she follows one simple rule:
Agatha will always play herself out if she is able to. This means that regardless of whatever other 6-cost cards are in your hand Agatha will always give herself preference and play herself down. This also means that if she is discounted (or if you have extra energy) she will play herself as soon as it is possible.
The other rule hardwired into Agatha is that she takes all of the boosters earned in a battle. In the early days of Snap some people used AFK Agatha decks to grind boosters to split Agatha over and over and, more importantly, grind season pass XP infinitely. Now that Second Dinner has put daily limits in place, we thankfully see Agatha farming decks far less often.
Does Agatha always move a card when she can? She does often seem to move cards whenever she is able to, but it's not one hundred percent of the time. It's random.
Does Agatha always use all of your available energy? No, she's random in this way also. Sometimes she's maddeningly inefficient.
Where to start
There are essentially two basic ways to build an Agatha deck:
Build a deck with good cards and strong synergies that works so well, even Agatha can't screw it up.
Or
Take back control of your deck from Agatha as soon as you can and, usually, cheat her 14 power back into play.
Let's start with a few deck lists where you leave Agatha in control. For these types of decks you need decks that don't care about sequencing. In other words, Agatha Destroy doesn't work too well. Generally ongoing decks will require less specific sequencing than on-reveal based decks.
Agatha Control Deck Lists
Ka-Zar has long been a partner for Agatha because even she can handle playing out a bunch of 1-cost cards and buffing them up. This is a more disruptive build with Iceman and Spider-Ham (be careful, these aren't effective against decks with Mobius). Jean Grey doesn't faze us much as we will often fill that lane and Agatha is just playing randomly anyway, but perhaps she can throw off the opponent. The odd Echo snipe can lead to victory as well. This is a great deck to play while you're watching a movie or doing something else.
Ka-Zar works well because we can flood the board with 1-cost cards. Well, let's shuffle six powerful Infinity Stones into our deck for Agatha to play! This deck can hit surprisingly high numbers.
Another Ka-Zar deck, but this time we add Patriot to hit even higher numbers. Will Agatha utilize Elsa Bloodstone properly? Rarely! Also, you should note that the 1-cost cards in all of these Ka-Zar decks are somewhat interchangeable. Adjust them to suit the decks you're encountering. Why not try M'Baku? Slamming an Agatha and having an M'Baku pop out after her is a peak Marvel Snap experience.
Why not just put Agatha in a deck with good cards and a curve that she simply cannot screw up? If you get sick of Agatha playing Mr. Fantastic on the left or right you could try Morph in that slot. After Agatha plays down Leech, she won't even get a chance to reveal herself to your opponent, as they'll already have retreated.
If you've ever felt like High Evolutionary decks play themselves, try this deck out. We don't play Hulk because Agatha will play herself instead. We're going for an inflict strategy and hoping Abomination gets played out. Play this one while you're doing chores or when you simply don't want to focus on the game.
We can't rely on Agatha to play everything perfectly to buff Kraven and Angela up or get Miles Morales out… unless we just include nearly every move card in the game. You will be surprised at how often this deck just wins.
Next, let's take a look at decks that wrestle control away from Agatha. There are three main cards that enable this.
Notes: For Lady Sif to work efficiently you shouldn't put competing 6-cost cards in your deck or she might discard those instead. Wave has become a little bit more risky with Mobius M. Mobius running around. Loki is the newest option and his addition to the game has revitalized Agatha.
Agatha Removal Deck Lists
Now that we have Loki, there are three ways to get rid of Agatha on turn 3, making it much more reliable. Loki has been a major boon to Agatha decks. She's another way to get Agatha out of your hand and it can also be hilarious if an opposing Loki gets our Agatha. If you're only going to try one Agatha list, it should probably be this one. It's consistent and powerful.
Agatha decks are playing big bodies and we don't really need to give her the freedom to play multiple cards per turn. This deck plays similarly to any ramp deck and Agatha will rarely stay in our hand until turn 6. The dream sequence is Electro into Sandman into Agatha into Alioth or Doom.
Agatha doesn't do as well with on-reveal cards since they need to be played in a particular sequence to get the best result. But sometimes Agatha gets it right! Embrace chaos! Getting Zabu on 2 can allow Agatha to play one of our 4-cost cards on turn 3, skipping the Sif or Wave, but just embrace the chaos! This deck can pop off even with Agatha piloting to the end if you get lucky.
This is another way to play Loki with Agatha, but this deck leans far more into being a Loki deck. Going straight Qunjet into Collector into Loki makes the game simple: you're normal Loki deck. But if we do get her into play via Wave or Sif/Ghost Rider, we can get big bodies down into multiple lanes. The lack of Shang Chi in the meta makes this a pretty safe deck to play. The high rolls are very high with this deck.
This Loki deck is designed differently from the one above. Loki is less of the emphasis here. This deck is happy to play Loki as late as turn 5 or you can pivot and play whichever of the strong 5-cost cards will help you win in a particular situation.
This list leaves out Loki and sticks with the classic combo of Sif and Wave. Getting Nebula on 1 is great, although it's possible, but very rare, that Agatha will play Nebula and Armor on 3 instead of one of our 3s. Often you'll play the Nebula out on 5 alongside one of our 4-drops. She's good bait for a turn 6 Alioth if you have priority. You can also run Dr. Doom in that slot as a good finisher. Also, don't be shy about trying out a second 1-drop (I had Spider-Ham in before Mobius came out) or a second 2-drop (Jeff!). It lowers the consistency of Sif/Wave, but broadens our options for turns 5 and 6 quite a bit.
Try this wacky Agatha Lockjaw Hela deck and embrace that your fate is out of your hands.
Whether you want to play Agatha because you want to play without focusing too much, are obsessed with 'breaking' the card, or if you just want to be a Snap meme lord, let us know how Agatha is treating you? Let us know your favorite builds or crazy Agatha moments in the comments below!