Ms. Marvel was released as one of the better season pass cards, and for a while, she was one of, if not the best, cards to include in your deck. She has fallen off in popularity a bit, but she’s still a fantastic option if you like playing for all three lanes or prefer a lockdown-type strategy.
How Does She Work?
Ms. Marvel is an Ongoing card that states: Your adjacent locations with 2+ cards and no repeated Costs have +5 Power. At first glance, this can be a little confusing, but it is much simpler to think about when you are playing the game: she provides 5 Power to the locations next to her as long as her condition is met. That condition? Have at least 2 cards in the lane, and ensure none have the same cost. If you play her optimally, Ms. Marvel is essentially a 4-cost 14-power card. That is a lot of power for one card. However, it isn’t as simple as just placing her in the center location and getting the benefits; you have to think about what you play at the other two locations to ensure you maximize her potential. There are many ways to do this, so let's get to it.
Synergies
Currently, Ms. Marvel is prominently featured in one main archetype. However, this is not the be-all and end-all of places for her in deck building.
Lockdown
As an archetype, lockdown essentially tries to lock down locations and remove your opponent’s ability to add power to them. As you do so, you also employ tools that let you add Power where they can’t, either because you anticipate the locked-down location or through effects that add Power in alternate ways—like Ms. Marvel.
Two main options for locking down lanes work well with Ms. Marvel.
Storm pairs great with Ms. Marvel because it locks down a single location so no extra power can be played there. It is not as hard a lock as some other effects since your opponent can still move cards into the Flooded location, but Ms. Marvel often adds more extra power to the Flooded lane than your opponent can match.
This is a harder lock than Storm— outside of Jeff the Baby Land Shark and War Machine, there isn’t a direct way to add cards to Professor X’s Location. That makes Ms. Marvel a potent tool for adding power while your opponent cannot.
Both of these cards allow you to move into locked-down locations, but they also allow you to manipulate priority and play around Ms. Marvel. Being able to move a unique cost in and out of a lane means you can have +5 power on one turn and nothing on the next turn. Conversely, it can turn a lane with only 1 card into a lane with 2, activating Ms. Marvel and enabling a sizable power swing.
Here are several different Lockdown lists— if you want a better explanation for that archetype, see our guide on Lockdown in general! - https://snap.fan/guides/archetype-guide-lockdown/
Lockdown
Midrange Good Cards
Even though Ms. Marvel is prominently featured in Lockdown decks, she isn’t exclusively tied to them. Ms. Marvel offers premium stats at the 4-cost slot, so instead of trying to lump her into one specific archetype, she can also fit in various deck-building shells.
Annihilus Junk Package
This is the simple Annihilus package from which many decks can slot in and get value— when coupled with Ms. Marvel. You have access to a lot of potential extra power throughout a game.
Junk
Darkhawk Package
Darkhawk forms another simple three-card package that provides good power. These cards are also unique in cost, making them perfect for Ms. Marvel to support.
Darkhawk
And why not use both? This deck uses both the Darkhawk and the Annihilus package with Ms. Marvel to maximize the general power of all three.
Ongoing
Both of these cards help boost Ms. Marvel's power output. The current metagame is not the best place for these strategies to be as effective as you want them to be. However, if you like playing Ongoing cards, these two are good to include alongside Ms. Marvel.
Move
Move cards can be tricky, but many different decks can run them. With Ms. Marvel, you can move your cards around to either produce unique costs and activate her ability or remove them and lose priority.
Deckbuilding Pitfalls
Now that we have covered most of the decks that she fits into, let's talk a little bit about what not to do when deckbuilding with her. Realistically, there is only one thing bad for Ms. Marvel: matching costs at the same location.
Same Cost Cards
Any deck running many cards with the same cost should immediately raise a red flag when considering Ms. Marvel. You don’t want to restrict your play, and even losing one of her location buffs is a massive loss of power.
Silver Surfer
This should be self-explanatory! Due to the large number of three-cost cards, this is not a good place to stick Ms. Marvel.
Bounce
Bounce runs many 1-cost cards, making it a similarly bad fit for Ms. Marvel. Furthermore, 4 energy is a high cost for this deck, which prefers to play low-cost cards and bounce them back.
Patriot
This might be a decent spot since it typically already runs Onslaught, but due to the nature of the tokens, it probably won't work in your favor.
Beyond these caveats, Ms. Marvel is pretty flexible (ha!), and a possible deckbuilding consideration anywhere you have various card costs in your deck.
Locations
Locations are pivotal to the game and can make or break your strategy. Let's discuss the good and the bad ones for Ms. Marvel.
Good
As the main beneficial location for any Ongoing card, Citadel helps boost Ms. Marvel’s Power and is always great to see— especially in the middle location.
These are great locations because they provide built-in lockdown; if you have Ms. Marvel and your opponent does not, being able to add extra Power later on makes you quite favored.
Since these locations have conditions that lower the overall power output in their lane, being able to add 5 power from outside is powerful, giving the player with access to Ms. Marvel a slight edge when they appear.
This location adds a card by itself, meaning it only takes one more card there to receive the Ms. Marvel buff. Note: the Monster is a 6-cost card, meaning another 6-cost card at Monster Island will lose the Ms. Marvel buff.
These three are interesting because while they don’t actively help Ms. Marvel, they are just good locations for your game plan. Crown City is essentially the Ms. Marvel of locations, while Knowhere helps keep Ms. Marvel safe from tech cards. Ms. Marvel in a TVA game can just be a game-winner—in a 4-turn game, your opponent will often be unable to play for all three locations as well as an active Ms. Marvel.
Bad
Savage Land is worse than Central Park, but both are bad. Adding multiple 1-cost cards to the board limits the unique costs that you can have at each location, and Savage Land immediately turns off Ms. Marvel's buff wherever it is.
Asteroid M is the bane of 3 and 4-cost cards, all but ensuring that it will have multiple cards with the same cost there as well as disrupting your Ms. Marvel placement. Great Web makes it similarly difficult to keep unique costs in a location and place your Ms. Marvel optimally because it will pull your cards randomly. Both can ruin your day!
This card is really annoying for any Ongoing. Depending on its placement, it caps how much power you can get from your Ms. Marvel. It also opens you up to potential Legion or Quake plays from your opponent.
Maybe Good, Maybe Bad
All of these locations can go either way. In the case of Sinister London, two Ms. Marvels are always better than one— but you’re also more likely to have the same costs at other locations, meaning you need to be extra mindful of how you play your cards. Strange Academy and Bifrost can turn on or off your Ms. Marvel. Strange Academy’s random effect makes it difficult to play around beyond avoiding it; with Bifrost, you often want to place Ms. Marvel on the left-most location on turn 4 so she moves middle, and plan your other cards around the movement so your costs at the right location remain unique. Big House doesn’t allow you to play Ms. Marvel there herself, but it functions as a soft lockdown, which can benefit you.
Card Counters
Now let's take a look at the cards that both actively counter Ms. Marvel and indirectly counter her.
When discussing Ongoing cards, you must always be wary of Enchantress: the number one counter for any strategy relying on Ongoing effects. Luckily, she isn’t that common currently— but she is always something you need to think about.
I believe Rogue is a better counter to Ms. Marvel than Enchantress; she negates Ms. Marvel’s spread power and takes it for herself. If you are playing Ms. Marvel and expect your opponent to have Rogue, putting two Ongoing cards in the same lane is often wise to minimize the chances of Rogue stealing Ms. Marvel’s bonus.
Echo will nail you a lot more than you think it will. Most people forget that she even exists. But several decks will place her into the center lane to limit effects like Ms. Marvel. If you see Echo, don’t mindlessly play out Ms. Marvel!
While these are not direct counters, they add a specific cost to your lanes, often disrupting your Ms. Marvel buff. As such, be careful playing around with your own +5 Power— Even The Hood sent over by Annihilus can become a minus 8-power swing.
This card ruins your game plan. Pulling 3 and 4-cost cards where you haven’t planned around them is a very powerful effect. Magneto can either pull cards and disrupt your unique cost lanes, or he pulls Ms. Marvel herself and lowers her potential power output.
At 4 power, it’s unlikely that Ms. Marvel has the lowest Power card at her location. Still, it is possible, and having her alone at a location makes her an easy target for Red Guardian.
Meta Considerations
Ms. Marvel is a good choice when the meta is more about being able to go wide and fight for all three lanes or when lockdown strategies are heavily prevalent. When an opponent tries to lock you out, having tools in your deck to reach these locations is beneficial. However, in a meta-game that is more focused on going big in just two lanes and not spreading out power, she doesn’t fare as well because while you are threatening three lanes with a good amount of power your opponent will go over the top of you in the two other lanes. Also, when clog is heavily prevalent in the metagame, her effect is drastically reduced because it is much easier for your opponent to play a card that negates her effect, like Debrii or one of the goblins and even the Void.
Variants
Conclusion
Ms. Marvel is just a generally good card: she can be used in almost any deck with a balanced curve. Stat for stat, she is one of the best 4-cost cards in the game, and that hasn’t changed in a long time. She also has several great variants! All these factors make her a great card to pick up when possible. In the comments below, let me know your favorite way to use Ms. Marvel!