Pool/Series 5 has some awesome cards, let's get into them! Realize that as of now, none of the decks below have been tested, but all have at least some reasonable theory behind them.
Please read this article to see some of the math on spending collector's tokens on pool-5 cards. I generally plan to spend all my tokens on pool-5 cards for collection reasons.
Onto the cards!
Valkyrie
This card is almost surely good. The question is where is the best place to play her? What cards does she synergize with? The following cards (and there are surely others) all work off of auras.
- Cerebro-3
- Patriot
- Blue Marvel
- Captain America
- Iron Man
- Ant-Man (Mojo?)
If she sets the full lane to 12 vs 12 power, these sorts of auras will secure the lane. She will neutralize large opposing threats (Venom, Death, etc) while giving us the key to go over-the-top of what is otherwise an equal lane.
Super Skrull
This seems like an insane tech card that surely can warp the meta....It doesn't seem like we ever build a deck around him, so I'm not going to include a deck here...hard to say how it will warp the meta. Onslaught/Omega Red combos may hurt...
Shuri
Shuri can bring together some cool combo-cocktails. This is a deck that WillowSnapping came up with:
There's a lot of combos here, some old, and some new. New combos:
- Forge>Wong>Shuri>Odin>Wasp (other lane). Wasp should be worth around 100 power with the Odin triggering Forge and Shuri over and over. The lane with Odin should end at 32 power.
- Psylocke (other lane)>Wong>Shuri (also other lane I think?)>Black Panther>Zola.
Old combos:
- Wong>Black Panther>Zola. Welcome to the past few weeks.
- Wave>Doom>Wong>Odin.
There's others that involve Wave locks for multiple turns and more. The 96 power Wasp is the best, though.
Bast
For the ol' beta players...this could maybe revive Negative Seratonin. Missing 1 slot, this could look like:
Why Bast? Well, 8 of the cards in the deck look to gain power from it and only 1 (Sera) loses power. We are not looking for some insane highroll here, but just solid value on average. The deck came to be with that idea in mind as well - play good cards that have a lower base power than mana cost, and thus negative ends up adding value. Since then, Negative went from 4 to 1 to -1 power...Bast alone sets him back to 3, and may just also hit Angela and Bishop, in essence being a 1/11. It is worth noting that we are not necessarily in a rush to play Bast either - for example if Negative is not in hand and Sera already is.
This is the pool-5 card I am the most excited for, because I truly loved this deck. I'm a degenerate, right?
Bast also has some value with Brood or Mr. Sinister. Hitting Mr. Sinister makes her worth 3 power, Brood worth 4 power...which is solid, but nothing too crazy.
Thanos
I don't think this card is good, but it will be one of the most actively brewed around cards, and as such, very much could end up great. There are so many different ways to try to do something cool here. Random cards worth considering (not all in the same deck):
- Quinjet
- Ka-zar
- Carnage
- Crystal (lol)
- Beast / Falcon
And surely a ton more...I'm looking forward to seeing what ideas people come up with, and I may be trying as well, but there's a ton of flexibility/possibility out there.
Galactus
Alright. This is my hot take time. I think this card was a mistake to print. I'm not even saying it's good. I'm saying once a lot of people get him, it's going to make the game far less fun. If you are playing against me, and I pull off what a Galactus deck wants to do, it's basically saying, "oh, by the way, it doesn't matter what you did for the first 4 turns of the game, because those other 2 lanes didn't matter!" That is not a good thing for a game, in my personal opinion. It was fine as a random card that we could laugh about. It is less fine when we build around it.
Expect people to play Galactus on turn-5 into a lane that you have weak development in - say 2 lowdrops. Then on turn6, expect them to play Death (units in the other lanes will die when Galactus pulls off his thing) plus something else. For their early turns, expect things like Hood (to play Demon into turn6 single lane), Wolverine (to die and bounce into Galactus lane), Sabretooth (dies, then free into Galactus lane), or Green Goblin (already in the Galactus lane.
You can beat the deck with your own Green Goblin, Debrii, Cosmo, and the like. I do not think the deck is some insane tier0 unbeatable deck. Not at all. But Suddenly I feel like I have to play cards to counter this specific deck in every deck I play, because I cannot just try to win with the normal rules/playlines of the game. That does not sound fun to me.
Oh, and Galactus will always come down on turn-5 (Wave/Psylocke/Electro), so they have turn6 to develop the lane and win. He is NOT a turn-6 play. And expect them to run Killmonger (to deal with Debrii and Central Park). Example deck (I am not saying this is the best, but it's what I'd want to try):
Electro/Destroyer is just an added alternate wincon if we don't hit Galactus. Gamora is solid power into a single lane, it turns out.
Additional Note: If you try to play Galactus + another card in the same turn, Galactus will not trigger, even if the cards are ordered "correctly". He sees face-down cards as cards for his conditional.
And that's all for pool-5 for now!