Blob - Card Preview
BLOB! BLOB! BLOB! BLOB!
Sorry, I’m excited. Fred Dukes, The Immovable Blob is an iconic original X-Men villain— he’s the big guy, a circus performer-turned-supervillain with the strange ability to generate a gravitational field and render himself, well, immovable.
He’s also just Really Big, Really Strong, and, traditionally, all-around unpleasant to be around. He’s no omnicidal maniac— but he’s a jerk and a bully, willing and able to throw down with any pipsqueak do-gooder that crosses him.
And isn’t that terrific?
Nothing Moves The Blob!
In Snap, Blob is an appropriately hefty 6-drop— a 6/4 that, when he deploys, merges with the rest of your deck and becomes really $#@!ing huge. This isn’t just an effect that conveys power— it’s an effect that conveys sheer mass. Once he sets himself, Blob isn’t just Big and Strong— he’s as Big and Strong as the rest of your deck combined!
Mechanically, Blob uses the same ‘merge’ keyword as Phoenix Force and Hulkbuster— meaning that (like Hulkbuster) your deck will be turned entirely into bonus Power and added to Blob’s base card. In an ordinary game, you end turn 6 with 3 cards in your deck— and if you cheat Blob out early, he’ll be that much bigger, though you won’t have anything to draw on turns afterwards.
And if your opponent is running the board with Darkhawk and Mystique, well, they’re in for a rude awakening.
His secondary Ongoing effect is niche— to the point of being almost irrelevant, save the odd Aero or Stegron play. But it might come into play more often than you think, letting you circumvent pesky locations like the Great Web, The Bifrost, or Strange Academy.
Besides, c’mon.
Superheavy!
What all this means, of course, is that Blob benefits most from a deck full of chunky, powerful 5 and 6 drops. There are some combinations that present themselves, off the bat. The Infinaut, as always, is the premier target for power-cheat effects like this. Similarly large cards like Giganto, Magneto, and Death will help pump Blob up. Dukes wants raw power— cards with stat values tied to an Ongoing like Devil Dinosaur or Iron Man won’t cut it.
Blob Hela
This makes Blob a natural pair with a deck like Hela— a deck that already loads up on a bunch of high-cost, high-Power cards you have no intention of playing fairly.
In this deck, Blob is a potent supporting finisher— if you don’t find Hela by turn 6, you’ve got a large turn 6 play that will still let you leverage your deck’s top-end. And if Blob ends up discarded and revived by Hela herself, he’ll be as strong as any scraps left in your deck: that is, any cards that Hela wouldn’t have reached anyways. (To minimize Blob misses, you might avoid mainstays like Iron Man, Jubilee, or Lockjaw and company.)
Blob Ramp
In an Electro Ramp deck similarly stocked with massive threats, you can cheat Blob out early on turn 5 to get him even larger. You’ll sack the rest of your draws, of course— but any Electro deck’s optimal curve only has them playing one card a turn the rest of the game, meaning you only need two other plays alongside Blob anyways.
Zero Blob
Finally, you just might run Blob in a Zero deck— a deck filled with plus-size 4 and 5-drops like Sentry, Typhoid Mary, and Red Skull. There, Blob’s another way to sidestep their drawbacks and get full value out of their power. He’s got unfortunate anti-synergy built into Sauron— playing our favorite pterodactyl-man will nullify Blob as an Ongoing card as well, so you might modify a list without him, or use Blob as a back-up plan rather than in tandem with Sauron.
Other Synergies to Consider
At 6/4, Blob is a candidate for another Negative payoff, and he also synergizes with Thanos and the Infinity Stones inflating your deck and letting you fill it with top end. It may be possible Blob just ends up large enough to benefit as a Large Man at the top of your curve, minimal build-around required. Regardless, he fills a clear role: a finisher with the power to put you over the top in any given lane.
But The Bigger They Are…
…well, you know the rest. Blob has a few glaring vulnerabilities. As a Large Card, he gets his teeth kicked in by the perennial Shang-Chi. Moreover, because all of his power is bonus power, he’s susceptible to fellow X-villain Shadow King— no love lost between birds of a feather. And finally, a well-placed Cosmo will prevent Blob from ever sucking his gut in in the first place.
*For Echo, note that, like Electro, Blob only triggers her effect after he hits the board, meaning he’ll have already gained his power. No-sell!*
Because Blob’s effect makes him soft to so many tech cards, players should carefully monitor their priority going into turn 6— it will be imperative for a Blob player to know when to deploy and when to feint and opt for a different play. If you have priority going into turn 6, look out for Shang-Chi and Shadow King. If you don’t, Cosmo is the main consideration.
Variants!
Blob comes with some neat variants, too— peep a gnarly pixel, a terrific Dan Hipp, and a cadre of lesser known costumes from Blob’s time in various phases and realities! His Spotlight variant is none other than his Hellfire Gala attire on Krakoa, where he runs the local bar, the Green Lagoon.
Verdict?
Blob’s big, splashy effect will no doubt attract lots of players; there are bound to be highlight plays where a 30+ monster Blob slams a location and wins it by himself. He’s a fun and novel payoff that certainly seems compelling to build around.
Will he be worth 6000 tokens as a series 5 card? That’s a tougher question. There’s a tension in every card game where a big, dumb finisher needs to be very, very strong to be worth the cost— Marvel Snap is no different. A big card threatened by multiple different counter cards might be a tough sell, and Blob’s power being variable game to game might hurt his consistency.
But will I, beholden to my chimp brain, be cramming Blob in every Big Stuff deck I can run for the rest of the season? Maybe. Is it, objectively, the best decision? Yeah, basically. Can I be trusted? Absolutely not.
But that’s not something I plan to budge on.
