I'm very excited about the Young Avengers season pass card, Kate Bishop. I think she's incredibly strong and extremely flexible. I'll guide you through her power level, key synergies, and ideal play lines and leave you with 8 great Kate decks to try!
Card
Kate Bishop, Hawkeye
But first, let's get to know Kate. Kate is a part of the proud tradition of superheroes that don't have superpowers. But she's more than just the Robin to her Batman, Clint Barton (the original Hawkeye). She and Clint have a fun, high-achiever / messy uncle relationship in addition to their mentor/mentee connection. Their chemistry is fully displayed in Matt Fraction and David Aja’s seminal 2012 Hawkeye series. The more Kate-centric 2016 series from Kelly Thompson and Leonardo Romero is a personal favorite. Kate grew up with a villain for a father and became a superhero through sheer force of will.
Power breakdown
Kate Bishop is a 2-Cost, 3-Power card. Or is she?
If you play Kate and her Basic Arrow and Pym arrow, you could net 11 power for 4 energy. A 4-Cost, 11-Power card would be above rate and see plenty of play. Of course, you're not always going to hit this theoretical maximum of 11 power, but what makes Kate Bishop a powerful card is that power is divided. The best way to conceptualize Kate Bishop is as a modular card to give you control over how that card's power is distributed. Even when you're not getting the maximum power value from Kate and her arrows, you get greater volition about where that power goes and the additional benefits the arrows provide.
The table below shows the power you'll get from playing combinations of Kate and two arrows. In the worst-case scenario, Kate plus the Pym and Basic Arrows without activating their bonus power will be pretty rare and still be 5 power for 4 energy—not exactly a disaster. Though the power output when using the Grapple and Acid arrow may be lower than the maximum possible, you presumably get additional benefit from their effects, not just their raw power.
Key Synergies
Thena is already a powerful force in the meta game, and Kate seems like a perfect way to guarantee you always have a profitable way to enable her. Playing Thena and Kate alongside several low and mid-cost options should allow you to curve out your energy perfectly while getting as many Thena activations as you want. Thena’s strongest ally, Angela, works well with Grapple Arrow and Acid Arrow.
The old Loki would have loved Kate, but there is also synergy with the new Loki. Playing Kate with Loki will ensure you always have usable cards in hand, and the arrows being 1-cost cards means you'll likely have enough energy to play them since you'll be drawing discounted cards from your deck. Kate has a similar synergy with Arishem since she can make it more likely you have ways to use your extra energy. Kate is akin to a “mana sink” in other games—cards that give you ways to spend excess resources.
Black Swan makes Kate’s arrows free on the following turn, and plenty of other cards can abuse that below.
Bishop has fallen out of the metagame a bit, but Kate Bishop could bring Lucas Bishop back into the fold. The Basic, Pym, and Grapple arrows reward playing out other cards, and Bishop soaks up those advantages, too. Like Bishop, Kate has a natural synergy with Hit Monkey, especially if you include some bouncing options or Black Swan.
Bouncing the Basic Arrow is nice, but you can also bounce Kate to make even more arrows! Bouncing Grapple Arrow can supercharge move payoffs.
The Acid Arrow gives us another low-cost clutter option to clog our opponent fast. Titania has a lot of shared synergy with Kate in Zoo, Bounce, and Flood archetypes. The Acid Arrow is so strong that you could also consider playing Kate and Titania with junk enablers like Doctor Octopus and Green Goblin.
Storm is intriguing with Grapple Arrow. After playing Storm on curve, you can play a 3-cost card and Grapple Arrow on turn 4 to set up to shift a 5-Cost card into the flooded lane.
Any new card generator means synergy between the Collector and Devil Dinosaur. Adding two cards is a premium regarding incidental card gain for the Collector. Whether you're a lower collection player or closer to completion, it may be time to experiment with the Collector and Dino again, especially now that Loki has been transformed.
The first concept that will come to mind for many with Kate is a Zoo-style deck that fills the board with low-cost cards and buffs them with Ka-Zar and Blue Marvel.
We have to address the ex-boyfriend in the room. Noh-Varr, a.k.a. Marvel Boy and Kate, dated for a while in the comics, and they make a powerful pair in Marvel Snap. In the decklists section below, I included plenty of Marvel Boy, but you can click on each decklist to see replacement options that I made sure to include for those who aren't picking up this week's spotlight card.
Gilgamesh has direct synergy with the Pym and Basic Arrows and shared synergy in archetypes that play Ka-Zar, Blue Marvel, and Marvel Boy.
Ranking the Arrows
Each arrow opens up some interesting play lines. Here are a few to look out for with each one.
1) Acid Arrow
Acid Arrow is the most powerful despite accounting for the lowest power output—a net advantage of 2 power. But, as we all know from White Widow and other clogging cards, taking up an opponent's board space is a powerful effect. While the Widow's Kiss loses its negative power if the opponent fills the lane, turns off its Ongoing with Enchantress, or plays Luke Cage, Acid Arrow can only be dealt with by a destroy effect.
Into a lane where your opponent has a single card, you can play Acid Arrow, Titania, and White Widow (in that order) to fully clog an opposing lane as early as turn 4.
2) Basic Arrow
Next, we have the Basic Arrow. In a classic Kate-style burn, Clint Barton gets his effect slapped onto Basic Arrow. Hawkeye has seen play recently in bounce decks, and likewise, Basic Arrow will have a greater impact if its On Reveal can be repeated.
If you play Kate on turn 2, Basic Arrow and Falcon on turn 3, Basic Arrow and Beast on turn 4, you can play out Basic Arrow on turn 5 again to grow it to 10 Power on turn 6. Yes, Basic Arrow can be bounced back to hand and still receive its bonus! Just make sure to play at least one card into the lane where it's On Reveal went off on the previous turn. We haven't seen it yet, but there will likely be an animation to help you keep track, like Hawkeye’s green animation.
3) Pym Particle Arrow
Pym Arrow is like Ant-Man, but since he was buffed back in February, Ant-Man gains +4, while Pym Arrow gains +3 when its lane is filled. This card will obviously work well in Zoo, Patriot, or other decks that fill all of their lanes, but having a 1-Cost, 4-Power card is solid for any deck.
If you have an empty lane, you can move Nightcrawler, Jeff, and Nocturne into it, fill it with Pym Arrow, and make a surprise 14-power lane on turn six using a single energy. This allows you to contest another lane with the remaining 5 Energy. In a Zoo deck, playing out just an activated Pym Arrow plus Gilgamesh nets 14 power on turn six, not even accounting for any additional buffs that will further grow Gilgamesh.
4) Grapple Arrow
Last is Grapple Arrow. I may be ranking this last of the arrows, but I think all of them are impactful. Grapple Arrow is like a delayed Ghost Spider in that it pulls your next card to its location. As a raw move activator, Grapple Arrow is weaker than Ghost Spider or Iron Fist but still has a lot of utility. It can help you get into Death's Domain, Luke's Bar, and the Altar of Death, and occasionally help out with Kyln, the Vault, Morag, Quantum Realm, and the Big House, but you can't get into Sanctum Sanctorum.
Does Grapple Arrow provide enough value that Kate could see play in traditional move decks? I believe so, especially in bounce versions of that deck, given that both Falcon and Beast can return Grapple Arrow to hand. One important thing to remember is that, unlike with Nico Minoru’s spells, you have a 50% chance of getting any particular Arrow, meaning you will get Grapple Arrow quite often. With Nico, you can try to wait for your target spell to cycle through, but Kate only having four arrows lends her some valuable consistency.
If you play Grapple Arrow into one lane and card onto Angela, you will get added power on Angela while immediately pulling the card away to get more value there on the following turn. You've also played 2 cards, so you'll also get the point bonus on Thena!
Scosco's 8 Great Kate Deck Lists for Day One
Bishops & Birds
Ladies with Weapons
Target Acquired
Kate 4
Girls & Boys Club
Grapplers
Kate 9
Budget Kate Dino
Final Thoughts
If you're conservative with your season pass purchases and only occasionally buy the paid season pass, this is definitely one to pull the trigger on. Not only do I think Kate is powerful, but she also synergizes in important ways with the other cards coming out this month and in the future. If you plan to pick up Marvel Boy, Wiccan, or Speed, you will want to bring Kate to lead them. She also has direct or indirect synergy with September cards Silver Sable, Madame Web, Symbiote Spider-Man, and Araña as currently datamined, as well as Misery and Toxin from October. Kate is primed to become a format staple and lynchpin of the metagame. She is a card that will age well and is flexible enough to see play for the foreseeable future. She has been compared to Nico Minoru—they both randomly generate from a defined set of possibilities. I think they share another trait: they're both unlikely to be nerfed. They're both versatile cards with utility in a large enough range of decks that are unlikely ever to be seen as problematic, much like Jeff the Baby Land Shark can enjoy high play rates without rousing the wrath of the community or Glenn Jones and the balance team. Also, sweet Flaviano variants being included in the season pass is a nice bonus. Buy Kate with confidence and enjoy her for a long time.
