The newest member of the Eternals team being added to Marvel Snap is none other than the great inventor Phastos. However, unlike his previous partners, he doesn’t come in, boasting good stats or flashy On Reveals. So what does he do, and how can we make him work?
What does he do?
Phastos is a 3-cost 3-power card that states On Reveal: Give each card in your deck -1 Cost or +2 Power. At face value, that seems a little underwhelming because the ability is 50/50 for each card remaining in your deck, and with him being 3-cost at best, you will only be drawing 3 of those cards the rest of the game. That means he is exponentially worse whenever he doesn’t come down on turn three. However, several cards can cost-effectively take advantage of the extra 2 power or minus 1. Also, he can bring down the cost of cards to 0, which isn’t bad to have happen to cards in your deck.
Card Synergies
This is obligatory. He is a 3-cost card, so he can fit into a surfer deck section. However, Surfer is a deck that suffers from slight power and curve problems. Phastos helps with both of these issues. He can buff your Brood or Sebastion Shaw or make them cost 1 less, so you have a better curve on turns 5 and possibly 6 if you played a Hope Summers. This is one of the obvious places to start with Phastos. However, Playing Brood into Absorbing Man still might be the better turn 3 play.
This one might seem slightly odd, but with Phastos able to bring 1-cost cards down to 0-cost, some play is interesting to explore here. This is a bit like the Mister Negative or Pixie type deal where you will use her to draw your possible 0-cost cards after you Phastos.
Token generators with the token mirror the power always thrive when they can get a buff. This naturally fits into the surfer plan with Brood, but having some 4-cost sinister clones wouldn’t be that bad.
Counter Cards
The bane to all cost reduction. There isn’t a lot to say here other than this is a card that negatives one of the possible effects of Phastos. Mobius is super prevalent in the current meta-game (although he should be), but he is always hanging around, so you will see him at some point.
The other card that negates Phastos's other ability. While negating 2 power of a card that has been hit with Phastos might not be the worst, it still can swing a lane when trying to account for your cards to have the power they say instead of a reduced value.
JF's First Week Decks
Phastos is a little bit more limiting in his deck building because if you don’t try to maximize his ability at 3-power, he doesn’t help your board state as much, so he can’t just be fit into most decks to gain some marginal advantage like other cards.
Out of Obligation
This is more of the obligated Surfer deck with the new 3-cost card portion. Surfer is incredibly versatile, but this is the list I would probably run right off the bat. Other than Killmonger, it doesn’t run any tech cards like Rogue or Red Guardian, but those can be slotted in if you want them to. Again, there are many options here, but this is where I would start and then change from there. Phastos hitting a Brood or Sebastion or any of the cards besides maybe Nova for plus 2 power would be great. Being able to drop Nova to 0 cost would be helpful for some extra power on a turn 6 or even making it so that Mockingbird is 2 cost instead of 3 if you only were able to Brood. All seem like positive outcomes to me.
Are Ye Worthy?
This deck has already been performing well on the ladder, but with the addition of Phastos, there is a lot more burst potential. Phastos can drop all of the 1-cost cards down to zero, and then we can use Jane to grab them from our deck. This can help produce a massive Werewolf by Night on the final turn or get us some good quality power with Rocket Raccoon and a good spell of Nico. Also, if you drop Phastos after playing Thor or maybe an early Beta Ray Bill, a 2-power or 3-power hammer is beneficial. However, Phastos isn't the main plan here. Instead, we are either going for Hammers and a big WWBN with Phastos as a nice secondary plan. Black Swan and dropping Beta might be more consistent, or taking out Quake for another 1-cost card would be more power, or even having your own SK instead.
Inevitable Inventions
This is definitely a cook, but it is interesting because 0-cost stones seem awesome. Also, Thanos typically will run a lot of high-cost cards, so making any of them 1 cost lower can help immensely. There probably are better forms, or at least different than this. Thanos is still a very versatile deck that can have many different cards out there. It's possible that with Phastos, you might want to run Sasquatch to use your 0-cost stones if you get them. Also, because Thanos helps draw you cards, you're more likely to see the benefits of Phastos than in most decks, where it will only affect three cards.
Broodlings Everywhere
Being able to generate extra power for your tokens or possibly lower the cost of your high-priced cards to enable more power is something that seems beneficial. This has some high roll potential, such as playing a discounted Onslaught and another card on the last turn or maybe getting that extra power out of a brood and Absorbing Man. This is worth the shot, and I want to see if there are benefits.
Variants
Conclusion
Phastos is an interesting card because while this intro was short and sweet, I think there is much more to him than at first glance. He provides an interesting deck-building challenge to maximize his potential, which might be his biggest draw. However, while he might be interesting, he seems too slow to use in the current format. I want to do many things on turn three, and I don’t see playing him after turn three being that great. Regarding his spotlight, Phastos is releasing alongside Spider-Ham and Corvus, which are cards that are not extremely necessary but fun if you want to play with them. Corvus is probably the best tool to have if you want to keep trying Hela decks. He can make discard slightly better, but he isn't a necessity. Spider-Ham is also a decent card, but any number of 1-cost cards can be changed for Spiderham in any deck that he is in, so again, it's not necessary. Honestly, this could be a skip week for most people unless you want to deck build for the first week he is out because my four decks above are not the be-all and end-all of decks. Overall, Phastos seems a little lackluster, so I would suggest waiting till the end of the week to open, or if you are a deck builder and want to try and utilize his ability to the max, go for it.
