Marvel Snap is finally getting an answer to several unanswerable cards. Red Guardian will be a powerful new staple tech card that can shut down certain strategies. Think of him as an extension of our tech package that starts with Shang Chi and extends to Cosmo, Shadow King, Enchantress, and others. Each of those acts as an answer to something our opponent is attempting to do, and Red Guardian will have a lot of utility in answering strategies that slip between the cracks left by our current tech cards.
Power Level
Tech cards are the cards in our collection that let us interact with and respond to our opponents’ strategies. They vary in their utility and potential power level. Shang Chi is the king of tech because he is useful against so many different decks and can end up being an effective 4-13+. Enchantress is powerful but covers fewer opposing decks. However, she can occasionally surpass Shang when the meta shifts her way. We've also had metas where Shadow King was the most important tech card. Tech cards are meta-dependent, and a spectrum of tech power exists. Where will Red Guardian fall on that spectrum? There are very meta-dependent tech cards like Negasonic Teenage Warhead, which can be incredibly powerful but needs a particular metagame around her to shine truly. She is particularly good in a meta where your opponents aren't pushing for priority (so that you can) and metas where your opponent is playing giant cards in predictable places (i.e., a Shuri meta). Other highly meta-dependent tech cards include Echo, Supergiant, and US Agent. How meta-dependent and powerful Red Guardian is depends largely on how many cards he's good against and how effective he is against them. Let's take a look at Red Guardian’s best targets.
Best Targets
It's important to note that Red Guardian is particularly effective against low-power cards and cards that are likely to be alone in a lane. Sure, we can hit cards like Iron Man reliably, but we can also hit more powerful cards like Phoenix Force, Vision, Sandman, Armor, and Ms. Marvel if we can time things right to hit them when they're alone. Sometimes, this might be unpredictable, but because of the way Red Guardian is worded, to hit the lowest power card, we will encounter some interesting and powerful edge cases in addition to the expected ones.
Below is an exhaustive list of Red Guardian’s best hits, but before we dive into the nitty gritty, here are my 3 absolute top Red Guardian targets:
Powerful ongoing cards that augment your opponent’s other cards will be primary targets for US Agent since these tend to have low power themselves. The most relevant examples are Iron Man, Mystique, Cerebro, and Patriot. In some cases, we might be able to tag Blue Marvel or Super Skrull.
Less common, but still on our radar, are cards that spread power to other lanes like Ms. Marvel and Mr. Fantastic since you might be able to catch them alone, as well as ongoing cards that kick in late, like Ant-Man, Mojo, and Dazzler.
The meta is currently experiencing a reemergence of low-cost scaling cards. If we can hit them early enough, we can cut the knees of our opponent's strategy. It may prove difficult to get Red Guardian down in time against some of these scalers. Red Guardian gives us our first proactive way to attack triggered effect scalers rather than waiting to deploy a Shadow King or Shang Chi late. Red Guardian seems particularly useful against Angela and Nebula.
Beefier scalers that tend to be left on their own can also be hit if you time things well, but I imagine these will be occasional bonus cases rather than frequent targets. He can even pop cards like Namor, Warpath, and Orka, though I imagine those will be pretty rare.
Another important category of targets is our opponent’s defensive cards. We can take them out with Red Guardian to help us attack later. Many of these are on the fringe of the range where Red Guardian can target them, so timing and priority are going to matter. If Red Guardian becomes a common answer to these, expect skilled opponents to play around him by placing lower-powered cards in a lane alongside cards we might want to target.
Finally, we have a good way to attack Dracula. Red Guardian can target cards that are neither Ongoing or On Reveal. Red Guardian is the first card that can interact meaningfully with Dracula, Daredevil, Nightcrawler, Jeff, and several other static abilities and triggered effect cards that tech like Enchantress, Shang Chi, Cosmo, and Shadow King don't help against. Jeff might be too slippery for Red Guardian, but technically, he's our only anti-Jeff card besides Hercules.
We can shut down various other cards central to an opponent's strategy with a well-timed Red Guardian. Zabu being changed removes one of Red Guardian's better-anticipated targets, though.
One interesting fringe case is cards of the same power. Based on how cards like Leader work, he might affect all cards of the same power. You may get lucky and hit your opponent’s Mobius and Armor in one go. I could not get developer confirmation that Red Guardian works like this or if he will hit one at random. If he can hit all cards at the lowest power level, he will be fun to deploy against Mister Sinister and Brood.
Match-ups
We've examined Red Guardian’s best targets and discussed how tech cards are meta-dependent. So, let's narrow down exactly which decks he will help you against. What decks does he beat? What decks currently have bad match-ups against those decks? This will help you decide how strong Red Guardian will be for your particular pocket meta, current or future.
Red Guardian should be very effective against Living Tribunal decks. We already have Rogue and Enchantress to help with that matchup, so his ideal metagame will also include other good matchups. Red Guardian will have added value if you find yourself in a meta where Cerebro or Patriot decks see a lot of play. It might not seem like it, but Red Guardian has some good utility against destroy decks. You can stop Deadpool, Wolverine, or X-23 in their tracks. Red Guardian won't be enough against that deck alone, but he could complement Armor or Cosmo well. Decks that rely on Wong, like traditional Odin tigers decks, Black Panther/Arnim Zola decks, or Hazmat decks, can also be affected by Red Guardian. We can probably steal some cubes against any deck counting on a last-turn Zola. Of course, Cosmo is the more reliable tech against these decks, but Red Guardian provides some nice redundancy. The current crop of Angela decks, including the small movers decks, can be hurt by Red Guardian, but there will be games where they scale up too quickly for him to help out. He doesn't help much against Hela or discard, but he is at least a tool to deal with Dracula or Miek. Against Loki, we can target Quinjet, Angela, or Collector. He has some small potential against Phoenix Force if we can snipe a Human Torch or Multiple Man early or hit an isolated Phoenix late. Against lockdown, he can help deal with Nebula, Daredevil, or (with perfect timing) Professor X.
Looking at Red Guardian's matchup spread, I am struck by how much overlap he has with other tech cards. Decks that take advantage of this redundancy and run him alongside other tech cards will succeed most.
ScoSco’s Day One Red Guardian Decks
As we've gone over, Red Guardian isn't a build-around card. He can slot into almost any deck that needs his particular skills. With that in mind, here are a few decks I think can use his assistance to improve their matchup spreads or take advantage of a little synergy with him.
Red Anni
I think Red Guardian can help Annihilus. There is some interesting soft synergy between him and Black Widow and the Goblins, which gives him some utility in matchups where he's less needed. Lady Deathstrike (either take out or be careful of your Goblins) and Cannonball make fun substitutions in this deck.
Soviet Pryde
If you pulled Lady Deathstrike in a cache, you can try her with Red Guardian in this deck. She can help improve your Guardian targets, or he can bring more cards into her range. Both of them can help Omega Red get over the top. But this deck isn't reliant on these three. It can be played as just a good Hope deck, with Guardian helping against bad match-ups as a tech.
Guardian Angela
The various tech cards in this deck help against decks that can cause problems for the scaling Angela/movers package. Spider-Man can help isolate Guardian targets. Be careful with your Enchantress placement.
C3 RG
I am very excited about this C3 build. I think Red Guardian will help C3 out a lot and could nudge it into the next tier of competitiveness.
Red Evo
If you can play a Hulk (either color) and another card on the final turn, you'll have a good chance of winning.
Red Wave
There are many ways to incorporate Red Guardian into a Surfer deck, but I've opted to use his synergy with Killmonger and Polaris, who can improve your Guardian targets.
Serrated
Of course, we have to try every tech card with Sera. With Zabu in hibernation, we go heavier on 3-costs and opt for power output.
Gallery
Red Guardian is only launching with a spotlight variant and a Luchador variant. I hope we get some of the many retro Red Guardian looks or a Bronze Age cover variant in the future.
Conclusion
Red Guardian is being overlooked a bit. This is likely because of the binary way many players do card evaluation. Red Guardian is very clearly not a build-around card. He's a tech card with the approximate power level of Enchantress or Rogue. If either of those cards came out today, they likely wouldn't feel like necessary cards, but because we've had them in our collections for so long, they feel indispensable. If you feel like those are cards you would buy if they were to be newly released today, you'll want to grab Red Guardian. The nerf to Zabu took away one of Red Guardians' best targets, but it may also allow him to slide past Enchantress in relevance since he attacks some of the same decks but costs one less. If you don't tend to play with any tech cards other than Shang Chi, then Red Guardian is an easy skip. If you like to play various decks and always want to feel prepared for any metagame, then Red Guardian is a definite buy. Opening caches is a no-brainer if you don't have High Evolutionary yet. Lady Deathstrike just got a buff, which will also be fun to experiment with. I think Red Guardian is powerful enough and hits enough targets while having some serious high-roll potential with his edge cases to warrant opening caches for or spending 6000 tokens. You can certainly live without Red Guardian, but I, for one, don't want to.
