Strange Supreme is what we get when Stephen loses the love of his life and ditches that whole Hippocratic Oath attitude while also making his sadness everyone’s problem. He’s the most powerful version of Stephen Strange that decided that no distance is too far when trying to reach your goals.
His origin story? Instead of dealing with grief like a normal emotionally repressed superhero by brooding in the heavy rain, Strange Supreme concluded that the only sensible option would be to devour all manner of magical beasts in the attempt of gathering enough power to break fate in the name of love. He is still the Doctor Strange that we know—just with a darker color pallet for his spells—and more tentacles in the mix.
But at least he is still one of the good guys—well it's complicated. Nowadays he spends most of his time pondering his orb in the crystalyne prison that remained after his universe was shattered to pieces. Occasionally he is recruited to fix the multiverse when things get out of hand. If he shows up to fix your timeline, it means that you’re definitely in big trouble.
When You’re So Supreme
The man is hungry and he is not a fussy eater!
Strange Supreme is not your run of the mill 2-Drop. After every turn, he’ll merge with one of your Created cards on any location, gaining its power while also receiving a +2 bonus for every merge. Quite a fitting power right?
To exemplify, If you play him on Turn 2 and he manages to devour a 0-powered card every single turn, he’ll be at 12 Power by the end of the game just on his base power alone. If you give him bigger meals, he’ll grow even stronger.
Before moving forward, it's worth noting that Strange Supreme will get his +2 bonus from every merge, even those that he didn’t start, so he might have some uses with Agony, Hulkbuster and even SP//dr.
However, to make the most out of his power, I do believe that the best route is to somehow create or find created cards and place them on the field. Luckily, our options are quite vast in this regard. Let me list some of those
We could use cards that create tokens such as:
I could picture Strange Supreme devouring a poor Squirrel with a side of Rock and washing it all down with a nice Ice Cube from luna. One strange occurance is that Strange Supreme could totally devour the real Mysterio before his big reveal that usually happens at the end of the game, Supreme can’t tell the difference and he frankly doesn’t care.
We could play cards that create cards for us to feed Strange Supreme. It would be a bit slower but I can see it working.
Let’s have a look at some of them:
If you’re going this route, you might as well place in some synergistic cards like Quinjet, and Kahhori, the newcomer.
Lastly, we have the big bads that shuffle created cards in our deck. Thanos and Arishem, they both struggle with board size from time to time and Strange Supreme would gladly help them out.
Arishem variance is so huge that no game will be the same. But the mad titan seems quite alright with our Sorcerer. Just be careful with him devouring your Soul stone that you needed to protect your Thanos from Shang-Chi.
Counterspells
Strange Supreme will be a crazy cool card but he has some dangerous aspects that I need to draw attention to.
Firstly, Strange Supreme is lore friendly in the sense that he is his worst enemy. I’m afraid that at least some of the time he’ll devour your win condition and leave you in ruins after a sour DEFEAT message pops up. Picture a regular game of snap where you have a ton of created cards on the field and you absolutely need him to leave that Demon alone for you to win, it goes without saying that this Demon will be on the menu for Strange Supreme and he’ll make no ceremony before bolting it down.
Secondly, He is quite counterable, Shadow King has been missing from the meta but his threat is always there when a big scaler comes around. Also, Shang will strive to control your power whenever Strange Supreme eats too many squirrels. Bring out your cosmo perhaps?
Dualgloves's Day One Strange Supreme Decks
Hoarder Supreme
I’m not even sorry for this one. Day, one hour zero I’ll be running this pile of junk and I’ll be up there clogging your lanes. Although It might not be a great plan because everyone will be running their own Strange Supreme. The game plan is the same as regular junk, we just have our own declogger in Supreme, Debrii is the star of the show and if you manage to trigger her twice with either Grandmaster or Misery, your opponent will be in big trouble.
Eson Buffet
This is a list that is quite tricky to finetune, maybe we need more card creation, if so, be ready to slot in Coulson. We’re trying to get Eson on the field as quickly as possible with Wave, Luna and Blink. If we manage to do that, everything should slot into place with Eson pulling your created cards and Strange Supreme devouring them. This dry run will feature no tech cards beside Alioth so you should be mindful of a timed Shang ruining your Eson plans.
Supreme Is There Somewhere
Just Arishem, the usual suspects are here besides Mockingbird since she has some attrition with our hungry boy. Arishem usually has a big issue with clogged lanes due to his extra energy generation and sometimes drawing poorly, Supreme is here to fix that by merging with your Arishem cards. Loki could be extremely awful with Strange Supreme but I love chaos and I want to see at least a game featuring both those cards.
Stone Eater
Thanos is a powerhouse of a card and one of his major weaknesses has always been clogging. Janitor Stephen Strange Supreme is right here to fix that. Pray that you’ll draw a stone by turn 1 and this deck becomes so much better for it due to Strange Supreme and Wiccan triggers. The only bad aspect of slotting Strange Supreme here is the fact that he can devour your precious Soul Stone and Power Stone and their Ongoing effects, leaving Thanos weaker and more Vulnerable.
I'll Make My Own Win Condition
The Triumphant return of Joaquin Torres! Frigga is my favorite card to see on this list, with her in hand, we can decide if we’re going for double Victoria hand or double Strange Supreme, both those cards copied could win you the game but in vastly different ways (just be very careful to play a ton of created cards to avoid the main Strange merging with the Copied one). Try to get the most out of your creations because this deck doesn’t have traditional win conditions and most of the time you’ll be cooking with what you’ll get. Have fun!
Variants
Strange Supreme has two variants with extremely similar vibes so far. Pick your favorite and you can’t be wrong. Such a great character will for sure have more amazing art in the future so hold on to your magical cloaks for a broader wardrobe that is probably bigger on the inside.
Final Thoughts
Strange Supreme is simply a cool card, however, I don’t think he’ll be a must have. He is niched and strange to say the least. I imagine that he’ll be like Victoria Hand, although a bit more limited. Just like her, Strange Supreme will fit quite nicely into a limited amount of decks but on those lists, he’ll be extremely good. So, if you’re wondering about grabbing the card, consider if you’d have fun playing with created cards, if you conclude that you’ll do, grab him and don’t look back.
Right now, it is quite difficult to recommend getting a card due to the imminent changes to our card acquisition system. This Spotlight week will feature Strange Supreme alongside Speed, and U.S. Agent. I would recommend that you’ll go for Spotlight only if you are missing at least one of the other cards. If you’re eyeing Strange Supreme alone, consider using tokens or waiting for the upcoming Snap Pack system that will feature Strange Supreme together with all the “What If…?” season cards.