"You're not going any further in - as a matter of fact you're not going anywhere at all. Consider this a dead end!" - Lady Deathstrike
Divisive? Absolutely. Bad? No.
Lady Deathstrike is the ultimate definition of a 'niche' card in Marvel Snap. While on the forefront, she is a low-power card, and her effect can be quite devastating in multiple scenarios. When coupled with a few ramping or buff options in the right archetypes, she's seeing success! Today, we look at 5 unique ways to use her to help YOU decide if she's worth your Spotlight Caches or 6,000 Collector's Tokens.
As new cards and new decks come out on Day One, I compile a few select decks from the Snap.fan community that I think are worth showcasing and are worthy of much more playing and/or testing for Day Two. If you'd like your deck showcased, just build one here in the Snap.fan Deck Builder! After 24 hours, I go through play rates, win rates, cube rates, successful synergies, unique synergies, online content and more and pick out five decks that I think are worth talking more about here in our Deck Showcase.
With that said, here are five decks I think are worth highlighting after 24-hours of Lady Deathstrike:
#5 - Lady & The Ramp - Drewberry
Layering our Lady into a ramp model may not be a primary win condition, but in a COnquest format makes tremendous sense. By showing a ramp line off attack within Shuri -> Black Panther -> Arnim Zola, you give another solid option for Black Panther by including Lady Deathstrike. Mix that in with the possibility that Ironlad could pull her ability via his or by duplicating her ability on turn 6 with Absorbing Man and you have now multiple outs to pulling off 2 or even three Lady Deathstrike mechanics on the battlefield. This is a solid mix of ramp + destroy that I recommend all our Black Panther enthusiasts try out.
#4 - Buff Lady 2.0 - Dmoney
The appearance of Lady Deathstrike in the Big in Japan season is not a coincidence. Both in sotryline and mechanic, these cards are well-connected. By having Lady Deathstrike destroy the Muramasa Shard, these two cards feed benefit off of eachother. Now, mix that back in with the Absorbing Man/Ironlad package we saw in the previous deck and sprinkle in some Zabu-meta control pieces like Shang-Chi and Captain Marvel and you've got a great way to use the last two weekly featured cards in Marvel Snap.
#3 - Lady Thanos - Revis
Destroy Thanos has been making a plash as of recent in the Marvel Snap competitive scene.
Thanos' stones are perfect fodder for Lady Deathstrike to free up board space while simultaneously lowering the cost of Death. The perk here for Lady Deathstrike versus our normal destroy mechanics is that she will hit the 0, 1 & 2 power cards on the opponents side as well. So pairing her attack in a Soul Stone lane buffs that ability +1 more without the need for ramp options like Shuri, Hulkbuster or Forge. I expect this variation to appear in some capactiy in the Tournament scene in the upcoming weeks.
#2 - Lady Negative - Cozy Snap
You say a Cost higher than their power...we say Negative that thing ASAP. Coupled with the recent change to Jane Foster, Cozy Snap has taken the Jane Negative to a destructive level with the inclusion of Lady Deathstrike. While it is very easy to misplay, with a few games under your belt on this negative archetype, you'll easily begin to evolve into the win conditions of how to build into a lane without worrying about Lady Deathstrike "undoing" what you have already started to lay out. If mastered, it is a great 8-cube deck in ranked mode.
#1 - Deathstrike C3 - Alex Coccia
To answer the thumbnail's question...yes. She is good IF you can ramp her easily. The nice thing about a Cerebro-3 build for her is that it can be built as early as three turns before her actual play. So, this gives more flexibility to how and when she gets dropped onto the battlefield. The secret sauce of Jean Grey and Shadow King in this deck make it incredibly difficult to navigate around and will be an easy deck to control your opponents with. But the reason that this deck makes number 1 in my eyes is because of the perfect parallel card being paired in here along side her in that 5-cost slot: Valkyrie.
I think Valk is a perfect pairing to be a top-end partner in a Lady Deathstrike deck. The power control in here is stellar and still allows for a potential 7-power Lady Deathstrike to drop at any moment. She is a great win condition to help control those pesky Patriots, Ironmen & Draculas and I invite this deck variation to be a potential best Cerebro-3 contender while simultaneously being my top pick for Lady Deathstrike use in Marvel Snap.