Our intrepid miners have been hard at work in the Mines of Data extracting the purest and shiniest information for you. They've uncovered a ton of cool new characters and designs. We'll go through who they are and review their Snap abilities! Are you ready for the robot invasion? What about the zombie apocalypse?
Robot Season!
Most of the new data-mined assets relate to robot, android, or otherwise synthetic life forms! It looks like September is going to be robot season! Check out all these cool “real” boys and girls.
Viv Vision - Season Pass 9/02
Viv Vision first appeared in Tom King’s stellar Vision series from 2015 as the “daughter” Vision creates in an attempt to more fully experience humanity. It's probably my favorite modern comic book, so I'm definitely excited to grab Viv!
Viv Vision has been in the data files for a long time, so she clearly has fans at Second Dinner—enough that she's going to be the centerpiece of this synthetic life form season as the Season Pass card. Her text has changed from older data-mines to: “End of Turn: Give each card in your hand +1 Power if you’re winning here. Otherwise, move this to another location.” She seems both strong and fun. Hand buff is already a presence in the game, but this could push that strategy into a higher echelon of competitiveness. The best targets for Viv are going to be Mysterio, Sebastian Shaw, and other buff payoffs like those.
Moira X - Series 5 - 09/02
Moira X is scheduled to come out the same day as Viv, so it appears she will be the first weekly card available in the robot season, despite being the least robot-y character on this list. Moira MacTaggart has been around since Uncanny X-Men #96 in the ‘70s, but she was the central character in Jonathan Hickman's House of X/Powers of X set of intertwined stories that kicked off the Krakoa era. It was an incredibly ambitious and compelling start to an unorthodox status quo for the X-Men. The general consensus is that Moira’s storyline didn't have the payoff that the setup promised with her later heel turn into a cybernetic villain that joined up with malicious AI.
Her Snap ability is a reference to her mutant power: when Moira dies, she is reborn in a new timeline where she can make different choices in an attempt to reshape the future (let's hope Mister Sinister doesn't get a hold of this technology!). At 1/2 she will slot easily into Destroy decks as a powerful way to get more copies of Death or more copies of your destruction triggers like Venom and Carnage. The combo potential here is sky high and this is the strongest card of the newly discovered bunch.
Sparky - LTM 09/02
Sparky is Viv and the Visions’ pet canine Synthezoid. He's clearly designed to work with Viv, but hopefully he'll see more play in move decks to bounce cards like Vulture, Dagger, and Human Torch around. Sparky’s ability will be incredibly strong in move decks and Activate allows you to time it in a way to make your move payoffs get crazy tall!
Sparky is listed as an LTM card, but with the date set for the same day as the start of the season and his connection to Viv Vision, I'm wondering if he could be part of the September Super Premium Season Pass.
Bastion - Series 5 - 09/09
Bastion was one of the breakout characters of X-Men ‘97 and played a major role in late 90s and early 2000s X-Men comics. He's an amalgamation of Nimrod and Master Mold whose purpose is to destroy all mutants. He transforms humans into Prime Sentinels, which accounts for his Snap ability. I'm imagining the little 2/3s he sends back to your hand having a cool nanobot Sentinel transformation animation.
What are the ideal targets for Bastion? Because Bastion is a 4/5, we'll want cheap, low-power cards so that we still have time to play them out and have them feel worth it at 2/3. Victoria Hand seems like both a good target and the best partner. We could clone little cards like Ant-Man or Pym Arrow, or 3-Costs like Captain Carter, Brood, and Sage. I believe he will work well in a Victoria Hand/Quinjet style deck.
Jim Hammond - Series 5 - 09/16
Surely this one's not a robot, that's the Human Torch! Think again! The original Human Torch was an android created by Phineas Horton! He's one of Marvel's Golden Age heroes and he'll be the second oldest character in Marvel Snap after Namor, but before Captain America and Bucky! You definitely can't claim Second Dinner has recency bias when it comes to which new characters to add anymore!
At 1/1 we can get him down early. There are quite a few cards in Snap now that give you extra energy all across the curve. We've got options like Psylocke, Jennifer Kale, Luna Snow, and Wiccan. In fact, I'm planning to try him in a Wiccan deck first.
Warlock - Series 5 - 09/23
This isn't Adam Warlock, this is Warlock, the techno-organic alien from Kvch! He was first introduced in one of my favorite 80s comic runs, the New Mutants! This season is packed with personal favorite characters of mine!
His ability is a bit reminiscent of Jim Hammond’s above, but hopefully they'll exist in different packages. Because Warlock is an Activate, you can time him for when he'll be most effective. The obvious idea is to activate him the same turn you full skip. Suddenly, you can play out She-Hulks and Infinauts and more on top! At 3-Cost he fits pretty well into a Moon Girl, skip sequence.
Jocasta - Series 5 - 09/30
We got Ultron and Infinity Ultron, now we're getting Ultron's bride Jocasta! Ultron created Jocasta and, just as he was created using the brainwaves of Hank Pym, Jocasta was created with Janet Van Dyne’s brain patterns. She turned out to be a lot less evil than her creator and has even been an Avenger!
As for her Snap ability, it's nice to see another card interact with the Activate mechanic. She is a little awkward being 3/3 and an Activate herself, but she finally opens up the possibility to play Activate cards down on the final turn and still have them pay off by using Jocasta to set them off. She should provide increased consistency to other Activate cards.
Series 4 Bots
The above cards are all the ones we have dates for. The ones below are all tagged as Series 4 so they'll presumably be released at the beginning of the season or in LTMs sometime during the season.
Awesome Andy - Series 4
A creation of the Mad Thinker, Awesome Andy the Android has been around since the 60s, but his star turn came in Dan Slott’s 2004 She-Hulk series (which is delightful, and largely the inspiration for the Disney+ show).
Mined as a 2/1, Awesome Andy might be one of Jocasta’s payoffs. Only playing out as an effective 2/5 barring any additional scaling from cards like Sebastian Shaw or Beta Ray Bill, Andy feels a little underpowered to me. They could remove “other” so he buffs three cards, or they could make him grant +3 power.
Danger - Series 4
We kind of already have this character in the game. Danger is the Danger Room in physical, anthropomorphic form! Danger debuted in and plays a major role in the 2005 Astonishing X-Men series that I talked about here and went on to be quite a compelling and sympathetic character as the warden of the X-Brig in the Utopia era.
In Snap, Danger provides a new way to destroy opposing cards. She can be boosted with something like Forge or Shuri to increase her destructive capabilities. 4 is an awkward cost for Activate cards, and, while I'm hoping she can make an impact as an alternative to Shang Chi, I don't see it happening with her current 4/6 stats. Still, she could be fun in a Fenris package or as a way to destroy Ongoing cards through Cosmo.
Karima Shapandar - Series 4
Karima Shapandar, a.k.a. the Omega Sentinel, is one of the humans that Bastion transformed into a Prime Sentinel. Karima has had a rough go of it, having been infected by nanobots, possessed by Malice, infected by Arkea, and having her mind overwritten by an alternate future version of herself.
At 4/3 with a whopping -7 Affliction, could she fill the role of an alternative or supplemental Shang Chi? If I were playing an Affliction deck that had Shang in it, I'd take a hard look at Karima as a replacement. She could be very powerful against decks that duck Shang and will be a solid, meta-dependant tech card.
Super Adaptoid - Series 4
Super Adaptoid is an A.I.M. android with a shard of a cosmic cube inside him who can mimic the abilities and appearance of up to 8 super beings at once.
3/5 is a solid stat line, but Super Adaptoid’s utility will be directly tied to how prevalent Activate abilities become. Keep in mind, even if you steal an opposing Activate ability, you need to have time to deploy it. This is the kind of card you tuck away for a rainy day. If there's ever a meta tyrant that relies on an Activate, Super Adaptoid can swoop in. It seems awfully niche, but the point of these series 4 dumps is to release some niche cards like this.
Zombie October!
Finally we're getting a real spooky season! We don't have many details, but the files have been flooded with a horde of Zombie characters. Personally, I'm hoping these are all clever, warped twists on the existing cards they're Zombifications of. The fact that we're getting Zombie Giant Man instead of Zombie Ant-Man makes me think this is exactly what they're doing. It could get a little weird with Luke Cage, but that they labeled him Zombie Power Man instead of Zombie Luke Cage may indicate he fiddles with power or affliction in some way.
Side note: Steve Rogers was referred to as Colonel America in Marvel Zombies, so that is likely another Zombie-related card. We also have “the Hunger” virus data-mined as a card, so maybe this is a way to infect the existing characters and transform them into their Zombie counterparts! Or perhaps the Hunger just makes the Zombie Horde! Headpool also seems like a fun way to round out a Zombie season.
Future Seasons
That's all the info we have based on card assets, but titles are always a fun trail to follow for future season content. There are quite a few dragon themed titles so a season with Fin Fang Foom, Lockheed, and Dragon Man could be coming! These three dragons all have clear references, but to fill out an entire Dragon Season you'd need to include a few more obscure dragons. Jubilee's son Shogo would be a great inclusion. I would love to see a season titled “Young Dragons in Love.
Eagle-eyed readers also noticed a plethora of music references in last month's patch to go along with a couple more this month. A music season seems like a strange theme, but it would definitely include Spider-Punk Hobie Brown as a centerpiece. There certainly seem to be references to Lila Cheney, and I’d lose my mind if we actually got a Lila Cheney card. I'm having trouble thinking of other musicians we don't have already given that we already have Dazzler and Luna Snow. Maybe Rick Jones? Could they shoehorn Siryn in here? It's also possible there is some other reason for all the music related stuff like a game mode, event, celebration, or cross-promotion.
Final Thoughts
This data-mine brought in a lot of my favorite characters from a lot of my favorite comic storylines. I know people are feeling a bit down on Snap the wake of the Kid Omega Fiasco, but we've been given some nice little nuggets to look forward to. Hopefully Second Dinner’s Fall decisions will prove better than their Summer ones and we can actually acquire these cards in a reasonable way. The card mechanics and abilities seem really cool and reasonably well-balanced, so I'm excited to theory-craft and build with these cards.