The Ancient One is a powerful, wise, mysterious, and enigmatic sorcerer, best known as the Sorcerer Supreme and mentor to Doctor Strange. They protect Earth from magical and interdimensional threats. In the comics, the Ancient One is usually portrayed as an elderly man, while in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the character appears as a Celtic woman. This difference can be chalked up to multiversal quirks, or perhaps the Ancient One is simply a title passed from one bearer to the next. Regardless of identity, the Ancient One is always dedicated to guiding new sorcerers and preserving the balance of the universe.
We Love Casting Spells
The Ancient One arrives as a unique Ongoing synergistic card. She is a 3-Cost, 5-Power card with an On Reveal ability that adds a Tao Mandala to your hand. And believe me, all of her ancient wisdom is poured into that Mandala.
Now this is an interesting spell. It's On Reveal ability copies the text of one of your Ongoing cards at this location onto your other character cards. Just to be clear, cards affected by Tao Mandal lose their original text and gain the new Ongoing one. No double dipping. What Tao Mandala excels at is giving new life to “spent” cards, like Activate and On Reveal cards after their effects have been triggered already.
Now, the best way to use it is to set up a location with a single powerful Ongoing card and two other cards without an Ongoing effect. This way, you grant the powerful effect to your other two cards. Seems simple enough. Let’s try finding some—
Tao Mandala Targets
We all know how powerful Ongoing cards can be, but you can’t simply cast Tao Mandala on Iron Man and call it a day. While it’s tempting to dream of using Tao Mandala to copy a game-breaking Ongoing effect, however, I believe that copying cheap Ongoing cards to build an overwhelming advantage could be its real strength.
Consider this curve: play Ravonna on turn 2, The Ancient One on turn 3, then a 1-Cost card along with Tao Mandala on turn 4. This sequence gives you a -3 Cost bonus to every card with 1 or less Power. With Iron Man, Mystique, and even Gorr in your hand, your opponent may find retreating to be their best option.
RavonnaRennslayer
This approach isn’t limited to Ravonna. Many cheap Ongoing cards pair beautifully with the Mandala. One of my personal favorites is Victoria Hand. Here are a few other cheap cards that synergize perfectly with our Mandala:
I’m not a fan of 3-Drops with the Ancient one due to how wonky the energy curve will get. However, Captain Carter is so powerful that perhaps there is a version of Silver Surfer that could make her work with The Ancient One. Speed is another possibility for the Mandala but he isn’t as powerful as Captain Carter but it would be another consistency piece. It goes without saying that Sera would be extremely necessary in this Silver Surfer list.
Now, for a spicier line of play — enter Cerebro. With the newly empowered Cerebro, you can explore the idea of a Cerebro 5 deck, using the Mandala to duplicate Cerebro’s Ongoing effect across the board. It’s a bold strategy, but one well worth testing.
The realm of 4 and above has some serious heavy hitters for the Mandala to spread around. We can get some extra power from Kazar’s honest buff or Ms Marvels’ conditional extra boost. Wong is a crazy powerful card with just Mystique, imagine with the Mandala. But the one that I’m crazy about is Moonstone. You could pull off some crazy combos with the Mandala by getting Moonstone and two cheap cards on a location. I don’t exactly know which would be the best card to finish the set of cards on that location but it would be duplicated so many times by the Pseudo-Moonstones if the costs are appropriate.
Before moving on, there is another card that could work even though it isn't an ongoing card by itself. Doctor Doom 2099 makes Doombots that have a nice piece of Ongoing text for you to copy with the Mandala. I don’t think it would be that great since those cards won’t get to be proper Doom Bots so they won’t get buffed.
To finish this quest, the 5-Costed cards is the upper echelon of cards to copy with the Mandala on a regular game of Snap. You could focus on powerhouses like Iron-Man, Ronan, Devil Dinosaur, or even DarkHawk but to me, there is only one clear winner here. Blue Marvel is the card to copy with the Mandala. Don’t get me wrong, those other 5-Costed guys are quite powerful but unless you’re playing a Nexus game, Winning another location will be quite difficult when spending your 5th and half of your 6th turn on a single location. With Blue Marvel’s text, every location is affected, meaning that winning more than one location will be easier than with the other 5-Drops.
Small Print on the Spellbook
The Ancient One and her Tao Mandala are truly a force to be reckoned with but I must warn you that she is one of the most counterable cards ever. From the villain Enchantress stripping away your precious Ongoing to even some funky displacement from cards such as Juggernaut. Be very cautious when relying on your Mandala to assure your victory. Be careful against decks that usually run these cards:
Dualgloves's Day One The Ancient One Decks
Yellow Hand
I’m always making less than competitive decks so I’m starting things up with a real menace. This list has so many good cards that it would make any nom meta chaser complain. Try to use Ancient one’s Mandala to get more Victorias for an easy win or Quinjet for some crazy energy economy. This deck is a midrange deck through and through so I placed Merlin here to make more cards for us and to make sure we never lose to Storm or Magik.
Three Wizards is a Balanced Party
I want to cast spells and play Zoo, good thing I’m full of Spells! We got some crazy powerful Ongoings for Tao Mandala to replicate and we won’t be sad for not drawing it since the deck is actually great. The deck plays like a regular Zoo, fill location, buff your cards and win. This deck has no tech except for a couple of random spells so you're going to be good at handling your points in order to win.
Magical Fireworks
Let’s see if we can bring back Patriot into the mix.This deck will require some might finessing because on those games where Patriot is the star of the show. You’ll need to coordinate quite well to not use Tao Mandala in the wrong location and give an Ongoing effect to your cards and remove Patriot’s buff from them. Try to play Jennifer Kale or Luna snow to haste your Sera and to get further ahead than your opponent. Oh don’t forget that you can Use Tao Mandala On Luna Snow and her Ice Cube!
AncientBro
Another classic with a new twist. Let's see if we can rely on Tao Mandala to replicate Cerebro’s Effect, giving every card on our side of the field a whopping +9 power. With all the different buffs and nerfs that happen, this list becomes obsolete incredibly fast. I was planning on slotting in Omega red but now he has 6 power and he is out of the picture. This deck is not technical in any way, all Cerebro decks demand that you draw Cerebro, if you can’t, you basically lost.
Full Power!c
Let’s slot in all the ongoing cards and win big. Enchantress doesn't exist and if she did, Cosmo will 100% of the time save you. We have so many great effects here to replicate that the Tao Mandala will fit like a glove here. Don’t forget that you can always use your shield as a target for the Mandala, if you Have Samuel on the field it gets even better as the new Ongoing effect can freely move through the field.
Negative without Mr Negative
Inspired by Mr Negative decks. The idea here is to use your Mandal for some absurd stuff, be it to discount your powerhouses with the Mandala, three Wongs on the field or even copies of copies of Iron Man. Moonstone is practically your second Mandala so use her well when The Ancient One is just chilling at the bottom of your deck.
Variants
Happy colorful anime or serious with a magical hand fan?
Final Thoughts
The Ancient One is a difficult card to figure out. She has obvious synergies but her perfect 12 will be the result of some serious testing. However, I truly like the card, Like I mentioned a while back, I love unique cards and she is just that. No other card in the game can quite do what she does and that is a huge win for her. However, she is another narrower card. She will only be featured on lists featuring a large amount of Ongoing cards. So if you don’t particularly like Ongoing, I would skip this one. But please, let me know what you think! Is she going to be a great card? Have you got any crazy strategy for her? Did my lists help you in any way? Let me know in the comments!
Extra News
Our dutiful dataminers managed to dig deeper this week and we finally “struck gold” with the Season Pass for the Fantastic 4 Season. Go take a look right here.
Patch Notes
New Client (41.11)
- A new build with new systems is expected by June 12 that will consist of back end udates.
New Web Shop
This is an all new web shop where you’ll be able to purchase Season Passes, Gold Passes, exclusive bundles, claim rewards, and earn bonus rewards along the Web Shop Milestone track just as you could before.
To celebrate the launch of this new Web Shop we’ll be offering some fantastic deals and rewards just for checking it out.
Starting today, head to the Web Shop to earn a FREE bundle using the code WEBLAUNCH
- Redeem for (1) Premium Mystery Variant & (1) Premium Mystery Border
- Just log in with your Apple or Google account (no payment info required)
- Valid for 28 days after launch
Head to the Web Shop every day to earn a Daily Claim of 200 Credits during launch month!
- Starting 28 days after launch, the Daily Claim will change to 100 Credits per day.
- We know the “Galactus Spin” was a favorite feature on the old web shop and we're actively working on building something similar for the new Web Shop!
- The Web Shop Milestone Track is back in business! Some say it’s the best place to spend in Marvel Snap because you get Web Points for every purchase earning you bonus rewards.
Launch Loot Bundle - $4.99:
- 1,500 Gold
- 1 Premium Mystery Border
- Valid for 28 days after launch
Launch Celebration Supreme - $99.99
- 15,000 Credits
- 6,000 Gold
- 3x 155 Random Boosters
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Web Shop Celebration - $2.99
- Exclusive Iron Man Variant
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- 155 Iron Man Boosters
Here is the link to the shop.