Nico Minoru - Card Preview
Marvel Snap's next card is also one of its most enigmatic. Ever since Nico Minoru was revealed opinion has been divided and speculation has run rampant. Unlike a more straightforward card, like Elsa Bloodstone for example, Nico is one of those cards that we really need to get into our hands and play with before we can make a full determination of her power level and define her suite of use cases. One thing is certain though: she is definitely interesting.
Nico is the exact type of card that you should probably wait until the end of the week to decide on whether or not to pick her up, assuming you're working with limited resources. Let your favorite content creators throw things at the wall and see what sticks. I would only recommend her as a day 1 pickup if you're flush with resources and you are the type of player that loves to deck build, experiment, and innovate.
Let's run though the basics of the card, get some background on the character, and throw some ideas at the wall.
If you're the type of person that gets inspired by Snap to dive into the comic or TV stories of characters, Nico is definitely ideal for that. She's a relatively new character but has a high hit rate for quality.
She was created by comic superstar Brian K. Vaughn for his Runaways series that features a group of teens that find out that their parents are super villains (relatable?). Runaways is a great comic and the Hulu TV series of the same name is massively underrated and has developed a bit of a cult following.
Nico Minoru is the daughter of dark wizards. Second Dinner really did a great job capturing her flavor with her ability: She wields a badass staff called the Staff of One. She can only use the staff of One to cast a spell one time. She has to come up with a new spell off the top of her head each time. Second Dinner couldn't give us an infinite number of spells, but they get close to the feel of the staff of One by giving us seven unique spells that we can use.
The Card
Let's take a look at how strong each spell is individually, as well as look at primary synergies for each of the spells.
1)
This spell is nuts. This is the best spell by a wide margin, likely what makes Nico playable, and may become an instant snap when it times up perfectly for you.
This is a good effect for any deck, but it's especially powerful for combo-centric decks where we are relying on seeing certain cards. In a normal game of Marvel Snap you see 9 out of the 12 cards in our deck. There are a lot of ways that decks are built to dig deeper than 9. America Chavez, Iron Lad, and Jubilee are all popular options to see more of your deck. Chavez is a big enough boost to consistency that she is one of the most played cards in the game.
This spell from Nico allows us to see a staggering 11/12 cards from our deck on its own! This spell could be the straw that breaks the camel's back on a Chavez rework, since the two together can let us see all 12 cards in our deck with some frequency. That's not even considering that the destruction trigger can be an advantage as well. This spell can help combo decks as well as destroy decks (or decks that are both!)
2)
If you've ever popped off on cloning vats you know how powerful this effect can be.
3)
Moving into a closed off location can be quite strong, but movement in general is just a sneaky powerful effect (see expectations for Jeff and Space Stone compared to their actual power level as an example). Also, this is the first movement effect in the game that can explicitly only go right. We finally have a right-handed Iron Fist.
4)
This is the same effect as Forge, a card that currently sees quite a bit of play, but has an extra power built in. It is effectively a 1/4, which is pretty strong, but it places that extra power in places where we can abuse it.
5)
This may not seem powerful on the surface, the ability to turn anything into a 1/6 with no downside is incredibly strong if used on something with low power that has a strong effect otherwise. This is a spell with high potential.
6)
If you are thinking "well, this one is weak, it's just Scarlet Witch," remember it's half the cost. How many two drops would be a lot more powerful for one less energy. In fact, Scarlet Witch was a 1/2 way back in the beta and was changed because she was "a bit too good at working around location selections." Also, the lesson we all should have learned from Legion and Snowguard is that since locations are one of the main sources of randomness in Marvel Snap, effects that can tilt location variance in our favor are quite strong.
7)
While Nico doesn't really have a bad spell, I think this is the weakest spell. Doubling a 1/2 to a 1/4 is underwhelming. However, the next card should reveal and resolve and Nico will double afterwards. Doubling effects are notoriously abusable in Snap, and there are a few ways we can make a sufficiently large Nico.
ScoSco’s Day 1 Nico Minoru Decks
Here are a few deck lists to try with Nico on day 1. I imagine these will be merely starting points, even more than usual with a new card, due to how hard to evaluate Nico is.
The plan is simple. Get way ahead and keep priority. Play Alioth. This deck will undoubtedly be strong right out of the box. Whether it's an improvement or not to a deck that is already tier 1 remains to be seen.
If Wave and affliction decks aren't too prevalent this deck could easily become a strong performer. We can swap in Luke Cage or Mobius if they are (maybe over Nightcrawler or Forge?).
This is the first list I'm planning to try. Nico might be the perfect card to push this deck to the top of the metagame.
It is possible that Nico's Spells are just good enough to make her a great low curve card that can be included in a variety of "good cards" decks.
This deck takes advantage of some of Nico's more overlooked spells. In particular her Double Power and Demon spells have strong synergies here. As a combo deck, Destroy and Draw is obviously also helpful.
Turning Shanna into a buffed Demon sounds fun! Elektra, Squirrel Girl, and Storm are also excellent Demon spell targets.
Simple: Make one large card (Kitty, Nico, Vision, or Red Skull) and copy its power with Taskmaster.
Closing Thoughts
While I do think Nico is interesting, I think there's just not enough consistent synergy for her to be a day 1 purchase, though she could just become a kind of generic "good card" inclusion in decks. She has good synergy with Destroy and some with Move. She could find an immediate home in Cerebro 2 and Bounce. Her best home is probably with Phoenix Force, which I do think has a chance to develop into a tier one deck because it's already on the rise. However, that's still speculative and not a sure thing. My suggestion is to wait until the end of the week to decide on Nico, unless you're just itching to experiment with her.
Nico is featured in this week's spotlight caches alongside fellow series 5 cards, Kitty Pryde, and Phoenix Force. We previously had Man-Thing alongside Lady Deathstrike who pair well together. Now we have Phoenix Force, which seems like it will work great with Nico. It seems Second Dinner is considering synergy when choosing what cards to put into caches together. Nico's spotlight variant is awesome, as is the Kitty Pryde. The Dan Hipp Phoenix Force is great, but seeing a Dan Hipp variant in spotlight caches shows that Second Dinner is still behind on supply of art for the spotlight cache system. If you are missing Kitty Pryde, this week is a great one to open spotlight caches. Otherwise you will probably want to wait a few days to see how strong Nico is and if her best partner is Phoenix Force.
