It's that time, when it is perhaps worth starting to look forward to what the next season of Marvel Snap will bring! Before doing so fully however, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the past 2 seasons. Personally, I do not think Zabu was out of line power wise. I did my climb this season fully with Silver Surfer, and it feels to me that Surfer may be a stronger card than Zabu. That said, Darkhawk was the power outlier than slotted into Zabu decks and was quite strong. I do not know what the future holds for s5 cards, but I know a lot of people did not enjoy seeing a strong s5 card on the opponent's side of the board that they felt was out of their reach. I personally did not buy Darkhawk, for what that is worth. Reminder that your season pass will reset, so if you want to get some final rewards, do it before the new season begins!
Also, before we get into the new month's cards and such, friendly reminder that on Jan. 31st, we will see cards downranking, both from s5 to s4 and from s4 to s3. If you missed that information and want to catch up on it (such as which cards are downranking and what to expect), check out this article. On top of that, we are expecting battle mode! Battle mode is the ability to queue vs other players directly - be that for fun, to test out decks, or to participate in a community run tournament! Snap.fan is working on the plans to host such tournament(s), so keep your eyes open for updates here!
Season Pass Perks (from purchasing)
Some of the numbers here are based on the current season rewards~
- Modok - Season Pass card. See below for thoughts!
- Modok Variant - Self explanatory.
- Ant-Man Variant
- Wasp Variant
- 4 Mystery Variants
- 3-4 Avatars
- 1 Card Back
- 300 Credits
- 900 Gold
- 245 Boosters
And using USD as the currency to compare here, but the cost ($10) is identical to the cost of 700 gold from the store. While I will never tell people to go spend their money on a game - you know your situation and life better than an online stranger ever will - if you do want to spend money, season pass is the best place to do it. As I mentioned in this article, I really think that Second Dinner is designing things with the $10 per month player quite high on their priority list. For me personally, it's cheaper than virtually every MMO sub I've used within the past 2 decades of my life and seems quite fair, so long as the rest of the game is going in a direction I'm happy with. I want Second Dinner to have some profits, to be able to pay their employees, and to be able to continue supporting this game. I do plan to buy the season pass!
Series 5 Cards for the Month of February (in no particular order)
- Stature - Black Bolt may be playable?! Moon Knight as well? I like the design of this card, but I have 0 plans to buy it personally. I also don't think it'll be anything crazy. The upside is an efficient card (paired with one that is not, but gives discard disruption)...but not gamebreaking.
- Ghost - I love this card! If you hate Leader, you should also love this card (I like playing against Leader still, haha). I like playing reactively. Initative is good for Aero, Cosmo, and a few other cards...but it's wonderful to have the "final say" on turn-6. Despite liking her, I do not pan to spend tokens on her either. I do think she will be quite strong at some point in time - in the right meta/deck. Is that time now? No clue!
- Kang - This is a very hard card to evaluate. The main gain is knowing when to retreat (or bluff snap perhaps), but this can be hard punished by a Cosmo if the opponent has initiative. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about the specifics and nuance of how Kang will work...but nothing to really do about that except wait! I do not plan to spend tokens on Kang either.
Modok Deck
I think the best deck for Modok will look something like this:
This is clearly a Lockjaw discard/cycling deck. Chavez is included to give more consistency in the first 5 turns on the game, as well as for Dracula. The last slot is most likely to be a 3 mana discarder - Moon Knight for hand disruption, Sword Master for raw power, or Gambit for board disruption. I think Sword Master is the best, but I could be wrong.
It's worth noting that this is not a Modok build-around deck...it's just an already existing deck that he slots solidly into.
The other deck that could theoretically want this is a Hela deck. The issue with Modok in a Hela deck is that we rely very heavily on Invisible Woman (IW) at that point. This is because we need to play Modok begind IW so that he does not discard Hela. Of course, this just invites our opponent to Cosmo that lane, so I think Modok actually makes the Hela deck worse, not better.
At the end of the day, Modok seems far more tame than both Silver Surfer and Zabu. He has a solid home, but I do not see people building around him specifically further than that. Perhaps that's a breath of fresh air? Please share your thoughts in the comments below or on the snap.fan community discord server.