Hey everyone! It’s a brand new year, and I bet the first thing you are wondering is where are we going to find our new cards? Well, instead of searching for cards from the science fiction of the future, we are diving into the mythical traditions of the past. We’ve got a legendary season ahead for us, so let’s watch in awe as we rate all the new cards coming in the Dragons Season of Marvel Snap. Remember, I like my card ratings like I like my Marvel Snap games. Fast! Snappy!
Every once in a while, they make a card that completely warps the meta game around it. It’s the card to beat, while also being the card you want to be playing. Shou-Lao is that card. The introduction of Skill cards has made playing multiple cards per turn as trivial as ever. Merlin itself will be able to generate a 1-Cost Skill for you every turn. Not only will this scale Shou-Lao’s ability, but you’ll still get the intended value of the skill you are playing. You can also dip into classic card combos like Kitty Pryde/Hope Summers to keep yourself Energy neutral while stacking up buffs for Shou-Lao.
The best use cases for Shou-Lao will be cards that can use its buffed power in a multiplicative way. For example, if the card you played before Shou-Lao is Maverick, then Maverick can pass along those same buffs through his Activate ability on a later turn. Similarly, if Shou-Lao buffs Captain Carter, she can, in turn, buff her whole back row with those same buffs. These are just two examples; I’m sure it won’t take long for us to figure out the optimal targets for Shou-Lao. I expect Shou-Lao will be the terror of the Snowball Showdown this Saturday!
This one is a struggle for me to evaluate. Not because I’m torn on whether it’s good or not, but because I don’t understand what Dragon of the Moon was made for. In the realm of “3-Cost On Reveal that scales,” we have cards like Cassandra Nova and Sage. Is Dragon of the Moon able to compete in this space? Let’s do a quick comparison. Playing Cassandra Nova on Turn3 gets you a 3/6 with the potential of being an effective 3/9 if they play the cards they draw every turn, since those cards are 1 Power weaker. While this might not sound that impressive, Cassandra’s real strength comes from being a tech card for Arishem or Thanos decks, where she gets considerably more power. Dragon of the Moon doesn’t have that same use case since a hand is hard-capped at 7 cards total.
Some synergies make this card slightly more playable. The newly buffed Master Mold puts two Sentinels into their hand. Black Widow also gives them a 0-Cost card to steal from. Maximus makes them draw more of their deck, but you’ll find that giving your opponent more options, even if you are reducing their power, helps them out more often than it hurts them.
This cute little guy is finally in Snap, and I’m excited for it! It’s got a wonderfully synergistic design with Kitty Pryde, which comics fans will appreciate. Things to note about Lockheed: you don’t have to play the 1-Cost in the same location as Lockheed itself. He’s more like Thena than Angela in that respect. It does, however, afflict a card in the location that Lockheed is in. So you can set up some situations where you are contesting two locations. You can also trigger Lockheed with Skill cards, not just characters. This makes Merlin and Prowler excellent partners since they can give you multiple ways to fulfill this condition. While I’m excited for him, I have to temper it down a bit. Like all cards that afflict, Lockheed will live or die based on how meta Luke Cage is. A single card from your opponent can wipe away all your work, so just be aware of that.
This little card seems innocent, but I believe it will find itself a potent piece of the puzzle. Board spaces are becoming more and more premium, and Skills have been a great addition to deck building in order to circumvent that issue. Cards that can multiply small buffs are becoming more common. I previously mentioned Maverick, but also common cards like Deadpool work great with this.
On the other side of this card are the big guys. Being able to reduce the cost of a card, especially one that your opponent doesn’t know about, means you can play for location in unexpected ways. It’s the difference between playing one card they were expecting and two cards they weren’t. Not to mention some cards that drastically change their effectiveness if they can be played a turn earlier. An example of this is Galactus. Imagine getting to drop a 5/8 Galactus!
I’m weirdly into this guy. Being able to cheat Energy has often been found to be a winning strategy in Snap. The main issue with Dragon Lord is that it is in no way targeted. You are leaving yourself up to the mercy of randomness to get value out of this card. You can curate it a little. Dracula Dump strategies involve reducing your hand down to 1 or 2 targets. Dragon Lord fits into that type of strategy. The card I want to compare this most to is Jubilee. Jubilee offers some better advantages in deck thinning, but Dragon Lord lets you make a pseudo-plan since you can see the available options it can pull down.
Dragon Lord is not an example of a great version of this ability, but he represents a critical mass. The more versions of playing a card for free we get, the more it compounds against your opponent.
Something about Lin Lie compels me, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. The trick is going to be getting both Lin Lie and the Sword in the same location, without taking up too many board slots. I’ve seen a bunch of suggestions for Ghost-Spider with this, but that will take up 3 spaces in a location and only offer 14 Power. I’m more interested in finding other ways to get them together. Madame Web will let you freely move either of them without being in the lane herself. You could also use Beast or Toxin to bounce the Sword back to your hand and play it directly on Lin Lie on the final turn. What interests me with this card is the potential to abuse this +7 Power. What if we can double it with Moonstone or Onslaught? Or copy the Sword with Mystique or Prodigy? Lin Lie offers you the chance for a lot of power, and unlike a card like Thor, you don’t have to hope you draw the other half.
Remember, we talked about cards that cause the meta game to revolve around them? Well, we are getting a second one in a single season. Fin Fang Foom is a monster of a card! Definitely worthy of being a 7-Cost card. The best strategy surrounding this card is to cheat it by spending as little Energy as possible. At this point, a lot of talk around this card involves Hela. In a Hela deck, you can discard this easily and then revive it with either Hela or Ghost Rider. Being a 7-Cost means this can be revived alongside Infinaut. The point ceiling of Hela just got higher.
Fin Fang Foom isn’t just a Hela card, but I believe it to be a “Win 1 Location” card. We sometimes see decks forming around “scamming” a singular location. An example of this would be Cannonball combined with Mercury to destroy the largest enemy card. Fin Fang Foom falls into this category by virtue of being really, really large. Imagine a situation where you don’t have priority. If you then play Fin Fang Foom into a lane where there are only front row cards, you will always win, because he gains that same amount of power. It doesn’t matter if it’s a 1000+ Power Man-Spider. The trick here will be finding the appropriate partner to secure the win. Perhaps this will be Professor X’s time to rise again?
Shang Chi, Master of the Rings, is the type of card where I’m more enthused by the design implications than the actual card. This version of Shang Chi works by giving you a card you will always start the game with, but requires you to draw and play Shang Chi to make the created card worth using, like an inverse Thor and Mjolnir. The payoff, however, doesn’t seem very rewarding. Instead of highly buffing one thing, you are spreading power among multiple cards in the same lane. To take full advantage of the Upgraded Ten Rings, you need to fill up a location with as many buff targets as possible. This, unfortunately, leaves you vulnerable to interaction. I’d probably be more excited about Shang-Chi if the Rings did something more interesting, but I could easily be undervaluing their output.
So how did I do? For more detailed analysis on each card, be sure to check out our new card previews coming out at the beginning of each week, all month long, such as our card preview for Shao-Lao & Dragon of the Moon!
This is also your chance for your ratings and comments to make it into this month’s Snapcheck! Snapcheck will be coming out this Friday. We would love to see all your comments and ratings on the new cards! I’ll be picking 10 commented ratings to feature on Snapcheck, but I will be taking the average score from every comment, so be sure to leave your thoughts down below!