Off the back of a season looking ahead to the future, we now move into one about a classic: a Zombie Invasion! The undead have taken over Marvel Snap and they bring with them a new keyword. The Horde keyword will start by giving you a Zombie Horde and then subsequent triggers will feed and grow that Horde. The Zombie Horde is slowly approaching, so we’ll have to move quickly, just like how I like my Marvel Snap games. Fast! Snappy!
Everything hinges on this card!
Great build around for the new mechanic
Bold prediction: the Horde mechanic lives or dies with this card. This is the engine for any Horde strategy. Being able to gain value from doing something you already wanted to do (play cards) is huge, especially in a game like Marvel Snap with limited turns. If your goal is to be getting a big Horde to win one lane, or just looking for spreading points in general, then you’re going to want to give Zombie Scarlet Witch a good look.
Her playstyle will demand cards like Kitty Pryde or Silk. You’re going to want cards that you can play into the Zombie Scarlet Witch lane that have a built in way to leave that lane, so that you aren’t actively clogging yourself up. Older snap players will recognize this as the “Silky Smooth” deck from back when Angela used to be a 2 cost card that got +2 Power each time a card was played on it. Perhaps this strategy can return?
A new partner for Deadpool
The cheap Cost is perfect for fitting in curve
The latest tool for Destroy decks! Now this in no way replaces Deadpool but I believe it works in concert with him. As another 1-Cost he fits into your curves on turns with a destroy enabler such as Deathlok or Venom alongside the extra energy you pick up from X-23. This lets you destroy both Headpool and Deadpool which will let you double up on the buffs he grants. He can also be used with a card like Agony, who can “store” the buffs in your hand for when you draw Deadpool later than usual.
The other aspect about Headpool that I find interesting is the hidden information he offers Destroy. For a long time now, Destroy has been a “face up” type of points deck. You can math out the expected output of your opponent’s final turn pretty easily since all the buffs they give are either on board or are in the form of a 0-Cost Death. By buffing the cards in your hand, Headpool creates a dynamic where your opponent can no longer do this. They will have no idea if the Death in your hand has 12 or even 16 Power. Not to mention you could just play a bunch of your smaller cost stuff on the final turn with a few extra points of power they weren’t expecting.
Ongoing buff meets Discard
A merging of two playstyles that haven’t intersected before
Colonel America is the type of card I would have loved when I first started playing. He fits nicely into that classic Discard deck, where your turn 6 is playing a big guy and then a bunch of 0-Cost Swarms. Colonel America would boost those Swarms up dramatically. The only issue is this deck doesn’t really exist like this anymore. More modern takes on Discard don’t play out the Swarms but use them as fodder for Bullseye.
He wants you to both discard frequently while also having resources to fill a lane. It’s a weird ask, but can be fulfilled with cards that are discarded but don’t stay discarded like Proxima Midnight or X-23. That being said, he offers a bunch of points! I’m interested in seeing if Colonel America can be figured out.
Can this be anything more than an Agatha card
Is it even good at doing that?
This one is a rough one to talk about. There isn’t much to be excited about here. The one thing it has going for it is that it’s a “set it and forget it” type of card. Zombie Power Man will discard a card every turn for you, unless of course your opponent goes out of her way to stop it. My question is “do you want to discard something every turn?” What deck benefits from this? Hela perhaps, but what if you are forced to discard her?
There’s also the whole right card vs left card thing. Discarding the left card means you will always hit Agatha, but after that you won’t be able to control what gets hit unless you are constantly playing those cards out. Would Zombie Power Man be better if it was like most other cards and hit the right card? It would certainly make discarding Swarm, Apocalypse, or Khonshu easier.
Putting the Big in Big Power
Certainly designed to be the Horde finisher!
Zombie Giant-Man is meant to be the payoff to the Horde strategy. He is the incentive to cultivating a large Horde, because he will also reap the benefits of you pouring your Power into the Horde. This helps alleviate a common problem with these types of strategies. If you are spending all your turns putting Power into Zombie Horde, you’ll probably be fine to win that location but what about a second? That’s where Zombie Giant-Man will come in handy.
So why did I rate him so low, especially compared to the other writers at snap.fan? Historically these types of ”play two really big cards” strategies hinge on the fragility of the first half. Make Zombie Horde too big and it becomes a Shang-Chi target, and at any Power point it’s a magnet for Shadow King. This means we need to invest into protecting the Horde, which at that point gets expensive and off curve. This isn’t necessarily a problem, if the outcome is worth it. If we are sure that two big zombies are enough to win then it’s a great strategy, but what if it’s not?
My pick for best of the month
Not only great for Horde but is versatile enough for other strats!
Now this is a Zombie card! This is the first one that felt like it was rewarding you for playing it and not punishing you with a below average statline. At 2/2 Zombie Mister Fantastic stays in the approximate rate for that cost, but it also comes with a great upside. Making a Zombie Horde as early as turn 2 means that it is available on board to start growing. With a bunch of this season’s cards revolving around the horde you’re going to want to know where this Power will be allocated as soon as you can make it happen.
The other upside to Zombie Mister Fantastic is in its activate ability. Further increasing the Power of not just your Horde, but any other created card. This has great synergy with strategies revolving around Victoria Hand or Mysterio, both currently meta relevant. Even if you don’t get the full value of four created cards you will still be providing value past what is expected for a 2-Cost card.
A new skill to deck build with
One of the better Horde generators!
I am very much leaning on this being the third best Horde card. There are so many little things that this does that is tied up in the simplicity of its text of just “On Reveal: Horde +3”. Since this is a skill it doesn’t take up any board space. When you look at the other horde generating cards, they seem to be a little under stated at base. Scarlet Witch only has 2 Power herself, Sentry with 4. They aren’t providing much of a presence so their stats are hampering your win rather than helping. This will disappear off the board immediately, leaving room for more substantial units.
Costing 1 also gives you the fastest way to make a Zombie Horde. There’s some talk about a Zombie Bounce deck, where if you can manage it by bouncing it back to your hand, you can create a second horde token. The sooner you can make a horde and pick it up, the sooner you can facilitate weird out of the box combos like this.
A lot of text but not a lot to be excited about
4 cost Activate hasn’t been great in the past
As you can see, I’m much lower on this card than the other writers at Snap.Fan. 4 Cost Activate cards are a bit of a meme. They need an explosively good ability to make up for the cost and we have rarely seen that work out. Classic Destroy decks aren’t hurting for ways to destroy their cards, having many cheaper and better options. The place where I can see a home for this is with Nimrod, needing a way to set up a final turn destroy. This will allow you to get an extra creation of your Nimrods and have Zombie Captain Marvel move to fill your gaps. The issue with this is would this be any better than using Kid Omega? I’m not confident it is.
The “fun” card of the month
Can it make the jump from fun to competitive? I think it can
I am going to cope so hard with this card. Let’s break down what it does. At the beginning of the game you’ll get a quick animation of it marking 6 cards in your deck. When you eventually play Zombie Galacti, you will transform any of those marked cards that are on your board into copies of Zombie Galacti. Now you may be thinking why would I want a bunch of 4 Power stuff with no ability? The trick is going to be in preemptively buffing your Zombie Galacti so that when you do play it you are getting way more than 4 Power copies.
The major synergy that comes to mind is Khonshu. Not only does Khonshu provide an amazing jump in power from 4 to 12, but it also solves the secondary problem with Zombie Galacti, how to play a 7 Cost card. Discard decks are also full of both cheap On Reveals and cards that jump onto the board without playing them. A perfect storm of conditions to allow Zombie Galacti to pop off!
Not the worst card ever, but not one you’d be excited for
It’s not unsalvagable, but needs better stats
I don’t see the vision with this card. At absolute best, we are adding 4 Power to a Horde. To do that we either need to fill up our right side early or be playing Zombie Sentry on turn 6. Neither of which sound like appealing options. A 3/8 is not the best statline on its own, and spreading out that Power isn’t great at that Cost. Now if this cost 2 we’d have something to talk about.
There is something to be said for this being one of five Horde cards. Do we need all of them to make the Horde deck a thing? Or are there some that can afford to fall by the wayside? If Zombie Scarlet Witch and Zombie Mister Fantastic are enough value on their own then would the slot used for Zombie Sentry be better served with a tech card?
So how did I do? Feel confident that you’ll be a survivor in this Post-Zombie world? For more detailed analysis on each card be sure to check out our new card previews! Hit me up on X or down here in the comments and let me know what you think about all these new cards.