Hey everyone! We have a great new season coming up, but what if it could be better? Stronger? Faster? The top Second Diner scientists have heavily experimented on all of these upcoming cards, but have they gone too far? Are these cards too dangerous? Let’s go through them at the same pace as my Marvel Snap games. Fast! Snappy!
The card that asks “how many destroys can you do in a game?”
I’m really interested in this new “improve” ability. Every time you fulfill the condition, the ability gets better. I can’t wait to see how they incorporate that in the future. As for Weapon X himself, that’s a bit of a miss for me. He’s a Destroy scaling card that you can’t destroy itself. It makes it hard to fit him into your turns in a classic Destroy deck. There are non-traditional versions of destroy that Weapon X could see play in. “Deathbird” is all about making Created 1-Cost cards from Squirrel Girl and Shanna to discount Mockingbird and then destroying them to discount Death. In the past it hasn’t been a mainstay strategy but more of a fringe deck. Perhaps Weapon X is meant to support those types of decks?
New support for a niche strategy, can Revival become viable?
Revival strategies in Snap have always hinged on a degree of chance. Cards like Hela or Phoenix Force have built in randomness to determine what’s brought back. You can mitigate it of course, but sometimes the RNG will not be in your favour. Adamantium Infusion sidesteps this issue by offering you a clear target: your highest-Power card. This means you can create an actionable gameplan for when you are playing this card. You know exactly how much power this is going to offer you. That’s HUGE. All that before talking about how this card doubles the Power of what it revives. Move decks are unpredictable because on Turn 6 you aren’t confident on where the Power is going to end up. Adamantium Infusion offers a similar dilemma for your opponent.
Can this new scaler keep up with previous scalers or will he be outclassed right from the start?
I might be undervaluing Chamber a bit. Chamber wants to be a points card in a deck that typically doesn’t need the extra points. Chamber fits into ramp strategies, decks that want to have multiple high cost cards to play. Typically, cards with a higher cost have higher power. Why are we happy about a 2/9 Chamber when we are going to be playing The Infinaut for 20? On the flip side, a 2/9 is really good! This is the kind of card that ends up in the deck but feels easily replaceable. It reminds me a lot of Speed or Gladiator, cards that were big relative to their cost. Those cards eventually found replacements, so it’s up to you whether you think Chamber is going to be worth it.
An attempt to print what appears to be exclusively Deadpool support
Wade Wilson has a great flavourful design. After he’s destroyed you get Deadpool! Outside of that I unfortunately don’t have much else to see being excited about. Deadpool decks have lots of 1-Cost cards so you either have to cut them so you can find Deadpool with Wade, or just use Wade to randomly pull 1s. Neither option sounds optimal for the deck. I’m intrigued by the idea of supporting a specific card rather than an archetype (Deadpool support instead of Destroy support) but I don’t think this is a successful execution.
A modern day approach to a new Apocalypse.
Classic Discard decks have fallen by the wayside ever since the release of Bullseye. Those new strategies revolve around copying your Daken and using Bullseye to double and quadruple Daken’s Power. Weapon H doesn’t fit into those decks. What he does do is offer another Big Power card in your MODOK Dracula type decks. Think of Weapon H as an alternative Apocalypse. Instead of increasing Power for each time you discard him, he decreases his Cost. With enough luck and discards your Turn 6 could amount to you playing both Apocalypse and a free Weapon H! These kind of Discard decks have been floundering as of late, perhaps this new card can be enough to pump some new life into them.
If you thought granting +3 Power was dangerous, wait until you see this guy!
Maverick takes the ability of a card like Forge to its logical conclusion. It’s the most pushed version of this ability that we’re going to see. The way I see it Maverick has two major strengths. The first is being an Activate card. This means that you can freely play him and then save the Power boost for when you most need it. If you are looking to win Marvel Snap games, you want to hold back as much information as possible, so waiting to pop this extra Power until the last moment is amazing. The second strength is that it doesn’t provide a static boost, but grants Power equal to Maverick’s. That means he becomes a great target for cards with abilities like Gwenpool or Ironheart. The more Power you can add onto Maverick, the more Power he can distribute to something else later on!
The most exciting card of the season! Total slam dunk of a card!
We’ve talked a little about how Adamantium Infusion is great for being able to specifically target a card. Fastball Special is good for similar reasons. You always know when you play it which card is being destroyed. Destroy decks love cheap ways to destroy cards. It’s partly why Carnage is still played today. Fastball is comparable to Venom in that it allows you to destroy your card while also keeping its Power in play. While Venom gains the Power, Fastball puts it on the other side as affliction. Fastball’s cost conveniently allows you to pair it with Adamantium Infusion on Turn 6. This means you can destroy your strongest card, afflict your opponent and then revive it into another lane. A receipt for winning 2 locations if I’ve ever heard one!
Arguably the best 2-Cost of the season!
You are reading this right, it’s a 2/9! Now how do we make this happen reliably enough and do we want to? Based on the other new cards for this archetype, the direction for Discard/Destroy seems to be weakening your opponent’s side. In that case, a simple card that grows on your side is a great compliment piece. Since Wild Child is an Ongoing card, it means he doesn’t have to be present on the board when you trigger its conditions. You can save him for a Turn 6 surprise! I wouldn’t be surprised if Wild Child shows up in more generic piles as well. Cards like Luna Snow are ubiquitous enough these days and come with a self-destroying Ice Cube. Black Cat and Gambit are also cards that can help provide the Discard portion of its condition. There’s a bunch of cards that we can use if we are willing to think outside of the box.
A simple reward for a simple condition. Loving this direction for affliction!
Marrow is another one of the reasons you’d want to make a Discard/Destroy deck. My question is how many times can we make this happen? Discarding it only procs it once, but what if we destroy Marrow, revive her, and then destroy her again? Cards like Elixir and Adamantium Infusion make this dream possible. It’s also worth noting that Marrow doesn’t say it splits evenly. It’s entirely possible that she puts all of the -7 on cards that are in a location you are already winning. You’re going to want to use Marrow sooner rather than later so you can properly assess your Turn 6 winning play.
Is this better or worse Spectrum?
On initial reading she seems like an open ended card because of all the things she can buff, but in reality if you are just using her as a Spectrum you are missing out. To get the most value out of Aurora you are going to want a deck that can reasonably play as many of these abilities on board. I’m very excited for what this is going to do for Thanos decks! The Infinity Stones offer a good mix of On Reveal and Ongoing, with a couple of them having both. It’s also the type of deck that wants you to fill out the board, offering many targets for Aurora. Midrange style decks tend to have many different types of abilities as opposed to honing in on one type. A lot of her value will be flipping small lanes your opponent has assumed they won, into a victory for yourself.
The payoff for the new Discard/Destroy archetype… if it exists.
This is my card to watch for the month. My “wait and see” guy. Is there going to be a deck that can comfortably fulfill this condition? Can we make a successful Discard/Destroy deck? If we can, then I imagine it’s because we want to play Fantomex. The effective -12 he generates for you is a great upside. The glaring issue is “4-Cost Activate” which has been proven to be a bit of a meme. The history of this cost with Activate hasn’t been great. We’ve seen as recently as Zombie Captain Marvel that even with a “good” ability, if it’s too restrictive to play then the whole card isn’t worth it. Along with the Discard/Destroy synergies we also have Activate synergies like Jocasta, and even afflict synergies like Ajax or Diamondback. If Fantomex isn’t good, it definitely won’t be because of lack of support!
So how did I do? For more detailed analysis on the Series 5 cards, be sure to check out our New Card Previews coming out at the beginning of each week all month long!