Hello fellow Snappers, hope you’re having a great end of the year. I’m having a grand time as I look back, and I can’t believe that it has already been two years of this beautiful game that I believe it hasn’t yet reached its full potential. But never mind about that. Today we are going down memory lane and looking back at the cards released this year, and like the title suggests, trying to find the best, worst, and blandest cards of 2024. You might be wondering about the “Blandest” addition. I confess that I shamelessly stole it from Yahtzee, but I think it's a great addition to any top 5.
An addendum that I have is that this list is entirely based on my opinion. I might consider things like meta and how valuable and flexible a card might be, but at the end of the day, I’ll take into account mostly how amazing the card feels to me, the flavor, and if the card captures the essence of the character that it conveys. It’s just for my sanity’s sake that I’ll take only my opinion on the matter. I combed through the opinions of many top-level players, and no one truly agrees on which cards are the coolest. I could make a tier list based on the card's power, but I feel like there are things like that everywhere, and the way this game changes quickly, those become useless in a couple of months.
Please feel free to disagree; this is an open space for discussions and disagreements to take place. Let me know how different our opinions are in the comments. I promised that I will cry only for 10 minutes whenever one of you calls me stupid. Let's begin!
Honorable Mentions
With so many cool releases, it was quite difficult to name only 5, so this is the list of cards that almost made the cut into the top 5:
Black Swan had a beautiful redemption arc this year; she started as a lackluster card, but with the introduction of Activate, she soared into new heights and almost belonged to the top 5. She is flexible, and with the myriad of strong 1-Drops in this game, many decks try to slot her in.
Mockingbird is simply a cool card. Even though SD released her quite overtuned, and it took a long time to find the sweet spot for her. She would be perfect in a world without Thanos and Arishem, but alas, she is simply cool.
Zemo is so awesome. His introduction in the game created a brand new archetype, the Mill. Although milling was never that great, it is an extremely fun deck that lives and dies by dismantling your opponent’s options to fight back by the endgame. One of the reasons it never took off as well as it could was Arishem’s overwhelming presence in the game.
Francis is terrific! He is amazing, powerful, and strong; it's difficult to find 5-Drops that are deck-defining in the recent meta, but he made it work. The reason he isn’t in my top 5 is because he is quite limited in what he does. He only has a single deck, but that deck is quite versatile in which cards can be fitted in. Its newest member, Malekith, has elevated the deck, and who knows what the future might hold with Lasher just around the corner?
My favorite X-Men card. Throw a coin to see if she’ll give you a bonkers, crazy game or if she’ll do absolutely nothing at all. I love her, and I’m here throwing the coin all day.
I suppose I must address the elephant dressed in red in the room. Arishem is just like Loki, an extremely divisive card; he could be in the top 5 best or worst, depending on the person that you ask. And I can’t make up my mind about it. I hate and I love his role in the game. He pulls victories out of random cards and allows new players to use every card in the game, but it feels frustrating to lose to him because you never know how to counterplay him because he could have literally every card in the game. For those reasons, I won’t include Arishem on my Top 5 list.
Best 5
These are, and I must say, in my opinion, the peak cards of 2024. Second Dinner cooked amazingly this season with some amazing new cards that brought in some crazy new archetypes and possibilities into the game. I’ll try to avoid including too many cards of the same archetype. Other than that, anything is game.
This might be the controversial part of the list. Many people forget him completely, but I assure you that he is amazingly strong and unique. He makes plays that would otherwise be impossible. He just requires some more thoughtful card placement and deckbuilding. He was buffed to the point that he is now simply a great card in any deck that he could be slotted in easily.
It was impossibly difficult to choose only one of the Symbionts; I think this season was the best one in terms of card releases. “White Venom,” as I like to call him, is just too awesome; he is Iron Lad but better! He, most of the time, just gives you a bombshell to play on the last turn and win the game. He steals cube and hearts.
I love flexible cards, and this season alone, the reigning queen of flexibility is Kate Bishop (last year it would be Nico Minoru). Kate has an arrow for every situation, provided that your situations require an elaborate Ghost Spider, a cheaper, smaller Green Goblin, an Ant-Man, or the other Hawkeye.
Ола! Red Guardian is my favorite problem solver; if any card with a low power but a powerful effect proves to be too present in the meta, he can easily take care of it. Iron Man, Madame Web, and even the newest addition, Bruce Banner, have no chance against the Russian’s headbutt. He proved himself time and time again during multiple different metas, and he is still going strong.
I have to be honest: I’m not a fan. I dislike playing Wiccan decks personally. But I can’t discredit how powerful and flexible he is. He created a brand new deck archetype just like Zemo did, but the crucial difference is that his deck is competitive and very powerful. Also, any new card can be slotted in easily. His deck can brute force any other with his energy advantage when things go right.
Worst 5
Although Second Dinner released some powerful cards, they also released some cards that haven’t worked quite well, at least so far. It’s harsh to name something “worst,” and I don’t intend to make fun of any developers that worked hard on any cards. I’m sure that they’ve worked hard on every card release, it’s just impossible to release a great card every single week forever. Somehow this list was way easier to make, maybe because it's easier to agree when something is not great. Let’s start with:
The thirteenth card on any move deck. Even after his many alterations, it seems that Hercules is just too unwieldy and expensive for any move decks that usually spend their first few turns setting up movements and can’t be bothered to play Hercules. My only hope is that in the future they can buff or remake him, turning him from a zero to a hero, if you will.
Ah dear emperor, Sorry to see you here. Everyone tried; they tried really hard, but there is no home for this guy. Any time that you could slot in Hulkling, it's just better in the long run to play a 6-Drop that would fit nicely with your other cards 100% of the time. Perhaps in the distant future we’ll have so many powerful 6-Costed cards for him to copy that he’ll be reliably good. But today, he is one of the worst.
I failed you, Supergiant. She is one of my favorite cards due to how unique she is. I love cards that mess with the game's rules, but unfortunately she doesn’t do enough. She doesn’t fit any archetype, and her effect is not powerful enough to warrant a full deck made around her. Such a shame.
I was pondering hard on whether Makkari should be here. They release in the same season, and they could both be slotted here, but I feel like Phastos is the worst card overall, and it didn’t feel right to put both on the list. Phastos is simply too slow; if you play him on the usual turn 3, he only affects three cards, and that is simply not enough. It also doesn’t help that you can never rely on him to do what you want with the cards in your deck. Get yourself a discounted brood and +2 on your Sera is infuriating.
What a fall, huh? Old White Widow was simply a mistake; that card should’ve never been released. it was just too universally strong and too easy to use to lock your opponent out of a location, even if you weren’t a clogging based deck. However, what they did to her is also a mistake, she is beyond useless, even clog decks can’t justify using her. You could make an effort like using armor to make her Bite indestructible but that also wouldn't make her a decent card.
Blandest 5
This is a weird list, I must say. I grouped cards that I feel aren’t exciting, cool, or even unique; they don’t do anything memorable. To me these are the blandest, flavorless cards that they released this year. they can be strong but that doesn’t stop them from being boring.
Sorry guys, this one hurts. So yeah, Beta Ray Bill is just Thor². There is no other way of saying it; it's just Thor, but he is bigger, meaner, and more expensive. He gave life to the Hammer Bros. archetype, but that doesn’t make him interesting when a card in series 3 has basically the same effect as his.
Unexciting is the word that I would use to describe this guy. If he were a spice, it would be flour. He is so uninteresting that I can’t find anything else to say about him. Remarkably bland.
I yawn as I play down a 4-Cost 10-Power card with basically no text. To me he is the boring 4/10 and is even blander than Crossbones, and that is an achievement by itself. I’ll say that he makes Surtur a good deck, and not every card should be amazingly cool, but he is an unexciting card for Series 5.
Sorry about this, Marvel Rivals fans. Galacta is just the most recent Battle Pass card that is simply overtuned. She isn’t as egregious as Elsa was in her season, though. Galacta has no reason to have as much power as Gwenpool does since Galacta is more reliable and doesn’t have any impactful restriction to her effect.
The Bland King himself, no one’s favorite card, but he is in all the decks. He is simply too strong; there is no competition for 1-Costed cards. His text is not even that detrimental for his power level; Maximus, for example, has a much worse text and costs double the amount of energy that Bob does. They nerfed Silver Sable a while back for being too universally good, and I, for the life of me, can’t see a reason not to remove 1 power from him as well.
Conclusion
Well guys, this is it for my most controversial takes of the year. It’s quite fun to look back and try to decide which cards were cooler than the others and what changes could be made to the worst cards. I’ll try to make a tradition out of this, so I hope I’ll catch you at the end of the next year with another review.
Now for the interesting part, tell me what you think! I know for a fact that not a single Snapper will agree completely with me, but I tried to make my thoughts as coherent as possible and distance myself from my biases whenever I could. If you would, let me know your thoughts on your best, worst, and blandest cards from this year as well. I appreciate your presence and your attention.