Snap Into Marvel Season Recap– Deadpool Departs, The Young Avengers Assemble

As the Deadpool-centric “Maximum Effort” season comes to close while “Young Avengers” looms to take its place, let’s take a look back at this season’s cards and do some pre-ranks of the ones to come!

Maximum Effort

“Maximum Effort” was a bit of an atypical Marvel Snap season. Thanks to the rollout of Deadpool’s Diner as a new (and limited time) gameplay mode, the usual routine of Spotlight Cache cards was disrupted with Cassandra Nova serving as the “main” prize of Deadpool’s Diner. “Maximum Effort” also began with the meta in a state still dominated by Arishem, a state the Second Dinner developers may not have anticipated heading into the season (based on the latest round of late-season balance updates seemingly designed to take some wind out of Arishem’s sales after it proved a dominant Deadpool’s Diner archetype).

Ironically, a lot of those balance updates kind of seemed unnecessary by the time they landed – the combination of time (to allow the newness to wear off) and Cassandra Nova (both her ability and her ubiquity relative to other Spotlight Caches thanks to the unique circumstances of her acquisition) seem to have pushed Arishem into a more balanced position of being an archetype that people play and needs to be countered, but not one riding roughshod over the game. 

At any rate, this season’s cards turned out to be a better batch than initially predicted. Here’s my final rankings coming out of the season: 

#1 – Cassandra Nova

#2 – Copycat

#3 – Gwenpool

#4 – Ajax

#712 – Hydra Bob

Even a meta less dominated by Arishem and the indirect nerf she received thanks to the Loki “nerf” intended to nerf Arishem doesn’t change the fact that Cassandra Nova is the card of the season. Even against a regular deck (or a “shrunk by Loki” Arishem deck), she’s a 3/7 on curve that also hurts your opponent, and that’s just all around good stats. Copycat falls into a similar spot — the combination of stealing an ability from your opponent AND giving you info on their deck in the process while providing 5 power for 3 cost makes her a solid all around 3 challenging Nocture for the “when you have room in your deck for a 3-cost and just need a good card” slot in decks.

And Gwenpool, like the best Season Pass cards, is useful in a lot of places, as lots of archetypes can benefit from multiple in-hand buffs. Even Ajax isn’t a terrible card. His utility is limited and he probably needs to be one less cost (to make it easier to pair him with Hazmat on turn 6) to truly take-off. But he’s become a bedrock card in Negative/Junk decks.

Really, the only outright stinker in this season is Hydra Bob, a card which debuted looking bad and wasn’t helped by the shamelessly-fast one-point buff shortly after its release. Not even the extra-snaps-per-game mechanic of Deadpool’s Diner made Hydra Bob useful. There’s simply too many 1 cost cards with a better balance of upside to downside. Is Hydra Bob so bad to weigh down the cumulative average of the season? Possibly. He’s really bad. But take him out of the equation, and “Maximum Effort” was a vast success in terms of its new cards. 

Young Avengers

Next up is the “Young Avengers” season. This is a group of characters already well represented in Marvel Snap: Patriot leads an entire archetype, Iron Lad remains one of the most useful “good cards”, and Stature has found a place for herself (alongside Black Bolt). Loki and America Chavez have also had notable stints as Young Avengers. But the Young Avengers remain popular amongst comic book readers, and have seemed poised to take up the “Avengers: The Next Generation” mantle in the MCU for years. A dedicated Young Avengers Marvel Snap season was only a matter of time. Here’s my pre-release rankings of the upcoming cards: 

#1 – Marvel Boy

#2 – Hawkeye Kate Bishop

#3 – Wiccan

#4 – Speed 

#5 – Emperor Hulkling

Marvel Boy is an absolute monster of a card, at least in Zoo decks (which are already undergoing a bit of a renaissance). If Gilgamesh gave that archetype a much needed “closer” option to go tall on turn 6, Marvel Boy gives them an exceptional “go wide” option: Squirrel Girl on turn 1 and Marvel Boy on turn 3 will result in 18 power (for 4 cost). That’s wild, and Marvel Boy will still be useful in other scenarios, albeit almost exclusively in Zoo decks. That limitation might be enough to keep his ceiling low, but also, Marvel Snap deck builders can be pretty clever. It wouldn’t be surprising to see some archetypes make room for a “Squirrel Girl/Marvel Boy” pairing.

Hawkeye looks to be just an all around fun card, a combo of Nico Minoru (one of the most useful 1 drops in the ame) and Snowguard. Like Gwenpool before her, she could be useful in a lot of different decks (including Zoo, Loki and Arishem right off the bat), and that utility may well make her the card of the season. 

Wiccan and Speed are big question marks. Both are introducing a new game play mechanic — spend your energy under specific conditions to gain more energy or power. Wiccan gives you increased energy after he’s played (+2, more than any other energy booster in the game), assuming you used all your energy in the previous three turns. The real boon to Arishem as an archetype is the extra energy he gives you, letting you essentially play a turn ahead of your opponents. So Wiccan could well be a mini-Arishem (or a Corvus Glaive who doesn’t also kill two of your cards) in that regard, which could make him a transformative card.

Or, the very specific conditions of his On Reveal ability (do we need to run Quicksilver & Domino to ensure we’ll have a 1 and 2 drop to play each game?) could make him a dud. Similarly, Speed’s power increases +1 for every turn you use all your energy. That may not be as easy at it seems and even if you pull it off, the end result is a 3/9 by turn six. That puts him ahead of a “regular” Cassandra Nova in terms of points (without taking any power from the other deck) and Gladiator (without the risk/reward of drawing and hopefully destroying another card). But it also requires Speed to be in just the right kind of deck to hit that maximum. 

Finally, Emperor Hulkling probably won’t be a Hydra Bob-level dud, but his ability to copy a random six power card isn’t necessarily as good as it sounds. Most six power cards fit specific needs/actions: Galactus, Destroyer, Arnim Zola, and Hela are all cards you absolutely want to play in the right deck, but aren’t terribly useful unless you’re planning for them.

Sure, dropping a couple Doombots along with Hulkling’s 11 power or rearranging the position of cards with Magneto’s ability could be randomly useful, but Knull, Hulk or Thanos gain you nothing (to name just three). 11 power on turn 6 isn’t nothing, and will likely give the card some utility, but there’s other, more established ways of getting that kind of power that are less risky. 

All in all, “Young Avengers” seems, on paper, to be a less “must buy” season, with only two really good cards and a couple questionable ones that might turn out to be good (or overly-complicated stinkers). But “Maximum Effort” looked that way too at first, and it ultimately turned out some nifty cards.