Snap Into Marvel Season Preview: Symbiotes Out, Asgardians In!

A fresh new season of Marvel Snap starts this week, which means it’s time to look back at the season that was and rank the new cards we got, then look ahead at the season to be and make some [slips on sunglasses] snap judgments on the new cards we’ll be seeing. 

We Are Venom Recap

“We are Venom” turned out to be a pretty wild all-over-the-place season. In addition to being a five week season, the High Voltage mini game delivered a seventh new card to the game. And while the previous “Amazing Spider-Season” had a bit of a Move-focus to it, “We Are Venom” delivered cards that fit into and/or improved all kinds of different archetypes. 

Here’s where the seven “We Are Venom” cards rank for me:

1. Agent Venom (Season Pass)
2. Scream
3. Anti-Venom
4. Scorn
5. Toxin
6. Misery
7. Agony

Agent Venom, the Season Pass card, is the clear overall winner of the season. Not only can it slot into a few different archetypes, it rejuvenated Bounce and more or less created a brand new version of the “Good Cards” archetype that quickly rose to the top as one of the best decks in the game, and even survived the in-season nerf to Klaw. Expect an Agent Venom nerf imminently.

After that, the rest of the cards released this season slot into more niche environments. Scream gave an added dimension to Move decks, creating win conditions beyond simply moving cards to rack up points, with a small Scream-centric package finding places inside other non-Move archetypes. Anti-Venom seems underrated at the moment (and if it wasn’t the last card of the season, might have eclipsed Scream as the #2 card), with too many treating it (and dismissing it) as a finisher and not a mid-range enabler for a big finish, like Wiccan. 

Then things get niche-y. Scorn gives Discard a new one drop AND an alternate buff target to Apocalypse -— that alone makes it the better one drop over Miek. I like Discard, so that puts Scorn above Toxin on the ranks, who basically does the same thing to Bounce as Scorn does to Discard: offer a better alternative to an existing card in the archetype (in Toxin’s case, it’s a better bounce card than Beast and/or Falcon). 

Misery is much more generic, fitting into really any deck with lots of On Reveals. It’s probably a better “re-fire your On Reveals” card than Grandmaster thanks to the higher power (even accounting for the destroy aspect) but not so much that it demands to be played in any particular deck and is thus easy enough to leave out. Finally, Agony is basically a reverse Hulkbuster with a better curve for Deadpool Destroy decks; outside of those decks, it’s not really worth playing, making it the least card of the season. 

War of the Nine Realms Preview

Now, onto the next season! Here’s my preliminary rankings of the incoming cards, before playing any of them: 

1. Gorr the God Butcher
2. Frigga
3. Fenris Wolf
4. Surtur (Season Pass)
5. Malekith
6. King Eitri (Minigame)    

I was a little lukewarm on Gorr when it was first announced, but once I realized Gorr gets buffed by all On Reveal cards in play (not just your own), I warmed to it. There’s a good chance Gorr could become the new Red Hulk, the default 6 drop in a lot of different decks (unlike Red Hulk, Gorr doesn’t need to be in hand to grow). Similarly, Frigga seems like a ho-hum card at first (there’s not a ton of 2 power cards that are worth replicating). But its text specifically uses the word copy, so this is most likely a case where the copy comes with all the same discounts and buffs as the original. So off-curve, a turn 5 Frigga after a Anti-Venom-reduced 0 cost card would create a second 0 cost card. That kind of interplay is promising. 

Fenris is obviously a fun defense against Discard, Hela, and Destroy decks, but I also love the idea of playing it on T6 alongside Shang Chi — wipe out your opponent’s big card on one lane, resurrect it for yourself on another — especially given the large number of big cards that are likely going to pop up in the meta because of the Season Pass card. That trick may prove more cludgey than is worth the effort, but there’s potential there. So Fenris could well turn out to be one of the top cards of the season, or one of the worst.

Speaking of the Season Pass, Agent Venom is a tough Season Pass card to follow, and Surtur will unlikely be that impactful on the meta. Overall, Surtur seems…fine. Under regular circumstances (Surtur played on curve, followed by a big card on six,) it’s probably a Gladiator without any of the risk. Paired with enough big cards (which is probably how the early Surtur decks will be built), it could anchor a lane, but Big Cards decks are always susceptible to Shang-Chi — though it’s worth noting, Surtur’s buff won’t go away if the 10 power card that buffed it is destroyed.

Malekith will likely be a decent mid-range card, this season’s Misery. Cosmo and Alioth obviously shut down the abilities of whatever it draws, but his real utility is probably the way it thins your deck (whether the drawn card is nullified when it flips doesn’t stop it from being drawn). Will that be enough to make Malekith worth playing? Probably not.  

Finally, Eitri, the big prize of another in-season minigame, looks to be this season’s Scorn, a card that slots into one particular deck (in this case, Thor/Beta Ray Bill decks) and makes that deck better/more diverse (Eitri can complement or sub in for Jane Foster) but doesn’t really shake up the meta all that much. One thing to watch is whether Eitri sparks a resurgence in JaneJaw decks, with Lockjaw finding the most play these days alongside the Thor/Beta Ray Bill/Jane Foster combo.