Snap Into Marvel — More MCU Synergy With ‘Heralds Of Galactus’

The MCU synergy continues with “Heralds of Galactus”, the latest season of Marvel Snap which brings Fantastic Four First Steps versions of Galactus and Silver Surfer into the game, alongside another thick stack of new cards featuring a variety of comics-inspired heralds of Galactus. Before diving into the details of the new season, let’s see how the cards of “Fantastic 4” turned out (with my preseason ranks in parenthesis).

1. Mr. Fantastic (1) — As expected, this was the card of the season, more or less taking the place of Surge as a key, low-cost card that slot into a lot of different decks and make unexpected plays happen.
2. Invisible Woman (4) — On the whole, the “Fantastic 4” season inspired a new “End of Turn” archetype in addition to giving juice to existing archetypes (like High Evo), and it’s largely Invisible Woman that makes that possible, by giving all the other new FF cards a second pass on all their abilities.
3. Fantasticar (6) — Prior to release of Invisible Woman, this felt like a solid addition to End of Turn decks. Afterwards, it became a key card in the FF-exclusive End of Turn deck, giving a whole lot of cards a whole lot of extra points when everything lands right.
4. Human Torch (2) — For a hot minute there (ie when I was struggling to hit Infinite last season), this card made Silver Surfer (my least favorite deck to play against) run rampant over the meta. It’s cooled since then, but this card remains a key new piece of a solid archetype that is never far from the top of the meta.
5. Thing (5) — This is a lot more fun to play than I expected, and I particularly like it in unexpected decks like Zoo, but the combination of its cost, the way it telegraphs where you’re going to play, and the randomness of its targeting hold it back.
6. HERBIE (3) — At the very least, HERBIE was the best champion in the Grand Arena minigame. That’s something.
7. Mole Man (7) — On the one hand, this has a place in the Iron Hand deck, one of the top decks in the meta at the moment. On the other hand, the best Iron Hand builds don’t include Mole Man.
8. Mad Thinker (8) — I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen any one actually play this card.

“Heralds of Galactus” is one of the first “direct sequel” seasons of Marvel Snap, continuing the “Fantastic 4” season’s synergy with Fantastic Four First Steps and its newly-unveiled practice of releasing cards inspired by MCU-alternates of characters with existing Marvel Snap cards. Like last season’s Mr. Fantastic/Fantastic car pairing, right off the bat we get a Galactus/Silver Surfer (premium) season pass combo; it’ll be interesting to see if Second Dinner continues the practice of selling an additional season pass card with the premium pass in future seasons with less obvious pairings (I’m going to assume they will, because money).

But with fewer MCU versions of cards to introduce, this season also delivers a wider range of pure comic book-inspired characters, including some of Galactus’ most notable (non-Silver Surfer) heralds, like Terrax and Frankie Raye, as well as some big cosmic figures like Firelord and another Ghost Rider.

Plus, with another limited time game (back to High Voltage!) and some direct-to-the-token-shop Series 4 drops, it’s another season packed with new cards. Overall, this feels like a “low ceiling, high floor” batch of cards, nothing outright terrible on the level of, say, Cobra but also no, “put this in every deck immediately!” kind of big impact cards. Here are my pre-release rankings of all of them.

(And for more Galactus/card related content, be sure to check out my rankings of all the Galactus trading cards!)

1. The Fallen One — This will probably be the first card of the season to get nerfed. Even just playing it on turn 5 as a 5 power is insane; that’s more extra T6 energy than the White Hot Room or any of the other energy cheaters (Psylocke, Jennifer Kale, Electro) provide. And that’s before you start thinking about buffs (Shuri + Fallen One) and/or cheating it out early and retriggering.
2. Silver Surfer — The obvious play here is the OG Silver Surfer deck, but this card’s sneaky strength is both that it can be playable in a more diverse set of decks, and that it can be played early and then triggered later thanks to being an End of Turn card – which also makes it another tool for Invisible Woman First Steps.
3. Frankie Raye — This seems like a riff on Surtur. Even if you only play one 6 cost card, six points is at the top end of points for a two drop, and if you can get out multiples (or buff this card then play a 6 drop) it could get even bigger.
4. Galactus — Red Hulk with a bit of Iron Patriot-style opponent manipulation and a touch of Dormammu, the new Galactus will likely be a good-not-great card: better than Dormammu, not as solid as Red Hulk.
5. Air Walker — Could be a way to ramp out one of the critical 4 cost cards (Galacta, Gwenpool, etc.) early, but seems a little putzy in terms of deck-build cost. Kid Omega on turn 2 into Air Walker is pretty slick, but if that draw doesn’t come out just right, is it worth including other cards to try and target Air Walker? Probably not.
6. Firelord — Has the potential for some neat synergies with Venom in a Destroy deck, but probably too limited to find much use beyond that.
7. Stardust — While the appeal here is probably meant to be stuff like playing Sentry without having to worry about the Void, there’s already better ways to deal with that downside. Instead, I like its potential as a tech card, stopping Fenris or shutting down a late Brood. That said, those kinds of cards aren’t really ubiquitous enough yet (except for Brood, but even then, it needs to be a late Brood for this card to have an impact) to make this worth carrying into every game.
8. Red Shift — Targeted discard cards are always appreciated (this is sort of like a Reverse Blade, with a little twist), and this will likely make Agatha Hela a contender, but I’m not sure if it’ll earn a spot in wider discard decks on the level of Blade or Colleen Wing.
9. Cosmic Ghost Rider — A supersized Red Guardian (it takes out two cards and has higher power) sounds great, but the cost will likely hold it back – it basically makes it equivalent to a Red Guardian you draw late, after its target cards have already done their thing for several turns.
10. Terrax the Tamer — Darkhawk hasn’t been a meta-terrifying card for a while now, but it certainly won’t object to having a rock-delivering 3 drop to synergize with again (after Rockslide got nerfed to a 4 cost). The problem is the extra condition, which limits the effectiveness of that rock delivery and risks harming you as much as your opponent.