Snap Into Marvel: “Arachnid Anarchy” Swings Move Decks To The Top Of The Meta

It’s time once again for another Spider-Man-centric season of Marvel Snap, which means Move decks are in the spotlight. A third of the new cards set to release this season are designed to fit that archetype, and Second Dinner, the team behind the game, is dropping three of them in the first two weeks of the season. But before we drop into Spidey’s friendly neighborhood, let’s revisit the “Undead Horde” cards and see how they shook out.

1. Zombie Scarlet Witch (2) — The “Undead Horde” cards can be divided into two groups: the one that support a new Zombie archetype/playset, and the zombie cards that can be slotted into other archetypes. The Season Pass card isn’t so strong it demands a place in other archetypes, but it is a key player in the Zombie set.
2. Hunger (7) — Right behind ZSW is the simple skill card that boosts the power of your zombie. No fuss, no muss.
3. Zombie Giant Man (8) — The Zombie deck’s finisher;
4. Zombie Mister Fantastic (6) — A solid mid-game piece for Zombie decks.
5. Headpool – (4) — The best of the “zombie cards that slot into other decks” cards, though that’s largely because Destroy is stronger archetype at the moment than Discard.
6. Colonel America (3) — The better of the two zombie Discard cards, giving that deck another scaler alongside Morbius, Collector and Miek.
7. Zombie Power Man (5) — A fun card, and when your hand order lines up, it can be extremely useful. But it also can burn you hard, too.
8. Zombie Sentry (9), 9. Zombie Captain Marvel (1), 10. Zombie Galacti (10) — And now we’re into the bad Zombie cards. Each one of these can be useful and/or fun, but each is also super finicky and requires too much effort for too little gain to consistently pull off.

Based on recent balance updates (and comments made in the course of them), it’s pretty clear that Second Dinner has a vested interest in boosting the Move archetype (see for example the nerfing of Debrii and the effective elimination of the Clog archetype — a key counter to Move decks — just days before the “Arachnid Anarchy” began). Not being the biggest fan of Move, I find this push somewhere between “puzzling” and “infuriating”, but here we are, with a Spider-Man themed season that leads with new Move cards — including the Season Pass card. Thankfully, the rest of the season offers up a wider variety of card types, in the process introducing cards of some classic Spider-Man villains and modern variations pulled from the animated Spider-Verse films.

1. Chameleon — This is basically another Mystique, with the added limitation of needing to be played in the same location and turn as its target, but with two more power in exchange. It’s already found a place in Cerebro and Silver Surfer decks, and there’s lots of cards — even low cost ones — that would be good targets for it.
2. Deafening Chord — A poor person’s Red Guardian, this only targets low cost cards, but costs two less and doesn’t eat up a board spot. That’s a good card.
3. Web Sling — Like Hunger to Zombie decks, this gives Move another tool.
4. Spider-Punk — As with Rocket & Groot, there’s potential here for the card to break out of the Move archetype (the flexibility of moving it and taking power from opposing cards is strong). Even if it doesn’t, it gives move another scaler, like Scream or Kraven, that can also boost cards like Hydra-Stomper (and Kraven).
5. Man-Spider — Highly vulnerable to tech (both Shang-Chi and Shadow King kill, and Cosmos can cause problems getting it into more than one lane), this is a super fun card that will probably play better in lower ranks than higher ones.
6. Prowler — This will either give Move its own Kate Bishop, or the establish itself as another Kate Bishop in other decks. The cost may hold it back.
7. Superior Spider-Man — Ramp cards are always useful and the condition is relatively easy to meet, but the 3 cost may hold this back.
8. Ezekiel Sims — Another of the season’s Move cards, this seems like a new, somewhat more complicated, Silk (incidentally, Silk is an easy card to play to trigger Ezekiel’s effect). The tradeoff is the increase in power, but it may not scale enough in Move to warrant inclusion over, say, Silk (it could be a sneaky New Surtur in Sauron/Nightmare decks, though).
9. Spider-Man Noir — I really don’t want to be doing any more math than I already do to play this game.
10. Hydro-Man — This could maybe work if it just shared its benefit with the opposing deck or was entirely random, but it seems unlikely to thrive while it does both.