Marvel Snap - Cards, Analysis, etc.

[Bobbin Cranbud]

Hm, the main thing that interests me about them is how they shape play. They're an element that's (almost) completely out of both players' control, but which can dramatically alter the experience. That's not something you normally get in a CCG and I'm curious how impactful you find them in practice.

For one of the few examples I know offhand, if you see a Sanctum Sanctorum and your deck doesn't have a way to move cards to it, how much does that influence your decision to retreat early?

[Tide]

Okay. Since Bobbin Cranbud asked and I aim to deliver, let's look at another big part of any Marvel Snap game: The locations! Most of these as I noted are from famous Marvel locales. The flavor of each varies, but in general you can classify them as "Beneficial", " Detrimental", "Restrictive" and "Neutral". These are not official terms the game uses and beneficial / detrimental vary based on the type of deck you are running. Locations also have a rarity factor and not all locations' spawn rates are equal. Specifically, the really rare locations will spawn less than 5% of the time, while the more common ones appear closer to 20-30% if I had to wager a guess. In case it wasn't clear, not all locations reveal themselves at the same time but rather one at a time. So when a location is revealed can have some impact on your play too.

With all that being said, let's look at Marvel landmark from the Phase 3 days - Thanos' Toilet Space Throne



Classification: Restrictive - As it says on the tin, you can only play one card here! Or...can you?
Rarity: Uncommon
Favored Decks: Lane Lockdown, Junk, Movement

Analysis:
The Space Throne in some ways pretty much is the microcosm of SNAP in a nutshell. It's effect on the game is pretty huge. Instead of having 4 spots to play, you are now restricted to only have one spot available. This means that if your deck requires on creating a combo such as with Wong, Shuri or Invisible Woman for example, Space Throne denies you that possibility. Because you can also only play one card there, you have to be very careful in the type of card you choose. Your kneejerk reaction might be to wait until the latest turn possible so you can drop as large of a card as you can. But at the same time, there are other cards that an opponent can play to shut you down. Wait for Turn 6 and an opponent might counter by playing Professor X on 5. As has been mentioned before, timing is everything in SNAP and the Space Throne defines that.

Whether or not to play into the Space Throne really depends on the type of deck you are running. If you have cards that can move such as Nightcrawler or Captain Marvel, an early play into Space Throne is risk-less. If your opponent wants to put something bigger or chump you out from winning, your Movement Card will guard it for you. Even better if that card has higher base power to begin with such as Vision, because then it can contest the lane on its own. However, if you don't have any cards in your hand that can do that, then you really need to pay attention to what your opponent is running. Junk decks in particular love this location because they can throw something useless into this spot against you or threaten you if you play early into it with Hazmat. This is a location where real estate agents such as Rhino or SWitch are particularly useful against. Both can be played relatively early and can get rid of the "All-or-nothing" mantra it puts on you. Just having 3 extra spaces to play cards is huge, even if you have to sacrifice one spot for just 3 power to start.

Combo Plays
Winning the Space Throne is all about timing. The key decisive turn here is, surprise surprise, Turn 3. This is the turn where an opponent is mostly likely to play a wacky trick or try to cheese the lane out. So it pays to see what else the opponent might have played and where they played previously. Some common cards you are likely to see:

Green Goblin - Basically the asshole move where you fly a Goblin into the opponent's territory and take up their possible spot for them. You can then win the lane without playing anything else more or less because now they cannot play any other cards into the lane to get rid of the Goblin. Countered by Cloak primarily but also by a possible Legion that can re-open the lane by changing it to something else. If an opponent SNAPs on 3 with Space Throne, be wary of Green Gobu

Debrii - Another super common card that cheeses out the lane. Your opponent plays Debrii in one of the other two lanes to launch rocks into the throne. They lock themselves out too, but the difference is, they will have cards that break parity such as Kazar or Blue Marvel, buffing their rock to 3 or 4 power while yours remains at 0. Countered by your own Kazar, Patriot, et al if you are running that type of deck, but you can also use Killmonger to free up the lane.

Polaris - My personal favourite, but this one is conditional. If an opponent plays an early 1 cost or 2 cost, Polaris is a very cheeky way of getting around an opponent trying to cheese you out while applying your own cheese. You will move their 1 cost or 2 cost into the Throne and lock them out by using their own card against them. Polaris having a 5 power body means she can contest against most 1-2 cost cards, while defending you against Debrii rocks and Green Gobu. There are trade-offs of course. For starters, she won't win against every 1-2 cost card. Ebony Maw beats her at 7 power for example. Second, if an opponent has Magneto, they can play him later to move your Polaris out of the lane and then cheese you back out on 6. Just something to watch out for. 

Nightcrawler - Kurt is very good against this location. He's a 1-2 with the ability to Move once. You can play him early into the throne, then only Move him last minute for a big 5 or 6 drop, giving you defense against early cheese plays.

Jeff the Baby Land Shark - Jeff don't give a damn about your rules. He's a card that can ignore play restrictions, so here, he can be played on Space Throne for an additional 3 power. Might not seem like a lot, but if you say used Polaris to hold the location, an opponent can easily toss in Jeff and steal it back from you as long as the 1-2 cost they pulled has at least 3 power. And that is surprisingly more common.

Shang Chi - Of course you're likely going to see kung-fu Asian man. If your opponent hasn't played a card here on 3 or 4, the expectation is that they might try to blow you out here with a heavy 5 or 6 drop. Shang of course says, "lol" if that happens. This is definitely a read so it is risky by nature but is obviously very effective when it works. Loses to any play where the card on the Throne is between 4-8 power though, so be careful. For example, Aero or Doom can both be played on 5-6 and will win the throne if you try to be cheeky with Shang.

Galactus - Also obvious. This one is harder to pull off because 7 power on 6 isn't a lot. And if you are trying to shortcut him out with Wave, it becomes a pretty big tell and an opponent can counter easily with a card that is 8 or more (easy to do thanks to Wave). Combo play into Galactus is also possible and while tricky to pull off, also come with the caveat that you win the game when it succeeds. Forge into Galactus gives him 10 power and that is much more likely to win as 10 power is quite a bit of bulk.

Living Tribual - While Tribunal is pretty memey, he's the ultimate counter to lockdown styles of play and this is pretty much a prime example that shows off his strength. Even if you locked this location out early, it doesn't matter if your opponent ends up with a billion points in another lane because Tribunal will then split that power.

[Tide]

Back to cards for a bit - Nick Fury



Cost: 4
Power: 5 (1 Below Par)
Ability: On Reveal - Generates three random 6-cost cards into your hand (up to hand size limit of 7).
Ideal Turn to Play: 4-5. Like all 4 cost cards, Nick Fury comes with the advantage of being able to be discounted by Zabu by 1, giving him an early play window of 3 if need be. But really, you probably don't want to call Fury too early on the field since if you reach your hand size limit, you can't draw anything from your deck.
Archetype: Dino Handsize

Uses:
The theme running between all of the Agents of Shield cards is that they all generate cards for you. What  pool they generate from though is different. In Fury's case, he only generates 6 cost cards - basically the biggest and baddest, usually finishers, into your hand. So pros and cons to this should be obvious.

Obvious Pros - For starters, you expand the options you have available for the end of the game. Sometimes your deck just doesn't really match up well to an opponents. Fury's random +3 cards here can give you a finisher that rounds out the current game perfectly. 6 cost cards are the creme de la crop, so you are likely getting something good too. There are some fringe benefits here as well such as creating more targets for a possible Spider Ham, but those are not as important.

Obvious Cons - Because they are 6 cost cards, you can't play them on the next turn unless you have Quinjet already onboard. Quinjet is a 1 cost support card that discounts the cost needed to play cards that did not come from your deck by 1. This means, if you don't draw Quinjet or get it destroyed by Killmonger or the rare Elektra, you have gummed up your hand by 3 additional spaces. The hand size limit in SNAP is 7. For most intent and purposes, you probably won't hit the 7 card limit, but since Fury gives you a net +2, hitting the cap is actually a real possibility with him. You also cannot guarantee the quality of the 6 drops and unlike Coulson, who generates 4-5 drops, 6 drops are usually not tech cards either.

Of the SHIELD cards, Fury falls somewhere inbetween being useful and irrelevancy. He's pretty much viewed as a weaker Coulson because at least when you play Coulson, you are guaranteed to have a Turn 4 and Turn 5 play, even without any other supporting cards. And Coulson's pool of draws are generally considered better because the 4 cost pool has some real useful tech options (Sup Shang-Chi).  With Fury though, you pretty much NEED Quinjet on board. Otherwise, even if he gives you some great options, you can't play them until the last turn anyway. You might as well play Emma Frost instead who will also shed light on your opponent's hand, while being +1 on power.

You always run the risk with the SHIELD cards to generate cards that are basically dead on draw. That's why including these cards should be used to fuel a more consistent win-con. Hence, Nick Fury is often paired together with Devil Dinosaur. Dino gains +2 Power for each card in hand. And at 5 Cost, it can be often be a surprising power slam that an opponent cannot contest unless they have a tech card on hand. Even there though, Fury competes with Moon Girl who is often better because she duplicates card in your hand. Y'know, the cards you chose that are likely to have more synergy than the random 6 costs Fury calls.

Still, at the end of the day, Fury isn't a bad card because he's at least generating useful finisher options. His previous iteration was actually worse. Being a 5 cost meant that while you didn't have the issue of gumming up your hand, you still only had 1 turn to take advantage of Fury's reinforcements. This ontop of the fact that it narrowed his window down to JUST turn 5 made him often unplayable. Now, he might not be a great card, but he definitely at least has uses. And let's be real here - if you are using any of the SHIELD cards, you are likely using Quinjet because not only is the synergy obvious but the ability to modify a card's play window is hugely powerful. It does mean Fury is more reliant on it than the other agents, but being able to play two 6 cost cards can be very decisive.

Common Combos:
Because the cards generated by Fury are randomized within the 6 cost pool, creating stable combos for him is tough. There are a few cards he works very well with though:

Collector -> Nick Fury - Gives your Collector +3 Power if you get the 3 cards from Fury
Quinjet -> Nick Fury - Another basic combo but lets you play the cards generated by Fury at a -1 Cost. Can be pretty powerful since it means you can use 2 of the 6 drops Fury created.
Nick Fury -> Devil Dino - The name sake base combo and deck archetype. Fury refills your hand, ensuring your Dino gains as close to the +14 Power boost that it can.
Nick Fury -> Colleen Wing -> Lady Sif - A more unorthodox combo but one you may see in Discard decks. The idea is to have Fury generate 3 cards, then Colleen and Sif discard two from you hand, one of which is going to be a card Fury generated. This is then usually topped off with either a Ghost Rider or Hela recall. A little less powerful than MODOK into Hela, but doesn't completely blow you up since you are using controlled discards


Rank/Tier: C tier. And probably on the lower end. You're better off with an actual proper 6 cost that synergizes instead of hoping Fury's hail mary reinforcement call saves you. However, when backed up with a more synergistic deck and proper support, two 6 cost cards in a game is still a powerful mix.

Most Used Decks:
Dinohand Size (Generic + Agents of Shield variation)
Generic Discard

[Tide]

It's finally time to talk about a S Tier card since it MAY possibly being seeing an adjustment due to the new release. The strongest Marvel character SNAP card- Wave



Cost: 3
Power: 3 (1 Below Par)
Ability: On Reveal - Sets the Cost of all cards in both player's hands to 4. This effect overrides cost reduction effects
Ideal Turn to Play: 3-5. Wave's effect means she just needs to be played before the final turn. Realistically, she can be played as early Turn 1 if you want to lock down a Turn 2. When you play Wave really depends on what you're trying to do with her.
Archetype: Ramp / Control

Uses:
There are many debates regarding what the strongest card in the game. Personally, I think looking at individual cards can be pretty meaningless because some cards are really good in specific decks but their effects are useless if played outside of their archetype. Wave is an exception though, because she is very powerful both as an individual card and in the decks that use her. We've already seen several cards I consider A Tier. What makes Wave stand above them?

Well, there are a few things, but one of the key ways Wave separates itself is that by design, she is a card that can be played in two ways. The first is as a parity ramp-enabler where you can cheat out a 6 cost card early. Decks like Galactus or Agatha benefit tremendously if they are able to play out their key card ASAP and Wave enables that play possible. Sure, your opponent can also leverage that to their advantage but as long as what you're playing gives you a bigger benefit than your opponent, then Wave's symmetrical effect isn't a big of an issue. Even in decks where she isn't a staple, she can help make them better in some cases. For example, in Zero Shuri, Wave can let you cheat out a big card on 4 to then copy via Taskmaster. Patriot can play down Onslaught early which can just make your power pretty much explode. She gives a lot of decks alternate curves and thus creates combos that otherwise wouldn't be possible.

But the more powerful, more impactful way of using Wave is using her as a control piece. By locking in all your opponent's cards at 4 cost, she effectively makes it impossible for your opponent to play more than 1 card. In essence, this is a 1-turn Sandman except Wave costs 2 less and has the same power value so she's less of a tempo killer. Because SNAP is all about timing, playing Wave at a critical point can basically be GG. Your opponent is playing a bounce deck? Play Wave on 5 and watch them cry tears as they can no longer hand dump on 6. Opponent is playing the Kitty variant on Shuri to dodge Shang/Shadow King? Play Wave on 5 and that stops that cold too. You can even retrigger Wave's effect continuously to keep an opponent basically under perpetual lockdown (see Combos below), so it's not even that she can't do the same things as Sandman - just more complex. What makes this even better is that Wave's effect can also impact what lanes you can play in. Certain locations such as The Big House prevent cards 4-6 from being played there. So if you are leading that location on 4, you can play Wave on 5 plus another card to possibly lock out the opponent from playing there on 6. Goose (see Goose's write up) has the same effect as The Big House, so Goose + Wave can also lockout a lane from being played on, making it a one turn Professor X.

Add on to her a good play window and now Wave also becomes flexible. It would be one thing if she was only effective for one turn like Jessica Jones, Rescue or Sera, but Wave's window is pretty much triple theirs. As long as she isn't played on the last turn, Wave WILL have an impact. And when she IS played, she will do what the player intended for her to do without any diminishing returns like say Zabu, whether that is to create a combo or create a play restriction. As a result, Wave has very few weaknesses other than a) being slightly below tempo and b) being played but getting less out of her than an opponent on the subsequent turn. 

Why Wave is so powerful is because she influences play windows. More specifically, she's either widening them by creating another turn which they can be played on (such as for Galactus or Agatha) OR she's makes them more narrow and thereby reducing the turns which would make them effective or otherwise conflict with another card that would want to be played on that turn. Normally, cards that effect play windows such as Iceman, Quinjet or Sera only go in one direction. Wave is different in that she does both things in a single card. Altering a card's play window is one of the most impactful things you can do and this dual effect means Wave doesn't just enable your plays but can also work to disrupt your opponent. You could make a case to add her to every deck and it wouldn't even be the craziest idea because at worst, she can still serve as tech card against decks that want to dump cards on the last turn like Bounce or Zoo.

Common Combos:
Whoo-boy. Are you ready for the list of combos Wave creates? Get ready, cause this is just a small sample:

Goose -> Wave - As described under Goose, this is the "Goose-Lock" and shuts down cards from being played into that lane for that turn as it makes everything 4 cost.
Wave -> Aero - Locks an opponent to playing one card, which you can then redirect where it goes with Aero. Game winning if you are in the lead at the end of Turn 5.
Wave -> Agatha - A very common combo as a means of getting Agatha out early. Also as described under Agatha.
Wave -> Galactus - Forget Surfer, Wave is the true herald of Galactus. If an opponent only plays Wave on 3, you have to assume that it is a possible Galactus, and it turns the game into a 50/50. There are cards that will 100% stop Galactus such as Aero or Debrii, but if you don't have those, you are going to be guessing.
Wave -> Sandman - A pretty common line in Sandman Ramp to get Sandman out early. Wave tends to be weaker than Electro here because even though she is +1 power, the parity she provides gives the opponent a chance to jump far ahead in tempo.
Wave -> Moebius M. Mobius - Yes, Wave combos with the newest card. MMM stops cost increases for you, but your opponent won't unless they have their own Mobious. So you are basically hitting an opponent with a Sandman for 1 turn, while not effecting yourself. The disgusting part about this is that it can be done on Turn 5 and loses virtually no tempo if you do Mobious on 2, then Wave on 3.
Magik -> Psylocke -> Wave - Play Magik on 3 to create a Turn 7 in the game. Then on Turn 6, play Wave and Psylocke together. This effectively locks your opponent down to only play 1 card for the final turn but you get to play two, as Psylocke's +1 Energy on reveal bumps you to 8 Energy on Turn 7
Wave -> Destroyer -> Taskmaster - A simple enough combo that's probably best played with Armor on 2. Let's you cheat out Destroyer earlier. Taskmaster then copies Destroyer for another 15 Power. Then you still have Turn 6 to do whatever else. 
Wave -> Zola -> Odin -> Doom - Wave on 3 to lock opponent's down to one card play. Zola your Wave on 4 to repeat, but create two copies in the other two lanes. Then play Odin on Zola again on 5 as Wave gets reactivated by Zola. Since only Zola is in the Odin lane, Zola warps Odin to the other lanes and triggers Wave a 3rd time. Then you play Doom on 6 to add 5 power everywhere. This is the "We have Sandman" at home meme, except much more annoying.
Wave -> Onslaught -> Magik -> Sera -> Iron Man -> Living Tribunal - Play Wave on 3 to cheat Onslaught out on 4. Then play Magik on 5 to create a Turn 7. Sera on 6 where Onslaught is, giving you -2 to all costs, letting you play Iron Man and Tribunal on the last turn on the Onslaught Lane. This gives you a total of 65 Power, meaning Tribunal splits that to 21 to each lane. It's not the craziest score you can do with Tribunal but it was one of the earliest lines of play on "Neutral" locations.
Wave -> Onslaught -> Mystique/Forge -> Brood/Patriot/Wasp - Play Wave on 3 to cheat Onslaught out on 4. Then Mystique and Forge on 5, copying Onslaught and giving the next card you play +3 Power. On Turn 6, play Brood, Patriot and Wasp in that order. The result is Brood is played at +3, becoming a 3 for 15 power, then because Patriot is being boosted by Onslaught and Mystique who also power up each other, Patriot's effect is now 6 times more than what it states, meaning it gives 12 additional power to each broodling. Wasp can then be played for free, gaining the same boost off of Patriot and becoming 13 Power in a lane. This combo illustrates the effect of how devastating Wave can be as an enabler.

Rank/Tier: S tier. I purposely stayed away from talking about the cards I think are S tier for awhile because I think to really do them justice requires quite a bit of detail. Certainly, with everything that I've talked about, you can see why I think Wave sits there. The fact that she can be played in 2 roles, both extremely powerful along with having a wide play window herself means she is one SNAP's strongest cards (if not THE strongest) currently in the game.

Most Used Decks:
Any deck that wants to "cheat" a 6-cost early
Agatha
Galactus
Sandman Ramp
Death-Wave
Zero Shuri
Control
Surfer
Shenault

[Tide]

Was talking to VSM and we just both said something along the lines of, "Armor's pretty good". So let's talk about her - Armor



Cost: 2
Power: 3 (Par)
Ability: Ongoing - Cards played at this location can no longer be destroyed
Ideal Turn to Play: 2-6. Armor has a huge play window. It's not quite 1-6, but a 2-6 gives her a lot of time to be deployed. She tends to work better early with priority, but you could drop her down as a Turn 6 play too to surprise opponents.
Archetype: Support

Uses:
Armor is just one of those cards that sit in the background, where nobody talks about how good they are, but everyone secretly knows that it is good. It is a card with a simple effect but has a surprising amount of combo play and use that makes it fit into a lot of decks and playstyles. On the surface, Armor basically does one thing, which it says on the tin - that cards being played into its lane can no longer be destroyed. So the immediate thought is obviously, "Oh, this is to tech against Destroy". That's definitely true. If you ever want to see a Destroy player cry unfair, play Armor, Mystique then Cosmo to complete the trifeca. However, Armor is just capable of so much more.

An important factor about Armor is that her effect is symmetrical. Meaning while it shuts down destruction for your opponent, it also means it stops destruction for you. What this means is that Armor can be a way to mitigate risk on high value win-con type cards that may otherwise be fragile. Things like Sunspot, Nebula and Kitty really appreciate having Armor plopped down into a lane because that let's them grow without worry of a sudden Killmonger sniping them out. Other cards that have telegraphed players like Rescue or Shuri also hugely benefit with Armor down since it prevents you from possibly losing a card the next turn to an incoming Shang Chi. When Armor is in effect, it means that an opponent has to go the extra mile if they want to get rid of a card in that lane. You can't even use the 3 Cost Rogue to do it because of the symmetrical effect. Instead, she requires the 4 cost Enchantress to shut down, which means that you can't play her alongside Shang unless you also have either Zabu or Sera. That's huge, since both of those cards need to be played at least 1 turn earlier and gives the Armor player some warning.

The usage of Armor for your own set up play would already be pretty good, but Armor then has another utility function where she can effectively neutralize a location's effect. Lots of locations in SNAP have a destroy modifier added to it. Stuff like Fisk Tower (Destroy cards moved into this lane), the obvious Death's Domain or tricky spots like Warrior Falls (Destroy the lowest power card here at the end of every turn) all basically become neutral once Armor lands. If your deck normally doesn't carry Reach, Armor is a secondary safe way that lets you get cards onto that lane, which is huge since it basically opens up 3 more play spaces for you. Of course, this does come with the caveat that an opponent can also benefit, but no one said you can't drop Armor down on Turn 6 to surprise an opponent. To add onto her function as a psuedo real estate agent, Armor is basically par on tempo - equivalent to Scarlet Witch. So if an opponent tries to do the same, she'll at least tie against them. If an opponent plays Storm, you even win the lane. 

Being able to set up "Gotcha" type plays is another point in favor for Armor. No one also said you can't shut off your own Armor, so this can really throw your opponent for a loop. If it looks like you are both heavily invested into a lane and your opponent might win, disabling Armor might be the way to go. For example, on the above mentioned Warrior Falls, if an opponent played some Goblins and it doesn't look like you can win, playing Enchantress effectively nets you 8+ power since the location will get rid of the Goblin for you if Armor is shut down. Another fun one is playing Armor over Collapsed Mine if an opponent didn't skip their turn when it is revealed as this prevents the rocks from ever being destroyed, effectively cheesing the lane out for 2 energy. This type of "Gotcha" play means that Armor has surprisingly good cube equity rate and keeps her theoretical play window of 2-6 completely viable at all points. It really does depend on what is happening in the match and what you want to do.

Armor's only weakness as noted is that she is symmetrical. This parity means your opponent can use the Armor'd lane to also set up their own plays against you or play the same tricks against you as you might to them. Quickly identifying an opponent's deck is important since it stops you from accidentally giving the opponent a free lane to set up. You also pretty much want to have priority all the time against Armor as that diminishes how effective she is. Her impact is lessened if you can get your payload out before she comes to stop further play in that lane, similar to Cosmo.

For a card that looks so simple on the surface, Armor certainly proves true the age-old adage of "Don't just a book by its cover". She's included in many decks, often as a "flex" slot and really is that any surprise? She's a tech card with the added benefit of having some really creative plays available, meaning she has more versatility than just guarding against that one particular archetype your deck might be bad against. Knowing what tricks Armor can do is key because it opens up the doorway to some really neat solutions that your opponent just might not see coming.

Common Combos:
Armor provides set up play for a lot of other cards - way more than you'd expect. Here are some examples:

Armor -> Attuma - The obvious one. Guards your Attuma from it's own negative effect and ensures you can safely plop him down as a 4-10.
Sunspot/Nebula/Kitty -> Armor - All three do the same thing. Basically sets up a lane to be safely used by the 1 cost pump cards to grow in value. No more worries about Killmonger!
Armor -> Shuri - The revised Shuri's effect only happens when the next card is played in her lane. This makes her a huge tell for an incoming Shang Chi or Negasonic to eat your play. Armor shuts that down instantly and gives you a safe place to set up your big boi
Armor -> Destroyer - Yep. Destroyer's "Destroy all cards" effect doesn't hit the Armor lane, so it avoids any potential power loss that you might suffer otherwise.
Galactus -> Armor -> Any other big card - Nowadays, if Galactus triggers, the player who activated him will usually have priority. This means that Shang-Chi and Rogue can come in and deal with Death and Knull - two common finishers to a Galactus play. Armor basically goes "lolno" to Shang and she'll guard whatever big card you are playing. Most likely, this will be Death plus something else for 4 but also maybe not depending on what else was played early. An early Wolverine might have jumped into one of the 4 spots for example.
Green Goblin -> Armor - One of the Junk deck's weakness is that an opponent playing Destroy has many tools to use the cards you feed on to their board as fuel. Green Goblin is no exception to this rule. Armor therefore, can be quite useful in making sure that your the junk you're throwing to your opponent stays there.

Rank/Tier: A tier. Armor basically shuts down Destroy in a lane when played but then has the added benefit of also letting you play some otherwise detrimental cards or into unplayable locations. So when combined together, you have a card that doesn't just serve as tech, but also a semi-real estate agent and a support for larger combo play. This makes Armor hugely flexible and versatile - which sounds like an A tier card to me.

Most Used Decks:
Any deck where you have a big play you want to protect
Any deck where you want to have tech against Destroy
Spectrum Destroyer
Bounce
Zoo
Dinohand Size
Zero Shuri
Shenaut
Cerebro 3

[Tide]

And on the back of Armor, let's look at funny location: Rickety Bridge



Classification: Detrimental - Any time there is more than one card here, they all get destroyed. Unless...
Rarity: Uncommon
Favored Decks: Destroy, Lane Lockdown

Analysis:
Rickety Bridge is a favourite amongst more experienced SNAP players but an absolute bane for anyone just starting out. It is a location that looks simple on the surface but there are tons of tricks, game knowledge and tactics that it tests. This location is basically a game of chicken in a nutshell. When do you go in? And when you do, are you confident that you can set up a play here without the location triggering? Whenever I see this location, I always check to see if I have any cards in my deck that are favoured, because the cards that work well here are VERY difficult to contest against if you don't have a corresponding counter card.

This is also a location where once it spawns, you definitely want to try and go wide because it is not a location that you need a ton of power to steal. Even in the situation where the Nexus spawns, you have to be very careful about building tall because Rickety Bridge can absolutely be used against you and you want to minimize the impact of that happening. If you don't want to deal with any of its shenanigans or are just otherwise playing a deck that needs the play space, Armor is the way to go. As described above, it stops card destruction, so once it is placed down, you can stop a lot - but not all - of the nasty things one can use this location for. On the other hand, if you are trying to take as great advantage of this location as you can, it is best to play wide as noted to minimize the impact, then turn the tables against someone on late Turn 5 or 6 since it reduces the amount of time one has to recover.


Combo Plays
There are lots of ways to use the Rickety Bridge to your advantage. Many cards can interact with it to cause devastating plays. In general though they fall into two categories - either aiming for card destruction or taking the lane out for cheap:

Wasp - 0 Cost means you can play Wasp out anytime. So if you play her out on a late turn, you can force an opponent to also either sack a card or risk losing the lane because of 1 power. Since she doesn't cost you any Energy to play, Wasp is basically a free pressure tool or a free way to relieve yourself of possible pressure should the opponent play something first.
 
Colossus - Colossus is a pretty boring card but he was built for locations like this. Since he is just flat out indestructible and doesn't provide lane equality like Armor, Colossus basically lets you take the location for a measly 3 Power unless your opponent has an answer. This may come in various forms such as Rogue or Hazmat but if an opponent doesn't have one, it is very difficult to steal it back.

Professor X - Pretty risky since Charles is only 3 Power. But playing him on to the Bridge prevents further destruction and plays on to it, meaning it can stop a turn 6 Bucky (see below) and outright take the lane if an opponent has basically been trying to avoid the location. He's best combo'd with Jeff in this case, giving you 6 power and guarding you from an opponent's Jeff should they try to take the lane back.

Bucky / Winter Soldier - Against all play conventions for the old Buckster, this time you want to play him on the very last turn. Bucky's ability means that if he is destroyed, he gets replaced by a 6 power card. So for 2 Energy, you threaten to take the lane for 1 power. And if the opponent had played anything OR plays anything directly into the lane, he immediately spawns and basically takes the lane since the destruction gets rid of whatever your opponent played. 6 Power in this location is not trivial. It beats raw Doom for instance and of course, the above mentioned Colossus and ties with Professor X + Jeff. To really win this against old Buck, you want something with solid reach or have the play go off at the end of the game (more on this below).

Mr. Fantastic / Klaw - Both let you add power onto the lane without actually being on the lane yourself. The advantage in this case is pretty obvious.

Captain Marvel - Captain Marvel is somewhat conditional here but forces the opponent to commit 5 power more than you in some way down the lane in order to not lose it. Playing Carol in a separate lane means that at the end of the game, she will take the Bridge for you if she can win it by moving there. Since Carol's check is done at the END of the game, this means that the location's effect would have already taken place, so no further cards are destroyed. This is how you can have more than 2 cards on Rickety Bridge. As an example how this can work, if you played Colossus and your opponent played Buckey, your opponent would be leading at 3 vs 6. However, since Captain Marvel is worth 4 points and she can win that lane for you, she will flying in as part of her check and take the lane back IF it would win you the game. The main issue here is of course, needing to be within her small power threshold in order for Captain Marvel to make a difference. You can't even use any supporting cards like Kraven here because they will most likely be destroyed.

Aero - The first of the cards that gets into destroying an opponent's play, Aero's redirect means you can play her as a sacrifice to eliminate an opponent's Turn 5 play IF they are only playing one card. You have to read the board though. If an opponent is playing a deck like Bounce, Aero is at best neutral for you since you are basically paying 5 Energy to get rid of their last card when they are most likely playing several. However, if your opponent is playing Zero Shuri and Shuri just went down? You can be taking out a 28 Power Red Skull. Instant GG if that happens.

Quake - Like with Space Throne, this is my personal favourite but again is conditional. This time, it is dependent on what the other 2 locations and what the middle location is. If you can play into the center and there isn't any bad locations for you, Quake can be a very hilarious way to turn the tables against an opponent. Once played, she will shuffle the 3 locations around. So if an opponent has heavily invested into another lane, it is quite possible for Quake to then place the Rickety Bridge underneath their feet there and basically destroy the entire investment. An absolutely dick move that costs you only 2 Energy. It can backfire because the locations do move randomly, but it is pretty great when it works.

Magneto - Magnetman is similar to Aero but better in some ways. He works best when an opponent has played their establisher and it is a 3 or 4 cost like Brood or Dracula. Playing Magneto then redirects those poor fools onto the bridge where Eric sacrifices himself and blows up everything he took with him. If you played something else earlier that can take the lane like Colossus, this move then lets you cheese the bridge while removing the power off of another lane - basically a game winning Turn 6 play. Of course, this doesn't work if the establisher the opponent played isn't a 3 or 4 cost, and you still need a card to win the lane after so it can be less flexible than Aero.

Doctor Octopus - Speaking of asshole moves, say hi to Doc Ock. When played, the good doctor will randomly take 4 other cards out of your opponent's hand. And since the Bridge destroys cards anytime there is more then 2 on it, you basically kill 4 of your opponent's cards while only losing your one. Even better - if you played Iron Fist previously, he will then bump Doc Ock back onto a safe lane before the Bridge triggers, letting you get rid of 4 cards without losing Otto. See you in hell, Shang!

Absorbing Man - Absorbing Man lets you repeat any On Reveal effect you played previously. I am sure I don't need to explain why this can be very devastating. Playing Aero on 5, then Absorbing Man again on 6 onto the bridge is like the type of thing that gets you stabbed in a back alley. It effectively lets you pretty much lock down an opponent if they are playing single large cards like Devil Dino or the Infinaut. At 4 cost, he's obviously not cheap but if you have a strong board position, Absorbing Man lets you double up on a trick your opponent might think you have already exhausted.

Living Tribual - As with the Space Throne, Tribunal works great against the Bridge if there is another lane you can safely play him out on. Build tall in that lane, then Tribunal splits the power. Ignores all the cheese and stupid nonsense an opponent might be using against you. Do be careful though as even though he isn't thought of as a big boi, at 6 cost, it means he's likely going down on his own, which does leave you vulnerable to Aero.

Invisible Woman + Ultron / Dr. Doom - Using the same logic as with Captain Marvel, this is a way to let you sneak more cards into the lane. In this case, a Patriot shell works because Sue will prevent the cards from being revealed until after the location effects take place, then they will come in and place a large amount of power into the lane courtesy of Patriot.

Armor + Enchantress - Yep. Rug pulling as described under Armor's entry can be very effective here! Your opponent might think you are extending an olive branch to play cards here, but if they start outpowering you, rug pull them out by sacrificing both Armor and Enchantress at the same time. Like with Magneto, helps if you have something else to take the lane with thereafter.

[Bobbin Cranbud]

Love that Rickety Bridge analysis.

The amount of emergent complexity the game gets out of a single line of rules text is seriously impressive.

[Tide]

Time for another Marvel favourite: Magneto



Cost: 6
Power: 12 (Par)
Ability: On Reveal - Move all of the opponent's 3 and 4 cost cards into this lane.
Ideal Turn to Play: 6. While his best buddy's ideal play window is 5, Magnus' ideal play window is 6. He really is best saved as a finisher due to the fact that Magneto's repositioning is best utilized as a surprise. You can play him earlier but that gives time to course correct, which isn't ideal - despite Magneto's 12 Power body.
Archetype: Movement / Lane Lockdown

Uses:
There is a joke in SNAP about Move players in that they are similar to Flowchart Kens from Street Fighter 4. Essentially anytime it is Turn 6 and it is possible, the turn 6 play is ALWAYS Heimdall. And it's not hard to see why this is. For the longest time in Pools 1 and 2, Move players basically lack a lot of their tools in the late stages of Pool 3. As a result, when all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. What saves Move players in Pool 3 is that they start getting more cards added to the archetype's arsenal. Move in general often starts out with smaller base cards that grow larger as the game goes but they never quite scale to the size of Destroy because Move has the added benefit of repositioning. Magneto is a representation of that. He's basically the other 6 cost finisher in Pool 3 and beyond. Move decks really like Magneto because he often results in a much bigger field shuffle than Polaris and instead of effecting you like Heimdall, he hits the opponent. If your opponent has like 1000 Power Venom in one lane and Knull in another, guess what? Magneto on 6 can move Venom into the Knull lane and basically steals the game. It helps Magnus that lot of the key cards in SNAP are 3 Cost cards and some of the best establishers are 3 cost like the before mentioned Venom.

What makes Magneto good is that he's basically Polaris and Aero except on steroids. He can basically shove 4 cards in completely separate lanes directly into just one. And much like his actual character, his card is at its best when it is played in a similar style as a martyr. Sacrificing Magneto to lose the lane he is played on is a very common tactical choice because it is often game winning. Of course, it isn't the only play available. Magneto is nice because he also has a large amount of power behind him. In the event where repositioning isn't to your greatest benefit, Eric can still come down as just a Turn 6 stat stick ala Hulk. Yeah, he's not as strong as the Hulk since him moving other cards into the lane offsets your power gain, but a lot of 3 and 4 cards don't always have a lot of power to start. This holds true especially for the support ones like Jubilee, Kazar and Moon Girl. So if he's paired up with someone like Kraven, you can often take out the majority of the sting when playing him this way.

Because of his repositioning ability, Magneto does a few other duties that are otherwise often reserved for cards that are lower cost. Using Magneto in this way often requires you to Ramp him out because his 6 cost makes him prohibitive to play other. The first is that he can be (non-surprisingly) used as a tech card. Moving your opponent's cards away from their lane can disrupt a combo that is somewhat in motion and can save you from a last minute comeback. Take the Wong/Mystique/Gambit/Ironheart combo for example. This is a combo that when it goes off will often be a game winner because it destroys 4 cards from your field while boosting up the power of their own cards by 24, albeit spread randomly. If you have priority, Magneto can be played to pull out the rug from under Wong and Mystique by positioning them now to a different lane than the one which was played. This second use is that he can be used to move cards that are otherwise almost immune to other forms of interaction. A great example of this is Cosmo. Once Cosmo is played in a particular lane, he will shut down a large number of cards in that lane because On Reveals will no longer take place. If you can find a way to play Magneto out earlier, you will actually have a way to force the Doggo away from that lane which you want to play On Reveal cards into. This is most relevant with decks that use Invisible Woman, where Cosmo then comes out to often stop the entire combo. Magneto can redirect Cosmo, and thereby allow the combo to still take place at the end of the game. Similarly, he can be used to interact with Dracula - a 4 cost card that often lacks tech cards to counter it as it sits at 0 power until the end of the game. Magneto can shove him into a lane you are not contesting and basically make him truly worthless.

Due to these factors, Magneto is often a highly regarded card. He does have his fair share of weaknesses however. The first is obviously that he doesn't effect costs that are not 3 or 4 cost. There are establishers at all cost levels of Marvel SNAP, so Eric only being able to target 3 or 4 costs means it limits the scope of where he can be at his most effective. If an opponent is playing a Kitty / Taskmaster combo, Magneto doesn't interact with either card at all. You're better off using Aero in this case. The second is that Magneto is often worth less than the 12 power he is stated on the tin. Compared this to Polaris who is a 3-5 and therefore, +1 above par for tempo, and you'll see that Magneto is probably more realistically like a 6-6 once you consider the cards he moves. Therefore, if you aren't taking advantage of his ability, Magneto loses a lot of value. If you are only looking to play a stat stick, regular Hulk exists. Lastly, Magneto's ability is randomized. You're only targeting 3-4 cost cards, sure. But if an opponent has multiple 3-4 cost cards, you're kind of gambling on what cards Magneto ends up pulling. If an opponent has Brood, Captain Marvel and Attuma in play, he could very well just pull all 3 Broods + Captain Marvel, which can be pretty worthless. A smart opponent can also work around Magneto by completely filling in the lane he thinks you are targeting, which then prevents any cards from being able to Move there.

Ultimately, Magneto is another tool in the box primarily for Move players. Other decks can use him, but they often don't have ways to reduce the power he drags with him into the lane or they lack ways to take advantage of the repositioning. And if you can't do either of those things mentioned above, Magneto CAN still work as a stat stick, but at that point, there are often better choices for that role. Like a lot of B tier cards in SNAP, he works pretty well in his archetype, but loses something when he steps out of his element.
 
Common Combos:
Magneto has a few fun ways he can be utilized. At 6 cost, he's often the piece that completes the puzzle so he's rarely the initiator:

Kingpin -> Magneto - Pretty self explanatory. Kingpin forces an opponent to play on his lane otherwise you can play Magneto on 6 to destroy their cards.
Lockjaw + Wasp -> Magneto - One of the few Lockjaw big pulls as Magneto has good power alongside an ability. Here's, he's primarily used for his stats, but a good Magneto pull will also drag some stuff into the lane you are contesting with Lockjaw, reducing the spots available for a counter play from an opponent.
Kraven -> Magneto - I mentioned this before but to put a little more depth here, Magneto dragging multiple targets into Kraven's lane means he offsets the net power loss from Magnus' ability. This can be critical for holding a lane, while you still want to remove an opponent's power elsewhere.
Wave / Sandman -> Magneto - When your opponent is stuck playing just 1 card a turn, Magneto's 12 Power and ability to move cards around is pretty devastating. Unless they are playing raw stat sticks, this is a good way to control exactly where their power ends up going.
Professor X -> Magneto - A funny and thematic combo. Since Charles locks down a lane completely, this then allows you to get a more controlled draw of what cards Magneto moves into his lane. Also a good way to ensure that you aren't pulling a card from which you've already won a lane from with Xavier.
Storm -> Juggernaut -> Magneto - A combo using primarily X-Men cards! Storm + Juggernaut is pretty devastating since you knock away any cards played into Storm's lane with Juggs. However is they played something like Brood into that lane, you're probably going to lose the lane still cause those 2 Broodling are very likely going to get buffed. Magneto can be an effective way to pre-empt that and shove them elsewhere.

Rank/Tier: B tier. Like Aero, I think Magneto has seen better days but he's a still a solid 6 cost finisher. At worst, you can use him as a basic stat stick, but that's not really using him to his full potential. He requires more tactical thought as he's a repositioning tool but better players can find ways to work this to their advantage.

Most Used Decks:
Lockjaw Lotto
Hela Discard
Movement
Lane Lockdown

[Tide]

Let's look at what I consider the best location in the game: The Bar with No Name (BWNN)



Classification: Restrictive - Scores are basically inverted and so are power values.
Rarity: Rare
Favored Decks: None. BWNN doesn't favor any particular deck. It instead calls for creative solutions...or skip the lane entirely.

Analysis:
Bar with No Name is basically my favourite location in the game because it takes a simple rule in SNAP and flips it around. Instead of the person with the highest power winning the lane, instead it is the person with the LOWEST score wins the lane. Pretty much all cards in the game sans one or two have positive values or instead hit the opponent's side. So to win this location, you always have to get creative and out-think your opponent. There are some cards that always give you an out, but many, many plays with BWNN are often surprises because of the rule inversion. Once this location spawns, you tend to always have to keep it in the back of your mind because you are either losing 4 play spaces or you have something up your sleeve that you want to save and surprise your opponent last minute. Be aware of players that snap when BWNN spawns. Because often times, it means they have some trickery going on and you can't really play the rest of the match in a conventional manner. Ignore it at your own risk.

What I like to do when I see BWNN is to treat it like a restricted location at first, then see what the rest of the location spawns are. Remember, you only need to win 2 of the 3 lanes. If the other 2 locations work to your advantage, you can use BWNN as a setup point for a combo and have the results land on the other two lanes. On the other hand, if the other 2 locations are neutral or are disadvantageous to me, I try to think if I have any solutions to work around BWNN. Barring that, I stay in the game until a SNAP at which point I'd retreat to avoid the risk of a loss. As I noted above snaps when the Bar is in play are very dangerous because it will often result in a combo you have probably never seen before. While bluff snapping is often not a good option because you can't read any tells from an opponent, this is the one case where it might be worthwhile.


Combo Plays
A few individual cards can work on the Bar by themselves, but often times, winning it requires a combo of cards you would usually never play together. It is worth covering the ones I'm aware because it demonstrates the creativity of SNAP's player base:

SWitch/Storm/Rhino - All 3 of these work to steal the location last minute. If you completely ignore bar, you basically give an opponent that has one of these real estate agents a pass. Going back to play windows, you can see why I emphasize SNAP is often about timing. Sure, you can play these on turn 2 or 3, but it's often better to save these till Turn 6 because they it requires a very risky read from your opponent to play something into the Bar with hopes that you are doing the same. There is one location change card I left out because he does something completely different...
 
Legion - Legion is basically the grade A dick move when BWNN spawns. Since he changes every location to the same one he is played in, players would often hold off on Legion and wait until Turn 6 to the drop Legion into the Bar, losing that lane but basically stealing the other two if their opponent has played any other cards into them. There are a couple of ways to stop this, but they all require reading the opponent having Legion. For example, Cosmo on Bar on Turn 6 with Priority is an instant win. The better Legion players will aim to keep their power across all lanes relatively to not be as so obvious as to just wait until Turn 6 for the Uno reversal.

Quake - Like with Rickety Bridge, Quake on BWNN can be very devastating. Again, the location positions can be random, but if your opponent is building tall in the other two lanes, a Turn 6 Quake will basically shuffle everything around, meaning that one of their tall lanes can end up with the BWNN, resulting in possibly stealing 2 lanes with a 2 Energy card.

Captain Marvel - This one is just mean, but pretty great in long endurance matches such as Conquest. The idea is simple - play Captain Marvel on BWNN. Since she will move to a location to win you the game, if you are losing this location but can win the swing in another lane within Captain Marvel's power range, she will fly off away from the Bar and leave it as a 0-0 tie. This requires no effort from you. Your opponent however is stuck in a mind game trap. You could very well play a real estate agent on the last turn and steal the lane for 6-7 points. So do they play anything into the Bar and try to pre-empt that possibility...OR do they ignore it, hoping that you don't and try to power through the other 2 lanes and hope to be above your Captain Marvel's power threshold?

Polaris / Spider-Man / Aero / Magneto - All four run on the same concept. If your opponent plays a card (or series of cards), that can be moved into BWNN, these can make for a good single card surprise play. They work with different pools and types of cards though, so when they are the most effective varies depending on an opponent's deck. For example, Polaris works great on stuff like an early Ebony Maw or Winter Soldier as they both have higher power than her. Aero works great if you see something like Shuri because even without priority, you know a big card is coming down so a redirection can cause them to lose the lane. Magneto can a great surprise to Surfer decks - especially Brood - since the bulk of their cards are 3 cost. 

Mister Negative / The Hood / Sentry - The only two cards I'm aware of that have Negative power values. Remember, you win the lane if you are ahead by even one point. So Mister Negative himself, for once can steal a lane despite being -7 from tempo here. Sentry deserves an honorable mention but is not reliable because the Void only spawns on the right most location. So if BWNN spawns anywhere else, the Void he creates doesn't give you any advantage.

Ironheart/Typhoid Mary, Ironheart/Hazmat - The first combo card play but re-iterates my previous point. The idea is simple. Play Ironheart earlier (like say Turn 5) into BWNN, then play Typhoid Mary/Hazmat elsewhere. Both Mary and Hazmat gives every other card on your side of the board -1 Power and since Ironheart has 0 Base power, this can let you steal the lane by 1 through a -1 Ironheart. Ironheart will never hit herself with her ability, so this is 100% safe.

Iron Fist/Doctor Octopus, Doctor Octopus/Ghost Spider - Same idea, but different order depending on the card. Continuing his reign as being king asshole, playing Doc Ock onto BWNN will almost guarantee winning the lane because pulling out 4 cards from an opponent's hand is almost certainly going to trump the 10 power he provides. But on the offchance it DOESN'T, playing Iron Fist or Ghost Spider then lets you lane ditch and steal the lane, while reinforcing another position by 10.

Doctor Octopus/Galactus - King asshole appears twice in this location with 2 different combos. Sure, taking down 4 cards and winning a location is pretty great. You know what else Doc Ock sets up in this case? Galactus. In fact, this is almost certainly match winning because your opponent can't play anymore cards there and if their power combined is greater than 5, then Galactus "wins" the lane because his power is lower resulting in his effect triggering. The only issue is that you need to move Doc Ock away from the Bar afterwards. So this is pretty much reserved for an Iron Fist combo only...but you could also get lucky by pulling an opponent's Shang. At this point I'm pretty sure Doc Ock was bullied as a child at this point since so many of his combos are basically the equivalent of giving your opponent the finger.

Cosmo/Hobgoblin, Wong/Hobgoblin, Zero/Hobgoblin - Hobgoblin is a -8 Power card that flies into an opponent's lane when revealed. So if you play Cosmo on bar, then drop Hobgoblin, you put yourself at -5 and win the lane. Wong is similar, except the double on reveal forces Hobgob to fly back into your lane, resulting in a -6.  Zero is even better because he can be played with Hobgob on the last turn and can be played in a separate lane, allowing you to cancel Hobgob's effect and landing in your lane at the full -8.

Green Goblin / Absorbing Man - Pretty funny and works on a similar principle as the above. Green Goblin is -3, so doesn't work with Cosmo and only gives you -1 with Wong. However, you CAN launch Green Goblin into another lane, then play ABSORBING MAN into BWNN to launch him into your opponent's lane, giving them +4. This is one of the few times where launching a positive power card works in your favor and is a neat way to take the lane.

Either Goblin / Taskmaster - Don't have Absorbing Man? How about a Taskmaster? Tasky will copy the power value of the last card played. So if you play Hobgob on 5, then Tasky on 6, Tasky becomes a -8 Power card that just sits in the lane you play him in. In this case, he works perfectly at BWNN.

She-Hulk/Viper - Speaking of launching positive power cards, there's another one with the same idea. She-Hulk decreases in cost per point of energy that was unused in the previous turn. So as long as you have 2 Energy as float on 5, this is a combo you can use on 6. Gifting your own She-Hulk to the opponent puts them at 9 power while Viper is only 3, letting you take the lane by a difference of 6.

Black Panther/Zola - Zola destroys a card in the current lane and then creates a duplicate in the other two lanes. In fact, Zola himself is great when BWNN is involved because he has 0 power, so he can be played safely into it without causing you to lose. You do need something else to combo him with though - Black Panther is usually the best recipient because cards duplicated by Zola have their On Reveals reactivated again, resulting in 2 large Black Panthers. The downside is that playing a large card into Bar is often a tell that you are going to Zola so you have to be careful of that.

[Tide]

Lizard



Cost: 2
Power: 5 (2 above par)
Ability: Ongoing - If an opponent has 4 cards in this location, -4 power
Ideal Turn to Play: 2-6. Kind of depends on what your goals are. If you want priority, then you probably want to play Lizard early turn 2. At that point, very few cards can compete on a Power basis to a 2-5. On the other hand, if you have cards that can combo with it or you want to be safe, playing him late game on 6 works too.
Archetype: Lane Lockdown / High Evo (HE)

Uses:
Lizard is the first card you get and that I'm covering where he has a negative ability that looks to be a real problem if you are using him. He's normally a 2-5, which is a great stat line BUT the caveat being that if an opponent fully fills that lane, he becomes a 2-1. 2-1s are pretty terrible, even when they have GOOD abilities like Psylocke. I remember when I just starting playing SNAP last year, that I had a discussion with Grefter and said something along the lines of, "Lizard is kinda meh", to which Grefbro replied, "Nah he's good fam". Months later, I can clearly say that newbie me was wrong. Grefbro once again dispensing the bestest advice.

The first thing you have to understand about Lizard is that 2-5 is just a good stat line. In fact, it is so good that he was actually nerfed to this current iteration. It used to be his power loss was only -3. To make him less attractive to play, but still retaining his role, they decided to increase his penalty instead. However, Lizard is also one of those cards where his penalty can be like -10 Power and it still wouldn't really matter because in the decks that best use him, his negative ability might as well not exist. There are many, MANY ways to get around it - from moving an opponent's cards, moving your own Lizard, disabling your own Lizard or just making it an unattractive proposition. As a result, Lizard is just a strong card that advances your board state well. 5 Power is a real amount of power. Not overwhelmingly so, but definitely solid enough to win lanes with.

The second thing that should now become a bit more obvious is that because there are so many ways to get around Lizard's negative effect, he ends up having a *lot* of combos. And the best part? Many of these combos aren't even complicated. They are often 2 card combos that work his negative ability into a strength. For example, Lizard + Mojo is a combination that leverages Kurt's power loss into a possible power gain on Mojo. Mojo only gains Power if the lane is filled in completely by both players. The issue with him is that when an opponent see this, they will avoid playing cards so Mojo cannot gain his +6 and become a 2-8. Throw Lizard into that lane and now the opponent is stuck with either letting you get away with a 2-5 or risk potentially blowing up Mojo. His effect also isn't symmetrical, so he makes for an excellent guard too against Rogue. Playing Lizard + Patriot for example means Rogue risks a 50/50 of gaining Lizard's -4 effect instead and basically blowing 3 Energy. You don't have to be a long term player to realize that is an awful trade.

Typically, Kurt is played out early to gain priority, and then from there, played with the intention of using that priority to win. But don't be mistaken - Lizard has a pretty wide play window and doesn't lose much effectiveness being played on 6 either. With 5 Power, he can be a good surprise drop into a lane where an opponent isn't expecting much else. Because he only costs 2, he can be effective with another 4 cost on Turn 6 - notably Enchantress because she can also disable his ability. This allows you to attack an opponent at the same time while putting a solid amount of power in the same lane. A Turn 6 Lizard that has been hit with Sauron can be dropped with a Sauron'd Maw and another 3 Cost, resulting in 12+ power across different lanes. As a result, Kurt is generally pretty flexible and when to use him really depends on what your aim is.

As strong as Lizard is though, he doesn't have a real defined archetype until you get to around mid Pool 3 and more and more tools become available. His most definitive home is in HE decks where his power loss, might as well not exist because these decks often run Luke Cage to stop you from killing their massive Hulk and combos well with Hazmat. However, High Evo himself is a Pool 5 card, so unless you get lucky, Lizard won't have his primary home for awhile. He does do okay in Zero Shuri decks which can regularly remove his ability as well as Lane lockdown decks that shuts off play space, making it real difficult to lane flood. Otherwise though, before then, he's an anchor but doesn't have a real place anywhere. This can make him awkward to slot in and he usually ends up being the first card to get cut in those decks.

Other than this deck building identity crisis however, Lizard is stronger than what might appear at first glance. He's obviously best in decks that can work with his detrimental effects, but you can flex slot him into many other places until you find the better substitutes and not miss a beat. I think Lizard does teach a very important less about SNAP, which is that Power values matter. There are many other cards like Lizard that have significant drawbacks, but there are often ways that exist in SNAP to work around them. And more often than not, these cards are played pretty regularly because being above tempo and not having to pay a true cost is a game winning advantage. Lizard still existing in SNAP's current landscape is a testament to that.   
 
Common Combos:
Most of Lizard's combos deal with his detrimental ability but that doesn't mean there aren't others:

Lizard -> Mojo - Asks your opponent to pick his/her poison. Do you leave Lizard unchecked as a 2-5 or risk accidentally blowing up Mojo to a 2-8
Lizard -> Punisher - An early Pool 1 Combo that works on a similar principal as the above. Punisher can act as a deterrent and stop an opponent from trying to flood nuke your Lizard since he gains +1 Power each time.
Lizard -> HE Cyclops -> Regular Cyke is an abilitiless 3-4. HE Cyke though is a 3-4 with the ability to drop 2 cards by 1 Power each every turn as long as you give him 1 point of float. You can see how this combination works. Play Lizard, then HE Cyke to secure foothold. If your opponent wants to contest, they risk getting blasted by Cyclops - making him effectively more like a 3-10. Not exactly a great trade!
Luke Cage -> Lizard - The first of the many combos that work to mitigate Lizard's power drop. Luke just stops Power Reduction and since he is Ongoing as well, his ability trumps Lizard's - meaning Lizard will always be a 2-5 as long as Cage is on the field and not disabled.
Zero / Lizard OR Lizard / Enchantress -> Don't have Cage? Zero works too since he disables abilities, good or bad. Enchantress is an even better way of going at it cause you also attack an opponent's side by disabling their Ongoing abilities in that lane. The best part is that her 4 Cost here means she can be played alongside Lizard for a 6-10 but also attacks an opponent. One of the few cases where a Turn 6 Liz can be pretty good.
Lizard/Polaris OR Lizard / Magneto -> Best on Turn 6 and does depend on an opponent's play but also a way to reverse uno and rug pull the opponent. If they flooded Lizard's location early, playing either Polaris or Magneto can shuffle their 1-2 or 3-4 cost cards to a new lane and basically freeing it up, resulting in Lizard regaining his 4 power loss.
Lizard -> Patriot, Blue Marvel, Luke Cage OR Kazar - Yep, Lizard works as a guard too like Armor and Goose. Except he is better because he just straight up either makes Rogue terrible or forces an opponent's Super Skrull to also absorb his -4 penalty. Enchantress is slightly different because unlike Goose, Lizard doesn't stop her from being played and the removal of your negative effect might not matter to them if they aren't bothering to contest your Lizard lane.

Rank/Tier: A tier. For a card that doesn't have a real defined archetype, Lizard has always been good. It's funny because at 2-4 he was barely played in beta, even when his penalty wasn't as harsh. In his current iteration, he lacks a defined home compared to say Dracula, but he's a good sub or filler card that advances your board state, especially if you want priority early.

Most Used Decks:
Spectrum Destroyer
Lane Control
Ramp
Zero Shuri
Cerebro 5
High Evo

[Tide]

Jessica Jones



Cost: 4
Power: 4 (2 below par)
Ability: On Reveal - If you do not play a card in this lane the next turn, gain +4 Power
Ideal Turn to Play: 4. Jess Jones is a card that like Professor X, has a very restrictive window. If she is not played on 4, her effect on 5 is hugely detrimental as it impacts where you can go for 6. You can ramp her out on 3 with Psylocke or Zabu, but at that point, there are better stat sticks if that's all you're looking for.
Archetype: Anchor

Uses:
When you are just starting out in Pool 1 and the number of cards available to play are more limited, Jess is actually not too bad. A 4 cost that turns into 8 power is strong enough that she might often even clinch out lanes on her own. The issue with Jess though, like Punisher, is that she's a card that definitely gets phased out as you enter into later pools and the game starts opening its doors up more. Jess is a card that has a *lot* of problems that don't become that evident until you really start experimenting and realizing her restriction for the +4 bonus to kick in really screws with her ability to be used in any later Pool 3 and onward decks.

So where should we start? Let's talk about her play window, because this is something that gets glossed over but is a chief reason for why Jess has issues. In essence, she is a 4 cost establisher card that HAS to be played on Turn 4. Playing Jess Turn 5 basically restricts your own play space on 6 unless you are okay with just playing a 4 power card on 5. On 6, she is no different than an ability-less card because she needs an extra turn (like Hawkeye) for her effect to proc. Since you see 9 of 12 cards in your deck over the course of match, this means that Jess has an effective play rate of 12.5%. And while there are other cards that also have single turn play windows like Sera or Professor X, those cards when they ARE played have huge impacts. Jess is a card that just gives you 4 more power, which is a pretty marginal return for such a narrow window. If you just wanted to play a 4 cost anchor, there are better options such as Warpath or even Rescue - both of which have their own issues too. Playing Jess just basically sets yourself up to be locked down. 

Outside of her play window, the condition of her ability poses another problem. I guess true to lore, Jess has to work alone to be effective. Unfortunately, this means in SNAP, she doesn't combo well or work with many other cards. Thus, similar to Lizard, she doesn't have a true archetypical home. Except in her case, this problem is even worse because at least Lizard is good and does eventually get a couple of spots where he is a key component. Jess just doesn't. The fact that you cannot play a card in the same lane after her, really restricts on the types of things you can do with her as a card. A common combination early game is to play Storm into Jess Jones for 10 power as it poses a moderate amount of power but even then, it still loses to Namor, who is also a Pool 1 card. Now imagine what happens by the time you get to Pool 3.

Then you add in the fact that she's also vulnerable to a handful of tech cards and her playability basically goes out the window. Her one saving grace is that at 8 power, she JUST dodges the Shang threshold, which is good as an anchor. However, that's about all she has going for her. She's still vulnerable to Cosmo and Shadow King. She can still be moved around by Magneto or get wrecked over by Leech. She can't be played against a lane where Goose is residing. The list goes on. About the best you can do for her is to play her in a Lane Lockdown deck along with cards like Nebula and Sunspot, so that when you aren't able to play in Jess' lane, the other cards there still grow. Playing her alongside some other movers such as Vision also help cause then you can shuffle them over to Jess' lane if you really needed to reinforce it. However, these are all ways to work around Jess' limitations. At that point, you really have to ask yourself - why bother? You're probably better off using another card unless you really like her.
 
Common Combos:
Not much to say here. Jess' effect doesn't combo super well with other cards because you need to leave her alone for her bonus to kick in:

Storm -> Jess Jones - Locks a Lane down by Turn 4 with 10 if you get it to come on curve. Decent in early Pools but it's marred by a strict window and can still lose to stuff like Namor or a boosted Warpath.
Nebula -> Jess Jones - If you are going to have to old!Spiderman yourself and lock yourself out of lane, you might as well find some way you can add power while you are being locked out.
HE Cyclops -> Jess Jones - Same principal as above except you take power away from your opponent. Loses to Luke Cage, but that's true for most HE Cyke combos
Vision -> Jess Jones - Since Jess' ability means you cannot play on her lane, move cards can be played elsewhere then Move into it on 6. Stuff like Nightcrawler, Captain Marvel also work. I just went with the largest mover to illustrate the concept.

Rank/Tier: D tier. Outside of Pool 1-2, Jess has a lot of problems. She's severely hampered by the fact that she her narrow window of play results in a very marginal bonus. Needing to lock yourself out for a turn is equivalent to getting hit by old Spiderman and that risk just isn't worth the reward.

Most Used Decks:
Lane Control / Lockdown
Ramp

[Tide]

Rescue



Cost: 4
Power: 5 (1 below par)
Ability: On Reveal - If you play a card into the same lane the next turn, +5 Power
Ideal Turn to Play: 4. Rescue has the same play window issues as Jess...that should give you a good idea about what I think about her in general
Archetype: Anchor - Like Jess, Rescue doesn't have a set defined home. You might want to play her with a Movement deck since she works best with those although she doesn't Move herself.

Uses:
I could probably take what I wrote about Jess Jones and just copy and paste it for Rescue because in practice, they both have the same problem: a very tight window for a marginal payoff that has an additional downside where you are forced to play into particular lanes and thereby locking yourself out. Rescue is a bit more offensive when it comes to this because while Jess can be excused for being a Pool 1 card, Rescue is a Pool 3 card. At that point, you don't expect to see as many stinkers, but Rescue certainly qualifies under that umbrella. However, that wouldn't do justice to this analysis, and truthfully, she is different than Jess Jones in a couple of crucial ways. So let's try to go over them without repeating myself too much.

Rescue's ability is basically the reversal of Jess's. Instead of NOT playing in the lane, with Rescue, you have to play into the lane to get the bonus. The devs seem to realize this is more restricting since with Jess, you technically have 2 lanes to choose from. So they compensated this by giving Rescue an extra point of power. The other benefit to Rescue is that as she wants other cards to work with her, she does have more combo viability than Jess. This then it is easier to add her to more decks since even if she isn't that strong, there are at least ways to utilize her and not lock yourself down by accident.

One good example is that she can combo with Professor X. Sure, Attuma does it better, but Rescue can be played into a lane already with another card that isn't Armor and grow to a respectable 4-9. Another example is to use cards with movement or flexibility to get around Rescue's lane limitation. You are basically shining a big spotlight onto that specific lane when she is played, but you can also play with that fact as a feint. No one said the next card you have to play MUST be a 5 cost card. So a good way to get around Rescue's restriction is to play her alongside another low cost card. You can split it in various ways but Wasp deserves a special mention here since she is 0 cost. This means you can play Wasp to trigger Rescue, then play a separate 5 cost card in another lane. This can be a good diversion if an opponent wants to play Professor X themselves for example and try to lock you out from contesting the last lane.

These small combo plays make Rescue better than Jess except with one caveat. A boosted Rescue is exactly 9 power. If there's one thing in SNAP you never want to be is to hit 9 power on the dot and not have a way to get around it because that just makes you an active Shang Chi magnet and you're not even getting as much out of the deal if they didn't draw him. Is this a worthwhile trade-off for the increased card synergies? Given how prevalent Shang usually is in the meta, probably not. And it shows because in practice, you pretty much never see Rescue at all. With all the same problems as Jess AND an added Shang vulnerability, that should hardly come as a surprise. 

Common Combos:
A lot of these as noted deal with the issue of Rescue being lane restricted:

Rescue -> Professor X - Very similar to Attuma Professor X, except it is one less power than Attuma.
Rescue -> Vision - Gets around Rescue's limitation somewhat but letting you move your 8 power Vision on Turn 6 if you need to reposition. Used to be done with Captain Marvel so the AI can auto move her to the best possible spot. However, given now that Captain Marvel is -2 Power from her original iteration and -4 from Vision, Vision's the better card now for the same function.
Rescue -> Wasp/Kitty - As described above, gives you a way to play around Rescue's limitation while acting as bait. Your opponent may be lured into a false sense of security of knowing that you have a play in the Rescue lane and might even suspect a larger secondary play, but probably not a 4-5 Energy play.
Daredevil -> Rescue -> Whatever - A risk mitigation way to play Rescue. This way you can at least see what an opponent might play on 5 and whether it is worthwhile to drop something into the Rescue lane or play something else to nullify the Turn 5 play.

Rank/Tier: D tier. Rescue is basically Jess Jones 2.0. Her ability might be the inverse of Jess, but she has the same problem as her and does not do enough to mitigate any of those issue.

Most Used Decks:
Lane Control / Lockdown

[Tide]

Crossbones



Cost: 4
Power: 8 (2 above par)
Ability: Passive - This card can only be played in a location where you are already winning.
Ideal Turn to Play: 4-6. About the one thing Crossbones does have available is that he is playable once you have the energy for him. Whether or not you can ACTUALLY play him is a different story
Archetype: Anchor / Lane control - Crossbones' ability pretty much makes him incapable of being used reliably in any other archetype.

Uses:
Crossbones has issues. You don't need to be a veteran SNAP player to see that. He is the very definition of a "win-more" card because he literally cannot be played unless you are ahead by 1 point. That means if a location is untouched by both players, Crossbones can't even be played. This makes his very inclusion into most decks iffy because the chances where he is a dead card is just too high. It'd be one thing if he was like Wong, where if he went unchecked, he would win you the game. But the only thing Crossbones does is add 8 power. That's pretty paltry for such a harsh restriction and 4 Energy. To add insult to injury, you can't even play him like other 4 cost establishers like Attuma and Mary where they can be combo'd into. Crossbones has to be played virtually stand-alone which really sinks him as usable.

Don't get me wrong though. 8 Power is technically above tempo, and functionally, if his Cost was lower, Crossbones would be very much usable. During the pre-Zabu nerf days when Zabu would reduce all 4 cost cards by 2 Energy, Crossbones was highly competitive because he became a 2-8 without much of a condition tied to him. Unlike Jess or Rescue, he didn't need an additional turn to proc his effect and he didn't need to be set up into like Mary. This meant that Crossbones was just a good value card...albeit at 2 cost. What this shows is that, IF Crossbones had a cost reduction, you'd probably see him more often because supposing that he was at 3 cost, he could be played similarly with Sera or be added as an option in Surfer decks. At 4 cost though, he's at best a 3-8 with Zabu, but that's still too risky and not enough of a reward. Put another way, Maximus, who is a 3-7, gets used selectively and his downside is much easier to deal with. So in games where Zabu is AWOL, Crossbones has virtually no presence and decks that DO use Zabu typically aren't looking to just a play a 3-8 stat stick.

The one thing Crossbones does have going for him as with Jess is that he sits right below the Shang threshold. So if you do get a chance to play him, he'd at least be something an opponent can't delete with kung-fu asian man. He also can't be disabled by Cosmo, Shadow King or Enchantress/Rogue. Heck, he can even serve as a guard against Leech and SpiderHam! But those are very fringe benefits for an otherwise difficult and clunky card to use. And despite what seems like few vulnerabilities, he is still open to being de-powered by Valkyrie so it isn't like he's 100% foolproof.

Once you then add-in the fact that he only adds power to a location where you are winning AND being unable to control exactly which lane you are winning, Crossbones ends up extremely lackluster at best since this means you can't even plan around when and where he will go. Sure, there are ways you can make him *able* to be played, but they might be in suboptimal areas like Jotenheim, where nobody wants to play a card early. A turn 3 Mr. Fantastic in the Middle will add power to every lane, but if your other 2 locations are Quantum Realm and Rickety Bridge, you're in trouble. Until he sees a bit of a tune-up, Crossbones will very likely remain underused because he is just too often dead or unpredictable. And the times when you can use him, your reward is to simply win more? Yeah, no thanks. 

Common Combos:
Crossbones is typically a pay-off card due to his restriction, so he's pretty much always going to be recipient versus a set up card:

Mr. Fantastic  -> Crossbones - Probably the most reliable way to play Crossbones. Mr. Fantastic on Mid gives you 2 power in each lane and is a good way to secure priority. Then on 4, you can drop Crossbones into whichever lane you are still ahead by. You can also amplify this in similar ways via Squirrel Girl on to add 1 additional power if needs be.
Silk / Spiderman -> Crossbones - 5 Power is a pretty moderate amount as noted. Silk's constant moving and Spiderman's redirection are both effective ways at relocating which lanes you have a winning amount of power in. From there, that gives you a window to plop Crossbones down on to the board.
Jeff the Baby Landshark / Vision / Nightcrawler -> Crossbones - Similar to the above and a more controlled way of doing it, but using Move cards allows you set up a lane with more power which then lets you drop Crossbones. The downside is that there is a one turn delay because Moved cards do not count towards a lane's power until the Move is completed - which takes place before the reveal phase of each card.

Rank/Tier: F tier. Crossbones borders on the realm of playability, sitting pretty much at the top of F or bottom of D, but his play restriction makes him virtually impossible to pre-plan where you can use him. If his cost was lowered as in the Pre-nerf Zabu days, he'd actually be a pretty reasonable card. As is though, no luck for Rumlow in the current landscape.

Most Used Decks:
Lane Control / Lockdown

[Tide]

We've mentioned this card a few times in the topic, but I think it is a good time to shed light on what it does as major archetype defining card: Cerebro



Cost: 3
Power: 0 (4 below par)
Ability: Ongoing - Give the highest power cards on your field an additional +2 Power.
Ideal Turn to Play: 5-6. Although you can play Cerebro as early as Turn 3, it is best played late into the match due to its sheer surprise factor. One of Cerebro's main strength is that it can incorporate a bunch of underutilized or cards with no seeming synergy together, only for the Turn 6 to happen and basically turn the entire board's power values upside down. Turn 5 is a consider if you want to use 6 for other plays, but means your opponent will know before going into the final turn what you are playing. And of course, as in any card game, being predictable is often a death sentence.
Archetype: Cerebro - Namesake Card!

Uses:
Here is a card that is real interesting. Cerebro buffs cards up similar to things like Ironheart and Blue Marvel but it only buffs up cards that have the highest power value. In short, if you currently have a 6 Powered Winter Soldier and a 4 Powered Carnage on the field, it will only boost up Winter Soldier to a +8. So on its own, it doesn't seem impressive since all it does is give +2 to a card. The kicker is that this buff effect hits *every* card as long as they are all the highest value. In short, if instead you have a 3 powered Cosmo and a 3 powered Armor on the board, BOTH cards will receive the buff. So Cerebro is actually an excellent tool if you plan on going wide. It does mean you have to do a lot of deck planning because you essentially need cards all to converge on to 1 main power value, but the big advantage is that you can utilize a lot of underused or otherwise unseen set of cards together.

A good example of this is something like Cerebro 5. So the goal here is to hit the board with a lot of 5 powered cards, then use Cerebro at the end to buff. The problem is that typically 5 Powered cards don't come cheap...at least they don't if you play more traditional ones like Polaris or Miles. This can make it quite difficult to effectively 5 flood your board. The solution to this is to then add cards that are normally less used due to their issues and thus are more unconventional. For example, you can slot in Star Lord, a 2-2 that only goes up to 5 power if his On Reveal procs. Medusa is another option as she is also normally a 2-2 but can become a 2-5 if you can throw her into the middle lane. Awkward card combinations like this can throw your opponent in for a real loop because on the surface, they don't resemble any archetype at all. Then Turn 6 comes around and that's when you slam like Cerebro on the board to add up to +8 in any lane.

The nature of Cerebro means that often times, playing a lower Cerebro value is better than playing a higher one. There are simply more cards that only have 2-3 power versus cards that have like 7-8 power. So while you can do something like Cerebro 7, the higher the values, the less effective Cerebro becomes because you simply don't have enough bodies to toss onto the field. In terms of effectiveness, Cerebro 2 and Cerebro 3 are often the most played followed by Cerebro 5. Of these 3 values, Cerebro 3 is probably the most competitive one in today's landscape. This is owing to a few factors, but namely having more available real estate agents, more powerful tech options and being able to utilize 2 power cards even if it ends up weakening the overall state of the board. Meanwhile, Cerebro 5 is kind of the best upper range - where cards have an adequate amount of power that they aren't wont for needing Cerebro to be drawn to threaten taking over a lane.

Despite its wide scope, Cerebro has a few crippling weaknesses that prevent it from real rocketing in terms of play rate. The worst amongst these issues is dealing with power adjustment effects from locations. There are lot of locations in SNAP - around 130 of them in fact. Unfortunately for Cerebro players, many of these locations also provide a power modifier for a card. When your deck is built upon reaching a certain power value and not going over it, these things will be the death of you. Locations that normally are neutral like Xander or beneficial like Muir Island are all of a sudden complete nightmares to deal with because one miscalculation can mean your Cerebro now only hits one card instead of an entire lane. Then there are locations that either drop unwanted tokens like Monster Island giving you a 9 Power Monster token or negative power locations like Sewer System which then further cap how much power you can output in a lane. It is for this reason all Cerebro decks really want to have a real estate agent available and why C2 and C3 are the most played. Between Scarlet Witch, Storm, Rhino and Magik, you can safely get rid of these and not deal with the hassle.

However, that doesn't stop an opponent's card effects from hitting you. Cerebro players are real vulnerable to power adjustment cards in general, which is why Luke Cage is also often a card included. Being only 2 power, he will almost never steal Cerebro's effect for himself unless you are doing some real goofy idea like Cerebro 0. Yet at the same time, he will guard against stuff like Soul Stone, Scorpion and Hazmat - all of which can hurt the potential reach of Cerebro. Red Skull in particular is a huge bane for Cerebro players because his Ongoing effect alters the power value of all opposing cards in his lane and it is impossible to Turn off without giving the opponent an advantage unless you play C5. For lower Cerebro values, Titania also spells trouble since she's either 5 power for your opponent or ends up hogging the Cerebro buff all to herself. As the game continues its life span, there are sure to be more cards that have power adjustment effects - all of which can impact Cerebro in different ways.

Because Cerebro plays with all the same values typically, it is also a deck where a smart player can figure out the potential ceiling of the deck. Remember earlier when I said being predictable can be a death sentence? Here, having an opponent figure out you are playing Cerebro is bad for 2 reasons. The first being that they know exactly how much power you can output and can therefore hedge on whether or not they can beat you. The second is that if they know they cannot, they can simply retreat for a low cube loss. You want to be able to mask your intentions with Cerebro as much as possible, but sometimes that can be pretty tough to do because even in Cerebro, there are certain cards that are preferred choices. Your best bet is to often mesh these together with what looks like another archetypical deck play. For example, Forge + Brood suggests Patriot, but can be a good way to lean into Cerebro 5.

The initial idea of Cerebro was to give a way for players to buff up their tech cards since they are often below tempo and can be hard to interact with. As the game has progressed though, this idea has become less and less important because now there are just more cards you can use for various Cerebro values. The best Cerebro decks though have often maintained this identity, which is probably why C2 and C3 are still the most popular variants to this day. 


Common Combos:
Depending the Cerebro value you are trying to make use of, there are multiple different combos you can utilize. Here are some short and simple ones:

Universal
Luke Cage  -> Cerebro - Basically your main defense against anything that gives minus values. Useful against stuff like Scorpion, but more often utilized on annoying locations that might spawn.
Cerebro -> Mystique - Doubles up your Cerebro effect. Self explanatory. Giving your cards +4 is pretty good!

C2 Combos
Goose -> Cerebro - Guards an early Cerebro against Enchantress and 50/50s Rogue. Super Skrull can use Cerebro's power, but if they aren't playing their own Cerebro deck, this is a very minor advantage gained by Skrull. The best part is locking down a lane this way with Goose forces an opponent to also play low cost and therefore often low powered cards to this lane, making it easier for you to win it.
Storm -> Cerebro - Other than being a real estate agent, here's a situation where dropping Storm and early Cerebro can be useful because you effectively shut the lane off from further counter play. If you play another 1-2 in the Storm lane on the same turn, you can still buff that lane thereafter for noticeable power.
Brood -> Cerebro - A real simple 2 card combo but turns Brood into a 3-12, barring additional power boosts. A very good way to close out a game since the Cerebro play here also then buffs up all other 2 costs you might have played for the rest of the game.

C3 Combos
Invisible Woman -> Cerebro - Yep. See Goose. This one is better in some ways because your opponent doesn't necessary know it is Cerebro hidden underneath. Worse in other cases because unlike Goose, Sue won't stop large big costs from landing into the lane.
Cerebro -> Wasp / Yellowjacket / Valkyrie - Pretty much a killer Turn 6 play that guarantees a lane. The caveat is that you have to play Cerebro on an early turn, which can give yourself away.
Bast -> Valkyrie -> Cerebro - C3 is often the best Cerebro value to play with because Bast and Valk let you 3 Power wash your entire board and hand, making it easy to set up.
Cerebro -> Shadow King / Shang Chi - Like with the Valkyrie Play, this is another line that pretty much flips the board because Shadow King will reset values while Shang destroys anything over 9 power. Then you boost all cards with the same 3 power by another 2 points.

Rank/Tier: C tier. Cerebro is a card that offers some wide deck building opportunities. Because of this, these decks are often unpredictable and be quite strong because of it. Unfortunately, many locations in the game actively screw Cerebro players over and these decks often have a power ceiling, which means that it just loses to certain decks that can scale or explode really well.

Most Used Decks:
Cerebro
Negative

[Captain K]

I got your D-tier Rescue right here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bU2PWs9qIZSTQw-T27x4KL7JKpn2ABib/view?usp=drive_link

[Tide]

I got your D-tier Rescue right here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bU2PWs9qIZSTQw-T27x4KL7JKpn2ABib/view?usp=drive_link

Nice one. Let me know when you get Rocks as your mascot.

I haven't updated this topic for awhile, so let's go over something quick and dirty. I've been recently asked if I wanted to contribute to a "Card of the Day" style analysis on the reddit board, so I will probably be cross posting at some point! Maybe. The game has gone over 4 or 5 patches since the last time I posted and a lot of stuff has changed - maybe when I get unlazy, I will review the analysis for a few of the cards I've already visited. This mainly applies to Wave, Aero, Chavez (which has undergone big changes) but also to minor adjustments such as Black Cat and Shang (minor OTA adjustments mostly).

Anyway, back to business: Colossus



Cost: 2
Power: 3 (Par)
Ability: Ongoing - This card cannot be debuffed, destroyed or moved once it is played.
Ideal Turn to Play: 2-6. Colossus has a wide play window overall. That's his main selling point arguably in that he's old reliable. Unfortunately, it does mean he's pretty boring otherwise
Archetype: Anchor / Ongoing - Predictably

Uses:
As far as cards in SNAP go, Colossus is probably the most boring. Yeah, I'm aware abilitless cards like Wasp and Misty Knight exist, but those have an alternative form with High Evo (HE), which then makes them more powerful and interesting. Colossus really just sits there. Quite literally too because once he's on the board, you can't really interact with him. He's immune to being destroyed, being debuffed by power down effects and can't be shoved around at all. If it wasn't for locations being a thing in SNAP, Colossus would basically be interchangeable with Shocker most of the time. They are both 2 cost 3 power cards that don't do much - just that Colossus' ability means he has good defenses against most things that want to interact with him.

Where Colossus really shines is with locations that have detrimental effects. Take Negative Zone for example. This is a location that applies a -3 Debuff to any card played in its lane. Well, Colossus' ability means he doesn't care about that, so he sits there at his regular 3 power value. Your opponent now has to play a 6 power card to counteract him...more if you buff Colossus in some other way. The above mentioned Rickety Bridge is another. Simply play Colossus onto the Bridge and if your opponent doesn't have a play to answer, you basically steal it for free since he can't be destroyed without first taking away his ability.

His ability means he's an excellent defensive card against most disruption effects, often creating 50/50s or worse for an opponent if the disruption most interact with the board. A common example is with Polaris. Polaris interacts with 1-2 cost cards, which Colossus is. However, Colossus' ability means he nullifies Polaris' ability to move him. If you have a high value 2 cost card like Invisible Woman or Zabu, Colossus can make those disruptive plays chancey because now there is a chance to hit Colossus instead. While he doesn't 100% nullify them, it is nice that he at least has par value for a card and doesn't require a separate tech card to offer this defensive bonus. Like you would expect, Colossus is just solid. This in turn also means that cards that have merge effects like Hulk Buster, are good with him too since like Wolverine, Colossus is hard to destroy.

Flip side though, because there's not much you can do to interact with Colossus, it also means that there is a ceiling to how useful he is. He won't win you games in a way like a Turn 6 Shang Chi might. He also doesn't set up combos like Wong or present a threat like Kingpin. So in short, Colossus is often just...there, sitting cozily at his 3 power. There are ways of course to leverage this such as with Cerebro, Spectrum or Destroyer. But overall, Colossus is about as straightforward as you can get. His ability often isn't good enough to just take away with Rogue or Enchantress but at the same time, his 3 power doesn't mean nothing either since you can use him as anchor in other ways.

Common Combos:
Because of his ability, Colossus isn't very interactive, which limits the ways a card can combo or play off him. Still, you can try some of these:

Colossus -> Destroyer: Pretty straightforward if you want to play Destroyer without risk of actually vaporizing your board. The nice thing here is that Colossus can sit in any lane instead of a lane that has been hit by Armor or Professor X. Logan is actually better since he gets that +2 buff but Logan also isn't synergistic with Colossus since he actually wants to be destroyed, versus Colossus who cannot

Colossus -> Man Thing: Man Thing is a recent release but he's pretty powerful, applying a -2 Power to all 1-3 cost cards in the lane. This hits your cards too so your options are to either not put 1-3 costs there, use Luke OR something like Colossus which ignores Man-Thing's ability.

Colossus -> Hulk Buster: Yep. Colossus works with any other power-up card because he has innate immunity to Shadow King. This just means that enchant creature type cards like Hulk Buster have less risk when used on him. Downside - he also doesn't do much else with it unfortunately.

Rank/Tier: D tier. There are actual rocks in the game, but Colossus is probably more of one by definition. You can't really interact with him once he comes down, but that's the beauty of the card. Unfortunately, that also kneecaps him in how he can be interacted with, which in turn means he has a very low ceiling potential.

Most Used Decks:
Spectrum Destroyer
Cerebro 3

[Captain K]

Wow, big disagree on Colossus. He's one of the best two drops in the game in my opinion. Just being able to play him on Death's Domain or the two or three other instant kill locations is an easy turn 6 win condition. Also has some newish synergy due to nerfed Luke Cage. One of the few cards you can play along with Hazmat or Typhoid Mary. Probably going to see a rise in High Evolutionary decks with Cage getting wrecked so that's another counter to them. Yes, he's only three power, but he's three power that can only be stopped with Rogue or Enchantress.

[Tide]

Wow, big disagree on Colossus. He's one of the best two drops in the game in my opinion. Just being able to play him on Death's Domain or the two or three other instant kill locations is an easy turn 6 win condition. Also has some newish synergy due to nerfed Luke Cage. One of the few cards you can play along with Hazmat or Typhoid Mary. Probably going to see a rise in High Evolutionary decks with Cage getting wrecked so that's another counter to them. Yes, he's only three power, but he's three power that can only be stopped with Rogue or Enchantress.

Let's respectfully disagree then. Which other 2 cost cards do you see him being that much better then? Especially ones which you commonly see? Like he's definitely better than Mantis, Mordo, Star Lord and probably Okoye. But I have a hard time seeing him being better than Psylocke or even Quake - neither of which I see being better than a C tier card. Quake, if played with the right location sets wins things on her own for 2 power. Psylocke can combo into really powerful plays or Ramp into necessary engine cards like Mr. Negative or Sandman. Colossus' ability is good defensively but the problem is that it doesn't disrupt or slow an opponent down and he's difficult to interact with, meaning he's often just going to be a 2-3. New Luke Cage still dumpsters HE Cyke but I'd argue it's probably killed off both Hazmat and Mary because now they are basically never worth their value without significant set up (in Mary's case, I can't even see how she is ever a 4-10 again if you play ANY other card other than Luke or Colossus). That doesn't help Colossus at all but just hurts those two other cards playability. I also already noted how he's basically very sturdy. He's basically almost always 3 power because his ability by itself isn't worth taking away. But because of that, you can use him as anchor in some decks such as C3.

Side note - My rankings are also obviously personal opinions so don't get too worked up about them. Anecdotally, I rarely ever see Colossus in the game currently and you never see him in Netdecks nowadays or from creators either, which I think reinforces my position. He's probably more realistically a Punisher scenario. Fundamentally not terrible but definitely powercrept.

[Tide]

Rogue



Cost: 3
Power: 2 (2 Below Par)
Ability: On Reveal - Steal an Ongoing Ability from an opponent in this lane. Rogue gains this power.
Ideal Turn to Play: Varies, but typically late game - usually 4-6. Rogue is very rarely, if ever, played on 3. She is the first card we are looking at that counters Ongoing abilities (there are 3 in total)
Archetype: Tech / Ongoing

Uses:
I have real mixed feelings on Rogue. She's a card which I really want to like, but more often in practice, if you're looking for Ongoing Hate, there are two other tech cards that do similar jobs as she does. And more often than not, Enchantress is probably a bit better than Rogue. Don't get me wrong though - Rogue is fun. How can she not be when you're basically doing a Uno Reverse against an opponent with his own card abilities? The issue is that Rogue is only useful in some specific circumstances. However, when she is good, she is *really* good.

Let's look at her main advantages compared to her compatriots. The first thing of note and the main that separates them is the cost. Super Skrull and Enchantress are both 4 cost cards. Rogue costs only 3. This has obvious applications. Rogue is more flexible for your curve and can easily fit alongside another card late into the game. She can fly under Goose which has merit, even if she is only a 50/50. After all, 50% is better than 0% which what Enchantress bats against it. It also gives her innate synergy with Silver Surfer, which IMO, is one of the best cards in the game. In terms of Power, 2 power is obviously not great, but Super Skrull costs 1 more and has the same power, so relatively speaking, Rogue is winning that trade there too. So altogether, she's just a more efficient tech card than the other two.

But of course, if you are paying for less, there are definitive trade-offs. The first here is that Skrull and Enchantress can match the 3 cost if the deck runs Zabu. And just as Rogue has synergy with Surfer, all 4 costs have synergy with the tiger. With Zabu's cost reduction, now Enchantress and Skrull can go through Goose as well, although the added set up makes them a bit more clunky. Second, Rogue only shuts down one Ongoing effect. While this can effectively be game winning, like if you steal your opponent's Knull or Iron Man, it might not be enough depending on what they are doing. Further, because you can only steal one ability, anytime there is more than one Ongoing ability in the same lane, Rogue becomes a gamble and immediately drops to 50/50. That's obviously not great. Because she cannot self-target, and is dependent on what your opponent plays, Rogue also is harder to combo into. Enchantress can hit your own Lizard, Red Skull, Mary, etc. and effectively let you play those cards with no downside, something Rogue (and Super Skrull) cannot.

At the end of the day, which of the Ongoing tech cards you use depends on the deck and what you are trying to do. Rogue is best in decks that want to run an Ongoing tech card that doesn't care too much about being able to combo into other cards. For this reason, she tends to be weaker because Enchantress can be used to set up a powerful series of card plays without relying on what the opponent does. If an opponent plays no Ongoing cards, or the only Ongoing card they are playing is Lizard, Rogue is effectively a dead card. However, if you're just looking to shut down one troublesome Ongoing ability like Wong or Knull, Rogue is a god-sent. Being 1 less Energy cost is a big deal at being able to deploy Rogue because it means she can come onto the board faster and you still might have room to play another meaningful card to impact your board.

Common Combos:
Like other cards where they are dependent on what an opponent plays, Combo plays off of Rogue is hard. One important consideration is that once Rogue copies an ability, she gains that ability for the rest of the game. Meaning if you can then dupe Rogue, she will have the same Ongoing text as the first ability she stole. This has some obvious applications if you are able to steal something of high value.

Rogue -> Mystique: Mystique copies an Ongoing effect of a card that YOU own. If you Rogue and steal an ability, Mystique then gives you a copy of that stolen ability. This is really good if you steal something like Iron Man, where the stolen ability can function well on it's own without a lot of other support.

Rogue -> Onslaught: See above. Onslaught doubles the effects of Ongoing cards. So Rogue + Onslaught doubles up on an Ongoing ability you stole.

Quinjet -> Nico Minoru -> Rogue: A 3 card combo that lets you dupe a Rogue with a stolen ability and then replay it at -1 Cost. Quinjet/Nico is a combo you might see in a Loki Collector Bounce shell, so there's a case where this 3 card combo is a real thing.

Rank/Tier: C tier. I think Rogue and Super Skrull are probably comparable and both are slightly weaker than Enchantress. The main issue here is that both cards are reliant on an opponent playing meaningful Ongoing cards. Rogue has no effect if that is not the case. Granted, the ability to steal an opponent's ability is always fun and can flip the board state entirely if she steals something meaningful.

Most Used Decks:
Surfer
Negative
Spectrum Destroyer
Ongoing Tribunal

[Tide]

Let's talk about VSM's favourite card - Valkyrie



Cost: 5
Power: 3 (6 Below Par)
Ability: On Reveal - Set the power of all Cards in this lane to 3.
Ideal Turn to Play: About 95% of the time, Valk is best played on 6 for the biggest surprise factor. However, there are times when you want to play her on 5 - especially if you can dupe her effect with Absorbing Man
Archetype: Tech / Support

Uses:
Most tech cards in this game flutter around the 3-4 cost range. Not cheap enough to be freely available, but not so expensive they become the only Card play available on a given turn. Of the cards in the game, only a handful of 5 Cost cards serve as tech cards. Valkyrie is one of them. She's a high cost, low powered card which is obviously bad in terms of stat line. If you're going to pay 5 Energy for a tech effect, it better win you the game or you're going to be in deep trouble. Luckily, Valkyrie does exactly that. She's a lane stealer thanks to her extremely powerful ability but she does require some set up to be used properly.

Valkyrie's effect makes it such that any cards in her lane are set to exactly 3 power. It doesn't matter if you played Shuri then doubled a Red Skull to 28. If someone plays Valk in the same lane, they will effectively turn your 28 power down to 3 - effectively killing your Turn 4 and 5 in one fell swoop. This already sounds pretty good, but then you can just play cards after Valk reveals to win the lane back, right? Well, yes. But that's why most Valkyrie users will look to flood your lanes first. Valk's effect is symmetrical so she hits cards on your end too. So you'd think just flooding the lane results in a tie. However, here's where a neat priority order in terms of power determination comes into play. Valk resets power to 3, but Ongoing effects are not considered to be part of the card's stat. They are an "Ability Power" effect essentially so Valk doesn't turn them off. So in the above example with Red Skull, if we both flooded lanes and I hit you with Valk, that lane would just be mine because of Red Skull's Ongoing ability, which gives all of my cards an extra +2 power.

Knowing these rules, you can set up Valk yourself with an Ongoing effect. You don't need to play the Ongoing effect in the same lane. Just as long as you have one active, about 95% of the time, it will result in you breaking lane priority. And that's the key. If you have something that can break parity, Valk will win the lane she is on once she is played. You do have to be careful though because if you play with priority, you'll miss any unrevealed targets. Order is therefore also important. Playing Valk then Demon keeps your Demon at 6 Power. Playing Demon then Valk turns your Demon to 3 Power and possibly losing you the game.

Most of the time, you're going to want to play Valk late and without priority. Partially, that's due to the surprise factor, but more importantly, you need proper set up to ensure your hitting everything since you otherwise risk unrevealed cards winning that lane. However, there are situations where you will want to hit a target earlier with Valk. A great example of this is with Shuri. Shuri is highly telegraphed in that for her effect to kick in, the card being powered up MUST be played in her lane. So against Nimrod destroy variants, you want to either have priority going into Turn 6 or pre-empt them on 5 with Valk. Doing so means you overwrite their power doubling and drop Nimrod back down to 3 Power. Nimrod is Shang Proof so this is one of the few ways which you can kneecap the Nimrod Destroy player before he starts splitting copies because once he does, you are likely going to lose. Having him dupe 3 Power cards is obviously not ideal! You can even do a dual Valkyrie play where you drop Valk on 5, then use Absorbing Man to dupe the effect. This is extremely powerful because opponents already don't tend to expect Valkyrie let alone two Valkyries. Indeed, most Shuri players would rather play Armor to stop a NTW or Shang versus Luke Cage to stop a possible Valk.

With all that said, it should be obvious then what Valk's weaknesses are. She will lose to most Ongoing effects because they can break symmetry. She will also lose if another card sneaks into play after her effect because 12 power in a lane is obviously not very high. Her cost means she's very inflexible and you need to preplan where she is going to be played and her overall impact because likely in the turn you play her, you can't do much else. Luke Cage voids Valkyrie setting power to 3 if it represents a drop, so he completely dumpsters you as does Shadow King who will reset power values if he is played after you. Priority control is important as is making sure there are no Ongoing effects in the lane you want to drop her in. As such, Echo and Rogue are some of Valk's best friends. Enchantress works too, but has higher base power and being 4 cost makes her harder to use than the other two. Ghost can be useful too if you have issues dealing with priority to ensure you reveal last.

Valkyrie's effect is devastating but she has to be for essentially being a 5-cost tech card.

Common Combos:
Valk has some really mean combos - like outright lane winners - if you have the right draw. But then like Professor X, if you're paying 5 cost for a tech card like effect, it better be. The good news is that Valkyrie delivers on that promise as long as you are aware of her flaws.

Valkyrie -> Demon / Titania / Antman: Let's start with the obvious. If a Lane already has 2 cards played, Valk + Antman gives you a point total of 16. If an opponent has played 4 other cards here as well with no Ongoing effect, Antman will win it for you after Valk goes off.

Cerebro -> Valkyrie: In C3, Valk is devastating. She serves as a way to both kneecap an opponent's lane while simultaneously bringing up all of your own on the last turn.

Doc Oct -> Valkyrie: Doc Oct pulls out 4 cards into a lane. As long as there isn't an Ongoing effect, Valk will cut them all down to 3 power - so 12 to that lane - which then makes it easy pickings to outright win it.

Hood -> Sentry -> Valkyrie + Demon: A simple set up. Sentry creates a Void that is -10. Play Hood in the same lane, then on 5, 3 wash the entire lane with Valk. Demon from Hood then wins you the lane.

YellowJacket -> Wasp -> Antman -> Valkyrie: A very powerful but 4 card combo which can be dumped on the last turn. Both Wasp and YJ or 0 Cost and Antman is 1. So Valk's 5 + Antman's 1 means this combo is valid for non-limbo games. Dump all 4 into a lane an opponent is investing and steal it.

Invisible Woman -> Valkyrie: A delayed Valk, like Shang and Killmonger, can be a magnificent way to lane steal. You just have to be wary of what cards you have in there that win parity after Valk goes off.

Rank/Tier: B tier. Valk probably borders on the bottom of A, but to be conservative, I'm placing her in B. She's basically a 5 cost tech card that will basically steal lanes for you as long as you have the adequate set up. That does mean she isn't as flexible as some of the other cards, but her effect is so good that in the decks she works in, she's an effective finisher.

Most Used Decks:
Control
Junk
Negative
Cerebro 3

[Tide]

Going to talk about a card, which I hope will lead up into something new for this topic, which is deck and game discussions. So with that said, let's look at a Series 3 big enabler card: Sera



Cost: 5
Power: 4 (5 Below Par)
Ability: Ongoing - All your cards cost -1 Energy to play
Ideal Turn to Play: 5. Sera is hard locked more or less into a 1 turn play window. Playing Sera too early risks her getting hit by an early tech card. Playing her on 6, obviously does nothing. You want to be late enough into the game that when Sera comes down, your opponent doesn't have much room to maneuver to disable you since a 5-4 stat line is obviously paltry.
Archetype: Enabler / Sera Miracle

Uses:
As has been said many times in this topic, modifying play windows is huge. Because of this, any card that alters the cost of other cards will always have some merit even if they are a little tricky to use. Sera fits the very definition of that. She is a flat -1 Energy Cost to all further cards plays once she comes down. The catch is that Sera basically only has a 1 turn window, so if she misses her window on 5, she basically becomes a dead card. That and the fact that her stat line is paltry means if her ability isn't doing anything, there is zero reason to play. Still, you may have only 1 turn, but that 1 turn can let you cause some real havoc.

While Sera can work well with many other cards, she's often best played alongside other late game turners - namely other tech cards - to do the greatest damage. This makes sense because many powerful tech options are 4 cost cards on base. Playing Sera now makes them 3 cost, allowing you to double up and play 2 of them if needed. When paired with Zabu, that 4 cost now becomes 2 cost and you can play up to 3. 3 tech gives you a lot of options to blow up your opponent's board. By Turn 5, you can often see what shell the opponent is running which means a more experienced player can guess what you may have on hand. If you start playing a lot of 3 costs, I know I need to save my Shadow King because you are likely playing Surfer as your last card. If you are playing Shuri, I know that last turn is probably a combo of Taskmaster + 1 large one drop - Hood Demon, Titania or a Sauron'd Maw. As such I will play Shadow King AND Shang to catch Tasky. This type of tech counter strategy has lead to Sera having her own archetype - the Sera Miracle - which focuses on Turn 6 turnarounds for this exact reason.

Of course, that doesn't mean Sera doesn't have other homes. 3 cost cards also often carry a lot of good tech, so she naturally finds a bond with Surfer for similar reasons. On the flip side, if you just need to cheat out a lot of big cards like a Tribunal deck, then Sera might also make sense. In this case, you'll often partner her with Magik to increase the number of turns where her impact can be felt AND as a way to extend Sera's play window. Where Sera makes less sense are often in very straightforward or "On Curve" type decks that don't need to dump a ton of energy plays at any time. Stuff like Zero Shuri/Kitty Shuri/Generic Destroy or even Shenaut often have game plans where their ideal curve doesn't require them to use up more energy then they have (in Shenaut's case, they actually want float) so a Turn 5 Sera actually doesn't do anything.

Even though she can provide a pretty big benefit, Sera has some rather large drawbacks as well. I've already mentioned the stat line, but there are other limitations here too. For example, Sera cannot reduce a card's cost below 1. So deck types that have a lot of 1 costs such as Thanos or Zoo have zero reason to play Sera usually. Related to her stat line, because she often finds homes in other heavy combo decks or tech heavy decks, most of the other cards, including Sera herself often have bad power. This doesn't seem like much of an issue on the surface. But when an opponent drops cards where you can't hit them with any sort of tech, this is a real serious issue. Cards that flutter around the 7-9 mark and cost more than 2 usually present problems for Sera because those types of decks just tend to outpower you. The cost reduction can also be a negative depending on certain location such as Crimson Cosmos, which can then just lock you from play.

Funnily enough, even though you can ramp out Sera early to get more of her benefit, I'd actually recommend against doing it. It obviously varies from a case by case situation, but placing an early Sera screams for your opponent to disable you. A lot of players might not be experts, but even the greenest of players know giving you more energy to work with is a bad idea. As such, this type of play carries a lot of risk and it often isn't worth it. Unless you're playing a deck that needs to ramp out multiple pieces, a single turn can often be enough to turn the tides around.

Sera is a card that is easy to misjudge. I think most players value her much higher than I do. To me, Sera should be a card where if she comes down, she aids you in whatever goal you are accomplishing. So her best homes are like with Surfer where you don't NEED Sera, but she's obviously very nice since she gives an extra card play. If your game plan 100% depends on getting Sera to the board, your deck is going to be shaky at best since between the various disruption effects, bad locations and draws, the chances where you can enact such a plan are not common enough.

Common Combos:
Sera's energy reduction, even though it gives you only 1 real turn to play with, can't be underestimated. Reducing Costs by 1 is huge, letting you play two 4 cost energy costs for example and it stacks with Zabu, sometimes letting you just dump cards. That said, even though you technically get more of a discount playing her early, a lot of the combos save her for 5 so the big swings on 6 can come out.

Sera -> Shang Chi + Absorbing Man: Sera works best with most tech cards as they border on the 4 cost, preventing them from being able to use multiple ones on the last turn. To get around that, you can either play Zabu or Sera. Sera has the added benefit of also reducing cost on tech cards of other costs, which then lets you mix and match for the scenario needed. Double Shang being one of those combos that's just very nasty if your opponent doesn't account for it.

Zabu -> Whatever -> Sera -> Valkyrie + Absorbing Man: This is an example of what I mentioned above. In this case, both Zabu and Sera have to be played because Valk costs 5. But with this set up, you can double Valk on 6, which is pretty devastating.

Magik -> Wave -> Onslaught-> Sera -> Iron Man + Living Tribunal: Sera can also enable long complex chains, in this case, in conjunction with Wave and Magik. You're goal is to stack Onslaught, Iron Man and Living Tribunal in the same lane. This costs a ton of energy and isn't normally playable...which is why you need to cheat cards out with Wave, then use Sera's discount to play the combo. Done correctly, this slaps 29+ Power across all 3 lanes. You do of course need to play everything on curve, so it is fragile but certainly possible.

Zabu -> Wong -> Mystique -> Sera -> Whatever: Yeeeah, here's another on curve requirement, but done played in this way, you go into Turn 6 basically able to dump a massive On Reveal combo. Your opponent could be baiting you into a sense of victory, but if they don't have Cosmo at the ready and priority, this is basically GG.

Sera -> Surfer + Brood + Any other 3 Cost: Yep. 3 Cost is the magic number as mentioned several times. In a Surfer deck, Sera's often added as the sole high cost piece because she enables you to then play 3 cards on Turn 6. This is often Surfer + an establisher and maybe one tech card to steal the game. Brood in this case, is often the go to.

Rank/Tier: C tier. Sera is a similar case to Professor X in that while they both only have a 1 turn window, when they are played, their impact is rather large. The difference is that unlike Charles, Sera doesn't end matches. She does let you do some powerful combos, but you still have to plan your turns and Turn 6 turnarounds can leave you quite vulnerable to disruption.

Most Used Decks:
Sera Miracle (Control)
Ongoing Tribunal
Surfer
Wong Combos

[Captain K]

This was my go-to deck before Surfer got Nerfered.

Psylocke, Colossus, Ironheart, Brood, Mister Fantastic, Silver Surfer, Cosmo, Rhino, Polaris, Absorbing Man, Enchantress, Sera

Psylocke should only be played on turn 3 (for early Sera on 4) or turn 5 (if you didn't pull Sera). Turn 6 has a lot of options, including
Surfer+Absorbing Man
Brood+Absorbing Man
Ironheart+Absorbing Man
or Surfer+two other three costs

Enchantress could be replaced by Rogue (don't think she was out at that time, or maybe I didn't have her). Colossus gives you something to do on turn 2, and is just nice to have in general.

Deck was easily 90%+ win rate before the nerf.

[Tide]

Shadow King



Cost: 2
Power: 2 (1 Below Par)
Ability: On Reveal - Reset the Power of all cards in this lane to their base power
Ideal Turn to Play: 6. Playing Shadow King (SK) at any time other than 6 means an opponent may still have ways to buff the cards you're hitting. His 2 Cost makes him very flexible and easy to slot in - doubly so if you have any sort of cost reduction.
Archetype: Tech

Uses:
Of all the cards released since I started playing, I think Shadow King has probably seen the biggest upswing after patches. When he was released, he was borderline unusable. At 4 cost and 3 Power, no one was going to use him when Shang was in the same range and did even better by just outright removing cards off the board. Old Shadow King's issue can be summed up in two words: Bad Statline. He costed too much and didn't have enough power to warrant using him even as a tech piece. Since then, his cost has dropped from 4 to 3, then 3 to 2 and his power suitably adjusted until where he is today. At 2 Cost, SK now has a distinct niche from Shang and is in some ways, the better tech card to slot for specific combos and decks.

Resetting an opponent's card to their base power is obviously really powerful. A lot of the build-up type cards like Kitty, Wolverine, Deadpool, just get absolutely eaten by a well-placed end-of-the-game SK. And in the case of cards like Wolverine and Nimrod, SK serves as the premier tech to them because they are immune to Shang. At 2 cost, he's now versatile enough to be slotted into many, many decks and can dumpster a lot of anchors on this own. See an opponent's giant Deadpool? SK can work even better than Shang in this case because he's actually +1 on base versus Deadpool and costs 2 energy less. It also makes him easier to be used in combo plays. For example, playing SK into a lane with Brood to reset your opponent's power down, then dropping Surfer to give all your Broods +2 can result in a massive swing. Similarly, you can drop SK to neuter all power gains from a location like Muir Island, then play Luke Cage on SK to regain all the power lost from SK's reset.

Because he is best used as a surprise (like a few other tech cards), SK is almost reserved for a Turn 6 play despite being able to be played as early as 2. This means you have to manage priority for most of the game if you intend to use him for the greatest effect. In current SNAP play, needing to give up priority has an added drawback in the form of Alioth, who will just flat out eat your cards if you don't have priority, without them getting to reveal. This vulnerability exists for a lot of tech cards but it hurts stuff like SK more because he is so very much intended as a last turn play. At least even with a card like Shang for example, there are fringe cases where you might consider dropping him early. SK suffers more because he doesn't straight up delete a card. So in essence, you are playing a 2 power card against whatever your opponent is playing that turn versus a Shang for 3 and an opponent technically playing nothing if you destroyed something.

SK's other weakness is in the form of cards that override his power resetting effect - namely Luke Cage and in some cases, Valkyrie. Valkyrie is less of an issue as the two counter each other depending on which one goes first. But Luke just wrecks SK completely. Luckily, current SNAP has nerfed Cage to the point where he only effects one lane now (just like SK) and since Cage is usually better played pre-emptive versus reaction like SK, your SK can usually dodge him. 2 power is also low enough that SK often can't win lanes on his own and will need some support. Take Black Panther for example. If Black Panther grows to be 16 Power or whatever, you can counter him with either Shang OR SK. However, while Shang can win by himself as he removes BP from the field, Shadow King does not. He needs at least another 3 power card in the lane to take it. This power (or lack thereof) is a real issue for Shadow King...especially now that he can now longer be buffed by Surfer. You have to be actively winning a lane before SK goes down because his 2 power is very paltry leaves much to be desired.

Common Combos:

Luke Cage -> Shadow King: Nukes your opponent's power gains but lets you keep yours. Only a 4 energy play so there is a lot of room for additional follow-ups.

Invisible Woman -> Shadow King: A delayed SK guaranteed to go last more or less, eschewing the importance of priority. Useful if you're planning to drop some other large base cards into the lane as a surprise.

Shadow King + Absorbing Man: Dupes your SK effect. The cool thing about this is that now he is 2 cost, you no longer need Sera or Zabu to enable this play. Similarily, you can do...

Shang Chi + Shadow King: Pretty much forces an opponent to weave a thread through the needle because their cards can't be above the Shang threshold, but also can't be buff cards or they will just get ruined. Obviously play Shang first. You can even do this on 2 different lanes.

Cerebro -> Shadow King: One interest aspect of Shadow King is that, while Luke will raise power back up, there are no cards in SNAP OTHER than SK who will drop a card back down to their normal power. Sure Hazmat exists, but she's a universal -1 effect. What I'm referring to is if your card gets buffed accidentally, there isn't a real way to reset them. Normally not an issue...except when it is because you are playing Cerebro. Here, a Shadow King into a Cerebro can cause a field wide change in power that can let you steal games unexpectedly.

Rank/Tier: B tier. SK is good. Real good. He's finally carved out a different niche from Shang (his primary competition) and his lower cost makes him a lot easier to use. Unfortunately, the existence of new cards like Alioth means there is definite power creep and SK is unfortunately one of the more impacted victims, preventing him from being a true A rank.

Most Used Decks:
Control
Zoo
Surfer
Cerebro 2

[Tide]

So we're going to do something different today - let's look at one of the most prominent and popular decks in SNAP. It's not necessarily the most successful, but it is a deck that pops up pretty frequently due to its accessability. I've also mentioned it a few times plus we've gone over a lot of it's most essential component, so it will be easier to digest.

Without further ado, let's look at a typical Sera Miracle deck



General Gameplan
Sera Miracle is equivalent to a Blue MtG deck that is loaded with counter spells. It's primarily a reaction based deck that is focused on playing tech cards to shut down an opponent's game plan. The deck is flexible with numerous different subs (based on the flavor of the month, your own preference as well as the availability of what cards you have) so it tends to be a deck that most players can assemble the moment they get out of Pool 2 with a little investment. The major card you will be likely missing then is Sera but the deck is functional without her and you can grab Zabu as an alternative. This deck focuses on last minute turnarounds for the biggest cube gains possible. There are of course fringe cases where you will be playing on curve but those tend to be cases where if you don't stop your opponent right there, you're probably going to lose - Hi Wong.

The deck focuses on having low tempo for most of the game until around maybe Turn 5. The main reasons for this is to keep priority low because you have a lot of tech cards that only work if you go second. Thus, understanding and being able to control priority is key. Sunspot is a great addition here because he covers two of the decks main weakness: 1) it's low power output and b) the tendency to have a lot of float. You're not often running Armor though, so you have to be careful that you don't accidentally Killmonger your own Sunspot. There are ways around this of course - one of the new cards recently released specifically guards 1 and 6 cost cards from destruction. You can easily slot her in to guard your Sunspot in favor of another tech spot. The rest then comes down to Turn 6. By Turn 3 or 4, you need to have a good idea of what the opponent is doing because then you can properly weigh your chances of winning. If you still don't have the tech card in hand drawn, or the opponent isn't playing something you can tech against, you're probably in trouble.

Despite being the namesake of the deck, this deck does function without Sera. It's not as explosive though because despite being available for only 1 turn, that 1 turn lets you dump a huge combination of cards. Sera + Zabu is -2 on Cost for your 4 cost and those 2 costs become 1 Cost. So you can quite literally dump your hand on 6 when the pieces line up. Some variants of this deck also play Magik (this one does) to increase the chances of a Sera draw making for even crazier Turn 7 Turnarounds.

Outside of the deck being low power, it also suffers though from being largely prediction related. Some decks such as Kitty Shuri for example, can both afford to have a couple of tech cards but also can just do their standard solitaire game plan if your opponent isn't interfering and end up with a sizable point count at the end of the game. Not Sera Miracle though. So many of your cards are below par that if you aren't countering something, you're probably just going to lose on straight tempo loss. This deck has a very high learning curve for that reason. You need to be able to predict what the opponent is holding and then be able to play the appropriate counter. You also need to be able to math quickly because that will determine whether or not your paltry output is enough, which sometimes despite countering an opponent's plan, isn't.

Key Cards:
The most important cards on this list despite the name of the deck are probably your 4 Costs. Shang and Enchantress can hard counter really greedy play styles and Absorbing Man let's you double up on it. However, the fact that they are all 4s is a FeelsBadMan moment on Turn 6 because you can only play 1. That's why having Zabu OR Sera on field is important. Past that, the rest of the deck is very flexible. Zabu/Sera are obvious additions here to support your 4s going down by 1, but the rest is kind of up to you. This variant I run adds Maximus and Aero for power, but you can also go with something like Ms. Marvel and Gladiator. You can also run stuff like Cosmo, despite being contrary to the deck because Cosmo wants priority instead of not.

General Play Lines:

Turn 1: Play Echo/Sunspot in a desired lane. If you don't have the variant that covers your own Sunspot, be very careful because you might blow up your own Sunspot by accident.

Turn 2: Almost always Zabu if you have it. Your 2s are otherwise holds to tech against other cards. SWitch kills bad locations or extremely favourable one for an opponent. Shadow King's power reset is best done at the end of the game. Otherwise, you pass.

Turn 3: Turn 3 is interesting here because like Turn 2, you're probably not playing Killmonger on 3. Some exceptions exist - like blowing up an opponent's Sunspot before you play yours - but you're likely covering a Turn 1/2 play versus actually playing anything on Curve. Magik comes down on this turn if you are running her. You don't have anything to guard Limbo though, so be wary of an opponent cutting off your Limbo.

Turn 4: See above. Turn 3 in that you're most likely covering for a Turn 1-2 play. If you're running Ms. Marvel as an establisher, she'll probably come down here.

Turn 5: This is a critical turn for this deck because unlike decks that don't have Turn 5 as being as important, here, Sera Miracle relies on Turn 5 to set up a Turn 6 play. If you've already played Zabu and want to cover it, the Cosmo variants can place it down to stop an opponent from shutting it down. Otherwise, Sera can be played here as can Aero to redirect an opponent's play and set up a single tech card counter.

Turn 6: Play the tech cards you need to swing the game. Highly suggest you math out what your power totals are and see if it's adequate. If not, you Retreat. If Limbo is on field, then you should play Aero for the redirect or Sera for the end of the game (see Turn 5)

Turn 7: Repeat of Turn 6 more or less. Use Enchantress to stop Ongoing stacks, Shang to kill big bodies, Shadow King to get rid of pump cards, Killmonger for 1 cost hate, etc.

Sample Game to Come!

[Tide]

Let's talk about the sassy queen herself. And no, I'm not referring to Emma Frost, but instead: Magik



Cost: 3
Power: 2 (2 Below Par)
Ability: On Reveal - Change the location of this lane to Limbo (Extends the current game from 6 turns to 7 turns). This card loses its effect if played after Turn 5.
Ideal Turn to Play: 3-5. Obviously a dead card on 6. Magik's best time to be played will really come down to the deck and what you're planning. In combo heavy decks that have steep energy requirements and tough curves, Magik wants to be played as early as possible. For decks that appreciate her but it's not a death sentence if she doesn't come on to the board late, then it is better for her to be played late so an opponent has a reduced amount of time to play a follow up real estate agent and pull the rug from under you.
Archetype: Real Estate Agent / Combo Support

Uses:
Magik is one of those cards that I feel a lot of people misuse. Players think "Add an additional Turn" and immediately think that let's them do all sort of crazy stuff or adding consistency...but completely forgetting the fact that this also applies to an opponent since SNAP requires 2 players. Having a potential for a Turn 7 game can be all kinds of wacky so it is often best to decide if your deck wants a Turn 7 to begin with BEFORE slotting Magik into your deck.

Let's get down to the basics. Magik doesn't "Add 1 turn to the game". Rather, she flips a lane's location to "Limbo" which reads, "There are now 7 turns this game". This wording is very important because it means if Limbo is changed to another location, the Turn 7 goes away. This proverbial "rug pull" is what keeps Magik from flying much higher in terms usability. She can be outright countered by real estate agents so the promise of a Turn 7 is only as strong as whatever safeguards you are using in place to keep it there. If she did the former of adding 1 turn for certain, she'll probably be a S rank or A rank card as once the turn is added, it would theoretically never go away. Although that does create some unending games if an opponent then plays Magik on Wong, so let's be thankful that the description is the latter.

Because Limbo can be flipped at any time, if your deck wants a Turn 7, you're best off running one of Magik's allies in the deck. The most common and easily accessible of these is Cosmo. For 3 Energy, you'll stop other On Reveals - which all Real Estate agents are and force an opponent to play a much higher cost if they are trying to catch you with your pants down. Luckily, Cosmo and Magik work in several decks together - most notably Shenaut - where Turn 7 is basically a wincon. So guarding Magik isn't terribly difficult, but you do need to pay an Energy cost to do it. The higher the cost you pay, the better the protection and sometimes this can be very worthwhile. If your plan on Turn 6 is basically to wait as in Shenaut decks, dropping Leech down on 5 makes perfect sense. Not only do you pretty much 100% guard Limbo, but you nuke your opponent's hand of all their abilities, which can be game ending on its own.

Determining whether Magik makes sense for the deck really comes down to how badly you need that extra turn. Like Wave, Armor and Cosmo, since her effect hits both players, you have to make sure your deck can play a potential Turn 7 better than an opponent. Some decks are rely on a Turn 7 to function. Shenaut has already been mentioned, but stuff such as Tribunal also pretty much rely on it. On the other hand, despite being 3 cost, Magik does less well in Surfer because Surfer decks tend to rely on options and teching to secure wins. Their point totals are often more middle of the road (high teens to low 20s) so adding a Turn 7 can be real problematic when your output is limited. Then there are decks where they don't need Turn 7 but having a turn 7 basically makes them explode. Generic Destroy and Mr. Negative both like having Magik but the lack of a Turn 7 doesn't kill them. They just scale up really well with an extra turn, so playing Magik against these decks is generally bad unless you have tech cards ready in the wings.

Ultimately, Magik is another support option which are better in combo heavy decks versus those that do not. Adding an extra turn isn't always beneficial but players should be aware of her increased frequency. At the time when I first started playing, Magik was actually 5 cost, giving her only a 1 turn window. This made her much more limited in most cases since she had to compete with other 5 drops. But at 3? She's much more flexible and being able to extend the game by 1 also means extending draws by 1. For that alone, a lot of players end up saving a slot for her, when the decision should really be more about overall deck objectives and cohesion.

Common Combos:
Magik -> Cosmo: The first of the few combos that aims to guard your Limbo. Playing Cosmo prevents any other real estate agent from coming in and removing Limbo from under you. They can still do it, but it requires a lot more footwork or energy cost to do so.

Magik -> Legion: A more extreme version of the above. Playing Legion on your Magik turns all locations to Limbo. That stops the singular real estate agent from coming in to do damage. Like with Cosmo, an opponent can still theoretically get around it, but it isn't easy and much more complicated. Unlike Cosmo, Legion also relies on having priority. Cosmo being Ongoing means once you plop him down, you're good to go. With Legion, you need to ensure you are flipping first - otherwise an opponent can pre-empt you.

Magik -> Leech: The above two methods not satisfying enough for you at guaranteeing a Turn 7? Try Leech. Nuking your opponent's hand of their abilities will in 99% of cases, pretty much rip their ability to remove Limbo away from them. That 1% chance is obviously higher since you could theoretically top deck a real estate agent, but Leech is about as good as you can get.

Magik ->Storm/Rhino/SWitch: While this doesn't generate much power, it is definitely one of the few ways Magik can be used offensively. Fool your opponent into thinking a Turn 7 is coming, then pull the plug yourself. Best done with a bunch of high powered cards so you can get a lead going into Turn 6 when you snipe your own Limbo. For this reason, Surfer is great here as Magik, Rhino and Storm are all 3 costs.

Magik + Mr. Negative -> One of the major benefactors to Magik and the additional upside here is that Magik doesn't wreck Mr. Negative's curve. You could Turn 3 Magik into Turn 4 Mr. Negative or vice versa and both plays are still legit. Both get you an additional draw too, which as noted in Mr. Negative's write up, amps up how stupidly OP your endgame will be.

Rank/Tier: B tier. Magik certainly had a glow up from when she was first introduced. Adding an extra turn and 7 energy allows for more powerful combos and opens the doorway to new decks that otherwise wouldn't be possible. However, the ability to strip Limbo out from under you means you're sometimes playing a game of chicken more than a game of SNAP. She's not for every deck and decks and since the added turn also benefits the opponent, one has to be certain they will get more out of it then an opponent before putting her on to the field.

Most Used Decks:
Shenaut
Generic Destroy
Hela Discard
Tribunal