Snap Into Marvel: Darkness Falls In The New Season Of Marvel Snap

Thanks to a handful of new and interesting cards, along with some key balance batches, the Marvel Rivals season thoroughly shook up the meta. As the calendar turns over and the Dark Avengers enter the chat, the meta is arguably more diverse than it’s been in a long time, with no one card or archetype dominating. Rather, a variety of different decks can find success.

Yet at the same time, most of the current top decks share a similar play style, with key (and obviously telegraphed) strong early plays intended to setup big points later in the match prompting early snaps. Think Zabu or Psylocke into Doom 2099, Scream or Kraven on turn 2, Quicksilver on turn 1. All are key to developing later power, all make it pretty clear what kind of deck you’re facing, and all are key to an early snap or retreat (depending on which side of the deck you’re on).

If you get your necessary early cards down, snap. If your opponent snaps and you think you can beat the archetype they’re telegraphing, stay in or snap back. As diverse as the meta is, the gameplay itself is perhaps as straightforward as it’s ever been.

Will a new season’s worth of cards offer up anything to disrupt that stasis?

Before diving into that question, let’s see how the Marvel Rivals cards stack up against each other (my pre-season rankings in parenthesis).

1. Galacta (1) – As expected, the Marvel Rivals season pass card is the clear winner of the season. It didn’t so much create a new archetype as become an immediate addition to a wide variety of decks (which certainly played a role in the diversification of the meta this season). While decks like Silver Surfer have gained a key new piece in Galacta, the fact is there are very few decks that can’t benefit from having cards played on turns 4-6 buffed a few points. 

2. Doom 2099 (3) – Shortly after its release, Doom 2099 looked like THE card of the season, a meta-dominating nightmare card running roughshod over all other decks (I’ve never had as easy a time in Conquest as in the days shortly after Doom 2099’s release). Since those heady early days, Doom 2099 has cooled off a bit, thanks to a slight increase in the frequency of Clog decks (which can attack the key weakness of Doom 2099 – its need for space to fill with Doombots) and a rise in play of USAgent (who can more or less take away a lane from a Doom 2099 player, single handedly making more decks competitive).  

3. Luna Snow (2) – More energy is rarely a bad thing, and Luna seems to have found a spot in High Evolutionary decks (more on that archetype below). But the mechanics of saving your own energy-boosting ice cube while destroying your opponent’s have proven to be cludgy, making other energy boosting cards easier to slot into a wider variety of decks. 

4. Rocket & Groot (5) – Like Luna, a solid but not meta-defining card. One thing I missed before it was released is the fact that every card played into the Rocket & Groot lane loses one energy. This has has earned it a place in a revived Affliction archetype as well as move decks, but is also a nifty enough tool (especially paired with the flexibility afforded by the move functionality) to make it a consideration in other decks simply for being a solid card. 

5. Peni Parker (4) – Like Luna, the mechanics of playing this card make it more of a hassle than it’s worth. At the end of the day, the benefit of it being a moveable Hulkbuster isn’t enough to make up for the fact that it eats up two turns of play to make that happen. Not a terrible card, but a largely inessential one. 

6. Dr. Bruce Banner (6) – Not surprisingly, this card is the dud of the season, with too little gain (a dice roll chance to get a Hulk) for too much cost (floating one energy every turn to get that chance). Shortly after its release, High Evo decks saw a bit of a boost, as it is an archetype that is already Hulk- and energy floating-friendly. But even there, it’s more of a novelty than a necessity. There’s simply no good place for it outside that particular archetype. 

So what’s on tap for the new season? Here are my pre-release rankings for the Dark Avengers cards, which seem like an amazing assortment of cards on paper. There’s at least three or four cards here that could easily turn out to be the best of the season.

1. Iron Patriot – This card seems incredibly busted right out of the gate. Like recent Season Pass cards, it’s a card that slots into lots of decks vs. driving a specific archetype. At 2/3 it offers reasonable power on curve, with the added benefit of generating a better, cheaper card. AND the fact that you need to win the lane to get the discount on the generated card means you can use it to control your opponent. Play Iron Patriot, and you’re directing your opponent to play into that lane on the next turn. So you know exactly where to put your Starlord, or Echo, or Negasonic Teenage Warhead, etc. Couple that with the fact that its only real counters are the underused Mobius, the oft-forgotten Quake, and Red Guardian (who may not even disable the discount, and is easy enough to redirect by playing a two power card in the lane ahead of Iron Patriot). Decent power for the cost, a cheap random card, AND an element of control? It’s gonna be tough to beat this card in the season rankings.

2. Moonstone – At first glance, Moonstone seems like a dud card. How many good 1-3 cost Ongoing cards are there, really? But Moonstone seems poised to be sneaky good (or at least fun). Two Echos, two Quinjets (or Victoria Hands), two US Agents (bye bye Doom 2099), plus six points in a lane? That’s not shabby. Play Cosmo on three, and Moonstone gets protected from Enchantress as well. And Mystique is a 3 cost; with the right sequence, a game could end with three Darkhawks or three Iron Mans across all three lanes, with two of the three protected by Cosmo. 

3. Bullseye – On the one hand, Bullseye could reinvigorate Discard decks (and make Daken a key part of the archetype again), while also adding an affliction angle that makes it, arguably, a better version of Gambit (offering targeted discard on your schedule — it’s an Activate, not On Reveal card — that can affect more opponent cards than Gambit). On the other hand, it could end up being a card, like Luna Snow or Peni Parker, that is more hassle than it’s worth to play, and/or becomes a Discard staple but doesn’t elevate the archetype much. This is a card that’s been hanging out in the game files for a long time though; it seems like Second Dinner believes they’ve settled on the best possible version of it. 

4. Victoria Hand – This is basically a reverse Quinjet, a card which boosts the power of cards that didn’t start in your deck instead of reducing their cost. Like Quinjet, it has an easy place in the long-defunct Collector/pure Loki decks as well as Arishem, alongside other SHIELD and SHIELD adjacent character cards like Maria Hill, Agent Coulson, and Mockingbird. And being an Ongoing, it doesn’t have to be played on curve, making it easier to avoid Red Guardians and other counters. The trick will be actually playing the generated cards it buffs; the randomness of your Agents 13 and Coulson may hold it back. With that in mind, it could also turn out to be a boon for post-nerf Arishem decks. 

5. Ares – In a strong-on-paper season of cards, Ares is the easy candidate for the worst card of the lot. There’s an element of randomness to the card — both your top 3 cards and your opponent’s are unknown to varying degrees and largely outside your control — that could make it useful for some surprise wins. But there’s simply too many better 4 cost cards that deserve a slot in decks ahead of it – many of which get close to Ares’ 12 point potential without any of the risk/randomness. As such, Ares looks like a dice roll card, akin to Bruce Banner –  a card that can hit or miss big.