The month rolls on and so too does the Marvel SNAP We Are Venom season! This, the penultimate week, has brought the game a new OTA update as well as a brand new card for the Bounce-based archetype in Toxin. Has the update changed the way we play the game in any major way? Is Toxin a boon to bounce or are three bounce-enablers too many? Read on and find out!
Toxin: Terrific or Terrible?
Toxin was a pretty highly anticipated card coming into this week. Readers of my Snap Sense column will see that I certainly contributed to that anticipation, predicting that he would be the “most immediately beneficial” card this season. While that’s far from true (unless you’re only taking into account the Spotlight Cache releases), Toxin has still debuted to great success within his natural home, bounce decks.
Toxin’s ability to return cards in his lane back to your hand has given these decks yet another method of performing the very action the deck archetype is named after – “bouncing” cards from your hand to the board repeatedly. Though he does not reduce their costs like Beast, Toxin’s ability to gain +2 for every card returned (just like his daddy Carnage gains +2 for every card he destroys) means he only adds to Bounce’s already formidable point spread.
Outside of bounce decks, however, Toxin isn’t likely to be a primary choice. A player looking to return cards to their hand is usually wanting to play them again, and Toxin’s lack of cost reduction means that you’ll need to specifically target low-cost cards and still have enough energy budget in subsequent turns to replay them. And, if you’re running low cost cards in an energy-efficient deck with a game plan involving returning cards to your hand in order to replay them, that means you’re just… playing a bounce deck. Toxin’s ability to be a 2/7 just doesn’t quite stack up unless you’re building around it.
Lastly, Toxin’s companions in the Spotlight Cache this week are hard to recommend on their own merits, as well. Zabu’s recent rework has made him a functional card once more, and there are a number of decks that feature him, including some with great potential, but few of these decks have proven to be extremely powerful competitors on the ranked ladder thus far. Elsa Bloodstone, too, has rarely seen much play in top-tier decks since her Season Pass release last year. Both are fine cards to have, but neither are must-have for those seeking a competitive edge.
Snap Back Verdict: Strong Recommendation for Bounce Enjoyers, Easy Skip for everyone else!
Agent Venom Reigns, Even Post-OTA
The OTA update on the 24th brought with it a slew of changes, including a 1-power boost to a handful of cards such as recent release Misery, as well as Electro, Miek, Daredevil, and strangely enough, Shadow King, an already very popular and powerful card at 2/2. There were also significant changes to the numbers on both Storm and Rockslide, turning them both into 4-Cost, 5-Power cards. These changes are largely detrimental, curbing the endless stream of rocks that can be generated from combos involving Rockslide, Grandmaster and Misery, and also significantly stunting the lockdown combo of Storm, War Machine, and Legion. The latter combo is one that resulted in a board state that only the enacting player could then play into, so making that harder to accomplish is only a positive change for the game overall.
Another interesting change is one made to Typhoid Mary, an oft-underplayed 4-Cost card. Now that she only inflicts -1 Power to other cards on her side of her location, making her a more reasonable card to add to those Skaar-based decks that look to add as many 10-Power cards to the board as possible. This is a deck type that’s been skulking at the edges of the metagame for a while now, as Shadow King has been replacing Shang-Chi as most people’s tech card of choice. Most of the strongest decks in the game right now are mostly untouchable by Shang-Chi, but almost all of them are susceptible to Shadow King. This deck, which is the exact opposite, could stand to surge in popularity as a result. These decks are among those that tend to run Zabu, too, in case you were still wondering about picking him up this week from the Spotlight Cache.
As it stands, though, even a 1-Power nerf to Klaw’s ability has not stopped the powerhouse that is Agent Venom from being a mainstay in today’s metagame. Not since Elsa or Ms. Marvel has a Season Pass card dominated its season’s metagame quite so thoroughly. The best decks in the game right now are bounce decks featuring Agent Venom and an Agent Venom “good cards” mix that I’ve reported on before, containing Iron Man, Mystique, Klaw and Cosmo as a package of powerful Ongoing effects that can be doubled with Mystique and boosted with Agent Venom. One of the best ways to counter both of these decks is with a Control-based archetype including Sera and a whole lot of tech cards, and even that deck runs Agent Venom, too!
At this point, it seems reasonable to believe that Agent Venom won’t remain this necessary forever. Whether Second Dinner steps in to make changes before the We Are Venom season completes or after, however, and whether or not they should, remains the question worth discussing.
Looking Ahead
There’s only one more week in this season, and according to Second Dinner’s patch schedule, there’s still two weeks until the next patch and OTA (on November 12th and 14th, respectively). In other words, settle in with Agent Venom for now, gamers, because its unlikely that anything is going to happen in the Marvel SNAP metagame that stands to shake him from his top spot. Personally, I’m a bit conflicted. I find that SNAP is less fun when there’s only one or two cards that define the entire landscape of the game, but on the other hand, Agent Venom is my absolute favorite variation on the Venom character, hands down, so it’s nice to see him getting a little love outside of the comics as well.
We still have one more card release in Anti-Venom, however, and who knows how that one will land. This is the card that people seem to have been arguing over its usefulness since it was announced, and the one I have the least clear idea for how good it’s going to end up being. If you’re not interested in playing him to find out, then be sure to come back to next week’s installment of The Snap Back for my review, the final review for Agent Venom you can probably already guess about, and more thoughts on the upcoming season and overall state of the game!
