Agent Venom is the next Season Pass card joining Marvel Snap for the We Are Venom season! It is a 2-Cost, 4-Power card that reads: On Reveal: Set the Power of all cards in your deck to 4. Today, we will take a deeper look at the new card and, of course, the best decks to try it out in.

Strengths and Weaknesses

I love writing long explanations about new cards where I detail everything I like and dislike about them. Agent Venom is going to ruin that fun for me, unfortunately. Everything I have to say about the new Season Pass card can be boiled down to four words: play low power cards.

There are a lot of those in Marvel Snap, so I made a few groups to talk about.

The first group includes cards that you would play late in the match. These can create Turn 6 patterns that the opponent can’t really anticipate due to the power of your cards being different from usual.

That’s already a very long list of cards that you are happy to buff with Agent Venom. There are all types of cards in the list, but most of them are cards you want to keep in your hand for the game’s end in order to catch your opponent off-guard. They’re perfect targets, in a way.

Moving on to group two! These are cards that you want to play on curve, but if they get hit by Agent Venom you’re still happy to play them later on.

I could honestly keep going. Almost every card with power ranging from zero to three benefits from Agent Venom. These 12 are some of the better targets, but there are so many more that I didn’t list here.

Let’s move on to the last group. This is by far the most exciting one because these cards aren’t currently part of the Marvel Snap landscape. I have no doubt that Agent Venom will find plenty of archetypes that can leverage its insane ability. If those cards become competitive options because of the new 2-Cost, we’re potentially talking about the best card of 2024.

Certain abilities have to be tied with a disappointing card because they would otherwise have no downside to playing them. This is the reason Professor X and Thanos have been nerfed so many times: they were too good as standalone cards, and they opened very powerful play patterns when they were at their best. The opposite could be said about Grand Master, which has been too weak to mitigate the great ability and had to be buffed before anyone even started looking at the card.

Agent Venom is going to lift the low power problem of those cards, and I can’t wait to see if it can change their fortunes.

Just in case someone wants to ask why Thanos, a 10 power card, is included in this group, I’m talking about the Infinity Stones, obviously. Plus, Thanos starts in your hand, so you’ll never hit it with Agent Venom.

Strength wise, Agent Venom synergizes with enough cards to speculate that it might push multiple decks in the future. The weakness should logically be that it can’t be played alongside cards above 4 power, but then you just don’t play it in those decks.

The Verdict

Honestly, I don’t see how Agent Venom won’t become a Turn 2 snap in a lot of decks very soon after its release. It’s also a [2/4] itself, which is mind-boggling to me.

This is a niche card by design, but the niche might be so large that we could be headed into an Agent Venom meta in October.

Pre-Release Score:

Agent Venom Decks

Although I couldn’t find a combination of cards that I could almost guarantee would break the meta, there is so much to explore around the new Season Pass card that I’m sure something will produce some fireworks rather quickly. I grouped the nine decks I made into three categories.

First are the archetypes that have a good power level heading in the new season. These are likely to quickly put up good numbers, and whether they run Agent Venom or not might be a first clue about the card’s true power.

Then there are the known archetypes that are not performing well at the moment but might be improved by the new card. If Agent Venom can make any of these into a real contender, the card can be considered to be a seriously good addition to Marvel Snap already.

Last are two ideas I had with the card, but I have little faith Agent Venom will change the way we play Lockdown or Arishem. If the card is going to be strong enough to impact current top tier archetypes and the way there are played, then Agent Venom is likely in line to be nerfed pretty soon.

Probably Still Good Decks

Good Cards and Bounce have been perennial solid decks without making it as the top contenders for quite a while now. With Agent Venom, both decks might gain a reason to Snap early in the match. Bounce would be almost impossible to match on points, and Good Cards would finally seize priority in order to land some devastating Cosmos.

There’s also a deck that’s been under the radar for most of the season, but it represents the best home for Symbiote Spider-Man. With Agent Venom, the Darkhawk + Ronan duo gets a shot at developing many more points without losing too much of its disruption.

Plus, the deck was already playing plenty of good targets for the new card. I only had to swap out Symbiote Spider-Man and Iron Lad for Iron Man and Agent Venom.

Archetypes That Need Agent Venom

Sera Control is the archetype that I will be keeping a close eye on following the release of Agent Venom. More points in a strong control deck will always be scary. The build that I featured is one of many that could appear with the Season Pass card. Mojo is the most debatable card in there, but Mister Sinister makes filling the requirement a bit easier. It also provides a third target for Mystique.

I have less faith for this Thanos Ongoing list, but I really hope it ends up being something. Again, plenty of cards can be discussed here, as the Ongoing synergy is full of cards that can be buffed by Agent Venom. Between Mobius M. Mobius, Caiera, Armor, Goose, Luke Cage, Mister Fantastic, and Mojo, there are more than enough cards that will have to be tested before finding the perfect build.

Further down the list of decks is one that I don’t think will be anything serious: Cerebro 4. This is likely the archetype that I saw the most of online when I was scrolling for ideas, so I felt obligated to include a list.

It looks like a cool gimmick, but it’s bound to end up with the other Cerebro decks.

Mom, I Put M’Baku in a Deck!!

I had to find a deck with M'Baku somewhere, and Arishem is the perfect archetype for it. If this becomes a thing, Agent Venom will be the best card to ever grace Marvel Snap. I don’t even know what to call the card if it pushes a different build of Lockdown to post better numbers than the current Lockdown Move (which is arguably a top three deck in Marvel Snap right now).

Variants

Closing Thoughts

Agent Venom is both a restrictive and permissive card. Obviously, it restricts the power of the cards you want to slot in your deck. However, there are so many good cards below the four power threshold that I had to stop building decks around Agent Venom to get this article done.

Among the ocean of cards that would like to be buffed to four power, the Iron Man + Mystique duo is the one to keep an eye on. It isn’t as good as reversing their power and cost with Mister Negative, but there are so many decks that can play the trio that there has to be something incredible.

I guess you figured out by now that I definitely recommend picking up Agent Venom (if you’re on the verge of buying the next Season Pass). I will never encourage spending money if you can’t afford it, but the card looks like a very cool card to experiment around.

I hope this review of the new card was helpful. Feel free to share your opinions and excitement about the card in the comments. You can find everyone on the Marvel Snap Zone team in our community discord to have a chat or ask any questions.

Good Game Everyone!