Pixie and Hope Summers Decks: Bonus Challenge (Weekend Mission) Guide

During the weekend, there is now one more set of Missions for players to complete: The Bonus Challenge! These involve additional rewards for winning games related to the week’s new card and the Season Pass card. These missions provide extra Collector’s Tokens and Gold!

You need to win games with the card starting in your deck, and it does not count if the card was generated by cards such as Cable, Loki, and Maria Hill. Each of these reward amounts will vary depending on the difficulty of the mission.

There will be Bonus Challenge Missions available for each new card release to allow players to earn back Collector’s Tokens and subsidize their cost. Players can also expect the rewards to be stabilized at 200 Tokens to help them plan their token budget for the month.

Bonus Challenge: March 1, 2024

This week’s Bonus Challenge Missions are:

Mission	#	Reward
Win a Location with 4 Cards	10	200 Credits
Win with Pixie starting in your Deck	4	200 Collector’s Tokens
Win with Hope Summers starting in your Deck	8	150 Gold

Most players will want to be efficient with these missions, so today we will give you three different decks that incorporate Pixie and Hope Summers.

We’ll also give you a short guide on how to get the most out of the deck and finish the missions quickly, but first let’s take a quick look at the new card’s performance this week.

For more inspiration, make sure to check out our latest strategy guides on Pixie and Hope Summers as well:

Best Hope Summers Decks to Try on Day 1 and Strategy Guide: The Next Broken Card?

Best Pixie Decks to Try on Day 1 and Strategy Guide: Pixie Will Praise You With RNG (Hopefully)

Performance

The Avengers vs. X-Men season has commenced, and along with it Hope Summers and Pixie have joined Marvel Snap. These two cards have seen a lot of experimentation over this week, but have either of them made a huge impact on the meta? And, more importantly, how do you use these new cards to complete the weekend missions?

Hope Summers

Hope Summers is three energy, four power card that reads After you play a card here, you get +1 Energy next turn. This card allows you to ramp into higher cost cards for Turns 5 and 6. All cards played into her location on Turn 4 will count towards the effect, and this allows you to potentially play 6-Cost cards on both Turn 5 and Turn 6 (and potentially even more cards alongside them). Saying she is having an impact on the game would be an understatement. The simplicity of the effect and ease of fitting her into a range of decks has significantly changed how many decks want to play. This card is likely to find itself in many more decks as time goes on.

Kitty Pryde and cards that can move from Hope Summers‘s location are the best synergies to really take this card to the next level. If you’re looking for a starting point with this card, simply include Kitty Pryde in your deck alongside Vision. Playing Vision and Kitty Pryde on Turn 5 allows you to then play your 6-drop on Turn 6 with Kitty Pryde. One other interesting synergy that is likely to find its way into even more decks is Wave. Wave and another card into Hope Summers on Turn 5 gives you eight energy on Turn 6. With all your cards reduced to four energy, this will allow you to play two 6-drops on Turn 6! Outside of these synergies, you could put Hope Summers in almost any deck you want and find some value.

Pixie

Pixie is a two energy, one power card that reads On Reveal: Shuffle the Costs of all cards in your deck that started there. So far, her journey this week has been a little more complicated, and playing the card requires an assessment of your strategy rather than pure stats-based judgement. This card is one of the hardest-to-judge cards we have had in some time, so if you’re on the fence let’s discuss why this card may appear to be overperforming.

The best synergy card for Pixie is Wasp. She also synergizes well with strong 1-drops that you want in your deck already, such as Sunspot and Nebula. This has led to one of her best homes being a version of High Evolutionary that includes these cards and some great 6-Cost cards (that get even better when reduced to zero or one energy when shuffled). The High Evolutionary deck is potentially the BEST pre-Infinite deck because many players and the much-maligned bots do not play Mobius M. Mobius. These Pixie decks are showing busted results in the ranks before Infinite, but as soon as you limit the filter to post-Infinite, the performance plummets. This difference between pre- and post-Infinite is the largest that I have seen in a while with this game. The cards go from >60% Win Rate to below 50%. My hypothesis for this phenomenon is clear: Pixie has an interesting effect, but it’s not one that consistently wins games of Marvel Snap against other skilled players. When included in decks with cards that are great for climbing, she outperforms the competition with ease. But, as soon as the safety rails come off, the card seems to be an active liability.

The reason this card is not performing is simple: it is not reliable. You have no certainty of which costs will end up where, and the big cards can shuffle among themselves. Also, you’re just as likely to draw a 6-Cost Wasp as you are a 0-Cost Magneto, which means you need to rely on Mobius M. Mobius heavily. Playing a low tempo 2-drop into 3-drop is not a strong position, so you then NEED to roll the right cards to catch back up. It cannot be compared to Mister Negative (which is a better card, as many have stated). With Mister Negative, you are aware of the costs of every card once flipped, and this allows you to plan better after the card’s the effect. Pixie just frustrates you, and it frustrates any opponent as well since no one knows what will happen after you play her.

Mobius M. Mobius should be in every deck you play during this weekend. It can really hurt Pixie decks, and lots of the decks using Hope Summers look to combine her with some other kind of cost reduction.

So, how do you use Hope Summers and Pixie (and Mobius M. Mobius) to rack up wins and complete the Bonus Challenge Missions?

Hope Summers

This is what you should play if you want to see all the strengths of this card. Here you have the classics (Kitty Pryde, Angela, and Elsa Bloodstone), each of which can help you get as much energy as possible from Hope Summers. You also have the movement pieces with Nightcrawler, Jeff the Baby Land Shark, and Vision that are all able to play well with Elsa and Angela. These three cards allow you to maximize the energy you can get from Hope Summers as well. Finally, Wave is included to allow for some big Turn 6 plays. Spider-Man has been a popular card in many lists, but this slot could be swapped out for your tech card of choice. My personal preference for this slot is Shang-Chi (and if you’re post-Infinite, I highly recommend making this swap).

Pixie

When looking for what could be THE Pixie deck, this Dracula Zoo direction stood out. Like all Pixie decks, the results before and after Infinite are widely different, but this deck follows the same basic distribution as the High Evolutionary decks (more below on that one). After some digging, I was able to confirm this came from the very talented Revis. I highly recommend following them, especially if you want regular deck inspirations.

This deck has ways to high roll and ways to reduce the impact of your bad rolls thanks to the inclusion of Blade. You can try to isolate one big card for Dracula and still attempt to play the rest out.

Hope Summers and Pixie

The best direction for Pixie is playing her in a strong deck where you don’t necessarily need to play the card, a deck where the high rolls are game ending and the low rolls are not too bad. High Evolutionary is the early front runner before Infinite with the Alioth and Professor X direction taking the crown. However, in an attempt to push the archetype forward, consider taking this version for a spin this weekend. This deck plays Hope Summers and Pixie, and you can be more flexible with your points than the decks that rely on drawing Alioth or Professor X.

In this deck, you have Evolved Abomination, She-Hulk, and Evolved Hulk, all of which can be great when flipped. It’s important to note that if Abomination and/or She-Hulk are reduced to three energy or lower, you would only need to float three energy or reduce the power of three cards to make them free. This allows Hope Summers to be activated twice on Turn 5 and potentially gives you the opportunity to play all three of the green giants on Turn 6. The rest of your game plan is High Evolutionary: play early 1-drops and let them scale to get ahead in the mid game for your big plays at the end of the game.

Mobius M. Mobius is the 12th card here for the weekend, but if you see less of him over time you can swap it for other counters.

Closing Thoughts

Wins with the new card may seem a tall order some weeks depending what quality of card is released. Hopefully this guide helps you decide first if you want the card prior to the missions coming out, and what you can potentially play to complete the missions quickly!

Good Luck, Have Fun, and Stay Safe!