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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 29, 2024
This week’s Bonus Challenge Missions are:
| Mission | # | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| TBA | TBA | 200 Credits |
| Win with War Machine starting in your Deck | 4 | 200 Collector’s Tokens |
| Win with Hope Summers starting in your Deck | 8 | 150 Gold |
Decks with War Machine
Decks with Hope Summers
Most players will want to be efficient with these missions, so today we will give you three different decks that incorporate War Machine 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 guide on War Machine as well:
Performance
The Avengers vs. X-Men season is coming to an end, and with that comes the most controversial of the new cards: War Machine. For the whole month, the debate about whether this card is going to be good or bad has raged on. Now that it has been released, we can finally try to answer the question properly. War Machine allows you to play your cards anywhere on the following turn without any restrictions. No location text or card text can stop your plays, which allows you to play freely into Professor X lanes or bypass the restrictions on cards like Ebony Maw. However, the catch is that it costs four energy. So, did it live up to the hype, or is it just another card?
Decks with Ebony Maw
Decks with The Infinaut
Decks with Hope Summers
The overall answer is simple. It’s just another card. Given just how high everyone’s opinion of the card was prior to the release, the naysayers have it here by default. However, analyzing why this is the case highlights some interesting points to think about as we end the season. We can distill the core package to play with War Machine.
First, the main issue with any new card’s release is they have to be able to produce power or they are simply never worth collecting. Put simply, if a card does not produce power, it is easily outperformed by Destroy, Discard, and Thanos, all of which are consistent performers that many players have assembled by this stage. So, if a new card cannot displace one of these, it will (at this point in the game) always be not good enough.
For War Machine this can only really be overcome by playing it with The Infinaut. Ebony Maw helps too, but in order to pull this off you are now committing to a 4-card combination with Hope Summers. So, while the card can activate several cards and can win games, this leads to a situation where it’s just harder to play with no advantage over continuing with the old decks. Many of the decks that were tested all included these three cards and tried to win with power. War Machine is not, however, a card that wins with power.
Decks with Professor X
Decks with Jeff the Baby Land Shark
This brings me to the second issue for War Machine: the very decks it was supposed to disrupt have been adjusted so much that they were already barely playable. Professor X is not very good into a meta with Destroy and Discard because they can take locations early. Also, the power decks right now are incredibly consistent, and they play from Turn 1 with high value plays. Back and forth play in Marvel Snap is almost non-existent at the moment, which makes a card like War Machine less useful than it could have been in the past. However, the mere threat of War Machine led to a lack of experimentation with Professor X and War Machine. This could be a direction that gets better as time goes on.
Unfortunately, there is a romantic view about how Marvel Snap is a back and forth with deception and sneaky plays that War Machine would have fit into perfectly. But, in reality, we have moved into a meta of decks that simply aim to do a bigger thing than the other decks. The only way to compete against this is to go heavier into the reactionary side of deck building. You can then always just replace War Machine with other tech cards anyway.
Now, here is how I believe War Machine should really be used.
Decks with Alioth
Decks with Cull Obsidian
Decks with Crossbones
The actual War Machine package is not a deck that uses The Infinaut at all. In short, War Machine is only really effective when it can be played on curve and have a pay off on Turn 5. It is also better with cards you can actually play earlier with their conditions. This makes you less reliant on the effect and able to play the game when you don’t draw in the “right” order.
Cull Obsidian and Crossbones are the two cards that work best with War Machine because they can provide just enough power and can be used in interesting ways. Ebony Maw also works well because you can play it freely from Turn 1 to Turn 3. As soon as you add The Infinaut, the deck’s performance drops significantly. Even with these decks, though, War Machine often feels ineffective because the real way these decks can win games right now is with the counter plays. You rarely win because you played War Machine, it just allows you to build a deck that uses these cards in new and interesting ways.
So, War Machine ended up being an average card by most metrics that you can reasonably assess cards on in Marvel Snap. It does not create enough power to overcome the top decks, and it needs to play tech cards to be consistent. This means you can simply play one of the top decks or play the tech cards in other decks. However, if you want a card that allows you to try some new combinations of cards and interesting play lines, War Machine is that card.
So, how do you use Hope Summers and War Machine to rack up wins and complete the Bonus Challenge Missions?
Ebony Maw
SafetyBlade
The main card that really benefits from War Machine is Ebony Maw. War Machine allows you to not only play Ebony Maw on Turn 6, it also allows you to play Ebony Maw on Turn 1 to Turn 3 and still be able to play into the lane at least one more time. This means you’re not all-in on playing for The Infinaut on the final turn.
SafetyBlade
The next version of this deck takes The Infinaut out entirely and focuses on using War Machine to play the smaller cards freely. The rest of the deck is simply Movement cards so you can reposition your power around the board on the later turns.
Lockdown
SafetyBlade
Although War Machine won’t allow you to get back into your Professor X lane, it does still fit alongside Professor X in this Iron Lad Lockdown deck. The goal here is to use Hope Summers to play Professor X early, or play War Machine on Turn 4 into Professor X and Ebony Maw on the same turn. This can be supported with extra power by Ms. Marvel, or you can use Alioth to checkmate the board.
Black Knight
SafetyBlade
Black Knight decks can accommodate War Machine easily without really changing their game plan. War Machine just gives you an extra way to play some of the big cards later in the game, and the rest of the plan remains pretty much the same. Ebony Maw once again features because it can be discarded or played easily with this deck.
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!
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