Best Captain Carter Decks to Try on Day 1 and Strategy Guide

Captain Carter is the Season Pass card for the April 2025 season, What if…?. It is a 4-Cost, 3-Power card that reads: Ongoing: Add this card’s Power to your back-row cards here. (can’t add to itself). Today, we will take a deeper look at the new card and, of course, the best decks to try it out in.

Note that Cap's Shield does not work with Captain Carter (see developer’s answer).

What is a Back-row?

There are (usually) four spots on each location in Marvel Snap that are split into two rows, each containing two spots. The back row refers to the third and fourth spots on a location.

Super-Skrull and Zabu are in the back row in the example picture above, behind Copycat and Iceman.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Without any help or shenanigans, Captain Carter should be a [4/9] in most situations (as long as you don’t play two cards before her, or some unfortunate summons come ruin your plans). While I don’t believe that is a big enough number in the current Marvel Snap with Gwenpool and Galacta around, nine power is still quite a high start for a card that can easily be propelled to much greater heights.

Indeed, every point of power given to Captain Carter represents three total power since it will be transferred to your cards in the back row. As such, it is quite easy to picture Captain Carter as a much higher contributor than the base [4/9] she represents.

When your biggest competition can also be your best ally, you suddenly turn that competition into a ton of points—especially with Zabu in the mix to help smooth the curve with all these 4-Cost cards. I added Symbiote Spider-Man because it is a 4-Cost and a ten power Captain Carter is appealing, but I doubt this will work outside the first few days of testing.

Apart from the meta juggernauts, there are also a few interesting support cards you can use to buff Captain Carter. Forge has paired very well with Brood in the past, and the new Season Pass card has a very similar ability, as she would also triple the +2 power buff. The curve is awkward, though, which potentially makes Nakia better fit, but Zabu could help you play Captain Carter right after Forge.

The other two cards I’m most curious about are Namora and Spectrum. The 5-Cost allows you to play a simple curve of Captain Carter into Namora and then whatever you want behind the 4-Cost on Turn 6 to win that location. As for Spectrum, Captain Carter is an Ongoing card, so the connection is quite simple to make. The two cards would limit your flexibility for the second part of the game, but if you can find a flexible Turn 5 that could be all you need. I mean, there’s no lack of other Ongoing cards to buff Captain Carter if you want to build around that concept:

Now, let’s look at the other part of Captain Carter. The card won’t just grant power to your back-row cards, she will also enable some others:

Skaar doesn’t care where you get your power; if a card has 10+ power, you get your discount. This is something Captain Carter can definitely help with. Iron Man and Gladiator are pretty self-explanatory here based on their abilities, and I included them to help showcase the range of possibilities with Captain Carter. Finally, Valkyrie would easily win most lanes when played behind Captain Carter since our back row would be at six power instead of three.

There are lots of good things to build around Captain Carter; however, there is a giant threat looming on the horizon. Sure, Enchantress might be a problem because the new Season Pass card is Ongoing, but I think I’d rather have my Season Pass card be outright canceled than give negative power to my other cards.

I don’t think the Toxic synergy needs any introduction anymore, but it might be good to remind everyone of its existence ahead of the new season. Fortunately, there are two cards you can use to protect Captain Carter, and I would highly recommend using at least one of them in your early cooks:

I could have added Shadow King as well, and I already mentioned Valkyrie (which can also just restore Captain Carter‘s power). Still, I feel like Luke Cage and Cosmo being Ongoing cards as well really indicates in which direction we should explore with the new card. Plus, these two don’t require you to set up complicated patterns that you might have to throw priority for.

The Verdict

I like the balance around Captain Carter, as the ways to make her represent a ton of power are matched by the possibility of making her afflict just as much. Obviously, I expect the card to be quite strong and represent a significant buff to the Ongoing synergy, especially with Goliath releasing at the same time.

This should be a great card… as long as you can protect her from the Toxic synergy.

Pre-Release Score:

Captain Carter Decks

The Good Cards archetype is already featuring the Zabu, Galacta, Gwenpool trio, so there wasn’t much work to be done here. Just throw Captain Carter in there, call yourself a deck builder, and tell everyone how good the deck is (although Captain Carter probably doesn’t impact it very much). There is one upside here: you can keep the new card in your hand to protect it from possible disruptive cards, then play it on Turn 6 as part of your explosive turn.

The Ongoing synergy is, at least to me, the most obvious one to explore with Captain Carter, and there are plenty of different decks to do that. I particularly like the Thanos Ongoing deck, especially now that the Mad Titan is looking great and provides a more flexible build than the other two. Still, both Ongoing Combo and Ongoing Tribunal should be great for climbing through the ranks before Infinite for those who like a more proactive, self-centered type of gameplay.

I wanted to build a Namora deck around Captain Carter, but this one is very much a work in progress. I like this as a first step to test the potential of the Namora+Captain Carter duo, though.

It is likely that Captain Marvel or Scarlet Spider would do better than the new Season Pass card, but the deck can always adapt to fit Zabu and run more 4-Costs if you want to build in that direction.

Variants

Closing Thoughts

I really like the new Season Pass card because it looks like a reasonable yet powerful addition to the game. I expect it to be on the stronger side of the spectrum and completely dominate locations when you find a way to buff its power. However, because of Enchantress, Rogue, and the Toxic synergy, Captain Carter should not be another Season Pass card that you can just throw in almost any deck without care. It will require some planning, either for when to play it or how to build your deck with those threats in mind.

I don’t mind strong cards in general, only the ones that force us to play Marvel Snap a certain way.

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!