Best Hellion & Mercury Decks and Strategy Guide

Due to an unexpected bug on Second Dinner’s side, players who did not update the game with the June 3 patch had access to Hellion and Mercury rather than Nicholas Scratch and Jennifer Kale when the new Season started. As of today, we now have direct access to the four Series 4 cards as part of the Seasonal Series 4 Snap Pack.

• Hellion is a 5-cost, 8-power card that reads: On Reveal: Next turn, you can move cards to this location.
• Mercury is a 2-cost, 2-power card with the text: You can move this once. Ongoing: Enemy cards here can’t move.

We get both a card for Move, and one against, should lead to an interesting mix !

Series 4 cards can be purchased for 3,000 Collector’s Tokens from the Token Shop as part of the card rotation. They will be also be included in the Seasonal Series 4 Snap Pack for 2,500 Collector’s Tokens during their season and the following two.

Hellion

The new 5-cost card is quite intriguing in the Move synergy, as it can serve a few different purposes.

First, it is a great setup for Heimdall. On turn five, play Hellion middle or right, and you can reposition your cards before playing Heimdall on turn six. It could be to free up some space, or to get more points from Vulture, Dagger, or Hydra Stomper.

There are a few cards in the game able to block your opponent from playing on their location. With Hellion, we can play a bit of mind game, asking our opponent whether we will move our keep those cards in place. This requires a bit of situational awareness, and the opponent could always play on the third location. Yet, considering Hellion allows us to move on turn six, we should be able to identify the location the opponent has little interest playing on for the final turn.

Eson is pulling double duty here, as the card will represent both the 10+ power team, and the cards in need of space to function properly. For the high power cards, the goal is simply to pose the same equation we did with Echo before: Where will we position our Shang-Chi target on turn six?

As for the cards in need of space, Hellion allows us to move to another location once theirs is full, so the ability can keep generating power.

This last part might be the best one for Hellion : The card is great to seize priority heading into turn six. Indeed, since Hellion allows us to reposition to a certain location, we can almost leave it empty, or at least focus on growing our power on another one for priority’s sake. Then, when turn six starts, we have our Alioth ready, or any other card much stronger if you have priority (Red Guardian, Juggernaut…) and can reposition our points in order to win the match.

This could be huge, especially for disruptive decks, which tend to struggle to grab priority due to their lower points total. Or for the eater of worlds, a deck that both wants to keep a location free of its cards, but also grab priority heading into its Galactus turn.

Mercury

If you really wanted to kill a popular Move deck, you could run both Mercury and Scream in the same deck, making sure you would draw one or the other early in the match. Otherwise, and this is kind of Mercury’s biggest challenge: We have Scream to bully Move deck when necessary.

In that context, I feel like it is important to find other reason to include Mercury into a deck. Yet, the “It is a flexible card thanks to its ability to move” doesn’t apply either, as Nightcrawler provides the same power for 1 less energy, and Jeff the Baby Land Shark offers more power and flexibility for the same cost.

Then, we need to find niche synergies for Mercury. We can include the card periodically in ongoing archetypes to counter Move specifically, kind of like we used Gorgon in the previous Thanos metagame.
Otherwise, we can also use the card alongside Cannonball, as Mercury should guarantee the 5-cost turns our opponent’s highest power card into a rock. Plus, Mercury’s ability to move means we are unpredictable as to where we will play Cannonball.

The Verdict: Should You Buy Hellion or Mercury?

Both cards have their merit, and I wouldn’t mind having them in my collection as options to consider at times. However, I don’t feel like Hellion nor Mercury are must own cards at the moment.

Hellion could end up as a great support for Galactus, which raise the card’s interest. Plus, the 5-cost slot isn’t that competitive at the moment, with only Legion and the recently buffed Infinity Ultron being flexible inclusions.

As for Mercury, her synergy with Cannonball is appealing for sure. The new 2-cost’s popularity will likely be tied to the strength of that duo.

Hellion Pre-Release Score:

Mercury Pre-Release Score:

Hellion Decks

The 5-cost slot might not be very competitive in terms of flexible cards, each deck kind of has its own synergistic option. Then, I couldn’t find that many decks where Hellion made sense except for priority purposes.

Amongst the best candidate, we naturally have the Move archetype, although someone with Fan Fei in their collection might not feel the need to spend more tokens for Hellion. There is also Arishem, a very proactive deck, which could welcome the ability to reposition its points heading into the later turns.

For the last deck, and the best pick in my opinion: Galactus Junk. In that deck, Hellion can serve to setup for Galactus in an Electro → Hellion → Galactus pattern. It can also be used to move The Hood or The Void so we guarantee sending them to our opponent if they filled their side of the location in advance. Finally, we can also stack most of our point in one location on turn five, only to play Cannonball plus the Demon from The Hood on six for the win.

Mercury Decks

Any card with a low cost, a decent ability and Ongoing written on it has a shot to exist in Marvel Snap, as long as these two are around. Because of that, Mercury will likely see play at some point, the same way Gorgon did, whenever we need some help against Move decks.

Another synergy we could explore is Cerebro 2, and Mercury actually makes quite a lot of sense there. Indeed, apart from being a 2 power card, Mercury can serve as support to Goose, Storm and Professor X, preventing opposing cards to move to their location.

Alongside Cannonball, Mercury can be included in Scream to get a feel of that synergy. From there, maybe Cannonball and Mercury can export their services to control decks, alongside Fenris Wolf for example.

Conclusion

For 2,500 tokens in the Seasonal Snap Pack, I wouldn’t mind getting Hellion or Mercury. However, I also believe they represent options more than important cards at the moment. Hellion has more flexibility in terms of decks we could test it in. Then, this is probably the card I would be fine spending tokens for specifically, as it should at least be fun to experiment with. Mercury, on the other hand, is more straight-forward when it comes to the decks she will likely be a part of.

I hope this review of the new card was helpful. 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!