Table of Contents
Welcome to our new series of Marvel Snap guides, where we feature a Series 4 or 5 card and analyze how to use it. The goal is to give you a tutorial on how to use the card most effectively in an everchanging meta, as well as help you decide if the card is worth the tokens or if you should pick it up during a Spotlight Cache week!
We will aim to revise this guide each time it becomes featured in a Spotlight Cache. If the card becomes rebalanced or the meta has changed a lot, please let us know in the comments and we will look to update it based on demand!
Decks with Hercules
Series 4 cards can be purchased for 3,000 Collector’s Tokens from the Token Shop initially as a weekly Spotlight featured card, or opened as one of the featured cards in the Spotlight Caches that are found every 120 Levels on the Collection Level Track after Collection Level 500 (until the next new card releases the following week).
Who is Hercules?
Hercules is an Olympian God who is often portrayed as Thor‘s Rival. He possesses the abilities of Super Strength, Speed, Agility, and a high resistance to damage. He can go head to head with powerful beings and withstand heavy attacks (even from Thor himself). Hercules is portrayed as a Hero, and has even has team-ups with the Avengers!
For MCU fans, Hercules was just introduced in the film “Thor: Love and Thunder”. We don’t see much of his character, but he is tasked with an important mission we have yet to see fulfilled: Find and kill the God of Thunder.
How to Use Hercules
Hercules is a move combo enabler. He doesn’t add much Power to the board directly, but he enhances the game plan of your other move abilities. After his newest change to a 3-Cost, he also is a viable option to stop cards from moving into (and staying) in a specific location. This can prevent cards like Jeff or Vision from entering a restricted location.
Best Synergies
To make use of Hercules, you need cards that benefit from extra movement. Your 3 biggest contenders are Human Torch, Vulture, and Dagger. Each of these cards gets a Power boost from movements, so moving twice in a turn can double their ability to become a threat on the board.
Decks with Dagger
To maximize your movement synergy, Kraven works perfectly with Hercules. Whenever the first card enters a location, Kraven will get a Power boost, and Hercules will clear that location slot. This allows more movement into Kraven‘s location to additionally move his Power. Now with Hercules at a 3-Cost, he curves perfectly as a turn 2 Kraven, turn 3 Hercules.
To enable movement into a location with Hercules, you will need cards like Iron Fist, Cloak, Ghost-Spider, or Doctor Strange. These enablers will allow you to move your key cards directly into Hercules to double trigger their move benefits.
Decks with Iron Fist
Decks with Cloak
Decks with Ghost-Spider
Decks with Doctor Strange
Meta Competitive Deck
ZombiesGoNomNom
With Hercules so recently receiving his buff (at the time of writing this article), players are just now starting to experiment the full capabilities he can offer as a 3-Cost. This deck could be called “Move cards that also work better with Hercules” as every synergy he has is in this deck. As players test out the newest OTA and subsequent meta, we could see a shift in what is considered the best meta deck. For the time being, this list is a safe move build.
Fun Off-Meta Deck
CanadianAlfredo
This deck is one of my favorites to play, and the buff to Hercules gives it much more flexibility. It is a pure combo deck designed to grow Human Torch to as large of a Power as possible, and use The Living Tribunal to spread that power evenly. The combo, of course, dies without those key cards, but Magik and Nico Minoru‘s draw capability can help you search for combo pieces. Beast and Falcon allow you to play your 1-Cost move cards multiple times, and Hercules boosts the move value you get. Black Swan offers a way for you to play your 1-Cost cards on the final turn alongside The Living Tribunal, to avoid tech cards that might stop your big moment. This deck is nowhere near competitive, but I personally have a lot of fun watching the combo play out.
Weaknesses and Things to Avoid
The biggest counter Hercules faces right now is Red Guardian. This is the only card that can disable his ability and make him useless.
Decks with Red Guardian
With the Hercules buff, we also saw a Kingpin buff. With a higher possible play rate, your move cards could see a penalty each time they move if Kingpin is in play. With Hercules adding extra movement, this could increase your chances of landing on a Kingpin location.
Decks with Kingpin
Closing Thoughts
We haven’t seen a card get a drastic change so close to their Spotlight release in a while. It’s too soon to call if the buff to Hercules makes him go from F-Tier to B or A tier, but it is clearly an improvement. For now, I feel Hercules deserves a moderate rating and a cautious buy recommendation. As the next few weeks go by and this card gets more experimentation time, this rating could easily change (up or down).
Is Hercules worth using 3K Collector’s Tokens?
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