Best Joaquin Torres Falcon II Decks to Try on Day 1 and Strategy Guide

Joaquin is the first Series 5 card joining Marvel Snap for the February 2025 season, Brave New World. It is a 3-Cost, 4 Power card that reads: Ongoing: The On Reveal abilities of your 1-Cost cards here happen twice.

Today, we will take a deeper look at the new card and, of course, the best decks to try it out in.

Spotlight Cache

Series 5 cards can be purchased for 6,000 Collector’s Tokens from the Token Shop initially as a Weekly Spotlight 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).

Spotlight Cache Week of February 04, 2025: Are Joaquin Torres, Makkari, and Namora Worth It?

Strengths and Weaknesses

This comment got me thinking a lot about the new card because it is kind of true. Joaquin Torres Falcon has the same ability as Wong, except it only works with 1-Cost cards. To make up for that limitation, the new card is one energy cheaper and has two more power.

How big is the limitation to be worth those upgrades? Well, quite huge. Indeed, Joaquin Torres Falcon only synergizes with about 20 cards in Marvel Snap. Plus, 1-Cost cards often don’t want to sit in your hand waiting for a 3-Cost to be played, which means you will have to play some of them before playing Joaquin Torres Falcon for tempo purposes.

I know, I know, Bounce exists as an archetype. This new card was probably designed specifically for it. Even still, I’m not sure that I want to run Joaquin Torres Falcon in Bounce when I have access to Bishop and Werewolf By Night. Those two are able to synergize with more cards in that same deck.

My biggest question regarding Joaquin Torres Falcon is why is the limitation further restricted to only cards here? I mean, sure, that would have opened some very strong patterns with Toxin and Beast, but it would also have been more in line with Bounce’s signature trait: flexibility. Due to that restriction, I think the new card will be like another Beast or Toxin at the end of the day. It’s a way to get a second trigger for your 1-Costs, except it is much more demanding.

Because of this, I actually don’t think Joaquin Torres Falcon is much of a Bounce card at all. There are some cute patterns with Black Swan, just like with the original Falcon, but it feels like too much work for the expected rewards. However, I did some digging and found other synergies to explore with the new card. All hope is not lost!

First up is Moonstone.

^{Side note: Odin could also be used with some of these combos instead of Moonstone, but the 6-Cost is much more demanding and some 1-Costs are much worse when their ability triggers on Turn 6. However, Odin alone can retrigger certain abilities, so you can use it without Joaquin Torres Falcon.}

Once I realized I liked Beast and Toxin more than Joaquin Torres Falcon in Bounce, I started treating it more like Wong and less like a Bounce support tool. So I asked myself, what is the best thing about Wong? And the answer was quite simple: you can duplicate the ability with Mystique / Onslaught to set up some fireworks.

Suddenly I saw way more avenues to explore once you start treating Joaquin Torres Falcon as an Ongoing ability you can leverage:

Generating four cards gives +8 power to Devil Dinosaur, and generating eight cards fills your hand completely. This means you don’t have to save anything during the course of a match for your 5-Cost to be huge. The same can be achieved with Agent 13 or Maria Hill, but you get one fewer card per trigger.

If you are scared to play your Devil Dinosaur on Turn 5, you can keep it alongside one of those 1-Costs for a crazy Turn 6 play.

This is a very similar idea, except this time you’re using Korg and Darkhawk together on Turn 6. Adding four Rocks represents +8 power for Darkhawk, which should mitigate the fact that you didn’t disrupt the opponent’s deck from saving Korg for later in the match.

Let’s conclude with the standalone 1-Costs you could simply play on Turn 5 behind Joaquin Torres Falcon and Moonstone for raw power.

Among these, I really like Silver Sable stealing eight power from a card. That effectively removes that card from the match, which is huge when it’s the last card your opponent will draw. Iceman adding +4 cost to your opponent’s hand is also pretty juicy, and doubling Nico Minoru‘s power four times gives her a minimum of 32 power on a 1-Cost card.

There aren’t too many cards apart from Moonstone that make Joaquin Torres Falcon look like a menace, though. Still, a new card only needs one good deck to make it into the meta. If you don’t like the Iron Hand archetype, maybe Mill can be that deck for you.

My biggest problem with Joaquin Torres Falcon is the fact you need to hold you 1-Cost cards in hand to maximize their synergy. Well, Misery is a 4-Cost, which perfectly follows the new 3-Cost and doesn’t destroy it since it’s an Ongoing card. You can play all your 1-Costs early in a friendly location and then trigger them two more times later on. This is a pretty solid pattern in a Mill deck

Finally, the purple elephant in the room. Five of the six Infinity Stones are On Reveal cards, so I had to mention Thanos somewhere in this analysis. Well, consider him mentioned. The synergy here is pretty self explanatory.

The Verdict

Joaquin Torres Falcon appears to be a niche card, and it’s likely not much of a great addition to Bounce. Instead of trying to pull off complicated play patterns, I believe Moonstone and Misery are much easier (and much better) pairings for the new card. Both allow you to leverage its ability without building an entire game plan around it to get a few extra triggers from your 1-Cost cards.

I can’t outright recommend spending keys on Joaquin Torres Falcon, but if you are a fan of Iron Hand or Mill—and I love both—you are probably just as curious as me to see if the card can be good there.

Pre-Release Score:

Joaquin Torres Falcon II Decks

With Moonstone feeling like a great pairing for Joaquin Torres Falcon, Iron Hand looks like a good landing spot. You only have two On Reveal 1-Cost cards in the base list, but Kate Bishop can provide one more and you can actually use the former two to create cards if you need to.

I kept Iron Patriot in there because the card is bonkers, but I believe the Collector could also be a strong fit if you really focus on creating cards.

The main issue with Joaquin Torres Falcon is that it pushes you to play a lot of 1-Cost cards to make it worth. In this deck, you really only have Korg that you want to duplicate, so I felt obligated to run Nico Minoru as well to make the new card worth it. Those are good abilities, but this shows just how limited Joaquin Torres Falcon‘s ability really is.

As I said in the card’s analysis section, I don’t think you need to run Joaquin Torres Falcon in Bounce. Falcon, Bishop, and Sage are all a great fit instead. Yet, this feels like the deck that is most able to leverage its ability, so those of you who spent to get the new card for Bounce will probably want to give this a try.

Mill is the strongest archetype in this article at the time of writing, so I expect to see it boost the new card’s numbers. But, similar to the previous decks, I don’t feel like you need Joaquin Torres Falcon in Mill for it to be a strong deck. Actually, including it forced me to remove the Destroy synergy due to a lack of space. That might not be so bad since the Surtur 10 Power deck is running Armor and is super popular at the moment, but you get my point. Joaquin Torres Falcon forces your deck in a certain direction, and it might not be good enough to warrant that shift.

Thanos is in a dire situation at the moment, so I doubt Joaquin Torres Falcon will bring it back. Still, there is a lot to like about the card here because it gives the deck a huge draw capacity using the Infinity Stones.

This immediately made me think Devil Dinosaur as an easy include since you should have a big hand with all the Stones drawing two cards each. This should also help the deck’s reliability, which is a much needed improvement to Thanos Ongoing because it typically needs to see the high impact cards to compete with points.

The deck will need some refinement, but it might have gained an interesting new ally with Joaquin Torres Falcon.

Variants

Closing Thoughts

I don’t think Joaquin Torres Falcon will be worth spending resources on unless you see a specific synergy that you want to play the card in. I could see the new card being a part of the rotation in certain archetypes, but it likely won’t end up as a meta staple.

Once again, there are so many options among 3-Cost cards that enhancing the power of your 1-Costs doesn’t look extremely necessary when you could run Juggernaut, Red Guardian, or another powerful ability for free instead.

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!