Best Merlin Decks and Strategy Guide

Merlin is the Season Pass card for the June 2025 Season, Masters of the Arcane. It is a 2-Cost, 3 Power card that reads: At the start of each turn, add an Incantation to your hand. There are three Incantations; they all cost one energy and vanish from the board after they reveal.

Season Pass cards can only be obtained through purchasing the Season Pass they are attached to when they release. At the end of their season, Season Pass cards become Series 5, and can be purchased for 6,000 Collector’s Tokens from the Token Shop as part of the daily rotation. They will be also be included in the Seasonal Series 5 Snap Pack during the season following their release.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Merlin is a card you want to play on Turn 2 in order to generate as many Incantations as possible and maximize the chances of getting the ones you want. Merlin looks to be another early play you can slam and reap the rewards of.

There are plenty of ways to build around the Incantations, so let’s cover the new Season Pass card’s limitations before diving into those: Red Guardian, Gorgon, and a full hand preventing you from drawing from your deck.

The first one is something you should be able to counteract rather easily. Indeed, because of the Once And Future incantation, you can play Merlin behind your 1-Cost to keep it safe from Red Guardian. Later on, you’ll simply trade that 1-Cost for two extra energy on the following turn.
Gorgon might be a little more annoying to play around, except if we can use our Red Guardian on it, or spend even more energy for Enchantress.

The second limitation is a bit more annoying, especially because cards that create other cards tend to mix well together. Even though Once And Future should give you enough extra energy to use all your cards, Merlin might create a few headaches when you are forced to get cards out of your hand—even when you don’t really want to play them.

This naturally leads me to the first obvious synergy to explore with Merlin:

When played on Turn 2, Merlin will generate four Incantations in your hand throughout the course of the game. That represents up to a bonus ten power to Devil Dinosaur, a bonus two for Kahhori when played on Turn 4, and anywhere from one to four bonus power for The Collector depending on when it gets played.

None of this solves the issue of potentially having your hand full, but it at least makes the most of that situation. To fix that issue, you’ll have to turn to other cards. Fortunately, Once And Future heavily hints in the right direction:

Creating cards is very random, and there aren’t many ways to control it. Sure, you can optimize their impact with some great Snap and Retreat mastery, but that doesn’t help you win more games, only more cubes.

The way to be competitive in most games is to be as flexible as possible regarding the cards you create. Merlin will give you 1-Cost Incantations, which shouldn’t be too hard to play alongside your other cards. However, when combined with more created cards (if you decide to follow the Devil Dinosaur + Kahhori direction), the cards in your hand can really add up if you don’t have extra energy to work with.

Let’s close that chapter, and open a possibly much scarier one:

Both Once And Future and Polymorph help you change your lowest-Power cards into something else, either energy or a better card. With The Hood, Korg, Zabu, and Quicksilver, there are plenty of utility 1-Costs I would be happy to transform or exchange in Marvel Snap. Still, Thanos feels like an obvious pairing for Merlin thanks to the six targets it provides.

Here are some other good yet more expensive targets, and a couple cards that create targets for either Once And Future or Polymorph:

And while we’re on the topic of good targets, Merlin might not just improve certain decks; it could also dismantle another: Clog.

Merlin doesn’t interact with the lowest cost, but it does with the lowest power card on that location. Sending low power cards to your opponent to limit their ability to develop might turn into them having great targets for Merlin‘s Incantations.

We thought Strange Supreme would be difficult for Clog to overcome. Merlin looks downright impossible to beat.

The Verdict: Should You Buy Merlin?

Agamotto was a fine card; not on par with the Season Pass cards preceding it, but it was still a popular inclusion for the entire March season. I expect Merlin will be stronger than Agamotto due to a more reliable way to generate the Incantations, on top of having more obvious synergies.

In my opinion, Merlin is simply a play me on Turn 2 kind of card. Sort of a 2-Cost Nico Minoru if you will, but you have to pay for the Incantations rather than pick one for free in the roulette.

There are synergies you can explore immediately, such as the Big Hand concept or the Infinity Stones. I’m not dismissing the fact that Merlin might become a solid standalone inclusion as well, especially if low power cards become more popular at any point.

Pre-Release Score:

Merlin Decks

I believe Merlin could end up being a solid standalone 2-Cost, but let’s build around its synergies for now. I’ve already discussed how you really want two things for the card to thrive: low power targets, and energy to play the cards you create.

Thanos has been friends with Wiccan for a while, which seems like the perfect deck for Merlin. The Infinity Stones are already included and can serve as easy targets for extra energy.

I feel like Thanos Control is too good of a shell to go for a full on Big Hand deck, but I wouldn’t mind incorporating Kahhori in the deck. If that proves to be good, you can test Devil Dinosaur, Agent Coulson, Frigga, and other such cards in the deck.

The Big/Iron Hand archetype (Iron Hand if you build around Victoria Hand, Big Hand is mostly a Series 3 friendly alternative) doesn’t really need Merlin as a core element. However, the new card does represent a great support for making The Collector, Kahhori, and Devil Dinosaur as good as possible. You just have to sprinkle some extra energy on those decks to make it look good.

Arishem is just a deck you have to consider whenever the words “If only I had more energy” are thrown around. If Merlin ends up being a strong standalone card, the Incantations should be a great fit for mitigating the impact of random cards.

I’ve looked around to see which of the cards that generate good targets had a deck Merlin would make sense in. The On Reveal archetype made sense with Jubilee and White Tiger, but I rarely found opportunities to have extra energy to spend.

High Evolutionary, on the other hand, is notorious for working with extra energy all the time, and it packs Luna Snow. Merlin should represent another way to use your energy when Sunspot, Cyclops, and She-Hulk don’t require you to skip. Plus, you would happily trade that Ice Cube for two energy with Once And Future.

Variants

Conclusion

Cards that require you to spend more energy in order to be good typically are make or break. For example, Hawkeye Kate Bishop‘s Arrows are strong enough to consider the card a 4-Cost split among three cards and still good enough to play.

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!