Spotlight Cache Week of April 2, 2024: Are Red Hulk, Echo, and Sebastian Shaw Worth It?

Welcome back to our new weekly series Cache-ing In! Each week, we break down what cards will be available in the new Spotlight Caches, as well as the Spotlight Variants! The goal is to help you determine if you should “Cache in” for the content, or hoard for a better week.

Check out our new Spotlight Cache Tracker and Planner!

Spotlight Cache Week of April 2, 2024

This week, the featured cards will be the new Series 5 card Red Hulk, the return of Echo, and the spotlight premiere of Sebastian Shaw!

Red Hulk

Variants

Red Hulk

When your opponent ends a turn with unspent Energy, +4 Power. (if in hand or in play)

Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Red Hulk

Kicking off this season is Red Hulk! He is a 6-Cost, 11-Power card with the ability When your opponent ends a turn with unspent Energy, +4 Power. (if in hand or in play). This card is basically the hard counter to High Evolutionary decks since Red Hulk will gain more power than Evolved Hulk if your opponent has extra energy. This card sounds great, but it has one major flaw: You can’t control your opponent’s energy usage. You can, however, make it more difficult for them to use all of their power!

This Sandman deck aims to use the one card restriction to punish your opponent if they don’t have a perfect curve to play out. This deck gives you multiple play lines to victory:

• Wong -> Black Panther -> Arnim Zola
• Electro -> Sandman -> Red Hulk -> Arnim Zola
• Magik -> Wong -> Sandman -> Doctor Doom -> Odin
• Electro -> Sandman -> Red Hulk -> Taskmaster

Red Hulk Sandman

Created by CanadianAlfredo

, updated 1 month ago

1

1x Collection Level 1-14

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

8x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

2x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

4.5

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.9

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Red Hulk could also be a solid card for Hela or Tribunal decks! These decks already run Giganto for a large body, so why not sub him out for Red Hulk for a chance at a much larger body you can drop without much effort?

Red Hulk Hela

Created by CanadianAlfredo

, updated 1 month ago

0

2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

6x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

2x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

4.4

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

7.1

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Overall, I think Red Hulk is a decent card that is hard to control. If you have him in hand and your opponent ends multiple turns with extra energy (like they often do with Hope Summers in the meta), you could have a massive stat stick with no restriction to your game play! On the other hand, if your opponent plays on curve or you don’t draw Red Hulk until Turn 6, you get a [6/11] with no extra abilities.

Echo

Variants

Echo

After your opponent plays an Ongoing card here, remove its abilities.

Series 4 Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 4)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Echo

Joining this week’s cache is the return of Echo! This Series 4 card is one that is rarely seen, but can have a big impact to counter cards that are in some major decks. For example: seeing how Ms. Marvel is a big player in the meta, drop down Echo on the center location to either force the Ms. Marvel to take less value by playing her on the left or right locations, or turn her ability off completely if you surprise them. Echo also works great to disrupt Tribunal decks! Place her in front of Invisible Woman if your opponent is hiding cards, or place her once they play their Iron Man to disable one of their key Turn 6 cards (The Living Tribunal or Onslaught).

Echo‘s biggest vulnerability is having to play her before an Ongoing card is played to get value. You can play Rogue or Enchantress to counter plays reactively, but Echo is played proactively. So basically, you want to use Echo in decks that are proactive rather than reactive.

Avengers Lockdown

Created by den

, updated 2 months ago

0

1x Collection Level 1-14

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

2x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

2x Series 4 Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 4)

5x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

3.4

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.3

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

This Lockdown deck helps Echo get value by limiting your opponent’s options. Storm can lock down a location and Quake can swap what location is locked to manipulate the locations to your advantage. With Echo, you can limit your opponent from playing Ms. Marvel in the center location and still allow yours to add power to the side lanes. If you secure your locked location, you can focus power into one location and secure the win with Alioth. If not, you have Jeff the Baby Land Shark, Vision, and Doctor Doom to secure it after it locks.

Sebastian Shaw

Variants

Sebastian Shaw

When this card permanently gains Power, gain +2 more Power. (wherever this is)

Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Sebastian Shaw

Closing out this weeks Cache is the spotlight premiere of Sebastian Shaw! Shaw was first released as the Season Pass card in December 2023 and is now available as a spotlight card this week! This card is one of those solid B-Tier cards: good enough to have some fun competitively, but doesn’t quite hit the consistent power levels or flexibility of A-Tier cards. He synergizes well with buff cards like Nakia, Okoye, and Forge, and his strongest deck is with Silver Surfer.

This deck uses all of these buff cards to power up your important cards like Brood, Absorbing Man, and Sebastian Shaw. Sera and Hope Summers can help you to delay your power dump until the last turn. Killmonger doubles as an offensive tool and a buff for your board since Nova is your only 1-Cost card. This shell has many substitutes available to you like Mister Sinister and Daken. Aside from deck styles like these, Sebastian Shaw doesn’t see much meta play since he requires a deck to synergize with to be effective.

Spotlight Variants

If you already own the cards the Spotlight Cache offers, one of these variants will take it’s place! If you own none of the cards, the variants will appear after you open all four caches. Spotlight variants are time exclusive to their release week, with no estimated time on when they will be available again. The developers recently mentioned they are looking to make Spotlight Variants available in the shop 1 year after their release, though no mention of cost yet. So if any of these Spotlight variants feel like a must have for you, make sure to Cache In if you have enough caches saved to guarantee the pull.

Viktor Farro launches his first line of variants to Snap this week, starting with this Red Hulk!

This Echo variant comes from David Mack, who has 2 other live variants for Daredevil and Jessica Jones.

Phil Noto premiers his art in Snap as well this week with this Sebastian Shaw variant!

Should I Cache In?

This week kicks off with a standard value of 2 Series 5 cards and 1 Series 4 card. Red Hulk looks fun, but his strength may be meta dependent against decks that float a lot of energy. Sebastian Shaw is a fun Silver Surfer card, but he is by no means a requirement for the deck archetype. Echo is a useful tech card, but she can be quite tricky to place correctly to get good value match to match.

My recommendation this week is to Hoard Your Caches. The cards this week aren’t bad, they just aren’t necessary to stay meta relevant. This month has some killer weeks with some S-Tier cards, and this week just doesn’t have any those in it. I feel like the better move to stay competitive with limited caches is to hoard this week to guarantee more meta relevant cards.

Wrap Up

Do you think Red Hulk will be a good card? Will you be Cache-ing In this week? Let us know in the comments! For the full schedule, check out our guide below: