Spotlight Cache Week of December 6, 2023: Are Man-Thing, Stegron, and Jeff the Baby Land Shark Worth It?

Welcome back to our 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.

Spotlight Cache Week of December 6, 2023

This week, there is no new card in the Spotlight Caches. Instead, we get three cards that have already been out while as the new card of the week, Sebastian Shaw, is available in the December 2023 Hellfire Gala Season Pass. It is important to note that from the January 2024 Planet Hulk Season onwards, a new card is featured in this slot.

The featured cards this week are Man-Thing, Stegron, and Jeff the Baby Land Shark!

Spotlight Cache Changes

After the most recent update, the datamines show that a previously datamined Spotlight Cache has been changed:

• On this week, Blob was moved to next week and replaced with Man-Thing.
• During the second week of the season, Firestar was removed from the Spotlight schedule entirely and Blob took her place.

These changes may be beneficial or hurtful to you based on your collection needs, but there is a key point to note from this change: Spotlight Caches that are datamined (or any other datamined information such as Bundles) are not official, and have the potential to change. So make sure you pick up a featured card if you know you need it!

More details in this article here:

Man-Thing

Variants

Man-Thing

Ongoing: 1, 2, and 3-Cost cards here have -2 Power.

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with Man-Thing

For our first card of the new season, Man-Thing returns for his second Spotlight appearance! Man-Thing is a card that looks great on paper, but hasn’t found a good home to make use of his ability. He has 2 major weaknesses currently: He afflicts your cards with negative power, and Luke Cage. This makes Man-Thing hard to play consistently and get good value. You could run Luke Cage in your deck to protect your cards, but with Loki still controlling the meta, you having Luke means your opponent has access to Luke. This means you often cut both Luke and Man-Thing from your list.

Even despite his weaknesses, he still has potential! In the right conditions, he can be as strong as a 4/13! In this deck, you use Man-Thing’s ability to help push Evolved Abomination as close to a 0-Cost as possible. Along with other power reducers like Evolved Cyclops, Scorpion, and Evolved The Thing, you threaten a lot of Power output while also reducing their power. This deck does run Luke Cage to protect yourself from Man-Thing, but could be swapped out when dealing with too many Loki decks.

High Evo No Flex

Created by PulseGlazer

, updated 5 months ago

2

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

2x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Series 4 Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 4)

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

5x Starter Card

3.1

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.3

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

In this Annihilus junk deck, Man-Thing makes your junk more potent! With The Hood and Debrii, you can add lots of junk to your opponent’s side of the board and lower its power to make things even worse for your opponent. You use Sentry, Annihilus, and Demon as your power plays to secure lanes on the final turns. Just like the previous deck, you can optionally run Luke Cage here to tech against your own Man-Thing.

Junkrats

Created by SafetyBlade

, updated 5 months ago

1

9x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

1x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

2.9

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.9

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Overall, Man-Thing is a strong card that has too many drawbacks. In the right deck or meta, he has potential to be very strong. But for now, he hasn’t proven his strength to the meta and has since been sat on the back burner for players to tinker with.

Stegron

Variants

Stegron

On Reveal: Move an enemy card from here to another location.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Stegron

At long last, Stegron makes his first Spotlight appearance this week. With his release, now only Howard the Duck remains as the only card to not be featured yet. This card is one that used to be very popular in zabu decks. His downfall started after move started getting heavy support. Stegron‘s move ability often triggered a positive effect for the opponent, like buffing Kraven. His movement ability also just became lackluster with so many cards in the meta that can gain access to blocked locations, making him often unimpactful in matches.

Despite his setbacks, he has found a home in a recent meta deck, Cerebro 5! You may not think Cerebro is very competitive, but Ms Marvel has pushed C5 into a very playable state. Combined with Doctor Doom, you can pump out a lot of power with minimal effort. You can use the movement function of Stegron to activate your Miles Morales and play him and another 4-Cost card on turn 5.

Even the powerful Loki deck can have bad matches against this deck since it can’t properly utilize the Cerebro and Ms. Marvel combo with Doctor Doom. And yes, you can even use Man-Thing in this deck since you already want to run Luke Cage to protect your 5-Power cards. If you want to try a new deck and haven’t tried this list, I would highly recommend it.

After the latest patch, Stegron was changed to not effect unrevealed cards. This change is a clear nerf, so the devs have responded by giving Stegron an extra power. This “buff” is more of a huge second nerf that killed the card. Stegron no longer works in his best deck, Cerebro 5, and has no reasonable home at this point in the meta. Until this card sees a rework, I think this card is truly terrible and doesn’t really have a good deck he could slot into.

With no good decks for Stegron decks to feature, here is a deck based around move. If Stegron moves a card into Kraven’s lane, you can get 4/8 of value and lower the cost of your Miles Morales.

Sera Wolf move lock

Created by David971

, updated 5 months ago

0

1x Collection Level 1-14

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

8x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

3.1

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.5

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Outside of this deck, Stegron has been overshadowed by Juggernaut for his movement ability. Since Stegron has not been easily available for quite a while now, perhaps this Spotlight cache will give him the boost he needs to find the next big meta deck.

JEFF!

Variants

Jeff the Baby Land Shark

You can move this once. Nothing can stop you from moving or playing this to any location.

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with Jeff the Baby Land Shark

Everyone’s favorite baby land shark makes his second Spotlight appearance this week, Jeff! Jeff is easily one of the best cards in the game in my opinion. His ability to be played on any turn and still be good makes him invaluable to own. Especially with so many lockdown decks running rampant in the meta, Jeff provides a way to counter both Storm and Professor X. If you are a new player, Jeff is on my top 5 cards to collect list due to his sheer flexibility.

Even though he helps counter lockdown decks, he also can support them too! You can use your own Jeff to correct a misplaced Professor X, or give that extra edge on a Flooded lane. His flexibility to both move anywhere and be played anywhere makes him ideal to securing these Lockout matches by rebalancing your power without limitations of fear of most destruction abilities like Killmonger or Shang-Chi.

HL Brew 2

Created by PulseGlazer

, updated 5 months ago

0

1x Collection Level 1-14

2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

1x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x 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+

3.8

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

To utilize Jeff’s “Nothing can stop this card” ability, he fits great into Electro + Sandman decks. If you didn’t already know, Jeff cam bypass the 1 card per turn limitations that Electro and Sandman create. This means if you play Sandman to slow your opponent, you can play Jeff and another card to add 2 cards while they are limited to only 1 (unless they also run Jeff. And of course, you can also run Professor X to combo with Jeff in this deck too.

Conquest Lockdown

Created by FaThorNewman

, updated 5 months ago

0

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

5x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

4x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

3.7

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.1

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Overall, it’s pretty simple. Jeff is an incredible card and should he in every player’s collection!

The Variants

If you already own the cards the Spotlight cache offers, one of these variants will take their 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, and there’s no estimated time on when they will be available again. So, if any of these Spotlight variants feel like a must have for you, make sure to Cache In if you have enough saved to guarantee the pull.

This super unique Man-Thing variant comes from artist Mike Deodato Jr., who only has this variant as a credit in Marvel Snap.

If you’re in the market for a new Stegron variant, this 3099 one from artist Lorusso Giovanni can help you out! Similar to the previous artist, Giovanni only has 3 total credits in Marvel Snap, making his variants much more unique in style.

If you like adorable Disney-like variants, then this one from artist Sean Galloway comes to the rescue! If this variant also looks unique, that’s because this is a first release for Galloway, with their remaining 3 variants yet to be released.

Should I Cache In?

This week, we get no new card. Instead, we get 2 Series 4 cards and a Series 5 card that should have dropped Series half a year ago. None of the 3 cards have future spotlight features planned. Man-Thing and Stegron are not super meta, but Jeff is definitely a huge part of every meta.

My recommendation this week is simple: Do you have Jeff? If you do, Hoard Your Caches! Man-Thing and Stegron are Series 4 cards, so they aren’t alone worth a cache. If you don’t own Jeff, he might be single handedly worth a cache due to his strength, so you may consider Cache-ing In.

My biggest worry with Jeff is that the developers have said we will have more news on Series Drops by the end of the year, as early as the patch coming up on December 5, 2023. Jeff is so overdue for a Series Drop that he might finally see one soon. If he does, he might be a waste of a cache. If he doesn’t drop, this may be your last chance to get him until another Spotlight release.

Wrap Up

Do you think this week is a good or bad week with no new card? Will you be Cache-ing In this week? Let us know in the comments!

For the full schedule, check out our guide below: