Spotlight Cache Week of January 3, 2024: Are Caiera, High Evolutionary, and Nebula 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.

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Spotlight Cache Week of January 3, 2024

This week, the featured cards will be the new Series 5 card Caiera, High Evolutionary, and Nebula!

Caiera

Variants

Caiera

Ongoing: Your 1 and 6-Cost cards can’t be destroyed.

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with Caiera

Starting off the new year, Second Dinner is changing things up! For the first time, the first Spotlight Cache of the season will contain a new card AND you get a new Season Pass card! The new cache card for the week is none other than Caiera. It is a 3-Cost, 4-Power card with the ability Ongoing: Your 1 and 6-Cost cards can’t be destroyed. To put it simply, this card looks super strong. The ability to protect your cards from destruction across all lanes gives you a ton of flexibility.

Caiera may single-handedly bring Zoo decks back into the meta when they were only previously seen in the early game meta. Once players start unlocking Killmonger, these Zoo decks start to disappear from gameplay. Now with Caiera, they have a chance to become viable again since Killmonger can’t wipe the board without first countering Caiera. Zoo decks have a ton of flexibility, and can use different cards ranging from only Series 2 cards, to using cards from every Series. This example uses mostly cards in Series 3 and under.

Your key cards here are Blue Marvel and Ka-Zar to pump extra power. Shanna and Squirrel Girl can flood the board with 1-Cost cards (as well as your other strong 1-Cost cards). Caiera is of course used to protect all of these 1-Cost cards from being destroyed. You can even use the other cache card from this week, Nebula, to put pressure on a specific lane.

Shanna’s Army

Created by SafetyBlade

, updated 4 months ago

1

1x Collection Level 1-14

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

4x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

2x Recruit Season

2.4

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

2.3

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Caiera may revive more than one archetype this week. Lockjaw often suffers from putting big targets on the board early game, which makes for an easy Shang-Chi target lane. With Caiera, those big targets have a roadblock before they can be destroyed.

This Thanos deck wants to use both of Caiera‘s protections. It keeps your big 6-Cost cards from being destroyed on Lockjaw‘s lane (and elsewhere), as well as all of your Infinity Stones. Since your big cards are protected, you can also utilize the new Season Pass card (Skaar) well! If you haven’t seen yet, Skaar is a 6-Cost, 11-Power card with the ability Costs 2 less for each of your cards that has 10 or more Power. Since Caiera protects your big cards, Skaar is more likely to be discounted AND can’t be destroyed itself.

Hulk Smash Thanos

Created by SafetyBlade

, updated 4 months ago

2

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

5x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

4.4

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

6

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Caiera looks like a card that will be a new staple in multiple decks. The fact that so many strong cards become protected opens up a lot of doors for deckbuilding. It even allows you to safely play cards into Death's Domain and Altar of Death without destroying certain cards, while not protecting your opponent’s cards like Armor does.

Caiera is easily countered by Rogue or Enchantress, but that makes your opponent need to run, draw, and play these cards before their destroy cards can even work. Overall, I’d be surprised if this card wasn’t in the meta in some capacity for a long time.

High Evolutionary

Variants

High Evolutionary

At the start of the game, unlock the potential of your cards with no abilities.

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with High Evolutionary

The Big Bad High Evolutionary gets a other Spotlight run this week! High Evolutionary is an outstanding card that acts more like a 7-in-1 than a single card. While not every card it transforms is in a top tier deck, they each serve a purpose in different decks.

InSheNaut

Created by den

, updated 4 months ago

1

2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

3x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

2x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

3x Starter Card

3.5

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

5.5

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

In this deck, for example, you only use Evolved Misty Knight, Evolved Cyclops, and Evolved Hulk with your High Evo. Your goal is to float at least one energy each turn to trigger your Evolved cards. You use Magik to extend the game and play Leech on Turn 5 to stop your opponent’s game plan.

You can skip Turn 6 to grow Sunspot, Trigger Misty and Cyclops, and grow Hulk. You can then play Evolved Hulk or The Infinaut plus She-Hulk on Turn 7, which adds massive power and lets you float that extra energy for the bonus effects.

This deck also works with Caiera and Nebula if you sub them in, letting you use all three Spotlight cards effectively in a single deck! You could swap Cosmo and Armor for Caiera and Nebula for example.

Thanos Control

Created by den

, updated 4 months ago

3

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

3x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

2x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

1x Recruit Season

4.3

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.5

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

If you want to use more of High Evolutionary‘s cards, this deck is the more classic style. Your goal is to afflict as many of the opponent’s cards with negative power as possible. This can reduce your Evolved Abomination down to as low as 0-Cost and let you combo that high power card with a powered up Evolved Hulk. You can also swap Rogue with Caiera in this deck to protect your 1-drops.

If you are a newer player, High Evolutionary is the best card for players. Since you start the game with no ability cards, High Evo allows you to have a meta competitive deck with minimal cards needed to unlock. Even if you are a high collection level, High Evolutionary is still meta competitive – especially since the huge nerf to Luke Cage.

Nebula

Variants

Nebula

Each turn your opponent doesn’t play a card here, +2 Power. (except the turn you play this)

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with Nebula

The final card for the week is Nebula! It’s no surprise this card is good, as you can tell with its inclusion in the previous decks listed here. Nebula is a great card for a number of reasons. It has the potential to have a super high stat line without much tradeoff for yourself. Your opponent, however, may have to play into a location unfavorably in order to stop it from growing each turn.

Lockdown

Created by den

, updated 4 months ago

1

1x Collection Level 1-14

1x 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)

1x Starter Card

3.6

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.6

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

For an alternate deck style from what has been shown above, you can use Nebula in the notorious Lockdown deck. This deck aims to capitalize on Nebula‘s ability by restricting your opponent from being able to play in its lane. If you go into the final turn with priority, you can use Alioth to secure the win. If you don’t, you can use Doctor Doom to add additional power to your Flooded lane or to support all lanes with Ms. Marvel.

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. 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.

The first Spotlight variant of the year is a one-of-a-kind by artist Carlo Pagulayan. This Caiera variant is his only Snap credit thus far.

Our next Spotlight variant launches my most anticipated variant line – Comic Covers! And this comic variant is from Keith Pollard, who is also the artist for the upcoming Galactus comic variant.

Continuing this week’s theme, this one-off variant by artist Javier Rodriguez launches this week!

Should I Cache In?

This week, all featured cards are from Series 5. None of them have scheduled future Spotlight releases (I will update if this changes after the next datamine). High Evolutionary and Nebula are solid meta cards, and Caiera looks to join them soon if it performs as well as predicted.

My recommendation this week is to Cache In. You don’t often get a better Spotlight Collection than this week’s offers. The only way I would skip on it is if I owned High Evo and Nebula and wanted to get Caiera with Collector’s Tokens instead. Otherwise, this is a super great week for both value and meta relevance. You can even use all three cards in a deck together for a solid deck. It’s overall a standard that Spotlight Caches should be held to in my opinion.

Wrap Up

Do you think Caiera 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: