Spotlight Cache Week of July 25, 2023: Are Legion, High Evolutionary, and Darkhawk 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. This week, the featured cards will be the new card Legion, High Evolutionary, and Darkhawk!

As a quick note, if you haven’t read the news yet, the developers have listened! The Mystery Series 4/5 duplicate reward will be changing from a Premium Mystery Variant to 1,000 Collector’s Tokens during the next patch as of a new emergency bug fix from the developers, it was just announced this change is “now live” with the bug fix. Until then, it will still be a Premium Mystery Variant, so use your caches wisely! Now onto this week’s breakdown:

Legion

High Evolutionary

Darkhawk

Legion

Variants

Legion

On Reveal: Replace each other location with this one.

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with Legion

Legion is this week’s new card! His ability, On Reveal: Replace each other location with this one, comes with a 5/8 statline. It isn’t a big secret that this card isn’t very exciting. His ability comes too late to trigger anything meaningful. This makes him difficult to include in most decks. His biggest advantage is opening all locations to one that favors you, making him an expensive tech card.

You can’t copy Storm‘s Flooded location in enough time to be able to lock all lanes down, so he doesn’t belong in a lane lock deck. Developers and hands on testing confirm Legion will copy flooding ans lock all locations at once, though it does typically require playing storm on turn 4 to play Legion on turn 5. This makes a turn 5 lockdown deck possible. Legion also actually makes a decent counter to lane lock decks since his ability can undo Flooded, Sanctum Sanctorum, The Vault, Death's Domain, and so on. Though if you are looking for a way to negate locations on turn 6, Snowguard might be a cheaper option (as odd as that may sound).

He does, however, work well with the new Magik buff! Legion can copy Limbo to all lanes to guarantee a turn 7. This can either help you with a combo, or make sure your opponent doesn’t play Storm to cancel out their own Magik in the Silver Surfer deck.

I think Legion won’t be meta defining, but might lead to a fun match here or there. He will be especially fun during Hot Locations where you can reliably plan around a location like Death's Domain.

Turn 7 guaranteed

Created by den

, updated 9 months ago

2

3x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

3x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

3x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

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

1x Recruit Season

2.8

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.4

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

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

Being the newest Big Bad to be added to the game, High Evolutionary has been the biggest warp to the meta in some time. Being essentially a 7-in-1 card effect makes him as close to a must have as it gets.

Evolutionary Control

Created by SafetyBlade

, updated 9 months ago

1

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

4x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

4x Starter Card

3.3

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.8

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

High Evolutionary has several meta decks that have stuck around despite his recent nerfs. A negative power deck will focus on adding power with Sunspot and Evolved Misty Knight, while removing opponent’s power with Evolved Cyclops, Evolved The Thing, and Evolved Wasp.

Lockdown decks run a similar path using Storm and Evolved Cyclops to shut a lane down and contest it. Lockjaw also uses High Evolutionary with Evolved Wasp to cycle cards and Evolved Hulk to take advantage of skipped turns or off-tempo plays.

Evolved Lockjaw

Created by Bohe

, updated 10 months ago

1

1x Collection Level 1-14

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

5x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

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

1x Starter Card

3.8

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

6.6

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

While there are other decks High Evolutionary sees play in, this gives you the basic concept: it’s a good card. Even if you don’t play meta decks, his effect is so unique that it creates a new avenue to test your deck-making skills!

Darkhawk

Variants

Darkhawk

Ongoing: +2 Power for each card in your opponent’s deck.

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with Darkhawk

Following Knull as one of the most anticipated Series drop cards, Darkhawk finally becomes more accessible. His reign over the meta spans months, though his decks are not high in volume. Darkhawk shines best when partnered with his friends Korg and Rockslide to make his effect more powerful.

Devil Darkhawk

Created by den

, updated 9 months ago

1

3x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

5x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

1x Starter Card

3

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

2.9

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

You will most often see Darkhawk in decks built around him, along with Zabu and other 4 cost cards. On occasion, you will see a hand lock deck that uses Master Mold, Black Widow, and Baron Mordo to combo Darkhawk with Ronan the Accuser. Outside of these main ideas, you won’t see many Darkhawk decks that divert from his core combo sets. With that said, his combo set is extremely powerful and still holds true in the meta week after week.

The Variants

If you already own the card 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 4 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.

This Legion variant comes from artist Giuseppe Camuncoli. It is definitely one of the more unique variants as the artist only has 1 other variant for Hazmat so far.

High Evolutionary launches his Max Grecke variant this week. If you’re a fan of Grecke’s pixar-esque style, this might be the variant you’re waiting on!

Eduardo Francisco is the artist for the new Darkhawk variant. Eduardo has quite a few variants in Snap, though most are unreleased. So if you enjoy his style and want to collect them all, now may be a good time to start!

Should I Cache In?

The upcoming week is a great improvement over this week’s current Cache featuring Echo, Iron Lad, and Kang. 2 of the 3 cards are solid cards, and the other one may still be a fun card to own. This week, however, required a little more depth than a simple Cache In or Hoard.

My recommendation is that if you don’t already own High Evolutionary, Cache In this week! Even if you already own Darkhawk, High Evolutionary is a must have card, Legion isn’t a terrible addition, and the Darkhawk variant isn’t too shabby either.

On the other hand, if you do own High Evolutionary already, I recommend Hoarding your caches. Legion himself isn’t worth a cache, but is launching into Series 4 if you want him for 3,000 tokens. Darkhawk and Legion are worth a cache, but not worth 4 if you are unlucky. You are better off spending 3,000 tokens or waiting a bit longer for his eventual drop into Series 3. The High Evolutionary variant is also the most worthless variant. Even if you are a Max Grecke fan, you mostly never want to play High Evolutionary in a match, so nobody will ever see your variant anyways.

Do you think Legion 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: