Spotlight Cache Week of November 29, 2023: Are Martyr, Jean Grey, and Spider-Man 2099 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.

Spotlight Cache Week of November 29, 2023

This week, the featured cards will be the new Series 4 card Martyr, as well as Jean Grey and Spider-Man 2099!

Martyr

Variants

Martyr

At the end of the game, move to a location that LOSES you the game. (if possible)

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with Martyr

As this season draws to a close, our final card Martyr releases this week! Martyr is a 1-Cost, 4-Power with the ability “At the end of the game, move to a location that LOSES you the game. (if possible)”. Martyr is also one of the rare cards that will launch directly into Series 4.

At first glance, you look at this card and ask yourself “why would I want a card that loses me the game?” While I don’t think this card is particularly strong, I do think there are a couple of decks that could use this card and negate the downside of this card. The first deck is in a zero and invisible woman centric deck by SafetyBlade. Martyr doesn’t make the typical Zero list since her ability can’t be turned off by Sauron, but both Zero and Invisible Woman can negate the ability. While her interaction with zero is obvious, many people don’t realize how she functions with Invisible Woman.

Invisible Woman hides cards until the end of the game. That means cards that have “at the end of the turn (or game)” triggers won’t actually activate. You can see this concept already in the game with Attuma. If he is placed behind Invisible Woman, he won’t self-destruct when revealed because the game has already ended, and effects and scores are already being tallied. Martyr should function the same way, which gives you a [1/4] body that doesn’t have a downside and is protected from Killmonger. Alternatively in this deck, you can use Professor X to force Martyr to stay in place, thus stopping her effect as well.

No Bad Effects

Created by SafetyBlade

, updated 5 months ago

0

4x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

4x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

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

2.3

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.5

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

For an alternate way to stop Martyr‘s effect, you can use her in decks that aim to fill every location. This way, she has nowhere to move! You can capitalize on filled lanes with cards like Mojo and Dazzler to boost your power. You can use Patriot and Blue Marvel to add extra power in those lanes you filled up already. If you didn’t draw well, you can finish with Ultron to make sure Martyr stays in place!

Red, White & Dazzle

Created by SafetyBlade

, updated 5 months ago

1

3x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

6x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

1x Recruit Season

2.6

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.2

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Overall, I feel like Martyr is a rough card. Her power doesn’t justify her effect enough, and there are stronger 1-cost cards that you would rather run than her. Martyr is just Ant Man that doesn’t need the lane filled, but wants to lose you the game. In my opinion, this card is the biggest miss in a while. Do her supporting cards make the cache better though?

Jean Grey

Variants

Jean Grey

Ongoing: Players must play their first card here each turn. (if possible)

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with Jean Grey

Seeing her third Spotlight feature, Jean Grey joins this week’s Spotlight Cache! Jean is a great example of one of those cards that is projected to be amazing, but in practice turned out to be disappointing.

Jean Grey‘s biggest issue is her matchups. With Bounce and Loki dominating the meta, many decks you face won’t have an issue dealing with her restrictions. Even against Electro decks, Jean Grey can lose to Doctor Doom and Arnim Zola.

Despite her tough matchups, Jean Grey still has potential. In this High Evolutionary and Silver Surfer deck, you can use Jean to force your opponent to contest your strongest lane. Put down Sunspot, Misty Knight, Jean Grey, and Cyclops in one lane and force your opponent to take the negative power from Cyclops while you grow your power and play into other lanes.

You can also use Jeff the Baby Land Shark to fill your lane, and move him out if you need some extra power on the final turn. Silver Surfer comes in to buff Jean Grey, Cyclops, Brood, and several of your other 3 cost cards to both boost your Jean lane and add power to your other lane.

Jean Grey

Created by SafetyBlade

, updated 6 months ago

0

1x Collection Level 1-14

3x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

3x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

2x Recruit Season

3.6

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.2

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

If you want to combat those Loki and bounce decks, you can try this Ongoing list! It uses Cosmo and Mobius M. Mobius to counter these decks. You can also use the Infinity Stones to let you play into Jean’s lane with minimal energy to stack power elsewhere.

Your finishers are a powered Thanos or Spectrum to boost all of the Ongoing cards you have. This deck’s biggest weakness is against Annihilus decks since you need space to play your Infinity Stones.

I think that under the right meta and with the right decklist, Jean Grey has a lot of potential. With her current worse matchups being the headliners of the meta, though, I can’t recommend this card to anyone.

Spider-Man 2099

Variants

Spider-Man 2099

The first time this moves to any location, destroy an enemy card there.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Spider-Man 2099

For our final Spotlight card of the month, we get Spider-Man 2099! This card might just be a contender for worst card in the game. No deck really wants to replace another card for his effect, and his effect is so inconsistent it can’t be used reliably. This card is so bad, Move decks don’t even want to run it. If there were ever a candidate for a buff, I feel like it’s Spider-Man 2099.

If you’re interested in this card despite his weakness, here’s a list that aims to make his destruction more targeted. You can use Gladiator to pull a card from your opponent’s deck. If Gladiator can’t destroy the card, you can use Spider-Man 2099 on turn 4, and move it on turn 5 with Ghost-Spider to possibly destroy the card.

You could just use Shang-Chi, but Spider-Man 2099 allows you to destroy cards with less than 10 power. You can use Knull as a finisher with this deck, gaining power by using Gladiator, Yondu, Shang-Chi, and Spider-Man 2099.

destroy mill

Created by combatsnap

, updated 5 months ago

1

2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

4x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

3x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

2.8

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.3

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

If this card does see a buff during the new update, I will be sure to update his potential here accordingly. Until we see that change though, 2099 is just a bad card. His cost is too high of an investment to want to use, and he requires a second card to ever be effective. Without movement, this card is just a [4/5], which is a power level you can get from 3, 2, and 1 cost cards.

Spotlight 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 Annihiliation Martyr variants comes from artist Aleksi Briclot. If you like their artstyle, they also have a variant for Ultron and Adam Warlock in similar styles!

If you like the classic comic look of characters, the legendary Jim Lee launches his Jean Grey variant this week!

Do you like Chibi variants? Do you like Rian Gonzales variants? If so, this Spider-Man 2099 variant is made for you!

Should I Cache In?

This week, none of these cards have planned future spotlight releases past January. Spider-Man 2099 and Martyr are both Series 4 cards, and Jean is Series 5, making this a low value week. Jean and 2099 are never seen in the meta, and Martyr looks like a low tier card.

My recommendation this week is an easy Hoard Your Caches. With so many exciting upcoming new cards, I could never justify recommending these cards. Even if you don’t own any of the 3, the cards are so lackluster, they are only good to say you completed your card collection. Even if Martyr surprises everyone and ends up being a good card somehow, just use tokens to get her.

Since it appears that we will now be getting a new card in Spotlights each week, this is an easy skip week to boost your hoard until a better week.

**A recent change has removed Firestar from upcoming Caches, moved blob to the second cache of december, and added Man-Thing to the first week’s cache. So now the first cache week of December does not contain a new card.

Wrap Up

Do you think Martyr 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: