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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 October 11, 2023
This week, the featured cards will be the new card Man-Thing, Silver Samurai, and Lady Deathstrike!
Man-Thing
Decks with Man-Thing
Our first Spotlight card this season is Man-Thing! He is a 4-Cost 5-Power card launching directly into Series 4. His ability states “Ongoing: 1, 2, and 3-Cost cards here have -2 Power.” At his worst, he is only a 4/5, but at his best, he is a 4/13! With that said though, I think this card is the weakest of the new cards this month.
Currently, the meta uses Luke Cage quite a bit to combat bad locations, High Evolutionary, and tech against Shadow King. While low cost cards are very meta right now with Elsa Bloodstone and Angela, Man-Thing is simply too easily countered. The other issue I see with this card currently is that he effects both sides of a board, which means you either can’t play your low cost cards with him, or you also must have Luke Cage in your deck.
With that said, this card can still be playable in a couple of decks. One of those decks is in Junk/clog decks! Give your opponent The Hood with Viper, Green Goblin, or rocks with Debrii, and lower their power with Man-Thing! This can help secure a lane that you may have clogged, but need more power to secure.
mathias11
The other deck is with Evolved Abomination. Man-Thing‘s power lowering ability will synergize with Evolved Abomination to help lower his cost to zero. Of course besides Luke Cage, this deck also becomes susceptible to Mobius preventing Abomination from costing less.
PulseGlazer
Outside of these decks, Man-Thing may be useful as a strong tech card under the right circumstances. His biggest weakness will be dealing with Luke Cage and the occasional Enchantress. I can see this card being more potent in the coming months as more junk deck cards are released, but currently I don’t think this card is viable in the current meta.
Silver Samurai
Decks with Silver Samurai
Joining Man-Thing this week is Silver Samurai! This card is having its second Spotlight feature. After about 2 months of this card being in the game, it has not found a solid home in any decks. The biggest issue this card has is the lack of strong synergy for the cost.
Silver Samurai can be used to discard Daken’s Muramasa Shard or X-23. You want to use this card over Colleen Wing since it can double as disruption against your opponent as well. Typically these usages are primarily used in discard centric decks.
PulseGlazer
Another way you can use this card is with Ghost Rider. Discard a powerful card like Iron Man and bring it back with Ghost Rider for higher value. One deck that uses this is a mill deck that uses Moon Knight, Black Bolt, and Silver Samurai to attack your opponent’s hand so they lose valuable cards. The combos well with Ghost Rider and Stature to create high tempo plays.
jimothy123
Silver Samurai is one of those odd cards that isn’t necessarily bad, but it just hasn’t found a strong deck to shine in yet. While one may come in the near future once he gets his second release and players try using him again, currently he just hasn’t proven his value.
Lady Deathstrike
Decks with Lady Deathstrike
Continuing this week’s theme for disappointing cards, Lady Deathstrike makes her second appearance. This card is essentially a combo card. You want to buff her Power so she completely clears a location, then use Arnim Zola to destroy the other locations. When successful, the combo can be extremely satisfying! But pulling the combo off is much harder in practice.
It’s similar to how you can use Gambit to destroy every card your opponent has on the board, but it requires a lot of good draws and your opponent can’t run Cosmo or Armor. Your goal is to buff Lady Deathstrike with Shuri or Forge activated on Wong. To pull the best combo off, you also need Magik or Zabu to play Wong ▶ Shuri (or Forge) ▶ Lady Deathstrike ▶ Arnim Zola.
Lady Deathstrike can still be effective without lots of extra power, but since she also destroys your cards, it often leaves you in a situation where your opponent just has to have 1 card in each lane that has equal or greater power than Lady Deathstrike.
SafetyBlade
You can also use buff tools to use her in non-combo ways, such as Nakia, Okoye, and Forge. A copy from Iron Lad could also be impactful with his 6 Power.
Since her release, Lady Deathstrike did see a buff to gain an extra power. Since many players didn’t Cache In the first time she was available, perhaps someone finds a strong deck she works in that isn’t combo reliant. Until then, Lady Deathstrike is a fun combo card, but definitely not meta.
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 Nightforged variant is by Snap’s seemingly new favorite artist AIDA, who has been featured a lot both last season and this season.
The widely popular Rian Gonzales launches her Silver Samurai variant this week!
This unique variant is by artist Juan Doe, who only has this variant as a credit in Marvel snap!
Should I Cache In?
This week, only Man-Thing is the only premier this week, and he is also the only Series 4 Card this week. Man-Thing and Lady Deathstrike will see another feature in December, but Silver Samurai has no more planned Spotlight features until the next datamine is revealed. All 3 cards have potential for fun decks, but none of them seem to be anything meta-defining.
My recommendation this week is a definite Hoard Your Cache. The fact that Man-Thing is not only going to have a counter that is already prominent in the meta, but is also launching as a Series 4, he just isn’t worth a cache compared to upcoming weeks. His supporting Spotlight cards are helping to pull any weight, as they all have no meta presence. If you really want Man-Thing, just use your Tokens. I just don’t see enough value this week to warrant Caching In.
Wrap Up
Do you think Man-Thing 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:
