Table of Contents
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 18, 2023
This week, the featured cards will be the new card Black Knight, as well as Stature and MODOK!
Black Knight
Decks with Black Knight
Decks with Ebony Blade
For our new card this week, and 2nd new Spotlight card this month, we have Black Knight! He is a 1-Cost 2-Power with the ability “After you discard a card, add the Ebony Blade to your hand with that card’s Power. (once per game)”. The Ebony Blade is a 4-Cost, 0-Power at base stats, but the discard effect will set the blade’s power.
This card is exciting to me, as it opens up new lines of play and encourages some non meta cards to get some play time. The biggest normal target you want to discard is The Infinaut, so that the Ebony Blade spawns as a 4/20! While this alone is an exciting statline that requires no turn skip and can be played on tempo, but it can be expanded by Ghost Rider to revive the discarded The Infinaut.
Your ideal play line would be Black Knight on turn 2, followed by Lady Sif on turn 3 to discard The Infinaut. Turns 4 and 5 and 6 can be flexible depending on what you draw, but ideally you could use Zabu on 4 or 5 to set up a massive power swing on turn 6 with Ebony Blade and Ghost Rider.
Outside of discarding The Infinaut, any large power card can be worth the discard, including Red Skull, Giganto, Hulk (both normal and evolved), and even Agatha Harkness! The trickiest part of this plan is drawing both Black Knight and a discard card that can target what you need. Due to his low cost, you can play Black Knight and Lady Sif (or most other discard cards) on turn 5 if you draw less optimally.
SafetyBlade
Another way to use Black Knight is in a Hela deck. The discards you already plan on triggering can give you a nicely statted card that can be discarded again to double the value of bigger targets like Infinaut. The general idea of this deck is the same as the last, with the exception of your timing of when you play Black Knight may be more important since you have more targets.
Maust
Overall, I think Black Knight looks like a fun card to play with. Not too powerful, but just powerful enough that in the right deck, he could carve our a small place in the meta. Even with Mobius in the meta to counter Zabu, you have plenty of turns to play out the blade and Ghost Rider with a turn to spare. Shadow King is very meta right now, so the other concern is that Ebony Blade you play may turn to a 4/0 if you aren’t careful.
Stature
Continuing this week’s theme of discard, Stature makes her second Spotlight appearance this week. While Stature once reigned as a champion in the meta, she has since fallen from grace. The card hasn’t gotten significantly nerfed except 1 power, but the decks she was used in aren’t seeing play anymore. Her other major flaw right now is that Mobius cancels her ability to lower her Cost. At a 5/6, she just simply isn’t a strong card. When you can get the discount, like with Miles Morales, she can be very strong!
Stature‘s biggest usage is in the good cards package, where you aim to trigger her ability using Black Bolt on turn 5 to push for a massive turn 6. Again, her biggest weakness in this deck is versus Mobius. If you get a matchup without him, this combo is still very viable.
den
Another way to utilize Stature is in a Mill deck. The goal of this deck is to use Moon Knight, Silver Samurai, and Black Bolt to ruin your opponent’s hand size, and using Stature, Miles Morales, and Swarm for a massive turn 6.
ZombiesGoNomNom
One benefit of Stature right now is since all 3 Spotlight cards want to discard cards, many of your opponents may be playing discard decks. That means you may be able to slot in Stature as a tech against them since you don’t have to trigger their discards for her ability to work.
MODOK
The discard master, MODOK, makes his second appearance with Stature this week. MODOK is a staple in many popular discard decks. His ability to discard your entire hand makes him perfect for setting up Hela or Dracula for a massive turn 6. Often times you may play MODOK behind Invisible Woman so you don’t also discard your Hela.
MODOK has many viable decks, including Hela and Apocalypse. One odd ball deck that is only possible with MODOK is Hela Tribunal. The goal is simple, draw cards with Crystal, Jubilee, Magik, and Iron Lad, discard your hand behind Invisible Woman, and revive it all with Hela. The Living Tribunal will help balance out unlucky placements of cards, which is why many players prefer this deck over the traditional Hela.
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If you are a fan of the discard archetype, make sure you have this card. His ability is so strong, it single handedly puts discard decks from non existent to a viable meta option. If you don’t like discard, this card won’t help you in virtually any other decks.
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.
This variant comes from the Steampunk collection by artist Marco Itri, who is the same artist for each of the steampunk variants!
This MODOK variant is by artist Wild Blue, who has 2 total Snap credits, and both credits being on two separate MODOK variants.
Should I Cache In?
This week, Black Knight is the only card to have a scheduled release coming after this week, which is on the last week of December. MODOK is a staple discard tool and Black Knight looks very promising and fun to experiment with. 2 of the 3 cards are also Series 4 cards, making this a week with less value.
My recommendation this week is to Cache In if you enjoy the discard archetype. If you don’t like discard, you may not get enough value out of this week to warrant your caches. If you do enjoy it, both Black Knight and MODOK are excellent tools that are hard to pass up on. Both cards can create new deck styles that can expand amount of decks you have access to.
If you already own MODOK, you still may want to Cache In this week if Black Knight pans out to be as strong as he could be. If he isn’t very strong in practice, this may be a good week to Hoard Your Caches. Your best bet may be to wait a few days after his release to see how the card is performing so you use your caches best.
Wrap Up
Do you think Black Knight 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:
