Best The Ancient One Decks and Strategy Guide

The Ancient One is the second Series 5 cards joining Marvel Snap for the June 2025 Season, Masters of the Arcane. It is a 3-Cost, 5 Power card that reads: On Reveal: Add Tao Mandala to your hand.

Today, let’s explore the new card strengths and, of course, the best decks to try it out in.

Series 5 cards can be purchased for 6,000 Collector’s Tokens from the Token Shop as the latest Seasonal Spotlight card. They will be also be included in the Seasonal Series 5 Snap Pack for 5,000 Collector’s Tokens during their season and the following one.

Strengths and Weaknesses

There is a lot to be scared about when it comes to The Ancient One, both in terms of potential power and the ability to flop.

First, it is important to consider the card a 6-Cost spread across two different cards. If you don’t intend to use Tao Mandala, The Ancient One is just a vanilla [3/5]. That is slightly better than Esme Cuckoo when you don’t use the copy she gave you, but it’s still pretty terrible compared to Copycat or Red Guardian.

It is also crucial to find a way to avoid telegraphing to your opponent what is about to happen. Indeed, if you play The Ancient One early in the game, they will have eyes on all future Ongoing cards you play. This situation leads to one of my biggest worries about the card: how do you not fall into the “opponent Retreats or counters you” trap?

Typically, Ongoing cards have to worry about Enchantress, Rogue, and occasionally Red Guardian. With an On Reveal card in the mix now, you can’t even use Cosmo as a protective piece anymore. As such, here is the first crucial point on how to make Tao Mandala work at full force: you need priority.

For all the power it carries, Tao Mandala is also very easy to predict from your opponent’s perspective. With this in mind, you can’t do much about Enchantress except play Tao Mandala and immediately follow it with Cosmo or Juggernaut (with priority). However, copying first will at least remove Cosmo and Alioth from the equation while also reducing the impact of Rogue and Red Guardian.

Alright, there is one more thing you can do if, once again, you have priority:

This is a trick used by Nimrod decks from a while ago when Alioth was everywhere. To avoid having the destroy ability countered, you would use Ghost-Spider to move Nimrod to another location and safely destroy it there.

With this problem out of the way, let’s focus on the other hurdle: what cards should you copy?

Mystique is a great card because she allows you to copy any Ongoing ability on another location, which spreads your points and works toward the goal of winning two locations. Tao Mandala works the opposite way; the card will stack all your Ongoing abilities on the same place. I already discussed how that makes it weaker to Enchantress, but it also means you can’t really use the usual targets. Indeed, Iron Man and Gorr are usually enough on their own to win a location so there’s no need to double their abilities there.

Because of this, I expect Ongoing cards that spread power to other locations will have a better synergy with The Ancient One:

Another category of cards to keep an eye on are energy cheats, as they can impact the game tremendously if you manage to copy them early on:

Not really part of either category, I feel like it is also important to mention the wild cards that are Wong and Super-Skrull since they can turn into virtually anything:

From here, the question you have to answer is whether you want to pair Tao Mandala with a 3-Cost card on Turn 6 or expose your expensive Ongoing card for a turn before attempting the copy.

Both options have their limits. When it comes to cheaper cards, you could simply use Moonstone, which would be a cheaper, less telegraphed option. The more expensive cards will require you to gain priority heading into the copy turn in order to prevent the worst scenarios from happening.

The Verdict: Should You Buy The Ancient One?

There are a large amount of cards you can target with Tao Mandala, so the potential is definitely there. However, the Ongoing synergy is one that everyone knows how to counter if need be. And the fact that it should be fairly easy to guess where the ideal location to play Tao Mandala is won’t help in the regard.

I think the key to finding success with The Ancient One should be creating a deck with multiple good targets coupled with the ability to control priority. If you can get those two things together, you should have the opportunity to create some real fireworks with The Ancient One.

Pre-Release Score:

The Ancient One Decks

Of all the possible theorycrafts, I feel like KaZoo is the archetype that checks the most boxes. Indeed, not only do you have three great targets in Patriot, Ka-Zar, and Blue Marvel, the archetype is also known for being great at seizing priority.

Due to Tao Mandala commanding some of your energy in the later turns, I built a cheaper deck; however, Gilgamesh and Ultron can be put back in the deck at any point in the testing phase.

Cerebro 5 and Victoria Hand both have interest in running The Ancient One, but they also might struggle to find the required energy to play both the 3-Cost and Tao Mandala. There are great targets in both decks, particularly Ms. Marvel, which I feel has a ton of potential with the new card. However, it should be more challenging to set it up correctly compared to a KaZoo deck since that one naturally summons plenty of cards and controls priority with ease.

If you believe a gimmicky Ongoing deck can use The Ancient One without being either countered or Retreated against almost every time, then plenty of archetypes become available. I picked an old Silver Surfer High Roll deck Nitheal reminded me of as an example.

The goal here is to get Sera and Onslaught onto the same location using Wave, Blink, or Jennifer Kale. From there, you have all your 3-Cost cards discounted to one energy and can simply play all your cards at once for a crazy amount of points.

Variants

Conclusion

The meta has been quite Enchantress-heavy throughout the previous season, and Gorgon has been gaining momentum to limit Merlin‘s power. I expect The Ancient One to come into a difficult environment to leverage the ability. That doesn’t mean it will impossible to rack up cubes with the new card, but I believe the first decks should focus on flexibility and controlling priority first and foremost in order to find success.

I hope this review of the new card was helpful. You can find everyone on the Marvel Snap Zone team in our community discord to have a chat or ask any questions.

Good Game Everyone!