How to Play Hercules in Marvel Snap
Welcome to another installment in our series where we cover new card releases and how to use them. I’ll be covering new deck ideas in this article, but to stay up to date, check out our Full Tier List to see any new meta changes.
Hercules is the next Spotlight Cache release this month, and so far, the community is quite down on him. His effect doesn’t look like it will particularly change anything in the meta, but things could very well change.
Let’s get right into the guide.
Hercules Effect
The first time another card moves here each turn, move it to another location.
Hercules Analysis
Firstly, let’s talk about Hercules stats. 4/6 is considered to be standard as that matches The Thing, who is a vanilla 4/6.
His effect is quite interesting, but overall, the main thing I find is that it lacks control. If you want to move your own cards, you can’t easily control where they move. If you move your opponent’s card, it seems counter intuitive to move them twice.
As such, many players are confused as to how Hercules is supposed to impact the game at all. Even still, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt for now and see what synergies and decks can be made.
Cards that Synergize with Hercules
Move Cards
When this card moves, +5 Power.
It should go without saying that Move cards synergize with Hercules. In general, Move cards boil down to three categories:
- Cards that Move your own cards:
- Ghost-Spider, Iron Fist, Doctor Strange, Heimdall, etc
- Cards that benefit from Move:
- Vulture, Multiple Man, Human Torch, etc
- Cards that disrupt enemy cards with Movement:
- Aero, Polaris, Spider-Man, etc
All three of these types of Move cards can synergize with Hercules, but in different ways. You also will need a mixture of cards that benefit from being moved as well as cards that move.
Combo Analysis
To see how impactful Hercules can be, let’s take a look at a few examples.
Vulture + Hercules + Heimdall
Let’s say you put Hercules in the left location, Vulture in the middle location, and play Heimdall on turn 6. Vulture will move twice with Hercules and gain an additional 10 Power.
This combo results in a Power of 13 + 6 + 8 = 27 for 3, 4, and 6 Energy.
To be quite frank, this amount of Power isn’t very impressive. Ms. Marvel + Doctor Doom already puts 30 Power on the board for only 4 and 6 Energy.
Add Human Torch + Multiple Man
Now let’s say everything goes right and you also are able to play Human Torch and Multiple Man in the middle location.
This would result in 8 Power from Human Torch, 9 from Multiple Man, 13 from Vulture, 6 from Hercules, and 8 from Heimdall = 44 Power. (Using Energy from turns 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6)
As you can see, the more you’re able to leverage Hercules, the more value his effect will get. Even still, you need to actually draw every card on the right turn, and you don’t know exactly where certain cards will go after being moved by Hercules.
Hercules Decks
For this section, I’ll be mainly going over some decks that synergize with Hercules.
Keep in mind that these decks are all first impressions, so things can definitely change rapidly. As new discoveries are made, I will be updating our Full Tier List, rather than update this article.
Be sure to check it out to see what the best decks are.
Hercules Move Deck
This is a simple first pass at a simple Move deck with Hercules. The deck is pretty standard for Move, just with Hercules added in. In general, Move decks haven’t really been meta since the “Silky Move” era, and even that deck wasn’t fully a Move deck.
As more Marvel Snap cards are getting stronger, it’s become harder to Move to compete. The main benefit to Move decks are being unpredictable. However, Hercules even adds more unpredictability, which can be a double-edged sword.
Hercules Counters
Here are a few things that can counter Hercules.
- Junk
- Hercules needs his lane to have space in order to move cards into it. Things like Debrii or Annihilus can clunk up your location, not letting you move cards into Hercules.
- Professor X
- Locking down locations really hurts Move in general, as this stops most cards from moving around as pleased.
Should You Buy Hercules?
Overall, I would rate Hercules a 1.5/5.
While I do think he has potential and helps the Move archetype, I don’t think he can compete in the current meta of Marvel Snap. This is mainly because Move decks simply can’t compete in Power anymore. Being tricky doesn’t matter if you’re simply being outpowered.
However, as nerfs come to other decks, there definitely is potential for Hercules to be decent. Unfortunately, this just isn’t the current case.
Hope this guide helped you out a bit, good luck in your games, and snap away!
Be sure to check out our Tier Lists for out current rankings on Marvel Snap decks and cards.
- Best Decks Tier List
- Series 4/5 Tier List
Good luck in your games, and thanks for reading!
