Snowguard Guide
Marvel Snap comes out with a new card every week, and it’s a lot to keep up with. Sometimes these cards flop and don’t do much, and other times, they completely redefine the meta.
Snowguard is the first Series 5 card of April, and she appears to be quite a flexible card. While Hit-Monkey has very clear archetypes to slot into, Snowguard appears to be more of a general use card.
In this article, I’ll be covering what Snowguard does, how to use her, and some initial decks to try out for her.
As meta decks appear with the new card, be sure to stay updated with our Full Deck Tier List to see where Snowguard lands.
Let’s get right into the guide.
Snowguard Effect
Snowguard – While in your hand, this transforms each turn into a Hawk or a Bear.
Bear – On Reveal: Trigger the effect of this location.
Hawk – On Reveal: Ignore all Location abilities next turn.
- Artist – Ryan Benjamin
- Colorist – Ryan Kinnaird
Snowguard Explained
- On the first turn you draw Snowguard, she will turn into a Hawk.
- Every turn after that, the card will transform into a Bear, then back to Hawk, and so on.
- When playing Hawk, you effectively turn off all locations for both you and your opponent on the following turn.
- Bear does not trigger all locations. Here are some examples of locations he does not trigger:
- Locations that specify what turn they activate like Avengers Compound or Klyntar.
- Locations that have additional conditions like The Raft.
Snowguard Synergy
Unlike other cards, Snowguard doesn’t necessarily have heavy synergy with an archetype. She is a very flexible 1-cost that can be shoved into just about any deck with space for a 1-drop. In many decks, she won’t replace Sunspot, but she can easily replace something like Iceman.
Even still, there are a couple synergies that make the most out of Snowguard. Here’s a quick list of a few common ones you might see.
Sera
Ongoing: Cards in your hand cost 1 less. (minimum 1)
Sera decks range from heavy control decks to decks that want to flood the board with Power. With Snowguard in mind, a Sera Control deck that uses location lockdown and other disruptive effects can be very powerful with Snowguard. There are a wide variety of plays you can make that your opponent won’t expect from a new card. Even as Snowguard drops in Series, I expect her to be a bit more niche, making it very difficult for your opponent to predict what you’ll do.
Ka-Zar
Ongoing: Your 1-Cost cards have +1 Power.
Snowguard is a 1-cost card, so there is some easy synergy with Kaz-ar based Zoo decks. There are a variety of 1-cost cards you can use, and Snowguard can easily slot in for another 1-drop. Since Snowguard is more of a utility card, you will want to replace cards such as Iceman or Nightcrawler, instead of something like Squirrel Girl or Ant-Man. Even at Infinite rank, Zoo can still be quite effective, and Snowguard adds a lot of flexibility to the deck. Before, you were quite limited in utility, but Snowguard helps a ton with that.
Kitty Pryde
While technically not a synergy, I thought I should mention Kitty Pryde in this section. A lot of people will consider Kitty Pryde to simply be the better “flexible 1-drop.” For the most part, this is true. Kitty Pryde gives you a lot of value regardless of what deck you’re playing, and can make use of leftover energy. On the other hand, Snowguard provides utility for a one time cost of 1 energy. They do very different things, but if you’re looking for a strong 1-cost card to slam into multiple decks, I would recommend Kitty Pryde.
Snowguard Decks
For this section, I’ll be going over some decks that will likely be strong with Snowguard. Get ready for a lot of Zoo variants.
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, or if Snowguard is even in the best decks at all.
Dracula Zoo Snowguard Deck
This first deck is a fairly straight forward Dracula Zoo deck. Instead of other 1-cost cards like Iceman, you can run Snowguard instead. This can be nice if there are locations that are preventing you from playing, or if there’s a location you want to activate. While I don’t think Snowguard will increase the effectiveness of the archetype too much, it’s still a solid tech. Having that extra bit of surprise in Marvel Snap can help a lot.
Zoo Snowguard Deck
This version of Zoo looks to leverage Hit-Monkey along with other low power cards and Bast. The gameplan is still very straight forward. Try to play Bast early, play out your scaling cards like Angela, Bishop, Ka-Zar, and Blue Marvel. End the game with a burst of 1-cost cards.
Thanos Zoo Snowguard Deck
I think this deck might have the most potential with Snowguard. While she can be nice to have in other decks, Thanos Zoo actively looks to disrupt opponents, and Snowguard fits in with that gameplan. While she isn’t a huge upgrade over something like Iceman, this is probably where she can shine the most.
Sera Control Snowguard Deck
This version of Sera control also uses Hit-Monkey, but uses Snowguard instead of something like Nova Killmonger. I will note that Kitty Pryde is definitely an upgrade here, but if you are lucky enough to open Snowguard from a cache, this deck may work out for you.
With this version of the deck, I also included Scarlet Witch to give the deck more of a location flavor. Sera decks in general can substitute a lot of cards, so you can adjust this deck to your liking as well.
Conclusion
That wraps up my quick little guide on the new card, Snowguard. While the card initially seems to be lackluster, after seeing some games with the card, there is definitely a lot of potential.
However, I can’t recommend spending 6000 tokens on Snowguard. If anything, she will be a nice card to pull from Series 4, or a nice niche card we’ll see more of once she drops to Series 3.
Hope this guide helped you out a bit, good luck in your games, and snap away!
