July Card Rankings | Spider-Man: Brand New Day

July's season is a super-sized one and has nine cards confirmed for release! As usual, we're getting three on the first day of the season and two through LTGMs. The season is a good mix of long-awaited classic Spider-Man characters and new twists on existing characters. Come along and let's figure out which cards are the strongest and help you plan your resources!

The Cards

Have You Seen This Man?

We don't know how we're getting this card, but he's in the data files and was mentioned in the seasonal video!

Fourth Location Card Rankings!

Lauren and Scott got together once again to rank the season of cards. Watch the video for their initial reactions and then come back for their final rankings with additional analysis! How much did they shift?

Lauren's Rankings:

1. Tombstone
2. Spider-Man Brand New Day
3. Sinister Six
4. Aunt May
5. Tarantula
6. Scorpion Brand New Day
7. Mary Jane
8. Spider-Sense
9. Boomerang
10. J. Jonah Jameson

Further Thoughts:

Tombstone

Targeted, 2-Cost, on-rate Power, and capable of multiple destroys – this card is awesome. I expect many flavors of Destroy to be interested in this card. And while Destroy is almost never a top-performing deck, it’s almost always viable.

Spider-Man Brand New Day

I expect he becomes the premier generic 1-Cost. He brings a typical floor of 4 Power and the excellent utility of being Moveable twice. On top of that, he synergizes with Move by triggering abilities like Kraven’s and Aunt May’s, and also by handing out more buffs when paired with cards like Madame Web and Heimdall.

Sinister Six

It offers 12 “free” Power and occasional deck thinning. The cost is in deckbuilding. It’s a tricky puzzle, but I believe somebody will solve it. It reminds me of a darling trick for consolidating and moving Power: Venom + Ghost-Spider. Sinister Six does that cheaper and more effectively. I’m intrigued by the ability to hold a cheap EVIL card until Turn 6 to maximize surprise and minimize vulnerability.

Aunt May

I have doubts about a Moveable archetype, but I think you can justify Aunt May with “only” 3 or 4 Moveables in your deck. It’s a trade-off that she asks you to burn your Moveable abilities early (when they’re stronger held as late as possible). However, Spider-Man BND, Sam Wilson, and Madame Web all support triggering her several times with Energy to spare. None of her current targets can multiply her Power buff, but you can hide the buffs in your hand until the last turn.

Tarantula

This card is incredibly hard for me to place because I think his text is great but his base Power is too low. Won’t be surprised to see a swift buff, and yet – with some support from efficient 1-Costs like Bob or Martyr, this card can really help your Techno-Organic Virus deck snowball (even more than it already does).

Scorpion Brand New Day

A strong 6-Cost payoff, but the cost is awkward because it’s hard to dish out affliction after playing him. That means opponents will see him coming from a mile away and retreat when they can’t handle him.

Mary Jane

Mostly, I think Hydra Stomper is just a better shape overall. Unlike Mary Jane, it goes tall, gains power for moves that happened before it hits the board, and will reward you for moving the same card multiple times. Unlike Stomper and Aunt May, MJ has targets that can multiply the buffs she hands out. Ultimately, I think being a 3-Cost hampers her quite a bit. I really want Move x End of Turn (with Invisible Woman First Steps) to be a real deck, but I think it’ll just be too slow.

Spider-Sense

It needs too many Moveable cards in your deck and the reward is too small. I’m not docking its ranking for it, but I’m really disappointed by how bad the theme is on this card; it doesn’t feel like Spider-Sense at all.

Boomerang

Not big enough to justify paying for him every time you play him.

J. Jonah Jameson

He’s big enough to be playable and carve out a hyper-specific niche (tying Power Stone as the biggest 1-Cost Ongoing if you can’t fill a lane). Of course, the reality is that almost any deck running him is doing it for the memes.

Scott's Rankings:

1. Tombstone
2. Spider-Man: Brand New Day
3. Mary Jane
4. Aunt May
5. Tarantula
6. Sinister Six
7. Scorpion: Brand New Day
8. Spider-Sense
9. Boomerang
10. J. Jonah Jameson

Further Thoughts:

Tombstone

I think this is the most powerful card of the season. Even if some cards slot into more decks (SM:BND) or better decks (Tarantula), this card does more on its own. I think this fits into existing Destroy shells and can lead to a resurgence of other Destroy concepts. I'm especially excited to play him with Nimrod, but there are straightforward uses that will be more competitively powerful.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

He's just so generically good in his slot. We've seen this type of card take over in play rate before. Cards like the first Jeff and Nebula seemed to be in every deck in their heyday. This feels like one of those cards. Sure, he'll definitely be in Move-focused decks, but he'll be in a lot of others besides.

Mary Jane

Mary Jane is the biggest points package that hooks into the seasonal gameplay theme. Whether she's good straight away or she needs a buff, this is the kind of cards that Second Dinner rarely lets fail. As she is now, she represents a ton of potential Power and that's the name of the game in Snap.

Aunt May

The effect is very powerful, the concern is the targets. Are the two Jeffs, Rocket & Groot, and Spider-Punk really the best we can hit? It's a useful ability, but my reservation is the inability to abuse this ability, something that the most powerful cards in the game usually include a way to do.

Tarantula

I moved him way up in my rankings, not because I think his ability is all that great, but that the decks he goes into are. Tarantula will either be a contributing member of a meta-relevant crew, or he'll be the 13th or 14th card in those decks. Think of this as the optimistic ranking point. I'm rooting for Tarantula, just as I did in Brubaker's Daredevil run.

Sinister Six

There will be something playable with this card. But I have a few too many questions to rank him much higher. He's highly susceptible to interaction, concentrates your power in and scary way, and subject to awkward sequencing. He's also the most attractive deck-building puzzle of the season, which makes him worth the purchase alone.

Scorpion: Brand New Day

6-Cost finishers often appear more powerful on paper than they end up being. Scorpion is definitely that for Afflict, but that archetype has fallen hopelessly behind. This is partially because of the way the game is currently being played. Most decks are putting out so much power, concentrated strategically but with a lot of bodies, that Afflict just has trouble doing enough damage. And if it ever does, plenty of decks can afford to pop in a Luke Cage. If enough decks play Luke Cage, he starts to benefit the decks that aren't even playing him by chasing Affliction out of the meta. I am intrigued by Scorpion + deep Affliction like Omega Sentinel.

Spider-Sense

I think there is definitely a deck that includes Aunt May and just all the cards with the Moveable keyword. In those decks, Spider-Sense will be an obvious play. I also like this card with Professor X movement strategies.

Boomerang

In the end, I think Boomerang's issue is Cost. It just feels too expensive to pay to play this out 2, 3, or 4 times in a game. He's too strong at 1-Cost, but 2-Cost feels too expensive when you need to pay it multiple times. I don't think he's abysmal, but he's just a bit too weak to justify the Energy expenditure.

J. Jonah Jameson

I love the idea of having some cards that are strictly for fun and I hope to see more of this in the future. He's still obviously the worst card of the season though – but not so bad that you can't win with him in your deck!

How did we do? Think we're too high on something? See an interaction or strategy we missed? Come tell us in the Fourth Location Discord server!