September Card Rankings | Axis Inversion

As always, Scott and Lauren are here to rank all of the new cards! It's an exciting season as we get to see a lot of our favorite characters with a totally different spin! Agree with our evaluations? Found something we missed? Come join the conversation in the Discord server!

August New Card Schedule

The Cards

Fourth Location Card Rankings!

Scott and Lauren already got together for knee-jerk initial rankings. Now that they've actually read the cards correctly, they've come back and put their final rankings and thoughts below! There are some wild swings!

Lauren's Rankings

1. Friendly Neighborhood Carnage
2. Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos
3. Anti-Polar Magneto
4. Kluh
5. Superior Iron Man
6. The Inversion
7. Red Onslaught
8. Rogue, Scion of Division
9. Entropic Havok

Further Thoughts

Friendly Neighborhood Carnage

This guy is sometimes just a 3/10 who feeds your main game plan. He's both a payoff and an enabler! It's hard to know what to compare him to. Of all the enablers, he might be the most like Heimdall. Being On Reveal makes him faster than the Activate enablers and Hercules. He's cheaper and bigger than Fan Fei and Hellion. He just seems like a really strong card that belongs in many Move decks without any sense of memery or irony.

Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos

"Drawing" a free card every turn is great, and some of them are seriously strong! Even the ones that aren't can be used to trigger Angelas, Bishops, Werewolves, Rafts, and White Hot Rooms.

Anti-Polar Magneto

Magneto comes with 9 Power of his own, can discount 8 Energy, and his "random" effect is fairly predictable. I remain skeptical of how the rest of his deck can perform, but he's such a good card that maybe it won't matter. If your deck has to depend on a single card, it's nice to not need it until the last turn. And, hey, maybe the deck won't even be dependent on him. Zabu with a pile of 4-Costs has been semi-real lately.

Kluh

I really like the idea of playing Kluh alongside Pixie and Mobius. Kluh's 10 Power might be enough for him to disproportionately benefit you, even without Mobius. He feels like he might be a sleeper hit… or maybe he'll just always be limited to the Pixie/Mobius niche.

Superior Iron Man

He seems solid, but – unlike other recent Season Pass cards – I have a hard time imagining what the broken version of him looks like. I worry he's asking you to invest too many of your eggs into one basket – and even then the payoff is only okay. It's pretty tricky to play discounters and buffers that will benefit both Iron Man and your other cards. One synergy I like quite a bit is Shuri, who takes him to 21 Power.

The Inversion

It's just a bit too expensive to be much of a proactive tool at 3. It joins a bunch of other ways to deal with a Hood or Void, but Viper is another 3-Cost that's simply better at the job. Instead, Inversion's at its best when dealing with a decently powerful card that your opponent has left alone in its lane. That's a job it does quite well, doing both double the damage and leaving the space filled, as compared to Cowboy Thanos's destructive Soul Shot.

Red Onslaught

There are just too many bad hits to justify this outside of Spectrum. Even then, Klaw might be better on average. I'd bump this up a few spots if I thought you'd be able to preview the random Ongoing abilities in-hand, but I'm expecting him to be more like Rama-Tut.

Rogue, Scion of Division

I think she's just very expensive and low-Powered for what she does. It's hard to Snap on her before you've played her. If you Snap after hitting a critical piece, it's too late.

Entropic Havok

This card is hideously awful, with poor stats and only one proactive synergy available to it in Luna Snow. Even that synergy is bad, as being a 3-Cost competes with Luna on your curve. There are so many cool ways you could make Havok, but different. Instead we got this.

Scott's Rankings

1. Superior Iron Man
2. Anti-Polar Magneto
3. Friendly Neighborhood Carnage
4. Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos
5. Kluh
6. The Inversion
7. Red Onslaught
8. Rogue, Scion of Division
9. Entropic Havok

Further Thoughts

Superior Iron Man

I'm thinking of him like "Super Mockingbird" and he could have an impact similar to that card as a big, cheap finisher that allows the already-dominant decks to contest multiple lanes at the end of the game. He has some crazy combo potential with either hand buff or Ongoing packages.

Anti-Polar Magneto

Whether the best decks with him focus on good Cost/Power value or someone comes up with a reliable combo, Anti-Polar Magneto has the highest ceiling among this season's cards. New build-around cards have major flop potential and high-Cost ones more-so, but I just feel like Mags will land better than cards like Dormammu and Death FF because his condition feels so much more free. The ceiling is high, but hard as long as Stardust exists, though. He has a chance to form the basis of a solid B+ tier deck. If he ever gets too popular, the counters will come out.

Friendly Neighborhood Carnage

We had a move season with great movers like Spider-Man: Brand New Day and move payoffs like Mary Jane, but this is the best Move enabler we've had since... Madame Web? Even earlier? We've had a string of underwhelming Move enablers since then, and this is easily better than all of them.

Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos

Free cards are just super powerful, almost regardless of what they do. The synergy with cards like Scarlet Witch and Angela alongside things like Werewolf, Hit-Monkey, and Sasquatch is powerful enough to make me optimistic. Reading through the list of potential hits doesn't diminish that optimism.

Kluh

Have we hit critical mass of offensive Mobius cards? Between Pixie, Hydro-Man, and Kluh, I think we are. Plus the current meta is being ruled by a card that tries to discount the entire hand! There is plenty of defensive value in Mobius, and now there's enough offense to more easily justify his use.

The Inversion

Inversion can steal games, but it's hard to plan for offensively. It's probably too expensive to justify a place alongside just the Hood, but there will definitely be some cool Hood/Void decks that use this as a cheaper, more reliable Sersi.

Red Onslaught

There are a surprising number of detrimental and useless Ongoings. Take a look at the list of Ongoings currently in the game and think about what the net output will generally be. He definitely has some high-roll potential for a Spectrum or Aurora list, though, and I expect some people will find success with him there.

Rogue Scion of Division

The meta conditions for Rogue to be powerful are just very specific.It would mean a meta where everyone was playing multiple high-impact, yet relatively generically useful, 5 or 6-Cost cards. She's solving a problem that doesn't exist. Maybe she can make some hay in this inbred all-Thanos FF meta, though. If people weren't playing Spectrum or any other 5-Cost cards, that is. I think the best way to conceive of her is as a "mirror breaker" for a very narrow meta.

Entropic Havok

A meta-dependent tech card for a meta that is unlikely to ever happen and a potential hot location all-star, except that you literally cannot play him until all locations have revealed. The most upsetting card design choice they've made in a long time, IMHO. If he was a 2-Cost, he'd still be bad, but I would play him a lot with Luna and/or Galactus. He could definitely become a Galacti card, but the deck is doing just fine without him already.

That's it for this month! Come back next month for our Zombies vs. Vampires rankings (for real, this time!). If you have or need a cool deck for the new cards, come back for our weekly previews and be sure to keep an eye on the SnapDecks Twitter and Bluesky accounts, and come to the Kitchen channel on our Discord!