What do to with En Sabah Nur

After two straight tyrannical Season Pass cards, is a new Apocalypse card coming to reign over us? En Sabah Nur, Apocalypse before he became Apocalypse, is the Season Pass card this month and he's the centerpiece of a brand new mechanic, Objective.

It's always hard to fully judge cards with new mechanics until we get our hands on them. How easy will it feel to fulfill the Objective? How powerful will the swap feel? How free will the swap feel? My inkling is that the objective will feel easy to fulfill, but that the effect will feel underwhelming, but we won't know for sure until we get a handle on the play patterns and counters until we can actually experience them.

How do Objectives work?

Objective is a new keyword in Marvel Snap that rewards you for completing a fun little quest. It doesn't matter if your card is in hand, in play, or in your deck – progress towards your Objective will be counted. The Objective only resolves once the card is in play on your board and the timing window is at the end of the turn (though after End of Turn). Each one comes with a little tracker in the bottom right corner and as long as that counter is full, the Objective effect will go off after the turn.

His Function

Like Blink or Lockjaw, Apocalypse Celestials Chosen can cheat a card put onto the board that you didn't pay for. Unlike Blink, he doesn't provide any targeting and won't guarantee that the card is an upgrade.

Like Viper, Annihilus, Sersi, and Polymorph, Apocalypse Celestials Chosen can get rid of a negative card. However, he doesn't impede your opponent like Viper and Annihilus and he doesn't upgrade like Polymorph and Sersi.

Best Things to Swap Out

So, where does that leave us? Let's look at the best things to swap out and then take a look at some potential homes for ESN. We can swap out detrimental cards, early role players, or a variety of easy-to-create tokens.

Negatives

Tokens

0-Power

1-Power Role Players

2-Power Role Players

Higher Power Dreams - 3-Cost Cards

These cards will be harder to put back into your deck, but there is some special appeal to these, so I'll be keeping them in mind anyway.

Scott's En Sabah Nur Decks

Ancient Zoo

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When building around ESN, we want to have a minimum of bad hits and high-upside good hits. With a deck like Zoo that's actually pretty tricky. Instead of a bunch of 1-Cost cards, this deck relies on created cards from Squirrel Girl, Shanna, and Debrii to fill out our board and then, hopefully, pull out a powerful effect from the deck when we get our board filled.

TigerHeart

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Another classic archetype that can take advantage of ESN. There are plenty of good targets to swap out at the end of the game, preferably after filling our board with Tigers.

Eso Toria

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Anything with Hood can consider ESN. The issue is finding a deck that both can fill the board and also has worthwhile things to pull out of your deck. If you're unfamiliar with the Bastion interaction with Makkari, it's a real fun one!

Is He Worth It?

The Season Pass is always the best value in the game, even if you never play with the pass card. I don't think we have another ultra-dominant Season Pass card on our hands here, but I didn't think we would have a repeat tyrant last month either! Whether En Sabah Nur is great right out of the gate or he starts to show his power as some of the ‘rocks’ cards come out later this month, I do think he'll have a playable deck built around him eventually. He's also got the kind of effect that if someone hits upon some cracked play pattern with him, it could be especially cracked.

Below the paywall you'll find a 5 more En Sabah Nur decks that are a little more wacky! If you enjoy our content and want to support us, consider subscribing! It helps us produce more content and we are really grateful for any support!