Professor X's sister absorbs the life out of Snap!
Cassandra Nova is finally here! She is the first card in literally forever that you can acquire for free! That’s right! There is no need to spend keys or tokens. You must interact deeply with the new game mode: Deadpool’s Dinner. We have a wonderful article to help you acquire all the rewards, including Cassandra Nova herself; it’s beautifully written by my colleague Scosco23. Give it a read, and you won’t regret it.
Now, without further ado, let’s talk about the card.
Cassandra joins Snap as a 3/1 with the On-Reveal effect of stealing 1 power from each card in the opponent’s deck. “Steal” means that she takes the power to herself after inflicting your opponent’s deck with the power reduction. She does two powerful things: go big and make your opponent’s draws slightly worse.
Against a regular-sized deck, Cassandra will be a 3/7 when played on turn 3. For every single turn after that, she becomes slightly smaller. If you play her on turn 6, she’ll be a 3/4, which is nothing impressive, but it is still okay. If you play her against bigger decks, she’ll go gargantuan. Say, have you faced any Arishem lately? Possibly Thanos, too? She'll be the hardest counter to them, even better than Darkhawk.
Cassandra Synergies
Are you familiar with the Darkhawk gang? They will work greatly with Cassandra. Korg, Rockslide, and Black Widow all guarantee that your opponent's deck won’t be dwindling down by the time Ms. Nova joins the board. You could also increase your On-Reveal potential with the help of GrandMaster. He can do an encore of annoying On-Reveals effects, including Cassandra’s. Masterful, isn’t it?
We could go in another direction to reapply Cassandra’s debuff with the bounce package. Beast is the powerful engine that allows the bounce deck to thrive and conquer. Once again, Korg could fit well here to be played and replayed to get more rocks in your opponent's deck. Sage also loves to be bounced back in hand. If we’re playing Sage and Cassandra, we might as well go all out with Thena to scale and Ravonna to give them all a hefty discount.
Last week ago, we welcomed Ajax into Snap; I believe he’ll love working beside Cassandra. He gets big, she gets big, and the opponent's cards get smaller. We could play some other affliction cards like Hazmat and Scorpion.
Okay, one last affliction-style deck: High Evolutionary. The deck runs powerful affliction synergistic cards like Cyclops, The Thing, and Abomination. With this package, Abomination, most of the time, will go quite cheap for a potential big surprise on the last turn.
Cassandra’s Nemeses
Although Cassandra has only a couple of tough enemies, it is valuable to remember them.
The most horrible opponent is once again the fez-wearing dark side of human consciousness, Shadow Kin. He double-taps Cassandra’s power back into 1 while returning the original power of afflicted cards. You better be careful if you feel like a Shadow King might fit into your opponent’s deck.
Luke Cage is also a decent option against Cassandra; he doesn’t retake the power from Cassandra, but he makes sure that her debuff doesn’t stick.
Lastly, Cosmo would straight up win a telepathy-off against Cassandra. The mutt stops Cassandra completely and leaves her at 1 miserable power. Ensure your opponent doesn’t read your play and counter with the Russian space dog.
One last thing: don’t play Cassandra on Lamentis-1 hot location day.
Dualgloves Day One Cassandra Nova Decks
Ravonnova
I want to start with the deck, which will be the most competitive in the current meta. This one has everything to beat Arishem, but it also holds its ground while abusing Ravonna’s discount. All of our annoying On-Reveals help both Darkhawk and Cassandra. Mystique is a goddess in this deck since she has two powerful Ongoing effects to replicate on the last turn.
Biohazard Bounce
Do you like it? Try this new flavor that’s oozing with radioactive juices. We are going full toxic again and again with the help of Beast. While we debuff the board and deck of our opponents, our wolf is jumping all over the place. Ajax is here as the big guy this deck needs and deserves.
Cassandra From Up High
This deck has the advantage of being quite affordable for new players. You don’t actually need Ajax in this one; feel free to replace him for She-Hulk. The two main stars are Cassandra and High Evo. With Magik’s Limbo on the board, your opponent will have to eventually play enough afflicted cards to make your Abomination get on the board cheaply.
I want to test how well Cassandra fits into the Toxic Surfer archetype. It seems like a match made in heaven, but this deck is extremely greedy, and honestly, the original version with Sebastian Shawn probably would work better. But who cares about better, right? Here's to science!
Afterthoughts
I can’t talk about Cassandra without talking about Deadpool's Dinner.
I love the event and the opportunity to grab a brand-new card without spending anything. I truly hope the engagement with this event goes well and becomes a regular on Marvel Snap's future calendar.
It’s tough to know how big of an entry Cassandra would make in the game without Arishem’s overwhelming presence. I believe she is a great addition and a powerful card on her own, but right now, she is an S-tier card that you should do everything you can to get your hands on. She demolishes the biggest meta monster we’ve had without effort. I hope they do something about Arishem’s dominance in the future, but for now, she is a great answer against it, and you should add her to your arsenal if possible.