Doesn’t work well with the innocent
The super powered and super determined herald of Galactus, Cosmic Ghost Rider is riding into Marvel Snap!
Cosmic Ghost Rider is an alternate universe version of The Punisher, Frank Castle. After dying in the battle against Thanos, Frank sold his soul to Mephisto for a chance to get back in the fight, becoming the latest Ghost Rider. However upon returning to life he found Thanos already won and left the earth with no survivors.
Undying, years went by only for Earth to be visited by none other than Galactus. Frank offered the dead world to him if he gave him the power to seek his revenge on Thanos, and thus a new herald was born! Armed with both the Spirit of Vengeance and the Power Cosmic, Frank Castle continues his search to punish those he finds deserving.
In Marvel Snap
In Marvel Snap, Cosmic Ghost Rider is one of the scariest things imaginable. A tech card!
Instead of being the type of tech card that destroys your board, he instead is the type that seeks to invalidate your plays and board space.
Cosmic Ghost Rider removes the text from any enemy cards in the front row of the location he is played in. We’ve seen how potent that can be from Red Guardian, and now we get to hit twice as many cards!
There are currently no ways to “refresh” a card’s removed abilities. In other card games you could return it back to your hand and replay it or destroy it and bring it back to your board, but not in this game.
Compare and Contrast
When you look at the two you can easily make the Quality vs Quantity debate. Do I need to blank 2 cards when it’s more cost efficient just to hit 1? Red Guardian only costs 3, expensive tech cards are so much harder to play, why play Comsic Ghost Rider?
It’s going to come down to leveraging your advantage against the front row. Some decks live or die off of how they position their cards. Rather than destroying them and making more room for late game cards, we can simply remove their usefulness. A lot of early turn cards aren’t played for their Power but for their effects. Cards like Captain Carter and Invisibile Woman First Steps are best utilized up front.
Red Guardian will continue to be good at sniping specific low Power targets, but I believe Cosmic Ghost Rider will have to change how we as a player base think about the early turns.
Synergies
I’m excited about this one. The synergies with Luna Snow are two-fold. The first is the obvious, she ramps him out a turn early. What’s better than playing a 5-Cost on turn 5? Playing it on turn 4. The other part of the synergy is using Cosmic Ghost Rider to remove the text of an Ice Cube. Not only does this remove their extra energy you granted them with the Ice, but it stops it from breaking when the lane is full. Every clog player’s dream!
Another fun one is the Grand Master. You get to double up on removing text from another set of front row cards, while also moving Cosmic Ghost Rider’s 7 Power to a potentially more beneficial lane.
Counters
The bane of existence for any On Reveal, Cosmo will keep your front row cards safe even if he is one of them. You’ll have to watch out for the amount of Power you are protecting because unlike most tech cards, Cosmic Ghost Rider boasts a not insignificant 7 Power. He’s not a small card like most tech that Cosmo is used to dealing with.
I’ve been dipping my toes into Cerebro 2 decks and I’ll say this card does more heavy lifting than you’d think. In those decks it’s used to protect Cerebro from stuff like Enchantress, which is a principle that can be applied to countering Cosmic Ghost Rider. Even with a cost reduction from Surge or Sera, he isn’t cheap enough to duck under Goose. This will keep your front row cards free of danger.
August’s Day 1 Decks
Cosmic Ghost Rider Midrange
This shell of “tech cards with Wiccan ramp” has been a proven good list. If you are the type of player who likes controlling the board while advancing your own endgame, this is the deck for you. I’ve added Cosmic Ghost Rider and Luna Snow for the synergy mentioned above, along with him being a natural fit into a deck that’s looking to invalidate your opponent’s side of the board.
Cosmic Ghost Rider Clog
One of the known ways of dealing with the clog archetype is by setting down some early scaling threats. Clogging a lane doesn’t matter as much when you have a way to continuously add Power to it after it’s full. Cosmic Ghost Rider can remove that counterplay option, by taking out the text of those cards while still leaving them stuck in the lane. This not only reduces their potential Power output but encourages your game plan of clogging up their lanes with useless cards.
Variants
Final Thoughts
Cosmic Ghost Rider is a Series 5 card launching today in the Seasonal Series 5 Pack for 5000 tokens and the weekly Spotlight for 6000.
I’ve admittedly not been too excited about this month’s cards, but Cosmic Ghost Rider has got me very intrigued. I’m generally higher than most on tech cards but that’s because I like interaction in my card games. Hopefully this can help contribute to a meaningful shake up in the current Snap metagame.
What have you thought about the new cards this season? Let me know down below with your discord username or in the X post for this article for a chance to win PAX Borders!