6 Cost Espionage
Finally, the last card from the Thunderbolts season is here! La Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine, if that is even her real name. You can never be too sure with her because even though she has been working with S.H.I.E.L.D. since forever, she has also been double or even quadruple-crossing anyone who is in her way. She is as trustworthy as a $3 bill. Let’s see how her conniving nature translates to Marvel Snap and if she will intrigue and seduce us into opening her spotlight.
Let Me Call An Expert
Valentina is a 2-cost 3-power card with a card generation effect, similar to other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, however, her effect has some interesting changes from the run of the mill agent. She’ll grant you a guaranteed 6-cost card, although a bit modified. The generated card will have -2 energy cost and -3 power. How good is that, and is it better than the other two drops that generate a card like Sentinel, Cable, and Mirage? That’s a very tall order to beat!
She can potentially win you a game with the right call, but how often will she call the right person for the job? Being unpredictable by itself in Marvel Snap can be quite an advantage, but the only way to truly see how she might turn out is to look at the potential list of partners she can send out to help during a regular game of Snap. The list is quite large, so I separated it into the generally great and the situational. Let’s have a look, shall we? Remember that every card listed here is a 4-cost card and has -3 power.
The Great
The Situational
As you can see, we have way more Situational or even bad 6 drops on that list. However, that list becomes much better with the help of two friends: Luke Cage and Quinjet. With their effects on the board, many of the cards generated by Valentina become much better. A 4-cost 7-power Thanos might be bad, but a 3-cost 10-power Thanos is insane! It’s better than Cull Obsidian, a card considered great power for its cost.
As you can see, we need some friends to help our friends. And that’s the secret of Espionage or something. So that’s our girl Valentina. She has friends in high places, and although she might even be a triple agent who likes to keep her secrets, I trust she’ll be a great addition to the game. Her best archetype will likely be Loki. So, if you’re a fan of our local Mischief god, she’ll be quite a great option.
However, I must warn you, there is a card that destroys Valentina and what she is trying to do. Our timeline bureaucrat is back again to destroy any fun we might have with the new card. Mobius doesn’t care about your espionage plans with a cool theme song playing in the background. He will shut it down. So you might want to have Rogue or Enchantress to help you navigate his bureaucracy.
An important thing to keep in mind is that any 6-Cost future release will impact Valentina. Sasquatch is set to be released next season and is currently datamined to be a 6-Cost card. If the datamined ability is correct, Sasquatch may be a valuable pull from Valentina as he would be automatically discounted to 3-Cost after being pulled from Valentina.
With that, we have talked enough about our girl and what she can bring to the table. Although it will be a table filled with intrigue and secrecy, she can’t help it. Nothing is black and white with this girl, well, except her hair.
How about we leave the espionage for a bit and look at some decks?
Dualglove’s Day One Valentina decks
Secrecy & Espionage
Okay, this is the obvious answer on where to play Valentina. As I said, we have Quinjet and Luke Cage to make our card generated by Valentina better, or we can swap it away with Loki. Maybe Cosmo could be a good addition to this deck for those rare games you get The Destroyer.
The Collection
We make random cards and we play those cards to win! The Collector goes big, and this deck is extremely difficult to play against because no one will know what cards you got with your randomly generated cards. Your natural cards can also win the game by playing a tactical Shang-Chi or a big ol’ Devil Dino.
Gambitlution
Oh boy, here we go! This is an extremely fun take on Gambit's potential. If our Exodia combo doesn’t work out, we can always replace our combo pieces with Loki and win with our opponent's cards. Shoutout to BEWD for this crazy concoction.
Moon Girl Magic
I love Moon Girl Magic, and I will definitely try this creation by OmegaWarrior. The only drawback this deck might have is that it feels like in those games where you don’t draw Magik, the deck will perform much worse. This deck is made to play that explosive turn 7 with our powerful duplicated cards like She-Hulk, Martyr, and possibly Valentina’s creations.
The Patriots
This is the creation of ScoSco. Shoutout to him! We create patriotic squirrels, broodlings, and illusions to get buffed by the Patriot while also making our Mockingbird extremely cheap to play. Valkyrie is great against decks that rely on big power, and our ongoings guarantee our success by buffing our cards to outpower our opponents.
Variants!
Unfortunately, Valentina needs some more outfits in her wardrobe. We have her fantastic spotlight variant made by Viktor Farro, but if you don’t like his painted art style or you don’t want to spend keys on it, you won’t have any other option for a bit. We don’t have any data leaks about future variants with her, but hopefully, she’ll get some more variants in the near future. She has the style for a ton of variants.
Conclusion
The ultimate question is should you pick up Valentina? Every player is at a different stage of the game and has different preferences when it comes to play style, but Valentina can be a great addition to Loki-based decks. In terms of her value within the spotlights, she is coupled with Blob and Knull. Knull They're both valuable cards, with Knull being particularly important for the destroy archetype. While Blob isn't as strong in the current meta, it's still a solid card to have. If you were prioritizing getting Knull and/or Blob while pulling spotlight caches, I don't think you would be too upset if you pulled Valentina during that process. Let me know in the comments if you are picking up Valentina and where you would like to use her!
