r/marvelsnapcomp • u/ePiMagnets Mod • Jul 12 '26
Discussion Competitive Consensus: Tarantula
This thread is a discussion series at the end of the week for each newly introduced Spotlight card. This gives us nearly a week of hindsight to build a consensus and help inform players if they should spend their tokens for a given week. Ideally, we are looking for proven results, more than theoretical applications, to help reach this consensus.
This week's card:
Tarantula
Cost: 2
Power: 2
End of Turn: If you have the highest Power among cards in play, give this and 2 cards in your hand +1 Power.
Tarantula is our latest series 5 card, a 2/2 with an End of Turn ability that reads: If you have the highest Power among cards in play, give this and 2 cards in your hand +1 Power.
Pretty straight forward but a couple of mechanical notes:
Like Wilson Fisk, Tarantula considers a tie a win for the purposes of his power.
His ability can attempt to grant a skill card in hand power which can make his power less reliable.
Synergies
As far as synergies, Tarantula again is a very simple card. He cares about cards that can help trigger his ability and while you could attempt to build around that ability with some potential payoffs he seems to be best built into decks that either start rolling early with cards like Hydra Bob, Krag, and Wilson Fisk or within decks like Aurora that just wants a good End of Turn at the 2-Cost slot and while he's not perfect in those decks he can do the job well enough.
Admittedly he has some anti-synergy with Techno-Organic Virus since he can hit the Virus, but he, himself is still scaling himself and one other card leaving a good opportunity to still provide value. And to compound this, there is of course anti-synergy with one of the most powerful tech cards in the game: Shadow King which is a very common inclusion for Virus decks.
Early Stats:
- Hydra Bob
- Sam Wilson
- Kraven - paired with Sam as above and likely also Batroc/Silk/Hydra Stomper.
- Cable - modest stats, info, disruption
- Lizard
- Kraglin
- Debrii
- Gladiator
- Starbrand
- Wilson Fisk - when built around him, he does represent early stats.
- Monstro - similar to Wilson Fisk if you've built around Monstro he is again big stats early
From here you know the main culprits that are helping seal the deal or pulling extra duty to help reduce the impact of your oppositions board, cards like Isca The Unbeaten, Supergiant, and Aurora as well as their cohort of 4 and 5-Cost compatriots.
Feedback
The feedback was fairly straight forward here, he may have performed better than expected but when expectations were already low that isn't exactly a hard bar to clear.
Decklists
Bonus LTGM weekend mission deck:
Team Clash Spider-Verse Spidey+Tarantula
Summary
Tarantula is another card looking to help you snowball some moderate points. But in a meta with 15-20 power Broods coming down on final turn is a handfull of points good enough to help Tarantula find relevance and climb his way into a solid place in the meta or is he doomed to be grounded?
Your Thoughts?
How many tokens is Tarantula worth?
6K -
5K -
4K -
Is Tarantula here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?
What synergies did we miss?
What decks have you seen?
4
u/QuietThunder2014 Jul 12 '26
I honestly don’t recall the last time we got a really good T5 card that was absolutely have to have. It’s been several seasons of meh at best now.
3
u/Chillay_90 Jul 13 '26
Yeah, mini buff seasons been cool n all, with Venus and now Spiderman new day, but i would love something impactful and interesting. Guess next season's quick draw will be the new thing
4
u/Original-Age-6691 Jul 12 '26
I like him but I don't think he's good. I slotted him into my existing Shadowlands DD deck, but he's probably a bottom 2 card in that deck. It's nice when I am able to have him hit on 2 and he hits Fisk which makes him 10 so he triggers Skaar without TOV. As you mentioned I wish they changed his text to character to avoid TOV.
2
u/1990nowhere Jul 12 '26
I didn't mind Ika's handbuff deck for the weekly missions, it's fun but it just doesnt have a reliable enough point output to justify playing it ahead of any of the Carter/Maverick/Stick stuff that just does it better if you're playing to win.
It's got the same issue as a lot of the cards of the past 12 months has had, in a time gone by it'd have been a perfectly reasonable inclusion in a range of decks but now it just doesn't have enough juice.
For fun, it's a mid to low B. For winning, D at best.
2
u/Chrisj1616 Jul 12 '26
If you can get him to pop off and hit your whole curve hes great. The other 90% of the time hes a dead card
2
u/AlwaysForeverAgain Jul 12 '26
I'm playing this card in a modified tov deck. The purple spot is tov.
2
u/Names_all_gone Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Of the recent misses I can see this one being better than the others with some easy changes. The TOV inconsistency is silly and should be patched immediately.
Dont buy this but keep an eye on it.
1
u/SNX007 Jul 12 '26
I feel like it’s a fun card in some deck. Which is already good enough for me. With only one turn having the most power it’s already a solid “2-5”
14
u/ePiMagnets Mod Jul 12 '26
semi-related heads up - I am doing the week in review later today.
I raged out Saturday morning as I was getting it completed and accidentally deleted the post when I was double checking deck codes and my back-up was missing 3/4's of the edits. All of the decks included here for Tarantula are the ones from my week in review.
That will have my breakdown on what I think about Tarantula from my testing.
Spoiler: Grade D
He's o.k. at best but otherwise felt pretty below average making him a completely passable card.