If you’ve been following the discourse within the Marvel Snap community, you’ll likely have seen that fans aren’t happy with the new Spotlight Cache system, making it more important than ever to know whether or not a card is worth your increasingly sparse Collector’s Tokens or valuable Spotlight Caches. In the case of this week’s new card Echo, it’s quite difficult to know how she’ll shake out. This guide will help to answer that, outlining the best strategies and weaknesses of including Echo in your Marvel Snap deck.
With text that reads “After your opponent plays an Ongoing card here, remove its abilities” and a cheap 1 cost 2 power statline, it’s clear Echo isn’t worth the whopping 6000 Collector’s Tokens developer Second Dinner is asking for her. However, if you do pull her, that same low statline means she can fit into many decks and steal games against the right opponents.
Do note that Echo is not an On Reveal effect, so something like Cosmo cannot stop her from locking out a lane from Ongoing effects.
Early Echo Deck Strategy in Marvel Snap
The first and most obvious deck list for Echo is in the ever-popular — and objectively most powerful — bounce deck. Much like last month’s Spider-Ham, her effect can completely wreck certain decks. If you’re a bounce player (and depending on the meta you’re experiencing) slotting her into your deck can severely limit where your opponent can play their cards. In this list, I swapped out Iceman for Echo:
The Hood
Kitty Pryde
Bast
Spider-Ham
Echo
Angela
Hit-Monkey
Falcon
Mysterio
Bishop
Beast
America Chavez
The goal here is to play your disruptive cards, such as Spider-Ham and Echo, to ruin your opponents’ big plays while limiting where they feel safe to drop Ongoing cards. Then, using either Falcon or Beast, you sweep all those cards back up to redeploy elsewhere while buffing up Angela, Bishop, and Hit-Monkey for a massive turn 6 swing. On turn 5, dropping an Echo early to block a Professor X, Cosmo, or Iron Man can ensure your bounce strategy goes off without a problem.
Last week’s card, Jean Grey, also gave a buff to the Thanos Zoo archetype — which I readily admit I enjoy playing — and Echo also looks to benefit from a more control-heavy list. Here’s the list I plan to run that ironically also gets wrecked by an opposing Echo:
Ant-Man
Echo
Armor
Jeff/Goose/Mojo
Cosmo
Jean Grey
Blue Marvel
Devil Dinosaur
Professor X
Klaw
Spectrum
Thanos
The primary goal of this deck is to play Time Stone on turn 3 into a Professor X on turn 4. Otherwise, you can flood the board with Stones and Ant-Man to buff with Blue Marvel. You should be able to outpace your opponent in a Jean Grey lane by playing low-cost cards, and with Echo in that lane as well, they become extremely limited with what they can play there if they have Ongoing cards. Klaw comes in as a backup to add points to a capped out lane. This deck has slowly been regaining ground in the meta, and Echo might just push it back into prominence.
Echo Weaknesses and Counters
Killmonger
As a 1 cost card, Killmonger will make quick work of Echo unless hidden behind an Armor. For bounce decks, you usually do not have priority and play out your cards on the final turn; however, certain decks have been placing a Killmonger behind Invisible Woman to trigger the effect after the game ends — be wary of the Fantastic Four’s femme fatale if you see a card dropped behind her. Otherwise, Echo will struggle in metas where Ongoing cards aren’t prominent. At the moment, they’re somewhat common but not at all in the top meta decks, which include High Evolutionary Lockjaw and bounce.
Regardless, if you pull Echo from a Spotlight Cache and she doesn’t seem that valuable now, as a tech card she will certainly come in and out of play. The Marvel Snap meta changes on a weekly basis with new card drops and patches, so you best believe you’ll be on the receiving end of Echo’s effect at some point.
