Ghost is the newest card coming to Series 5 of MARVEL SNAP on February 14. In honor of this occasion, we've broken down Ghost's comics history, looked at the card's best potential synergies, and theorycrafted some decks that feature Ghost.
Five Best Ghost Synergies
Ongoing: Your cards are always revealed last. (Their On Reveal abilities happen last.)
Ghost is great for hiding your cards from your opponent until the last possible second - avoiding removal, Enchantress, and any other effects that could ruin your day.
While we expect Ghost's effect to be used mostly to avoid removal, it's also great at enabling your removal options, and has a few other juicy synergies, to boot. Here are five cards that we think have a lot of potential in decks with Ghost.
Kingpin
On Reveal: When a card moves here on turn 6, destroy it.
There's a lot of hoop-jumping when it comes to Kingpin, but one of the biggest issues with him is that he doesn't destroy unrevealed cards. That means, if you're trying to use Aero to blow up your opponent's final turn, you have to make sure that your cards are revealing after your opponent's - which is where Ghost comes in.
Titania
When ANY card is played at this location, this card switches sides.
Titania doesn't start switching sides until after she reveals, so you can use Ghost to delay her Reveal and keep your opponent from mucking up your plan to keep her 5 Power on your side of the board.
Hazmat
On Reveal: Give all other cards -1 Power.
For the most Hazmat efficacy, you need to make sure all your opponent's cards have been revealed; therefore, Ghost is integral in making sure they feel the maximum amount of pain.
Valkyrie
On Reveal: Set ALL cards at this location to 3 Power.
Valkyrie is another card that gets better the more cards it can see on your opponent's side of the board, and has the extra bonus of adding Power to Ghost, making this synergy doubly effective.
Shang-Chi
On Reveal: Destroy all enemy cards at this location that have 9 or more Power.
Shang-Chi synergizes with Ghost - ensuring you'll always hit whatever big body your opponent has played that turn - but Ghost is also the best defense against Shang-Chi, since it denies your opponent the very same opportunity that it provides you.
Theorycrafting Ghost
To go with our synergy picks, we've theorycrafted three decks that could do powerful things with Ghost. As always, this comes with a caveat: as a Series 5 card, Ghost is going to be a very, very rare drop from Collector's Reserves and, unless you're ready to drop 6000 Collector's Tokens on an unproven card, it's unlikely to become a part of your (or our) collection any time soon. That being said, let's look at these decks.
Cerebro 2
Ghost should be a useful addition to Cerebro 2, helping it dodge a final turn Enchantress or Rogue that could otherwise screw up the deck's core synergy.
Sera Control
We're also imagining that Ghost will give a boost to Sera Control, because it can now guarantee that its opponent won't be able to hide those final turn big bodies by manipulating priority.
Hazmat
Finally, Ghost should be a helpful addition to Hazmat, forcing your opponent's cards to reveal themselves before you dump them into the negatives with the deck's core combo. You also reserve the option to Viper your Ghost over to them, and steal priority to protect your Wong location from Cosmo for an extra turn.
Who is Ghost?
We'll start with the elephant in the room: those familiar with the MCU know Ghost as Ava Starr, the quantum instability-afflicted anti-hero from Ant-Man and the Wasp. Ava Starr wears a suit that controls her instability (a byproduct of the lab accident that killed her parents), and her abilities focus around invisibility, becoming intangible (like a ghost), and having increased strength. We mention this mainly because the base card's art appears to be inspired by the character's appearance in the MCU.
In the comics, the alias of Ghost hides the identity of an industrial saboteur and hacker whose high-tech suit allows him to become invisible or intangible (and grants the same quality to anything he touches). He views multinational corporations as corrupted and oppressive, and does everything in his power to bring them down.
Originally an IT engineer for Omnisapient Systems, the man who would become Ghost fell in love with his coworker Shana while working on an intensive project. After Shana died in an apartment fire, Ghost did some digging and realized she had been assigned to seduce him by the company's heads; a ploy that was meant to keep him happily doing their bidding while flirting with burnout. His discovery nearly came too late: a hitman sent by Omnisapient's board detonated a bomb in his apartment building; Ghost was saved when the flux state processor he'd fused to his body turned him intangible.
Ghost's first act of sabotage was a vengeance-fueled rampage against Omnisapient, in which he erased all traces of his previous identity. To the world at large, his identity becomes only that of Ghost.
Although claiming to be an anti-capitalist, Ghost has hired himself out as an industrial saboteur for various titans of industry: Roxxon Oil once hired him to destroy Accutech R&D (during which job he came mask-to-mask with Iron Man, who'd bought Accutech). He's also taken jobs from Norman Osborn and Kingpin, and Advanced Idea Mechanics' leader MODOK once employed him to plant bombs in rival company buildings. Ghost always has an escape plan and, even when it seems like he's been captured, will find a way to slip back into the shadows and rise again.
Card Flavor Grade: B+. In the comics, the Ghost is all about staying hidden and keeping important information (like his identity) secret.
How do you feel about Ghost? Share your thoughts on the new card in the comments!
Comments
How well are these news going... I mean the way game works I would need to wait for downgrades articles... because I ain't getting 6000 tokens for this anytime soon...