Building With Pryde - A MARVEL SNAP Deck Tech

With the most recent patch to MARVEL SNAP, every player was given a new card for free: the much-delayed 1-Drop Kitty Pryde. Given its unique (and formerly game-breaking) nature, some players might rightfully wonder how best to use their new toy. Never fear: we're here today to break down the card's best synergies, showcase some decks in which Kitty Pryde shines, and even talk about the decks that are best at countering her particular shenanigans. If any of what we just said interests you, come along for the ride.

The Syn(ergies) of Pryde

When this returns to your hand, +1 Power. Returns at the start of each turn.

Actual Stats: [1/0].

The best bet for synergizing with Kitty Pryde is to find cards that either like it when cards are played, or pay off when cards return to hand. It's also important to keep in mind that you'll want to mostly run cards that are cheap (generally costing 3 or less) so you can play them as early as possible while keeping an Energy open for Kitty.

With that in mind, there's a fairly long list of cards that play well with Kitty Pryde in some capacity, the most obvious one being The Collector getting an extra hit of Power every time Kitty Pryde returns to hand. Beast is sneakily the most potent enabler of Pryde, reducing her Cost to 0 and making it even easier to weave her into turns and continue to scale her Power. Angela and Bishop play nice with Kitty Pryde, increasing their Power each time Kitty is played (with Angela, it's even more useful, since Kitty gives her a buff without permanently taking up a spot at her location).

Those four cards form what we'd consider the basic building block of most Kitty Pryde decks through their apparent synergy with the 1-Cost card, and now that we've identified them we should talk about filling out the rest of the deck with cards that work well in tandem with at least one of them.

On Reveal: Return your other cards at this location to your hand. They cost 1 less. When you play a card here, +2 Power. When a card enters your hand from anywhere (except your deck), +1 Power.

If you're going to build a deck around The Collector, running cards that add other cards to your hand is an obvious must. The Hood is a good example of a cheap way to do this (while also handing you a premium 1-Drop for later), but is by no means the only option. Moon Girl boosts The Collector's Power and gives us extra copies of some of our favorite cards. Stepping outside the range of Collector synergies (but only slightly), we can also use Falcon to bring back Kitty Pryde (thus protecting her from removal for a turn) and other 1-Drops as Beast redundancy and clear up space next to Angela. Hit Monkey, while not technically budget-friendly, plays well with the idea of a large 1-Drop that's available on any turn to help grow his Power.

On Reveal: Add a Demon to your hand. On Reveal: Duplicate your hand. On Reveal: Return your 1-Cost cards to your hand. On Reveal: Gain +2 Power for each other card you played this turn.

We're only scratching the surface of the potential of this one card. There are a glut of options beyond the ones we've already discussed, as we'll see in the next section, which we'll get to just as soon as we can think of a natural way to segue into it.

Prydeful Decks

Even when you limit yourself to the cards and strategies that work best with Kitty Pryde, there remain a lot of different ways to build around her. We'll walk you through four of our favorite builds - what they do well and why we prefer them to other lists - but they are by no means an exhaustive accounting of the most powerful things that can be done with Kitty Pryde.

Pryde on a Budget

This budget deck uses only Series 1 cards to show that you don't need a lot of Series 3 cards to find ways to win with Kitty Pryde. However, without access to most Bounce synergies, she has to do a lot of the heavy lifting herself. The key synergies with Kitty are Angela, Bishop, and Hawkeye, packaged in a solid Zoo shell that feeds off of the Ongoing effects of Ka-Zar and Blue Marvel.

What It Does Well: Swarms the board and uses Kitty Pryde to get extra Power from Angela and Bishop.

Why We Like It: It's cheap, but effective (especially against opponents in lower Collection Levels).

The Pryde of America

Before Kitty Pryde showed up, the favorite child of Bounce decks was Bast, since bringing her back to hand gave the deck multiple chances to activate her On Reveal effect. This list pairs the two, giving more Power to Pryde along with all the other cards this deck wants to target with Bast, and runs America Chavez for a higher chance at drawing those key cards early.

What It Does Well: Buffing, bouncing, and buffing again.

Why We Like It: While it's fairly obvious in the way it took an existing archetype (Bast Bounce) and shoved Kitty Pryde into it, the deck is a worthy ground floor for any player just getting started with testing Pryde decks and offers plenty of opportunities to personalize it.

Twice the Pryde

This deck is designed to make the most of Moon Girl copying a key card or two, and Kitty Pryde gives the deck an extra target for doubling (even though it means skipping a turn playing her). Kitty Pryde is one of the better partners for a turn 5 or 6 Hit Monkey and, even though her interaction with Wave was nerfed, skipping turn 5 will still make She-Hulk cheap enough to play alongside Monkey and Pryde. The deck also dabbles in destruction with Carnage clearing up space in a location by eating The Hood or a copy of Mysterio.

What It Does Well: Gets a lot of stats onto Hit Monkey through a variety of cheap cards (or cards that can become cheaper) and doubling its win conditions with Moon Girl.

Why We Like It: We, personally, are partial to Moon Girl/She-Hulk/Hit Monkey shenanigans, but this list has more to offer beyond even that synergy with The Hood and Carnage, Beast and Kitty Pryde, Mysterio and Bishop.

Pryde Rocks

Our final showpiece list for Kitty Pryde is one that builds around (possibly longtime) Series 4 stalwart Darkhawk, fitting in Rock stars Korg and Rockslide as disruption effects and possible bounce targets. Darkhawk gives the archetype another big body to play in the late game, to go alongside the all-game scaling of Kitty Pryde, Angela, The Collector, and Bishop, or the one-turn burst of Hit Monkey.

What It Does Well: Puts Rocks in other people's decks, and can go off at any point with a big body, whether it's The Collector, Angela, Hit Monkey, or Bishop.

Why We Like It: It has plenty of ways to approach any set of locations and can use its tools flexibly to feed its multitude of Power sinks.

The Folly of Pryde

Ongoing: Players can only play 1 card a turn. On Reveal: All cards cost 4 until the end of next turn. On Reveal: Destroy ALL 1-Cost cards.

If you're someone who doesn't want Pryde to rule the day, there are a quite a few cards that can ruin Pryde's plan. Sandman is an obvious counter, forcing a Kitty Pryde player to either spend their entire turn doing nothing or give up their vain ways. The newly-nerfed Wave is also a good tool for locking down the opponent's final turn - (finally) limiting them to just one card, regardless of any other cost reduction.

Other options for countering Kitty include Killmonger (if you can manipulate priority so their Pryde is revealed first), and location lockdwon cards like Spider-Man and Professor X.

Our first counter deck is a Ramp Control list that opts for the first option of limiting the number of cards the opponent can play with Sandman and Wave while making use of their one card a turn by running a lot of large cards that can fill up more than one location.

Counter Deck Number Two opts to control locations by using Professor X and Spider-Man to lock things down on turn 5, or flooding a location early with Storm. Thanks to Daredevil, the opponent's Pryde will be laid bare and should help all those Guardians of the Galaxy trigger their On Reveal effects.

Now you know a little more about playing with Kitty Pryde, the newest card to MARVEL SNAP, and one that everyone has a chance to play with or play against, build around or counter.

How have you been building around Kitty Pryde? Create your deck with our MARVEL SNAP deckbuilder, and share it on the site!

Are there any MARVEL SNAP cards that you think deserve a deeper dive in a future article? Post your recommendations in the comments!