Phoenix Force Deck Strategy and Weaknesses in Marvel Snap

The Marvel Snap Rise of the Phoenix season is here for July 2023, and with it is a new potentially meta-defining card. Purchasing the Season Pass will net you Phoenix Force, which in Marvel lore serves as a much feared primal universal entity. You might remember it from the old ‘90s X-Men cartoon, as it bonded with Jean Grey to create the ultra-powerful Phoenix, or have fond memories of using Phoenix in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 like myself. Either way, our guide will break down Phoenix Force deck strategy and weaknesses in Marvel Snap.

As a 5-cost, 6-power card with an effect that reads, “On Reveal: Revive one of your destroyed cards and merge with it. That card can move each turn,” Phoenix Force can slot into a number of different deck archetypes.

Buying the Season Pass will also net you a bunch of credits, gold, card backs, and a couple awesome Variants for Magik and Colossus. If you don’t nab Phoenix Force now, it’ll be added to the Series 5 pool of cards next month.

Early Phoenix Force Deck Strategy

You might’ve noticed that Phoenix Force features both the Destroy and Move keywords in its card text, making it applicable for both styles or even a hybrid of the two. It is one of the harder Season Pass cards to gauge the power level of: Will it spawn a new meta-defining archetype or simply complement a couple of existing decks? As it revives a card and re-triggers its effect, there are too many combinations to count. Time will tell, but here are two decks to try out early on if you want to use this Moltres lookalike from day one:

• Human Torch
• Iron Fist
• Carnage
• Dagger
• Kraven
• Ghost-Spider
• Cloak
• Venom
• Vulture
• Miles Morales: Spider-Man
• Phoenix Force
• Heimdall

The key to this deck is to hit Human Torch or Vulture with Phoenix Force, either through Carnage or Venom. This will allow you to move Phoenix Force once on turn 6 to a lane your opponent may not expect, doubling or giving it +5 power in the process. Heimdall can once again trigger this effect on turn 6, powering it up even further. It may seem like a stretch to get this combo off, but with the standard move package as a backup, expect to see something similar to this deck — maybe slotting in new cards like Silk and Spider-Man 2099 — early on.

The next Marvel Snap deck to consider in strategy is a standard Destroy deck featuring Phoenix Force, which will look something like this:

• Deadpool
• Yondu
• Bucky Barnes
• Carnage
• Wolverine
• Killmonger
• Venom
• Deathlok
• Attuma
• Phoenix Force
• Knull
• Death

More than any other card, Attuma might stand out to you: Playing him in any lane with another card will cause him to implode, making him a great option to combine with Phoenix Force a turn later. Then you can move a 16-power Phoenix Force anywhere on the final turn. This deck plays exactly like a Destroy deck otherwise: Lower Death’s energy cost and drop it with Knull on the final turn. If this combination goes off, few decks can come back from such an endgame power swing.

Phoenix Force Weaknesses and Deck Counters

Like other On Reveal cards, supreme doggo Cosmo stops Phoenix Force in its tracks, making it a good tech card to slot in if you wish to counter it. So too does Armor, as Phoenix Force requires a destroyed card to activate. Otherwise, there isn’t much you can do to stop your opponent from reviving a card from their deck: Perhaps playing the likes of Debris to clog up their lanes with rocks that they’ll destroy will become a necessary evil if Phoenix Force takes off.

Regardless, I think Phoenix Force will be a force to be reckoned with in Marvel Snap strategy, whether in these two standard Move and Destroy decks, in a hybrid of the two, at the hands of a more creative player than I making a new deck, or with the release of a new, synergistic card to truly reveal its potential.

Related: Best Ongoing Decks in Marvel Snap on Twinfinite