Best Arishem Decks to Try on Day 1 and Strategy Guide

Arishem is the finally arriving to judge the Snap player base and finish the June 2024 Season, The Celestials’ Finest. It is a 7-Cost, 7-Power card that reads: At the start of the game, +1 Max Energy. Shuffle 12 random cards into your deck. Today, we will take a deeper look at the new card and, of course, the best decks to try it out in.

Spotlight Cache

Series 5 cards can be purchased for 6,000 Collector’s Tokens from the Token Shop initially as a Weekly Spotlight card, or opened as one of the featured cards in the Spotlight Caches that are found every 120 Levels on the Collection Level Track after Collection Level 500 (until the next new card releases the following week).

Spotlight Cache Week of July 2, 2024: Are Arishem, Hercules, and Black Swan Worth It?

Strengths and Weaknesses

It feels like the whole month has been leading to this, the arrival of The Judge Celestial Arishem. Are we worthy enough to pass the judgement? The excitement for this card is high, and with good reason! It does something completely game changing whether it turns out to be good or not. At the start of the game, this card gives you +1 energy BUT it also adds 12 completely random cards to your deck and making your total deck size 24 cards. Adding to your deck in Marvel Snap is a big risk, but is the extra ramp at the start of game effect worth risk? Also, does it even matter if Arishem is about to bring a whole new way to play to the game anyway?

Adding 12 extra cards to your deck is an awful lot, but you do get to pick 12 of the 24 cards in your deck. This allows you the ability to select cards that synergize with the randomness of adding the cards to your deck. However, you also have the limitation of not being able to add cards with too many synergies that you are relying on to win the game.

The first card to call out is, of course, Quinjet, the MVP of any District X game. Drawing Quinjet in the early game will result in every added card being reduced in cost by one energy, and that could lead to some truly crazy scenarios as early as Turn 1. Another card to consider is Loki because he can potentially be played on Turn 3 to transform your early hand into powerful reduced cards. Between these two cards, you already have the basis of a potentially strong deck, and you could add other hand generators to synergize with this while taking advantage of the extra energy and randomness from Arishem.

The next set of cards to talk about may end up being the P2W Arishem package. Thena is an excellent card on Turn 2, but playing her on Turn 1 and knowing you can start buffing her from Turn 2 could make her a lane winning threat alone. Phastos played on Turn 2 in a deck of 20+ cards is likely to make a lot of the cards better and more playable as well. Then, if you do hit several low-roll cards, Sersi can help flip them into pure stats and win lanes by herself. The Eternals may end up being one of the better packages to include with Arishem because they simply work without having to have too many synergies to rely on outside of playing themselves.

Another dynamic worth discussing for Arishem is the Blob vs. Darkhawk battle. When Blob was released, his ability took the entire deck. The cap of 15 power will make sure that the Darkhawk counter will likely remain little more than an Arishem and Thanos card. The extra cards in the deck will make Darkhawk an excellent card against Arishem, which might necessitate including Blob in Arishem decks to at least lessen the impact of this counter. Blob on Turn 5 is also another enticing play that the deck may be able to make.

Mockingbird is another card that can benefit from adding cards to the deck, and she will likely be worth including in Arishem decks. She will almost always have cost reductions when played in this deck, but she may still need some extra support from the cards you choose to put into the deck. If you are adding other cards that create tokens to fill space, you could also look to include Blue Marvel as a board-wide buff that helps every card. Which brings up another counter card: Mobius M. Mobius. He will impact most of the cards discussed here as good synergies with Arishem and may limit what can be done, but the extra energy makes this much less of a counter than he is to traditional cost reduction game plans.

Adam Warlock kicks off the “weird options” section here. Arishem may open up the ability to include some cards that have not seen play in a unique way. Adam Warlock is a bad card because he costs five energy, which normally translates to being played on Turn 5. Well, Arishem flips this, making Adam Warlock a potential Turn 4 play—which is a lot better.

What about cards you don’t want to draw? M'Baku has a much higher chance of staying in the deck, which can represent a free two power at the end of the game. Uatu the Watcher is another card that has an effect while in your deck that you hardly want to draw, and it might be able to find a legitimate home in the Arishem decks. These cards may seem ambitious to add, but maybe this is where these lost cards finally find play.

Also, Thanos is likely a meme with all the extra cards imaginable, but with cards like Phastos and Black Swan you can potentially make the meme into a dream with 0-Cost Infinity Stones.

The Verdict

You may be surprised to see the score below. Many will point to the extra cards as a major downside, and rightly so. But there are plenty of ways of using random cards in Marvel Snap, and you will be able to add 12 cards that you’ll have an equal chance of drawing. Also, it is legitimately going to create something new in Marvel Snap regardless of how strong it is out the gate, which leads to lots of experimentation and a greater chance of even more synergies being found. Plenty of card synergies are here, to the point where you can almost make every single one of the 11 cards you choose to put in the deck synergize with the effect.

Remember when Loki released and many felt that the cards from your opponent would be difficult to play? While this is not at the same level, Marvel Snap cards are (usually) designed to put power into lanes, and having 12 random ones with an extra energy to start playing them earlier and more often may be more powerful than it seems.

Pre-Release Score:

Arishem

As a starting point, this deck leans into the “play cards one turn earlier” direction. You simply play early cards that are great anyway along with strong tech cards so you can find wins against specific opponents. Then you rely on the generated cards to fill out the rest of the board around these cards. Blue Marvel is also one card that supports buffing every card on board, and it’s also really strong when played on Turn 4.

Most of the cards here can be replaced since the deck leans heavily into the generated cards for winning games, but Mobius M. Mobius and Mockingbird seem like solid options to consider getting to support Arishem decks.

Loki

What may be the best direction for Arishem may simply be Loki. This allows you to have the best Quinjet supporting cards along with Arishem giving you extra energy from Turn 1. This lets you play cards like Mobius M. Mobius on Turn 2 if you draw it, reduce the random cards from Arishem using Quinjet, and still use Loki to change your bad cards into your opponent’s good cards. The downside of this version over the classic Loki deck is the reliability on tech cards. In theory, you will see the tech cards less often, so the better direction may be just going for the stats from the cards and best effects you can include.

Enter Phastos, Sersi, and Blob. These three cards are ways to use the cards you generate a little more flexibly. Phastos hopefully reduces some of the cards and adds power, Sersi on Turn 4 or 5 pushes a lot of stats (and continues the Mockingbird cost reductions), and Blob is Blob.

Zoo

Another direction that may be underrated is playing Zoo/Flood. The advantage here is the deck is running lots of board-flood style cards along with one card that may be hugely underrated for the synergy with Arishem decks: Blue Marvel. Blue Marvel was once a staple in Thanos decks due to the ability to add power to every card you play. With Arishem, it doesn’t care what cards you’re putting down; it will simply buff all the cards, and the rest of the cards in your deck all add even more to the board.

Thanos

Well, I had to put this here. I wanted to have a go at just putting Thanos and Arishem together. This is likely VERY bad, but I tried to pull it together with Phastos and Blue Marvel to support swarming the board. Many will want to try this, and it’s not that hard to build. The current Thanos decks have a lot of cards that are great when played a turn earlier, so adding in Arishem and Blue Marvel helps you buff the board that you swarm with random cards.

High Evolutionary

Arishem means you’re less likely to see cards you put into your deck, so why not try and make them more powerful with High Evolutionary? This allows you access to Evolved Cyclops and Hulk specifically. Cyclops on Turn 2 can win lanes alone, and you can also include cards like Storm that are potentially really great on Turn 2. This craft also includes Adam Warlock to put behind Cyclops on Turn 4 so you can get extra draws before the end of the game.

Variants

Closing Thoughts

Arishem brings a new way to play, and that is something hard to find in Marvel Snap. Alongside this, it creates some new puzzles to consider, and it has a lot of synergy cards that you could try playing with it on release. This one could surprise many since adding random cards is bad in theory, but in practice all cards can win games if played correctly.

Good Luck, Have Fun, and Stay Safe!