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

Welcome back to our new weekly series Cache-ing In! Each week, we break down what cards will be available in the new Spotlight Caches, as well as the Spotlight Variants! The goal is to help you determine if you should “Cache in” for the content, or hoard for a better week.

We also now feature the other two existing cards in more detail in a separate guide, not just the new one! The goal is to give you a tutorial on how to use the card most effectively in an everchanging meta, as well as help you decide if the card is worth the tokens or if you should pick it up during a Spotlight Cache week! Check them out below:

• Arishem Guide
• Hercules Guide
• Black Swan Guide

Spotlight Cache Week of July 2, 2024

This week, the featured cards will be the highly anticipated new Series 5 card Arishem, as well as the return of Series 5 card Black Swan and Series 4 card Hercules!

Arishem

The wait is over. The craziest new gameplay card we have seen since High Evolutionary launches this week, Arishem! He is a 7-Cost, 7-Power card with the ability “At the start of the game, +1 Max Energy. Shuffle 12 random cards into your deck.” This is our first 7-Cost card to be added to the game so far, and the only card that allows you to ramp energy without needing to play a card first. That extra Energy comes at a cost of having 12 random cards shuffled into your deck, but does that hurt or help the deck?

In most cases, hurting the draw you want to find is never a good thing. Imagine shoving Thanos into a move deck for example. Those extra cards add nothing to your move gameplan! Arishem likely will be the same way. You want to deckbuild uniquely with him, skipping out on 1-Cost cards and brining more 4, 5, and 6-Cost cards to utilize your ramp capabilities.

Possible Meta Deck for Arishem

Loki is a good starting deck to test Arishem. If your random cards are good, you have Quinjet and extra energy to utilize them well. If your random cards are bad, you play the Loki game. Reset your hand, search for better cards with Agent Coulson, or transform them with Sersi. Phastos can give your entire deck a buff, and you have the chance to play him on turn 2! With all the random cards, Mockingbird’s value should always be solid. Finally, Blob gives this deck a big finisher since you are more likely to have a large deck than a full hand for Devil Dino.

Low Collection Level Deck

If you are a new player, Arishem might cause information overload. Since he randomly adds cards to your deck from the entire game’s collection, you will have a lot of reading and understanding to do in order to properly use all these unseen cards. I wouldn’t recommend Arishem for that reason alone.

If you still want to use him though, this Ongoing deck could use him best. A turn 2 Storm could easily win you matches with Mister Fantastic and Klaw to add Power. The extra energy could also help you play more Ongoings to get a better trigger from Spectrum, or simply play Klaw, Iron Man, and Onslaught on the same location. This all depends if you can draw the cards you need with the extra 12 shuffled in your deck.

Fun Arishem Deck

Ramp decks already have a place in the meta, but Arishem could provide a new style of Ramp decks. With no need to play Electro on turn 3, you can play your 4-Cost immediately on turn 3! If you draw wave by turn 2, you can also make cards cost a max of 4, but your opponent won’t be able to utilize that Ramp with only 3 energy! The list also allows the classic Black Panther, Odin, Arnim combo without the need for Magic to extend the game! While the list is very heavy in 6-Cost cards, Arishem‘s random cards will likely give you cards to play early game.

I don’t think anybody truly knows how good Arishem will be, but the developers mentioned something that makes me lean towards he will be surprisingly good: When asked why a 7-Cost card only has 7-Power, the response was he was too strong of a card with more Power. 7 Power isn’t very much for that much cost, so it seems like his ability carries the strength of the card in their testing.

Overall, I think Arishem will at bare minimum be a fun new archetype. At best, he could be meta defining! Even if he is a bad card at launch, players will be cooking with him for months discovering how to make him work. Regardless of how good he is, a card that creates a new archetype is almost always a must buy for me.

Check out our strategy guide and more decklists on this new card!

Best Arishem Decks to Try on Day 1 and Strategy Guide

Hercules

If Arishem wasn’t interesting enough, how about a dead card revived into an interesting one? I’m talking of course about the return of the recently buffed Hercules! After nearly 5 months of being a F-tier card, the buff to a 3-Cost makes him an interesting move enhancer, as well as a possible tech card against move cards like Jeff and Vision.

With Hercules finding what homes he is good in, a classic move list is a safe bet on how to make him useful. He simply allows the move cards you draw to be more potent when moved into Hercules’s location. As players continue to cook with Hercules, we may see more creative options begin to unfold.

With the change to Hercules being so new, players are still testing to see how viable he is long term. If you are debating on picking him up, Developer Glenn made an interesting comment about the possible future of Hercules: “The purpose [of the buff] is to soften the blow [of the loss to complexity move decks had before the movement redesign], and I personally think it will be temporary. But if it works out, maybe we’ll keep it.” So basically, if Hercules still isn’t good after this buff, they plan to make a bigger change to make him better. This is info you dream of when planning for what caches deserve keys.

For a detailed guide on how to use Hercules, his synergies, meta decks, and more, check out our new guide!

Hercules Guide and Best Decks: Everything You Need to Know

Black Swan

Last and actually the least this week is the return of season pass card Black Swan. Unlike Hercules, this card is still F-tier and has no place in the meta. Her biggest issue is her one turn benefit applies to the cards you often don’t need late game. For 3 energy, you could just play 3 1-Cost cards immediately. Her only real usage is with combo decks or to flood the board with Infinity Stones.

The best usage I have seen with Black Swan is using her in conjunction with Falcon. This allows you to pick up all of your 1-Cost cards and make them free for the final turn. This deck uses that ability to empower Bishop and Hit Monkey, but it also works with Werewolf By Night.

Black Swan is in a major need of a rework. I wouldn’t recommend this card to anybody unless you want to invest in whatever card she becomes in her inevitable rework.

For a detailed guide on how to use Black Swan, her synergies, meta decks, and more, check out our new guide!

Black Swan Guide and Best Decks: Everything You Need to Know

Spotlight Variants

If you already own the cards the Spotlight Cache offers, one of these variants will take its place! If you own none of the cards, the variants will appear after you open all four caches. Spotlight variants are time exclusive to their release week, and will only be available after 1 full year of time has passed.

After the year, they will be available for purchase, though no mention of cost yet. So if any of these Spotlight variants feel like a must have for you, make sure to Cache In if you have enough caches saved to guarantee the pull.

Francesco Tomaselli is our Spotlight artist of the season, and this week we get his Arishem variant!

This Hercules variant the second of 3 variants released by artist Jay Anacleto!

In a rare double feature, this week showcases Francesco Tomaselli again with this Black Swan variant!

Should I Cache In?

This week, we continue the standard cache value of two Series 5 cards and one Series 4 card. Black Swan is the biggest letdown of the Cache, bringing no value to owning her with her current stats and ability. Hercules is a much more fascinating card as a 3-Cost, but recent dev comments on the card make him look like a good investment either way. Arishem looks like a fun, wacky new card with unknown potential.

My recommendation this week is to Cache In. With Arishem being a new archetype to play with, he feels like a card you want to have avaliable. The Hercules buff and possible future (based on dev remarks) makes him a good investment, even if he isn’t strong enough as a 3-Cost. Between these two, I feel there is enough value in this Cache to warrant using your keys.

As a disclaimer, Arishem may take a while to have a good meta deck (if he does). If you are a player that wants new cards to have immediate payoff for their key investment, you might want to hold off until his next cache or use Tokens. With cards taking 4-6 months to reappear in a Spotlight Cache, you unfortunately need to plan ahead if you think the card might be fun to play in a month or two.

Wrap Up

Do you think Arishem will be a good card? Will you be Cache-ing In this week? Let us know in the comments! For the full schedule, check out our guide below:

Marvel Snap New Card Release, Spotlight Cache, and Series Drop Schedule