Alexander "peter bjorn" Fadin Ares enters the mortal Earth to conquer and revive archetypes that have long been absent from the top in terms of winrate. How did the God of War end up in the comics?
When Norman Osborne succeeds Tony Stark as the leader of the Avengers in the aftermath of Secret Invasion, none of the current Avengers remain with him. Well, aside from Ares and Sentry. Sentry only does it because he is intentionally insane, but how could Ares support the obviously evil man? He's an Avenger, right? Aren't Avengers meant to take on bad guys?
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As it happens, Ares is loyal to the war itself rather than to any one side. This explains why Ares from Marvel Comics and his Marvel Snap card have such a perfect flavor match. Ares enjoys playing War, large and powerful, prefers to be around big, strong people only. And just a dull jerk.
Best cards to team up
Ares doesn't have an instant connection to a well-established synergy like Bullseye and Swarm plus Scorn, Victoria Hand and Moonstone with Wiccan, to power them up through tons of copies and clones. So he has to do something in his own way.
ARES (sorry for Caps Lock) uses decks that contain a lot of large cards. One of the cards I'm most excited to play with Ares (Ares will take the credit) is also an on reveal, so you could try some cunning moves with Grandmaster or Odin. For 12 power, 4 energy is good, but for 21 power, 6 energy is preferable. Perhaps the best way to use Ares outside of Surtur decks is to repeat his ability.
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Despite Ares' arrogance toward small foes like Shang Chi and Shadow King, you might want to shield him with a Japanese teen named Cosmo or Armor, or a Russian dog (Ares would detest that).
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Ares is not a Big Bad, sadly
Although there isn't a raw [4/12] in the Snap card pool we have analogues that can reach Ares' level of power (hey Gwenpool, greetings Galacta). Furthermore, with the recent resurgence of Control decks like Mill and Wiccan Control,this exists just to try to protect itself from Shang-Chi's rings and his shift. This already suggests that, in contrast to the current trend of flexible decks, Ares will require some very specific deck construction to function.
In fact, you probably can't base your deck entirely on power unless your points wager is bigger than Mister Negative's (spoiler alert: it isn't). In some matchups, even Move, ability to accumulate a lot of power, uses some form of disruption to obtain an advantage. Ares probably needs to outperform Surtur in order to succeed because that deck hasn't been performing well enough lately to be regarded as competitive.
By contrast, the Surtur 10 Power archetype (dreams about Cerebro-10 to work properly) currently has an average win rate of about 51.5% and abyssmal .15 cube on Infinity levels of play, and just 48% below.
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So we have 3 vs. 2 if your opponent's top three cards only contain one Rock. However, Darkhawk lacks any strong archetypes in this setting. Mill makes Ares a 10000% [4/12] when your opposing snapper is out of card tank.
God of War is a little out of date because Death, which has 12 power and is typically less expensive than four energy, is better It was some food for thought, but I'm not sure if there is actually a place for Ares here. Thankfully, Ares is more than just a powerful weapon. He is a great information source as well.
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Ares appears to be the season's weakest card, which is why I'm reaching here. All you have is a classic coin flip when you splash out Ares on a curve, win the wager, and see what is up with the power curve and numbers. Just play them accordingly and win.
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With this knowledge, you can use Alioth, Cosmo, Man-Thing, Red Guardian etc and smash opponent with disruptive strategy. There you have it, a simple Snap.
Concluding
Ares is, in my opinion, the skip of the month overall. Because it is frequently too easy to counter compared to cards that allow energy cheating (like Wiccan) and cards that grant power all over the field (like Galacta), the 10 Power archetype has lost a lot of appeal recently. To consistently win that wager, Ares also requires you to construct your deck in a very particular way. In fact, unless it has a fantastic ability attached to it, a [4/6] is awful even though a [4/12] is great.
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