Table of Contents
The Hot Location for the next 24 hours is Altar of Death: When you play a card here, destroy it to get +2 Energy next turn. This is a Hot Location for Marvel Snap’s August 2023 season, Big in Japan, that starts on selected Wednesdays and Sundays at 3 AM GMT. For 24 hours, it has a 50% chance of showing up in games.
Decks with Altar of Death
Players who strategically build around the location or counter the decks that do so can have an advantage over their opponents! So what will you play?
What is Altar of Death?
Here is where the Swamp Men place sacrifices to their gods. We hold no liability if they capture you during our stop here and sacrifice you for extra Energy.
Strategy and General Tips
This is an interesting location which has the potential to significantly warp the game for the next 24 hours. +2 Energy on any turn of Marvel Snap can be a significant advantage, either to play more cards, or get expensive ones out early on. Playing a 0-Cost card or a 1 cost card into Altar of Death would represent a gain of Energy, and could serve to create otherwise impossible play patterns.
Additionally, this location includes the text Destroy which has synergies with cards such as Death, Nova, Bucky Barnes, Nimrod and obviously the Weekend Challenge Mission cards X-23 and Daken.
We also need to include ways to push power into the location – cards which can go wide (such as Doctor Doom), summon another, not played card (Brood, Jubilee, Mister Sinister), or can lock the location (Professor X), will have higher value on Altar of Death.
Altar of Death potential ramp curves for Turns 1, 2 and 3 can be sketched out to some degree. The location is counting played cards, so the following are just 3 examples all considering running Wasp as a 0 Energy card:
- Turn 1: 1-Cost card + 0-Cost Card – 6 Energy on Turn 2.
- Turn 2: 2 x 1-Cost Card + 0-Cost Card – 9 Energy on Turn 3.
- Turn 3: 3 x 1-Cost costs + 0-Cost card – 12 Energy on Turn 4.
There is a daunting range of possibilities for this location. Destroy cards, 1 drops (especially Deadpool), Wasp and Yellowjacket may all help you unlock these, but which one is going to be the most consistent is difficult to predict. Some ideas to consider:
- Turn 2 – Galactus (with no cards on board) or Legion to turn the whole board into an destructive field.
- Turn 3 – Professor X + Attuma or Warpath
- Turn 4 – Doctor Doom + Odin (or Leader)
Also, some cards are better played early, so if you are limited in accessing some of these options, Sandman, Hobgoblin early for example is always an option. If you are limited in your collection, we recommend you looking at the Series 2 build for this week and adjusting from there.
Cards and Deck Ideas
A location like Altar of Death will obviously have a big impact on the game, leading players to queuing highly synergistic decks, looking to abuse the Hot Location. We will get to those decks in a minute, because there are several great decks in the current metagame which could already do well for the next 24 hours.
They won’t be worth auto-Snapping every game with Altar of Death, but you would also have a much better shot when the location isn’t a part of your match. Then, if you want to include Death or Deadpool into those decks for the extra high roll potential, you should definitely feel free to do so. Even Wasp should be great for any deck looking to quickly gain extra Energy early in the match.
Also, the current metagame features various cards to change a location, so keep in mind your opponent could be including one of those cards in their deck. Magik, Scarlet Witch, and Reality Stone are the big three to be mindful of.
Here are a few decks which should not suffer from Altar of Death being in the game at all, rather than benefiting from the location. Feel free to make them your own, depending on how much you want to commit to abuse the location:
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Destroy
Obviously, the Destroy synergy will do great on Altar of Death, but Ramp oriented strategies can also feel empowered thanks to the Hot Location. There are a few cards which will naturally have their average power level much higher than they typically are.
Decks with Galactus
Decks with Deadpool
Decks with Knull
Since Altar of Death was featured back in January, the Destroy synergy has gained a lot of momentum and is the theme of the current Season! As such, you could build your deck in several ways to abuse the Hot Location.
Here is a simple Destroy deck mixed with Galactus, where the goal is either to get Galactus out very early, then locking the location with Professor X. Or benefiting from Altar of Death to grow Deadpool and destroy Sabretooth at will, leading to a free Death and a huge Knull.
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Other worthy directions to explore would rely on using cards such as Nimrod to get a free destroy on our 5-cost card. Paired with Shuri or Forge, this should represent a lot of points already on two locations, plus open the way to destroy Nimrod again the next turn as we would have plenty of Energy to work with.
Ramp
Decks with Electro
Quite the opposite to Destroy upward trajectory, Electro is barely seeing play anymore, Marvel Snap featuring more flexible decks overall. However, if a location would both gives us extra Energy, while also destroying our Electro at the same time, it sounds like a good enough deal to revisit the Electro Ramp archetype.
In this one, we can abuse the Altar of Death in very different ways:
- It will serve as ramp to our greedy deck, will lots of 5 and 6-Cost cards.
- It’s a location we can easily play onto with Deadpool, Jeff the Baby Land Shark, Arnim Zola or Doctor Doom.
- We can get Sandman or Legion out early on, limiting the game to one card per turn, or making every location be Altar of Death.
- We can lock Altar of Death with Professor X if we don’t need the Energy anymore.
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There are many cards in the game one could play with when you have a lot of extra Energy to work with. This build relies on mixing the ability to play onto several lanes, or lock our opponent out of options with disruptive cards. Yet, there are many more ideas one could experiment in the Electro Ramp deck.
Series 1
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Although you could use an On Reveal or Ongoing deck with more high cost cards than usual, both synergies are perfectly able to reach an unplayable location if need be. Series 1 already has a few cards which could benefit from Altar of Death.
It leads to a flexible build, mixing cards able to spread points across various locations (Mister Fantastic, White Tiger, Klaw) and cards which can directly benefit from Altar of Death appearing in the game (Wolverine, Nova, Professor X).
Series 2
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The Destroy synergy is already a bit more developed once in Series 2, so we can capitalize on it while Altar of Death is the featured location. Also, the extra Energy we would gain is perfect to abuse Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, as more Energy should lead to a much easier time managing our hand.
The Collector, in particular, should be very happy, as we can just dump Sentinel and Sabretooth every turn onto Altar of Death, giving the card +2 power for no cost as we would get the Energy back from Altar of Death.
Closing Words
SafetyBlade usually takes care of this column, and I used their previous piece on Altar of Death, back when it was featured at the start of 2023 to make this one. I hope I was a good enough replacement in SafetyBlade’s absence, they should be back next week to offer their expertise on how to abuse the next Featured Location, Yashida Base on Wednesday.
Until then, remember that a location appearing 50% more than usual is quite a big deal, and should change your approach to the game. However, if you do not feel comfortable with the idea of playing a wacky deck purely looking to abuse Altar of Death, scared you wouldn’t be able to compete when the location does not show up, cards like Armor, Scarlet Witch or Magik do exist to simply remove it from the equation, and are relatively easy to slot in many archetypes. Lastly, if locations aren’t your jam, the Hot Locations do not impact Conquest mode, so you can always play your usual deck in that mode.
I hope you will all have a great Sunday, be it in Marvel Snap or not. If you have your own idea on how to abuse the featured location, you can share your deck on our Deck Builder and discuss it with the community on our Discord!
Good Game Everyone.
