Archetype pages are updated after each Tier List is made. If a page isn’t up-to-date, it means there was nothing worth mentioning in the last report, either because there was no data about the archetype or it did poorly.
Ranked Performance
den
Sera Control’s numbers might make you believe Agent Venom didn’t get hit that hard, as a 0.55 Cube Average and 59% Win Rate are crazy good right after one of your key cards got changed for the worst.
I think this is likely due to the meta rewarding the ability to counter your opponent more than develop points. Indeed, with Surtur losing a lot of momentum, you don’t have to be able to beat 25 points on a lane to win the game.
Conquest Performance
den
The best deck in the game leading up to the last OTA, Sera Control has been slowly losing momentum since Agent Venom got nerfed. The list is still the same, and a 56% Win Rate isn’t bad by any means. However, the fact that this is a well known archetype in combination with the lower power ceiling seems to limit how strong Sera Control can be moving forward.
In a meta with a ton of Alioth, maybe Sera Control needs to take a break and wait for its moment to come back stronger.
How to Play
Control decks aim to mix points and counter cards in order to deny what the opponent tried to build during the course of a match. Ideally, Control decks will be able to win one location through points and focus on turning another one around on the last turn of play.
In order to do that, Control decks are typically built around non-committal cards early in the match. They serve as the foundation to their points total, but they aren’t big enough to grab priority. Cards such as Angela, Thor, and Bishop are ideal in that regard, as they allow you to spend your energy efficiently but only develop points when you go off (which is typically on the last turn). Cards that are able to move are another way to spend energy while keeping your true spread of points hidden.
The last turn in a match will often be the most important one, typically preceded by a set-up turn. Historically, Sera was the default Turn 5 for Control archetypes; she allowed the deck to cheat a lot of energy on the following turn. Nowadays other cards are used, such as Jane Foster Mighty Thor. On the last, you will typically want to play reactive cards such as Shang-Chi, Shadow King, Enchantress, and Killmonger to accomplish your goal of dismantling what your opponent tried to build and win two locations.
In order to play a Control deck well, you need to understand how to leverage priority, and you must have a good grasp of the current meta. Indeed, most of your game plan is based around cancelling your opponent’s strategy, so you need to figure out what they are up to in order to disable them efficiently.
Finally, it is crucial to understand that a Control deck isn’t meant to win every single game. Instead, you are trying to target certain popular opponents and get as many cubes from them as you can. Against the rest of the field, you want to play it safe, limit your losses, and take the opportunistic wins when they present themselves. In that sense, a Control deck focuses much more on its Cube Average than its Win Rate.
Archetype Evolution Over Time
- Sera Control remained an elite deck, and it was the only Agent Venom deck from the big three that existed before the OTA that was able to stick around.
- Sera Control remained a top tier deck for the first week of the new season with the same list as the last season.
- Sera Control is arguably the best archetype in the game at the end of the We are Venom season.
- Sera Control has been the best deck since the OTA, countering Bounce very effectively to bolster its Cube Average.
- Control synergies are doing fairly well for themselves lately and posting Tier 1/Tier 2 kinds of performances. You still need to dodge Cosmo and Alioth quite often, but there are a lot of targets for your disruptive cards in this meta.
- Living in the shadows of other decks built around Agent Venom (and annoyed a lot by Cosmo), Sera Control lost some momentum this week. It’s still part of the solid decks in the current Marvel Snap meta, though.
- Agent Venom woke up Sera and her low power friends to bring the Sera Control archetype back. In Ranked, the deck posted great results and earned a Tier 1 spot. Let’s see if it can keep up this performance in the future.
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