Battle Mode Analysis and Strategy: What We Learned About Battle Mode So Far

It’s been about two weeks since friendly battles were introduced to Marvel Snap and tournaments have been held left and right already (with our own ones coming soon). While there have only been a few “big events”, the community definitely showed their love for competing through small cash tourneys and several content creators holding their own tournaments.

Currently, it is really hard to say there has been a tournament metagame for Marvel Snap, although we can see some trends starting to form. We have seen some archetypes post great performances across the board, but the Best of One format that seems to be the norm currently creates a lot of volatility regarding deck performances. The name of the game in the tournament format seems to be flexibility, a trait that tends to be a little less important when it comes to laddering.

For example, the Discard archetype, the most popular synergy on the ladder since MODOK joined the game, is heavily struggling in the tournament environment. The same could be said about Mister Negative, for example, as neither archetype have reported a tournament win so far. In the meantime, Thanos Good Cards won two, DeathWave and DeathPool won one, and so have Devil Dinosaur and She-Hulk Combo (among the ones I am aware of).

What can explain this needed flexibility in Battle Mode compared to ladder play? How should one build their deck for a tournament based on this information? Are the performing decks different depending on the format of the tournament?

In this new series about tournament play, aimed at sharing the performing decks, let’s use this first installment to analyze why the more flexible decks seem to have dominated so far.

Why is flexibility so important?

On the ladder, whenever you lose a match, you have as many more matches against different opponents as you wish to get those cubes back. In a tournament, your health serves as a timer that stops your ability to play more once you reach 0. Also, you are only allowed to play against the same opponent with the same deck for the rest of the match in order to gain those cubes back.

This sole difference is incredibly impactful, as facing a bad match up immediately means your tournament life is at great risk. Indeed, you would be in a situation where you need to win several matches where you aren’t favored in order to move on to the next round.

Because of this premise, it feels like a deck able to adapt to a variety of opponents will do better than a very committed deck. Here are a few examples of decks with performances that are largely different from tournament play compared to ladder play:

• Galactus: The need to be unpredictable is big with this deck, which makes Galactus stronger on the ladder than it has been in tournament play so far. If you face one opponent with a counter deck, or just an Aero in their deck, your tournament could be quite short.
• Shuri Zero: Although it is one of the stronger decks to play on ladder, Shuri Zero has yet to report a tournament win. The reason for this is Shang-Chi and Aero are everywhere which limits the deck’s potential quite a lot.
• Good Cards Devil Dinosaur: Although the deck is losing to more synergistic builds on the ladder (and it seems that the Darkhawk version is needed to rack up cubes consistently), tournament play has been good for the Devil Dinosaur package as the archetype has a lot of room to play with in order to adapt to expected opponents.
• Lockation: Disruptive strategies are struggling on the ladder since they tend to only draw 1-cube retreats as soon as the opponent realizes they won’t get to develop their game plan. In Battle Mode, though, eating a few cubes early on still gives you a nice edge for the High Stakes rounds later on.

Overall, the first assessment of flexible decks being dominant over power driven decks is the change of dynamic in Battle Mode compared to ladder play. Because you only have 10 cubes to play with, you can’t afford to go on a long losing streak and just assume you will play enough to break even in the long term. In Battle Mode, you have to be able to fight in every game, or at least the majority of them.

This leads to the second important point of Battle Mode: High Stakes Rounds.

Once you enter match number five, there is an auto snap at the start of each game, and the minimum bet will be two cubes. Obviously, this is done to prevent a round from going too long as both players would simply retreat every time they have a bad hand.

You get where this is going; With this system, having a bad hand is heavily punished once you are in the High Stakes Rounds. Even before that point, losing a cube for free can have big consequences later on: it opens the door for your opponent to snap more aggressively whenever they have a good hand. Once again, flexible decks tend to have a playable hand more often leading to fewer retreats and fewer cubes lost due to an inability to compete in a match.

This point could be mitigated by the opinion that higher ceiling decks can compensate with snapping aggressively whenever they get a good hand. This, however, means playing a risky game and probably ending up in a battle of how frequently you get good vs. bad hands. Logically, your good draws will be met with a retreat the same way you would have to retreat your bad ones. Someone with a love for taking risks or enjoys playing high stakes games could vouch for this strategy. The majority doesn’t seem to agree so far and feel like a flexible snap strategy is the way to go. Especially as the good draws / bad draws idea will likely result in revealing what your deck is capable of very quickly in the round.

This leads to our last reason for bringing a flexible deck: Collecting information.

In Battle Mode, you cannot change your deck until one of the two players has lost all their health. As such, you will be playing with and against the exact same twelve cards for the entirety of the round. With this in mind, the quicker you can find out the exact twelve cards in your opponent’s deck, the faster you should be able to play optimally against them.

With a very focused deck revolving around the same game plan match after match, the opponent will very quickly figure out how to approach it and recognize the patterns they can or cannot beat. On the other end, even once you figure out the twelve cards of a flexible deck, you might not be able to precisely know how they will play out each game.

In a combo deck, with 12 cards working toward the same goal, the opponent is working with almost complete information as soon as you pull off the combo once. Then, if you didn’t get at least four cubes from that match, it is going to be extremely hard to catch them off guard and get them to accept your snaps. From this point on you will likely only collect cubes one at a time and will need to win a lot of games to close out the match.

On the other hand, even when you know the twelve cards in a flexible deck, it isn’t so easy to guess their precise play patterns. Sure, they will never develop as many points as the combo archetype mentioned above, but they will make it much harder for the opponent to anticipate their next move.

How to build a Battle Mode deck?

Before we talk about the cards that seem to be making the most sense in tournament play, I’d like to remind you that comfort should always be the deciding factor when going for a high stakes environment. Always build your strategy around concepts you feel confident about. With this out of the way, let’s talk about two key elements: Flex packages and tech cards.

A flex package is a group of cards included in your deck to fill a certain role. It can be for points (Shuri, Red Skull, Taskmaster), for location flexibility (Scarlet Witch, Doctor Doom) disruption (Polaris, Armor, Cosmo), or any reason you like. As long as you feel this is something your deck should be doing, feel free to invest cards toward that goal.

Currently, here are some of the strongest flex packages in the game, which you will recognize as the foundations of several of the popular metagame decks:

Devil Dinosaur Package

Variants

Quinjet

Ongoing: Cards that didn’t start in your deck cost 1 less. (minimum 1)

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Quinjet

Variants

Sentinel

On Reveal: Add another Sentinel to your hand.

Starter Card

view card details Start a deck Decks with Sentinel

Variants

White Queen

On Reveal: Draw a copy of the highest Cost card in your opponent’s hand.

Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

view card details Start a deck Decks with White Queen

Variants

Moon Girl

On Reveal: Duplicate your hand.

Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Moon Girl

Variants

Devil Dinosaur

Ongoing: +2 Power for each card in your hand.

Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Devil Dinosaur

Energy Saving Package

Variants

Sunspot

At the end of each turn, gain +1 Power for each unspent Energy.

Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Sunspot

Variants

Armor

Ongoing: Cards at this location can’t be destroyed.

Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Armor

Variants

She-Hulk

Costs 1 less for each unspent Energy last turn.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with She-Hulk

Moving the Opponent Package

Variants

Polaris

On Reveal: Move an opposing 1 or 2-Cost card to this location.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Polaris

Variants

Aero

On Reveal: Move the last enemy card played this turn to this location.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Aero

Variants

Magneto

On Reveal: Move all opposing 3 and 4-Cost cards to this location.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Magneto

Play Around Locations Package

Variants

Doctor Doom

On Reveal: Add a 5-Power DoomBot to each other location.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Doctor Doom

Variants

Mister Fantastic

Ongoing: Adjacent locations have +2 Power.

Collection Level 1-14

view card details Start a deck Decks with Mister Fantastic

Variants

Scarlet Witch

On Reveal: Replace this location with a random new one.

Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Scarlet Witch

Thanos Lockjaw Package

Variants

Thanos

At the start of the game, shuffle the six Infinity Stones into your deck.

Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Thanos

Variants

Lockjaw

After you play a card here, swap it with a card in your deck.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Lockjaw

Variants

Quinjet

Ongoing: Cards that didn’t start in your deck cost 1 less. (minimum 1)

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Quinjet

Control Package

Variants

Shang-Chi

On Reveal: Destroy all enemy cards at this location that have 9 or more Power.

Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Shang-Chi

Variants

Enchantress

On Reveal: Remove the abilities from all Ongoing cards at this location.

Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Enchantress

Variants

Killmonger

On Reveal: Destroy ALL 1-Cost cards.

Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Killmonger

Ramp Package

Variants

Electro

On Reveal: +1 Max Energy. Ongoing: You can only play 1 card a turn.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Electro

Variants

Wave

On Reveal: Next turn, cards in both players’ hands cost 4.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Wave

Darkhawk Package

Variants

Darkhawk

Ongoing: +2 Power for each card in your opponent’s deck.

Series 4 Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 4)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Darkhawk

Variants

Korg

On Reveal: Shuffle a Rock into your opponent’s deck.

Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Korg

Variants

Rockslide

On Reveal: Shuffle 2 Rocks into your opponent’s deck.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Rockslide

The second type of cards are Tech cards, included in the deck for specific match ups. In this case, we are looking at cards that punish certain strategies and allow us to get some easy snaps during the match. Compared to a package of cards, where there are synergies going on in between cards of the same package, a tech card is able to function alone as long as the desired situation arises.

• Armor against destroy based decks
• Cosmo against discard based decks
• Killmonger against decks with lots of 1-cost cards
• Enchantress against Ongoing based decks
• Shang-Chi against Shuri based decks
• Leech against turn six combo decks

Through all these possibilities (and these are just examples, there are many more), one is able to adapt their deck and craft it to match their expectation of the tournament metagame. Someone with no idea what to expect will likely drift towards good, flexible packages, such as Devil Dinosaur or Darkhawk, and be able to perform against virtually any opponent. Alternatively, someone with a clear picture of their game plan and the opponents they expect to meet might simply include one tech card to edge those expected matchups.

There really is not a rule book on how to build the perfect tournament deck as your deck will only be as good as the match ups you face during your tournament run. A very targeted deck will do great against specific opponents while a more generic build will have a larger spread to work with – but no easy encounters either.

Looking at the early results, it seems like generic flexible packages have done great so far with Devil Dinosaur + Darkhawk or the Sunspot and She-Hulk pair all working very well. The tech card of choice appears to be Shang-Chi as most decks will have at least one or two targets on average.

Tournament winners so far

As a conclusion, and probably what this series will become in the future, here are some decks that have won tournaments so far. I have not included small tournaments as there would be way too many to feature, so consider there were at least 32 players involved. It represents at least 5 rounds in order to take the final win home.

Trec at S.T.A.B

Created by den

, updated 1 month ago

0

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

3x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

6x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Series 4 Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 4)

1x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

3.5

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.7

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Wender at ArmaSnap

Created by den

, updated 1 month ago

1

3x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

7x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

2.8

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.9

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Evazord at Sakaar Arena

Created by den

, updated 1 month ago

0

3x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

6x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

3.4

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

5

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Torikun at Snap Twice (Pool 1,2,3 only)

Created by den

, updated 1 month ago

0

3x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

3x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

6x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

3.4

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.2

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Persaud at Battle Arena Showdown

Created by den

, updated 1 month ago

0

1x Collection Level 1-14

3x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

4x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

4x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

4.3

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

5.3

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+