Best High Evolutionary Decks: Impact on Meta After Day 1

After a little detour caused by a bug in the Token Shop, High Evolutionary finally joined Marvel Snap, ready to wreak havoc on the current metagame. However, because of the slight delay in the card availability, High Evolutionary‘s arrival is extremely close to this month’s final OTA balance update patch.

Why is that important, you might ask? Well, in order to assess a card’s impact on the metagame, it is usually best to give it a bit of time. Indeed, when a card releases, our first instinct will be to try it with various combinations, looking to separate the good from the bad ideas we had during the theorycraft period.

However, when less than 24 hours after the card became available, a balance patch, even if minor, is deployed – it can make it more difficult to know whether it was the new card or the balance patch which causes the metagame to change its course. As such, let’s take a look at High Evolutionary‘s early impact, before the last OTA balance patch of May comes into effect later on tonight.

So far, the new Big Bad had the expected high popularity, especially looking at a 6,000 Collector’s Token cards, and has been experimented with in several archetypes. Of course, I didn’t have time to test all these decks, so I’ll refer to the player’s judgement and the few statistics I managed to grab about the deck.

Here are a few headlines before we dive into the specific archetypes who seemed to perform well with the card:

• Decks with most of High Evolutionary Evolved cards seem to do quite well, ranging from 0.1 to 0.2 cube average for the most part. Their win rate was pretty high, on average around the 55% mark.
• It didn’t seem like the community was separating the “Unspent Energy” and “Inflict negative power” cards much. A lot of decks included both Evolved Abomination and Evolved Hulk.
• No precise archetype seems to have the nod when it comes to “best to include High Evolutionary in”. However, strong standalone cards, such as Wave, seemed to boost the deck performances.

According to our tracker, this deck had the best performance during day one, amongst decks with at least a few hundred games under their belt and heavily relying on the High Evolutionary synergy. Keep in mind, this does not factor in the rank the games were played at:

High Evolutionary

Created by den

, updated 11 months ago

4

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

4x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

6x Starter Card

3.1

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.8

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Lockjaw leads the race for High Evolutionary good graces

As most content creators and social media experts, myself included, have predicted, Lockjaw archetypes are in the running for most popular builds to include High Evolutionary into. However, if the popularity is quite high compared to other archetypes using the new Big Bad card, the performance is uneven, to say the least.

As it stands, the Thor variant appears to be more consistent, posting higher cube averages across the board. It is still early to call a clear winner, but Thor had very few bad cube averages amongst its most popular builds, while Thanos has much more inconsistent results.

High Lockjaw

Created by den

, updated 11 months ago

3

1x Collection Level 1-14

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

6x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

2x Starter Card

3.7

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.9

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

My guess as to why Lockjaw Thor is posting better results early on, and particularly why those results are closer to each other when looking at different lists, is variance. First, there is the deck variance, as Thanos makes your deck an 18-card build. Ever since both archetypes have been compared, the Thanos variant always had more chaotic data about it, ranging from a terrible deck, to one with a stupidly high cube average. The second aspect to look at is how challenging both decks are deck building wise.

Lockjaw Thor has been around for ten months already, created back when Thor released, in the summer of 2022. Ever since, the deck has undergone very little changes, with most of its cards remaining the same, gravitating around the On Reveal synergy, Wasp, America Chavez… As such even if it’s always some kind of challenge to bring new cards into the archetype, players know they have a solid shell to use as support.

When it comes to Thanos Lockjaw, although the deck also has quite the history to rely upon as to how to build the deck. The various variants around it (Death, Ongoing, Standard…) and the many cards which could legitimately makes sense in the deck (Devil Dinosaur, Vision, Aero, Leech, Iron Man, Spider Woman… and that’s just the 5-cost cards) have blurred the lines as to how to build the deck. So much so that most of the community eagerly awaits for LambySeries to share their deck around the archetype most of the time, as it seems easier compared to trying to build it on your own.

So far, the consensus list for Thanos Lockjaw has not emerged, at list not if we look at the data available. One tendency seems to emerge so far, in the form of Shang-Chi being included in most of the best performing builds. This might be the first sign of High Evolutionary impacting the metagame, as evolved Hulk can be considered one of the best targets in the game for Shang-Chi.

High Thanos Lockjaw

Created by den

, updated 11 months ago

1

2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

5x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

2x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

1x Starter Card

4

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

5.4

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Most popular archetypes with High Evolutionary

Apart from the builds we mentioned already, the new release mostly appeared in reactive decks, looking to impair the opponent’s strategy more than develop a huge amount of points, which Lockjaw is already trying to do. In this reactive idea, most of the currently popular archetype have iterated with High Evolutionary, from Lockdown to Sera Control.

Toxic Evolution

Created by den

, updated 11 months ago

0

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

5x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

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

4x Starter Card

3.2

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.6

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

High Lockdown

Created by den

, updated 11 months ago

0

2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

2x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

3x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

4x Starter Card

3.1

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.2

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

High Junk

Created by den

, updated 11 months ago

0

3x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

5x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

2x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

2x Starter Card

2.8

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.8

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Apart from the archetypes obviously interesting in afflicting opponent’s cards with negative power, Wave has been another popular inclusion, retaining her status as one of the premium disruption tools in the metagame. So far, it seems like it’s Wave who made the trip to join High Evolutionary‘s decks, rather than Good Cards builds managing to include the big bad in the mix.

In a very similar build to the one shared atop this article, Wave seems to be included mostly for match up purposes, only bringing Doctor Doom with her from the typical archetype they share with Darkhawk and other strong cards.

High Evolutionary Wave

Created by den

, updated 11 months ago

0

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

4x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

5x Starter Card

3.4

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.9

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Closing Words

With a huge focus around High Evolutionary for its first day in Marvel Snap, it seems like most decks are gravitating around the card. The abundance of cards like Luke Cage, Hazmat or Scorpion in particular, shows that the community is actively testing what could be the best way to support the new card.

I did not touch the topic of counters in this piece, as it isn’t the time yet. However, if you did not purchase High Evolutionary, and would be looking to counter the archetypes build around it, I would personally explore Bounce and the Destroy synergy in that regard. Both mechanics tend to have very few cards on the board, and should be able to mess the “Afflict negative power” synergy nicely.

As for a personal judgement about the card, I will refrain from having one for now, considering we are still in the honeymoon period regarding the card. I’m sure it will end up playing a role in the metagame, at the very least in the Lockjaw archetype. Otherwise, I’m still debating what is just hype of the moment compared to actual strong, impactful potential.

I’m sure I will have made up my mind by the time the next Meta Tier List comes around, and we have much more data to share about the card. Until then, I hope you’re having a wonderful time playing Marvel Snap, with or without High Evolutionary.

If you had a spicy deck to share with the new card, find me on the Marvel Snap Zone community Discord or follow my Twitter page where I share decks and biased opinions about the game.

Good Game Everyone.

Upcoming events you might be interested in:

• May 27th: Qualifiers #3 and #4 of the TYB 616 Open. Anyone can join and try to qualify for their share of a $1,000 prize pool.

• May 28th: Coaching seminar alongside Freshlobster about the fundamentals of deck building, game planning, Snapping, and Retreating. Reach out on Discord.