Red Skull – Best Decks, Builds, and Card Analysis

Hi everyone, welcome to this new piece looking to help find a way to maximize the use of your shiny new card. This time, we are going to cover quite an unpopular card from Pool 3: Red Skull.

Variants

Red Skull

Ongoing: Enemy cards at this location have +1 Power.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Red Skull

While a 5 cost, 14 power card sounds very appealing and places Red Skull amongst the biggest point scorer in Marvel Snap, the card sees very little play because of its significant drawback: Giving the opposing cards +2 power at the location Red Skull is played.

In this article, we’ll go over what can be done with the card, both with a limited collection, as if Red Skull was your first pull in Pool 3, or try to build something more competitive, supporting Red Skull with every card available in the game. You thought some cards were unplayable? Well, let’s see if that’s true.

Gameplay and Synergies

Red Skull can be a frustrating card to play. Everytime the bonus he grants to enemy units loses us the game, we immediately want to send him back into the collection and never think about it again. It also didn’t help that for the longest part of Marvel Snap’s lifetime, the most popular decks have been relying on swarming the board with cheap units in order to buff cards like Bishop or Angela.

Other synergies like Discard, that are able to multiply Swarm in hand and play 3 or 4 of them on turn 6 makes Red Skull difficult to find empty locations to be played on. As a result, even when played on turn 6 to avoid the opponent being able to play on the location afterwards, Red Skull isn’t finding enough situations where it can be used without some outside help.

In terms of synergies, Red Skull has different ways to see its negative ability mitigated, which gives the card all its merits. As a way to best make use the card, there are 3 main ways we can look to help Red Skull:

• We can try to deny Red Skull‘s ability, either making it a vanilla 14 power, or enabling other effects:

Variants

Dracula

At the end of the game, discard a card from your hand. This has its Power.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Dracula

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

Venom

On Reveal: Destroy your other cards at this location. Add their Power to this card.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Venom

Variants

Zero

On Reveal: Remove the abilities on the next card you play.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Zero

• We can limit what the opponent can do on the location we intend to play Red Skull at, removing their cards or preventing how many they can play:

Variants

Juggernaut

On Reveal: If your opponent played cards here this turn, move them randomly.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Juggernaut

Variants

Sandman

Ongoing: Players can only play 1 card a turn.

Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Sandman

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

Spider-Man

On Reveal: Your opponent can’t play cards at this location next turn.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Spider-Man

• We can try to be unpredictable as to where Red Skull will end up on the final turn, limiting the positive impact for our opponent:

Variants

Doctor Strange

On Reveal: Move your highest Power cards to this location.

Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Doctor Strange

Variants

Cloak

On Reveal: Next turn, both players can move cards to this location.

Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Cloak

Through these various synergies, we can see there actually are a lot of different ways to support Red Skull in Marvel Snap. Obviously, it might not be so easy to build a cohesive deck mixing all those options, as we can see cards from very different archetypes being showcased. Despite that, it is nice to see that even for very unpopular cards, there is potential in the deckbuilding area.

Budget Deck

SandMan Ongoing

Created by den

, updated 10 months ago

0

4x Collection Level 1-14

3x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

4x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

1x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

4.2

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.9

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

While talking about a budget deck when building around a Pool 3 card might sound weird, we’ll imagine you have a full Pool 1 and 2 and only Red Skull for this one.

In this deck, we are looking to limit what the opponent can do to use Red Skull‘s ability through Sandman, limiting both of us to 1 card a turn. If the opponent would flood the board before we get to play Sandman, we can always use Enchantress to remove Red Skull‘s Ongoing ability. Including Killmonger might also help if you are afraid of being swarmed by 1-cost cards.

The rest of the deck is centered around being able to attack multiple lanes while playing only 1 card a turn, effectively making this deck more of a Sandman deck rather than a Red Skull one. Maybe with more cards, we can give Red Skull some justice and make him the star of the deck.

All-In on Red Skull

Red Skull All In

Created by den

, updated 10 months ago

0

2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

4x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

6x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

3.4

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

6.2

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Obviously a gimmick aimed at being fun, this deck aims at maximizing the potential of Red Skull and other cards with a similar drawback when played. Alongside cards like Zero, Venom, Enchantress or even Dracula, we are able to largely limit the damage that cards like Red Skull, Typhoid Mary or Ebony Maw could cause to our board development.

Juggernaut should work really well as a follow-up to Red Skull if the opponent would want to invest on the location after we played him. To maximize the card even more, I added Storm for her synergy with both Juggernaut or Red Skull, which can win us a location as well.

The rest of the deck is rounded up with support cards, or ones that would reward us for not playing, in case we would happen to be locked from a weird draw sequence. America Chavez is the only odd inclusion in the build, and gets played mostly for added consistency. I don’t expect to play her much, and at worst she will feed Dracula.

Competitive Build

competitive Red Skull

Created by den

, updated 10 months ago

0

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

4x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

6x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Starter Card

3.8

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.3

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

This deck doesn’t feature Red Skull as its primary win condition, Magik and Sera being the real stars in the build. However, our featured card finds a lot of charming synergies in this deck and could prove to be a very good contributor to the overall synergy.

• Enchantress or Shang-Chi can be played alongside Red Skull on the same turn (7) if we have Sera in play. That would either be an addition of 17 (with Shang-Chi) or 18 (with Enchantress) power added to a location while interacting with our opponent’s side too.
• Gambit and Killmonger will remove opposing units, limiting how many buffs Red Skull can distribute. Wong could be added to the deck for even more power to a late Gambit, as when copied with Mystique, Gambit would remove 4 of the opponent’s units.
• Iron Man doubling Red Skull‘s 14 power isn’t such a bad thing power wise.

Just like the budget deck, it is hard to imagine Red Skull to be the primary win condition in a deck. The many synergies he finds with currently played powerful cards is enough to think about including it anti-meta decks that are already running cards like Enchantress, Shang-Chi or Killmonger.

Closing Words

After the first piece on The Collector, a popular card in today’s metagame, going for Red Skull felt like a fun challenge.

I don’t know if I managed to make a deck you could take to the Infinite ranks, or even if I inspired some of you to try this unused card. I think these kinds of cards will be the backbone of Marvel Snap in the future, and finding creative ways to use our collection will be a must-have skill to perform.

I hope you had some fun reading this piece, as much as I have writing and building these new decks, and highlighting what can be done with Red Skull. More highlights are on their way, and you can suggest which cards you would like to see next in this series. To do so, or if you have any question or piece of feedback, find us on our community Discord. You can also find me on my Twitter page.

Good Game Everyone.