Deck of the Day – Fazzer’s High Evolutionary Meta Lockdown

Hello everyone, and welcome to Deck of the Day! I’m Glazer of Snap Judgments: The Official Marvel Snap Zone Podcast, and every weekday I’m going to be highlighting a different deck for you to try out!

Today’s deck is by my friend Fazzer. He’s got a consistent 70-80% win rate with this meta deck and in immediate testing, after the very light nerfs to High Evolutionary, this is still a tier 1 deck. The changes to Evolutionary will, though, have many more people playing bounce, and this deck remains a way to punish that match-up!

On Fazzer’s Twitch at 12:30 pm EST today, I’ll be playing him his own Battle Mode gameshow called Snap Showdown. So far, Fazzer has had the number of the WSF Champion Super Tech God and the best player in Snap Lamby. Can he beat me too? If you can’t make it, check his YouTube – the games will be up there soon as well.

Fair warning, for the best version of this, there are a lot of higher Series cards needed.

Intro + Disclaimers + Giveaway

I think this deck is Tier 1 and very well positioned in the current metagame.

Sometimes these decks will be Tier 1, the most competitive decks in the metagame. Sometimes they will be fun tier. Often, they will feature Series 4 and 5 cards (which is hopefully less of an issue with the Card Acquisition change), but sometimes they will be Series 3 or even lower.

Additionally, these decks can come from anywhere – they could be homebrews, a really cool idea from your favorite content creator, a tried and true meta deck, and sometimes, well, we won’t really know where the deck came from. We endeavor, however, to credit original deck creators whenever possible, so if we miss one, please do let us know! Want to submit a deck for consideration? Email me [email protected].

One last thing before we start. Want a free Rise of the Phoenix Season Pass? I’m running the largest Giveaway in Marvel Snap history (as far as I know, anyway) on my Twitter. Check it out!

The Deck

Meta lockdown

Created by PulseGlazer

, updated 10 months ago

0

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

5x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

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

3x Starter Card

3.1

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.2

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Deck History

We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Here it is reproduced below.

Lockdown decks started to become a part of the Meta with the release of Nebula. Guardians control decks went from a pure meme to something that could get Infinite in the hands of players like Dera – in fact, here’s a video of Dera’s Infinite Lockdown deck:

Later on that month, High Evolutionary was released, and Lockdown became a High Evolutionary deck rather than a cool Guardians one. You should be familiar with that deck, as it’s still a major part of the meta, but if you aren’t, aware, here’s the deck:

Evolved Lockdown

Created by den

, updated 11 months ago

1

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

4x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

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

3x Starter Card

3.3

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.8

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

This deck entirely killed the previous version, as it disappeared from the meta, being considered inferior.

Variants

Kitty Pryde

When this returns to your hand, +1 Power. Returns at the start of each turn.

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with Kitty Pryde

Alright, we’re caught up to where this becomes a Tier 1 deck, one of the best in the meta. Eventually, the deck was pushed out a bit by the Lockjaw version, which just went too big, but Bounce came back and this deck is a great Bounce counter… in fact, many would argue the more bounce there is the stronger this deck is.

How to Play

This version deck removes all of the 1-cost cards found in the standard versions of High Evolutionary – Sunspot, Nebula, and Misty Knight all had homes in previous versions of this. But remember how Bounce is everywhere in the meta now? Well, that means so is Killmonger, and rather than working really hard to play around that, this just replaces those 1-cost cards.

Variants

Nebula

Each turn your opponent doesn’t play a card here, +2 Power. (except the turn you play this)

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with Nebula

Variants

Sunspot

After 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

Misty Knight

“We’ve got to save this city.”

Starter Card

view card details Start a deck Decks with Misty Knight

The first major replacement is Spider-Ham. Some people don’t love this card still, but whether it’s Hela, Knull, Hulk, Sera, Iron Man, or another card, the Pig wins games. The other cards finding their way into the deck are Wave and Jeff the Baby Landshark. Jeff in this deck is often free wins – a locked-off lane often needs 3-power. An unplayable lane is often won by Jeff.

Wave is more complicated. It’s often been said that Wave cannot answer bounce and that’s true to an extent. On turn 5, Bounce can just go off, leaving Wave useless on the last turn. This deck mitigates that with Daredevil. If they are going off, you can play Spider-Man to lock down a lane and win the last turn. If not, Wave and stop the flow of their cards on the last turn. It’s great!

Here are the play lines:

• Turn 1: Spider-Ham is the only card in the deck that can be played here. Play it. The information is great and the ability is plenty likely to be useful.
• Turn 2: Daredevil is so key here. The decision on Turn 5 to play Wave or Spider-Man is an awful lot of the deck. You’re fine with Jeff or Ham here, but nowhere near Daredevil.
• Turn 3: You really want to Storm here. A show called Heroes once said, “Save the Cheerleader save the world.” Well, for this it’s win the Storm lane, win the game. If you don’t Storm, I’d usually rather play Daredevil and Spider-Ham or Spider-Ham and Jeff than Cyclops, but if nothing else is there, Cyclops works.
• Turn 4: Cyclops on the Storm lane is the goal. If not, The Thing will do. Here or next turn is Wasp.
• Turn 5: Spider-Man or Wave. If you have Cyclops out, it’s just Wave. If not, pair Wave with whichever 2 you want. Wave alone this turn is also an extra 4-power on Hulk. One of these two cards usually guarantees you the game.

Variants

Wave

On Reveal: All cards cost a maximum of 4 until the end of next turn.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Wave

Variants

Spider-Man

On Reveal: Move to another location and pull an enemy card from here to there.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Spider-Man

• Turn 6: This is relatively simple. Either Hulk wins a lane outright (ideally with another already taken by Storm or Spider-Man) or Doctor Doom wins by going wide when you’re already ahead.

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

Hulk

“HULK SMASH!”

Starter Card

view card details Start a deck Decks with Hulk

Card Substitutions

Jeff the Baby Land Shark is very good here, but so is Nebula. Both are Series 5, so if you lack both, go with Misty Knight.

Spider-Ham could also be Misty Knight, Nebula, or Sunspot, but now you’re much weaker to Killmonger again. I’d probably add Armor or Cosmo for all the Destroy in the meta.

Variants

Armor

Ongoing: Cards here can’t be destroyed.

Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Armor

Variants

Cosmo

Ongoing: On Reveal abilities won’t happen here.

Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Cosmo

For those of you who are not Series 3 complete, Spider-Man can be Professor X, but then you really need Jeff again. I think Daredevil is truly a must-have, but Wave could be the aforementioned Cosmo for a different, but still effective deck.

Wasp, I guess, doesn’t need to be here with her nerf, but now you’re back to too many 1-drops. Doctor Doom, though, could be Leader. Without either, the deck gets complicated.

Obviously, for a High Evolutionary deck, you should be running the card.

Conclusion and Video

Lockdown is a really great deck to play into opposing Kitty Pryde Bounce decks, and if those are giving you trouble, I urge you to check this one out!

If you’d like a video discussion of this deck, check my page out. Here’s a video of this deck being discussed: