Deck of the Day – Galactus Evolutionary 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!

Our friend Combat – Marvel Snap posted on Twitter recently that he’s crushing with this brand new Galactus High Evolutionary Lockdown. If you listened to this week’s Snap Judgments, you heard NinaisNoob and SueprTechGod discuss how Jean Grey is unbelievable for Galactus. Well, this is one of the ways that is true.

Two Big Bads and Jean Grey AND Nebula make this one of the more expensive decks we’ve showcased here. You won’t need Nebula, but the other cards are absolutely needed to make this deck work.

Introduction + Disclaimers

The nerfs to High Evolutionary Lockdown are severely overrated. Adding Galactus as an alternative win condition is just absolutely great – an easy Snap condition to steal cubes.

Sometimes the decks featured in this article 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].

The Deck

Combat’s Galactus

Created by PulseGlazer

, updated 10 months ago

4

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

2x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

4x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

3x Starter Card

2.8

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.7

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Deck History

We talked about the history of High Evolutionary and Lockdown here. Let’s talk Galactus.

Variants

High Evolutionary

At the start of the game, unlock the potential of your cards with no abilities.

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with High Evolutionary

Variants

Galactus

On Reveal: If you’re winning this location and this is your only card here, destroy all other locations.

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with Galactus

Galactus, upon release, was a high cube rate deck that struggled to win. One of the most played cards in the game was Aero, and Aero often ruined Galactus‘ life. Still, there was an easy Snap and Retreat pattern to the decks, so they were popular for climbing, if not for winning a ton.

Eventually, Aero was nerfed, and thus began the rise of Galactus. Slowly but surely, all the meta answers just stopped seeing play to the point where Galactus became not only the highest play rate deck but among the top in Win Rate (it was already great in Cube Rate).

When Galactus started winning tournaments, it was time for a change, and a change did come. Galactus now needed to be winning the location on top of all of his other limitations, and that was enough to finally make the card stop being a meta staple.

Galactus is back to where it started, a good card to win with when people don’t expect it, which has clear patterns of play for Snapping and Retreating.

How to Play

This is first and foremost a High Evolutionary Lockdown list. That core still does great against the meta deck – Bounce – while also proving positive into the most popular counter-meta deck – Silver Surfer.

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

Variants

Silver Surfer

On Reveal: Give your other 3-Cost cards +2 Power.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Silver Surfer

Conveniently, though, this deck has two other tricks that help it perform at a really high level and make it crazy difficult to play against. The first of these is the brand new card Jean Grey. Jean, with all your cheap cards, limits the opponent while still granting you freedom. Wasp, Sunspot, and Nebula give a lot of options on how to play around Jean’s limitations.

Variants

Jean Grey

Ongoing: Players must play their first card here each turn. (if possible)

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with Jean Grey

The other main trick of the deck is that a Jean played late can limit how much power an opponent can output. If an opponent is stuck playing heavily into one lane, Galactus can steal games.

Enabling the last turn Galactus play are two cards: Wasp and Shocker. Wasp into Jean Grey allows Galactus to go freely into another lane. Shocker can also hit a 1-cst card or Galactus himself to enable that play.

And when Galactus isn’t the line on turn 6? There’s still Spider-Man on 5 and Hulk on 6 to win games.

Here are the play lines:

• Turn 1: Nebula or Sunspot are the key cards here.

• Turn 2: You can either protect your powerful 1-cost card with Armor or make something relevant cheaper with Shocker. Either play works fine.

• Turn 3: This is usually a Storm play into Nebula/Sunspot’s lane. They will grow and make it hard to contest. If there’s nothing else you can play Cyclops here. If you recognize an opponent on a big cards deck, Jean Grey is possible, though I usually prefer to save her. The Lockdown strategy can struggle without Storm, but luckily this deck has other options.

Variants

Storm

On Reveal: Flood this location. Next turn is the last turn cards can be played here.

Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Storm

Variants

Cyclops

“Let’s move, X-Men.”

Starter Card

view card details Start a deck Decks with Cyclops

• Turn 4: If you played Storm, Cyclops is an easy play that all but guarantees victory in the lane. You can conceivably play Storm here, or any of the cheaper stuff that doesn’t cost 0 (Wasp or Shocker hit cards).

• Turn 5: This is decision time. If you got Storm and Cyclops off, a lane is likely won. At that point, Spider-Man is a stellar way to steal another lane. That’ll end the game. If the game is looking more tenuous, and you have Galactus, play Jean Grey in a spot an opponent is already strong to force them to commit again to that location last turn. That location needs to either be A) Filled on your side by Jean Grey or B) You need a 0-cost card in hand.

• Turn 6: If you went with the Spider-Man playline, Hulk should win you the game now. If you played Jean Grey, then now it’s time for Galactus. Remember- cheap stuff decks can still beat Galactus – run from them, but anything trying to play a few big cards just gets crushed.

Variants

Hulk

“HULK SMASH!”

Starter Card

view card details Start a deck Decks with Hulk

Variants

Galactus

On Reveal: If you’re winning this location and this is your only card here, destroy all other locations.

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

view card details Start a deck Decks with Galactus

Card Substitutions

High Evolutionary, Jean Grey, and Galactus are necessary for this strategy, but Nebula could change. I think I’d add Daredevil if I were to change her, but I could easily see the choice being Jeff the Baby Landshark or Yellowjacket.

Variants

Daredevil

On turn 5, you get to see your opponent’s plays before you make your own.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Daredevil

Variants

Yellowjacket

On Reveal: Afflict your other cards here with -1 Power.

Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

view card details Start a deck Decks with Yellowjacket

Daredevil will let you make an informed Turn 5 decision. Yellowjacket gives a secondary Wasp for the Galactus play, and Jeff gives the illusion of a location you can’t Galactus in and can be pulled away later.

Conclusion + Video

This deck is just mean to opponents and if you miss Galactus, give it a try.

If you’d like a video discussion of this deck, check my page out. You can also watch the video here: