Table of Contents
Introduction and Preamble
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!
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 (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 – sometimes they’re homebrews, at times they’re a really cool idea from your favorite content creator, sometimes they’re meta decks, and sometimes, well, we won’t really know where the deck came from. We endeavor, however, to credit original deck creators where possible here, 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
PulseGlazer
Deck History
Once upon a time, SafetyBlade made a deck. Okay, that’s silly, Safety makes ALL the decks. But this deck, well, it had an absolutely insane win rate and took what was to that point a niche card – Stature – to the top of the metagame. Here’s the original deck:
PulseGlazer
Yeah, that deck. If you’ve been playing for a couple of months, you probably know the deck as something like the “Stats” deck, as KMBest ended up popularizing it under that name as, with the season change, Nebula replaced Nightcrawler in the deck. That became the swing spot, and I hit Infinite with Ghost in that Nightcrawler spot.
The win rate of this deck matched the height of Shuri Red Skull or Thanos Lockjaw, so came the nerfs – a loss of power to Rockslide, Enchantress, Stature, and Black Bolt. In conjunction with the rise of High Evolutionary and Kitty Pryde, the deck was all but forgotten.
Forgotten though it was by many, some remembered the power, including old Marvel Snap Zone friend HowlingMines, who just came in third in Creator Clash this weekend with the deck, in this case using Kitty Pryde in that swing 1-cost slot.
Okay, that’s probably the longest this History Section will ever be, but it gets us to the present!
How to Play
You’ll note my version of the deck changes more than the ones mentioned above – it’s trying to take advantage of the new card Spider-Man 2099. As a [4/6] the card is powerful, but like Shang-Chi, the real power is in how much it swings power away from the opponent and toward the person playing him.
In this meta, Lockjaw High Evolutionary Decks and Kitty Pryde Bounce decks are all the rage. Spider-Man 2099 offers an answer to those – he can snipe a Lockjaw or Thor in the former match-up, a Bishop or Angela in the latter.
This deck defies clear play lines, but the ideal looks something like this:
- Turn 1: Korg – You almost never play Iron Fist here.
- Turn 2: Zabu is the key play here. Again, you almost never Ghost-Spider, though without Zabu you can Korg. If Vulture is in hand, you can Iron Fist now, too.
- Turn 3: Rockslide is almost always the best play. The rocks in the deck early often give you card advantage in the game. If you had Iron Fist, you can now Vulture. There are worse plays than Zabu and either of the 1s as well.
- Turn 4: Again, Rockslide if you haven’t. If you got the ideal play, Iron Fist into Spider-Man 2099 is the goal here. If your move happened earlier and you have Zabu, this is a great spot for Miles and a 4-drop.
- Turn 5: Unless there’s a very spicy kill for Shang Chi or 2099, this is the Black Bolt turn.
- Turn 6: If you Black Bolted, you want a kill card (Shang or 2099) along with Darkhawk as an ideal play. Stature is great with a kill card, too. Indeed, you can go Stature, Iron Fist, and Spider-Man 2099 all on that last turn.
Card Substitutions
Okay, it’s not a high-Series card, but I’m not sure Vulture is right here. Safety and I have been talking about it, and the right answer is probably Jeff the Baby Land Shark for an on-demand Miles Morales activation. Some of you don’t have Jeff, and if not, then there’s always Spider-Ham.
Decks with Jeff the Baby Land Shark
Decks with Spider-Ham
Oh, that doesn’t always help either – fine. You can go with Polaris, as the original did. Nebula should also have some synergy with Spider-Man 2099, too. Also, don’t forget, HowlingMines used Kitty Pryde.
Decks with Polaris
Decks with Nebula
Decks with Kitty Pryde
Darkhawk is a high series card in the deck that I don’t suggest you run this deck without. However, a few months back, someone hit Infinite with this shell using Crossbones in Darkhawk‘s spot. If you’re desperate, it’s worth a shot.
Decks with Crossbones
Finally, Stature. If you don’t have Stature, I think you’re running Doctor Doom and Wave. At that point, you want to get the second play off with Wave (like a Miles Morales on the same turn or a Ghost-Spider to move 2099) to try and gain power, but I think you’re at a huge disadvantage in that case.
Decks with Doctor Doom
Decks with Wave
Conclusion and Video
The Stats deck never really went anywhere. It’s still one of the strongest decks in the game. Time to see just how good it is with a bit of extra kill!
Want a video of me talking about the deck? It’s right here along with my Spider-Man 2099 card review and two more decks using the brand new Series 4 card:
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