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In a metagame with the End of Turn synergy sitting at the top, and flexible decks powered by incredible early cost cards as its biggest rival, neither won the big Marvel Snap tournament over the weekend. Indeed, the crown goes home with the Ongoing synergy, piloted by f300xen.
Metagame
An Ongoing deck, even with Cosmo included, feels like quite a risk in a Conquest setup. Indeed, it only takes one opponent with Enchantress to kick you out of the tournament. Fortunately, when you look at the top 8 bracket, only one deck ran that card : Scorched_ice’s Arishem. I also checked for Rogue and Red Guardian, but I couldn’t find any in the eight decks fighting for the win.
It looks like specific disruption has left the chat.
In sizer2654’s Move deck, we find Cosmo and Alioth. There was quite a bit of Juggernaut or Mobius. M. Mobius amongst the End of Turn and Good Cards. Last, Shang-Chi was in just one deck, same for Negasonic Teenage Warhead.
This is just one community tournament Top 8 bracket, so I went to check the data available in the deck trackers to compare. Enchantress is nowhere to be seen, as the destroy package, led by Gladiator and Shang-Chi has taken over the disruptive duties in most archetypes. As for the End of Turn decks, they typically run Juggernaut and Mobius M. Mobius, but otherwise focus on their own synergy.
I found one Rogue in an Iron Hand build, but the likes of Gladiator or Cannonball are the main tools to stop that synergy at the moment. Gladiator offers snap opportunities whenever a key card is destroyed early, while Cannonball will at least disrupt positioning for Moonstone or Captain Carter.
Both cards are great, but not that difficult to play around with an Ongoing deck certain to win a location if its best cards (Goliath, Captain Carter, Moonstone…) are stacked alongside Cosmo. Then, once Gladiator failed to remove a key card, or we see most of them in hand early, the Ongoing deck was in a solid position to control the snaps of most rounds.
The Winning Deck
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f300xen shared a lot of their though-process behind the deck following the tournament. Here are a few key points:
- Mercury already synergizes with the deck due to being an Ongoing card, so Cannonball made sense to include. The 5-cost allows to win the second location in a match, the first being covered by Moonstone and cheap Ongoing cards.
- Mercury allows Moonstone to move when they are together on the same location. This interaction gives the deck a lot of flexibility and solves the typical rigidity of this kind of Ongoing deck.
- Gorgon was included against Iron Hand and Merlin decks. While Elektra helped against End of Turn decks, specifically Sunspot, on top of being a cheap card to play against a Negasonic Teenage Warhead they had to trigger.
To be honest, there isn’t much to comment except for acknowledging the superb deckbuilding here.
A lot of people keeping up with the game can figure the End of Turn decks are beatable if you can find a synergy able to develop even more points.
Mister Negative has been the obvious pick on the ladder, but that deck is very risky in a tournament setup, considering Mobius. M. Mobius demolishes your entire strategy. Move probably was the best pick, but that synergy requires a great mastery, which can’t be acquired in a few days before a tournament.
Ongoing was a great pick when we look at the metagame without much of the typical counter cards. Yet, while the other Ongoing player in the top 4, Qwido, went for a points heavy build featuring Mystique and Iron Man, the more flexible build brought by f300xen makes more sense overall.
The Ongoing synergy never had any trouble putting up tons of points, making it a candidate to beat End of Turn. However, it always struggled to hide its potential, and keep opponents in the game. In a Conquest setup, being unflexible often means we need to snap very early for our opponent to stay, or we’ll be stuck with 1 cube wins for most rounds. Plus, we need to be great at anticipating our opponent’s next moves if they snap, since typically only have plan A : dominate through sheer amount of points.
With the Cannonball inclusion, f300xen lowered its points potential quite a bit if we compare it to an Iron Man. However, that change in 5-cost card keeps the opponent on their toes at all times. Indeed, Cannonball is one of the scariest cards in the game once one location is already under control.
If opponents had an Enchantress to contest the Moonstone location, Cannonball wouldn’t be that much of a problem. Yet, since the Ongoing deck regularly entered the last turn with one location secured, Cannonball represented a major threat.
Elektra and Gorgon were also great touches for popular match-ups. These two not only help against End of Turn or Iron Hand, they are also cheap enough to be used as flexible cards when energy had to be spent.
Will the Metagame Change?
In addition to bringing high stakes gameplay, tournaments are also a way to impact everyone’s experience, as unknown strategies can take a center stage role. Heading into this Golden Gauntlet World Championship Series 1st Qualifier, the Ongoing synergy was nowhere to be seen on the ladder. Today, the winning deck from f300xen appeared in the data available through deck trackers, sporting a 0.35 cube average and 59.5% win rate in the Infinite ranks.
Obviously, the End of Turn synergy still is the most popular around. Even if it didn’t win, this tournament showed the strength of that archetype if other decks don’t build to beat it. In that environment, End of Turn still had two representatives in Top 8, with one reaching the finals.
Yet, with the decks shared from the tournament, and an OTA this week, the stage is set for new synergies to emerge in the Marvel Snap metagame.
It might not be anything significant, just the need to run Enchantress once again could force some decks to change their strategy. Suddenly, we have to find a slot for that card, meaning mixing two synergies, or certain packages of cards isn’t as simple. It could also cause a change in the popular tech cards used in the flexible decks. Enchantress replaces Shang-Chi or Shadow King and some decks trying to leverage buffs now have a lot more room to develop their synergies.
We only have 12 slots in our deck, so changing just one card impacts about 8% of our entire deck. If several archetypes make that change, the entire metagame can feel different all of a sudden.
Or maybe the Cannonball — Mercury pair gets nerfed and the End of Turn synergy becomes unstoppable…
All Top 8 Decks
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