Table of Contents
Welcome to our new series of Marvel Snap guides, where we feature a Series 4 or 5 card and analyze how to use it. The goal is to give you a tutorial on how to use the card most effectively in an everchanging meta, as well as help you decide if the card is worth the tokens or if you should pick it up during a Spotlight Cache week!
We will aim to revise this guide each time it becomes featured in a Spotlight Cache. If the card becomes rebalanced or the meta has changed a lot, please let us know in the comments and we will look to update it based on demand!
Decks with Grand Master
Please note: Gladiator on June 4th has been swapped with
Series 5 cards can be purchased for 6,000 Collector’s Tokens from the Token Shop initially as a Weekly Spotlight card, or opened as one of the featured cards in the Spotlight Caches that are found every 120 Levels on the Collection Level Track after Collection Level 500 (until the next new card releases the following week).
Who is Grand Master?
Grand Master is an immortal being who’s powers originate from the same cosmic big bang radiation as Galactus. While not as powerful as Galactus, Grand Master is incredibly powerful and has an impressive range of abilities. He can levitate, shoot energy blasts, change his size, teleport across space, time, and universe, and even cause death by simply his will.
He also has a love for games, being masterful at any game he plays. He can calculate probabilities and predict outcomes of games. He can even sense his surroundings, giving him additional advantages and perception against opponents.
Grand Master was featured in the MCU in the film Thor Ragnarok. He was played by Jeff Goldblum, but he wasn’t portrayed as a blue alien so he wasn’t confused with other blue aliens Goldblum had played in other films.
How to Use Grand Master
Grand Master is a combo card. His stats are below average, so you have to combine him with another card in order to get value. In order to retrigger an ability, your target card must be on the left or right location, and the center location must have room for the target to move to.
Grand Master currently has some inconsistency with his ability triggering as you would expect. If you use Galactus on the left or right location and use Grand Master to retrigger Galactus on the center location, he will always fail. This is because the target card sees itself stationed at the original location (despite its move) until the On Reveal is finished.
Similarly, playing GM on Blink will not swap GM for a higher cost card. Instead, Blink will swap herself! This is due to Grand Master not finishing his On Reveal until his target finishes their On Reveal, which makes him not fully “played”. This interaction may be important to remember when trying to fit Grand Master into your combos.
Best Synergies
Grand Master is a bit harder to identify synergies with. He obviously works with all cards that have “On Reveal”, but simply getting an extra trigger isn’t always beneficial over another card. Instead, his synergies revolve around enhancing the overall gameplan of the deck he exists with. With that in mind, the next section will showcase how his ability can prove synergistic based on his deck.
Competitive Meta Deck
den
This deck mixes a bounce package with the Darkhawk package. Grand Master helps both packages have more options. For example: You can play Korg, Grand Master, Rockslide for an on curve way to an extra Rock. Similarly, you can play Beast to bounce your cards, play them again in the center location, and play Grand Master on Beast to pick them up again! All of these extra On Reveals help to fuel your Werewolf By Night and Darkhawk.
As shown in this deck, Grand Master doesn’t unlock any new combos or synergies. Instead, he makes the existing ones in these packages more potent and gives flexibility in play lines.
Fun Off-Meta Deck
Nimrod decks can snowball, but they often require enough destroy cards to flood the board properly, while also playing Nimrod in a timely manner. Grand Master can help give you extra triggers on several destroy cards like Venom, Carnage, and Destroyer! He can also give you extra chances to Blink a card to search for Arnim Zola, Destroyer, and Knull.
Weaknesses and Things to Avoid
An obvious counter is Cosmo or Leech since they both stop On Reveals. This makes Grand Master a lackluster [2/2].
Decks with Leech
Deck types they often interfere with Grand Master are junk decks and move decks. Junk decks can clog your center location, making Grand Master‘s ability fail to trigger. Move decks that focus more on moving your cards can also interfere. They could clog you, or they could simply move your target to another location.
When playing Grand Master, also be aware of your card staging. If you have multiple On Reveal cards at a location, Grand Master will pick one at random to re-trigger and move. This could severely hurt your gameplan if the wrong card moves, so build your combos with this in mind.
Closing Thoughts
Grand Master is a unique card that hasn’t quite found a consistent home yet. While his ability is incredibly powerful, no consistent combo has been able to truly be born from his ability. He could be fun to experiment with at Series 3 or 4, but Series 5 is simply too high of a cost for an ability you don’t have to have. Since his buff to [2/2] is still new, perhaps his time in the sun will come soon and he might be worth the token cost.
Is Grand Master worth using 6K Collector’s Tokens?
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