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As most of the community is already eagerly waiting for the big balance patch promised on April 18th, the metagame keeps moving after last week’s Over the Air (OTA) changes where Shuri Zero took another slight hit and Sunspot lost a power.
Regarding Shuri Zero, the deck is still regarded as one of the archetypes to beat in Marvel Snap. The deck easily ranks in the top five for both Win Rate and Cube Rate, and it doesn’t seem to have dropped very much when it comes to popularity (at least in the ranks right before Infinite). Still, even if those numbers still keep Shuri Zero in the Tier 1 discussion, the deck isn’t the mastodon it once was. Right now, Shuri Zero should be considered one of the better options for ranking up, but not unequivocally the best deck – and that makes quite the difference. This mostly led the metagame to open up a bit, and several proactive decks have made quite a comeback now that they can compete in a points shootout.
This brings us to the Sunspot, a card that is extremely popular among proactive archetypes. In it’s weakened state, the card did not appear in as many decks as it used to. More synergistic lists have emerged as the best performing ones. In today’s Infinite Decks of the Week, we take a look at those new ideas and start preparing for this month’s biggest change in a few days.
Shuri has some tricks up her sleeve!
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A large part of the community is convinced that Shuri will finally be nerfed or changed on the 18th, finally marking the end of the reign of Shuri Zero. I could argue the latest OTA already did some solid work in that regard, but it seems like many players would still like to see Shuri herself be effected.
This is why I’m delighted to share Belal Batrawy’s deck today. They reached out to me on Twitter to share their “Unorthodox Shuri deck that kills it” which bought them to Infinite last month. and they repeated the feat again this month. I’m not gonna lie, I was expecting another Shuri Zero deck with a few cards changed to be able to call it innovative. OH BOY WAS I WRONG!
Sauron and Patriot together? I see what you did here, and I love it! It’s so original that I figured it would be best to let the creator share his vision on this one:
A few words from Belal:
It’s kinda a wild combo that no one expects. First off, you don’t need Shuri if Patriot appears, and you don’t need Patriot if you pull Sauron, and you don’t need Sauron if you pull Shuri, etc. So the deck is sturdy. But the Turn 5 and 6 combos get crazy. Like dropping Shuri then Maw on Turn 5, then Lizard and Mary on 6. Or skipping 5 and dropping Shuri and Maw and She-Hulk. Or going Red Skull, then either Doom or Ultron on 6. The opponent has no idea what to expect. Let me tell you I’m pretty bad at this game (but I try hard) and even I mopped up with this deck. 4s and 8s all day long.
This is the kind of deck I created this series for.
When in doubt, play the good cards!
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With Shuri Zero slightly losing its touch (and the upcoming patch expected to be the nail in the coffin for the deck), various proactive synergies have started to take more of the spotlight. Among these archetypes is DoomWave, a deck who had to rebound from the Sunspot nerf and found the perfect way to do so with Darkhawk. Korg perfectly replaces Sunspot, and Darkhawk and Rockslide are great 4-cost cards to round up the early curve before transferring to the late game with Wave on Turn 5.
The rest of the deck is largely unchanged. Only White Queen was removed as we have other 4-costs to include. The 5-cost slot is empty due to Wave being the play here most of the time; however, Sandman was seen in the build on some occasions because it provides another disruptive tool if you want to punish combo oriented decks.
I shared a very similar list a few days ago on my Twitter page, only Iceman was replacing Scorpion. Seeing other people have success with the archetype only strengthened my opinion about the possibility of playing other proactive archetypes outside of Shuri Zero.
Is Patriot a flexible archetype?
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Gunny’s Patriot build has been famous for a little while already, even though the Bast and Valkyrie variant made more noise recently. In this more traditional approach to the deck, I mostly want to discuss the inclusion of Leech and Shang-Chi.
For the longest time, Patriot was seen as a rather inflexible archetype since it’s divided between the need to play Vanilla cards and Ongoing abilities. Recently, Valkyrie started being extremely popular because of her ability to counter Shuri Zero. The card made sense in the Patriot archetype as the deck naturally played low power cards, and it needed some help to beat Shuri Zero in the points department. Shortly after, Bast also joined the deck because it provides a similar ability. The deck can go all-in on powerful abilities, including the likes of Iron Man or Mysterio as well.
With Shuri Zero reducing in popularity, Valkyrie has felt less important to the deck’s success. Suddenly the deck had two spots open and there’s no more need to play only low power cards.
For now, it seems like the open spots in the deck went to Shang-Chi and Leech, two overall strong cards in the current metagame. The deck has also started to include The Thing or Abomination once more. It might be for budget reasons that these two are included over other cards, but the fact that Shocker or Cyclops are not included seems to indicate otherwise.
Patriot already has three different variations shared in the new season. It’s probably worth following how it develops.
Diversity Batch
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This week, several players have shared they climbed with various decks, either alternating or changing decks when reaching a new league. Among those different builds, I particularly liked Hela Discard, a deck at its best when completely forgotten. With a big balance patch on the horizon, thinking about unexpected decks can create a nice edge while everyone tries to figure out what is and isn’t good.
Closing Words
Unless you are trying to get to Infinite before Tuesday, you probably don’t want to get too attached to your Tier 1 deck right now. Indeed, if Second Dinner announced Over the Air changes to only touch a few cards each week, the next balance patch should be a different story.
First, the Series Drops are the best we’ve had up until this point. Bast, Valkyrie, and Shuri going to Pool 3 is massive considering the impact those cards had lately. Stature and Ghost also have my curiosity; both cards were always judged too pricey at 6,000 tokens, but never considered bad to begin with. Now at 3,000 tokens, we could see more of these cards and their associated archetypes.
Then, if most people expect Shuri to finally be buried, I’m very curious about the other cards routinely performing very well in Marvel Snap. Sera, Wave, and other similar cards, which are never pushing one single archetype to be overly dominant and instead have several archetypes using them as a key component, wouldn’t be surprising targets for a nerf. With just these three cards suffering a nerf, we could be in for a completely different metagame where a lot of decks would have to find new cards to abuse as win conditions.
Last, and probably what I find the most exciting part of every balance patch, are the buffs. I don’t necessarily expect so many this time as I’m guessing they will keep them for the OTA patches, but there are a few cards on the brink of feeling solid. Ronan the Accuser, Deadpool, and Miles Morales, for example, are win conditions that aren’t so far from being playable. With just a little help to their supporting cast, maybe they could come back on a few people’s radar and be fun to explore once again.
For all those reasons, I would encourage everyone to think outside the box until the patch is revealed. We could have a big surprise awaiting us on Tuesday!
Until then, I hope you’re having a great time in Marvel Snap. As usual, join Marvel Snap Zone on Discord or find me on Twitter where I share decks and opinions about Marvel Snap daily.
Good Game Everyone.
