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Hit Monkey has been incredibly popular this week, largely because the card felt right at home alongside a lot of Pool 3 cards. It is still up in the air whether Bounce or Sera will emerge as Hit Monkey‘s best home, but it is also undeniable that the card had the impact one could expect from a Season Pass card.
Both archetypes with the card have seen both their Win Rate and Cube Rate soar over the past few days, and Sera Control even managed to become more popular than Shuri Zero in some portions of the ladder. Speaking of Shuri Zero: Although the deck has helped several players reach the Infinite rank this week, it will not be featured today. It just wouldn’t make sense as the list might need to go under a bit of a rework with the recent Red Skull and Sunspot nerfs.
We can already see players sharing their opinions on the impact of the nerfs as they try to establish which decks are able to rival Shuri Zero in a points shootout. With the nerfs happening moments before the time I’m writing this, it is too early to figure this out. But I will make sure to put the emphasis on this particular facet in our next Tier List. If you are curious about it before then, I’ll also share some personal opinions on my Twitter.
Anyway, let’s get back to what this piece is about: decks on the rise with the start of the new season. Hit Monkey helped decks who could easily play the card to gain a ton of popularity, but its natural predators also gained some momentum with Electro Ramp performing really well this week. This battle is one to follow closely in the future, especially if Shuri Zero drops in the ranking and opens the way for a brawl to find the next dominant deck.
Let’s explore those with a shot at claiming the throne next in this week’s Infinite Decks!
Hit Monkey makes a good deck better
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After MODOK and Nimrod failed to elevate their synergies to new highs, (although I would argue MODOK is a great card nonetheless), Hit Monkey had the difficult task of shaking the metagame in some way.
While the Bounce archetype had gained a lot of popularity during this first week of play, the big winner of Hit Monkey joining Marvel Snap is probably Sera Control – at least for now. Indeed, the card perfectly fits the deck’s miracle game play and offers another line to victory, enabling the deck to fight on points instead of relying solely on Shang-Chi to turn a lane.
There are many ways to build the deck, but I really enjoyed the take Paint had on the archetype. Paint went back to the Hazmat and Luke Cage duo over the more traditional Killmonger and Enchantress pair. With cheaper cards to play on Turn 6, we should be able to grow Hit Monkey to bigger numbers, and we might even have room for some spicy cards to support the Monkey.
I haven’t seen many people’s excitement about Wong or Absorbing Man alongside Hit Monkey. The Season Pass card mostly wants to be played with Mysterio and other cheap cards, and four energy is a lot for a single card in that context. However, with Zabu in the deck and the ability to pair these two with Hazmat as well, Wong and Absorbing Man feel much less gimmicky in this build compared to other decks shared online.
Thanos Lockjaw develops in the shadows
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While it was the only deck able to rival Shuri Zero‘s win rate before the OTA nerf, Thanos Lockjaw still hasn’t picked up in popularity yet. This, however, hasn’t stopped LambySeries from working on the deck and refining it this season on their way to Infinite. From the looks of it, the deck is now a mix of the original build of Thanos Thor, existing since the beta days, and Thanos Lockjaw Death, the latest variant of Thanos Lockjaw to emerge.
This deck has a lot of highs and a lot of lows since the draw can massively impact its performance. Looking at the recent results from its creator shows that both on the ladder and during tournaments, a good understanding of when to snap and retreat makes this deck a power house.
With Shuri Zero possibly stepping down from being the Queen of the current metagame after Red Skull took another hit on Thursday, I can’t help but wonder if the other titan from the previous format could come back and become the top dog.
Since the tweet from LambySeries, Leech was changed for Magneto in the deck.
Electro Sandman rises in the Bounce meta.
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With Hit Monkey pushing both the Bounce and Sera archetypes to be amongst the most popular decks on the ladder, Sandman is obviously a card to keep in mind. Against a careless opponent who doesn’t recognize your build (or simply thought they could get away with their typical combo play style), Sandman, and Wave in some cases, should turn their lights off and completely ruin their last turn.
As you might have noticed, this deck was shared before the nerf to Sunspot, now a 1/0 card. To be fair, I don’t think it impacts the deck that much as Sunspot wasn’t a core element of the deck. It might still be good enough to run in the deck, but it could just as easily be replaced by another 1-cost card such as Iceman, Nightcrawler, or Ebony Maw.
If you haven’t purchased the Season Pass or have no Series 4 or 5 cards in your collection, this is probably the deck you want to test next.
Other players reaching Infinite
With the new Over The Air balance patches expected every Thursday, I feel like one might be looking for more diversity to climb the ladder, especially as this piece will be released soon after the changes. As such, in case the decks showcased earlier don’t cut it for you or the metagame shifts enough to limit their overall power level, I thought of adding this diversity batch.
I won’t go over the deck here; instead, I’ll simply share some more players who made it to the Infinite rank with fun or unique builds. I am sure you can go ask the creators about their decks on the tweets they made about them and they will gladly answer.
Closing Words
The first week of the season is always one I like to cover in this series. Yes, the builds making it to Infinite in such a short amount of time aren’t the most original archetypes. Players tend to go to their comfort pick first and foremost when it comes to racking up cubes; however, I find it fascinating to check how these archetypes can be built and how people tried to change the expected dynamic of a deck in order to surprise their opponents on the way.
In that sense, I think going back to the Hazmat core of the Sera control deck or coming up with new ways to build Thanos Lockjaw are important steps for the metagame, even if those archetypes were Tier 1 material already. It shows the metagame is changing outside simply trying to find brand-new archetypes to counter the environment. In reality, building the next dominant deck – or even a Tier 2 contender, for what its worth – is extremely difficult, and it often takes a bit of luck in the process as well.
With that in mind, being able to adapt an archetype and bait your future opponents into snapping or accepting your snaps is already quite a deck building accomplishment. So let’s celebrate those who managed to hit the right balance in their decks and made it back to the highest rank in the game.
Want to share your accomplishment and be featured in this series? Feel free to join us on Discord or find me on Twitter.
Good Game Everyone.
