Infinite Decks of the Week: Rise of the Phoenix Week 2 – Just Have a Plan

It’s no secret, the climb to the Infinite rank on the ladder has gotten increasingly easier over time, compared to what it was last year. As such, the first week of the season is usually quite competitive, with many looking to grind back to the infinite rank, and therefore picking the established decks in the metagame. However, the second week has started looking more like what the later weeks were in the past, with more creative brews, and various archetypes punching their ticket to the three digit rank.

This week, I want to discuss something essential in card games, especially in the fast-paced game of Marvel Snap, with only six turns: Having a plan.

In the race to the Infinite rank, which is very much a grind based challenge, the ability to maintain a base level of play for long periods of time is necessary in order to collect the necessary Cubes to climb the ladder. Indeed, you can be the best player in the world, you have to play a certain amount of time in order to get to the Infinite rank. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter how good you are, you won’t get in.

There is much more to the gameplay than just playing our cards in the order we intended when building the deck, while dodging the annoying locations on the way. Coming in with a plan serves mostly as a foundation for the game, which allows us to think about all the situational information, as we always have something to fall back on at worse. As such, coming in every game with a plan will help maintain that minimum level of play over long periods of time.

Also, some decks make it easier to figure out their plan, while others will have multiple lines of play available, which can be a little tricky once you start fatiguing, or simply aren’t paying close attention to every game. For that reason, I picked decks with a straightforward guiding principle. One that should be simple enough to remember at all times, but not constraining enough so that you can’t impact the game as a pilot.

None of these decks are considered the best in the game, or even competing to be in that conversation. However, these decks should limit how much information you need in order to be played well enough to climb. This way, you can focus on your Snap and retreats, which is the most important part of the game to grind the ladder.

Build a Very Synergistic Deck

Ronan Infinite

Created by den

, updated 9 months ago

8

2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

8x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Starter Card

2.8

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.2

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

The buff to Nick Fury sparked a fire of hope for many players, who believe the Devil Dinosaur synergy would come back swinging as a result. Unfortunately, the deck has kept struggling a bit compared to the Bounce and Lockjaws of the world.

Something Devil Dinosaur has for it, though, is the simple gameplan we are looking for today. Indeed, apart from Cosmo, which you have to think about where you want to position it, either to protect your cards from a Shang-Chi or Enchantress, or to block some of your opponent’s card for their own synergy. Every other card, apart from maybe Maximus and Mystique, representing a nice turn six play, can be played on curve.

• Agent 13 or Quinjet are both solid 1-cost card you can play on game’s start.
• All three 2-cost cards can be played on the second turn. Simply play the one which support the 5-cost you have in hand.
• Agent Coulson can be slammed without much afterthought, while you could still play Cosmo or Maximus otherwise.
• Turn four, you can either mix a double two, a three and a one, or just play Nick Fury if you have enough space in hand.
• Turn five is dedicated to one of our big guys.
• Turn six is the other big guy, or Mystique plus another three most likely.

Sure, this plan is far from being as complex as Bounce, and probably less unpredictable than Lockjaw in its points spread. However, it is also more difficult to mess up from a pilot standpoint. So even if you might lose a few games because your point ceiling is lower than some, you might win more Cubes overall because you can be confident in your Snaps.

Abuse the Latest Trend

Toxic Infinite

Created by den

, updated 9 months ago

2

2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

7x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

2.5

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

2.6

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

High Evolutionary was nerfed in the previous patch, logically leading to the card seeing less play than it did before. The card still remains amongst the most used strategies in Marvel Snap, but is now at a level where it isn’t demanding everyone to run specific counter cards. This is exactly what Garfield abused, with a deck usually heavily countered by Luke Cage, a staple in the game ever since High Evolutionary was released.

However, even if it might come back later on, the few days after the patch were enough for Garfield to sneak into the infinite rank with their Toxic Junk deck. Once again, this is a quite straightforward plan, where we need to win a lane through filling it with worthless cards for our opponent, while we compete on points for the other one. It creates a repeating pattern we can use game after game, where we focus on the junk lane first, then work our way to playing loads of points on the second lane.

Cherry on the cake, most players won’t keep Luke Cage in their hand until the very last turn, instead playing it on turn two, or a few turns later at worse. As such, the pilot should have the information on whether Hazmat is a good idea to bet on or not, in order to lower our opponent’s score.

Commit to a Gimmick

Infinite Tribunal

Created by den

, updated 9 months ago

2

1x Collection Level 1-14

4x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

3x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

1x Starter Card

3.4

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.7

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

This is a deck I expected to see when The Living Tribunal released, but never really worked, as it is kind of an easy one to counter. Invisible Woman serves as a bit of a protection to Ongoing hate, which completely cruses the deck, but also brings that surprise element to the deck.

Ideally, the goal is to get The Living Tribunal down plus Iron Man and Onslaught together, to create a huge bag of points for The Living Tribunal to spread around. Another way to abuse the deck is to get Mister Fantastic and Klaw together, which we can then duplicate with Onslaught as well to impact multiple lanes. I would guess Warpath is the default last card on the lane then, giving you two simple turn three, four, five, and six play-patterns to abuse.

Let’s be honest, this deck is very shaky, as Ongoing hate cards will ruin your day big time. However, with Enchantress and Rogue barely played lately, and Invisible Woman hiding our archetype well, as a lot of decks are running the card lately. The environment is looking pretty nice to abuse this kind of strategy.

The Gold Standard for Enforcing a Gameplan

Infinite ramp

Created by den

, updated 9 months ago

1

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

6x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Series 4 Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 4)

3x Series 5 Ultra Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 5)

3.8

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.9

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

When you talk about coming into each game with a gameplan, trying to stick to it against most opponents. Electro Ramp probably is the gold standard in that regard, the archetype basically enforcing the same strategy every game, based around gaining Energy and abusing it. This particular deck is a little more flexible than your average Electro Ramp, as it includes also Galactus and Knull, in order to have a secondary gameplan, if the Sandman route wouldn’t do the trick.

I have to admit, seeing Doctor Doom and Galactus in the same deck isn’t something I expected to see when looking for decks reaching the highest rank in the game. Indeed, both cards seem to be complete opposites, and we don’t even have the usual Odin or Arnim Zola in order to abuse Doctor Doom otherwise.

However, this two different play-patterns can also make it easier to make a decision in the end. Depending on your hand and opponent, just pick the one you feel more suited to the situation. Obviously, you won’t be able to push the ramp, or the Galactus plan as far as if you had a full deck built around it, but do you want to?

Let me explain this one. When playing on ladder, your opponent will usually make educated guesses on the rest of your deck based on what they saw already. As such, as long as you show enough for them to believe you are a certain deck, they probably will put you on that deck, ignoring other fringe scenarios. This opens avenues to punish their certitudes, making these oddballs much more effective than they should, if the opponent knew what was coming.

It’s outside the box, but it’s not completely crazy either.

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

Negative Deadpool Infinite

Created by den

, updated 9 months ago

3

2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

7x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Series 4 Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 4)

1x Starter Card

3.2

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

1.2

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

The Marvel Snap metagame changes constantly. Through OTA hotfixes or the monthly patch balance updates, Second Dinner manages to shift the power of the stronger decks regularly during a season, or at least try to do so. However, they rarely nerf a deck which isn’t considered a problem, or does not break any popularity or performance threshold.

Therefore, if you have a deck you feel particularly good with, that is not getting impacted from one patch to another, you might have no reason to change it. As you play the deck over time, you will develop immense comfort with the deck, as well as a great adaptability to different environments and opponents. This improvement over long periods of time leads to some players being able to reach Infinite with the same deck for several months in a row.

It’s only normal, as the pilot will have acquired a deep understanding of the deck and how it functions. Also, through extensively playing the deck, one will naturally be able to play it for hours without its level of play declining, a great skill for ladder grinding.

If you follow some competitive players, you might have noticed most of them have a pet deck they constantly keep going back to whenever they don’t know what to play. This is exactly the same here, as the comfort built over time will be our best asset whenever we don’t know what to play, or feel lost in a new metagame.

Closing Words

As we enter the second part of the season, and with a lot of us being bored playing Bounce or Lockjaw for a while now, many players are sharing their will to find different strategies to abuse, as a way to keep having fun with Marvel Snap. Unfortunately, changing your strategy will often correlate with a worse performance, at least during the learning period, where you are bound to make mistakes in order to get a grasp of your new deck. While this is completely normal, and a core part of learning new skills, card games being a lot of trial and error in the end. Some are finding this process very frustrating, leading up to just not playing anymore until impactful changes are made to the metagame.

I don’t have a perfect solution for this, and would actually vouch for a break from time to time, especially if you are not finding any more fun over several play sessions. However, if the problem is that you are struggling with learning a new strategy, and getting frustrated because the results take too long to get, picking up a deck with a simple gameplan might be a great way to work on that learning ability. It doesn’t mean you have to pick a boring deck, which only works when one, super specific play-pattern gets pulled off.

Instead, try to find archetype which have a core idea that is easy to understand. Something you can easily summarize in one sentence, which you will carry with you in every single game. With that foundation, you will be able to play the deck at higher level faster, while also maintaining it for longer periods of time.

As usual, if you would need to get in touch, for a question or coaching inquiry, find me on the Marvel Snap Zone community Discord, or follow my Twitter page, where I share decks and biased opinions about the game, to share those with me.

Good Game Everyone.