Infinite Decks of the Week – Diversity in Week Two!

Looking for a sweet decklist to climb the Ladder? Every week, we scour the community for decks and highlight the interesting ones that reach the Infinite rank on the Marvel Snap ranked Ladder. We also provide commentary on each list, which allows us to discuss how the overall Marvel Snap metagame is developing and how these players took advantage of it.

Overview of the Week

When I do the Infinite Decks of the Week article series, the second week tends to be the most boring week in the season. The same decks from week get repeated a lot because the players are influenced by those who reached Infinite in week one. However, this season is shaping up differently, it seems, as it was pretty easy to find some original brews to showcase in this column.

In the Tier List reports, we could already see a little more diversity than we saw during the past two seasons – probably because Ms. Marvel added a few archetypes to the mix rather than pushing for a single powerful deck. But if those reports focus on the Infinite rank and the archetypes performing at the highest levels of Marvel Snap, this trend seems to also have impacted the ranks leading up to Infinite. Indeed, I barely saw any of the usual suspects on the way to Infinite, and I was actually surprised by some decks or some peculiar cards that I thought we would not see for the time being.

Gladiator, for example, is a card I have been quite disappointed by. I was ready to quit on it because I was convinced the support just wasn’t there yet (and triggering the opponent’s On Reveal cards was too much of a drawback). Black Knight is one of the worst cards to have released in the past few seasons, and it quickly disappeared from the Marvel Snap landscape… until it punched its Infinite ticket this week. She-Hulk has been struggling in the InSheNaut archetype lately, and its buff felt like it was about to go to waste, but someone cooked a different deck around the card got to the Infinite rank as well.

Really, this second week of the season felt as refreshing as the last one where we saw all the creative brews make it to the game’s highest rank, and I’m loving it!

Gladiator Enters the Arena

Many of my tests with Gladiator have been disappointing, to say the least. Plus, with Annihilus coming next week, I was saving the pleasure of playing Junk for that moment (although I was going to try Gladiator in there as well). It seems like Rasendriya beat me to it, though. They already found a pretty good Junk list to play with Gladiator.

Of course, you might question how much of the heavy lifting Rogue and Shang-Chi accomplished in this meta, and I’m also curious about the inclusion of Klaw. As for the rest of the deck, it looks like a pretty standard Junk build with the usual suspects in the 1- to 4-Cost slots.

So why is Gladiator good here? Three reasons:

• Your goal is to fill the opponent’s board, which means you should be able to create a situation where Gladiator‘s On Reveal can be cancelled because the lane is full. If the card loses its battle, you can always Shang-Chi there later on.
• You are a disruptive deck that typically lacks points when compared to a lot of other archetypes. It doesn’t pay off in a lot of situations, but you can sometimes destroy the opponent’s key card and just win a cube.
• You will usually get to know what your opponent plays on Turn 3 thanks to Gladiator revealing some information about their deck. Once again, it isn’t a big upside, but it might help you make a few decisions in the second part of the match.

Is Gladiator a great card? I’m still leaning towards no. However, there are some pretty cool use cases for the card, and more support is coming soon!

Win streak to infinite

Gladiator is a perfect fit for a junk deck, he's like Doc Ock lite

Rogue to counter Ms. Marvel (or Hawk, DD, etc)
Klaw to counter Alioth#MarvelSnap pic.twitter.com/vi1yYtpKoR

— Rasendriya F (@f_rasendriya) November 16, 2023

Discard is the Best Archetype on the Way to Infinite!

I don’t think this is a secret to anyone anymore: climbing to Infinite can sometimes include a few bots along the way. It isn’t pretty, but if you steal a couple of eight cube wins, you can boost your confidence, which sends you on a good run with a positive mindset. Well, is Discard probably the best archetype in Marvel Snap for exploiting bots and getting them to Snap while they have absolutely no chance of winning the game.

Why? Because the deck has plenty of cards with power that is very different from what is written in the orange box in the top right corner. Cards like Dracula, Morbius, and Hela, in particular, will completely mislead your artificial opponent and cause them to Snap. Also, did you know you can do this against humans, too?

This is a little trickier, but it also works well to get a couple of unadvised Snaps from fellow players. Indeed, Discard Dracula has regained a lot of its strength since Mobius M. Mobius got nerfed and it could abuse Swarm once again. Unfortunately, the nature of the deck leads it to be pretty predictable for anyone who has been playing Marvel Snap for a few months. But you can throw a twist in it, like with Hela and Ghost Rider.

Indeed, when you see a Blade or Morbius early on, you will immediately recognize Discard and think about Dracula, Apocalypse, Swarm, and MODOK. However, when they see you discard your Dracula, they might think something went wrong for you, or maybe that you are a bot yourself. This leads them to make the mistake of Snapping.

Imagine their face when you bring it back with Hela and steal their cubes.

Discard is fun when you can throw a little twist in it.

Another Marvel Snap Infinite, took me about two days again, this time with Discard Hela mostly but I did play some SheNaught too. LAIC bound later today! 🙂 pic.twitter.com/NLLfS9WAFG

— TSS | Cyrus Davis (@CyrusDavisTCG) November 15, 2023

She-Hulk Finds a New Home

InSheNaut has been struggling lately. The buff to She-Hulk was about to fall by the wayside since that was the only archetype for the card so far. But, thanks to Mark Gray, you might have another reason to enjoy the beautiful Peach Momoko variant you got with a She-Hulk combo deck featuring Moon Girl!

Here, the concept is fairly simple; it somewhat resembles what InSheNaut is trying to do, except you are a bit more flexible at the cost of a lower points ceiling. Ideally, you are looking to duplicate She-Hulk and Evolved Hulk with Moon Girl, have Quinjet in play, pass Turn 5, and slam two She-Hulks and Evolved Hulk together on Turn 6 for close to 40 points. To help with that plan, you have Magik for an extra draw, as well as Armor and Cosmo to protect yourself from Shang-Chi, Alioth, and Killmonger. Last, you also play America Chavez to help with reliably finding your cards in time.

What I like most about this deck is how flexible this toolbox is. You can easily find four or five flexible cards in the deck. Indeed, as long as you are packing your combo, you can decide to include cards for extra protection, reliability, disruption… Cards like Evolved Cyclops, Evolved Shocker, possibly even Mirage to go with Quinjet are all valid inclusions. This deck looks like a giant toolbox!

On the way to Infinite, you are often pressed to change decks as soon as something isn’t going your way, but this typically results in even more cubes lost. If, however, you have a very flexible deck to play with, you can keep its structure intact and just change the support cards around to adapt to your environment. Then you don’t have to learn a new deck from zero, as your end goal and general strategy has remained the same.

Didn't have much success with it before, but used this deck on a run to Infinite in @MARVELSNAP last night. Opponents often underestimated it and gave up 8 cubes.
Guess I just needed to watch more @JeffHoogland to get more patient and learn how to count. 😁 pic.twitter.com/W18PPu2tLi

— Mark Gray (@bashdazzle) November 15, 2023

Black Knight Brings Fun to the Climb

I wasn’t expecting Black Knight to be part of a Week Two Infinite Decks of the Week. It had an incredibly bad performance when it released, which lead to the card being left for dead for the past month. Week Two is also fairly fast, and, as I said, Black Knight is considered one of the worst card to have released over the past couple of months. Suffice it to say I’m impressed.

Looking at the deck, though, we can see plenty of cards that are able to work well with the 1-Cost card. Three of them represent double digit power, and Black Cat can get you a quick nine power Ebony Blade. Then, Zabu helps with your energy and opens an explosive Turn 6 with another 4-Cost alongside the blade. I’m pretty sure Ghost Rider plus Ebony Blade easily represent a solid 25 the majority of the time.

One downside I will note is the fairly high average cost of this deck, which means it could be difficult to fit Black Knight in after Turn 3 if you don’t find Zabu early on. Then, apart from playing it on Turn 5 alongside a 4-Cost card, you might just have to pass on Black Knight for that game. This probably means that this deck needs to be played with a huge emphasis on your Snaps and Retreats. It’s very likely that no one will expect what you are trying to do, so you should be able to leverage this and get much more than you should out of your wins.

Mid-Season (?) Infinite! With Black Knight! Saw @DeraJN playing it and ended up climbing from 93-100 with it. Ended up with enough boosters to finally split my ultimate Ghost Rider to boot! #MarvelSnap pic.twitter.com/9hXC5z5q5A

— iamdew (@IDew802) November 15, 2023

Closing Words

This season is slowly shaping up to be a very enjoyable one with much more diversity than we saw in the previous two. At the top of the Ladder, I keep seeing posts on social media about how Loki is still obnoxiously strong and needs a second nerf. However, in every other sphere of Marvel Snap (and also the data I see when I prepare a Tier List), the game looks to be globally much more enjoyable, and this week’s decks have certainly contributed to that.

Ms. Marvel is having a big impact on the metagame, that’s for sure. However, even though the card is now almost two weeks old, we keep seeing various archetypes with it come and go as players search for a little niche that it can exist in. This isn’t simple, as the current average deck appears to be pretty powerful. Still, these original brews are showing that climbing to Infinite is easier than it seems, and you don’t necessarily have to play a reputable, strong archetype in order to climb. In particular, I think disruption cards are very important right now. They can add to an already unexpected archetype and lead to a situation that the opponent can’t navigate properly. The logical thing to do in that case is focus on themselves, which opens those counter cards to dismantle their game plan.

I hope you’re having fun with the game, and may your climb to the Infinite rank be a successful one! As usual, if you need anything, you can find me on the Marvel Snap Zone community Discord, or follow my Twitter page where I share decks and biased opinions about the game.

Good Game Everyone.