Marvel Snap Conquest Meta Tier List: October 5, 2023 – Elsa Bloodstone Putting on a Show

Welcome to our Marvel Snap Meta Tier List for Conquest mode! Each week, we review the best decks in the ever-changing Marvel Snap metagame. Then we bring you the decklists, and we provide an in-depth report about them. This report contains information like how their ranks are justified, how to play the decks, and how to build the deck with alternate cards to accommodate different collections.

Marvel Snap Conquest Meta Overview

Towards the end of September, the metagame was pushing for a war to seize priority, and the ability to land a devastating Alioth. Then, we were starting to see Loki struggle, as Mobius M. Mobius reduced its ability to cheat Energy. Kitty Pryde was barely played, and combo oriented decks in general became non existent. Elsa Bloodstone hasn’t completely changed that situation, but made quite a mess upon joining Marvel Snap with the new Bloodstone Season.

Indeed, if Iron Patriot is standing tall amongst the archetypes dominating the past week, Shuri Sauron and Evolved DoomWave is also representing themselves pretty well. Move has jumped ship, featuring the now super popular trio of Elsa Bloodstone, Angela and Kitty Pryde, and claimed the top spot in the process. Loki Collector also welcomed Elsa and her friends, which immediately propelled the deck back to Tier 1, as the previous space problem because of the many cheap cards in the deck is now a clear upside.

Bounce, Thor Miracle are two decks which also saw their stock skyrocket over the last few days, abusing the same core with a different way to surround those cards. Although they are both posting worse results than Move or Loki, these two articles have all the traits of difficult builds to master. As such, while they pick up momentum and see more players give them a shot, their win rate might be much lower than it would in the hands of an experienced pilot.

Bounce for example, is ranked in the silent performers because of the many lists currently being played, and shared on social media. These different ideas are making it difficult to see the clear potential of the archetype, and aren’t pushing one list to have a lot of games we can take a look at. Thor Miracle is a little more established, and its best list seems to be decided already. However, considering the deck is still very much navigating under the radar of a large part of the community, it’s hard to say how much of its solid performance is due to its pure strength, or to a surprise effect that will eventually vanish.

Overall, these first few days of Conquest have been a clash between last season, and the one we just started. The edge seems to go to Elsa Bloodstone so far, although the clear winners appear to be the decks which manage to combine synergies from both months, such as Move or Loki Collector.

We will probably need more time to figure out exactly which decks are the best of this early bunch, and which are just getting a buff thanks to being new. However, I don’t think we need more data to say Elsa Bloodstone is a really good card.

Happy Tier List, everyone!

Marvel Snap Conquest Meta Tier List

Tier	Deck	Guide
Silent Performer	Bounce	Guide
Tier 1	Move	Guide
Tier 1	Iron Patriot	Guide
Tier 1	Loki Collector	Guide 🆕
Tier 2	Shuri Sauron	Guide
Tier 2	Evolved DoomWave	Guide 🆕
Tier 2	Deadpool Destroy 🔼	Guide
Tier 2	Thor Miracle 🆕
Tier 3	Discard Dracula 🆕	Guide
Tier 3	Thanos Control 🆕	Guide
Tier 3	Hela Discard 🆕	Guide
Tier 3	Ramp 🔽	Guide
Tier 3	Junk 🆕

Disclaimer and Tier Explanations

Conquest is not played as much as the Ladder, so it is difficult to have a clear representation of the metagame in the game mode. Indeed, there currently is not enough data to precisely assess the power of each deck – even more so when the Proving Grounds have become the default unranked mode for Marvel Snap. Nevertheless, by scanning social media, looking at what players are having success with, and which decks are performing on Ladder, we can form an educated opinion about the best performing decks in Conquest, as well as those worth keeping an eye on.

This Tier List won’t be as detailed as the Ladder one; instead, it will focus on the very best decks right now and a few more worth keeping in mind (similar to the Silent Performers in the Ladder Tier List). I would rather keep this to a shorter list for now so I can provide a more in-depth reasoning, rather than a longer list that I would have to extrapolate on.

Tier 1

Move

Rank Justification:

Anticipated as one of the synergies to benefit a ton from Elsa Bloodstone, Move did not disappoint, immediately taking the top spot in the rankings from Iron Patriot.

The new card has not a mere addition to the deck – helping cards like Nightcrawler or Vision to gain power before being moved later in the match. Elsa also brought Kitty Pryde back in the deck, as well as Captain Marvel. Simply put, every card in the deck loves Elsa Bloodstone, and the new addition has elevated Move to a new level.

There are other lists going around, like one closer to the previous build with Alioth, or some without Miles Morales to play around Mobius M. Mobius. It is early to say which list is the best for Move, but there is no denying is going to be a serious contender in October.

How to Play:

Move aims at building the power of Angela, Kraven to anchor its lanes, while Elsa Bloodstone can spread buffs around to the other cards.

A typical setup for the deck will be to play Move cards behind Angela until the lane is full, so we start receiving buffs from Elsa Bloodstone. Then, we can get into a routine of playing a move card to fill the lane, move it out to Kraven, and playing another one in that spot. Kitty Pryde can also take that role, and be replayed over and over behind Angela while receiving Elsa’s buff every turn.

Once we approach the end of the match, we should be able to assess whether the Angela lane is safe or whether the opponent can still challenge it. Similarly, we should also know how much we can grow Kraven once we move our cards to that lane. With that in mind, we can decide how we want to spread our points, either going big on two lanes, or spreading power across all three locations.

Keep in mind some upsides of Move, which is reaching unplayable locations pretty easily, and keeping the opponent in the dark as to where several cards could end up on game’s end.

Potential Additions:

An interesting build popped in the data, with Wave included, but more intriguing, also Ghost-Spider and Spider-Man 2099:

Iron Patriot

Rank Justification:

Completely unaffected by the patch, and uninterested in running Elsa Bloodstone, Iron Patriot is the same as it was during September. A simple gameplan, lots of points when it works out, and a pretty simple Snap and Retreat strategy.

Plus, the archetype is very far from the Mobius M. Mobius, Alioth, and other Wave considerations of the current metagame. Iron Patriot looks to do its thing, and win games in the process.

While the spotlight is logically on the decks with some shiny new toys to show, Patriot feels like the comfort pick for those who don’t necessarily enjoy very flexible strategies, or enjoy the gameplay those decks are pushing. Reporting at 61% over the first few days of the season, Patriot doesn’t have much to envy to those decks.

How to Play:

Ideally, this deck only has Turn 5 as a flexible option, and that is often where it plays Blue Marvel. Otherwise, it is hard to deviate from this archetype’s go-to play pattern:

• Forge on Turn 2.
• Brood on Turn 3 (with five power thanks to Forge).
• Absorbing Man to copy Brood and create three 4-Power cards on Turn 4.
• Alioth or Doctor Doom on Turn 6. Patriot plus Silver Surfer can also be played here.

When this pattern happens, the deck is usually in the lead for most of the match; therefore, it possesses priority for the last two turns. This allows it to play the Turn 6 card, Alioth or Doctor Doom, in the ideal scenario with no worry of an opposing Alioth ruining its plan.

There are still a few things to keep in mind since this very anticipated scenario can be ruined by some choice tech cards:

• Cosmo counters almost any card in the pattern, and then the opponent will typically have priority going into Turns 3 and 4.
• Space will quickly fill on your side of the board – especially after Brood and Absorbing Man. Be careful not to lock yourself out of future plays.
• Outside this specific pattern, particularly Forge into Brood, the deck can quickly fall behind and be preyed upon by decks that are much stronger with priority available to them. Although Iron Lad and Mister Sinister provide decent replacements in the mid-game.

Potential Additions:

Luke Cage, Cosmo, Legion and similar strong overall cards are simple to include in the deck.

Also, Killmonger has been seeing play, representing a solid play alongside Silver Surfer on turn six. You probably want to replace a 6-cost in that case.

Loki Collector

Rank Justification:

Loki has been on a bit of a difficult run since Mobius M. Mobius joined the game, as it denied the important cost reduction for the deck to be explosive late in the game. With Elsa Bloodstone joining a deck with cheap cards, and Kitty Pryde, Angela, already staples in the past, when Kitty Pryde was a [1/2], the deck is picking up momentum once again.

The biggest difference is the points provided by the cheap cards now that Elsa Bloodstone is in the build. Indeed, where space could have been a problem in the past, it is not an issue at all with Kitty Pryde, Angela and the new season pass card in the deck.

One could even wonder if we are creating enough cards for Loki to be worth it, as there really only is Snowguard and Agent Coulson for the role. So far, this has been the best performing list, but we’ll see how things develop in the future for Loki. In particular, I’m curious to see if Quinjet will be kept out of the deck for long, which is legit in a meta with everyone playing Mobius M. Mobius.

How to Play:

This new take on Loki Collector pair two different synergies to build points, and keep as much flexibility as possible while doing so.

The points are brought by The Collector, Angela and Elsa Bloodstone primarily, all three cards able to bring a lot of points for their cost. The Collector will push you to create cards to grow its power, and might entice for an early Loki on a large hand. Angela is the simple card to abuse, as it just pushes you to play cards behind her, Kitty Pryde in particular, but also Jeff the Baby Land Shark.

Lastly, Elsa Bloodstone allows you to spread power across the various locations, when The Collector and Angela are telling the opponent where the bulk of our points will be. If you can buff Kitty Pryde or Jeff the Baby Land Shark, you can then reposition these cards to get points somewhere else.

If you are able to abuse Angela and Elsa Bloodstone together, you can wait to play Loki on turn five, only using the card to build a solid turn six with the opponent’s cards, as you build up your points total another way until then.

The rest of the deck can be considered support, serving to protect our important cards such as Luke Cage and Cosmo, or build The Collector with Agent Coulson, Loki, and Snowguard while providing different options to play with.

Potential Additions:

Cable, Maria Hill and other card generating abilities are obviously a consideration in this deck.

Legion and other standalone cards are also common inclusions, but were taken out for the Elsa Bloodstone package this week.

Tier 2

Shuri Sauron

Rank Justification:

Elsa Bloodstone has helped other decks increase their points potential, which can lead to some close battles for Shuri, when it was a walk in the park in the past. Nevertheless, Shuri remains one of those strong, reliable decks most players already know how to play. As such, in a similar vein as Iron Patriot, Shuri Sauron kept being decently popular in Conquest, while putting up a solid win rate, although a notch below those in Tier 1.

Also, for yet another Tier List, Alioth has been the twelfth card in Shuri Sauron, bringing a different approach to the otherwise very point driven gameplan. While Enchantress had the ability to serve as a counter card as well, Alioth is much safer, especially if you know you got a lane under control with a 28 power Red Skull there. As Bounce and other explosive decks are back lately, Alioth feels even better, able to turn them off on a lane completely.

How to Play:

Shuri Sauron is based around the idea of cancelling negative Ongoing abilities with Sauron and abusing Shuri to create a huge amount of points. In that regard, the deck is very rigid in the mid-game since Turns 3, 4, and 5 are almost always the same: Sauron → Shuri → any card worth doubling the power. Often times, Turn 2 will also be dedicated to Armor as a way to prevent an opposing Shang-Chi from ruining your plans. Speaking of Shang-Chi, Vision is another way to play around it, as hitting a moving target isn’t so simple.

This leaves only Turn 1 and Turn 6 to be truly flexible, with Nebula or Zero taking up the 1-Cost slot and Taskmaster usually being the default Turn 6 play alongside Ebony Maw.

If this very straightforward approach can lead to a ton of points on two lanes, it also often doesn’t equate to a lot of cubes. Indeed, unless you are Snapping aggressively, the opponent can see the points coming and will rarely stay in the game once you show Shuri (and they can’t handle it). This creates two important factors to take into consideration when playing Shuri Sauron:

• You have to accept Snaps early in the game, especially when Sauron and Shuri show up.
• You need to find lines of play even when you don’t have the best play pattern with the deck, especially when the opponent does not Snap. Even without Shuri, the deck can develop a solid amount of points, and Enchantress is able to steal a few wins.

Potential Additions:

Enchantress and America Chavez are the other two common inclusions in the deck.

Evolved DoomWave

Rank Justification:

With almost everyone running Mobius M. Mobius, I have a hard time understanding why Evolved DoomWave keeps being a top five deck, especially in Conquest. Sure, the High Evolutionary core is still very strong, and apart from High Evolutionary it self, every card in this deck is very strong. Also, one could play Wave earlier on in the match, before the opponent gets their Mobius M. Mobius in play, such as turn three or four, and just get a Doctor Doom or Evolved Hulk on the board the next turn.

Even if the deck still packs quite some power, as Bounce or Loki Collector might gain momentum in the near future (basically any archetype with the Kitty Pryde, Angela and Elsa Bloodstone trio in it), I also expect Luke Cage to be quite popular in those decks too, and that might be too much to overcome for Evolved DoomWave, in addition to Mobius M. Mobius.

How to Play:

Similar to other High Evolutionary decks, Evolved DoomWave tries to create power while not spending all of its energy every turn. If you have Evolved Hulk in hand, one energy is worth two power, plus the other bonuses you would get from the cards you have on the board. If you have at least two of your four cards (Sunspot, Evolved Misty Knight, Evolved Cyclops, Evolved Hulk), it is usually worth looking for a play that leaves an energy to spare. Otherwise, Sunspot or Evolved Misty Knight alone are rarely worth the deal of one energy for one power.

More often than not, the turns you are likely to leave some energy on the table are Turns 4 and 5, which are typically dedicated to Evolved Cyclops and Wave, respectively (although you might want to play Mobius M. Mobius on Turn 5 to protect your cheap cards from Wave). Turns 2 and 3 will depend on your hand, but you tend to play a 1-Cost, 1-Cost, 2-Cost pattern over the first three turns. Then, you will naturally float some energy on Turn 6 if you played Wave.

Outside of this signature High Evolutionary game play, the rest of the deck is centered around Wave limiting what can be done on Turn 6, which usually rewards the player in the lead. By that point, you have two options: go tall with Evolved Hulk, or go wide with Doctor Doom. With a read on where your opponent might play, Alioth is another card you can play here. If you happen to have several of those big cards in hand, you could also consider playing Wave on Turn 4 to be able to play back to back 6-Cost cards.

Another big strength of this deck is its ability to play into any kind of location and impact those that have been locked during the whole match. Indeed, Doctor Doom can easily reach most locations, and Jeff the Baby Land Shark is a popular inclusion in the deck as well. Then, Sunspot, Evolved Misty Knight, and Evolved Cyclops are also able to impact a location after it’s impossible to play there, like after Storm has locked it down. In that regard, knowing early on where your opponent might be playing some of their space limiting cards can have a big impact on the match.

Potential Additions:

Iron Lad and Storm have been a popular duo in the deck lately, replacing America Chavez and Cosmo usually.

Deadpool Destroy

Rank Justification:

The metagame finally opened, in particular no Elsa Bloodstone is playing Armor right now, and finally, Destroy managed to come back into Tier 2. There are still some hurdles to overcome, such as Mobius M. Mobius turning off Death’s cost reduction, or Alioth remaining a card to dodge on turn six. As such, Destroy remains a notch below our top five, as Conquest can be very punishing when you have a crushing weakness amongst the popular cards or archetypes.

Nevertheless, the environment looks much better for Destroy overall. In addition to Armor being less prevalent, Killmonger also found some nice targets to remove with Kitty Pryde returning as a very popular card. The 58% win rate, its highest compared to any week in September, is proof that it’s looking a bit better for Deadpool.

How to Play:

If finding Deadpool in your opening hand, buffing it with Forge or Hulk Buster and destroying it over and over until turn six is the main concept with this deck, there are other ways to score lots of points.

First, it is important to understand the role of X-23, which is to give energy on specific turns, so we can break the expected timing our opponent think we will cash in on some cards. For example, going for Deadpool plus Taskmaster on turn five can throw off an opponent, while opening for a Knull play on the following turn. Similarly, if you destroy X-23 on five, you can play both Deadpool plus Knull on turn six.

As we are playing a deck that is easily recognizable, and well known in the community, finding those unusual ways to develop our play-patterns will throw the opponent off.

Once we understood these key concepts around our 1-costs, the rest of the deck is really about dodging the opponent’s traps. Death needs to be played as soon as possible if you suspect your opponent to play Mobius M. Mobius. Killmonger can be used to destroy opposing cards, not just for our Deadpool.

Also, Forge plus Taskmaster on the same card represent a bonus eight power, which alone can be enough to create a decent Taskmaster target, in addition to Venom also serving that role.

Potential Additions:

America Chavez can help for reliability. Bucky Barnes is a great destroy target.

Thor Miracle

Rank Justification:

On the rise at the end of last season, alongside other decks which benefited from Mobius M. Mobius shutting down Wave, Thor Miracle received a massive boost with Elsa Bloodstone. Not only is the deck doing the shenanigans as the others, it can actually start buffing early with Wasp and Yellowjacket available to fill a lane for no cost.

While it looks like a fun deck at first, the archetype posted a 57% win rate in Conquest since the patch, enough to consider it more than simply fun. Compared to the other decks using the Elsa Bloodstone core on this report, Loki and Move have proved to be the strongest archetypes to welcome those cards so far. Yet, if these two will likely be the frontrunners for the time being, Thor Miracle should be one of the most surprising, and disconcerting deck to face currently, as very feel people can assess its potential when playing against it.

How to Play:

Thor Miracle aims at building an absolute killer of a turn six, with Hit Monkey alongside a plethora of cheap cards. In order to get there, the deck has a few cards it wants to set up during the match, such as Angela, Thor and Bishop. Then, with turn five dedicated to Jane Foster Mighty Thor, Thor Miracle is all set for the fireworks. Against a deck you suspect to run Wave, make sure you also have Mobius M. Mobius in play by turn four, so you can safely play your 5-cost card and not get punished.

The big consideration for the last turn of play is where to place our cards, which is heavily impacted by our set up, and what we expect from our opponent.

First, we need to look at where we placed our most important cards. Indeed, if Thor and Bishop can challenge a lane on their own, as their power will grow from Mjölnir or the other cards we play, we have to play behind Angela to grow her power. Then, we also have to decide where will Hit Monkey go, as it will represent our biggest source of points the opponent does not have information about already.

With these information, we can then spread the support cards in the remaining space. Be careful about Yellowjacket if you don’t have Luke Cage.

In order to determine where to place our cards, we need to decide whether we want to build two very strong lanes, or spread our points across all three. As a rule of thumb, spread out against a reactive deck, to mitigate the impact of their counter cards, and pick two lanes against another proactive deck, to maximize your chances of winning the points shootout.

Potential Additions:

Bast and Valkyrie are two cards easy to consider in this deck.

Tier 3

I didn’t expect to see this many decks in Tier 3 this week, as the decks around Elsa Bloodstone were discussed a lot on social media for the past two days. It is a nice surprise to see various synergies find some relevance in this current meta, possibly inspiring those who could not afford to get the Premium Season Pass this time around.

Amongst those decks we can see two distinctive sides, Discard archetypes and archetypes looking to leverage Alioth through limiting the opponent’s ability to play as they wish. Most of these decks were around the 52% win rate mark, which is decent, but probably the floor to consider a deck playable if you wish to farm some tickets in Conquest.

However, I am curious about both Ramp and Junk ability to rise in the next few days, particularly if Elsa Bloodstone keeps pushing archetypes like Bounce or Thor Miracle. Against these two, Sandman, or locking the opponent out of available space, could be extremely powerful.

We will have to see if the community picks up on those decks and considers them good enough to get a bigger sample size. Who knows, maybe we’ll have a Sandman meta next week. I doubt it…

Discard Dracula

Thanos Control

Hela Discard

Ramp

Junk

Closing Words

Just like Loki in September, the new Season Pass card doesn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, it could very well have a similar impact to Loki, and warp the metagame around it for some time, especially as the future releases do not look able to be compared to Alioth. However, Elsa Bloodstone is pushing several archetypes to feel really strong. Move, Bounce, Loki… We have several decks using the new card, which might give a better sense of diversity compared to Loki taking the metagame hostage for a while.

Also, these have just been the first few days with Elsa Bloodstone in the game, and many people said it would be strong, so many decks were shared across the community to test with the card. Already, we can see decks like Junk, Ramp or Destroy gain some momentum, which could indicate some players are trying to abuse the current trend, looking to punish 1-cost cards, or lock the opposing side of the board to limit Elsa’s ability.

As usual, the first week is pretty difficult to navigate, and we can only draw limited conclusion from the early data we are getting. When we revisit the ranked ladder Tier List this weekend, new trends might have emerged, or at least part of the community will have agreed on the best Elsa Bloodstone decks to run. Until then, unless there is a deck we enjoy amongst the Early Performers, we can only trust our instincts, and test our ideas until we feel we are onto something.

I’m curious to know if you are enjoying these first few days of October. Let me know in the comments below, or find me on the Marvel Snap Zone community Discord, you can also follow my Twitter page where I share decks and biased opinions about the game.

Good Game Everyone.