Table of Contents
Introduction
We skipped a week in our usual scheduled tier list update, but so many things happened in Marvel Snap that it was impossible to deliver something accurate last week. With a bit of time into Season 3 Heroes for Hire, and the recent balance patch making their presence felt, we feel ready to give our first takes on what the metagame looks like now. Once again, thanks to Dunkoro for helping out with this article and taking care of several decks, and to every other player that helped refine the lists and gave feedback on the final rankings.
Compared to what I expected upon seeing Daredevil and the changes in the August 9th patch, I was expecting more of a shakeup at the top of the Marvel Snap food chain. However, even though Nakia will be missed in several archetypes, we haven’t seen anything new dominate the ladder so far.
Instead, it is how each deck has adapted and who benefited the most from the changes that will be the emphasis of this week’s tier list. Archetypes stay the same, but the metagame keeps moving, and we’re here to tell you everything about it.
Marvel Snap Meta Tier List – August 15, 2022
💡 You can always go to our Tier List section and view the latest updates, and more! Check out our new collection tracker, add your cards, and see what decks you can build or find a deck in our database!
Tier 1
DeathWave
den
DeathWave continues to shine at the highest tier of play, with its powerful disruption abilities coupled with huge point generation potential.
The addition of Wave to Pool 3 makes the deck more accessible now, as people who didn’t buy the season pass two seasons ago, can now access this powerhouse of a card. She makes sure most decks would only play 1 card on the next turn, while enabling us to play Death and a 6-cost card alongside one another.
The new addition to the deck appears to be Rescue, as an easy-to-turn-on 4/9, that fills a previously mysterious slot in the deck (Rockslide and White Queen were long in the running due to being solid 4/6es).
Due to the ever-increasing prevalence of Magik, the deck became slightly more top-heavy, adding Leader as an additional 6-cost, which lends the deck much more power on turn 7. Otherwise, the deck would probably run out of gas by turn 6, and give basically a free turn to an opponent prepared for an additional round. Additionally, Leader is exceptionally powerful at winning mirror-matches.
The expected She-Hulk did not appear, leaving Daredevil in the Season Pass instead. The change lowered the expected power of this deck slightly, but make no mistake, it’s still just as much if not more so of a powerhouse. Indeed, with most of the competing decks having lost Nakia at the very least, DeathWave seems to be on the winning side of the recent changes.
Sera Magik
den
Magik and Sera is a very versatile deck relying on the power of the two namesake cards to provide huge cost/value efficiency. The deck can quite easily out-scale most other decks in pure points, or focus instead on teched options to counter your opponent’s 6th turn on the unexpected 7th turn.
The core cards of the deck; Angela, Bishop, Mystique, Iron Man, Sera, Magik are the only “mandatory” parts of the deck. This small 6 card core leave a lot of room for tech cards, allowing the deck to be capable of adapting to the metagame. It could contain Wong and more On Reveal cards, Red Skull and Shang-Chi… You could even slot in Mister Negative, considering some core cards work amazingly with him and none of them are actively bad if you do not draw into the Mister Negative.
The deck’s only major change with the most recent balance change is that it no longer is worthwhile to play Nakia in it. But considering this has been the case for almost every deck so far, the nerf didn’t impact the relative power of Sera Magik so far.
Other Takes on Sera Magik
den
den
Mister Negative
den
A tier 1 for some, a good tier 2 for others, evaluating Mister Negative has a lot to do with your definition of a good deck. If you are looking for a reliable deck, which will consistently execute its gameplan and give you similar results from a game to another, don’t even bother with Mister Negative. On the other end, if you think Marvel Snap is best played when 8 Cubes are on the line, even if it means conceding other games, you definitely should get your hands on this deck.
Nakia was played in the deck before the patch, but cutting it didn’t feel like such a sacrifice, to be honest. In this iteration of the build, Gambit is the replacement, as it synergizes with Wong as well as our featured card.
The change of a card changed nothing about how the deck plays. The priority still is to find Mister Negative, drawing into it or using Lockjaw and Jubilee for help. Once we have switched our deck’s power and energy, we’re looking for the highest possible high roll over the remaining turns.
Logically, you should draw into 2, or 3 if you use Magik, cards that have been touched by Mister Negative, which should be enough to secure 2 locations alongside the cards in our hand. If possible, we would like to hide our “negative” cards as long as possible, playing them only on the final turn, to keep some unpredictability.
Tier 2
Sera Miracle
den
Another deck that was forced to cut Nakia out of the starting line-up, but which doesn’t appear to be doing much worse because of it. Hellcow was the real hit to the deck, but in the end, Sword Master mitigates the loss very well, and Colleen Wing could also be included for energy purposes.
With a different way of using Sera‘s passive compared to the Sera Magik build above, the miracle version uses the Discard synergy to create explosive plays on turn 6.
In a typical game, we would try to go Okoye on turn 2, Bishop on turn 3, Angela on turn 4 and Sera on turn 5. With this setup, we can do basically anything on turn 6, and it should lead to a ton of power. The 2 big points of emphasis are Mojo, as we need to guess where she is most likely to get her +6 bonus power. The Ghost Rider combo with Lady Sif if possible to guarantee discarding America Chavez (16 points combo for just four energy), otherwise with Sword Master.
Other cards in the deck are simply picked because they are the highest power contributors for their cost.
SandWave Lockdown
den
A new archetype on our list the last time, SandWave managed to stay relevant during the end of Season 2 and the start of Season 3. In this build, the goal is to get to a point where the lategame is decided by playing only 1 card per turn, either with Sandman being in play, or with Wave followed by Odin. Because our deck is built with the best multi-lane cards in the game, we should be looking great to win 2 out of 3 locations in that specific setup.
Through combining the Move synergy with Nightcrawler and Captain Marvel, and the ability to impact several lanes at once with White Tiger, Doctor Doom, Mister Fantastic, Klaw, and Leader, SandWave simply creates a setup it is highly favored to win.
With the patch hitting Nakia, decks aren’t skipping turns until turn 3 as often as they did, which sometimes can be a problem as opponents could be developing more in the early game.
However, against other decks on our list, like Mister Negative, Sera builds or Death Wave to name a few, Sandman on 4 can immediately throw off the opponent and set a dominant position for us.
Ironically, the biggest issue with this deck is when playing against bots, as those tend to be using their energy most of the time.
Hela Discard
den
With most of the Discard focused decks mourning the change to Hellcow, Hela Discard is the deck that didn’t really get impact with the change. Indeed, Hellcow wasn’t a mandatory high scoring part of the game plan for the deck, and even as a 4 cost, running it isn’t so bad.
In this deck, the 2 cards we want to see all the time are Invisible Woman and Hela. The former in order to delay our Discard effects until the end of the game as a way to prevent potentially losing Hela because of it. The latter because as the last card played on Invisible Woman‘s location, she should bring back a ton of points and win the game with some fireworks. In this scenario, paying 2 or 4 energy for Hellcow doesn’t matter much, as the deck basically only plays discard effects until turn 6 except for Invisible Woman.
Maybe once the other discard focused archetypes find a way to adapt to the changes, Hela Discard could go back to being the unreliable deck of the synergy. Until then, players who enjoy discarding, and with most Pool 3 cards should definitely turn their attention to Hela.
Discard Combo
den
Discard combo is potentially the most impacted deck of the most recent balance patch, having ran The Collector, Hellcow and Nakia. While the deck’s overall gameplan remains the same, it’s now significantly less reliable. As a result, the deck fell to the bottom of Tier 2, and should be considered a work in progress for now, with the perfect list still being up in the air.
The deck continues to include the nerfed The Collector, while deciding to eschew the other two nerfed cards, the 4-cost Hellcow being too top-heavy to include alongside the other 4-cost cards the deck wants to run.
The newly buffed Colleen Wing and Sword Master find their home in the deck now, providing a strong cost-value ratio. Blade could be slotted in the deck for Sword Master if you value the cost of cards more than the power they provide.
The new inclusion of Mystique allows to either copy Wong for even more On Reveal triggers, or Morbius for additional per-discard value. Because the raw power of the deck has decreased significantly, adding an extra high roll card felt necessary.
While the deck can’t do the insane 20+ power The Collector anymore, it can still provide pretty high value spread across multiple lanes and continues to be a force to be reckoned with. It simply feels it isn’t on par with the other Tier 1 decks, which have suffered from the recent balance changes much less than Discard Combo.
Tier 3
Destroyer
den
Destroyer decks had some popularity before, but got massively more popular with the introduction of the new piece of the deck (and its only meta home so far): Daredevil. The primary function of the card is to guarantee Professor X lane, which makes it so that Destroyer winning 1 more lane is a game win, unlike previously where the deck had to rely on the 50/50 of Professor.
The deck has a lot of ways to guarantee that Destroyer‘s drawback is either employed for its benefit such as Nova and Bucky Barnes, or at least not to detriment with Colossus, Armor, the two Goblins, Cosmo, and Professor X.
The deck has an inherently nice matchup versus DeathWave, due to running Armor and Cosmo which mitigates the effects of Destroy and On Reveal cards for the opponent. With Daredevil effect active, it is quite easy to keep Wave in check and completely deny the opponent’s otherwise insane turn 6.
It does, however, not have that much power, and if you don’t draw some of your key pieces, your entire game plan can fall apart. Winning without drawing Destroyer, for instance, is extremely difficult in any match up.
Bounce
den
The nerf to The Collector was quite a low blow to the deck, especially as the Bounce archetype was finally starting to feel like a refined deck. With the patch notes, it is likely the archetype goes back to square one, and this take on the deck is neither the only one you could face, nor the clear-cut best 12 card list.
In this iteration of Bounce, we are focusing on disrupting the opponent as much as possible while growing Angela, Bishop and Human Torch. Backed up with America Chavez or the Demon from The Hood, this trio is more than capable of winning over 2 locations.
In order to do so, we are mixing cards that will help them grow (Cloak, Falcon and Beast mostly), with cards making the opponent’s deck much weaker than what they intended upon building it. Korg, Iceman and Black Widow, mostly, can repeat their effects to affect the opponent’s hand and deck and limit their possibilities.
While cutting The Collector from the deck could be wrong, the card felt a little weak after the August 9th patch. It can still grow to a nice 7 or 8 power, which is still big for a 2 cost, but also isn’t worth playing if we don’t draw it by turn 2 in a lot of scenarios. As such, I decided to focus my efforts around the other high scoring potential in the deck, as they also synergies very well together, and cut The Collector and other card generators like Agent 13, for example.
Closing Words
Because of the nature of Marvel Snap, the environment doesn’t evolve as fast as it would with other card games after a balance patch. Especially as, once again, Pool 2 crds took the biggest hit from the latest patch, Pool 3 intensive decks have stayed atop the competitive rankings. Cere6ro is the only newcomer on our tier list, but for now feels very unreliable as well as being another Pool 3 exclusive deck.
One thing I am extremely curious about is the impact Wave will have on the meta, now that she can be collected by anyone, and considering the card already is considered a top tier card.
If you are playing on a budget, Angela and Bishop likely still are your best ally for most of your journey across the early Collection Levels in Pool 1 and 2. These 2 are flexible enough to be playable in many archetypes, and represent a very solid points to cost ratio. With Nakia out of the way, we may see a lot more of Angela and Bishop for a little while, unless new archetypes emerge.
If you’d like to discuss the current metagame or have questions about a specific deck, feel free to leave a comment in the section below. To get in touch with me for any question, you can find me on Twitter or on our community Discord server!
Good Game Everyone.
Contributor
Dunkoro has more than 12 years of combined card games experience, ranging from the more mainstay titles like Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh or Hearthstone, to lesser known titles like Gwent and Keyforge.
Always aiming for the highest competitive tier possible, he was well known in the Gwent community as a deck-crafter, consistently making up decks that contributed a noticable chunk of the metagame patch after patch.
In Keyforge he’s managed to become one of the most acclaimed players in the world, being one of the three total that have won more than one Vault Tour.
And in Snap he’s engaged with the game on a deep level, trying to optimize his plays and deckmaking to their fullest potential, already having been one of the primary contributors towards the developement and popularization of Deathwave as a strategy.
