
Marvel Snap Metagame Tier List, May 16th, 2023: Iron Lad Joins Sera and Wave as Marvel Snap Defining Cards!
Table of Contents
The weeks keep passing, and Marvel Snap keeps getting better. This time, we don’t have a new deck atop the rankings as Good Cards Stature has cemented its status (and made the Rockslide nerf look completely irrelevant). For this report, there are two important phenomenon to take a look at: Iron Lad‘s impact on the performance of several archetypes, and the return of the Control archetypes.
The first point was something I expected, and I discussed it (maybe too much) ahead of the card releasing. As it stands, I made the Tier List with most archetypes not running Iron Lad, as I would assume a large majority of the community does not possess the card. As a result, Patriot is ranked based on its performance of the most popular build right now. However, if you take a look at the Silent Performers, you will see the Iron Lad variant of Patriot, which would rank in Tier 1 if added to the bulk of the report.
The other deck I was obligated to include Iron Lad in is Nebula control because the deck is a solid Tier 2 archetype with Zabu and Iron Lad included, while it would be somewhere in the middle of Tier 3 otherwise.
This doesn’t mean Iron Lad is necessary to rack up cubes; archetypes built around Sera, Discard, or Lockjaw don’t seem to need the card to boost their performance. Nevertheless, it would be misleading to not let you know how strong Iron Lad and Zabu currently are in several archetypes, and how much the duo impact performances. For Good Cards Stature, DoomWave, Devil Darkhawk, Patriot, and Nebula Control, adding Iron Lad to the mix represents an average gain of 0.1 cube average compared to the other lists.
Now, it would be easy to focus on how the card might lead to becoming a necessity down the line, so instead I would like to focus on how Iron Lad is helping some archetypes rise and reach competitive viability. We already discussed Patriot, but it is Nebula Control that impressed me this week. I didn’t think the Guardians of the Galaxy had it in them to be a Tier 2 archetype. Yet, with Nebula plus Iron Lad added to the mix, it is happening, and I’m not ashamed to say I loved playing this deck ahead of writing this article. If you enjoy a control play style, you should feel right at home!
There are a lot of good (and a few scary) possibilities if the trend continues. We have a lot to unpack this week, especially as the big monthly patch might add even more to it!
Happy Tier List everyone!
In order to be featured here, a deck needs to represent at least 1% of the current environment and have a positive cube average using data from our Marvel Snap Tracker. If a deck showed great performances with a very limited presence in the metagame, you can find it in the new “Silent Performers” section. There, I will highlight decks with an excellent cube per game ratio but too little of a sample size to be representative of their real strength.
Decks not good enough to be considered contenders but with a good representation will be ranked in Tier 3 or 4 in our chart and won’t have their own dedicated write up here but may be transferred to the main Tier List section. See those builds as decks that are good to know about, as you should face those when playing Marvel Snap. However, unless the metagame changes or a new variation of the build emerges, these decks are a notch below the dominant ones in Tier 1 and 2.
Marvel Snap Meta Tier List
Tier | Deck | Guide |
---|---|---|
Tier 1 | Good Cards Stature | Guide |
Tier 1 | Sera Control | Guide |
Tier 2 | Sera Surfer | Guide |
Tier 2 | DeathWave | Guide |
Tier 2 | DoomWave 🔽 | Guide |
Tier 2 | Discard Dracula | Guide |
Tier 2 | Devil Darkhawk | Guide |
Tier 2 | Lockjaw Thor | Guide |
Tier 2 | Nebula Control 🆕 | Guide |
Tier 2 | Galactus | Guide |
Tier 2 | Patriot | Guide |
Tier 2 | Thanos Control 🔼 | Guide |
Tier 3 | Shuri Sauron 🆕 | |
Tier 3 | Hela Discard | |
Tier 3 | Electro Ramp | Guide |
Tier 3 | Thanos Ongoing Zoo | Guide |
Tier 3 | Thanos Death Lockjaw 🆕 | Guide |
Tier 3 | Bounce | Guide |
Tier 3 | Cerebro 2 | Guide |
Budget | Handsize Destroy | |
Budget | Ongoing | |
Budget | Sandman Kazoo | Guide |
Budget | Control |
Silent Performers of the Week
This week, the Silent Performers features one of the most criminally underplayed archetype in the game – InSheNaut, an archetype that now also has a version based around Hit Monkey. The deck has been living in the Silent Performers section while posting a high Tier 2 cube average for weeks now, so my guess is the problem is not the deck’s performance.
I have seen several players reach out on social media saying they couldn’t get the deck to work. I have taken a good note on this, and I will work on a guide for the archetype, so there should be no reason for SheNaut to not appear in the ranking next week!
The other Silent Performer this week is Patriot, with Iron Lad added to the mix. Arguably, this is the archetype Iron Lad has transformed the most if we are looking at performances, boosting Patriot from a Tier 2 deck that is weak to Enchantress to a juggernaut taking down tournaments.
There are two main reasons why the Iron Lad version is much stronger than the traditional Patriot build. First, the deck’s ceiling is much stronger as copying Patriot, Onslaught, Doctor Doom, Blue Marvel… ups the overall points potential for the deck. Second, it’s because we are adding one more card to take care of whenever we copy an Ongoing effect, which leads to Enchantress not being enough to shut it down anymore.
Especially with Iron Man‘s addition in the build, there are too many Ongoing abilities to take care off, which, if spread onto multiple lanes, cannot be dealt with properly. One would have to run Sera Control with Absorbing Man to copy Enchantress to be able to counter Iron Lad copying Patriot on Turn 4.
Tier Explanation
Tier 1: Tier 1 represents decks with all the upsides we would be looking for to rack up Cubes. They have good match ups in the current metagame, offer different play patterns during a match, and often have the ability for explosive or surprising turns. These should be decks worth investing into in order to climb for the coming week.
Cube Average > 0.3
Tier 2: Tier 2 are very good decks but with a weakness holding them back – either not being as reliable in its draws as Tier 1 decks, countered by another popular deck, or still being a work in progress as you read this. A good pilot could probably take these and have the same results as with a Tier 1 deck, but their play patterns are more difficult to enact compared to the Tier above.
Cube Average > 0.15
Tier 3: This tier is made of decks that have a pervasive issue compared to Tier One or Two decks. Usually, Tier 3 will be a mix of decks on the rise which don’t have much data about themselves, old archetypes on the decline, decks that require substantial experience and/or knowledge to pilot properly, powerful decks that aren’t well positioned, or niche decks.
Cube Average > 0.1
Tier 4: Off-meta decks that have fallen off in recent times, or counter picks relying on specific match-ups to stay afloat competitively.
Budget: Decks that consist only cards in Pool 1 and 2 but are still capable of competing with an experienced pilot in a similar Collection Level, Rank, and MMR range. See our matchmaking guide for more details.
Meta stats and analytics directly from our Marvel Snap Tracker can also be found here. Version 3 now out!
Tier 1
Good Cards Stature
Rank Justification: Both decks in Tier 1 have lost a bit of cube average this week, likely due to the fact that more people have adopted Good Cards Stature for their climb and diluted its performance. Nevertheless, with an above 58% win rate this week and a “best-in-show” cube average of 0.4, Good Cards Stature had made the Rockslide nerf look like a joke. For what it’s worth, the deck is also still playing Enchantress as well. It is also important to note that as we look closer to the highest rank, we also look at the best players and the best this archetype can perform. In the ranks below Infinite, Good Cards Stature is posting around 0.4 cube average, but this number is much higher (above 0.5) if we look at only the Infinite rank.
This would also explain why the deck has been dominating the tournament metagame, too, as the best players can probably take it to an even higher performance ratio.
The biggest takeaway about the deck this week is Nightcrawler performing better than Nebula, apparently. I would guess the extra reliability towards triggering Miles Morales‘s discount is what tilted the balance in favor of Nightcrawler.
There is a list running Cloak as well, seemingly Jeff the Baby Land Shark‘s replacement for those without the Series 5 card, so the direction towards supporting Miles Morales as much as possible looks to be the best one this week.
It is difficult to pinpoint what to do to keep this deck in check because there isn’t one big offender to point the finger at. It seems like the mix of Stature, Darkhawk, and Move abilities is just clicking, and an experienced pilot will always find a way to develop points during the game.
How to play:
Good Cards Stature is a very tempo oriented build looking to use its energy while staying flexible on where it can invest in the future. Points wise, the deck is built around three cards: Nebula for the early game plus Darkhawk and Stature for later in the match.
The move package with Polaris, Jeff the Baby Land Shark, and Miles Morales represents a great backup plan if we don’t find Zabu for our many 4-costs. Lastly, the deck packs Shang-Chi and Enchantress as counter cards that also benefit from Zabu being in the deck.
With so many options, it is difficult to outline a specific play pattern outside of Nebula on Turn 1 and Black Bolt on Turn 5 with Stature in hand. Ideally, we want to set up Turn 6 to be a 4-cost plus Miles Morales, plus Stature. The rest of your game plan should be based on which package of cards you draw and your opponent. Try to assess early on which cards are fundamental to play and which turns make the most sense to play them; you can then use your other cards to fill the holes in your established pattern.
Against a deck weak to Shang-Chi or Enchantress, you might want to develop points early to have your counter cards played on Turn 6. In a points shoot out, you might want to keep Darkhawk and either Miles Morales or Stature for Turn 6 in order to hide where the bigger chunk of your points will be developed.
Potential additions:
In this tweet, you can see how several players have built the archetype for their preferences. There is some Shuri, some Iron Lad, and even a Juggernaut! This deck is extremely flexible – as long as you stay true to its purpose.
Sera Monkey
Rank Justification: Still looking strong overall, this is the only other archetype above the 0.3 cube average globally this week. Sera Control (Hit Monkey variant) doesn’t seem to be phased by anything happening around it. For another week, the deck kept being one of the most popular archetypes in Marvel Snap while posting its usual 52% to 53% win rate.
The gap with Good Cards Stature is wider than last week, as both the win rate and cube average indicate Sera Control is not contending to be the best deck. However, Sera Control would have to lose at least 0.4 cube average to fall into Tier 2, something I can’t imagine happening unless Sera is nerfed in the near future.
How to play:
This archetype relies on giving up priority going into the last turn, so it can punish the opponent with reactive cards like Shang-Chi, Enchantress, and Killmonger. Ever since Hit Monkey joined the deck, it also unlocked a proactive pattern on Turn 6 with the monkey assassin able to challenge a lane with points, rather than looking to counter what the opponent did.
Sera is at the core of this strategy as she allows reducing the cost of cards in your hand, strengthening your Turn 6 potential and making it worth to purposefully give the lead to your opponent. Note that losing priority doesn’t mean losing the game – we can be in the lead on a location and close on the other two. Since Sera only has four power, your opponent will typically have a stronger Turn 5 than you do and take back priority.
This way, we don’t need to have an incredible Turn 6 or perfectly guess our opponent’s plays to win every game. Most of this deck’s strength relies on its ability to be able to stay as close as possible while not having priority, so our reactive cards are at their best.
Potential Additions: Absorbing Man might be the card to consider in this deck, alongside Zabu as we start adding more 4-cost cards. Lizard seems to be the logical cut for Zabu. As for Absorbing Man, it is a little more difficult to figure out; maybe Bishop is the cut considering we would look to play less cards overall.
A Darkhawk variant has also emerged this week, quite ironic considering Rockslide was nerfed on Thursday.
Tier 2
Sera Surfer
Rank Justification: Similar to Sera Control, the Sera Surfer deck keeps being a solid deck overall. Compared to other Tier 2 decks, Sera Surfer has about a 0.05 cube average, placing the deck quite comfortably atop Tier 2. However, the same could be said when looking at the deck’s gap with Tier 1, hence why it is not listed among the best archetypes.
It also feels important to note that Sera Surfer sees its performance improve as we look at the highest ranks, while Sera Control is stronger in the lower ranks. This seems to indicate that the Surfer version is the most demanding to pilot of the two Sera archetypes in the metagame, and it could be the one with the most to unravel in the future.
How to play:
The deck follows a pretty simple play pattern that culminates into an explosive Turn 6 and hopefully catches the opponent off guard.
On Turns 2, 3, and 4, you will usually just play a card and focus on spending your energy efficiently and advancing your game plan. Apart from the Storm–Juggernaut duo on Turns 3 and 4, there aren’t many synergies going on. Look to play cards you won’t be able to fit in on Turns 5 and 6 but still need to have in play. Usually, Nova is better to be played on Turn 4 with more information available rather than on Turn 1. It also disguises our archetype from the opponent better.
Turn 5 will usually be a Sera play, if you can. If you don’t have Sera, it can be a 3-cost plus a 2-cost (Goose can lock a location from a big card being played by our opponent while barely impacting us). On the last turn of play, the deck has many play patterns. The general game plan is dumping two 3-cost cards followed by Silver Surfer in order to surprise the opponent with power.
Potential additions: A lot of 3-cost cards can enter the deck and make sense. Feel free to play around with the abilities you think are valuable to the deck’s success. If we want to go for another route, Zabu can allow us to play some 4-costs along with our Silver Surfer game plan. Zabu plus Sera even allows us to play them for two energy on Turn 6 with our other 3-cost cards.
If you want to build around Nebula, you can remove Nova, Killmonger, and a 2-cost card to include Nebula, Armor, and Cosmo or another solid 3-cost card.
DeathWave
Rank Justification: Jeff the Baby Land Shark and Zabu are largely dominating the popularity contest among 2-cost cards, even with Nebula feeling worthy to protect. As such, with Armor nowhere to be seen on a large sample size, DeathWave keeps being a great deck, and it even rivals InSheNaut for the title of best in Pool 3.
This week, the biggest takeaway is the deck moving on from three 1-cost cards to only two, with Squirrel Girl being cut from the best performing lists. Instead, it’s Enchantress who took the spot, joining Aero and Doctor Doom as a standalone card in the deck.
How to play:
The whole point of the deck is to get at least two destroy effects while having reveal priority going into Turn 6. This should be achieved with a simple on-curve play during the first four turns, as the Destroy synergy is able to generate solid power through its signature cards Bucky Barnes, Deathlok, and Carnage.
Turn 5 should be a Wave play and nothing else if we have She-Hulk in hand. The card will become a 2-cost on the next turn and can be paired with anything else. Without She-Hulk, you can play other cards as well. If we manage to get to four destroy effects, Death becomes free and both her and She-Hulk can be played in addition to another card. Squirrel Girl being destroyed by Killmonger is usually the way we get our four destructions in time.
Outside this basic play pattern, the deck is quite flexible and is able to develop points even without drawing into Wave. The destroy synergy shines especially well when it comes to cleaning up annoying cards that appear on our side of the board.
Potential additions: Shang-Chi probably is the first card you would want to include in this deck, America Chavez can also be a consideration for consistency purposes.
Right now, Doctor Doom feels great in the deck as the last spot to add some flexibility. Aero is often necessary to beat Galactus, so it is difficult to know what to remove if you want to include another card.
DoomWave 🔽
Rank Justification: After a hot start to the season last week, DoomWave took a bit of a hit to its overall performance. First, the Good Cards Stature deck keeps on being more popular, and both Stature and Miles Morales bypass Wave‘s limitation. Then, Iron Lad made Zabu even more popular, leading to a lot of decks being able to play two 4-cost cards on the last turn of play, even with Wave‘s ability.
All things considered, it is quite a feat to keep a decent 0.22 cube average and be a solid Tier 2 deck when the metagame isn’t looking good for the deck.
How to play:
This deck can play a Lockation strategy with Wave as the seal on Turn 5, or win with Wave into Doctor Doom and She-Hulk. The deck plays for tempo through the early turns, starting with Storm on Turn 3 and following it with Jessica Jones.
The true star of the deck is not the classic DoomWave combo; instead, it’s the interaction with Goose. This creates a flexible, powerful early game that can lock down lanes and control the board. Post Wave, She-Hulk can be played on the Goose lane, while you still get to play America Chavez or Doctor Doom. Your opponent will often be unable to play anything into the Goose lane, and this creates plenty of checkmate situations.
Everything you need to know about the deck can be found in this guide, written by SafetyBlade
Potential additions: The deck is undergoing quite a few changes with Jeff and Iron Lad impacting it quite a lot. Without Nebula or other Series 5 cards, the Darkhawk variant seems to be the best option to run:
Discard Dracula
Rank Justification: The rank where these lists were played might have had an impact on their performance, or maybe Nebula has been adapted against this week. No matter what, it seems like the Nebula – Storm duo has been replaced and Discard went back to a more standard list that focuses on discarding as much as possible. Sunspot reclaimed the spot for the 1-cost card in the deck, but it is unclear whether Iceman or Nebula would be much worse. It seems to be flexible depending on your opponents.
Apart from these changes, it’s been another quiet week for Discard Dracula, which keeps on cementing its place among Marvel Snap’s strongest decks with another top ten placement. It’s definitely a deck to consider if you are limited to a Pool 3 only collection.
How to play:
The Discard archetype relies on growing Morbius and Dracula out of proportion through the discard synergy. Most of the time, either of these two cards are able to challenge the lane they are played into on their own. Morbius can fall to Enchantress, which pushes you to support the card much more or not consider that lane a surefire win. On the other end, Dracula isn’t weak to any card in the metagame – its ability isn’t Ongoing, and protects itself from Shang-Chi as well. As such, whenever you have Apocalypse in hand and start discarding it, you can almost guarantee Dracula will be able to take over its location.
Last, we have two turns to discard as much as possible and develop points the old-fashioned way. Most discard oriented cards have solid power for their cost, so you can build a decent total through playing several of them in the same lane.
Discard’s biggest strength is also its most common weakness: It is pretty simple to understand. The hand manipulation part, and maximizing our odds of hitting the right card, are not such easy feats when you pick up the deck. However, the deck’s strongest points contributors are well known at this point. As such, it can often be difficult to get more than a cube out of a Morbius plus Dracula start if we did not Snap early. Similarly, your opponent should know to be careful if we start discarding Apocalypse, while they can feel better if Lady Sif discards MODOK instead.
Because the Discard deck gives the opponent a lot of information through showing the discarded cards, it is important to have an aggressive mindset, or we will regularly be forced to play by our opponent’s rules.
Potential additions: Last week’s list is probably still good to run if you like this play style better:
Devil Darkhawk
Rank Justification: Here is another deck built around Darkhawk that didn’t see any impact to its performance following the nerf to Rockslide. As such, Devil Darkhawk is basically the same deck it was last week, with the sole difference of Agent Coulson seeing more play than White Queen.
Apart from this slight change in the choice of card to play to support Devil Dinosaur (and probably to help the deck when not drawing Zabu), there isn’t anything noteworthy around the deck this week.
How to play:
The goal here is to be very efficient with our energy, while also keeping our options open for the last few turns. We have three main win conditions: Darkhawk, Devil Dinosaur, and Shang-Chi, while Mystique could represent a fourth win condition if she copies either of our two huge Ongoing cards.
When we find Zabu on Turn 2, we are able to keep Darkhawk and Mystique together for a Turn 6 play, creating a solid one-two punch with Devil Dinosaur on Turn 5. Shang-Chi plus Darkhawk is another very strong Turn 6.
Without Zabu, we can rely on Moon Girl to create a second Devil Dinosaur, or simply plan to use Mystique plus Cosmo on Turn 6. Usually, not finding Zabu makes it quite difficult to play both Darkhawk and Devil Dinosaur in the same match while supporting both cards.
Potential additions: With Enchantress becoming a staple in several archetypes, Devil Darkhawk is now forced to run Cosmo as its default tech card. As such, only Shang-Chi feels replaceable in the deck currently. You could try Doctor Doom or another counter card in that slot. White Queen is also a good card to consider.
Lockjaw Thor
Rank Justification: Similar to Devil Darkhawk above, nothing happened around Lockjaw Thor this week. The deck kept a very similar performance compared to last week, and the same list has remained the most popular.
How To Play:
Based on its signature card, the deck aims to use cheap, weak cards behind Lockjaw in order to summon much stronger ones without paying the required energy. In that sense, Lockjaw’s lane is often very strong, and it is important to keep in mind how to win another one and not get caught up in abusing Lockjaw.
Without Lockjaw, Jubilee and Dracula will serve a similar purpose and try to cheat points for less than the usual amount of energy. We’ll usually throw the cheap cards behind Lockjaw in the last two turns, so Dracula isn’t so difficult to abuse in the deck. Make sure to play Jubilee before doing so if you have both cards available.
The first three turns of the game can be very quiet for a Lockjaw deck, as we aren’t looking to do much. If you have Lockjaw in hand, you could even consider not playing Nightcrawler in order to cycle it for a bigger card later on. Since Lockjaw‘s nerf, it isn’t possible to go all in on the card in one turn anymore. Unless you hold Lockjaw to play it with another card immediately on Turn 4, you will look to play it on Turn 3 to start cycling card on Turn 4. This can create a conflict with Thor, one you can only solve based on the match’s situation.
Once in the final two turns of the match, the goal is to think about our best outcomes and how we can high roll enough to win the game. If ahead, a simple Magneto play could be enough to secure the win. If behind, it is important to know the chances of winning Lockjaw’s lane based on what is left in our deck, while counting how big we can get Thor and Dracula to challenge the second lane.
Potential additions: The only changes in the deck which show up in the data are around Nightcrawler and Vision. Both cards have been replaced by Iceman, Jeff the Baby Land Shark, Aero, or other strong standalone cards at similar costs.
Nebula Control 🆕
Rank Justification: The interesting rise of the week, Nebula Control really made the most of Iron Lad joining the game. One could argue Patriot is the deck who gained the most from the card, or that Good Cards Stature is the best deck using Iron Lad, and both would be right.
However, Nebula control would not be a competitive archetype if it wasn’t for Iron Lad, considering the deck’s ranking (Tier 4) last week. With Iron Lad, the archetype is averaging around 0.23 cubes per game, which could place it even higher if it weren’t for the cube average of other versions (usually around 0.15) placing it at this cautious ranking.
Popularity wise, the deck almost didn’t make it into the ranking as it barely reached the required 1% play rate, but it’s worth noting this number has been increasing through the week. This is definitely a deck to keep an eye on for the week to come.
How To Play:
Nebula control relies on mixing both a lockdown game plan and the ability to develop points through the Guardians of the Galaxy. Typically, one would look to limit the opponent’s space so the Guardians are more likely to see their ability trigger. In particular, Rocket Raccoon plus Gamora on Turn 6 on the sole lane you are fighting for is 16 power total, more than any 6-cost card in the game. Drax is also a solid follow-up to Storm, a role usually assigned to Jessica Jones. However, Drax can also be a strong play on Turn 6 alongside Jeff, for example, while Jessica Jones needs to played earlier in the match.
As for the lockdown plan, we find the usual suspects of Storm, Professor X, and Spider-Man, which are the perfect complement to Nebula and Jeff.
Iron Lad and Zabu act as the turbo in the deck and allow it to keep up with energy cheating decks, which are currently the best ones in Marvel Snap.
Potential additions: Here is a budget version for those without Iron Lad and Jeff the Baby Land Shark.