Table of Contents
What a week it has been for metagame activity in Marvel Snap. It’s especially insane how much one good card becoming widely available can change the dynamic of the entire game. Yes, Kitty Pryde alone made Bounce a top five deck, brought back some of its counters like Electro Ramp, pushed some decks to adapt, and led to other archetypes trying similar Bounce card packages. Please, Second Dinner, give us more new cards that are available to everyone upon release; this week felt so good to be a Marvel Snap Player, even if Wave played gatekeeper.
Still, as much as Kitty Pryde made Bounce the most popular deck in the game this week, Wave made quite an impact as well. First, because it quickly became Kitty Pryde‘s nemesis, countering most archetypes built around the card. Second, several players started to realize the card was still much more than a counter and that they could still build around Wave.
DoomWave (renamed Good Cards Wave since the deck now plays very similar cards to the Good Cards archetype) came back swinging and immediately established itself as the best deck in the game. Thanos Lockjaw, then, made a comeback after a few weeks in Tier 3. The archetype is not playing Death anymore, and it seems to be doing great without the card anyway. Last, Patriot also started to play Wave in the Iron Lad variant and similarly rose atop the rankings in the process.
This battle of Kitty Pryde against Wave took the metagame by storm, with seven of the ten best performing decks featuring one of these two cards. I could also mention Jeff the Baby Land Shark and Iron Lad as other cards greatly affecting the environment, but since they’re in Series 5 they haven’t spread as widely yet. Iron Lad seems to have sided with Wave as the card benefits much more from the high cost cards Wave helps to play rather than the small cost cards Kitty Pryde looks to combo with. Jeff, on the other hand, is fine being played anywhere, establishing itself as the most versatile 2-cost card in Marvel Snap.
Apart from Galactus (which is an archetype that kind of does its own thing), the rest of the metagame seems to be warped around these cards, either looking to abuse their power or trying to figure out a way to counter them. This week, it seems like building around them net much better results than choosing a counter strategy. However, if the trend keeps going, counter strategies will have to emerge – or the OTA patch could provide a solution as well.
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 Wave 🆕 | Guide |
| Tier 1 | Iron Patriot 🔼 | Guide |
| Tier 1 | Sera Control | Guide |
| Tier 2 | Good Cards Stature 🔽 | Guide |
| Tier 2 | Bounce 🔼 | Guide |
| Tier 2 | Sera Surfer | Guide |
| Tier 2 | • Lockjaw Thor • Lockjaw Thanos 🔼 | • Guide • Guide |
| Tier 2 | Galactus | Guide |
| Tier 2 | She-Monkey 🆕 | |
| Tier 2 | • Kitty Control • Thanos Control | • Guide • Guide |
| Tier 3 | Discard Dracula 🔽 | Guide |
| Tier 3 | Electro Ramp | Guide |
| Tier 3 | Devil Darkhawk 🔽 | Guide |
| Tier 3 | Shuri | |
| Tier 4 | Hela Discard 🔽 | |
| Tier 4 | Cerebro 2 🔽 | Guide |
| Tier 4 | Dino Collector 🆕 | |
| Tier 4 | Attuma Destroyer 🆕 | |
| Tier 4 | Mister Negative 🆕 | |
| Budget | Handsize Destroy | |
| Budget | Ongoing | |
| Budget | Sandman Kazoo | Guide |
| Budget | Control |
Silent Performers of the Week
This week, there are no Silent Performers. Most of the decks that emerged after the patch have immediately reached enough popularity to be included in the rankings, leaving the unpopular decks to be significantly worse in terms of cube rate.
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 > 0.4
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 > 0.2
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.
Cube Average > 0.01
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 Wave 🆕
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Rank Justification: Many focused on the losses when it comes to Wave‘s rework in the last balance patch. The gains, however, have largely made up for DeathWave not being playable and She-Hulk not being a good card to include anymore. Indeed, Wave has established herself as the best card in Marvel Snap in a Bounce dominated metagame, overshadowing every archetype destroyed by her ability being changed.
When played on Turn 5, the card completely shuts down any game plan relying on a synergy of several cards. In this context, Doctor Doom and Leader are the two best cards to run, and it doesn’t hurt that they are also incredible targets for Iron Lad (another card impacting the metagame a ton). This is also what motivated this change of name from DoomWave to “Good Cards Wave”. The pattern of playing Wave on Turn 5 into Doctor Doom still exists, but this archetype is really about playing 12 of the strongest cards in Marvel Snap and being rewarded for it.
Leader and America Chavez might not be a part of that list, but their contribution to the deck justifies including them, boosting their play and win rate in the process.
For now, DoomWave might not jump in the stat sheet the way this ranking reflects. The various builds around the archetype are logically impacting its performance when looking at a large sample. Still, in the competitive community and among those who give the deck a fair shot, everyone has agreed this is the best deck in Marvel Snap right now.
How to play:
This archetype relies on the power of Darkhawk, Nebula, Iron Lad, and Wave. With these four cards, we are able to disrupt the opponent with Rocks, push them to play on Nebula‘s location, get some high rolls with Iron Lad, and limit their ability to play with Wave. With that in mind, our first four turns should be geared towards developing points and solidifying our lead going into the final two. There, we can play Wave plus a cheap card on Turn 5 and follow that with Leader or Doctor Doom on Turn 6 to seal the deal.
The deck is built to focus on its development (except for Enchantress), so it should be played with a proactive mindset and try to build the biggest lead before playing Wave. Then, the flexibility of cards like Jeff the Baby Land Shark and our 6-costs allow us to be flexible in how to handle the last turn, even with only one card to play.
Potential additions:
Enchantress is the flexible card, allowing us to counter Patriot or Darkhawk. One could think about other 4-cost cards to include instead, or use Cosmo to counter Galactus – another popular archetype.
Iron Lad and Jeff are both Series 5 cards that help the deck reach this status of absolute juggernaut. However, one could try to include the Move package with Polaris, Nightcrawler, and Miles Morales instead of these two and Nebula.
Iron Patriot 🔼
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Rank Justification: Patriot has been struggling a bit since Enchantress became the default tech cards in most archetypes, especially the decks running Zabu already. For the past few weeks, the traditional build for Patriot was struggling to perform, going from the bottom of Tier 2 to high in Tier 3 from one week to another. Fast forward to Iron Lad joining Marvel Snap and this new, more high roll based list of Patriot has emerged. Last week, I placed it in the Silent Performers as the sample size was minimal, and the classic Patriot build was immensely more popular. This week, the performance gap in between both decks pushes me to feature this one as the new default Patriot deck.
So why is it so much better? Two reasons:
- The points ceiling is much higher now because Iron Lad copying any of the high cost cards can be game winning on the spot.
- With this new potential, Enchantress is also a little less problematic as we can spread our Ongoing cards more efficiently.
This week, Wave was also added to the deck, both to be able to cheat a big card on Turn 4 and also because Patriot is absolutely fine with playing only one card on Turn 6. And in that case, it might as well deny the opponent the chance to play multiple cards in the process.
How to play:
Without a 1-cost, this Patriot build is more passive than the traditional one. The idea is that the late game will be crazy enough to not need to invest early on. Once we arrive at the third turn, we need to make our decisions and pick a play pattern. Here are a few ideas:
- Patriot → Iron Lad → Wave plus a 2-cost → Doctor Doom
- Debrii or Brood → Iron Lad → Blue Marvel → Patriot plus Debrii or Brood
- Wave → Doctor Doom → Patriot plus a 2-cost → Onslaught
There are many more play patterns you can follow with this deck, but the idea is to decide when you will you play your buffing cards and when will you swarm the board with Debrii, Brood, and Doctor Doom. Most of the time, it will be based on your hand, with only Turn 4 being rather rigid (either for playing Iron Lad or a 6-cost if you played Wave on Turn 3).
Otherwise, Turns 3, 5, and 6 are very adaptable based on your hand and what you want to show your opponent.
Potential Additions:
Ultron is the card to consider in this build, especially with Wave included. Most players sharing an Ultron build have removed Shocker or Debrii from their deck. It’s really about the balance of your build and whether you use Wave on Turn 3 or Turn 5 more often. Shocker can be played alongside Wave on Turn 5, for example. Debrii is the anti-Galactus card in the deck, but it could also be Cosmo if you want to also protect yourself from Enchantress. You would lose a bit of disruption and points in the process, which would make Ultron more valuable as a 6-cost addition in the deck.
Long story short: Shocker, Debrii, Cosmo, Ultron. There are four cards and only two slots available in the deck, so choose wisely.
Sera Control
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Rank Justification: Although Wave is a problem for the deck, Sera Control keeps being one of the best archetypes in Marvel Snap. Even more surprising than the deck keeping its Tier 1 status, Sera Control is the best performing archetype with Kitty Pryde this week! Indeed, although Bounce is the archetype that benefited the most from Kitty Pryde returning to the game, Sera Control posted a 0.42 cube average and largely beat Bounce in that category.
In reality, the only difference about the archetype in its place in the metagame after the patch has been its popularity, which is now down to around 5%, when it used to be closer to 8% or 9% in the past.
For now, the inclusion of Kitty Pryde started a bit of a deckbuilding frenzy in the archetype. Bast, notably, is a card I saw on and off, while Sentinel seems to have slowly faded out with Kitty Pryde filling that slot of energy filler in the mid-game. Considering Sera Control’s longevity, I have very little doubt about its ranking next week. Still, it should be interesting to see which list emerges as the best one 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.
Against an opponent you expect to play Wave, it is completely fine to skip Sera and go off on Turn 5. Kitty Pryde, Mysterio, and Hit Monkey will provide enough points, and then we can simply play Enchantress or Shang-Chi on the following turn.
Potential additions:
Bast and Absorbing Man are the two cards I have seen the most while doing research this week. Usually, Sentinel and Shang-Chi would be the cut for these two if you want to try them out. Absorbing Man was typically included with Zabu to maximize its ability to copy Hit Monkey‘s On Reveal ability.
Other worthy mentions are Zabu, Polaris, Maximus, and Lizard, all of which can serve as replacements to cards you might be missing.
Tier 2
Good Cards Stature 🔽
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Rank Justification: The best deck from last week suffered quite a bit from Wave cancelling Stature and Zabu‘s discount abilities. As such, it seems like Good Cards Wave has become the best “Good Cards” deck in the metagame. Nevertheless, Stature still retained a solid 0.29 cube average overall, enough to consider it a top five pick this week.
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.
Potential additions:
The featured build is the default proactive way of going about Good Cards Stature. Shang-Chi and Enchantress were spotted in some lists, although those seemed to do a little worse overall. Iron Man was also included in the archetype, adding another high roll for Iron Lad in addition to Doctor Doom.
Bounce 🔼
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Rank Justification: Although Wave kind of stole the spotlight this week, the return of Kitty Pryde shook the Marvel Snap metagame too! With the card now back in the mix, Bounce almost doubled its cube average compared to last week, going from a low Tier 3 placement to a high Tier 2 contender. This week, it was in the 0.25 to 0.3 bubble among decks like Good Cards Stature, Sera Surfer, and the Lockjaw archetypes.
Right now, there is a lot of experimentation around Bounce with various lists being shared, as well as other archetypes taking a page from the deck’s core (as we already saw with Sera Control). The deck is currently the most popular in Marvel Snap, obviously drawing a lot of attention. Down the line, Bounce feels a bit dependent on how oppressive Wave ends up being, as well as other counters such as Sandman.
Nevertheless, simply keeping up this overall performance while being the center of attention says a lot about how impactful Kitty Pryde has been for the archetype.
How to play:
Bounce relies on replaying cheap cards several times through the use of Beast, Kitty Pryde, and Falcon, leading to several benefits:
- Their abilities can be great, such as Iceman and The Hood.
- They serve to buff cards like Angela or Bishop as they grow when you play more cards.
- It gives you an easy way to plan ahead of time because you don’t necessarily depend on your draw to use your energy. You can reuse cards already in play.
- You are much more flexible with your available space because you can remove cards and play others instead.
- Bounced cards are usually quite cheap, leading to very flexible turns down the line.
With Hit Monkey in the deck, Bounce also looks to keep those cheap cards in hand to have an explosive Turn 6 play. Through the Bounce mechanic, we are able to both play cards to buff Angela and Bishop during the game and also have them available to play alongside Hit Monkey.
Strategy wise, the deck wants to be as flexible as possible and only commit to lanes on Turns 5 and 6 in order to withhold as much information as possible from the opponent. Until this last turn, the deck will use Beast and Falcon to manage its hand and locations. The idea should be to abuse the abilities of our cards to disrupt the opponent while building the best hand possible going into the final turns.
Against an opponent you expect to play Wave, it is completely fine to go off on Turn 5. Kitty Pryde, Mysterio, and Hit Monkey will provide enough points on Turn 5, and we can simply play America Chavez on Turn 6.
Potential additions:
There are a few ways to build Bounce right now. Some like to include Korg and Darkhawk in the build, for example. Sunspot, She-Hulk, and Moon Girl have also been experimented with this week, taking a page from another combo archetype.
There also is a Destroy-based version looking to discount Death in order to create a different Turn 6 synergy.
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Sera Surfer
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Rank Justification: Fresh off its signature card joining pool 3, Sera Surfer did not seem to have anything different to it this week. The popularity rose a little, but nothing significant as Sera Control remained the default archetype of the two. The deck kept being a solid Tier 2 archetype, in the 0.25 to 0.3 cube average bubble with the other decks atop Tier 2.
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.
This week, Shadow King (another card that joined Pool 3) saw a surge in popularity in the deck. The card seems to be a nice addition if you are looking to annoy archetypes with Angela, Bishop, Nebula, or Sunspot as their core cards. Ghost was also included at times to make sure we don’t have priority in those match ups.
Thanos Lockjaw 🔼
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Rank Justification: Another archetype benefiting from the Wave rework, Lockjaw builds have done quite well this week, especially Thanos Lockjaw. Pushed by its number one fan LambySeries, the deck made a comeback in tournaments as well as picking up in popularity on the ladder.
Right now, the cube average isn’t stellar when looking at a large sample; but this has always been the case with such demanding archetypes, especially in the week they start to resurface. Still, this particular list posted a 0.3 cube average, and many recognized players have praised the build. As such, I took the liberty of including it below the top Tier 2 trio of Good Cards Stature, Bounce, and Sera Surfer, all of which which are posting similar numbers over thousands of games.
How to play:
The core concept in this build is to abuse Lockjaw to summon our big cards, paying just the cost of an Infinity Stone. Then, while Lockjaw should dominate the lane he is played, it is important to craft a game plan as to how to attack your second location. Cards like Doctor Doom and Vision will bring some flexibility in that regard, but it is usually good to anticipate the need to play a big card such as Devil Dinosaur or Magneto on the second lane as well.
With Death now out of the equation, Wave and Killmonger are only utility tools in the deck. Wave serves to block a combo based opponent or as a mini Lockjaw, allowing to skip directly to the part where we play big cards. Killmonger helps the deck manage its space and clear the popular 1-cost cards like Nebula roaming the ladder.
Leech is the only high cost, low power card in the deck, and many have removed it after its nerf. However, looking at the current metagame, the card seems to have many targets worth disabling on Turn 6. Be warned: it cannot be played behind Lockjaw anymore, limiting the play patterns available with Leech.
At its core, Thanos Lockjaw is quite the high roll strategy, and it isn’t suited for conservative players. The secret with this deck is to be fearless with your Snaps when you have one of your high rolls. Bad draws happen – they’ll cost you a cube, and then you’re on to the next game.
Potential additions:
Aero, Iron Man, and Shang-Chi have been spotted instead of Vision. Otherwise, the Lockjaw Thor build posted similar results, also including Wave this week.
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Galactus
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Rank Justification: It seems like Galactus finally settled on its go-to list as the Shuri build was not represented much this week. It kept the trend of the previous weeks when the more Galactus oriented build were prevailing. Performance wise, Galactus progressed a bit with a 0.23 cube average, placing it much closer to the top decks than it usually is.
With the current trend to focus a lot on high rolling with cards like Wave and Iron Lad or by running combo oriented decks. We are seeing less of cards like Cosmo and Goose, which usually annoy this archetype a lot. As it stands, only Patriot is a real problem because of Debrii. If this tendency keeps being the norm, Galactus could become a really strong archetype in the coming weeks.
How to play:
At its core, a Galactus deck starts every game with the same goal: play Galactus as safely as possible. Once this critical step is completed, your deck should be built to crush a one lane battle, using Death, Knull, Shuri, and other such cards to punish any opponent crazy enough to stay in the game.
In order to so, we have to look at three important components:
- We need an empty lane, maybe even two, if we want to keep the opponent guessing where Galactus could be played. The opponent’s side can have cards on it, that is not a problem.
- We need six energy, and we would like this to happen before Turn 6 so we can play points the turn after Galactus.
- We need Galactus to reveal and resolve.
The first two conditions are not so hard to fulfill as they mostly depend on us. Electro and Wave should take care of allowing Galactus to be played before Turn 6. As for the empty lane, it is important to pick the location we intend to play Galactus on as early as possible. Most of the time, the choice should happen on Turn 3 at the latest. Also, if you see a great location reveal first or second, feel free to play onto unrevealed locations. Even if they are punishing, you intend to destroy them anyway.
The last one is the deciding factor, and the difference between a win and loss. Indeed, Galactus is starting to be a well known card in Marvel Snap, and there are many ways for the opponent to disrupt our perfect setup on the turn we play Galactus. Here are some cards to keep in mind:
- Polaris, Debrii, Green Goblin, Titania, or Viper can get a card to the Galactus lane before it reveals.
- Juggernaut and Aero can move Galactus to a lane that would not be empty.
- Cosmo and Goose can deny the ability to play Galactus on a lane, or most of our cards afterward.
- Professor X locks the lane and wins the one on one against Galactus.
Potential additions:
Jeff the Baby Land Shark has often been replaced by Daredevil or Wolverine. Hobgoblin is the other flexible card in the archetype, with Destroyer or Iron Lad often replacing it.
She-Monkey 🆕
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Rank Justification: InSheNaut and Hit-Nebula, two archetypes I have mentioned in the Silent Performers section a lot in the recent weeks, seem to have merged together with Kitty Pryde joining the game. Together, they finally picked up enough play rate to be considered a metagame achetype.
As is customary with more players testing an archetype (alongside Wave shutting it down pretty hard), the cube average is a little worse compared to the previous weeks when it was a Silent Performer. At the end of this first week, the deck had a 0.21 cube average, enough to be considered a top ten performer in Marvel Snap.
Similar to Bounce, adding Kitty Pryde to the mix lead to a lot of different builds emerging. As such, I’m really curious to see what the deck can do once the community agrees on the best way to build She-Hulk Combo.
How To Play:
The goal with this deck is to play proactively during the first three turns, with Nebula, Sunspot, Armor, Goose, or The Hood and Viper duo being cards we can easily play. Through dumping cards from our hand, we also make sure Moon Girl will copy the important pieces for our combo later on: She-Hulk, Hit Monkey, and the Demon. Then, after passing Turn 5, we can slam our points with 1-cost She-Hulks and other high power cards that we copied.
Kitty Pryde should be treated differently and almost considered another route to take with this deck. Indeed, if we don’t grow Kitty Pryde enough, there isn’t a point in duplicating it. Still, if we do commit to playing Kitty Pryde every turn, it is much harder to manage our hand and grow our Sunspot. As such, see Kitty Pryde as a secondary win condition, allowing an alternate route when you don’t draw the pieces for the perfect combo.
Potential additions:
This is the archetype that existed before Hit Monkey and She-Hulk were merged together:
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Kitty Control
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Rank Justification: After Nebula pushed the Control archetype to come back last week, Kitty Pryde followed the lead and pushed a different way to build around the archetype. Once again, this is a relatively new archetype, so it can be difficult to separate the good from the bad among the many lists shared daily. However, it seemed like the Kitty Pryde and Angela duo was the core to build around as it gave the Control archetype a solid foundation to dominate a lane. Then, the deck can rely on its usual countering tools like Enchantress, Shang-Chi, and Spider-Man to take care of the second location.
The list could very well be different by next week, but Kitty Pryde largely dominated Nebula when it came to cube average over a large sample size. At the very least, the Control archetype retained a top ten position in the metagame, which is a good sign for the future.
How To Play:
Most of the deck’s game plan relies on cancelling what the opponent could do late in the game. Either with counter cards like Spider-Man and Enchantress, or by slamming points with Gamora and Miles Morales. However, in order to be able to focus on the lanes we need to win, establishing ourselves early is crucial.
In that role, Angela and Polaris are our two best cards. Angela can grow with Kitty Pryde and anchor the location she is played at, and Polaris can reposition our opponent’s cards and limit their ability to play on a location as a result. Also, Polaris enables Miles Morales, so we can have a five power card for cheap and bring a bit of explosiveness to our game plan.
A proactive, points driven approach naturally flows into a reactive mindset, and it’s the key to winning with this deck.
Potential additions:
As is customary with a reactive archetype, there are many cards one could think of. The Hood plus Viper is a common duo in such a deck. Killmonger and Valkyrie are other reactive cards to consider. Lastly, Beast has been used alongside Kitty Pryde to discount the card to zero in the same way that Bounce does.
Thanos Control posted a similar cube average this week.
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Last week’s list is probably still good to run as well, although the surprise effect might have worn off, which explains why it performed poorly compared to the Kitty Pryde version.
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Tier 3
Although it might seem like Tier 3 is a bad ranking, the emergence of new builds led to solid archetypes finding themselves lower in the rankings. Nevertheless, all these decks have an above 0.1 cube average, with Discard and Electro Ramp flirting with the 0.2 mark.
Speaking of Electro Ramp, the deck has established itself as a reliable counter to Bounce in the Pool 3 community. This week, the deck rose in popularity, placing third behind Bounce and Galactus. This popular good match explains why Electro Ramp gained a few ranks in the overall hierarchy, and it was shared by many on social media as their pick to climb toward the Infinite rank.
Still, it is important to note the deck is a counter pick, so if Bounce were to lose a big chunk of popularity, Electro Ramp could see its performance be impacted as well.
Discard Dracula 🔽
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Electro Ramp
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Devil Darkhawk 🔽
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Shuri Sauron
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Tier 4
Although there isn’t so much to say about the decks in this Tier this week (as all of them have been around for a while), I am a bit curious regarding Cerebro 2’s performance in the coming week. High Evolutionary will release soon, and Luke Cage is widely regarded as a potential counter card.
I don’t think it’ll be enough to have Cerebro 2 be considered a metagame contender, but it should be interesting to note how much a new release can impact a deck’s performance and popularity.
Hela Discard 🔽
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Cerebro 2 🔽
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Dino Collector 🆕
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Attuma Destroyer 🆕
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Mister Negative 🆕
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Closing Words
I love my card games a bit messy: when it’s unclear what is best to play and the most creative minds are rewarded for coming up with something unexpected. In that regard, Marvel Snap did not disappoint this week. A plethora of decks rose with Kitty Pryde becoming available to all. Alongside a monthly patch shaking up Wave, an iconic competitive card, we saw an incredible battle between the two.
I’m a little more worried about this trend continuing in the future weeks. Indeed, this week felt nice because both Wave and Kitty Pryde were new in light of the monthly patch. In the future, if both cards were to keep this level of popularity, mostly in the way they impact almost every deck in the game one way or another, one could wonder if creativity would still be a rewarding skill. In particular, I’m looking towards decks with Iron Lad and Wave, which have no downside to playing a lot of expensive cards with these two in their decks. This week, we saw Patriot, Lockjaw, and the Good Cards archetype heavily rely on these two cards, and finding a lot of success in the process.
The same could be said about Kitty Pryde; it’s slowly becoming a staple in every deck without a precise idea of how to spend their energy until the last few turns. It reminds me a little of the time when Sunspot and Armor were in literally every deck.
I don’t mind having stronger cards, don’t get me wrong. In the end, every card game player wants strong cards to play with, and nobody would play the game if the abilities were not good or fun to build around. However, when a few abilities are overshadowing all the other ones, it can lead to some frustration. A frustration we all had enough of during the Shuri Zero and Thanos Lockjaw era. Hopefully Wave and Kitty Pryde do not become the next cards we will complain about and instead keep this fresh and amusing side to them as long as possible.
For a first week, both cards have had an unbelievable impact on the metagame (a great one if the dynamic keeps going). It might become problematic if it leads to a stale situation with these two at the core of most strategies, but I’m hopeful that the former prediction will prove to be true and Marvel Snap will keep being as fun as it has been during May.
Until next week’s report, I hope you have a great time. To reach out, 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.
Upcoming events you might be interested in:
- May 27th: Qualifiers #3 and #4 of the TYB 616 Open. Anyone can join and try to qualify for their share of a $1,000 prize pool.
- May 28th: Coaching seminar alongside Freshlobster about the fundamentals of deck building, game planning, Snapping, and Retreating.
