Table of Contents
I am a big fan of the first week of the season. I find it to be a nice mix of grinders trying to abuse established archetypes and crazy deck builders looking to counter the metagame. This first week in Warriors of Wakanda didn’t disappoint in the regard, and I have been having a blast both playing the game and researching for this tier list.
Yet, with everything that happened during this first week, the Tier List has been heavily impacted and decks are all over the place. For the first time in a while, Sera Miracle isn’t the top performer anymore, as other decks seem to manage a better score average, or figured how to adapt to the environment better.
Another crazy turn of events is Destroy not being the absolute best synergy currently, as On reveal got a very nice boost since Black Panther joined the game. Discard has also found its footing, using Lockjaw as the key card to abuse the mechanic. The Move archetype also seems to be on the rise, although not on the same level as the other two I just mentioned yet.
Lastly, the surge in the amount of Armor or Cosmo you will face on ladder is another explanation why the Destroy decks might have taken a step back.
Overall, this early metagame for the Season of the Panther is extremely enjoyable, and feels diverse enough to not be bored playing it while grinding the ladder. Let’s dive deep into all the decks that have been relevant in creating one of the best metagame on Marvel Snap so far!
As always, thanks to all the sources of information I use to create this Tier List:
- https://marvelsnap.pro/
- https://snap.fan/
- Snap.fan Community Server on Discord
- https://twitter.com/SnapDecks
- https://marvelsnap.io/
- All the players offering their insight and time to chat
Marvel Snap Meta Tier List
| Tier | Deck Name |
|---|---|
| Tier 1 | BAEro 🔼 |
| Tier 1 | Dracula Lockjaw 🔼 |
| Tier 1 | Ongoing Destroyer 🆕 |
| Tier 1 | Wong Reveal 🔼 |
| Tier 1 | Sera Miracle 🔽 |
| Tier 2 | Kazoo 🔼 |
| Tier 2 | Control 🔼 |
| Tier 2 | Deathpool 🔽 |
| Tier 2 | Patriot 🔽 |
| Tier 2 | Negative Seratonin 🔽 |
| Tier 3 | Lockation 🆕 |
| Tier 3 | Movement 🔼 |
| Tier 3 | Zero 🔽 |
| Tier 3 | Lockjaw On Reveal 🔽 |
| Tier 3 | Hela |
| Tier 4 | Cerebro 2 🆕 |
| Tier 4 | Bounce |
| Tier 4 | Handsize Panther 🆕 |
| Tier 4 | Mister Negative |
| Budget | Ongoing Kazoo |
| Budget | On Reveal Pool 2 |
| Budget | Dino Control Pool 2 |
💡 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
BAEro
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Rank Justification: It is extremely difficult to separate all the decks in Tier 1 when it comes to their average power or ceiling. They all look like they could compete for the title of best deck in the game, and probably change position based on what you face and the popular tech cards at the moment.
I decided to go with BAEro as the deck is the most polished so far, with other archetypes potentially still having some room to grow. Aero and Magneto seem perfect currently to disrupt opposing synergies like Wong, Lockjaw. These two cards being great stat-sticks as well as unique effects doesn’t hurt either. This deck does get hurt by the prevalence of Cosmo and Armor in the metagame, both of which require you to hold your cards you want to blow up rather than playing them out into a possible Cosmo or Armor with priority.
How To Play: The deck can be split into two parts: Setting up the late game and reaping the rewards.
Your early game is built around doing two things: getting ahead in as many lanes as possible, and getting two kills so that you can discount Death by two, allowing you to play her and another card after you play Wave. You have several efficient ways of doing this. Carnage + Bucky Barnes is an incredibly efficient threat, Mysterio creates tokens that can be killed off by Carnage and Deathlok while being five hidden power, and The Hood and Nova die to Carnage, Killmonger and Deathlok while also leaving some power behind.
Once we’ve achieved this, we can slam Wave onto the board on turn five, setting our Death plus another card combo and preventing the opponent from doing too much on their side. Then, while Death represents our points to lock up the lane we play her into, we can use Magneto or Aero in order to pull opposing cards away from the other location we were ahead on. And because Wave limits how many cards the opponent can play, Aero and Magneto rarely have the problem of being played into a lane that could be filled by the opponent during turn six only.
A full guide to the deck can be found here, courtesy of our very own KMBest:
Jawcula
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Rank Justification: If it was my decision alone, this deck would be in Tier 0, alone. I might even want to write a tier list including just Jawcula in it, but again, I am a discard fanboy.
I have been talking about the deck for three weeks now, and it seems like the perfect build is still up in the air, with Hela, Thor and Odin also being tested as I write this. Yet, even being an unpolished deck, Jawcula develops a ton of points. When you get Morbius on two, Lockjaw on three and Dracula on four, you can expect to break the 60 points barrier without any location help.
The deck’s major limitation is its inability to adapt, either to locations or including tech cards. This is a big bag of discard cards we want to abuse as much as possible, and generate a ton of points in the process. We aren’t concerned with what the opponent is doing most of the time, and aren’t running many ways to counteract on it, except for Moon Knight. We’ll see if counters to this deck arise, but for now, it looks like Jawcula is making Discard very relevant again.
How To Play: The deck looks to use Lockjaw in order to maximize Discard effects. When we start going off, our hand should melt quickly. This means that it’s important to find either Swarm or Apocalypse before doing so, hence the inclusion of America Chavez in the deck. If we do, Swarm gives us some potential explosive play when played behind Lockjaw later on, and Apocalypse grows to stupid amounts of power, making Dracula able to win a lane on its own.
With Morbius, Lockjaw and Dracula in the deck, it is entirely possible to start discarding on turn five, once the cards we don’t want to lose are on the board. Yet, this isn’t much of a problem thanks to Swarm being able to fill Lockjaw’s location quickly and getting additional discards from our decks thanks to it.
Ongoing Destroyer
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Rank Justification: Destroyer felt like a solved archetype, but it turns out it just needed an entirely fresh take. It was a nice deck, but missing a bit of power in order to compete with the other big performers. Thanks to Owen Collier-Ridge it feels like that power problem has been solved, as the deck takes a page from the Spectrum Ongoing deck.
In this build, Destroyer simply is a big beater that can contest a location on its own. The whole destroy package was cut, which doesn’t feel so bad considering the amount of times Nova, the Hood, or Bucky Barnes get met with a timely Armor these days. Since the deck plays Armor and Cosmo itself, it can also annoy the other destroy decks without suffering any setback from it.
Another take on the deck is to add Electro to it, alongside another 5-cost such as Iron Man which I saw in several takes on this deck. This makes the deck much greedier, but opens the possibility to play both Destroyer and Spectrum in a game.
How To Play: The deck aims to fill the board with ongoing cards while trying to limit what the opponent can do. As such, the deck could be split in two separate part, the proactive ongoing effects, and the reactive ones.
In the proactive category, we find Ant-Man, Colossus, Lizard, Mojo, Captain America, Mister Fantastic and Warpath. These cards should be our main source of points during the first part of the game. Keep in mind, because we are running Warpath, we don’t want to expand on all three locations.
As for the reactive ones, Armor, Cosmo and Professor X fill this role. These three allow to set up a good Destroyer and protect Lizard while annoying Destroy or On reveal based decks in the process. Also, because Spectrum can buff them on turn six, they contribute to the overall score quite nicely.
A detailed origin story about the deck, written by Owen Collier-Ridge himself: https://receptive-basilisk-bb3.notion.site/Spectrum-Destroyer-Origin-Story-c4fdf11c41404c40a37fd3c48730eb3d
Wong Reveal
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Rank Justification: I wasn’t a believer in Black Panther, and based on how well On Reveal has been doing, I was wrong. Arnim Zola also makes the cut now, combining with Black Panther to create 32 points, spread across two locations. Alongside Wong, things go crazy and you get at least 64 points.
As a result, similarly to the Jawcula deck, On Reveal appears to be amongst the highest scorers in the game. Yet, with Iceman and Storm included, it can afford to be a little bit more annoying than the discard build.
The reason I ranked it lower is Cosmo. Cosmo absolutely ruins this deck. It also feels a little less reliable overall, leading to more retreats.
How To Play: Mostly looking to abuse Wong and Odin in the On Reveal synergy, this deck really separates the first three and the last three turns of the game. Once Wong is in play, we enter a completely different realm of potential power.
The basic sequence for the deck is Wong on four, play a five behind it, play a six behind it. Most of the time, Black Panther wants to be paired with Arnim Zola while White Tiger goes with Odin. Doctor Doom is a bit of the “fit everywhere” kind of card and just contributes no matter what. Ironheart plus Wolfsbane can also represent a nice turn six when played together.
As for the first three turns, the deck is quite flexible :
- Ebony Maw is mostly played to gain priority, which at least gives us a turn to abuse Wong in the event of Cosmo or Enchantress.
- Iceman is just annoying to the opponent
- Psylocke allows us to directly skip to Wong on turn three. She can also open a 3-cost plus Ebony Maw or allows playing two 5 or 6-costs in a raw, if we wouldn’t find Wong for example.
- Storm is just a location lock, which we can easily access later on
Sera Miracle
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Rank Justification: Sera Miracle is still the most flexible deck in the game in my book. It can build around Dracula, Strong Guy, the Ongoing synergy or the Destroy one. In that sense, the deck is highly capable of adapting to the metagame.
Yet, with other high scorers emerging, such as Black Panther or Discard, it seems like Sera Miracle simply doesn’t get away with as many wins as it used to.
How To Play: As you might have guessed from the name, this deck is looking to capitalize on Sera‘s ability to create a spectacular turn six.
While there are cards that can be played before Sera, such as Bishop and Angela, the deck is trying to be extremely flexible on turn six. This way, it can spread its points as efficiently as possible. This allows you to surprise the opponent, and gather a lot of information on their strategy as well.
A very detailed guide is available here, covering everything you need to know about the deck: https://marvelsnapzone.com/sera-miracle-deck-guide/
Tier 2
Kazoo
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Rank Justification: In the early days of a season, Kazoo simply does everything it’s asked to do. It’s stable, adaptable and capable of Snapping quite early in a game to scare the opponent, or raise the stakes on a great hand.
Now that it includes both Armor and Cosmo, the deck could consider making the switch to an Ongoing build with Spectrum and Ebony Maw added to it. Even without going this far, it seems like Kazoo has solved its Killmonger problem, which immediately allowed it back into the metagame.
How To Play: This is the textbook proactive deck, looking to develop points and making smart use of each energy we are given. If the first three turns are rather flexible, turn four will usually be dedicated to Ka-zar and turn five to either Blue Marvel or Iron Man. Turn six can be flexible as well, either pushing a location with America Chavez or spreading points if we have enough cards to do so.
Compared to previous iteration of the archetype, the current build includes Armor and Cosmo to protect its very important 1-cost units from Killmonger, and also annoy Destroy and On Reveal.
Ideally, we want to play Armor on a location where we will also play Ant-Man and another 1-cost, usually Iceman or where Nightcrawler will be moved. Cosmo is more flexible to play, either on our big Ongoing cards location, to protect from Enchantress. Or as a disruptive tool against On reveal or Destroy, where we anticipate our opponent to play its key effects.
Control
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Rank Justification: The optimal build of the control archetype is incredibly difficult to figure out. First, there are the many cards that can be played in the deck, such as Magik, Sera, Doctor Octopus, Armor, Cosmo or Green Goblin to name some good ones. Second, with new archetypes typically rising at the season’s start, it is hard to pinpoint exactly what we are supposed to counter with the Control archetype.
Nevertheless, Enchantress and Shang-Chi have formed a very solid duo that a lot of players seem to rely on to climb the ladder. With the help of cards like Rescue to develop more points early on, the deck seems to be a nice middle of the pack archetype.
How To Play: With less reactive cards than usual, although Cosmo or Doctor Octopus could make the cut as well, the deck wants to develop some points before switching to its reactive game plan. Being able to get ahead at least on one location makes it much easier to play our reactive cards later on.
Through Angela and the destroy mechanic, we are able to contest at least one location quite easily. To win the second one, we can either rely on our flexible cards, like Captain Marvel and Doctor Doom, or wait for the opponent to commit and punish them with Enchantress or Shang-Chi.
DeathPool
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Rank Justification: DeathPool is still a great deck, but suffers too much from the popular inclusion of Armor and Cosmo, which limit the major synergy of the deck. It simply seems like this isn’t a great time for the deck, although it finds a way to stay relevant despite the counter cards.
How To Play: The deck is based around trying to destroy Deadpool as many times as possible to grow its power, reducing Death’s cost in the process. Then, you can copy Deadpool‘s power with Taskmaster, alongside playing Death thanks to Wave’s ability. The deck has the nice upside of naturally playing around most board disruptions like Goblins or Rocks.
Outside these four key cards, the rest of the deck is solely cards that either help Deadpool grow (Carnage, Venom, Hulkbuster) or benefit from being destroyed themselves (Bucky Barnes, Nova, The Hood).
Venom is the flexible card in the deck, either being used as another destroy tool or as a big target for Taskmaster as a back-up to Deadpool or Death not being available.
Patriot
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Rank Justification: Enchantress is very annoying for Patriot. Cosmo can sometimes ruin a Mystique and the whole game in the process. Yet, Patriot still seems to be able to perform quite nicely, and new iterations of the deck have emerged as well, showing the deck can be flexible.
Several players have reached Infinite using the archetype already, such as Shadysoul, which we highlighted in our “Infinite Decks of the Week” series here.
How To Play: The deck revolves around making the most out of our payoff cards, which buff our whole board.
Ka-Zar and Blue Marvel can serve as decent Patriot replacements, but Patriot himself should be the go-to option if available. Supporting these Ongoing abilities are Onslaught and Mystique for duplication, and in some versions, cards like Magik and Adam Warlock for an extra draw if needed.
The rest of the deck is composed of cheap recipients for the buffs, and should be used to fill two locations before we focus on our combo in the last few turns, we need the third one for our payoffs. Ultron offers a different path to victory, as the card can fill two locations, making the deck extremely passive in the early game.
Negative Seratonin
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Rank Justification: The play rate for this deck has dropped a lot with the new archetypes emerging, so this could be one of the last weeks that Negative Seratonin is featured on the Tier List.
The deck still features a nice high roll, leading to a ton of points and surprising the opponent in the process. With Discard and Black Panther On Reveal being popular currently, it just feels like there are more reliable options for players looking to develop as many points as possible.
How To Play: The deck focuses a lot on being played over large sample sizes and maximizing its great hands while folding the bad ones. As such, you should snap based on your hand more often than not.
A hand worth snapping for will usually include Mister Negative or Sera, your big enablers. There is one thing to consider regarding Mister Negative: the amount of low power cards you already have in hand by turn four.
If Iron Man, Mystique, Rogue, Wolfsbane and such cards are already in your hand, playing Mister Negative won’t benefit your deck much. If this scenario happens, you can either become a Sera deck, or simply retreat and move on to the next game.
Becoming a Sera only deck will lower your points’ ceiling, but with Angela, Bishop, Mojo and other potential high scorers, you can still compete.
Tier 3
Lockation
den
Rank Justification : The other take on controlling the opponent and limiting their ability to play also gained some momentum. Through reducing the playing field, this deck makes Cosmo and Armor super reliable against the decks they counter. The reason this deck isn’t ranked as high as the Enchantress and Shang-Chi core is that On Reveal is very popular, and doesn’t have any trouble playing onto any location, even if you use Storm or Spider-Man there.
There might be a case to start playing Green Goblin or Debrii again, as we can protect them now from being destroyed easily.
How To Play : The goal of this is to limit the playing field for the opponent and make it easy for us to guess their next play. With Storm, Spider-Man, Hobgoblin and Professor X, we are able to reduce the game to one or two locations, which makes Armor and Cosmo much more annoying for the opponent.
Also, this gives our own high points cards like Ebony Maw, Lizard or Jessica Jones a much higher chance of winning a location almost on their own. We can also use Nightcrawler and Doctor to support them, as they give us the ability to impact other unplayable locations.
Movement
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Rank Justification : A Tier 4 deck for the larger part of the previous seasons, Move seems like it might be on its way back this season, posting much better results than we have seen in the past. I ranked it in Tier 3 as a precaution, considering the deck is quite new, but it could move up next week if its solid performance is stabilized.
The change in the build, now including Polaris, Aero and Magneto, probably has a lot to do with it. These cards enable the deck to disrupt the opponent rather than just trying to develop as many points as possible. Also, these cards allow the deck to set up much better situations for Dagger, or grow Kraven with our opponents cards.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the build kept evolving with time. This very different take on Move could be a new start for the whole archetype.
How To Play : The move archetype is based on several key cards, supported by the rest of the deck.
In this iteration, Human Torch, Dagger, Vulture and Kraven seem to be cards we want to grow:
- Human Torch and Vulture just want to move as much as possible, as to grow to ridiculous amount of points. Iron Fist, Cloak, Doctor Strange or Heimdal shoud always be valuable cards as long as they are paired with one of these two.
- Dagger and Kraven require a bit more finesse, and seem to be more situational. Yet, thanks to the newly introduced package of Polaris, Aero and Magneto, we are able to set them up much more efficiently.
Lastly – and this feels like the biggest improvement compared to other Move builds – we have more way of developing some raw amount of points. Miles Morales, Aero and Magneto all contribute nicely in this way.
Zero
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Rank Justification: The downfall that already started at the end of last season hasn’t stopped for the Zero archetype. Although Enchantress is great at countering Wong in the popular On Reveal deck, it feels like Zero doesn’t develop enough points to consistently challenge the top archetypes. Also, with Aero and such cards being popular, the deck can end up with several big scorers on the same location, leading to barely anything on the other two.
How To Play: Built around negating the ability of Typhoid Mary and Red Skull, the deck mixes several synergies. The big ones are the ability to destroy cards (Carnage, Venom) and the ability to remove the negative impact of Typhoid Mary and Red Skull (Zero, Enchantress). The last card included in order to get the points without the downside from Red Skull is Taskmaster, which can be Arnim Zola in some lists.
As a result, the deck plays similarly to a destroy archetype until turn four, looking to set up cards to eat later on like Nova, Bucky Barnes, Sabretooth or Mysterio clones. Once in the late game, we should plan around the big point-scorers, and look for play patterns that can maximize our points while minimizing the downsides of our big point-scorers.
While Zero needs to be played before Typhoid Mary or Red Skull, Enchantress, Venom and Taskmaster will come afterwards. This means we will usually plan to use those on turn six, as a surprise to our opponent.
Lockjaw On Reveal
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Rank Justification: The deck still exists, yet seems to be losing a ton of popularity to the On Reveal Wong deck, or the Discard Lockjaw build. While other decks have evolved with the start of the new season, Lockjaw On Reveal doesn’t seem to have any new cards appear in the deck.
It might just be the beginning of the end for Lockjaw as its own thing, time will tell.
How To Play: Plan A is a very straightforward game plan of abusing Lockjaw with cheap cards in order to get the bigger ones. Plan B is to abuse the On Reveal synergy to try to compete even without Lockjaw.
Through Thor, Jubilee; White Tiger and Odin, it is still possible to develop a decent amount of points while playing on curve. Giving us a fighting chance instead of retreating whenever we aren’t drawing into Lockjaw. The deck will be weaker, but can still find some play patterns to compete.
Hela Discard
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Rank Justification: With Cosmo being quite popular, Hela can be shut down if the space dog is played on your Invisible Woman lane on turn five or six. That said, the deck still provides some nice explosiveness and ability to surprise the opponent.
Points wise, Hela might be one of the few older archetypes that can still compete with the new kids on the Tier 1 block. The deck’s problem is being much more unreliable than these decks, leading to more retreats and unfortunate losses.
I have seen people advocate for safer builds of Hela, but then it would just make more sense to run Jawcula, which is the more reliable discard deck currently.
How To Play:
The deck revolves around using Invisible Woman to safely play our discard effects and Hela onto her location. At the end of the game, all the effects will trigger in their order of play and summon everything we have discarded.
If we wouldn’t draw into Invisible Woman, we can either just play for points on turn three, four, five, and six, as the deck has many high score cards. Or risk it and hope we won’t discard Hela before turn six.
Jubilee could be a consideration in the build in that regard, providing another turn four to the deck. Red Skull can be included too, providing a second 5-cost if Captain isn’t enough in your opinion.
Closing Words
The start of a new season is always an exciting time, but also a very difficult one to read clearly. I see posts about reaching infinite with various decks on a daily basis, everyone has a different opinion on what is good and what isn’t. Some tech cards can completely change a match-up, tilting your opinion towards one or the other deck. Even excellent platforms like Snap.fan see their data constantly evolving, the sample size not being big enough yet.
As a result, I would advise viewing this Tier List with an open mind, as it very well could change a lot by the time I write the next one. Nevertheless, I am super excited about the direction the metagame is taking currently, and seeing Discard and Move back in the discussion for viable synergies is a great sign for Marvel Snap overall power balance.
We have had no balance patch since the global release, which would be worrisome if this metagame was not constantly evolving. This week has felt incredibly fresh, and I had a ton of fun during my climb to the Infinite rank. If you’d like to comment or discuss this article with the team, feel free to join our community Discord. You can also find me directly on Twitter.
Good Game Everyone.