Table of Contents
The end of the season is rarely a time to witness big changes in the power level of each archetype. While some players who have already reached their goal may try to be innovative, most players still climbing will stick to the established, well-rounded builds.
As a result, the stronger decks tend to be more popular, and tech cards to counter them also gain a bit of momentum. Currently, it seems like the Ongoing theme is very strong, with Kazoo or Devil Dinosaur roaming the ladder for players in Pool 1 or 2 and Wong, Sera or Patriot representing the foundation of many Pool 3 decks.
The Destroy synergy is the other very strong theme alongside Ongoing, represented by Destroyer and Deathpool. They can’t fit many tech cards in their decks, as most of the slots are used for their core cards, and aren’t as easily teched against as well.
Unfortunately, Move and Discard haven’t improved and still look very far behind the other main synergies in Marvel Snap.
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 | Sera Miracle |
| Tier 1 | Patriot |
| Tier 2 | Deathpool |
| Tier 2 | Destroyer 🔽 |
| Tier 2 | Kazoo 🔼 |
| Tier 2 | Lockjaw On Reveal |
| Tier 2 | Zero |
| Tier 2 | Negative Seratonin 🔼 |
| Tier 3 | Control |
| Tier 3 | Wong Reveal 🔽 |
| Tier 3 | Wongoing |
| Tier 3 | Dracula Discard |
| Tier 3 | Hela Sandman |
| Tier 4 | Bounce |
| Tier 4 | Movement |
| Tier 4 | Mister Negative |
| Budget | Ongoing Kazoo 🆕 |
| Budget | On Reveal Pool 2 |
| Budget | Dino Control Pool 2 |
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Tier 1
Sera Miracle
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Rank Justification: Still looking like the most stable deck out there, Sera Miracle shines with its capacity to include virtually any tech card in the game thanks to its flexible curve. Rogue was already making an appearance in some lists last week, and the card looks to only have gained momentum as time passes.
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, 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.
Rogue can be played on turn 4, as a way to try to snipe an opposing Wong. Against Patriot, you can wait for turn six and simply steal Patriot‘s ability to ruin your opponent’s day.
Patriot
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Rank Justification: Patriot is a little harder to target than other Ongoing decks thanks to its flexibility in terms of how it can accomplish its combo. While it has become easier to recognize as time passes, the deck has kept a nice win rate and cube average. Alongside Sera Miracle, it looks like the best deck for someone who knows how to properly use the Snap and Retreat buttons.
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.
Tier 2
DeathPool
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Rank Justification: Deathpool has been quietly progressing over the last weeks, and seems to be the best “leave me alone” deck in the current metagame.
It will rarely be countered apart from the occasional Cosmo sniping a destroy effect, and play most match ups simply trying to outscore the opponent.
This is something that it is very able to do when Deadpool is able to reach 10 or 20 points.
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.
Destroyer
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Rank Justification: With almost no changes to the deck during this whole patch, Destroyer managed to stay consistent and relevant.
In my opinion, of the two Destroy decks, Deathpool seems to be slightly better as of right now, with a higher ceiling in points. Yet, Destroyer keeps being a popular deck, able to play against most opponents in the metagame. Also, Cosmo sometimes single-handedly beats Wong.
How To Play: With Warpath in the list, Destroyer is one of the few decks out there that will focus mostly on two locations. It can contest the third one through playing cards for its opponent with Green Goblin and in some lists, even Hobgoblin, although it does not have to.
With Destroyer‘s effect, we can play cards onto the third location, we just shouldn’t expect them to contribute to the points total as they will be destroyed. This can be a useful juke with Warpath on the board.
For the locations we look to compete on, we will usually try to play Armor and any card we don’t want to see destroyed on one. Warpath and the Demon are often our highest point scorers we are looking to protect.
On the other location, we should be playing Bucky Barnes, Nova, or the Goblins, as a way to have cards other than Destroyer contributing to the point total.
If we can’t find any of the cards we want to destroy, we can also use Cosmo as a way to deny Destroyer’s effect and just have him as a 16-point card.
Kazoo
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Rank Justification: The deck is currently crushing it in terms of play rate, as Kazoo is perhaps the best deck for Pool 1 players.
Even when looking at the full collection metagame, Kazoo looks like a real contender, although it doesn’t fit the combo theme most other decks have.
The way to play Kazoo currently seems to be super aggressively, snapping opponents whenever we spot that they aren’t drawing optimally. As a result, your goal isn’t necessarily to go to the end of the game. You can instead focus on farming the quick games where the opponent retreats early because they are afraid their average hand won’t beat the very reliable Kazoo.
How To Play: Kazoo is the textbook proactive deck, looking to make a smart use of its energy and play cards when possible.
The big emphasis when playing this deck should be on if you have the payoff cards, such as Angela, Ka-Zar and Blue Marvel. If you do, maximize their impact on the game, as they represent our main win condition.
The disruption gives this deck a different dimension, looking to limit what the opponent can do while we develop our side of the locations. Most of the time, our go-to curve in the late game will be Ka-Zar into Blue Marvel into Onslaught. Drawing into this trio means we don’t need much space on the board, and can afford to play cards like Debrii and all our cheap card in the earlier turns.
Otherwise, we can be more flexible with our curve, but still focus on being energy efficient.
Lockjaw On Reveal
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Rank Justification: With more tech cards to counter Wong, such as Enchantress or Rogue, Lockjaw seems to be the most reliable way to play On Reveal for the end of the season.
The deck still has a heavy reliance on draws, but should reward any player with a good sense of when to snap or retreat to optimize cubes.
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 and Odin, it is still possible to develop a decent amount of points and not be forced to retreat whenever we aren’t drawing into Lockjaw. The deck will be weaker, but can still find some play patterns to compete, like using Psylocke in order to go Doctor Doom into Odin for example.
With Wave now added to the mix, the deck can also take a disruptive route, playing Wave on turn four, and Odin on turn five into Wave‘s location. This locks both players out of playing multiple cards for the last two turns of the game, as every card is set to four energy.
Zero
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Rank Justification: Zero has managed to keep a solid status in the metagame, although it’s far from the breakout status it had earlier in the month.
As the deck became more famous, it feels like it lost a bit of that surprise element, and a few percentage points on its win rate as a result.
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 4, 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.
Negative Seratonin
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Rank Justification: This deck simply never dies, and with Project Pegasus featured on Sunday, being able to play Sera or Negative early kept it relevant yet again.
The win rate still isn’t good (46% according to Snap.fan data), but it looks like the deck’s cube average is up there with the best performing decks. As usual, it feels like the deck is disrespected and making the most of it.
How To Play: Functionally, this list plays the same as it always has. The deck is all about high rolling now that one of its core cards provides negative points.
The big difference compared to its glory days is the go-to curve, which was formerly Mister Negative on four, Sera on five and Magik on six alongside other cards. Now, Magik must be played on turn five and Sera needs to wait a turn if both are in hand.
Also, with Mister Negative now at minus one power, he isn’t an autoplay anymore now, especially if you have your best targets in hand, like Iron Man.
A bit more discipline is required in order to get the best out of Negative Seratonin, and with better options available, it seems like many players have switched to other archetypes.
Tier 3
Control
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Rank Justification: While it is very flexible thanks to the power of Enchantress and Shang-Chi, the Control archetype still struggles, in my opinion.
If I had to take a guess, I would say the very popular On Reveal (Doctor Doom, Ironheart) and Ongoing (Blue Marvel, Ka-Zar) cards that help to buff otherwise unplayable lanes is hurting the deck game plan a lot.
Another take at the control archetype would be the “Skience” archetype, which includes the most popular tech cards currently. That said, it does not have good numbers on Snap.fan:
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How To Play: The deck wants to play cards every turn, but always in the spirit of “how is it going to annoy my opponent the most?”. The core of the deck is centered around limiting what the opponent can do, so we won’t need 50 or more points in order to win.
Storm, Spider-Man, Blue Marvel and Doctor Doom are at the core of our strategy. The first two are in charge of disrupting the locations, while the second duo impact locations that can’t be played on.
With the latter turns taken care of, what this deck is aiming to do is not fall too far behind early on, so Storm and Spider-Man really feel punishing for the opponent. In that regard,
Debrii and Jessica Jones directly compete with some of our core cards in terms of the mana curve. Usually we would want to play Storm on turn three, as a way to lock the location down as early as possible. As such, Debrii can be played alongside a cheap card on turn four or five in order to limit the opponent’s development once they start committing more cards.
As for Jessica Jones, she usually represents Storm‘s best follow up, and Spider-Man doesn’t mind being played on turn five. The decision only becomes difficult if you have both Blue Marvel and Doctor Doom in hand in addition to Jessica Jones and Spider-Man. Otherwise, you should be able to work out a curve to play three out of these four.
Wong Reveal
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Rank Justification: With more disruption against Wong, this deck got worse this week. Also, with the metagame switching to a more combo based environment, Hazmat lost a ton of value.
As a result, Wong On Reveal had to become a more proactive deck, and it looks like Lockjaw has more high rolls. Leader feels like it can steal some games though, and gives another solid target to hit with Odin.
How To Play: With more combo oriented decks, Wong Reveal had to adapt to wards generating more points rather than being disruptive with cards like Hazmat.
In this iteration of the build, we have potential high rolls with Jubilee and more stability thanks to America Chavez. Both cards help us be more competitive when we don’t find Wong and also help to find our signature card more often. Also, with Psylocke in the deck, we can play Jubilee on turn 3 and still have our Wong pattern starting on turn 4.
Otherwise, the deck still is based on developing during the last three turns, while playing flexibly in the first three:
- Wong → Ironheart → Odin in order to get a ton of buffs on our board, look to get a unit on at least another location before starting your combo.
- Wong → Wave and Psylocke → Two 6-costs cards (reduced to 4 with Wave, and we have 8 mana thanks to playing Psylock on the Wong location).
- Wave → Odin → Another 6, which is more disruptive for the opponent as all cards will cost 4 during turn five and six.
- Psylocke → Doctor Doom → Odin, which allows contesting most locations as we develop at least 10 points everywhere.
Wongoing
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Rank Justification: With Destroyer running Cosmo, and other decks adding Enchantress and Rogue, Wongoing doesn’t feel in a good spot.
The deck only seems able to compete when it draws the full Spectrum combo, and is relevant mostly thanks to being able to retreat in the other scenarios.
How To Play: The deck aims to play Wong on turn four, Mystique to copy its ability on turn five, and Spectrum to buff our entire side of the board on turn six.
Apart from those key cards, the rest of the deck is filled with cheap Ongoing cards, ready to receive Spectrum’s blessing when she hits the board.
If this happens, and the opponent doesn’t recognize their incoming demise with a retreat, you should be almost guaranteed to get some cubes.
Dracula Discard
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Rank Justification: Similarly to our previous entry, Dracula Discard seems like it can’t compete with the other decks unless it gets Dracula, Apocalypse and manages to get the discard right.
Fortunately enough, it happens enough for the deck to be relevant, and you are only punished with 1 cube losses when it doesn’t.
How To Play: With Invisible Woman in the mix, the deck can now play its discard effects a bit more carelessly, even with Dracula in hand. Also, it allows playing discard effects while Apocalypse isn’t in the hand.
This deck’s play patterns really depend on our hand and turn two play:
- Morbius is the least committal play, and simply pushes for discards down the line. He usually benefits a ton from Wong duplicating our discards later in the game.
- Angela pushes for a tempo oriented curve, aiming to play cards on her location.
- Invisible Woman is the bad hand savior, allowing us play discards on her location even without Apocalypse in hand, or with cards we can’t afford to discard.
Based on how we start the game, the only really rigid turn is turn 4, where we will look to play Dracula if we have it.
Hela Sandman
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Rank Justification: With Project Pegasus featured on Sunday, Hela received a sweet location to abuse. Outside this kind of help, the deck seems to be working only for specialists of the archetype.
It doesn’t really help that Invisible Woman gets punished by all the cards included to normally counter Wong.
How To Play: Sandman doesn’t change the way Hela discard plays, it simply is another alternative for turn four against certain decks.
As such, the core of the strategy is unchanged, and 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.
Closing Words
A new season is usually the perfect occasion to drop a patch and mix things up for the developer team. Given the way the metagame has evolved, it also looks like it might be time for it. Obviously, players still in Pool 1 or 2 are experiencing a whirlwind as they advance in Marvel Snap. We can see the budget Kazoo list now includes Armor as a way to defend against Killmonger, its natural predator, showing there is some adaptation even outside of Pool 3.
Otherwise, the top deck has barely changed in several weeks, as Sera Miracle, Patriot or Destroyer have been at the top for almost the entirety of October. We have seen some surprises like Zero and Deathpool, but these archetypes quickly found their groove and joined them to form a solid top five.
Outside of these decks mainly built around the Ongoing and Destroy mechanics, On Reveal seems to be solidly anchored as the third best. As we can see in the rankings, although Dracula and Hela discard can be considered passable, they don’t make the cut to the top tier.
Something worth noting is a build I stumbled across in the Snap.fan community discord, a hybrid Dracula, Hela, Lockjaw discard deck which was praised by multiple early adopters. The creator seems unknown so far, but Kraken_Null was the one who was sharing it there.
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Given how little data exists on this deck, it would be crazy to rank it, but for now, it seems to be better than the current popular discard decks. I personally can’t wait to see how this develops and I wonder if the deck will be able to climb our rankings at the start of Season 8.
Lastly, even though Miles Morales was released on the Season Pass, decks using the move synergy haven’t done anything worth noting this month.
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.
