Table of Contents
Global release is finally upon us! The metagame is still solidifying after patch 7.6.5, so let us dive right in with our Tier List.
Currently, all decks in Tier 1 are existing, well-known archetypes, with the most dominant synergies being Destroy and On Reveal.
The former has some solid decks with Destroyer, or Deathpool for example, but also easily plays around disruption like Green Goblin or Debrii. The latter is a popular high-roll strategy, led by Wong or Lockjaw. Both cards make your on-reveal cards more efficient, and raise the ceiling of your deck.
Speaking of ceiling, bots aren’t so common anymore, and human players are much better at using the Snap and Retreat functions. As a result, decks with an easy to read game plan or an easily accessible punish are doing worse as time passes. This means that explosive, high ceiling decks are the preferred ones. Cards like Sandman especially, or Wave in some cases, are met with quick retreats and only one cube as a reward, while combo decks can manage to draw an opposing Snap from an overconfident opponent. You’ll see our Tier List will be heavily impacted by that orientation, making highly synergistic decks’ stock rise, while predictable decks plummet.
Thanks to all the sources of information I use to create this Tier List:
- 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
| Tier | Deck Name |
|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Sera Miracle |
| Tier 1 | Destroyer |
| Tier 1 | Patriot |
| Tier 2 | Zero |
| Tier 2 | Deathpool |
| Tier 2 | Lockjaw On Reveal |
| Tier 2 | Wong Reveal |
| Tier 2 | Control |
| Tier 3 | Negative Seratonin |
| Tier 3 | Wongoing |
| Tier 3 | Dracula Discard |
| Tier 3 | Hela Sandman |
| Tier 3 | Kazoo |
| Tier 4 | Bounce |
| Tier 4 | Movement |
| Tier 4 | Mister Negative |
| Budget | Sandman Ongoing Kazoo |
| Budget | Control 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
Sera Miracle
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Rank Justification: A week has passed, and counters to Sera Miracle have emerged. However, the deck still managed to widen the gap between it and the rest of the competition in my eyes.
While the deck’s winrate is not outrageous, the ability the deck has to develop an insane amount of points on turn six makes up for it. This makes it easy for the deck to rack up cubes.
Another great upside of the deck is the flexibility, as Sera played on turn five allows for otherwise impossible to pull off synergies.
You can read KanyeBest’s takes on innovative Sera builds in this write-up: https://marvelsnapzone.com/kanyebest-my-two-best-decks-are-both-sera-miracle/
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.
Destroyer
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Rank Justification: While it will likely never reach 60 points in a game, Destroyer’s stability is outstanding.
Destroyer features a nice mixture of disrupting the opponent and developing points on one or two locations during the game before capping it off with a 16-point haymaker.
In addition to this, the destroy mechanic is quite useful currently, thanks to the amount of goblins and Debrii in the metagame.
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 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 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.
Patriot
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Rank Justification: Patriot seems to have found its groove currently. Outside of the deck’s natural ability to produce points on all three locations, Patriot has the added upside of not caring about the opponent playing Debrii for disruption, as her Rocks are buffed by Patriot’s ability.
Otherwise, Patriot simply seems to fit the bill in terms of surprising the opponent with the amount of points it can develop, alongside being able to impact all the locations, even when not playing directly onto it.
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 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
Zero
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Rank Justification: As expected after the very hot start from the deck last week, the Zero archetype suffered a bit of a setback, but still looks like a great deck.
It is worth noting the deck is adapting, and various lists have emerged. This archetype might still have some tricks up it’s sleeve.
Sera is a potential addition to the deck, and she impacts the whole build quite a lot, creating a hybrid with the Sera Miracle build.
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.
Bonus Sera Zero decklist, work in progress on the Snap.fan community discord:
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DeathPool
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Rank Justification: Wave and Sera have a very strong relationship in Marvel Snap. The more popular Sera gets, the more enticing Wave becomes. Indeed, playing her on turn five is, alongside Sandman, amongst the best counters in the game to prevent the explosive turn Sera enables, and limit the opponent to only playing two cards.
In addition, the destroy mechanic is looking quite strong currently. This means that Deathpool makes a lot of sense against the current top dog in the metagame, naturally raising its stock.
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.
Lockjaw On Reveal
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Rank Justification: The first On Reveal deck on our list is Lockjaw, which seems like it has found its core, and is now moving a couple of cards around to adapt to popular opponents.
While America Chavez looked great as a way to thin the deck to draw our signature card, Wave seems more important currently as a way to stop the opponent from flooding the board late in the game.
Green Goblin could be a cut as well if you really want America Chavez back in the mix.
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.
Wong Reveal
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Rank Justification: This deck has been on the rise since patch 7.6 and was mentioned in the Wonggoing part of last week’s tier list. Also known as the “Exodia deck” back in the first seasons of Marvel Snap, this deck looks like it has solidified a good position in Season Five’s metagame.
While it isn’t aimed at countering anything in particular, the deck manages to be surprising in the later turns, thanks to Wong putting our On-reveal effects on steroids. It’s also flexible enough to include the current annoying tech cards like Green Goblin, and Debrii for disruption or Carnage to cancel those out from the opponent.
Ebony Maw is the most questionable card in the build, and definitely the first cut if you find something more suitable. Considering we will usually play onto the same location for at least three turns if we find Wong, Ebony Maw’s ongoing effect isn’t much of a problem for the deck.
How To Play: As the name indicate, we are looking to leverage Wong’s ongoing ability in order to get the most out of our on reveal effects.
During the first three turns, we basically are a disruptive deck. Look to play Black Widow, Scorpion, Debrii or Green Goblin to annoy the opponent and limit their development.
If turn four comes around and if you have Wong in hand, it is almost always correct to just slam it onto an empty location, or one with at least two additional spaces.
Turn five could be either White Tiger for power or Hazmat plus Ironheart if the opponent already has a ton of units on the board. Carnage can also be played alongside Hazmat to limit the damage the card does to our side. Carnage can also be played alongside Ironheart, clearing out any annoying units we might want to get rid of.
Turn six should always be Odin on Wong’s location, triggering all our On Reveal effects on the location four times. If you don’t have it, you can try to bluff it, or you can try to figure out other ways to win.
Control
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Rank Justification: With the metagame looking clearer as time passes, disruptive and reactive decks are getting refined to counter specific synergies.
Mostly focused around beating Sera Miracle through locking locations and trying to snipe Sera with Enchantress, the control archetype seems to be rising lately.
Compared to SandWave, this deck seems to have a better overall cube gain rate, as opponents don’t instantly retreat when they see a specific card come down on the board.
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 for the win.
Turn one and two can be played in a bit of a careless way, setting up Nova, Angela and such for later use. Turn three and four really are when we need to make the tough decisions:
- We can take the “lockdown” route with Storm and Spider-Man, which only leaves one location available for Sera, and just snipe it with Enchantress as long as we reveal second.
- We could take the board flood approach with Mysterio, Debrii and Doctor Doom on turn six, planning to use Blue Marvel for a ton of points.
- Furthermore, we could also try to fight for points, with Angela being the anchor of a location, and then locking another one with Storm or Spider-Man while we keep the ability to develop points there.
Once we decided on our path to victory, turn five and six should simply follow this route, supporting our game plan to emerge victorious.
Tier 3
Negative Seratonin
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Rank Justification: With Sera Miracle dominating the fray, Negative Seratonin seems to have fallen off significantly after the nerfs to Magik and Mister Negative.
The deck is still able to produce some incredibly strong play pattern when it pulls Mister Negative on turn four and Sera afterwards. It might actually boost its cube average, as some opponent might not take the deck’s ceiling seriously and snap against you, not realizing they are doomed already.
Still, it looks like the deck will not compete for the highest tiers anytime soon.
How To Play: Functionally, this list plays the same as it always has. Magik could be a consideration to cut from the list, but that seems unlikely given how valuable cards drawn from Mister Negative are. 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.
Wongoing
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Rank Justification: With more decks running Enchantress nowadays, Wongoing has suffered some collateral damage.
Also, with Wong now being featured alongside the On Reveal synergy more, and the good results that deck is putting up, there are more and more reasons to move away from Wongoing.
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: Already in a difficult position last week, the discard synergy doesn’t seem like it improved with time.
Still, there is a reason to discuss the deck, as Invisible Woman is a card I have seen played on ladder and found to be very interesting in the deck, She replaces the usual Swarm, and Mojo for some players. I doubt it will save the archetype, but it definitely is interesting enough to follow the deck’s evolution in the coming week.
I still have doubts about Wong, and could consider Magik a fitting replacement, as it gives the deck an extra draw to find Apocalypse. For now, Wong gets played as it presents a nice disruption potential alongside Moon Knight.
Sera is also a consideration, but would push the deck towards a more explosive turn six rather than playing on curve like it currently does.
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: Just like Dracula, it seems like Hela Discard needs a bit of outside help to perform well, in the form of Sandman. The card is just great at annoying Sera based decks, and doesn’t bother Hela one bit, as the deck is absolutely fine only playing one card on turn five and six.
Hela does have problems with Debrii and Green Goblin, as they allow the opponent to pile up useless cards on Invisible Woman’s location.
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.
Kazoo
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Rank Justification: The best budget deck in the game is still hanging on in our tier list, but suffers from the other decks improving as time passes. Kazoo was great last week, but its simplicity came back to haunt it as the deck quickly had very little room to progress or adapt.
With a ton of new players expected to join Marvel Snap this week though, Kazoo should welcome a ton of new adepts very soon.
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.
Otherwise, we can be more flexible with our curve, but still focus on being energy efficient.
Closing Words
Sera still seems to be a meta-defining card, but the question is to what degree she defines the metagame.
Obviously, the card is answerable in many forms, such as Enchantress, locking locations from the opponent, or adding units to their side of the board. To me, the current progression of Sera Miracle seems to indicate the card is capable of dominating in the same way Mister Negative did before suffering two nerfs.
The rest of the metagame is very enjoyable, I must admit. The destroy synergy against the disruptive cards like Debrii and Green Goblin is a fun battle to have, and the On Reveal synergy allows combo deck aficionados to get their fix while not going too far over the top.
Overall, this metagame feels like a great one for the global release, and I can’t wait to see the game grow and welcome a ton of new players.
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.
