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Without the customary early season patch to kick off Season Four Sword and Shield, it’s been difficult to find enough material to justify running our weekly tier list. That said, even without some widely requested balance changes, the metagame has been moving in our absence. In this week’s piece, we will be utilizing a new tool: the Snap.fan app. This app tracks your statistics in Marvel Snap.
Brought to my attention by Dunkoro, a long time contributor to the tier list, the app allows us to access some less subjective information about deck power. There aren’t enough players using the app to represent the complete reality of the current Marvel Snap metagame, but it can still be useful. The biggest potential pitfall is the way decks are grouped based on card inclusions and the inclusion of bot games in the data, which could discourage some from taking it seriously for now.
There are some results that have pushed us to reconsider our rankings, We will also include some decks on this tier list that we feel we have missed in the past. These changes do not reshape the metagame, as Negative Serotonin still the best deck in the game by quiet a margin. Some lower tier decks are showing better results than we thought, however, such as Patriot, listed as a top 10 deck in terms of average cubes per game. As for the newly added builds, Lockjaw and Dracula seem to be pushing archetypes that we dismissed because of nerfs or low popularity.
Thanks to all this new data, we feel like it is time to present our updated Marvel Snap Deck Tier List!
| Tier | Deck Name |
|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Sera Negative |
| Tier 2 | Dracula Discard |
| Tier 2 | Mister Negative |
| Tier 2 | Sera Miracle |
| Tier 2 | Hela Discard |
| Tier 2 | Lockjaw On Reveal |
| Tier 2 | Wongoing |
| Tier 2 | Patriot |
| Tier 3 | SandWave Lockdown |
| Tier 3 | Daredevil Control |
| Tier 3 | DeathPool |
| Tier 4 | Destroyer |
| Tier 4 | Bounce |
| Tier 4 | C3r3bro |
| Budget | Pool 2 Swarm |
| Budget | Pool 2 Control |
| Budget | Pool 2 Disrupt |
💡 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
Negative Serotonin
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I know the introduction stated that we have some new decks to highlight, but the list at the top of the food chain hasn’t changed one bit. We even have some data to support the conclusion everyone already knew: this is the best deck in the game.
Whether one looks at pure winrate (55.16%) or average net cubes per game (0.8), Negative Serotonin is the best deck in the game during Season Four. The only competition to it is Kazar Pool One, which plays in a different environment, as it is the go-to deck for beginners.
Once we enter the realm of full collection decks, Negative Serotonin is at least 1% ahead of every other deck, and thus deserves to be alone in Tier One for another week.
Tier 2
Dracula Discard
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A deck that once was ranked at this very second spot is looking to claim it back, as Dracula Discard, also known as Discard combo, has been rising from its ashes in season 4.
The deck was a top contender before the August 9th patch, but Hellcow’s nerf had everyone doubting the strength of the discard synergy ever since. The Collector’s nerf was another blow to the deck. Apparently, we were wrong for doing so, as Dracula Discard is listed as the second-best deck for cubes averaged per game, and third-best for overall win rate.
Still looking to play a very similar shell to what it was back in the summer, the discard synergy is teaming up with Wong for extra discard effects and Dracula to feed off of Apocalypse. The Collector is a card that has been in and out of the deck. I personally would favor another 1-Cost card for hand management purposes, but consider it a flex spot.
Mister Negative
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While there is a better deck using Mister Negative, the card still is strong enough to warrant running it as a solo option. Although it isn’t as good as Negative Serotonin, the solo Mister Negative build still ranks in the top five in most meaningful categories.
When building around solely Mister Negative, you are basically favoring flexibility over potential. In this build, cards like Wong, Jubilee, or Gambit can be played while there isn’t enough space in the Negative Serotonin deck for them.
Also, Negative feels better than Sera when alone in its deck, as the On Reveal synergy is strong enough with Wong to be competitive. Most of the time when Sera Miracle isn’t drawing Sera, the deck is forced to concede.
Sera Miracle
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Just as Mister Negative is good enough to be a solo act, Sera is also playable on her own. Looking at the data from the Snap.fan app, it appears that Mister Negative is doing slightly better than Sera solo, but Sera is also ranked in the top five of most metrics.
I feel there are fewer reasons to go for a Sera Miracle build if you can afford the Negative Serotonin deck. Compared to Mister Negative, Sera doesn’t allow for a very flexible build, and forces you to play mostly two and three cost cards. Although you can still adapt your deck, being limited to mostly two and three energy cards can quickly limit your creative potential.
Hela Discard
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We had a lot of conversations about whether we should highlight the Sandman variation of the archetype or stick to the more traditional Hela Discard deck. In the end, we decided to go with the traditional one, listed 4% win rate better than the Sandman build. Note that both decks have the same cube average per game, meaning there isn’t much wrong with picking the other option.
Outside of this deckbuilding dilemma, Hela Discard seemed to solidify its position as a good Tier Two deck lately. There was a surge in popularity at the start of the month, when Dark Dimension was the featured location. Even though the deck did much better during that period, it was still not worthy of Tier One status.
Lockjaw On Reveal
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One of the new additions to this list that came from looking at the data, the Lockjaw archetype looks to abuse its signature card to trigger a wide array of On Reveal effects. It also seems to be the first deck where Thor and Jane Foster are significant contributors that feel like solid cards to include.
In terms of construction, the deck is similar to many of this week’s Tier Two decks, which are all (except Discard Combo maybe) looking to abuse the power of a specific card. Just as Mister Negative, Sera Miracle or Hela Discard can feel much worse when they aren’t drawing their featured card, Lockjaw On Reveal feels bad when we can’t cheat our biggest cards out of our deck.
Wongoing
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Considered a meme deck at some point, the Wongoing archetype was the hottest build during the second part of Season Three. Nowadays, the deck isn’t so hyped by the community, but it has managed to maintain a decent play rate and cement itself as a top 10 deck in Marvel Snap.
The biggest problem with the deck is that it seems it has reached its ceiling extremely quickly. For a combo deck like this one, the element of surprise is key in order to push the opponent to accept playing for higher stakes.
Now that most players know how the deck operates, it is much more complicated to abuse the Wong – Mystique – Spectrum trio to routinely play for eight cubes.
Nevertheless, the Ongoing synergy is well represented and can hold its own against Discard or On Reveal as one of the best in Marvel Snap.
Patriot
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Patriot is a bit of a weird inclusion in Tier two. Indeed, the deck is the worst of the bunch if we are looking at win rate (47.9%), and would probably be ranked in Tier Three if it was our default measurement. Yet, Patriot is also ahead of Hela, Wongoing and Lockjaw if we look at average cubes per game, almost tying Sera Miracle’s score.
As a result, it feels quite hard to rank Patriot precisely on our list, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the deck dropped in results by next week as it began drawing less cubes from more careful opponents.
Tier 3
Sandwave Lockdown
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The goal of this deck is to lock your opponent down with Wave and Sandman, and maintain flexibility with your cards that affect multiple lanes. While this deck is posting one of the highest win rates in the game (53.17%, ranking fourth overall), it suffers a ton from opponents not being interested in playing the game out once Wave or Sandman hit the board.
This is the curse of Sandman, and the reason Mister Negative and Sera are managing to stay on top of the cube acquisition competition. You will often win only one cube, and can’t really lose less than that, which flattens your potential profits.
Compared to other high win rate decks in Tier Two, you simply have less ways to raise the stakes and get away with it.
Daredevil Control
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Many people expect Daredevil to go in the Destroyer build. However, the control archetype has been posting better results lately.
With Green Goblin and Hobgoblin becoming more important to combat the most popular combo decks, Daredevil serves as a guarantee these two can’t backfire. This trinity has become a popular inclusion in control decks that to prevent the opponent from using their lanes effectively.
They are accompanied Storm plus Juggernaut combo, as well as powerful disruption like Professor X, Magneto, Shang-Chi and Magik.
While the deck’s win rate would place it in Tier Two with the likes of Sera and Negative, the cube average is pretty bad. We suspect this is because opponents will often retreat once they feel locked out of their usual play-patterns.
DeathPool
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Death‘s new archetype has taken over from the previously dominant DeathWave, and it is looking fine but not great. With a 50.8% win rate and a 0.13 net cubes per game average, the deck is a top 20 deck at best. This is a mighty fall compared to the times before Sera and Mister Negative were ruling Marvel Snap.
While Deadpool offers some crazy points potential, the deck suffers from opposing retreats whenever you start destroying the dangerous 1-Cost card more than a couple of times.
Compared to the decks in Tier 2, which manage to keep their surprise element hidden for use on later turns, DeathPool gives up a lot of cube equity because of the way it operates.
As a comparison, Death Wave has a higher win rate (51.6%), but an even lower net cube average (0.09). It feels like the deck cannot compete with the new top tier archetype, while at the same time making other opponents retreat early. This means that it generates a very low net cube average.
Closing Words
Unpredictability and explosiveness in the last few turns still appears to be the name of the game in Marvel Snap. If we look at win rates, control decks look to be able to fight the combo archetypes pretty well, and are posting similar results. However, once we take a glance at the average net cubes per game category, it is suddenly clear as day that combo decks are the better choice overall.
This week, I had my curiosity piqued by Dracula Discard, and wonder if the deck’s success is due to players not believing how good it can be, and therefore accepting their opponent’s snap rather than retreating.
I hope the addition of the data provided a better experience for you. We welcome any feedback on this different take on our Marvel Snap Tier List. 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,
