Marvel Snap Metagame Tier List, September 27, 2022: Patch 6.9 Early Impact

After Patch 6.9, there are already noticeable changes atop the metagame. For one, Mister Negative doesn’t seem to exist by itself anymore, and only sees play alongside Sera in their still very strong Negative Seratonin deck.

We can also see some decks rising, like Wongoing, which is closing in on a potential Tier 1 status after the patch. Another highlight is the return of the Handsize archetype, currently posting both a solid winrate and average cubes per game per data.

It is important to note that players are still experimenting in the post-patch metagame. As a result, some archetypes from before the patch, like Hela Discard or Lockjaw On Reveal, have a much lower play rate as they aren’t particularly exciting in the current metagame, despite being solid choices.

It might still be a little early to fully understand all the changes that were brought with the latest patch. This is especially notable when it comes to knowing how big of an impact the newcomers are having.

With that said, we feel ready to dive deep into Patch 6.9’s metagame, and cover the best decks of this first week of play.

💡 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 Seratonin

Negative Seratonin

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

2

2x Collection Level 1-14

2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

6x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Recruit Season

1x Starter Card

3.6

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

1.3

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Rank Justification: Although the deck lost a bit of power with Mister Negative, it still feels like this archetype ceiling is the highest in the game. The buff to Blue Marvel seems to be helping it as well. And Sera is arguably capable of carrying the deck still, this deck still could function as a better Sera Miracle deck.

As a result, Negative Seratonin still is one of the the few decks capable of reaching 60+ points, while also maintaining flexibility on how to spread them.

How To Play: The deck aims to play Mister Negative on turn four and Sera on five. Once in that position, it is really up to you to be flexible with your options based on how you want to spread your points. The dream is being able to follow this up with Mystique copying Sera’s ability and Magik for the extra turn.

Note that Mystique can also copy Iron Man or Blue Marvel’s ability and be absolutely fine with it.

Before turn four, you will usually be fairly passive. Bishop is a good turn three play, and Angela can also be slammed on two, even though she is also fine staying in hand if you have a Sera and want more information before deploying her.

Rogue feels like the flex spot for now, but she feels great in a metagame where Sera is expected to be a in a lot of decks, alongside other popular Ongoing abilities.

Tier 2

Handsize

Handsize

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

0

5x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

4x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Starter Card

2.9

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

2.3

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Rank Justification: This is one of the biggest surprises of the patch so far, and I would attribute a lot of the results to the fact that it is surprising, and wait until next week before calling the deck a real dominant archetype. Per Snap.fan, the Handsize archetype is posting the best win rate amongst Pool Three decks and our opinion is that it feels great to play too!

There are several ways to build around the shell of the deck (The Collector, Devil Dinosaur and their support). The list featured here is the one that I personally think has the highest ceiling, but I would refrain from describing anything about this deck as set in stone.

How To Play: This deck capitalizes on The Collector and Devil Dinosaur as its win condition. During the game, we will be looking to grow these two as big as possible using all the support at our disposal.

The only flex slots in the deck are Beast and Arnim Zola, which we use as surprise elements in order to mix up our point distribution.

Beast allows clearing a location in order to buff The Collector and Devil Dinosaur instead. For example, if you know a location is lost, you can get some extra points on the other two using Beast’s ability.

Arnim Zola allows us to duplicate our Devil Dinosaur, and go from one big threat to two. If you managed to keep a very big hand, it shouldn’t be too difficult to have seven cards in hand going into the last turn. This will give you two 15-point Dinosaurs on the board.

Sera Miracle

Sera Miracle

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

1

1x Collection Level 1-14

6x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

4x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

2.6

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

2.8

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Rank Justification: The deck most people expected to rise with the Negative nerf has stayed in the Negative shadow.

While it is arguably better when you don’t highroll, Sera Miracle is unfortunately unable to compete with Negative Seratonin once Mister Negative is played on turn four, resulting is a lower ceiling.

How To Play: Apart from playing Sera on turn 5, this deck doesn’t have any specific play pattern that it is forced to follow. The important part is to know where we are going and how we are going to manipulate our hand in order to get there.

The deck could go Okoye on two, Bishop on three, Strong Guy on four and look like a proactive build playing on curve. It can also pass its turns and play the whole hand on turn six, maximizing the surprise factor.

In order to perform, you really have to be flexible based on what your opponent is playing, the locations on the board and the cards in your hand.

Magik Destroy

Magik Destroy

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

0

4x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

6x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

3.3

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

2.7

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Rank Justification: Sera has become the dominant card of the game after the patch, and the Ongoing Synergy as a whole also feels much improved.

Already built with a reactive shell including Enchantress, Magik Destroy was a reasonable deck before the patch that gained some popularity in the past week.
It is a bit early to say if the deck will be able to counter enough of the dominant synergies once the metagame stabilizes. But for now, this feels like the best meta-counter deck available.

How To Play: The deck is built around a reactive game plan first. The Killmonger, Enchantress, Shang-Chi and Magik shell makes up the core. This places the emphasis on answering what the opponent does.

With that in mind, the rest of the build includes proactive plays in order to not passively wait for the opponent to make a move. Angela, The Hood, Debrii, Sera or even Red Skull should help get some points and be able to challenge at least one location without the need for a tech card.

Carnage is the spice in the deck, found by Torikun, and helps clean our side of the board, like the Goblins which are quite popular lately. It will also eat our unnecessary units like The Hood, Nova, Rock from Debrii and Squirrels from various locations.

A very complete guide to the archetype can be found on Reddit, written by Torikun: click here.

Patriot

Patriot

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

0

1x Collection Level 1-14

2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

6x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Recruit Season

2x Starter Card

3

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

2.5

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Rank Justification: Already in a decent position before the patch, Patriot only gained from Patch 6.9 with Onslaught now at seven power and Blue Marvel pairing well with him as a 5-Cost card.
This change was actually so impactful that lists looking to go wide have emerged, built around the Patriot shell with Blue Marvel and Ka-Zar.

How To Play: The deck can be divided into two parts: the units we are looking to buff, and the buffers.

In the first category, we will find our vanilla units: Wasp, Misty Knight, Squirrel Girl, Shocker, Debrii and Brood. Ideally, we want to use those to fill two locations, which are the one we will try to compete for.

The second part of our deck revolves mostly around multiplying Patriot’s ability with Mystique and Onslaught (Copying Onslaught with Mystique is stronger, but more difficult to do as we can’t play both at the same time). With Ka-zar and Blue Marvel in the deck, we now have backups find Patriot.

Lastly, Magik is in the deck to give us an extra draw and turn, which helps in setting our combo up.

Wongoing

Wongoing

Created by den

, updated 5 months ago

5

Pool 3OngoingMeta

2x Collection Level 1-14

3x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

4x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

2x Recruit Season

2.5

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

2.9

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Rank Justification: While the deck not drawing as intended can be very frustrating, the Retreat button is here to make sure you will never lose more than a cube with a subpar draw.
On the other end, whenever you have the good stuff, you can go ahead and Snap as there aren’t many decks able to compete with this deck’s max points output.

How To Play: This deck is one of the simplest to pilot currently, to which we attribute some of its popularity.

The whole point of the deck is 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.
As long as you do this sequence, the only thing left to do is to play as many Ongoing cards as possible in the early turns.

Lockjaw On Reveal

Lockjaw On Reveal

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

0

1x Collection Level 1-14

1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

3x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

7x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

3.8

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

4.3

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Rank Justification: This is another deck that was doing well before the patch and hasn’t seemed to slow down.
With Thor’s buff, the deck feels a little improved, but the card I particularly like in the deck is Iceman. Getting an opposing Sera to six mana can be devastating to their gameplan, and with Lockjaw, you can sometimes get multiples tries at it. With Thor now a 3-Cost, finding a flexible 1-Cost helps to use more of our energy on each turn. Korg is another good option in that slot.

How To Play: Play Lockjaw on turn 3 and then benefit from it as much as possible. We have America Chavez and Jubilee in the deck to increase our likelihood of finding the featured card.

If you don’t find Lockjaw, you can still try to go for some highrolls in the lategame or just take the one cube loss and Retreat. I have seen some people run Wave in the deck to be able to play the big boys early on. Since the deck already plays Doctor Doom and Odin, Wave could replace Green Goblin quite easily.

Destroyer

Destroyer

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

0

4x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

3x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

4x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

1x Recruit Season

3.3

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

2.6

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Rank Justification: Destroyer feels right at home at the end of Tier 2. The deck may never be a Tier 1 contender, but it also never feels bad to play, and has a decent shot in most games. This makes it a nice balanced pick if you aren’t much of a Snap/Retreat kind of player. It might go down to Tier 3 depending on how other decks evolve, but for now, Destroyer looks like a safe pick.

Spider-Man is also being tested in the deck, looking to edge towards more disruption

How To Play: The deck basically only cares about two locations, the third one being empty in order to activate Warpath.
This doesn’t mean we can’t play onto the third location, as Destroyer will clean it up with its effect, but we should anticipate the need to win the two locations we are playing onto.

On one location, we will usually try to play Armor and the card we don’t want to see destroyed, Warpath and Demon being the two best ones usually . On the other location, we should be playing Bucky Barnes or the Goblins, as a way to have not only 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.

Dracula Discard

Dracula Discard

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

0

5x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

5x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

3.3

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.4

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Rank Justification: Although it rose to a high ranking at the end of the last patch, Dracula Discard suffered a bit with the patch. The Lady Sif nerf hurt the deck. I would still run the card for now, but Bishop and Mojo are two cards that would also make sense in her spot. Building this deck is really about balancing the amount of discards and the amount of proactive effects.

The other problem for Dracula Discard is the current state of the metagame, where the deck needs to find Dracula and Sera in order to be at its best, when most other decks are fine with Sera only. The prevalence of disruption, with Cosmo, Wave, Sandman and the Goblins making the deck difficult to pilot properly.

How To Play: The important play pattern for this deck is playing Dracula on turn four, Sera on turn five and then discarding Apocalypse as much as possible on turn six. This can also happen on turn seven if we find Magik, who is at her best in this list, giving you an extra draw for Apocalypse and Dracula, and an extra turn to empty your hand for Apocalypse.

This leaves our first three turns quite open, with turn one being almost always a pass (you can consider Blade if your hand is Swarm, Apocalypse and not Dracula or Sera). Turn two should be an Angela or Morbius play. Ideally, you could play Lady Sif on turn three if you have Apocalypse already in hand. If you are playing Bishop instead, feel free to just slam the card.

Tier 3

Hela Discard

Hela Discard

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

1

2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

9x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

4.5

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

6.8

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Rank Justification: The deck didn’t gain much with the patch and suffers from the Lady Sif nerf. It will still pull some incredible turn six plays, but feels a bit weaker for now.
Also, because there are other shiny new toys to play with, Hela Discard hasn’t been so popular in the past week.
The list doesn’t seem to have changed for now, but this could also be due to the deck not being very popular after the patch.

How To Play: In order to safely trigger Hela on the last turn, the deck abuses Invisible Woman’s ability.

Once we play her on turn two, we can place our discard effects behind her, leaving the last spot open for Hela. On turn six, all the effects will trigger in their order of play and Hela will summon all our discards.

Although nerfed, Lady Sif remains in the deck, as she is the only discard effect playable without Invisible Woman. As long as we have Death in hand, she won’t discard Hela.

SandWave

SandWave

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

0

2x Collection Level 1-14

4x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

6x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

3.9

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

5.1

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Rank Justification: On paper, this deck looks incredible in a metagame with Sera as the top card. To me, however, this kind of disruptive deck suffers a lot from the ability to retreat from a game. Oftentimes, playing Sandman will only gain you a cube, while you will be playing for higher stakes with your worse hands.

Maximus and Ronan are feeling like a nice addition to the deck so far. Baron Mordo has been tossed around, but I feel like Scorpion is a better option.

How To Play: This decks looks to lock the opponent’s in hand options through Sandman and Wave while not affecting our ability to play cards.

There are two main play-patterns to the deck, the Wave route or the Sandman one.
Wave allows for more proactive plays as we get Ronan, Captain Marvel, Doctor Doom, Odin, and Magneto discounted. Ideally, we would play Odin after Wave and get her effect repeated for another turn, ideally playing another 6-Cost card.

Sandman, on the other hand, looks to disrupt the opponent more, and should allow for a good Ronan followed by a big 6-Cost card. Doctor Doom and Magneto are mostly played for points, while Odin could be synergized with Maximus to help grow Ronan the Accuser even more.

Our very own KanyeBest recently wrote an in-depth guide to his take on this deck.

Electro

Electroyer

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

0

3x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

2x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

7x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)

3.8

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

3.1

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Rank Justification: This deck mostly relies on its surprise effect and doesn’t seem to be good enough to be a contender without it. As a result, you should be able to get away with Snaps very often, at the cost of retreating often as well. Overall, the standard Destroyer list feels more well-rounded.

Still, Electro can win games on its own at times, and you can end a Sera deck’s hopes when giving them Electro;

How To Play: While we could focus on alternate play patterns, and make the deck even closer to the current Destroyer’s list, this deck looks to play Electro on turn 3 every single game.

Once in Electro mode, we are looking to play a 5-Cost card into two 6-Cost cards. The two basic patterns are 1) Nick Fury into the best pulls from it or 2) a Destroyer curve, with Hobgoblin or Professor X with five energy and Leader with seven energy.

Find much more info about the archetype in this guide by ICowCow, clicking here.

Ongoing KaZoo

Ongoing Kazoo

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

6

3x Collection Level 1-14

5x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)

1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)

2x Recruit Season

1x Starter Card

2.8

Cost

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

2.2

Power

0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Rank Justification: Considered the best budget option for a significant part of the summer, KaZoo comes back into our Tier List thanks to Blue Marvel‘s buff, enabling new play patterns and helping the deck compete against Pool 3 intensive decks.

Perfect for anyone not familiar with all the intricacies of the more complicated decks, or simply missing cards, Kazoo should be a popular deck for the weeks to come.

The Ongoing package feels like an obvious inclusion from now on, with Iron Man, Blue Marvel, Ka-Zar and Onslaught looking like logical inclusions. The last card is still up in the air, with Captain America, The Punisher or Mojo competing for the Mister Fantastic slot. Debrii is another card I have seen included, as she can be annoying for the opponent while we have Ka-Zar and Blue Marvel to buff the Rocks.

How To Play: This is the go-to budget proactive archetype, looking to spend energy in a very effective way, from turn one to turn six.

While Angela, Bishop and either 5-Cost card are our go-to plays when available, the deck can be flexible during the other turns. A big consideration in order to know which route to take is whether Onslaught is in hand. If he is, we are pushed further towards the Ongoing synergy plan.

The one drops should be played when we have the energy to do so, and prioritized based on how annoying they are for the opponent. Korg and Iceman are good to play anytime, the earlier, the better. Ant-Man is flexible and Iron Fist and Nightcrawler are at their best with Angela, and can be used to reach otherwise unplayable locations.

Closing Words

Two things are certain as we head into the second week of Patch 6.9. First, Sera is still very strong Mister Negative. The card is played in about fifty percent of the best decks on ladder, and should rise in popularity as players realize there is barely any downside to running it in most decks.

Second, and running in opposition to the first point, the metagame probably still holds a surprise or two in terms of dominant decks. The incredible rise of the Handsize archetype amongst mostly decks that existed already in the previous patch is a little suspicious to be honest. It could mean that we will discover other gems as time passes, as Handsize demonstrates that it is possible to break the mold. It could also mean that players are still testing and refining their decks, and Handsize is succeeding in this weak and experimental field

However it goes, I can’t wait to see how all this develops. 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,