Marvel Snap Balance Patch Update Analysis and Decks to Play: Sandman vs. Combo Archetypes

Every four weeks, Marvel Snap undergoes a major patch. Unlike the OTA Balance Updates, the abilities of cards are able to be reworked with these patches, as well as their stats (Power and Energy). This article is our in-depth analysis of the changes, how they might impact the current meta, and some potential decks you can play from the get go!

Patch Balance Update Overview

We are not yet done figuring out all the consequences of Thursday’s OTA and the massive changes to Elsa Bloodstone, Angela, and Loki, and the balance team from Second Dinner decided to hit us with another meaningful balance patch! This time, they’ve changed a few abilities and made Sandman a little more powerful, too.

Let’s start with the Sandman buff from all these changes, as it explains what we should expect for the aftermath of this patch. From now on, Mobius M. Mobius will only be usable one turn per game, and Wave will not raise the cost of cheap cards (only reduce the cost of 5- and 6-Costs). At the same time, Ravonna Renslayer is now a 2-Cost, which should help decks built around the card be a little more explosive early in a match.

So, why is the Sandman change so key in all of this? Simply put, all the other changes are signaling that combo based archetypes will get a huge boost with this balance patch. Less disruption, plus an improved engine in Ravonna Renslayer. It sounds like if you like an explosive late game, Marvel Snap is about to be a very fun game for you. Unless you run into Sandman, of course, but everything needs a counter.

I didn’t forget about Negasonic Teenage Warhead, either, but she isn’t really part of that story. We’ll still throw a couple of decks with the card for good measure, as it could be a mini Alioth now.

Ready to try to figure out the metagame for the second time in a week?

Combo Archetypes Should Make a Comeback

Basically, any deck that is looking to keep the opponent in the dark as to how many points the will develop (and where they will develop those points) should be very happy about the changes to Mobius M. Mobius and Wave today.

Sera, Bounce, Discard Dracula, Loki, Zabu… There are many decks that are already doing pretty well for themselves, and you can expect them to progress even more in the near future. Loki, in particular, might be unstoppable once it starts playing Quinjet in the deck again since it can build those stupidly efficient Turn 6s with the opponent’s deck at a two energy discount per card. However, what is really exciting about these changes is the potential decks we could see reenter the metagame.

Indeed, most of the decks I mentioned are quite flexible in the way they operate. For example, Bounce can pop off on Turn 5 if they expect Wave to come down, and the same goes for Discard playing Swarm as soon as it is discarded to avoid Mobius M. Mobius turning it back to a 2-Cost card. Unfortunately, there are also decks without this leeway; they are forced to play their cards in a certain, expected order, which makes it much easier for the opponent to anticipate their patterns and derail. Well, derailing them might be much harder after this patch.

InSheNaut

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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3.5

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She-Hulk might be one of the cards Mobius M. Mobius damaged the most since it completely killed its ability. Sure, there might still be a time when the opponent will slam M3 on Turn 5 and you will look at your She-Hulk in hand and shed a tear. Still, the new Mobius M. Mobius should see much less play than the current one, so that problem might not exist anymore.

I picked the standard InSheNaut deck because it already exists, and it actually made kind of a comeback after the OTA (until Mobius M. Mobius came back in almost every deck, that is). We could get much more creative and work with Moon Girl, for example, to try duplicating She-Hulk to create explosive patterns. You can try doing that with Death as well. Basically, any card with a lot of power and a way to become extremely cheap will do the trick.

High Evo Combo

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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Here is an idea of such a deck where you would use Moon Girl to duplicate both Abomination and She-Hulk to build a crazy strong Turn 6 or Turn 7. This is basically a riskier InSheNaut, but it has a much more explosive side when it works out.

Negative

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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Negative Surfer

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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Mister Negative has gathered enough friends over time to build several decks around its inverting ability. If you think Destroy will still be very popular, you might want to pick the more high roll based deck with Knull, as that card might win the match up on its own. Bonus points with Ravonna Renslayer since it’s already included in that deck, so you get to benefit from another part of this patch. Plus, it perfectly replaces Psylocke; Ravonna Renslayer on Turn 2 will allow Mister Negative on Turn 3. Otherwise, the Negative Surfer build also looks like a nice deck to test if you like a more reliable strategy (albeit with a bit of a lower ceiling).

I’m sure many more ideas could flourish with that same play style in mind, so be on the lookout for other ideas shared around the community! Also, this is precisely the reason Second Dinner buffed Sandman.

Ramp and Thanos Decks Might Spoil Grand Return of Explosive Synergies

Although I find it really fun for short periods of time, I’m not a big fan of combo-oriented metagames. Therefore, I tend to be on the side of the “bad guys” and try to find ways to stop those patterns (and get a lot of cubes doing so).

Obviously, the buff to Sandman is a big tip as to what the developers think we should use in order to stop the resurgence of combo archetypes: Electro Ramp.

Electro Ramp

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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This deck is absolutely perfect for illustrating how you can annoy combo decks after the patch. You basically have the four cards that I would expect will put in the most amount of work:

• Sandman, obviously.
• Professor X to lock a lane before the opponent tries to go off.
• Alioth to destroy all cards on a lane during their explosive turn.
• Iceman, which should finally return as a playable 1-Cost card without Mobius M. Mobius in the way.

Honorable mentions to Cosmo and Spider-Ham, as well. Both of them should also make some waves in the near future. Also, the new Negasonic Teenage Warhead could join that group very soon.

Now that we have identified the cards we can use to annoy explosive decks, we need to discuss which archetypes can play those cards. Actually, there are quite a few that are able to play at least two of these four:

Thanos Control

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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Thanos Control is already doing pretty well heading into the patch. Sure, the deck has the Darkhawk hurdle to overcome, but it is a Tier 1 deck nonetheless. With this patch, the deck might progress even more since canceling whatever the opponent had in mind is very much up Thanos‘s alley. Professor X and Alioth are already staples in the archetype, and you could very well change Shang-Chi to be a Cosmo or Echo if you felt the need to.

Thanos Zoo

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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With a seven power Spectrum, Thanos Zoo gained a lot of momentum with the OTA. It never really managed to break into being a competitive deck, though, as its points ceiling tends to be on the lower end compared to a lot of synergies. With this patch, we might see decks with even more potential rise, so the part where Thanos Zoo beats its opponent based on points shouldn’t improve at all. However, the deck is also known for packing quite a lot of annoying cards. Cosmo and Professor X are part of its core, and you could also throw Jean Grey, Super-Skrull, and Goose into the deck as well.

By the way, did you know Sandman is an Ongoing card? With this deck, you rarely play multiple cards when you have Spectrum in hand for Turn 6. Who knows, Thanos Zoo could end up being even more disruptive than Thanos Control for combo based decks.

Cerebro 3

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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With Cosmo, Professor X, Alioth, and other disruptive cards all at three power, C3r3bro should have all the tools to adapt if the environment comes down to explosive decks.

Guardians Lockdown

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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In a similar vein, the Lockdown archetype was doing really well back when Bounce was dominating the game. We might even see the deck come back to its original form when it was built around the High Evolutionary synergy.

Iron Patriot

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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We’ll talk more about Silver Surfer on its own in the next section. Until then, Iron Patriot already started to make a comeback, and it could easily include Cosmo in the deck to help Alioth shut down a couple of decks who thought keeping cards in their hand was a good idea.

Archetypes With an Ace Up Their Sleeve

Up until this point, I’ve only really spoken about combo decks being extremely glad to see two of their nemeses changed, and how Sandman (alongside a couple of other cards) could play gatekeeper.

But wouldn’t the metagame be extremely boring if it were just about picking a side between combo decks and disruption decks? There must be other decks we can explore, in addition to the already solid archetypes that were not included in this patch, such as Destroy, Patriot, Good Cards Darkhawk, and Move.

Oppressive Junk

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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I might have taken this a notch too far. Iceman, Ravonna Renslayer, and Hobgoblin could be more traditional Junk cards, or just the Luke Cage, Hazmat, and Man-Thing trio. But with the change to Ravonna, I feel like it is at least worth testing the card in a deck with several targets included. You could throw Black Widow in that mix as well.

Otherwise, I think Junk could be a sleeper in the upcoming metagame; the deck is great for both filling the lanes of a slowly developing deck and punishing Thanos for playing low-power Infinity Stones early on in the match.

Loki

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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I already mentioned Loki in the first section of this article alongside the other explosive decks with a lot to gain, but I wanted to emphasize the power of the deck. Many people who had access to the patch early echoed the same sentiment: How do we stop Loki now?

Without Mobius M. Mobius and Wave, which were both touted as the best cards to keep Loki in check, it sounds absurdly difficult to counter that deck with only Sandman. Indeed, if Loki comes down on Turn 4 with Quinjet on the board, you might be so far behind after playing a [5/4] that the opponent might as well play no cards on Turn 6 instead of the one you allow them and still win. Plus, they got your deck, so you better believe they’ll have a big card to play anyway.

Surfer Move

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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There are plenty of ways to build a Silver Surfer deck. I also thought about including Snowguard now that both of the cards it generates are 3-Costs. I could have also discussed Goose, Maximus, Rogue, and Killmonger (and its typical friends, Nova and Daken)…

Nevertheless, the important thing to remember for this archetype is that Sera just gained a lot of momentum alongside the other combo activators in Marvel Snap. This should lead to the deck once again being able to play three 3-Cost cards on the last turn of play.

Also, you might have noticed I did not include Negasonic Teenage Warhead in that build, as I focused on the move synergy. Let’s fix that right now with a more destroy oriented build because the card does look quite appealing now:

Surfer Destroy

Created by den

, updated 6 months ago

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There are two usages for Negasonic Teenage Warhead I’m eager to try in this deck, both of which should immensely impact my appreciation of this change.

First, how effective is it as a Turn 6 play with priority? Is it similar to the way we use Alioth, but allow the On Reveal ability to trigger for the opponent? I’m not sure Silver Surfer is the ideal archetype to do this since it isn’t particularly fighting for priority early on, and Negasonic Teenage Warhead would do nothing on Turn 6 if it revealed second. However, the deck is playing Storm, and that is a synergy I’m eager to explore. Negasonic Teenage Warhead could be a great follow up, similar to Juggernaut, in order to make sure you are ahead on that Flooded location.

Closing Words

We are still learning new things every day after Thursday’s OTA, and this patch should create an even more chaotic environment with tons of avenues to explore. And I’m loving it!

I do have a few concerns, though, particularly Loki since it might just rule Marvel Snap. The synergy around the card seems to be able to take on the returning explosive decks, pack tech for archetypes like Destroy, and keep up with Good Cards decks. I remain curious regarding Loki‘s ability to beat the High Evolutionary synergy, which is one of its worst match ups because it steals non-Evolved cards. We might have a way out for this one that solves most concerns about the changes to Mobius M. Mobius and Wave.

Nevertheless, reading through this patch gave me a ton of ideas to experiment around, and that should exactly be the feeling one gets when reading a balance update. Not all of those ideas will work, obviously, but the impetus it provoked to build different decks and think about the new possibilities around cards that were gathering dust in our collection is huge.

Plus, even if Loki is a little too strong, Marvel Snap is built in a way that Second Dinner can regularly step in and make changes if needed. I’m sure they probably already considered that possibility, and they might have a change for Loki ready to go in one of the future OTAs if it is deemed necessary. I mean, we just got two incredibly impactful balance patches in less than a week, so they have already proven they are ready to make changes to strong cards.

I’m curious to know both your ideas and opinions about this patch. Let me know in the comment section, find me on the Marvel Snap Zone community Discord, or follow my Twitter page where I share decks and biased opinions about the game.

Good Game Everyone.