Table of Contents
The early results in the Heralds of Galactus season are pretty close to what most players anticipated: End of Turn is very good and everyone is now able to play that synergy, while the decks we saw dominate over the course of the Fantastic 4 season remain competitive.
Except for Galactus First Steps being the new 6-cost for a flurry of archetypes, the popular decks look exactly the same as they did last week. In the end, Terrax the Tamer and Red Shift provided bigger changes to the metagame, as they each brought back exotic synergies we had not seen in a while.
Both are amongst the worst performances of this report, and they still have to prove they can hang with the best once the bots won’t be a factor. Yet, the Series 4 cards represent the originality in this ongoing war between the Fantastic 4 cards and the Fenris Wolf package. To kick of this new season, it looks like we are tied with two decks each in the top tier, although Small End of Turn has a 5% win rate lead on every one else. However, there are more decks using Fenris Wolf, Gladiator and their friends.
Ironically, those disruptive decks are gatekeeping the high scorers from being a reliable counter to the End of Turn synergy. For example, Mister Negative has no problem beating Invisible Woman First Steps and Fantasticar, but can’t do much against Mobius M. Mobius or Supergiant blocking Jane Foster on turn five. Then, it seems like the battle of the top two synergy will need a winner, so other decks finally know which one to target.
Happy Tier List, everyone!
| Tier | Deck |
|---|---|
| Trending | Supergiant Rocks 0.55 Cube Average / 58.5% Win Rate |
| Trending | Double Galactus 0.6 Cube Average / 58% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | Small End of Turn 0.85 Cube Average / 65.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | Merlin Clog 0.75 Cube Average / 60.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | Supergiant Control 0.7 Cube Average / 60.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | Doom End of Turn 0.65 Cube Average / 60.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 2 | Good Cards Buff & Disrupt 0.75 Cube Average / 59.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 2 | Wiccan Control 0.9 Cube Average / 59% Win Rate |
| Tier 2 | Mister Negative 1. 1 Cube Average / 59% Win Rate |
| Tier 3 | Disruptive Surfer 0.65 Cube Average / 59.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 3 | Iron Hand 0.65 Cube Average / 59% Win Rate |
| Tier 3 | Black Knight Discard 0.5 Cube Average / 58% Win Rate |
Trending
Supergiant Rocks
den
Performance: 0.55 Cube Average / 58.5% Win Rate
Except for Mister Fantastic First Steps, this deck is quite refreshing in the current metagame card wise. Plus, it shows that priority still is a key component in Marvel Snap. The rocks are a bit unreliable to snap for, as we never know if the opponent drew a 0 power or a good card, but the early results are promising.
Double Galactus
den
Performance: 0.6 Cube Average / 58% Win Rate
Not much to report on this one, as it looks like a pretty standard Galactus deck, with the new Galactus First Steps added to the mix. I don’t have much hope this will still be around in week 2, when only the Infinite rank is factored in, but I would love to see it.
The new season pass represents a big power play on turn six, but can also be reminiscent of Nebula, enticing the opponent to play on a certain location, opening for the original Galactus to be played somewhere else.
Luna Snow on turn three is extremely important for this deck to function properly, so I would recommend H.E.R.B.I.E or Jennifer Kale as extra help for ramp.
Tier 1
Small end of Turn
den
Performance: 0.85 Cube Average / 65.5% Win Rate
No surprise here, except for maybe seeing so many 1-cost cards in the deck. Last week, Killmonger was quite popular in a lot of archetypes to mitigate that build, and the 3-cost seems to have disappeared, as everyone is too busy focusing on their own deck to climb to Infinite.
Once the race against the bots is done, it will be interesting to see if some decks adapt, and manage to stop End of Turn from being dominant all season long.
Potential Additions
The Thing First Steps, Bruce Banner or standalone strong cards fit that deck. Stardust even made an appearance in one of the builds.
Merlin Clog
den
Performance: 0.75 Cube Average / 60.5% Win Rate
Clog is quite good at annoying the popular decks, since most are playing proactively. Plus, although the card has not been impressive so far, Galactus First Steps is popular, so denying its herald is another upside.
Stardust was part of the best build for the archetype, but doesn’t synergize with the deck itself. It will be interesting to see if the new card manages to exist in a few archetypes as a strong standalone past the experimentation period.
Potential Additions
Fenris Wolf makes a lot of sense in the deck. Stardust probably is the flexible card, unless you aren’t using Shadow King much.
Supergiant Control
den
Performance: 0.7 Cube Average / 60.5% Win Rate
The archetype spent most of last season in the trending section, and is now ready to burst onto the scene as a top tier disruptive deck. Except for Maximus and Ronan the Accuser, arguably the two most flexible cards in this deck, Supergiant Control is just another deck built around the Fenris Wolf package. Alongside Gladiator and other destroy based disruptive cards, it seems to be the best counterpower to End of Turn at the moment.
Potential Additions
Alioth, Echo, and Cosmo are other disruptive cards to consider. Spider-Woman has been an intriguing inclusion alongside Supergiant in some builds, and frees up the Maximum slot for whichever card you like.
Doom End of Turn
den
Performance: 0.65 Cube Average / 60.5% Win Rate
The pair of Doctor Doom isn’t as flexible as the Small End of Turn build, and tells the opponent everything about its end quite early in the match. Still, if you aren’t in the mood for mind games and Jedi mind tricks, this is a good deck to snap the good ends, and play the weak ones for 1 cube.
Potential Additions
Galactus First Steps feels like the most flexible card in the build. If you wanted to include another cheap options, such as Surge or Psylocke to emphasize on the 4-costs more, this is probably the cut.
Tier 2
Good Cards Buff & Disrupt
den
Performance: 0.75 Cube Average / 59.5% Win Rate
Although End of Turn kind of stole the show in terms of strong standalone cards synergizing with each other, Good Cards remains a solid competitive option early on, especially for those who skipped on last season.
Once again, the deck leverages the power of Fenris Wolf and its friends as the complement to its signature energy cheating low costs plus 4-cost cards.
Potential Additions
Phastos still feels a little slow in my opinion, so it likely the card I would replace if I had something else in mind. Red Guardian, Sebastian Shaw or Silver Surfer First Steps come to mind. If you come across Stardust, you could swap Brood instead.
Wiccan Control
den
Performance: 0.9 Cube Average / 59% Win Rate
The only Silver Surfer First Steps deck on this report, Wiccan Control sports one of the best cube averages around. In this metagame with most archetypes around the same win rate except for Small end of turn, finding some reliable snaps is a huge tiebreaker. Wiccan might not be a new card, it remains one of the most reliable way to gain an advantage the opponent can’t do much about.
Potential Additions
Gwenpool joined the deck to synergize with Silver Surfer First Steps. Merlin is another way to generate energy if Wiccan didn’t show up, and most cards are decent polymorph targets. However, Stardust and Galactus First Steps are mostly included as standalone cards, so look to be the most flexible in the build.
Negative Destroy
den
Performance: 1. 1 Cube Average / 59% Win Rate
End of turn is a synergy mostly focused on itself, but difficult to counter since it isn’t On Reveal nor Ongoing. Then, the most reliable way to tackle that problem is to find another synergy able to develop even more points.
The card has been around since the beta day, but Mister Negative still is the kind when it comes to points shootouts with no disruption involved. Plus, the Destroy build is quite good in this metagame invested by Fenris Wolf and destroy based disruptive cards.
Potential Additions
Cassandra Nova probably is the most flexible card in the deck if you wanted to include something else. Arishem and Thanos are almost non-existant at the moment.
Tier 3
This last tier features decks with the same Win Rate as the ones above, so the difference lies in the cube average. At the moment, bots are raising the potential earnings of every deck, so it is hard to give that metric too much credit. Yet, if we consider every one is able to steal 8 cubes from bots, a significant difference must means those decks aren’t gaining as much as the others against human players.
It kind of makes sense, as Surfer, Iron Hand and Black Knight are fairly simple to recognize early on in a match, meaning their snap might lead to more retreat than the other decks on this report.
Disruptive Surfer
den
Performance: 0.65 Cube Average / 59.5% Win Rate
Iron Hand
den
Performance: 0.65 Cube Average / 59% Win Rate
Black Knight Discard
den
Performance: 0.5 Cube Average / 58% Win Rate
That’s it for this week! To reach out, find me on the Marvel Snap Zone community Discord, or shoot me a direct message (@den_ccg) for specific stuff or coaching.
Good Game Everyone.
Disclaimer and Tier Explanations
In order to be featured here, a deck needs to represent at least 1% of the current environment and have a positive Cube Average in the Ranked mode. Win Rate is also taken into consideration, and it can greatly impact the ranking of a deck, particularly when several archetypes (or different builds of the same deck) have a similar Cube Average but big Win Rate discrepancies. The Marvel Snap mechanics do, however, push players to maximize cubes gained rather than win every single game.
In order to create this chart, den is using data from our Marvel Snap Tracker, as well as other available data online and his own expertise and opinion of respected players. If a deck showed great performances with a very limited presence in the meta, you can find it in the Silent Performers section. That section highlights decks with an excellent Win Rate, but too little of a sample size to be representative of their real strength.
Decks not good enough to be considered contenders but with a good representation will be ranked in Tier 3 in our chart. See those builds as decks that are good to know about, as you should face them when playing Marvel Snap. However, unless the meta changes or a new variation of the build emerges, these decks are a notch below the dominant ones in Tier 1 and Tier 2.
Silent Performer: Decks with a very little presence in the meta that still showcase a Cube Average and Win Rate worthy of a Tier 2 deck (or better). Oftentimes, these can be archetypes with some nice game play that have been left unchecked in the current environment, or decks on the rise that found a few good match ups to abuse.
Tier 1: Tier 1 represents decks with all the upsides we would be looking for to rack up Cubes. They have good match ups in the current meta, offer different play patterns during a match, and often have the ability for explosive or surprising turns. These should be decks worth investing into in order to climb for the coming week.
Win Rate > 60%
Tier 2: Tier 2 are very good decks but with a weakness holding them back – either not being as reliable in its draws as Tier 1 decks, countered by another popular deck, or still being a work in progress as you read this. A good pilot could probably take these and have the same results as with a Tier 1 deck, but their play patterns are more difficult to enact compared to the tier above.
Cube Average > 0.75 & Win Rate > 59%
Tier 3: This tier is made of decks that have a pervasive issue compared to Tier 1 or Tier 2 decks. Usually, Tier 3 will be a mix of decks on the rise that don’t have much data, old archetypes on the decline, decks that require substantial experience and/or knowledge to pilot properly, powerful decks that aren’t well positioned, or niche decks.
Win Rate > 59% & Cube Rate < 0.75
Budget: Decks that consist only of cards in Pool 1 and 2 that are still capable of competing with an experienced pilot in a similar Collection Level, Rank, and MMR range. See our matchmaking guide for more details.
Meta stats and analytics directly from our Marvel Snap Tracker can also be found here.
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