Table of Contents
Welcome to our Marvel Snap Meta Meta Tier List! Each week, we review the best decks in the ever-changing Marvel Snap ladder meta.
This report is dedicated to the Ranked mode and lists the current best decks heading into and once in the Infinite Rank. We also provide a Conquest report, available every weekend, that highlights the best archetypes for that mode. Looking to figure out the impact of the newly released card or the latest balance changes? This is the place to be!
If you are looking for more information about a deck in particular, check out our Archetypes pages, with detailed information about each of the household names in Marvel Snap.
| Tier | Deck |
|---|---|
| Silent Performer | Scream Move |
| Tier 1 | Toxic |
| Tier 1 | Good Cards Wiccan |
| Tier 1 | Silver Surfer |
| Tier 1 | Small Good Cards |
| Tier 1 | Arishem |
| Tier 2 | Mister Negative |
| Tier 2 | Big Hand |
| Tier 2 | Lockdown |
| Tier 3 | Bounce Move |
| Tier 3 | Discard |
| Budget | Ongoing KaZoo |
| Budget | Devil Dinosaur Destroy |
| Budget | Swarm Discard Aggro |
Meta stats and analytics directly from our Marvel Snap Tracker can also be found here.
Marvel Snap Meta Overview
Ah… The first week of a new season. Two new cards to put into decks bring a bit of fresh air to the meta, and bots everywhere are making everything look strong. Honestly, it’s such a weird combo. On the one hand, I want to believe all the crazy results I’ve seen online of people who reached the Infinite rank on day one with a deck that even someone who doesn’t play the game would call mid. On the other hand, it is known that the higher your MMR is, the more bots you are likely to see this early in the season, which makes it hard to believe anyone.
As such, I tend to give much more weight to the Win Rate metric during the first week of the season. A bot giving you one cube or eight cubes impacts your win-loss record the same way, but it can inflate your Cube Average from decent to stellar. Unfortunately, looking at the Win Rate naturally favors the already refined archetypes since they don’t have to go through that learning period where half of the deck is made up of cards you are unsure of.
Plus, Iron Patriot can seemingly fit any archetype in the game, or at least a vast majority of them. The card found its way into four of the eleven decks in this week’s Tier List, three of which are in Tier 1 (and two of those are top performers).
With all this in mind, don’t expect a ton of change compared to last season just yet. Victoria Hand pushed an old timer, the Big Hand archetype, to return, and that’s about it when it comes to new season novelty. Some changes happened within each archetype with a few lists swapping some cards. For example, Rocket and Groot has been quite popular in a few great builds, and Wiccan is back at full force with Iron Patriot granting some early game support.
There is a patch coming on January 14th, so more changes might be on the horizon. Until then, this week seems to be a repeat of last season with Iron Patriot and a few card swaps here and there.
Happy Tier List, everyone!
Silent Performers
den
I think Scream Move should be in the rankings, but the deck is still living in the previous season with Rocket and Groot + Doctor Doom 2099 as the impactful new additions to the deck. Both cards also brought their best allies, Nebula and Doctor Doom, to bolster this deck’s points potential as well.
The only reason this deck is a Silent Performer is its lack of popularity compared to the rest.
Tier 1
Toxic
The best deck from the second half of last season has kept its throne heading into the new year. This week it was backed by Iron Patriot, as well as the new addition of Rocket and Groot.
In the last season, Toxic mostly leveraged its ability to bully Doctor Doom 2099 in order to to rack up some cubes. While the 4-Cost is still quite popular, the other recent additions help the deck to simply develop points, which gives it a better shot against archetypes that are not weak to the affliction synergy.
At a 65.5% Win Rate, Toxic is just an overall great deck.
Potential Additions
Frigga could be a nice addition since she can copy the card generated and discounted by either Iron Patriot or Anti-Venom.
Good Cards
den
While Galacta remains a stellar card in 2025, Wiccan benefited a ton from the arrival of Iron Patriot. Indeed, the 2-Cost pushes for a strong early game in order to win its location, which plays right into Wiccan‘s requirement of not losing any energy during the first two or three turns. In order to support this pattern, Mirage joined
At a 64% Win Rate, Good Cards did what it does best: add new cards to an arsenal of already strong standalone options.
Potential Additions
The 3-Cost cards are quite flexible in this deck. Red Guardian, Cosmo, and Luke Cage are some options, but plenty of others are available.
Silver Surfer
den
There’s nothing new under the sun for Silver Surfer. The archetype is still rocking the same list we’ve grown accustomed to since Galacta joined the game. With the surge of cheap cards to help Iron Patriot, Killmonger gained some momentum and helped the deck perform well early in the season. This week the deck managed a 62.5% Win Rate.
Potential Additions
Nova and Killmonger could be replaced by another 1- and 3-Cost depending on the decks you want to target. Also, Gwenpool and Absorbing Man have been removed in the past when extra 3-Cost cards, such as Luke Cage or Rogue, made more sense.
Small Good Cards
den
I expected Iron Patriot to make sense in this deck because it has both plenty of early support to win the location and a potential high roll with Nico Minoru copying the discounted card. Yet, this Agent Venom archetype is still using the exact same list as last season. I mean, with a 61.5% Win Rate, why would you change a winning recipe?
Potential Additions
Rogue and other low power cards with strong abilities make sense in this deck. I even saw Gorr in some lists during the last season.
Arishem
Although Doctor Doom 2099 is still the most popular way to build Arishem, the best performing list for the archetype early in the season didn’t feature the card. I would guess this is probably due to U.S. Agent still being popular. This particular list posted a 64% Win Rate over 150 games, but most other lists for Arishem ranged between 58% and 61%.
Potential Additions
Both Dooms can replace Magneto and Captain Marvel. The early cards are also flexible, with Killmonger, Cable, Hydra Bob,
Tier 2
Mister Negative
den
As another evergreen archetype, there’s nothing new for Mister Negative in 2025, either. It continues to benefit from new cards being released, which makes Mobius M. Mobius even less popular. A 59% Win Rate is much higher than what the deck typically posts, though, so either the bots are helping or the deck is crazy good early in a new season.
Potential Additions
Super-Skrull can replace Cassandra Nova or Wong to give you an edge in the mirror match and against other Ongoing-based decks.
Big Hand
The “new” archetype of the season has plenty of lists at the moment that ranged from a 63% Win Rate (which is what the featured one posted) to a 58% Win Rate (which is where most of the lists were at). This deck clearly needs to be refined and tested for longer, but seeing that it can at least exist in an environment where most decks are steaming from last season shows that it has some potential.
Potential Additions
Hydra Bob,
Lockdown
den
Lockdown lost a ton of momentum towards the end of the last season, and it doesn’t seem to have recovered from that yet. At a 58.5% Win Rate, the deck is definitely good enough to climb, but it still feels a notch below the top contenders. Plus, U.S. Agent remains an unsolved problem.
Potential Additions
Blue Marvel can replace Super-Skrull or Copycat if you want to invest in the Doctor Doom 2099 gameplan even more.
Tier 3
Bounce Move
den
Bounce Move was super popular to start this season; the featured list had over 1000 games recorded. Unfortunately, this insane popularity has not translated into great results. The 58.5% Win Rate is good enough to compare it to several decks in the higher tiers, but the Cube Average is rather low compared to decks like Mister Negative and Lockdown, both of which typically don’t shine through their ability to surprise opponents.
Discard
den
I was curious to see if Victoria Hand could synergize with Swarm to help Discard, and she did. The deck went back to its old trick of using Helicarrier and Corvus Glaive to bring some unpredictable patterns to an otherwise rigid deck. The Cube Average still hasn’t risen much, but the 58.5% Win Rate put Discard in the category of decent decks after this first week of the Dark Avengers season.
Closing Words
The best way to play Marvel Snap hasn’t changed with Iron Patriot adding yet another reason to Snap early. The Big Hand archetype did bring some novelty and a nice deckbuilding challenge, but so far it has failed to really disrupt the current environment. Indeed, Galacta, Wiccan, and Doctor Doom 2099 remain absolute powerhouses and the foundations of many decks in this week’s report.
To reach out, 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.
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.
Win Rate > 58% & Cube Average >0.8
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 > 58% & Cube Average < 0.8
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.
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