Table of Contents
With the recent OTA Balance Update, the metagame is still changing as we speak. Then, this Meta Tier List should be regarded as a picture during that development phase, rather than what the game will look like until next Masters of the Arcane Season starts.
Although I expect things to keep changing over the weekend, here are some headlines from these first days after the OTA:
- Thanos Control took a colossal hit in terms of performance, looking like a shadow of itself.
- Most of the decks posting strong results are proactive at the moment, with Mister Negative being the best of them due to Mobius M. Mobius not being around much. At least for now.
- Move has been very popular following the OTA, fairly expected considering the strength of the synergy and the fact it did not get nerfed at all. This was a perfect field for Scream to shine, as the archetype posted the highest win rate in this report.
Nothing crazy if we compare to previous balance updates, really. Those who tested the new synergies largely failed to beat the already refined ones, and will logically have to start including counter cards to edge certain matchups. The only exception to that rule being Scream Move, an already perfected build and the natural counter to another super popular one.
If we try to pinpoint the big winners from the OTA, Cerebro and Storm come to mind. Indeed, even if it far from a menace at this point, Cerebro 2 performed like a decent Tier 3 deck since the OTA. If it keeps up, it could become a routine inclusion, especially if the community can agree on a refined list, and Ongoing counters aren’t too popular.
As for Storm, the card and her two best friends, War Machine and Legion, appeared in Good Cards and Move to post great results since the OTA. Granted, it is quite easy to look good when you join some all-time great archetypes. Still, it will be interesting to see if these builds can keep being the top performers for those specific synergies.
Happy Tier List, everyone!
| Tier | Deck |
|---|---|
| Trending | Good Cards Lockdown 0.65 Cube Average / 56.5% Win Rate |
| Trending | Cerebro 2 0.2 Cube Average / 51.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | Scream Move 0.4 Cube Average / 62% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | Mister Negative 0.5 Cube Average / 57.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | LockMove 0.45 Cube Average / 58% Win Rate |
| Tier 2 | Arishem Thanos 0.3 Cube Average / 59.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 2 | Sauron 10 Power 0.3 Cube Average / 57.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 2 | Bounce Move 0.25 Cube Average / 57.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 3 | Small Ongoing Good Cards 0.2 Cube Average / 53.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 3 | Thanos Control 0.1 Cube Average / 53.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 3 | Discard Dracula 0.1 Cube Average / 55.5% Win Rate |
Are you still chasing that elusive Infinite Rank? Here are the Top 5 performers in the ranks 80 to 99!
| Patriot Zoo | 0.85 Cube Average / 63% Win Rate |
| Silver Surfer | 0.85 Cube Average / 62.5% Win Rate |
| Sera Control | 0.8 Cube Average / 58% Win Rate |
| Destroy | 0.75 Cube Average / 59% Win Rate |
| Mister Negative | 0.65 Cube Average / 56% Win Rate |
Here is my usual annoying advice because I’m a coach and I like to think this helps people: Focus on controlling the stakes of each game and building trust in both your deck and your decision making abilities. Once you feel confident, feel free to take more risks. Reaching Infinite is all about understanding the process of grinding cubes. Also, constantly changing your deck limits your ability to learn the game fundamentals, as you are always focused on learning how to pilot the new deck.
Trending
den
Performance : 0.65 Cube Average / 56.5% Win Rate
The same shell of strong and flexible cards have found new friends in the War Machine Lockdown package. Playing without Shang-Chi and Enchantress, typical inclusions in a Zabu deck, might look scary. Yet, a chaotic environment after a balance update rewards proactive patterns more than reactive ones. As such, I am not surprised to see Storm, War Machine and Legion perform better at this stage.
So far, the win rate isn’t very high, but the Cube rate is incredible. We’ll have to monitor to check if the win percentage goes up, or if Good Cards Lockdown starts losing momentum once opponents stop being caught off guard.
den
Performance : 0.2 Cube Average / 51.5% Win Rate
Goose plus Storm have emerged to be a much more disruptive duo than I anticipated. These two are perfect to protect Cerebro from Enchantress or Alioth, and make sure we get the buffs going. When we do, Cerebro 2 doesn’t look like a decent deck anymore. Indeed, at +3 per card, +6 when Mystique is around, this deck routinely gets 20+ points on multiple locations, while Lasher will obliterate one of your opponent’s cards as well.
This feels pretty close to an optimal build already, and Cerebro will have to deal with Red Guardian eventually, so it is hard to imagine this deck becoming more than it is at the moment.
Tier 1
Scream Move
den
Performance: 0.4 Cube Average / 62% Win Rate
There are two good reasons to play Scream right after an OTA: The deck is already built, and Move is likely to be quite popular.
The only downside to picking Scream is Mister Negative dismantling you if you can’t disrupt their synergies. Red Guardian is the flexible card for now, but Mobius M. Mobius could easily replace it to fix that problem.
Potential Additions
Kingpin and Red Guardian are flexible cards. Stegron and Aero are routine inclusions, while you typically want at least one counter card for popular opponents. It can be Rogue, Cosmo, Mobius M. Mobius, Shang-Chi, Enchantress…
Mister Negative
den
Performance: 0.5 Cube Average / 57.5% Win Rate
With Thanos Control taking a big hit, and most other decks focused on developing their own game plan since the OTA, Mister Negative had a boulevard to rack up cubes. And it did.
Rogue still protects the deck from Mobius M. Mobius, which will eventually be popular again if Mister Negative keeps being this good. Otherwise, you can also use the 3-cost to edge the mirror match.
Potential Additions
Rogue is instrumental in making Mister Negative this good. The deck loses about 2% Win Rate without the card. If you wanted to run Psylocke or Super-Skrull, Cassandra Nova is probably the cut.
LockMove
den
Performance: 0.45 Cube Average / 57.5% Win Rate
Bounce Move has established itself as the better deck when it comes to developing a stupid amount of points. This means Pure Move typically has to find some twists in order to exist as another option.
The change to Storm was a perfect opportunity to reunite with the Lockdown package, as Move rarely cares if a location is open or not, it will move there if need be.
Potential Additions
Cosmo and Alioth serve as extra disruptive pieces, but feel like the flexible inclusions here. Yet, this deck is built around dismantling your opponent’s game plan, with the Move card acting as the points to compete rather than the opposite so keeping that balance is probably the right decision.
Tier 2
Arishem Thanos
Performance: 0.3 Cube Average / 59.5% Win Rate
If you aren’t sure what to play, just play everything would be a good way to describe this deck. Snap the good hands and retreat the bad ones is another fine definition. Indeed, when the metagame is all over the place following an OTA, high roll based strategy tend to be at their best, because most players won’t know what to be careful about.
With and Arishem deck, and early snap often means you drew like a god, most opponent will rather give you a Cube rather than find out.
Potential Additions
The deck feels very unbalanced towards big cards, hence the inclusion of Man-Thing. Gorr the Butcher is probably the most out of place here, representing just another high points card. It can likely be changed, for pretty much any card in the game depending on your needs.
Sauron 10 Power
den
Performance: 0.3 Cube Average / 57.5% Win Rate
Looks like Sauron is fine after its change based on this early performance. The deck is still running the exact same twelve cards, and actually posting a better performance compared to before the OTA. Most of the other decks are not running Shang-Chi at the moment, which might help a little.
Potential Additions
Surge was played over Lizard before the OTA.
Bounce Move
den
Performance: 0.25 Cube Average / 57.5% Win Rate
With Scream Move immediately a top pick, it is hard to get much leverage from Bounce Move, even if you are a fantastic pilot with the deck. If you aren’t, this is probably not a good time to pick Bounce Move, as you might find yourself stuck in the “Win 1 because I snapped too late but lose 2 or 4 because I didn’t retreat” zone. If you are, the deck packs one of the highest points potential in the game, just have to dodge Scream and Mister Negative.
Potential Additions
Sage tends to be the flexible card in the deck, but it always ends up as the twelth card in Bounce Move.
Tier 3
Obviously, Thanos Control is the shocking inclusion in Tier 3, as the deck spent all its time at, or very near to the top of the rankings leading up to the OTA. The list is almost the exact same as before the update, so it must be the nerfs being very impactful.
As for the other two decks, I would rank Small Ongoing cards much higher, especially as I love Spider-Ham early in a new metagame. The card gives you so much information about your opponent when played on turn one, it makes snapping and retreating much easier. However, the stats are always right in these reports.
As for Discard Dracula, the deck posted a decent win rate compared to other decks, but simply can’t match the points of a Bounce Move or a Mister Negative. Then, it might pick up momentum once counter cards emerge, and they aren’t directed at it. Right now, Red Guardian on Dracula is catastrophic, while other proactive builds tend to outpoints you.
As a side note, Bullseye had a better performance, with a 0.25 cube average for about the same 55.5% win rate. Yet, the deck had less than 80 games recorded when Discard Dracula has more than 300 so it was impossible to compared them based on such different sample sizes.
Small Ongoing Good Cards
den
Performance: 0.2 Cube Average / 53.5% Win Rate
Thanos Control
den
Performance: 0.1 Cube Average / 53.5% Win Rate
Discard Dracula
den
Performance: 0.1 Cube Average / 55.5% 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.
Cube Average > 0.4
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 > 0.25
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.
Cube Average > 0.10
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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