Table of Contents
This first week of Marvel Snap in May isn’t very surprising. At the top of the rankings, we find a mix of the strong archetypes who dodged a nerf last season, joined by the strategy pushed by the new releases. Together, they form a bunch of points-driven decks with enough flexibility to run a couple of disruptive, or at least support cards.
Flexible decks able to develop a lot of power typically are the best way to climb early in a season. Not only you can snap based on your early draws, about the only reliable information when a lot of players are testing out new synergies. These decks can easily swap out a few cards if you wanted to adapt against an archetype on the rise, when the likes of Mister Negative or Destroy don’t have that flexibility available.
Plus, the new Wilson Fisk is a great card to support early snaps. Indeed, turn three is early enough to keep your opponent in the game if they also have a decent hand. Yet, it is also far enough to figure if you have enough gas to keep playing at a high pace until the end of turn six.
I’m a bit surprised not to see at least a bit of Killmonger or Shang-Chi, as these two make sense against the high power synergies, mixing 1-cost and some 10-power cards. I guess a strong start is both easier to pilot, and more suited to grind than a complicated counter strategy. Plus, there is nothing to counter when playing against bots.
Happy Tier List, everyone!
| Tier | Deck |
|---|---|
| Tier 1 | End of Turn 2099 0.65 Cube Average / 63% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | Blind Virused High Power 0.6 Cube Average / 62.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 2 | Supergiant Rocks 0.65 Cube Average / 59.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 2 | Blind 10 Power 0.55 Cube Average / 60.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 2 | Blind Supergiant Ronan 0.55 Cube Average / 60% Win Rate |
| Tier 2 | Disruptive Aurora 0.5 Cube Average / 60% Win Rate |
| Tier 2 | Blind Black Bolt Stature 0.4 Cube Average / 60% Win Rate |
| Tier 2 | High Evo Afflicts 0.45 Cube Average / 59.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 3 | Lockdown Move 0.35 Cube Average / 59.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 3 | Nimrolactus 0.65 Cube Average / 58.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 3 | Hela Discard 0.5 Cube Average / 58.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 3 | High Power Summons 0.45 Cube Average / 58% Win Rate |
Tier 1
End of Turn 2099
den
Performance: 0.65 Cube Average / 63% Win Rate
This first week has been mostly dominated by proactive decks, built around their ability to develop points. While it isn’t a bad strategy based on those deck’s results, it also makes them limited in terms of disruption.
In that context, End of Turn 2099 knows it can develop its synergy peacefully. Plus, it packs a few good cards against those decks, such as Isca the Unbeaten or Drax, Avatar of Life, both growing as the opponent develops more points.
Enchantress could be a worry, but it seems like Techno-Organic Virus is enough to remove negative abilities.
Potential Additions
Sam Wilson made it into the deck after Chamber’s nerf last season, while Aurora is sometimes preferred to Galactus First Steps. However, cards able to grow to a lot of power seems preferable than flexible ones at the moment.
With that said, only Caliban Horseman of Pestilence feels like a flexible card, if you wanted to include another 3-cost card instead.
Blind Virused High Power
den
Performance: 0.6 Cube Average / 62.5% Win Rate
There are a lot of lists within this archetype, and I came into this Tier List very curious about the better card for those deck: The new Shadowlands Daredevil or Iron Patriot. So far, it seems like the best option is to run them both, which is also a great way to settle that argument.
It does tilt the deck towards a low energy curve, but the draw from Adam Warlock, the card from Iron Patriot, or playing Techno-Organic Virus multiple times will solve that issue.
Potential Additions
Zero and Ebony Maw are not a common duo in this deck. Typically, decks will run Debrii plus En Sabah Nur, Luna Snow plus Cosmic ghost Rider, or Ares plus another standalone good card such as Cosmo.
Tier 2
Supergiant Rocks
den
Performance: 0.65 Cube Average / 59.5% Win Rate
A well-known archetype at this point, and one I expected to struggle a bit more considering the most popular archetype, by a mile, is better than Supergiant Rocks at developing early power.
Often against the High Power decks, it can be tricky to extract value from Askani'son, Iron Patriot or Viv Vision. When you do however, your disruptive cards allow this deck to be much more flexible in the later turns, and more versatile against a diverse field.
Potential Additions
Martyr could be Nightcrawler, but the 1-cost is great to ensure you have Wilson Fisk available.
The other flexible cards is Cosmo as there aren’t that many On Reveal synergies currently. Drax, Avatar of Life, can grow to a ton of power against the high power decks.
Blind 10 Power
den
Performance: 0.55 Cube Average / 60.5% Win Rate
This one is playing extremely close to the High Power in the higher tier, so it will be interesting to see if it remains popular in the near future. Otherwise, it is the exact same strategy leveraging other cards to get to a high power total.
Potential Additions
Enchantress, Typhoid Mary or Ares are solid high-cost cards to consider.
Blind Supergiant Ronan
den
Performance: 0.55 Cube Average / 60% Win Rate
This is an archetype we had not seen in a long time, but Supergiant proved she was good enough to uplift many synergies to a competitive level, while bots are also happy to help in week 1.
To be fair, the Adam Warlock, Shadowlands Daredevil and Devil Dinosaur trio is intriguing, even if I don’t expect this list to be around when we take a look at the infinite rank only in the next report.
Potential Additions
Enchantress, Legion and such strong 5-cost could replace Devil Dinosaur if you aren’t getting value out of it.
Disruptive Aurora
den
Performance: 0.5 Cube Average / 60% Win Rate
A staple archetype in the metagame for a while, and apparently one able to go toe to toe with the newcomers as well. The list is the same as last season, and might have to be adjusted once we’ll know for sure which archetypes are the ones to beat. Indeed, Spider-Ham isn’t useful against decks with negative abilities, while Stardust doesn’t counter many strategies based on the decks featured in these rankings.
Potential Additions
It isn’t simple to keep the right balance among the various keywords Aurora wants to work with. However, the Luke Cage, Man-Thing and Anti-Venom package might make more sense at the moment.
Blind Black Bolt Stature
den
Performance: 0.4 Cube Average / 60% Win Rate
There are many decks built around the same idea of developing a lot of power early in the game, and then branching out to different synergies in the second half of the match. To be fair, most of those decks will disappear once the surprise and the bots aren’t part of the equation anymore. Until then, we can have fun with those suboptimal synergies, and pretend they are good because they received one power, or steal cubes from bots.
At least, Adam Warlock makes sense in order to find Stature and one of two cards able to force our opponent to discard.
Potential Additions
Drax and Enchantress are just solid cards at the moment, but could be anything that strikes your interest.
High Evo Afflicts
den
Performance: 0.45 Cube Average / 59.5% Win Rate
This one is particularly good against 10 power, as it will ruin the synergy around Skaar. Otherwise, this is another high power deck, except it will lower its opponent’s total rather than build unilaterally.
High Evolutionary has always been good early in the season, with Abomination and now Polaris Horseman of Pestilence granting some explosive power to the deck.
Potential Additions
Shang-Chi or another card able to turn a location around while Abomination adds up to our total on another one make sense to consider.
Tier 3
This first week is centred around decks trying to develop as much power as possible. In this third tier, we find specific synergies rather than a pile of high power cards we can play flexibly. To see the destroy or discard synergy not win in a metagame driven by your points total tells me packing a few disruptive cards and grabbing priority early in a match remain some Marvel Snap fundamentals to respect.
Lockdown Move
den
Performance: 0.35 Cube Average / 59.5% Win Rate
Nimrolactus
den
Performance: 0.65 Cube Average / 58.5% Win Rate
Hela Discard
den
Performance: 0.5 Cube Average / 58.5% Win Rate
High Power Summons
den
Performance: 0.45 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.
Cube Average > 0.5
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 > 0.35
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 > 0.20
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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