Table of Contents
With an OTA not so long ago, the amount of games available to craft this Tier List was pretty small. Over large samples, three archetypes (Pure Move, Wiccan Curve and War Machine Ramp) were dominant.
This isn’t to take anything from other entries in this list, but reliability is also a crucial part of a deck. Then, keep in mind most of the archetypes listed except these three might not be as great as their numbers indicate, since I had to work with limited data due to an OTA less than three days ago.
With the disclaimer out of the way, we can now turn our attention to a very diverse, balance metagame. Indeed, with seven decks worthy of Tier 1 status, Marvel Snap has rarely been this open when it comes to competitive picks.
Obviously, this also means there aren’t many decks to discuss outside that elite group. Indeed, after Arishem, the closest deck is Toxic with 0.2 fewer cubes per game and 2% less wins.
I could say we are still early after the OTA and things are bound to change. Yet, with the new season at the corner, it is unlikely a new deck will rise in such a short period of time. Then, it looks like the end of Zombie Horde season will be an all out battle in between seven archetypes, all able to post great results while using very different strategies.
Happy Tier List, everyone!
| Tier | Deck |
|---|---|
| Trending | Mill Destroy 0.55 Cube Average / 57.5% Win Rate / 150 Games |
| Tier 1 | Wiccan Curve 0.65 Cube Average / 63% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | Flexible Zombies 0.5 Cube Average / 63% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | Deadpool Destroy 0.75 Cube Average / 57.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | Pure Move 0.55 Cube Average / 59% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | War Machine Ramp 0.45 Cube Average / 60% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | Supergiant Sauron 0.5 Cube Average / 59% Win Rate |
| Tier 1 | Arishem 0.5 Cube Average / 57.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 2 | Toxic 0.3 Cube Average / 55.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 3 | Buff Zombie Galacti 0.15 Cube Average / 52% Win Rate |
| Tier 3 | Discard Dracula 0 Cube Average / 55.5% Win Rate |
| Tier 3 | Move Bounce 0 Cube Average / 52.5% Win Rate |
Are you still chasing that elusive Infinite Rank? Here are the Top 5 performers in the ranks 80 to 99!
| Supergiant Rocks | 0.65 Cube Average / 64.5% Win Rate |
| War Machine Ramp | 0.65 Cube Average / 63.5% Win Rate |
| Flexible Zombies | 0.45 Cube Average / 62.5% Win Rate |
| Deadpool Destroy | 0.5 Cube Average / 61.5% Win Rate |
| Mister Negative | 0.7 Cube Average / 60% 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
Mill Destroy
den
Performance: 0.55 Cube Average / 57.5% Win Rate / 150 Games
As Second Dinner keeps pushing the game towards more synergistic strategies and limited disruption, Mill is bound to gain some appeal as a synergistic way to disrupt our opponent.
The archetype didn’t post great results over the past few months, basically since Fenris Wolf got nerfed, so this showing needs some follow-up performances to cement Mill’s comeback.
Tier 1
Wiccan Curve
den
Performance: 0.65 Cube Average / 63% Win Rate
Mobius M. Mobius has been in and out of the deck for a while, but should become a staple if Sandman returns as a key disruptive card. Together, they form a solid disruptive duo in order to limit combo decks from performing any sort of energy cheats.
The rest of the deck is pretty standard and gained popularity through the course of the season. It never became the default way to play Wiccan based on popularity alone, as the build with Domino and more 3-cost cards tends to see more play. Yet, week after week, Victoria Hand and her crew keep posting the best results for Wiccan Curve.
Potential Additions
Valentina is a good 2-cost to add to the mix, or replace one you would be missing.
The deck can also be played with Domino, three more 3-cost cards (Copycat, Silver Surfer First Steps, Red Guardian, Shadow King…) and Leader as the second 6-cost card.
Flexible Zombies
den
Performance: 0.5 Cube Average / 63% Win Rate
It is pretty ironic to see Sentry make it into a deck everyone expected Zombie Sentry to join. Yet, while the new 3-cost adds more points, the Flexible Zombies archetype has mostly been looking for a good way to disrupt its opponent since being buffed mid-season.
This week, it was a light Junk package that posted the best results. We’ll see if it sticks long-term, but it makes a lot of sense since all the cards are On Reveal for Werewolf By Night, while The Void can polymorphed with Merlin’s spell as well.
Potential Additions
Absorbing Man, Surge, Joaquin torres falcon II, Red Guardian, Hope Summers, Grand Master or Kitty Pryde are some cards you could envision in this deck. There are lots of different builds of Flexible Zombies, so find the most suited for your play style and metagame.
Deadpool Destroy
den
Performance: 0.75 Cube Average / 57.5% Win Rate
X-23 becoming a [1/1] only impacted the popularity of Deadpool Destroy, the results largely remaining the same. The more impactful thing could be Mobius M. Mobius gaining momentum as we have seen in Wiccan Curve, or disruptive cards as a whole.
Indeed, the main consequence of X-23 losing some power is priority being harder to seize early in the match, meaning the likes of Cosmo or Armor are much harder to dodge.
Potential Additions
Headpool is played instead of Agony in some lists.
Pure Move
den
Performance: 0.55 Cube Average / 59% Win Rate
After every OTA not mentioning a Move card in the nerf section, you can expect a Move deck to post a strong performance shortly after. Add to that the fact Pure Move has been a strong contender for most of the season, and there really is nothing surprising about this performance.
Potential Additions
Doctor Strange and Iron Fist are the other two cards commonly part of Move decks. Disruption wise, Juggernaut is likely more flexible than Cosmo based on lifespan in the deck. Yet, the 4-cost allows to challenge a location when a high power Dagger or Human Torch is missing to do it.
War Machine Ramp
den
Performance: 0.45 Cube Average / 60% Win Rate
A strong archetype before the OTA, Electro’s buff allowed War Machine Ramp to gain some popularity while not changing a thing to its build.
With disruptive cards being nerfed to allow for more synergistic patterns, the Storm, War Machine, Legion trio could gain even more momentum in the future.
Potential Additions
Doctor Doom could replace a missing card, but the deck with the 6-cost instead of Vision is posting lower numbers.
Supergiant Sauron
den
Performance: 0.5 Cube Average / 59% Win Rate
This might be the most impressive performance on this report, since Supergiant Sauron is playing with two nerfed card. Arguably two power isn’t that much, especially for a deck relying on a good bit of disruption. Yet, considering most of the other decks in Tier 1 are also mixing points and disruption, those changes must impact priority and other specific situations.
If the results are still this good, Supergiant definately deserved to be nerfed. As for Sauron, there is a chance that one was to accomadate for the incoming Man-Spider.
Potential Additions
Black Cat is now worse than Hydra Bob with her nerf so that swap doesn’t make much sense.
Red Guardian would be the flexible card here, with Cosmo (but priority is harder to grab with the nerfs) or Mobius M. Mobius making sense as other disruptive 3-cost cards.
Arishem
den
Performance: 0.5 Cube Average / 57.5% Win Rate
Arishem dumped Alioth for Blob following the nerf, which isn’t that surprising. However, the reason to split from Thanos is a bit harder to grasp. Indeed, the two shared the same deck for multiple month now, and there isn’t particularly more of Killmonger at the moment.
Maybe it is due to an increase of Junk synergies, something Thanos typically struggles with.
Potential Additions
Shang-Chi could be a proactive option, such as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Galacta or Juggernaut. Enchantress is also flexible if you don’t face any Ongoing decks. Lady Deathstrike is another disruptive 5-cost if you wanted one.
Tier 2
Toxic
den
Performance: 0.3 Cube Average / 55.5% Win Rate
After the seven decks in the top tier, there is quite a gap with everyone else. Alone inside that gap, Toxic is performing well enough to possibly join that group in the future, but also feels limited when compared to other archetypes.
First, Toxic has not received any new card in ages, meaning the deck is as good as it was months ago. Then, the deck looks like a synergistic Wiccan Curve deck, relying on seeing certain cards in order to function properly.
On the other end, Wiccan Curve is much more flexible, and does not have useless cards if the one it pairs with is stuck at the bottom of the deck.
Potential Additions
Shadow King pairs well with Anti-Venom and a great card in the current metagame.
Tier 3
Zombie Galacti being included in this report after the card posted one of the worst performances of the year is a sight to behold. Yet, due to the top tier decks driving everyone else’s performance down, the best of the worst will be our Tier 3 this time around. For the record, I almost included Iron Hand because of a 0.3 cube average, even if it was combined with a 47% win rate.
Move Bounce is the deck I believe should be ranked much high, but Shadow King is quite popular, Destroy isn’t gone so Killmonger is still around, and the deck needs to snap very early to hope to play for high stakes with a good draw.
In a way, it is even worse for Discard Dracula, whose win rate is pretty decent at 55.5%. Yet, Red Guardian and Cosmic Ghost Rider are too popular for Dracula to be anywhere a safe card at the moment. Then, it is safe to assume that deck is winning little cubes, but losing plenty.
Buff Zombie Galacti
den
Performance: 0.15 Cube Average / 52% Win Rate
Discard Dracula
den
Performance: 0 Cube Average / 55.5% Win Rate
Move Bounce
den
Performance: 0 Cube Average / 52.5% 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 > 0.5
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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