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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.
Marvel Snap Meta Overview
Due to the bots skewing the numbers, the first week of the season is more about the Season Pass card and testing possible new archetypes than figuring out the absolute best decks. As such, the meta will often be as diverse as the new card allows. Last season, Agent Venom quickly pushed a multitude of decks, which allowed for several archetypes to exist (even if they were all based around a similar concept).
Surtur has convinced a lot of players so far, and it has easily been the most popular card in the game this season. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the versatility of Agent Venom, which has lead to only two new archetypes using Surtur in this report.
The best one is the more discreet of the two: Double Up. It includes Surtur for the sake of making it a [3/11] with extra copies of She-Hulk and/or
The more popular deck, 10 Power, is by far the deck you should expect to face when queuing a Ranked match. The perfect list has yet to be figured out—especially when it comes to the early cost cards—but the “Surtur on Turn 3 into a cheap Skaar” formula has already proven its worth to the Marvel Snap community.
There is one odd thing, though: the other decks don’t seem to have adapted their strategy to reflect the popularity of the 10 Power deck. I expected to see much more of Mobius M. Mobius to prevent Skaar from being discounted. Maybe even more of Hazmat, U.S. Agent, and other affliction cards to keep cards below the ten power threshold.
It is weird to see the most popular deck (by a mile I should add) not be treated as a menace. Maybe it is because everyone is busy playing it, or maybe Surtur just hasn’t earned the respect it deserves yet.
With the bots factored in, the numbers say we should respect the new card, or at least the two decks it is played in. Still, I can’t shake off the feeling that Agent Venom was much scarier. I would love to read what you think in the comments section down below!
Happy Tier List, everyone!
Marvel Snap Meta Tier List
| Tier | Deck |
|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Surtur Double Up |
| Tier 1 | Sera Control |
| Tier 1 | 10 Power |
| Tier 2 | Good Cards Ongoing |
| Tier 2 | Bounce Move |
| Tier 3 | Arishem Loki |
| Budget | Ongoing KaZoo |
| Budget | Devil Dinosaur Destroy |
| Budget | Swarm Discard Aggro |
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 Cube Average 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. They won’t have their own dedicated write up here, but they may be transferred to the main Tier List section. 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 Tiers 1 and 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 > 0.8 & 58% Win Rate
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 > 0.5 & 56% Win Rate
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 > 0.4 & 52% Win Rate
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.
Tier 1
Surtur Double Up
den
It’s no secret that explosive decks that are able to play from behind are the best ones for farming bots. Still, even though the Double Up archetype might have benefited from some free eight cubers here and there, the deck is simply doing a lot of things right. Indeed, there are three cards you need to be afraid of when purposefully playing without priority: Cosmo, Alioth, and Juggernaut.
With this in mind, I think it’s fair to question the 1.3 Cube Average, as this high of a number only happens with bots helping. However, the 61% Win Rate is much harder to achieve solely from bots.
Potential Additions
It is unclear whether Surtur is mandatory to the deck’s success, and Wasp is really just a hand management card that is sometimes a bonus two power for
U.S. Agent, Silver Sable, and other annoying cheap cards would be worth testing as proactive options against Skaar decks.
Sera Control
den
The best deck at the end of the previous season has started the new one strong, especially because it represents a nice counter against the current tsunami of Skaar + Surtur decks. The best list isn’t running Shang-Chi (which might seem odd when tons of decks are filled with ten power cards), but there is a lot of Armor and Cosmo around. As such, U.S. Agent and Red Guardian can proactively reduce the power of your opponent’s cards, and that is enough at the moment.
Potential Additions
Mobius M. Mobius gained another good match up with the surge of Surtur decks.
10 Power
den
There are a lot of lists for this archetype at the moment, and, considering bots are messing with the Cube Average metric, this one managed the best Win Rate of them all at 62%.
While that is the highest score on the entire report, the fact that there are so many lists around this archetype (which would have ranked third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh if I included all of them) means there was a much higher chance that at least one would post an excellent performance. They all kind of did to be honest, but they also all showed the same limitation: a Cube Average that is rather low for such a high Win Rate.
A straight forward, points driven deck is very simple to pick up, which means it will quickly perform very well. However, the 10 Power archetype is equally simple for your opponent to figure out, so you’ll often struggle to keep them in the game if you’re off to a hot start.
Potential Additions
Luke Cage could replace Juggernaut or Cosmo, or both if you decide to add U.S. Agent to the mix for the mirror match. White Widow can replace Shadow King for proactive disruption instead of Shadow King. Just be sure to use her with Armor.
The Hood and Nico Minoru are other popular 1-Costs if you’re missing either Hydra Bob or Silver Sable.
Tier 2
Good Cards
den
Agent Venom is no longer the focus of everyone, even if Shadow King remains very popular. Also, in a meta that is even more concentrated on the ability to develop points, a four power Iron Man remains extremely strong. The problem is that you don’t have much more than that to challenge a Skaar deck on points, unless Cassandra Nova manages to hit all the right targets.
There is a need to pick a direction at the moment, as flexibility isn’t that great.
Potential Additions
Mobius M. Mobius could replace Speed for disruption rather than points. U.S. Agent is also pretty good at the moment.
Bounce Move
den
Frigga found a home in Move, and she brought in some bounce elements to help create a huge Human Torch, Dagger, or Vulture to copy. The Pure Move deck was already great, so it is hard to say if this is an improvement or just an exotic iteration that has made the deck fresh. There was a Pure Move deck in the data with a much worse Win Rate (about 5% lower), so the early results seem to indicate this new Bounce Move deck is the way to go.
Potential Additions
Cosmo serves as a good protective piece. Cloak can help the Move synergy and Black Swan can help the 1-Costs.
Tier 3
Arishem Loki
den
Arishem doesn’t have to prove its flexibility anymore, and that is probably what is keeping this archetype in business. The Win Rate is behind the rest of the report; the other five archetypes are all above the 56% threshold while Arishem is only around 52%.
It is hard to include some surprising elements in a deck with 15 random cards, but the Lockdown Variant seems to be the way to go. Professor X might be a little much, but Storm and War Machine work well in a deck that has lots of energy to use. The first one will typically lock a lane that you had more energy invest into, while the second makes sure you can spend energy and won’t be blocked by an annoying location or a limiting ability.
Closing Words
This first week of the War of the Nine Realms season mostly told us that the community loves to jam points with Surtur even though Agent Venom is still a great card to build around. It will be interesting to see how these two match against each other once the bots are out of the equation.
So far, it seems like Surtur develops too many points to be matched by four power cards, unless Iron Man is part of the equation. As such, Agent Venom should be turning toward more disruptive decks in the future. Armor and Cosmo might have their say in that, though.
I didn’t think this month’s Season Pass card can truly compare to the one from October, but so far that has been the case.
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.
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