Master Mold

Master Mold Theorycraft, Strategy, and Decklists: Reverse Handlock Time?

We explore the potential strategies and builds for Master Mold, a new Marvel Snap Series 5 card, and how it could affect the meta.

Master Mold will be hitting Marvel Snap on March 14, 2023 as part of the Days of Future Past Season. This card will initially be available as a Series 5 card.

As a reminder, Series 5 cards can be purchased for 6,000 Collector’s Tokens or opened via the Collection Level Track at a 0.25% drop rate in Collector’s Caches and Reserves. Master Mold is a 2 energy, 2 power card that has the following ability: On Reveal: Add 2 Sentinel to your opponent’s hand.

Strategy and Potential

Master Mold could help significantly revive some dead cards. Other new cards have had success reviving cards such as Stature with Black Bolt and Darkhawk with Rockslide. Although, since this new card supports a fringe way to play and might significantly improve the power of other cards, evaluating it can be difficult.

The plan is to send two Sentinels into your opponent’s hand, both of which they will have a hard time getting rid of. This maintains the opponent’s hand size and can potentially reduce the number of cards they can draw, and later it provides support for the card that stands to gain the most from Master Mold: Ronan the Accuser.

But when do we play the card? If we play Master Mold on Turn 2, your opponent’s hand will contain between five and seven cards. If the opponent skipped the first two turns we can fill their hand, but otherwise Master Mold won’t deny any draws. If we assume that the average opponent’s hand size is 4 on any given turn, we may find that we rarely brick their draws.

If these assumptions hold true, playing Master Mold alone could represent two energy for two power and an additional four power on Ronan the Accuser by the end of the game. Two energy for potentially six power is not a bad rate.

If we pair the card with Wong, on Turn 4 or 5 we can put four Sentinels into our opponent’s hand. This is highly likely to brick a draw, but it’s much later in the game than playing on curve and therefore will usually deny only one draw. This, however, represents an additional eight power for Ronan, and if we pair him with Mystique then it could represent a total of 16 additional power.

So if we are looking to make the biggest impact with Master Mold, it seems we need to pair it with cards like Wong, Odin, and Absorbing Man to repeat the effect or Ronan the Accuser and Mystique to profit off the effect.

Other cards which may work within the same archetype include Baron Mordo and Maximus. Both help clog your opponent’s hand and maintain the size of your Ronan. These cards also synergize with Wong, which may help the deck consistently drop large Ronans.

Another card that synergizes well with Master Mold is Sandman. The former never ‘misses’ and will always add 2 cards to your opponent’s hand, and following up with Sandman will ensure they add no benefit to your opponent. We could combine this with an On Reveal package and other ramp cards to set up combo, or we could even try playing Magik to extend the game. When looking at these builds, they seem to be strictly worse versions of what is already available, and playing multiple cards is likely to happen when playing a Ronan deck anyway.

The biggest concern is how do we ensure we win two lanes. Ronan the Accuser strategies can consistently win one lane, but Marvel Snap requires more. This leads to the expectation that the best Master Mold decks will likely be a hybrid to allow for flexibility.

And there’s another significant weakness that may hold the new card back: your opponent can play the Sentinels. This means they now can always convert two energy to three power, and if they play a deck that tends to leave energy unspent during the mid game then they may actually find ways to use these cards to beat you.

In summary, Master Mold is more interesting than it seems on the surface, and it adds power to some interesting cards that are probably lying dormant in your collection. Outside of Ronan the Accuser, the power of synergizing with Baron Mordo and Black Widow is not as strong as the synergies that other new cards have revitalized. It’s hard to judge, but comparing these theorycraft ideas to current similar builds indicates that Master Mold doesn’t quite seem to push the needle far enough.

Potential Score

Rating: 6 out of 10.

Below are some potential starter decks for Master Mold with brief descriptions.

Starter Decks (Theorycraft)

Sandman Stands Accused
Created by SafetyBlade
, updated 1 year ago
1x Collection Level 1-14
1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)
3x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)
7x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)
3.8
Cost
0-
1
2
3
4
5+
4
Power
0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Here’s a Sandman Electro deck to start. As mentioned above, there are concerns that this is not strictly better than other Sandman Electro decks. In order to compensate I have attempted to build in some flexibility. The deck notably does not run Mystique in favor of transitioning to a more traditional Electro deck on Turn 4.

We aim to play Ronan the Accuser on a lane and use Arnim Zola to spread points, or set up Doctor Doom and Odin to accomplish the same goal.

We can also use Odin to rebuy our hand filling effects if we need to boost our Ronan. The early game includes Maximus to help us win a second lane alongside other good cards.

Ronan Sera
Created by SafetyBlade
, updated 1 year ago
1x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)
3x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)
7x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)
1x Series 4 Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 4)
3
Cost
0-
1
2
3
4
5+
3.3
Power
0-
1
2
3
4
5+

Another promising direction is the Sera shell. This can allow us to play Ronan the Accuser on Turn 6 with Mystique or Maximus as the finisher.

To support this, Absorbing Man is included as a way to either double up our Shang-Chi or one of the effects we need to build our Ronan up. There’s lots of room to experiment with this build, and it may even be correct to drop Mystique.

MasterHawk
Created by SafetyBlade
, updated 1 year ago
2x Collection Level 18-214 (Pool 1)
1x Collection Level 222-474 (Pool 2)
7x Collection Level 486+ (Pool 3)
2x Series 4 Rare – Collection Level 486+ (Pool 4)
3.1
Cost
0-
1
2
3
4
5+
3.3
Power
0-
1
2
3
4
5+

This deck aims to mitigate the main weakness of including Mystique when you have only one main target by carrying both Darkhawk and Ronan the Accuser. Whether this is an improvement on the Devil Dinosaur hybrid builds will take time to see. The potential advantage is that you don’t have to manage your hand; you can just play your cards out and look to set up either Darkhawk or Ronan the Accuser into Mystique.

Since we are playing Zabu, we can also play Wong to synergize with the support cards from both the Darkhawk and Ronan packages. Playing Wong on Turn 3 into Master Mold and Korg on Turn 4 sounds like a great sequence of plays on its own.

Who is Master Mold?

Master Mold was created by Bolivar Trask to build an army of Sentinels. It is a colossal machine that was built by the mutant-hunting organization known as the Sentinels. As the central processing unit of the Sentinel production process, Master Mold is capable of creating and controlling numerous Sentinel robots. It was damaged and then destroyed by the X-Men, but Stephen Lang rebuilt the machine after he took over the Sentinel program.

Eventually, Stephen Lang was also defeated by the X-Men, and then his memories merged with Master Mold. This enabled it to start making independent decisions and adapt to different situations. Master Mold‘s ultimate goal is to eradicate all mutants and anyone who sympathizes with them (sound familiar), and it has attempted to achieve this goal with brute force and artificial viruses.

Good Luck Have Fun and Stay Safe!

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SafetyBlade
SafetyBlade

SafetyBlade is an reformed Hearthstone addict and Marvel Fanboy from Australia. Needless to say Marvel Snap is the perfect game for him!

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