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Everyone knows how dominant Thanos and Shuri are in Marvel Snap right now, but they’re not the only thing you can play. I’m seeing a lot of pessimism among people who do not own those cards and people who simply want to play something that doesn’t revolve around Thanos and Shuri. Thus, I felt like I should share some of the decks that I have been working on. Many of these lists are not fully optimized and definitely require more work to be done, but I feel like the community could really use some new directions to investigate in the current metagame. And there’s no better time than right now!
This is not going to be the typical KMBest-Go-Play-The-Best-Decks column. We’re going to get in the weeds. Welcome to Tier 2!
Electro Sandman
Sandman’s recent buff made him a much better curve play with Electro. This combination of Electro on Turn 3 into Sandman on Turn 4 is extremely powerful, and it can yield big wins if you are ahead when you play Sandman.
You want to follow up Sandman with cards like Doctor Doom, Magneto, Aero, and Odin. Lock up the game by limiting the opponent to only one card per turn, a restriction our deck is better equipped to play with.
Here’s what my current build of the deck looks like.
KMBest
The major issues the deck has are with Thanos and Shuri, which shouldn’t be surprising. Thanos can get ahead before you play Sandman by playing the Infinity Stones, and Shuri fights hard for early priority while being totally fine playing one card per turn in the late game.
Many of the choices in this build are made with these archetypes in mind. Wave into Sandman is a good way to prevent the Lockjaw explosion. Shang-Chi is a concession to the fact that Shuri simply goes bigger than you and you need an out. Ebony Maw is a card I typically hate, but it fills a big role when Thanos tries to get ahead of you early with Infinity Stones by being a truly enormous unit.
Magneto and Doctor Doom are your finishers of choice, with Aero as another option that can easily dominate games when your opponents are playing only one card a turn. These cards affect multiple lanes at once, which is a very important aspect of this deck.
Against other decks, the deck is genuinely very solid. DeathWave wants to play a ton of cards late in the game, as does every Sera deck. You are vulnerable to play patterns that involve a Turn 4 Killmonger on your Ebony Maw, but most of the time you’re in a good spot if you do what your deck wants to do.
One major edge this deck has is that it limits the amount of thinking you have to do in terms of what you need to play around. I’m generally regarded as a pretty good player, and I’m still very vulnerable to overthinking. Reducing the amount of possible outcomes makes it easier to make the right decision.
Another edge this deck gets is that it’s very easy to snap and retreat based on your hand; however, this can also be a disadvantage as smart opponents will know that you are vulnerable in the games where you do not snap.
Good Cards
This one is boring, but sometimes being boring is good.
KMBest
I’ll be frank. This is a worse Leech deck than Thanos, and a worse curve deck than Shuri. That said, you have a lot of game into many match ups that you can run into on the Marvel Snap ladder. When I first put this deck together, it was to target MODOK and DeathWave. If your opponents aren’t doing anything too unfair, you can put yourself in a really good spot when you play this list against them.
The deck is built to play for priority so your effects happen before your opponent’s do. Against MODOK, this is important so you can Leech them just before they MODOK. Against DeathWave, it’s important so you can use Polaris and Armor to disrupt their early Bucky/Carnage/Deathlok plays. DeathWave falls behind pretty badly if they can’t get priority, and if you can block their Bucky with Armor it’s easy to lock up the game from there.
The major upside this deck has is simplicity. It curves out; you can see if your big haymakers win the game and snap or retreat accordingly. The main downside it has is that it’s only the second best Leech/Aero Priority deck.
Normie Lockjaw
My testing involved trying out a number of decks, and, weirdly, this one had success against Thanos for reasons I simply cannot fathom. I would be remiss if I didn’t report it, though. It seems as though going really big on the RNG plays can yield some positive results against Thanos with good snapping.
The basic idea is to cycle Wasp and Mjolnir with Lockjaw and redraw them with Jane Foster, all while cheating out big 6-cost cards. You also have a bit of counterplay into Leech. Lockjaw, for reasons unknown to anyone, actually removes the Leech debuff on a card you shuffle into the deck. In addition, playing The Infinaut leaves you the ability to recover after a Leech by playing an enormous unit.
KMBest
Then there’s the other version of the deck. This is one I arrived at after the original list was decent into Thanos – I wanted to see what happened if we metagamed against other Lockjaw decks.
KMBest
I wanted to take this deck to the 983 Infinity Gauntlet so badly. I ended up not doing that, and, if I’m honest, I think I may end up being punished for it as the decks I did bring are very predictable (in my opinion).
As such, I’m leaving it here for you. I couldn’t get it up to the level I wanted it to be at, but maybe one of you can do something that I could not. The shell really has potential.
For more from me, you can follow me on Twitter for polished lists and shitposts, YouTube for deck breakdowns and tier lists, and Twitch if you want to keep up with the Marvel Snap meta in real time. As always, you can catch my weekly columns right here at Marvel Snap Zone!
Thanks for reading!
