Best Series (Pool) 3 Advanced Decks

Marvel Snap Series (Pool) 3 cards are the most impactful in the game, and the ones that can be make or break for a lot of players. When one enters Pool 3, they officially step in a different world of Marvel Snap, with many more ways of building a deck, various synergies and play patterns, and some of the most impactful cards in the whole metagame.

Currently, even with Series 4 and Series 5 cards making a huge impact, several Pool 3 decks are still able to compete and provide a solid chance at climbing the ladder. The trick in order to be able to exploit Pool 3 cards to their fullest is to look for the full range of possibilities around the card, a big difference compared to Pool 1 or 2.

Indeed, up until this point, cards were relatively straightforward as to what they could do, and how to build or play around them. In this next step, you will have a chance at creating much more flexible builds with various play patterns, and different options on how to conduct the game, based on your opponent and the various locations. Deckbuilding wise, the big emphasis in Pool 3 is to make sure you know where you are going with your deck. If you manage to build a strong core, then you can use the flexible cards to complement your idea, and have a deck able to both push for its own agenda, or annoy the opponent.

Pool 3 features many cards worthy of being the core of your deck, Sera, Mister Negative, Wong, Patriot and others. You will also meet some cards that can seemingly help any kind of strategy and make sense in the overall goal of their deck, such as Aero, Leader or Magneto for example. So welcome to Pool 3, the biggest land of your Marvel Snap journey so far. There are a lot of things to discover, and this guide is here to help you get started on the best decks you might face while in Pool 3.

Toxic Surfer

Toxic Surfer can be played with eleven out of the base twelve, only Sebastian Shaw not being available at this stage of your collection.

With this deck, the goal is to leverage the On Reveal synergy to either create a ton of points, repeating Silver Surfer or Ironheart‘s ability (you could throw Wolfsbane in this mix), or afflict our opponent’s card with negative power through Hazmat.

While it is a very straightforward approach, the ability to grow your side of the board, or attack your opponent’s make this deck more flexible than one might think. Plus, with Magik to get an extra turn, and Sera to discount our cards, we can often mount some explosive turns to catch our opponent’s off guard.

They key to playing this deck’s well is anticipation. Indeed, you need to figure out which On Reveal abilities are essential against your opponent’s deck, plus sequence your turns properly to play all your cards without actually being too obvious about it.

For example, if you plan to use Hazmat and Odin together on turn seven, you need to play Sera on turn five or six to discount them. This means, any card you have not played before entering that sequence, such as Luke Cage in order to protect your side of the battlefield, won’t be playable due to a lack of energy.

Rather than just have the card sit in your hand doing nothing, might as well take a risk and show your opponent Luke Cage on turn three or four. It could be countered with an Enchantress, but it at least forced your opponent to do something about it.

If you enjoy combo oriented decks, this is definitely the one you want to explore.

Mister Negative

If you don’t face much of Mobius M. Mobius, Mister Negative is amongst the highest scoring synergies in the game. If you do, give Rogue a try, the card could solve that specific problem. Plus, once you played your signature card, almost your entire deck is free, meaning you can patiently wait for the last turn to play all your cards. Doing so, you both protect them from possible counters, but also hide your points potential to your opponent, who surely will retreat if they understand what is going on.

The key for this deck to climb is to master the art of early snapping. Once you know you can safely play Mister Negative, even more so if you can follow it up with Jane Foster to draw your negatived cards, you have to pull the trigger.

At the moment, there are two ways to play Mister Negative. You can choose On Reveal cards focused on developing a ton of points, which is the simplest, but also more obvious from your opponent’s side way to play the deck. Or you could build around Destroy based cards since Knull joined Series 3 during a Series Drop. This way, you have access to counter cards like Killmonger or Shang-Chi, at the cost of a lower total points ceiling.

Discard Dracula

The discard synergy is one that is associated with fast, flooding based decks until you reach Pool 3. Then, you will unlock some key cards to get the discard archetype towards something combo-oriented, especially as you get Dracula added to the mix.

Discard strategies focus on points first and foremost : Morbius is able to grow to six, eight points with a good hand, which is more on par with a 4-cost card. Dracula can win a lane on its own when we get to discard Apocalypse a couple of times during the game.
Yet, we also have access to a good bit of disruption through Moon Knight, meaning we have a shot at forcing an important discard from our opponent’s hand at times. Just make sure you won’t discard your Dracula or Morbius with either of those cards.
Silver Samurai could be played as well to emphasize on that disruptive side even more.

Unfortunately, we are missing a few great cards to make the full Discard Dracula deck. Still, since M.O.D.O.K joined Series 3, the deck is pretty close to a polished product, even without the likes of Scorn, Khonshu, Proxima Midnight, or Corvus Glaive.

Also, there is a fun variant of Discard Dracula you can build in Series 3, building around The Collector more, as he is now joined by Quinjet and Helicarrier.

Cerebro 2

Buffed recently, Cerebro has come back to be a competitive synergy, even outside of Pool 3 considerations. We have to remove a few cards here, particularly Lasher, but the deck still works quite well.

Here, the goal is to focus on disrupting your opponent through Echo, Elektra, Goose or Storm, while also stacking 2 power cards on the locations you covet. Typically, you will play Cerebro on turn 6 alongside Mystique to keep it safe. Yet, you could also drop it behind Storm and have it sit on the Flooded location, where Enchantress or Rogue can’t reach it.

Since its buff to grant +3 power, the deck is able to reach 20 power on two locations quite easily, as Mister Sinister and Brood will make sure we fill all spots. If Mystique is also in the equation, we’ll reach 28 points.
You could go even higher with Blue Marvel, but the 5-cost also represents a risk, as it will be the only recipient of Cerebro’s buff if your opponent can cancel Blue Marvel’s ability.

Deadpool Destroy

Not running X-23 definitely hurts, as the Series 4 card enable plenty of play patterns through granting us extra energy. Still, with eleven out of the perfect twelve available, Deadpool Destroy is absolutely a solid archetype to explore when limited to Series 3 cards only.

There are four things we can aim for with this deck :

• Grow Deadpool turn after turn as we keep destroying it.
• Play Attuma into Nimrod to spread points across the board
• Build a great target for Arnim Zola on turn six, either a free Death, a huge Venom, Nimrod…
• Simply play Knull plus Death on turn six. Typically, we would love to add a big Deadpool to that turn, but we can’t without X-23 giving us an extra energy

The twelth card is Hulkbuster, which synergizes quite well with Deadpool. Yet, Shang-Chi or Lady Deathstrike could also make a case to be in that deck.

Other Worthy Considerations

Closing Words

I truly believe all the decks on this list are solid, like Infinite material kind of strong within the Series 3 restriction. However, the key point when you will start playing in Pool 3 are your snap and retreats. Up until Pool 2, you could always get away with risking it at times, facing enough bots to get some grinding done, or capitalizing on your opponent’s inexperience of the game. Once you enter Pool 3, you will have to be a little more careful, as strategies will diversify, and players will have picked up more experience under their belt.

Another emphasis of Pool 3 is the frustration often associated with collecting all the cards, as it will start being much slower than compared to Pool 1 and 2. You might feel robbed of losing to a card you do not have yet, or helpless against certain strategies you are facing for the very first time. This is all part of the experience, and it is important to detach ourselves from simply trying to grind cubes, and instead trying to learn this new environment. Comfort will come back sooner than you expect it, and you will be back on the grind in no time, as long as you allow yourself this precious time to get settled in Pool 3, the toughest one in Marvel Snap.

Have some questions about a deck, missing some cards and need advice? Feel free to reach out to the Marvel Snap Zone team on Discord, or find me directly on Twitter.

Good Game Everyone.