Table of Contents
- Absorbing Man joins the Hela archetype!
- Absorbing Man also joins the C3r3bro archetype, alongside Valkyrie!
- Has Titania finally found her deck? Is Lockation back?
- Bast and Shuri join Deadpool!
- Zero welcomes Shuri and She-Hulk!
- Valkyrie has her own archetype now? The birth of Valkyrie Control
- Closing Words
Hi everyone, hope you are all having fun with the new cards, and feel ready for the new season starting at anytime now. I’m sure Silver Surfer will only add to the current deckbuilding madness we are experiencing, but I will leave the Season Pass card out of this piece. Do not worry, we will come back to it very soon, as well as a fully updated tier list once the meta is a bit easier to read.
Today, let’s talk about the new cards that have been in the game for about a week now, and keep inspiring players on a daily basis, the Series 4 and 5 cards. Last week, I already wrote a piece with early emerging builds, but the innovative decks keep coming, so I felt obligated to write a second one.
Once again, we are going to explore how the new cards have managed to impact already existing archetypes, and might have created a new one as well! Lots of exciting things to cover, which will hopefully help and inspire you for your next sessions on Marvel Snap.
We have six decks to cover today, so let’s see what the community managed to cook with the new cards!
Absorbing Man joins the Hela archetype!
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The Hela deck is one looking to pull the biggest possible high roll, as often as possible. In that sense, ever since we figured how to build the deck to be reliable, it felt very difficult to change any card. Indeed, the risk of unbalancing the whole thing always hangs in the balance.
However, Absorbing Man seems to have manage such feat, and proved to be a good ally to Hela, as all the On Reveal cards in the deck feel worth replaying:
- Lady Sif, Sword Master, Hellcow: Running only 3 discards in the deck can lead to not finding enough to be explosive later on. At worst, Absorbing Man can act as the fourth one.
- Ghost Rider: You discarded Hela and unfortunately didn’t pull it back with Ghost Rider? Well, Absorbing Man gives you another shot at summoning her back.
- Jubilee: Similarly to Ghost Rider, why summon one big card from your deck when you can summon two?
It is too early to say if the card will stay in the build, or if we’ll end up going back to another big card in the end, but the flexibility of being able to copy either a discard or a summoning effect has made the deck feel a little more flexible overall. This also surprisingly reduced the need to draw Hela when we high roll Ghost Rider or
Credits: A creative player I faced on ladder, sorry I couldn’t remember the name.
Absorbing Man also joins the C3r3bro archetype, alongside Valkyrie!
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C3r3bro was an archetype many expected to welcome Valkyrie, as her ability felt like it was created to help the deck, and she does. Most of the time, Valkyrie will win her lane, as the opponent ends up with 3-power cards when ours are boosted by Cerebro. Also, Valkyrie has a nice little synergy with Hawkeye, as she doesn’t force you to play behind Hawkeye if you Valkyrie the lane later on. As such, you can Hawkeye as a bait to make your opponent think they know where you will play next turn. If we had to guess for a logical second inclusion in the build, many looked at Bast rather than Absorbing Man.
However, the card found some nice On Reveal abilities to copy in the deck:
- Spider-Man: Why lock your opponent for just a turn when you can do for two turns?
- Valkyrie: If we have Cerebro in play, Valkyrie should be a lane winner, setting the opposing cards to 3 power when ours will have five. Absorbing Man allows doing this on a second lane.
- Killmonger: Use him on turn five, bait the opponent into thinking they are safe to drop many 1-cost cards on turn six, punish them and have a good time, courtesy of Absorbing Man.
- Scarlet Witch: Sometimes, there are just a lot of bad locations we want to get rid of.
- Sentinel: Probably the weaker one, but still fine if you need to swarm the board a bit more, and lack the cards to do so.
- Hawkeye: Don’t do this one, it will end up badly.
Compared to the Hela deck, the big question mark here revolves more around the deck being able to reach a competitive status, C3r3bro being a fringe archetype at best until now in Marvel Snap. For now, it benefits a lot from the surprise effect, and the complete lack of Enchantress being played.
So it seems effective for now, we’ll see how it develops in the future.
Credits: Gosh
Has Titania finally found her deck? Is Lockation back?
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A 1-Cost with so much power attached to it couldn’t go unplayed for so long. Titania‘s intricacies made her difficult to figure out and use efficiently for some time, leaving her out of the decks that appeared last week. With more time under her belt, it feels like Titania might have found a home, in the Lockation archetype. A deck aiming at being able to manipulate the locations, which makes Titania much easier to use, and keep on our side by the end of the game.
Through playing her on locations where the opponent can’t play cards anymore, Titania should be on our side at the end of most games:
- Storm‘s Flooding if you reveal second, prevents the opponent from playing there anymore.
- Spider-Man locking the location on turn 5, played alongside Titania.
- Filling the opposing space with Viper, Debrii, or Green Goblin, so they can’t play cards anymore.
- Dragging Titania back to location where we can take her back with Polaris.
Being an already solid archetype in the previous metagame, I expect this deck to be able to rise in popularity quite fast, as long as players accept the steep learning curve of both the deck, and Titania.
SafetyBlade also makes use of Titania in his Ka-Zar Zoo deck if you want to check it out:
Credits: Torikun
Bast and Shuri join Deadpool!
Deadpool is a card that simply wants to grow as big as possible. So naturally, whenever there are new cards able to help in that regard, we have to test them. In Series 5, two additions fit the bill, Bast and Shuri.
Bast is simply used as a general buff in the deck, only Deathlok losing power when affected. On Deadpool, it is a Forge buff that you can play on turn one. It loses value once Deadpool started growing, but can still be fine alongside The Hood, Venom or Arnim Zola for example.
As for Shuri, she just seems like a card made for the deck, and probably the reason Arnim Zola made it back in it too. Outside simply buffing Deadpool, the card also serves as a great setup to a future Taskmaster or Arnim Zola on turn six, copying the big card we created on turn five.
One of the strongest play pattern with Shuri on turn four is playing Deadpool, Demon and Venom on the same location on turn five. This sets up for a big Taskmaster plus Deadpool, or just Arnim Zola on Venom the next turn.
Credits: Kraken_Null
Zero welcomes Shuri and She-Hulk!
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The Zero archetype was struggling a lot towards the end of the last metagame, falling out of popularity and posting bad results overall. With the new cards, the deck might have a shot at redemption, as there seem to be some nice additions in Shuri and She-Hulk.
Just like Deadpool previously, Shuri creates stupidly strong units that we can abuse with Venom or Taskmaster later on. Also, a 30-power Red Skull is likely to win its lane, and the following Taskmaster will likely win his as well. However, the creative part of the deck comes from , which I haven’t seen mentioned before running into AmIRight’s post on Twitter.
Because there are no 6-Cost cards in the deck, passing on turn five isn’t much of a problem, opening She-Hulk to be played alongside any other card. The other sweet thing is that Shuri isn’t limited in time regarding when you play your next card. As such, you can play Shuri on turn four, pass turn five, and have an incredible turn six with She-Hulk paired with Taskmaster or Red Skull.
Originally, the creator has Luke Cage and Hazmat in the deck as well, which have a cute synergy alongside Typhoid Mary. Ultimately, Venom and Ebony Maw still felt like better options, and more reliable cards on their own. Especially with Shuri in the deck, Venom easily finds a way to become absolutely huge.
Credits: AmIRight
Valkyrie has her own archetype now? The birth of Valkyrie Control
BikiniBody
This deck is dear to my heart, because it comes from someone I know, and has been brewing decks for years, on every card game they got their hands on. And for as much as I have seen bad decks be tossed around, I recognize this one has a lot of potential.
The goal of this deck is to win a lane with Spider-Man and Professor X, while Valkyrie will win you the second one on turn six. For the first lane, you want to use Angela as your main source of power, which can be supported by Nightcrawler, Daredevil and such cards. When turn five comes around, especially if you have Daredevil ability helping you, just lock the lane you are ahead on using Spider-Man or Professor X. If you can win a lane where Angela isn’t in play, even better, we can still use her on turn six with Valkyrie.
As for Valkyrie, she is used as a “miracle” card here, generally being played alongside Wasp and Yellowjacket. The trick is that your fourth card should be Ant Man, Mojo, or Angela, as those will have more than 3 power after Valkyrie resolves, guaranteeing you to win the lane.
Other support cards in the deck include Bast and Adam Warlock, which works wonderfully together, as Adam Warlock can win the location alone now, netting you some draw. For now, the deck seems to do quite well, the surprise element being very important especially for winning extra Cubes. Wave can be a pain for the deck, so against DeathWave, you might want to pull the trigger on the cheap cards on turn five, as to avoid being locked out of a good play.
Credits: Timejo
Closing Words
I have been trying to come up with a cohesive tier list this past week, but it just seems impossible to do so currently. While frustrating to not be able to have somewhat of a clear view about the metagame, it is also the sign of a game where things are moving constantly. The decks shared today should be a testimony of this, as old and new archetypes are rising from everywhere in the community.
For now, These articles highlighting how old brews evolve and new ones emerge is the best I can do. Hopefully once the new season starts and Silver Surfer joins the fray, we might be able to analyze the field better than it is possible currently.
Until then, I hope you are all having a ton of fun on Marvel Snap – feel free to join us on Discord to share your original brews and talk about the game. You can also tag me on Twitter if you want me to review a deck or just share what makes you happy.
Good Game Everyone.
