Snap Judgments Presents: PulseGlazer’s Top 10 Decks

Good morning all! It’s Friday and it’s Valentines Day; let’s do something special!

I’m going to spend this article covering the Top 10 decks right now in Marvel Snap. On this site, you get the great den’s weekly Tier Lists, which are entirely data-driven. This will not be that.

This Tier List is my opinion based on top meta gameplay. Some viewers will ask, “if these are not top of the meta decks, why should I care about them?” The answer is simple: a high majority of decks proliferate downward from the top meta players. Most of the best deck builders are top meta players, and decks at that level are built to counter each other so the meta ends up spiraling downward through the Ladder.

These 10 decks are all Top Tier and presented in no particular order.

Finally, I’m not doing turn-by-turn breakdowns or card replacements for this article. If you’re interested in that (and two bonus decks), be sure to check out the video above!

The Top 10

1. Chamo Wiccan

The current #1 or #2 rank list on the Infinite Leaderboard is this one from MSL Chamo. The list was nerfed with the Wiccan change and it will lose some small percentage more of games because of that, but it’s still insanely strong.

As it turns out, having +2 energy is a lot, and what the list does with that energy is truly special. Chamo runs power cards like Galacta and Gwenpool to compete in power and still use multiple tech cards to answer whatever the meta is doing.

It’s a fairly simple strategy, but it absolutely wins games; not only is it ranked #1, but I’ve had numerous people tell me they hit Infinite with this list as well.

2. Sizer Move Bounce

Sizer has been rank #1 or #2 with variations on Move every season since October, a whopping five straight months. He and Chamo are currently trading blows for the #1 spot on the leaderboard.

This is the hardest list ever to play in Marvel Snap. It requires an encyclopedic knowledge of the meta (in particular, what decks run Cosmo, Shang-Chi, Shadow King, Killmonger, and Alioth). Furthermore, you need to learn how to throw priority on Turn 5 effectively. That’s not easy, but with the Bounce cards it is doable. Against cards like Alioth and Cosmo, if you can predict their placement (which gets easier with enough practice), you can just go over the top of them. They’ll be paying six energy for their nine power or three for three, but you can pay one energy for ten or more with Human Torch, or three for sixteen with Vulture.

Here’s an example of a clear play pattern I like: Turn 1 you can play Human Torch, then Peni Parker elsewhere. Drop the Sp//dr on Human Torch. Next turn, move Torch to Peni and play Frigga. Turn 4, play the second Torch and Doctor Strange. That leaves you with two [1/20]s on Turn 5 in one lane. From there, play Beast or Toxin to throw priority, then replay those cards on the last turn and the game is over.

There are a dozen playlines like that for this deck that is endlessly rewarding to play and frustrating to play against deck.

3. BBAK Surtur

Yes, Surtur was nerfed. No, I don’t care.

Surtur used to be a [3/4] that with would get to [3/16] with four triggers. But here’s the thing: when I saw Surtur on Turn 3, if I also played four more cards with 10+ power I was probably winning the game anyway. And in most games? Surtur was either a [3/10] or a [3/13]. In the former, it’s a one power buff, the latter a two power nerf. None of that is meaningless, but the games where it matters in terms of victory are far rarer than one would assume and often involve locations like Kyln.

BBAK is ranked #3 right now and has already been rank #1 both this season and for a full season prior. He’s traveling this week so his rank will probably fall, but this deck is an absolute beast. With the Surtur nerf, this is paradoxically a great time to play this list—people will play it less and will tech for it less.

Sam Wilson Captain America was a major update for this deck since he allows Cull Obsidian to be a free play without diluting the deck with 1-drops. Add that to the insane power of all the 10s and the crazy control of Cosmo and Armor and Juggernaut. This deck is still a winner.

Here are two more Surtur decks that could have made this list, but I don’t want to overwhelm it with one archetype.

4. Smlz Surfer

Our rank #4 deck on the Infinite Leaderboard is this exclusive Silver Surfer deck from Smlz (pronounced Smilez), a member of the Pixel Discord.

This Surfer is hard-teched for the meta. If you’re sick of discount cards like Swarm and Death, you have Agent Coulson. Red Guardian is a catch-all answer. Arishem and Skaar decks hate Cassandra Nova and U.S. Agent (you haven’t lived until you’ve gone Cassandra Nova into Absorbing Man against Arishem). Killmonger gives you an answer for Bounce Move and Victoria Hand.

And Smlz was able to do this without sacrificing power. The power of Surfer decks comes from their title card and Galacta, and the energy to do it all comes from Hope Summers. As long as all that is in tact, Smlz’s list can counter it all, and he has been holding onto rank #4 with this great shell.

5. Husky Hand

Our last explicitly top of the Infinite Leaderboard deck comes from this HuskyPuppies update to a Derek shell. Husky is playing the Victoria Hand power game where you can win with a single Victoria Hand and a lot of Demons or crush with two to three Victoria Hands (Nico Minoru, Frigga, Moonstone) and go way over the top.

Husky was able to fit in two tech cards—Mobius M. Mobius is everywhere y’all—to really take this to the next level. The other tech card, Shadow King, is still great, but not in very many decks. In this list it pulls double duty, not only shutting down your opponent’s plays but also giving an Anti-Venom card its power back. Add in a little extra power from Iron Patriot and Speed and you have the rank #12 player’s deck right now.

6. Ema Arishem

I put this off for as long as I could, but we need to discuss Arishem, a clear and powerful member of this list. Ema is around the top 30 with this insanely strong list.

Beyond extra energy good, Arishem has a lot going for it. The 2-Cost cards—Iron Patriot and Valentina—are perfect. Valentina‘s generated 6-Cost can be played immediately after her on Turn 3, and Iron Patriot lanes are easy to win when you have extra energy on the next turn.

But what this deck really scales on is powerful 4-drops. Being able to play cards like Doctor Doom 2099, Galacta, and Ares a turn early is insane. Add in the free-ish Mockingbird and shut-down potential of Alioth and Shang-Chi… Yes, Arishem is a force to be reckoned with.

7. PulseGlazer Doom 2099 Ongoing

Hey, I made this one!

Doctor Doom 2099 was nerfed, but it doesn’t really matter most of the time. Given that Doom 2099 himself is now all but Red Guardian proof, the nerf only takes between two and three power off the deck. Again, you will lose more games because of this—but the list is still top-notch in terms of easy power.

This is probably the simplest deck to play of all these lists. Get Doctor Doom 2099 out, play one card a turn, win. Super-Skrull gives you a failsafe against Ongoing decks that want to go bigger, and Blue Marvel, Spectrum, and even Captain America all allow you to scale up those DoomBot 2099s.

This deck is a clear climber with a clear ceiling. If you want to play the deck, count your power up and be ready to take 50-50s based on where your DoomBot 2099s land.

8. Alexander Coccia Bullseye

The day Bullseye came out, Alexander Coccia made this deck +/- one card (Gambit for Moon Knight). Moon Knight is in the better version of this because it gives you an extra semi-targeted way to hit the deck’s key card, Swarm.

A discarded Swarm unlocks the deck since it becomes a target for Bullseye. Between Bullseye and MODOK, this deck gets a ton of discards. Those discards scale up your Morbius and number of Swarms. Daken gets big, too, especially with Scorn hitting him and Frigga copying him. He frequently plays for [3/16]. This deck scales out of control with good draws, and it’s a major reason why the meta is infested with Mobius M. Mobius.

Still, unless you’re playing against Mobius every game, this deck’s scaling competes with Move Bounce at a far lower skill cap. It’s worth playing.

9. Scream

This is a bog standard list, but it’s still exceedingly powerful. Scream lost one starting power and is now bad into Luke Cage, but with so many decks forced to play Mobius M. Mobius or Red Guardian or whatever other tech card, Luke has disappeared from basically every deck (except for the next one on this list). That leaves Scream free to dominate.

Scream on Turn 2 is an easy Snap. Her Win Rate was on par with Mister Negative on Turn 4 before her nerf according to Marvel Snap lead designer Glenn Jones. She has insane power and disruption… and her ability plus all the movers puts real pressure on the opponent’s cognitive load. They’re forced to and frustrated by planning and re-planning while you reap the benefits: extra wins, extra cubes.

10. Sizer Affliction

Is it any surprise to see the game’s #1 Ladder player show up on this list twice? Sizer created this deck the day that Iron Patriot came out. Since then, this has been the #1 ranked Ajax list in the game, and it still is.

It offers a ton of advantages. While it does run Zabu and Anti-Venom, it isn’t reliant on those cards so Mobius doesn’t mess up your whole gameplan (and it can be hit by your Red Guardian anyway). Malekith offers an extra draw, which helps you hit key cards like Luke Cage, U.S. Agent, and Hazmat, thus helping you draw into your power cards (Ajax and Man-Thing). Man-Thing in particular is very strong in this very low-cost meta, and Ajax is just lane winning in a world where opponents aren’t running Luke Cage. Meanwhile, Juggernaut lets you win a lane with minimal commitment.

This deck is going to get a new card soon—Diamondback—and when that happens, people are absolutely going to run Luke Cage again to counter it. As such, this will be paradoxically worse for awhile when it gets an awesome new card… but people will slowly stop playing Luke Cage again. And when they do, this will once more be a meta deck.

That’s it for this week, and I’ll be away next week. But I’ll still see you in the daily videos, which never stop (even when I’m away)! And I’m coming back in two Mondays time for another deck of the day!