Table of Contents
Hello everyone, and welcome to Top 5! I’m Glazer of Snap Judgments: The Official Marvel Snap Zone Podcast, and every week, we’ll be counting down a different Top 5 things you need to know in, around, and about Marvel Snap! Sometimes this will be silly in nature, but we’ll always have some pearls of wisdom to help make you the best (and best adjusted!) Marvel Snap player you can be! This week? The Top 5 Underused Cards in Marvel Snap!
To get these cards, I looked at various datasets from the Marvel Snap Zone meta located below. Naturally, I’ll also feature a deck to try out for each of these cards.
5. Quake
Decks with Quake
This is the one card I’m permitting myself to add without any data to back me up. Quake‘s numbers in terms of win and cube percentage are quite medium, but that’s not a surprise, as the community considers the card pretty bad, and so it’s rarely played outside of meme decks.
Still, I have two counterfactuals to that. First, Keen Koala, every month, hits Infinite with a different Quake brew, almost always within a few days of Season reset. Further, Teroh, a top 1000 player in the world has been ranked in the 600s using mostly Quake. Quake is an extremely powerful card, but has an extremely high skill cap.
One of the easiest ways to utilize Quake is to combine it with Storm. In most storm games, people overcommit to the lane. Quake allows you to play around that, moving the flood to a different location, one you can still win with cards like Captain Marvel or Doctor Doom. In addition, Quake with a location that really helps certain decks can absolutely steal cubes, and even just at messing up a Shuri play on turn 5 with priority, it’s very high value.
If you are going to try Quake though? Do so in Proving Grounds. When you’re good, she can beat anything, but it’ll be a while likely before you’re good.
PulseGlazer
If you want a play guide for either of those, check out my video today.
4. Mysterio
Decks with Mysterio
Mysterio makes this list by virtue of his when-played rate being through the roof. Games that feature Mysterio hitting the board are very often won and won for big cubes in Marvel Snap according to our data.
That doesn’t come as a huge surprise – Mysterio is a wholly unique card with notable synergies. The most notable pattern is that since each Mysterio clone counts as a card played, Mysterio and Hit Monkey on the same turn is extremely powerful. Just those two cards played, in fact, is 4 power from Mysterio 8 from Hit Monkey played in an extremely unpredictable manner. When combined with ways to get Mysterio more power or play more cards for Hit Monkey, it’s explosive. So what are those combos?
Well, Mysterio as three plays also means that that’s plus 3 power on a Bishop. We’re up from 12-power to 16 already. We can also play on an Angela for +1 or fill an Elsa Bloodstone lane for a potential +2 to each clone. We can really tune that up with Bast who loses 1-power on the real Mysterio but gives both clones +2, making Mysterio an insane [2/9].
And sometimes you don’t even play Mysterio for any of these combinations. The Mysterio clones are cards without text – Patriot loves that, especially when played with Bast or Valkyrie.
AstronautPoro
3. Yellowjacket
Decks with Yellowjacket
This card and the next one were big surprises for me that made far more sense when I really thought about it. Yellowjacket has three things going for him that make it powerful and one that keeps him underrated.
The underrated is pretty simple – giving -1 to your entire lane when he’s played can be pretty tough. Indeed, were that consistently the case, he’d be just a bad card. The downside, though, is quite easy to mitigate. Yellowjacket can be played in an empty lane freely or combined with Luke Cage to have no negative effect at all.
And the positives are great. 0-cost obviously is a boon when drawn, but it can also be tutored with Jane Foster to mostly guarantee you have the card, at which point, given its cost, we can always play it. Naturally, too, then, there’s synergy with Hit Monkey giving it plus 2 for 0 energy. While that potential +2 also helps with an extra move for Werewolf By Night. That extra change is especially good with Hit Monkey, as putting both the powerful scaling cards in different lanes is an excellent way to win a game of Marvel Snap.
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2. Shocker
Wait, what the hell is the Shocker doing here? The weakest High Evolutionary card? Well, not so far.
InSheNaut decks are extremely powerful. An unpredictable 29 power on turn 7 from The Infinaut or Hulk and She-Hulk. Magik is one consistent way to get there, but with Storm, Legion, Scarlet Witch, and Snowguard in the meta, keeping Limbo in play can be dangerous… plus, what if you just don’t draw Magik on time? Shocker is your backup plan!
Evolved Shocker to hit Hulk, She-Hulk or The Infinaut allows for a pass of turn 5 and playing both huge cards on turn 6. With this play, you don’t need to make a dangerous turn 7 – you instead just get to win the game and steal an absolute ton of cubes. As an added bonus, if you have to just play Shocker and hit, say, a Cyclops, you get a [2/3] that can activate the benefits of Evolved Misty Knight or Evolved Cyclops!
Matranti
Of course, Shocker has one other natural home in Snap as a vanilla card.
1. Patriot
How many of you would have guessed that even now Patriot is the top win rate and second cube rate card in our database? Patriot is extremely powerful – plus 2 to nearly a full board is stellar – but what really makes the card sing is all the variety that can go into a Patriot deck.
This season, I hit Infinite with a Series 3-only Patriot deck that has become known as Bastriot. Patriot doesn’t buff the whole board here, but with Bast and others, he makes Valkyrie an almost sure lane winner and allows cheap cards to work with Iron Man enough to dominate Marvel Snap.
Of course, there’s also Iron Patriot. These Brood + Absorbing Man decks use clone cards to make Patriot alone a +4 per card played or more. Forge and Iron Man further amplify those buffs to the point where an opponent simply cannot keep up with the overwhelming tempo.
And hey, none of that fancy stuff is needed. A bunch of vanilla powerful cards with Blue Marvel and Ka-Zar, followed by Onslaught or Ultron still dominates games of Snap. Patriot is just one of the best cards and best decks… but not one you’ll hear most creators talk about. That’s what makes him so underrated.
PulseGlazer
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Wrap Up
That’s it for me this week. Keep it here on Marvel Snap Zone for the best Snap Content, check out my YouTube where daily videos will still be uploaded, and I’ll see you all next week!
