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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, 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 Martyr Decks in Marvel Snap.
And hey, Martyr isn’t good, but, in Marvel Snap, even bad cards can have good homes. I’ve been testing with it all week, and it definitely has quite a few uses where it’s a pretty solid card!
Decks with Martyr
5. The Invisible Tribunal
PulseGlazer
The Living Tribunal decks, particularly those without Hela, need to get power on the board. Strangely, with Tribunal spreading that power, there’s very little chance of Martyr moving to a location that costs you the game. The four power is therefore just premium on a 1-Cost body that is able to be played early or fit in on curve (which is not actually hard to do if you use Magik for a Turn 7). The main goal beyond that is to play Iron Man, Onslaught, and The Living Tribunal in one lane, thus creating so much power than your opponent can’t stop you.
Ideal Play Pattern:
- Turn 1: Martyr
- Turn 2: Invisible Woman
- Turn 3: Magik
- Turn 4: Ms. Marvel or Iron Lad
- Turn 5: Iron Man
- Turn 6: Onslaught
- Turn 7: The Living Tribunal
4. Junk
PulseGlazer
This Junk deck has had the best stats for Martyr thus far, but it’s also a deck where Martyr is almost entirely replaceable. So why is Martyr here? Well, it has three uses. First, Junk keeps the opponent’s power down, so four power anywhere is usually pretty good. Next, if you drop Annihilus on the last turn, doing so with four power is pretty solid. Finally, the best use (and one we’ll see again on this list): Professor X wants some big stats so it can win a lane, and Martyr accomplishes that reasonably well.
Ideal Play Pattern:
- Turn 1: The Hood or Martyr
- Turn 2: Jeff the Baby Land Shark or Luke Cage
- Turn 3: Werewolf By Night
- Turn 4: Sentry or a bunch of 1-Cost On Reveals
- Turn 5: Professor X or Annihilus
- Turn 6: Alioth or Annihilus + Demon/Martyr
3. Safety’s Red, White, and Dazzle
SafetyBlade
This one is simple: if you can fill every position, then Martyr is just a [1/4]. Dazzler is also then a [3/8], and both Patriot and Blue Marvel can pump up all of your cards further to give you a good chance of winning. In order to fill every location, you have Ultron, Squirrel Girl, and Mysterio. The cube rate on this one is nothing special, but it’s winning games at least!
Ideal Play Pattern:
- Turn 1: Martyr
- Turn 2: Invisible Woman
- Turn 3: Patriot
- Turn 4: Dazzler with Squirrel Girl or Martyr
- Turn 5: Blue Marvel (or Patriot and two 1-Costs/Mysterio)
- Turn 6: Ultron or whatever you need to flood the board
2. Tempo Thanos
PulseGlazer
Johnson, an unbelievable player, finished in third place with this deck at a tournament. Martyr in this one is largely a way to get Professor X to win a lane, just like Silk. Having that initiative is extremely important here, and the Infinity Stones make it really unlikely that Martyr loses you a game.
Ideal Play Pattern:
- Turn 1: Draw or Martyr
- Turn 2: Elsa Bloodstone, Silk, or Kraven
- Turn 3: Silk or Kraven + Time Stone if you can, otherwise Martyr
- Turn 4: Professor X or Negasonic Teenage Warhead and a 1-drop
- Turn 5: Professor X > Vision > Blue Marvel
- Turn 6: Usually Alioth, or Magneto to ruin Ms. Marvel
1. Derek’s Shanna Zoo
PulseGlazer
Derek is a high infinite player (top 30) who used this deck sans Martyr to reach those lofty heights. I cut… some card and tossed in Martyr, and I kind of love it.
I’ve been playing this successfully all week. This season, I decided to stay around the Top 5,000 for the first time, mostly by doing dailies. What typically happens is that I get to around 3,800 doing my dailies with this deck, then I make some videos, grade some papers, and go to bed. I wake up and go to work. By the time I get home, I’m around 6,000 again, so I play this deck back to 3,800 and repeat. I’ll be ruining that today writing this article (oops, the things I do for love!), and on Sunday by doing my Infinity Conquest runs, but so far so good! This deck works. Destroy absolutely rocks the face off of this, but it’s otherwise pretty solid. Plus, it goes both higher and wider than stuff like Darkhawk.
Ideal Play Pattern:
- Turn 1: Spider-Ham
- Turn 2: Elsa Bloodstone
- Turn 3: Armor or Jeff the Baby Land Shark + Martyr (if the locations are good, Shanna works too)
- Turn 4: Ka-Zar
- Turn 5: Blue Marvel
- Turn 6: Go as wide as you can!
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!
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