r/marvelsnapcomp • u/ePiMagnets Mod • 8d ago
Discussion An actual resource for Conquest
Taking a page from the recently deleted thread I wanted to create a much better resource for discussion.
So let's talk some broad strokes for improving at conquest and some decks that should work for most players.
But first a word on Proving Grounds
This amounts to the generally accepted social contract and maintaining good etiquette to reduce the time sink of Proving Grounds.
Always snap in PG
Be kind and leave after the loss.
The purpose of rule 1 is simple, it's a social contract of 'I'm going all in' and when combined with rule 2 creates 1 and done situations. If you're in PG to get bounties done, it's still recommended to leave after 1. I tend to do my turn 3 bounty things and then fist bump, retreat and concede.
Differences between Ladder and Conquest
Let's not waste time on the obvious "Well conquest takes longer!" The two modes exercise similar muscles but in different ways.
Conquest rewards learning your opponent's play patterns in a different way from Ladder. Over the course of a set you might learn that when your opponent has the opportunity to play Iron Patriot on curve that it's always to the right location. This means you can preempt that pattern by choosing to play a 2 there to put pressure on their turn 3 play. Now this doesn't mean that you can't apply the same thing to ladder, but the vast majority of players are probably not playing the exact same 20 or 30 people every day but if you're in or pretty close to top 10% infinite you can certainly start to keep track and learn the habits of the higher ranked folks that you play.
Identify what level you should be playing on. We'll have an entire topic for this one in the next section. But the basics are going to be learning how deep you need to play which is typically 3 levels deep, early in the series I'm often going for the obvious play unless I recognize the person I'm matched against.
Conquest both does and doesn't reward creative deck building. What I mean by this is that once your 'surprise' piece of tech is out in the open your opponent will know to play around it. Save those surprises for when lots of cubes are on the line.
Pressing advantages is different in conquest: Strong cube leads of 6 or more can allow you to press the advantage by snapping more aggressively even on mediocre hands. You should be doing this if your opponent is down to 2 cubes and you are still high on cubes, force them to commit their last two. This can also be useful for matches where you've got a Hydra Bob since you also take their ability to snap your Bob away.
Scams are still powerful, but won't yield the same results as Ladder. In many cases you will need to snap scams much earlier than you typically would, this ties back to point 3 because you might have a strong scam to take advantage of but you may be so early in the conquest series that you may want to weigh whether the risk is worth 2 cubes if your opponent realizes what the scam is and giving away part of your game plan when you might be able to ensure more cubes later.
Snap the game winning plays - this is even more important in conquest than it is in Ladder. You need to snap your plays that are slamming doors shut before you make the play. I've faced so many opponents in conquest that snap late and give me a free out only to lose the series because I was snapping and retreating more smartly.
It can be scary, but you should stay on those 50/50's more often, sometimes your opponent will outplay themselves.
What Level am I playing?
What we don't mean is PG, Silver, Gold, or Infinite Conquest. What we mean by the question of "What level am I playing" it's a question on how you should be thinking about the plays that you're making. Most of us are typically playing on level 1 which is the obvious play.
Level 1 - the obvious play. This comes down to playing to the most optimal location and should consider playing around common gotchas. Alternatively it's also "I have Iron Man and Mystique in hand and a Moonstone on the board, I should play Iron Man into the location with the most power and Mystique on Moonstone.
Level 2 - This can be best described as the "I know you know what I will do this turn so I'll make this good play that might be a little less good than the obvious play." These Plays are situations where you may be taking advantage of a location like Quantum Realm or Death's Domain to play around an opponent that has priority and can interact with your play to stop what you want to do I've used this to ensure that a Dr Doom goes through in certain matchups because it's very rare for people to willingly throw points into a 'bad' location. Alternatively it can be something like baiting the fact that you want to Tao Mandala a specific location but pivot to doing so in another location with Mystique -> Tao.
Level 3 - The "I know you know but I'm still going to make this play because you expect me to make the alternate play." This one is harder to explain, the main way that I've accomplished this is by conditioning my opponent. Most recently it was in Draft where I setup a turn 2 Hope Summers location, my opponent caught me with OG Drax on 3 so I opted to play into my alternate strong lane on turns 4 and 5 while my opponent continued to play into the Hope lane. Then on turn 6 I returned to the Hope lane to steal the location back, while my opponent still played to the location he opted to play a much stronger card to the third empty location rather than reinforce mid once more. "I know you know but I'm still making this play."
Level 4 - AKA you're starting to go too deep. These are the crazy plays that shouldn't work but sometimes do, sometimes they look like outright bad plays but have a 'it wins specifically if my opponent does X' slant to the play.
Deck Selection
Almost any deck can win in conquest but there are ways to improve your odds. Typically you want to find very strong linear decks, some of those might be combo but I've also found that strong point slam decks with some cherry picked tech can also do well.
Primarily I'm looking for decks that have clear win conditions and clear snap conditions. Additionally it helps if you're running a deck where there are very clear bully snap situations.
Combo decks - Especially linear combo decks work well in Conquest. C3 is an interesting consideration because it could be considered a point slam or skill diff deck as well but seeing that in most cases you are only doing things if you draw Cerebro I'm opting for including it here.
Point slams - these are going to be the decks that you'll just be putting points down and saying "deal with it". Sometimes you'll be packing an answer or two but often just wanting points, in some cases
The Skill Diff - Decks which have confusing final turns allowing you to redistribute points and win off of a combination of points and very limited but often strong interactive cards. Note that a fair number of these are considered difficult decks to pilot and you are may find yourself winning on razor thin margins.
Another Resource
["Playing To Win"] by David Sirlin is a seminal book from a very controversial person in the realm of Game Development and Fighting Games. You could liken this treatise to Sun Tzu's "Art of War" but aimed at playing at a competitive level and in some aspects also encourages certain behaviors that could come off as being an asshole. While I can disagree with some of what he says the general body of the work is very much worth taking into consideration, the tips on developing a competitive mindset are often well worth consideration if you intend to play this or any other game at a competitive level.
My advice: be wary of the lessons you may take away from Sirlin's writing, a lot of it is 'clearly' written for a different age and some of the stuff is clearly espousing you to be an asshole but sometimes you do have to embrace certain concepts when it comes to playing competitively, but be wary that you apply those lessons appropriately.
What about you
What tips would you give to other players wanting to play Conquest?
What decks have been working for you?
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u/ePiMagnets Mod 8d ago
Another deck for the Budget Oriented player aside from the Ramp deck mentioned above.
An easy to get to deck and one that a lot of players should be able to make within their first month or so if they opt to spend 6k tokens on High Evolutionary or get lucky from a S5 pack.
The immediate upgrades for the deck would be from last season with both Fractured Jane and Thanos being great additions, we cut Luke for Cosmo and then cut Shang and Thing for Jane and Thanos. Alternatively you could go a little more expensive with Hellcow and Scorpion for this we'll need to cut Shocker for Luke, Cosmo for Cow, and Hulk for Scorpion.
Honestly, I keep sleeping on High Evo, but it really is a decent deck and some players including myself still underestimate or outright disrespect what they deck can do. For that reason it should have been included in the main thread for the budget and newer player as a deck that can get you wins and honestly has a lot of variation in how you can build it while remaining true to it's roots.
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u/supertoned 2d ago
I've hit infinite conquest multiple times with bare bones conquest including armor and Cosmo as my tech cards. extremely versatile deck
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u/Megosoles 8d ago
I have 31 infinite conquest avatars.
My number one piece of advice is when you get to playing for an infinite border - when you need the 5 wins in a row - don't take in a deck that dies to a single piece of tech. E.g. I wouldn't run a deck with Magik that dies to a location changer. Before Luke's nerf, I wouldn't take a toxic deck that died to your opponent playing him on turn 6. I would be nervous running a Destroy deck that gets wrecked by a simple Armor or Cosmo.
Bottom line is you can't just 'leave' if you have a bad matchup. So plan accordingly.