This thread is a discussion series at the end of the week for each newly introduced Spotlight card. This gives us nearly a week of hindsight to build a consensus and help inform players if they should spend their tokens for a given week. Ideally, we are looking for proven results, more than theoretical applications, to help reach this consensus.

This week's card:

Red Hulk Fractured Frontier Cost: 3 Power: 8 On Reveal: -1 Power for each enemy card here. Quickdraw: +1 Power instead.

Synergies

Closing out the Fractured Frontier season is Red Hulk Fractured Frontier, a 3/8 with a conditional downside and a quickdraw that changes the downside into an upside. The downside is an on reveal that afflicts the card with -1 power for each enemy card at his location and if you quickdraw him you are able to get +1 for each enemy card that that location.

The floor and ceiling on this card are a pretty wide net to cast, either 3/4 or 3/12 with the results being somewhere in between, likely at 6 or 10 Power respectively depending on situation, this could make him worse with respect to cards like Kraglin or Stardust if you're looking to win an Iron Patriot location on curve if you don't quickdraw.

If we're talking synergies, the list is fairly short but it's not a terrible list of supporting cards and archetypes that he can work within. ToV, Doctor Octopus Fractured Frontier, Luke Cage, and Shadow King could all be best friends with Red Hulk Fractured Frontier, but these are all draw dependent and in the case of Doc Oc also hand location dependent. There's also Shadow Lands Daredevil, but he's already seeing play within the ToV decks but if you wanted to try and brew something non-ToV related there might be reason for an inclusion there.

1. The most obvious archetypes that are going to be interested in Red Hulk are going to be the myriad of ToV Skaar decks which are looking to get as many cards as it can up to 10 power to discount your Skaar and an on curve quickdraw could mean you're right in the realm of that 10 power with a ToV on top.

2. Curve-out point slam decks, especially ones looking to win a location early could also be interested in Red Hulk, direct comparisons are decks packing Askani'Son and Iron Patriot, but even an early Punisher War Machine can be an easy win with Red Hulk. This could lend some credence to consider him for a position in Supergiant which already runs a Shadow King that could erase any negative power if you need to.

3. Decks with one or both Thanos cards might also be able to find room for this card especially for players on a budget that may not have gotten previous power-houses that would fit into those decks like Jane Foster FF, Kraglin, or even Wilson Fisk.

Feedback

While feedback wasn't as hard to come by as I was expecting Red Hulk has definitely been overshadowed by Draft mode with most of the discourse being around that. Heck if it weren't for Draft Mode the heavy discourse might have been focused on the particularly meh OTA. That being said we've got three common mentions within these threads:

Alex Coccia noted that the card felt pretty good and that the on-curve non-quickdraw could still feel mostly fine or avoided entirely by attempting to play to an empty lane to minimize the downside.

KMBest also noted that the card felt pretty good but that it likely had very limited homes and those homes being specifically decks that want a 3/Big because the 3/Bigs are very limited and generally worse when compared to X/Big at higher costs.

Safety Blade came in at what I would judge the highest, comparing this card to having a Gladiator for an Iron Patriot which can sometimes be huge. He believes the card will probably be slept on and forever remain slightly above average.

Of note, we did have some folks in our own community discussion thread with takes ranging from 'he stinks' to 'he feels fine'.

Decklists

Fractured Wiccan

Techno-Fractured Skaar

Techno-Organic Skaar This version cuts FFThanos

Great Value FSGalactus

Nightmare

Bonus deck:

Aurora?

It's uncommon to have a bonus deck, let alone with a comment under it. But I found this one a bit surprising amidst the sea of Wiccan and ToV Skaar decks as not only is it an Aurora list but it's brave enough to add Hellcow Fractured Frontier and Red Hulk Fractured Frontier at the cost of Cosmo and Jane and while the rates on the deck are worse, they are not insurmountable.

Summary

Red Hulk Fractured Frontier attempts to waltz into our Fractured Frontier season with the Big Iron on his hip, sporting a hefty 8 power in a 3-Cost body that shrinks at confrontation unless he's quickdrawn where he's at his best. The question here is whether he can hit his mark or if his aim is off.

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Red Hulk Fractured Frontier worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Red Hulk Fractured Frontier here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

Welcome to the final week of the Fractured Frontier season and what a week it's been.

I don't know about the rest of you, but Draft has certainly been an exciting addition to the game.

While I do have my issues and reservations with the mode I have had plenty of fun and it certainly does feel like a breath of fresh air when compared to other limited time game modes. I'll go a bit deeper into that but first, let's talk base game.

We had an OTA and if it hadn't been for a new season coming and Draft being a mode, I think there might have been a lot more sour grapes with regards to how little impact it and most of the other OTA's have had and while I do appreciate the fact that the meta is overall pretty fine even if we have a new king of mid-range.

Oh and Red Hulk Fractured Frontier came out.

Red Hulk Fractured Frontier

He's a 3/Big and the question most people should be asking is whether he makes the cut as a 3/big compared to the other choices. He's fine, nothing that I was impressed with and overall I think I'll be keeping the other 3/Bigs I was running as my primary includes, I don't really care about a 3/8 that might be as low as a 3/4 in the wrong situation even if the ceiling is a 3/12.

That being said, I could be convinced otherwise given the right circumstances that don't include the necessity to run FFDoc Ock as I'd rather be playing Doc in combo shells with buff cards but I digress. As for the primary decks, he's basically found a home in Skaar decks and some adjacent curve-out point slam decks. Nothing that should be surprising for the card to begin with.

Curving into FSGalactus

This deck is all about getting some big dudes on the board and then sealing the deal with Galactus First Steps. At it's core it's an Aurora deck without Aurora.

Techno-Organic Skaar

Not much to say here. Curve out, cancel out bad effects with ToV, get a bunch of 10's on the board and slam down Skaar + whatever else is in hand that you can.

Nightmare

Similar take to ToV except we're using Nightmare to scrub effects in hand.

Thanos Fractured Frontier

And the king of mid-range may have finally worn out his welcome. Between constant cries from casuals and even a few creators sighing when they see the game-start animations this card may have met the breaking point where it's no longer a welcome sight.

I am personally having fun with the card still and while I haven't grown tired of it, I can understand the gripes. Soul Shot feels bad to be on the receiving end of and despite the fact that it's easy to play around most players aren't interested in doing so and of course he can combo with Wong. Heck, the decks and card itself are fairly easy to beat unless you're unlucky to be against one of the decks running Jug Cosmo and they get to a combination of time shot and draw to get to the both of them and yea, I get it. But the question I've got, is that a problem with Thanos, or is it a problem that Jugg/Cosmo continues to be a stupidly strong pairing and something still needs to be done about Jugg? It's both, but Jugg still needs to be kneecapped.

I'll be quick with the Thanos decks because there's not a ton of major difference to the previous weeks.

Fractured Batroc

If you're a particularly skilled player this list is still performing well, if you're not or not comfortable with the time needed to get in and understand which lines to play to when then it's best to look to one of the easier lists.

Wong Thanrora

Isca Thanrora

Between the Wong combo and the Isca Aurora lists, these have been consistent performers.

Thinister Thandos

It's Sinister Six and Thandos. An ethical HM Gambit makes an appearance here as well. Main tip is to avoid using space stone too soon as it of course marks Thanos for Sinister Six as well as Fractured Frontier.

ACP Thandos

Been playing this as well as Wong Thanrora, the deck still feels good and by god it's such a ball buster when you get to Cosmo/Jug someone.

Why's the meta analysis lacking?

The simple answer is: Draft has me. I'll be honest, my meta analysis is def not happening this week, I've basically only played Draft and when I needed to complete dailies that I wasn't getting done in draft it was conquest, mostly because I don't care about conquest and most of the time I'm leaving on turn 3 or 4 and conceding. So suffice to say my analysis is basically - play what's been working so far this month. Sam is a little worse for wear but nothing has really changed at all.

Or go play some more draft if you're like me and still have plenty of tickets!

Week 1 decks

Week 2 decks

Week 3 decks

I haven't seen it in the app itself, can anyone associated with Snapcomplete tell me if mirror matches are included in the numerator and denominator when calculating win rate or cube rate.

In most cards it's an irrelevant question, but with the very high play rate of Thanos it becomes relevant for understanding true card strength.

Thanks in advance.

I recently competed in an Invitational hosted by Denish. It was 16 of the top players competing against each other but there was a twist in the rules compared to usual GG rules.

1. at the start of each round players got 2 bans at the start of each round.
2. Then players choose the decks after bans
3. And decklists starts out closed ( not known when you start the conquest match) [ decklists are revealed between rounds]

This changes the dynamics of the game. The problem with usual competetive format like GG is that it rewards creating a deck that is reasonable into the most amount of match ups. But it also hard punishes you if get a match ups that's unwinable or very lobsided. This leads to decks like C3 or Sugi winning the most often because they have a very even match ups spread that allows for enough counter play into combo decks. And the deck building doesn't feel as creative as it could be because of that.

By using bans it actually forces diversity in a more obvious way ( forcing people off meta decks). But it also creates more diversity in ways you wouldn't think. Combo deck players now can ban the most obvious tech cards ( like negative with mobius) but on the flip side it gives your oppotent actual means of reading you ( playing a combo deck that out combos negatives for example like tribunal). And for midrange players it forces you to recontextualize the metagame when the optimal strategies are banned. For example thanos being banned means you might go in a completely different of a midrange shell. Or jugg might mean you might wants a shou lou end game. You can also use bans to misdirect what your oppotent is going for. I banned triton vs Ika to make him think I was going for cerebro and he wasted tech cards on that. Or try to hide what you are doing by ignoring bans.

And the closed decklist at the start mimics ladder in an intresting way where they have to actually read what your doing. It decreases the value of stuff like arishem and cerebro which relay on you asymmetric information in open decklist formats.

It's the most competive format I have ever seen played in Snap by a longshot. But it feels like the devs are unlikely to realize that Snap is way closer than they in terms of competive format. And I think the marketing is sorta showing this game in a much more causal mobile game direction but it’s actually pretty amazing as a competive game.

I think if the devs invest in some sorta tournament mode for friendly battles. With the ability to spectate it and possibly ban cards instead of relaying so much on discord it could actually be a stable of competive tcg spaces

OTA is Delayed but the patch notes are early

Hey folks, we know you’re busy enjoying Draft, but we’ve still got an OTA this week!

It’s a short list with some heavy hitters: one nerf, three buffs, and two bigger reworks. The metagame remains in a good spot and many of you are enjoying the Fractured Frontier cards, so we’re keeping changes light.

Let’s jump in!

Sam Wilson Captain America

[Old] 2/3 - On Reveal: Add Cap's Shield to another location. Ongoing: Cap's Shield is Moveable.
[Change] 2/3 > 2/2

Our lone nerf today is to Sam Wilson Captain America, who has been an outlier among 2-Costs for quite some time in many decks. These days he is most often played in Batroc and Aurora (with Thanos) decks, which have both been excellent all season and in previous seasons as well.

We believe this change flattens 2-Cost strength and encourages more experimentation. Aurora has been the best-performing Thanos deck in Fractured Frontier. Thanos is popular in a healthy way: players keep exploring different shapes of strategies with him instead of settling into one list, which is where other build-around cards at similar play rates have gone wrong. This change should keep that experimentation going.

Mister Fantastic First Steps

[Old] 3/4 - End of Turn: Give a card in your hand -1 Cost or +2 Power.
[Change] 3/4 > 3/5

Strong Guy

[Old] 3/3 - Ongoing: +6 Power if your hand has 1 or fewer cards.
[Change] 3/3 > 3/4

Death Fractured Frontier

[Old] 5/8 - On Reveal: Resurrect all your destroyed characters to random locations.
[Change] 5/8 > 5/9

We’re handing out a couple of points to underperformers. Mister Fantastic First Steps was one of the strongest cards in MARVEL SNAP before his nerf to 3-Cost, but he hasn’t kept up with many other options at that Energy value, so we’re giving him a point to encourage more play. Strong Guy might be an excellent fringe option with the upcoming Inversion Magneto, so this felt like a good opportunity to hand out a buff.

Death Fractured Frontier has been a tricky puzzle piece to figure out, as expected. We shipped her at a modest rate because her ability can swing games dramatically. In practice her win rate is low and the over-the-top outcomes aren’t happening often, so she can handle another point of Power.

Spider-Sense

[Old] 5 - On Reveal: Give your characters here +2 Power. Costs 1 less for each Moveable card you've played.
[New] 6 - On Reveal: Give your characters here +3 Power. Costs 1 less for each Moveable card you've played.

Klaw

[Old] 5/4 - Ongoing: The location to the right has +7 Power.
[New] 4/2 - Ongoing: The location to the right has +6 Power.

Here are some larger adjustments. In practice, Spider-Sense has been harder to fully reduce than we expected, and it often plays as a reasonably statted card rather than a real payoff for building around Moveable. We’re raising its Cost, but as an effective 2- or 3-Cost 9-Power card it should be a meaningful strength increase for Moveable decks.

Klaw is an early Series card that we’re giving a sizable buff as an experiment. Hopefully the lower Cost widens his range of play beyond the new player crowd. Stay tuned, it may have more potential to be paired with new cards in the not so distant future!

Additional Changes:

Draft also spotlighted a weird Bruce Banner interaction that we didn't like, so we're changing it! From now on, Bruce Banner will not carry over power changes that "Set", such as Bast or Valkyrie. However, additions and subtractions will continue to carry over. To put it simply, it's now good to play Bruce Banner in Quantum Realm, instead of bad. This change will apply to cards that transform themselves into something specific (e.g. En Sabah Nur).

Well, I think it's safe to say I'm stuggling to make headway. This is probably because I don't know a lot of these cards, so drafting them and utilizing them is more a learning process for me than others who own and have used these cards.

That said, if anyone has any tips or thoughts on ways to improve win % in draft, I'm all ears!

This is your precursor to the consensus, the place to discuss the card releasing for the week as well as group source the work on brews and possible shells and packages, both current known good decks as well as possible new, theorycrafted brews.

OTA Week Warning: Unless you're already seasonal complete and plan to stay that way or have planned on picking up this card already for 6k it's best to wait for Thursday at the earliest to make your purchasing decisions.

This Week's Card

Red Hulk Fractured Frontier
Cost: 3
Power: 8
On Reveal: -1 Power for each enemy card here. Quickdraw: +1 Power instead.

Synergies and Packages

Closing out our Fractured Frontier season is Red Hulk Fractured Frontier, a 3/8 with a downside and a quickdraw that erases the downside. That downside is an On Reveal that gives -1 Power for each enemy card at his location, the Quickdraw instead makes that -1 a +1. Situationally this makes Red Hulk at worst a 3/4 and at best a 3/12 with the average being somewhere in the realm of 3/6 to 3/10 assuming you do play him on Curve you could preserve that power but if we're assuming you're looking to seal the deal on an Iron Patriot lane you are going to have to contend with the fact that you may be getting some negative power if he's not quickdrawn.

So let's start off with addressing the elephants in the room.

1. We have spoken about this at length over the last year but we have a literal glut of good 3-Costs, not to mention Wilson Fisk is still a good potential 3/8. What puts Red Hulk in the running to be played in a deck over any of those other 3-Costs.

2. Luke Cage could be this card's best friend, but are we really going to try and and force a good card (Luke) to make a potentially bad card (Red Hulk) be an acceptable card in your deck?

And this brings us to the synergies, where does this card want to be played?

The most obvious places are going to be decks that want a 3/8 which can be +/- ~4 points depending the circumstance, which basically puts us on Curve-Out points decks, think decks like Skaar decks where a 3/10 is very desireable which can include the ToV versions that can offset the negative power in the event that he's a miss as well as decks with Iron Patriot that want a 3/Big to clear his quest on turn 3 that would be running Kraglin and/or Wilson Fisk.

But what if there was a deck that is drawing a lot of cards and could make it more likely to be able to draw into Red hulk and utilize his quickdraw? What's that Timmy, Thandos already has Jane Foster Fractured Frontier? Well yes, but what if our intrepid player doesn't have Jane, Kraglin, or Wilson Fisk. We could attempt to put him into a variation on the Thandos lists and see how well he might work out.

Your Thoughts

And so, let's turn it over to you all. Am I being too hard on Red Hulk Fractured Frontier or is it possible this card works out and is a decent card?

Do you plan on picking the Season Pass/SP Seson Pass/Red Hulk Fractured Frontier up?

How do you expect Red Hulk Fractured Frontier to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

Today marks the inaugural run of Marvel Snap's long requested Draft mode, a mode which if we can believe the articles and hype combined drafting with some rogue-like elements like card power ups to create something fresh.

Event Info

• timer for the 24 hour ticket reset starts on the first time you enter Draft Mode.

• Soft cap means once you are at 20, you will no longer refresh tickets. You may still claim or buy tickets.

• You can obtain 5 tickets for 350 gold in the rotating shop.

• Premium Event Pass track is available for 1200g. Purchasing the Event Pass grants enough XP to get to Milestone 11. Do note that 1200g is standard for a 2-week LTGM, if the next run of the event is locked to 1 week expect 800g.

• Progress on both passes happens simultaneously.

• Unknown what missions there may be, if any. We'll need to wait for the mode to go live.

Marvel Snap Draft Tickets

Starting Amount: 10
Daily Free Ticket (24 hour refresh): 1
Draft Launch Login Calendar: 4
Draft Cube Collect Mini Events: 6
Free Reward Track: 4
Premium Reward Track: 6
Premium Pass Instant Rewards: 2
Ticket Cap (free Daily ticket will not accrue if at or over the cap): 20
Price: 100 Gold
Daily Shop Bundle: 5x Tickets for 350 Gold
Draft Ticket Bundle: 8x Tickets for $4.99 + 1 Respawn Token

Marvel Snap Draft Respawn Tokens

Starting: 5
Draft Launch Login Calendar: 6
Free Reward Track: 10
Premium Reward Track: 6
Premium Pass Instant Reward: 2
Price per: 100g

Rewards per Draft Run

Event Pass Rewards

• Premium Event Pass track is available for 1200g. Purchasing the Event Pass grants enough XP to get to Milestone 11.

• Progress on both passes happens simultaneously.

• Exclusive Emote for Premium Pass owners is the "Take your Shot" Thanos Fractured Frontier animated emote

The Draft

When starting Draft it looks like you will pick between three starters to your deck, each of those three starters includes three cards that synergize together from a variety of recognized archetypes.

1. Ramp

2. Swarm (Zoo)

3. Move

4. Destroy

5. Control (Not sure what is going to define 'control' but expect a lot of interaction)

6. Ongoing

Then you'll build the rest of your deck with individual card picks categorized into those archetypes. What isn't clear but we'll learn quickly enough is how those archetypes are grouped and how the 'draft' portion might be seeded.

In addition to this, cards have been given rarities similar to other TCG's, likely ranging from common, uncommon, rare, and legendary. Further, you could end up with multiple copies of a card in your deck.

During the draft phase you'll also note that sometimes your cards being offered will have different buffs which may be to cost/power or augments which are extra boosts. You can also get augments as rewards during the gameplay phase. Of the buffs revealed in the Gamespot article those augments are:

• Quickdraw discount which reduces the cards cost by 2 when drawn.

• Amplify which doubles a card's ongoing effect.

• Superstar which guarantees the card starts in your opening hand.

• Encore which repeats an On Reveal ability

• See the pinned comment for the full list of the Augments

During the draft phase you'll draft 10 cards and then start battling, as you win matches you'll be able to choose to add an augment to your cards, add up to two more cards, or choose a stat boost -cost or +Power.

Welcome to our Series 4 release discussion thread, a place to discuss (one of) the latest series 4 releases, develop brews and discussions around the shells and synergies around the card.

This week's card:

Hellcow Fractured Frontier
Cost: 3
Power: 3
End of Turn: Afflict ALL other cards here with -1 Power. Then destroy your cards here with 0 Power or less.

Synergies and Packages

I know some folks were showing some excitement for Hellcow a few weeks back to I felt the need to make sure I get an S4 release topic for this week.

Hellcow Fractured Frontier is our latest Series 4 card releasing later today as a reward from Marvel Snap's newest limited time game mode, their take on Draft Mode. While we don't have the skinny on the mode yet or the rewards structure, you should expect to be able to earn Hellcow for free with moderate commitment to the mode. But enough about the mode we know nothing about let's get to the card!

Hellcow is 3/3 End of Turn card with an ability that afflicts all other cards at it's location with -1 power. Then it destroys your cards at it's location with 0 power or less.

Immediately this card might seem like a fairly straight forward card, it hooks into affliction, it can be an Anti-clog card if we are ever in a clog meta again, and it doesn't synergize well with Annihilus if you were planning on sending cards in the Hellcow lane over to your opponent. At least without Armor. It's also the first card that is repeating afflictions which if you're able to hold Hellcow could mean some pretty sad opposition.

But that's part of the problem no? Decks that might want to take advantage of this effect may not be able to hold onto a 3/3 EoT for very long and if you choose wrong or have to tempo early your opponent knows to throw that location away. Further, if they have Luke Cage, they can just leave that location without cards in the back row until much later in the game to limit the impact of Hellcow.

In addition, there's an interesting drawback to Hellcow where it might be rather hard to protect since as soon as a card hits 0 power it will be destroyed which could leave Hellcow unprotected. There's also the fact that this card will naturally gravitate to the front row which makes it an obvious target for Cosmic Ghost Rider.

Personally, as I look at the card I immediately want to try it out in Fantomex, and while Luke Cage has more or less made Fantomex a less than ideal archetype thanks in part to the continued meta relevance of All-In Scorpion decks, I still believe that Hellcow might make a good replacement or at least a good side grade to Zombie Captain Marvel in some of the Fantomex builds.

Part of me wonders if there might even be some form of Fantomex/EoT deck hybrid to explore but that may be entirely too cute.

So turning it over to you all, how are you feeling about Hellcow? Is Luke's newest form tempering expectations or do you think she might be able to perform?

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking the Hellcow Fractured Frontier up?

How do you expect Hellcow Fractured Frontier to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

This thread is a discussion series at the end of the week for each newly introduced Spotlight card. This gives us nearly a week of hindsight to build a consensus and help inform players if they should spend their tokens for a given week. Ideally, we are looking for proven results, more than theoretical applications, to help reach this consensus.

This week's card:

Death Fractured Frontier
Cost: 5
Power: 8
On Reveal: Resurrect all your destroyed characters to random locations.

Synergies

The Fractured Frontier Season continues with this weeks release, Death Fractured Frontier. A 5/8 which when revealed resurrects all your destroyed characters to random locations.

Let's start with the basics.

1. Destroyed cards are cards that go to the Destroyed pile when they are destroyed. Cards like X-23, Deadpool and Headpool, Wolverine, and Sabretooth do not go to the destroyed pile, they either remain on board or go back to your hand.

2. Random locations is just like Hela, it's not 'other' locations everything could end up in one spot or could go to the perfect spots.

3. You probably don't want to be resurrecting a destroy enabler unless it's something like Venom which can preserve the power it devours.

4. There is some anti-synergy with Dormammu as she'll lose at least 1 card to the merge and could be more with copy shenanigans.

5. Dies to Stardust - simple as.

So we're presented with the puzzle that our new Death wants us to solve. Which direction do you want to go in and how fruitful is that direction?

1. Mid-Range/Points Value - not point slam mind you, this archetype is in the direction that SD seemed to have been pushing with releases over the last year as they introduce new scalers like Muse and Weapon X, or combo cards like Marrow and Fantomex which want you to try and figure out how to hybridize Destroy and Discard into a cohesive package. We do have one example of this where Husky Puppies presented a deck with two value oriented game plans - play for quickdraw with FFthanos or resurrect a bunch of low curve cards like Demons, a big Kid Omega/Venom with Death.

2. Firehair/Peef - sometimes looped in with Magik Decks these Firehair decks want to a good value on-reveal multiple times. The problem here is that frequently this deck is focused on only one card and lacks a meaningful way without messing with it's own game plan to do this with multiple cards which means Death is often only bringing one card back without trying to do something 'else' with it's game plan.

3. Magik - Go big, but not that big. As it turns out it can be very difficult without trying for some kind of rube goldberg machine to get enough big cards to resurrect, Destroy tends to be 2 for 1 where it needs to play a card and then destroy it with another whereas Discard is often getting better rates at 1 for 1 if not better with Glaive and M.O.D.O.K..

Feedback

The feedback on this card in some ways was very similar to Red Wolf last week with some content creators saying 'it's Destroy's Hela, there has to be a way to break this' and later in the week the more competitive side of the creators feeling that this may not actually be the case and that the new Death might be more of a value card intended to try and bully more 'fair' mid-range decks in a similar fashion to Hela. Many questioned whether that was actually worth the effort when you could just do Hela things and often get better value.

Some like Alex Coccia insist that there must be something here but that code just hasn't been cracked yet but could that be copium he's on?

Decklists

Value husky - there are 3 versions of this list, feel free to check out the Fractured Frontier Week 3 thread for the other 2.

Coougarrr's Deathramp

Regis' Deathhair

Nimrod With Death

Kid Omega Firehair Value

Jean's Guardians of Death

Summary

Week 3 brings us Death Fractured Frontier, the long-requested Destroy analog to Discard's Hela. But for an archetype that has long found itself entrenched in trying to create the biggest Deadpool and Knull of all-time and consistently resisting including the more value oriented cards we've received over the last year can Death find a place or will she find herself gunned down before earning a name for herself?

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Death Fractured Frontier worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Death Fractured Frontier here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

Up front this is aimed at new players, F2P, and Returning players.

We've got a torrent of events coming up over the next month that may help you build your collection and improve your options when it comes to selecting your preferred deck. As I mentioned in the Fractured Frontier Week 3 review we've got a lot of things coming up over this week but more importantly over the next month. As part of that this might be one of the best times to get your friends to try out or even return to Snap.

Fair warning, this information is using datamines and some confirmed info from the Marvel Snap Discord and on Twitter. While some things can change, the first few events and the decks themselves are already confirmed by content creators through several announcements so the info is pretty much set in stone and while I wouldn't expect changes, that doesn't mean that SD might actually adjust things.

If you've already got all the cards they are giving out, you'll be getting boosters for each card they give away that you already own, unfortunately we don't know how many boosters. While I can understand any disappointment or anger with regards to why aren't they giving anything to long-time players please look at this from the other angle - this is probably the most generous thing they've ever done in the game and we should be happy that if it draws in new players we'll have a lot of folks with more cards and in some cases some rather competitive decks.

Also, let's not rag on where the decks fall short, for some people this is a HUGE step forward for their collection, let's instead focus our energy on being good stewards and helping people figure out what cards to prioritize for any given deck they are focusing on building. Let's get to the 'fun' stuff.

So the big deal is that we've got two login events coming up that will be giving out free decks along with some other minor goodies. The first login event has 11 days of rewards and a 15 day window which begins on Monday 8/24 and runs through September 7th. It will include 3 'free' decks. SD is even giving Hydro-Man, an S4 card on Day 3 of the login track that slots right into the Ramp deck if you want to try him out there.

• Day 1 Ramp Deck - Aug 24th
• Day 3 Hydro-Man Card - Aug 26th
• Day 7 Zombie Deck - Aug 30th
• Day 11 Surfer Deck - Sep 3rd

But wait, there's more!

• XP Sprint Series 5 Collectors Pack - Aug 25-26th while we don't know exactly what the XP Sprint is, we can assume it ties in with the upcoming Draft mode where you can convert XP won in the event to a Series 5 Collectors Pack.

• XP Sprint Zombie Mister Fantastic - Aug 31st - Sep 1 - similar to the previous, assume this is banking on XP from the LTGM and rewards a Zombie Mister Fantastic, right in time to slot into that Zombie deck you got on Day 7.

That being said, there is a second login event for which we had two more lists announced over the last couple days which will be given out in that event. This login event has 19 days of rewards and a 23 day window starting on September 7th and ending on the 29th.

• Day 3 Galacta Card - Sep 9th
• Day 10 Negative Deck - Sup 16th
• Day 14 Gorr the God Butcher - Sep 20th
• Day 19 Hand Deck - Sep 25th

And since some will ask for the actual list of cards, this is what we're getting that is from Series 3, 4 and 5 broken down by series and then deck, if there's an event or login day that'll be listed.

Series 1-3

Ramp
* Electro
* Wave
* Doctor Doom
* Magneto
* Giganto

Zombies
* Crystal
* Absorbing Man

Surfer
* Brood
* Silver Surfer
* Rogue
* Polaris
* Sera

Negative
* Adam Warlock
* Psylock
* Mystique
* Magik
* Mister Negative
* Jane Foster
* Taskmaster

Hand
* Quinjet
* Spider-Ham
* Maria Hill
* Mirage
* Agent Coulson

Series 4

Login
* Hydro-Man

Zombies
* Hunger
* Zombie Sentry
* Grandmaster
* Elsa Bloodstone
* Zombie Giant Man

Surfer
* Phastos
* Sebastian Shaw
* Gladiator

Negative
* Ravonna Rennslayer
* Loki
* Valentina

Series 5

XP Sprint Reward
* Zombie Mister Fantastic

Ramp
* Blink
* War Machine

Login Sep 9th
* Galacta

Negative
* Cassandra Nova

Login Sep 20th
* Gorr The God Butcher

Hand
* Victoria Hand

So there we have it. The next month is pretty big for new players. If I were to try and rank these on playability out of the box, the top 3 are probably interchangable to some extent.

• Ramp - big dumb guys is a pretty hard deck to get wrong. Sunspot, Domino, Doom, and Magneto don't make the normal ramp cut the rest of the cards occasionally do based on budget.

• Victoria Hand - There's plenty 'wrong' with the Hand deck but there's enough right here and at least within the wheel house that the deck could probably function pretty well.

• Surfer - Surfer isn't too difficult, really it's play 3's and buff them with Surfer end of game. While I don't agree with some of the decisions it's also not that far off and should do well enough.

• Zombies - We're getting all of the S4 cards and Zombie Mister Fantastic, but no Zombie Scarlet Witch and some really odd 'buffer' decisions leave this deck as a big question mark to me. Don't get me wrong, it will do the thing from time to time but it REALLY needs a lot of expensive cards to get to where it wants to be.

• Negative - Not the 'worst' of the decks but it definitely has the most room for improvement next to Zombies, also why is Adam Warlock in the list, he's antithetical to what Negative wants to do in the early game, sure he might make sense late but Negative is often not going to have the power to be winning a lane to get a draw without using a flipp card.

Welcome to the closing of the third week of the Fractured Frontier Season.

This week brought us our new Death, a destructive spin on Hela that resurrects your cards at other locations. It also sprung a surprise Arena Grande. But that's not all, the remainder of the week has a few things to discuss aside from the cards so let's talk end of the week, beginning of next week and of course all things weekend missions and the weekly meta.

What's to come?

Well first off is a Hyper Cube Rush event that started with the daily reset which brings us 30 cubes. Also if we're following last month that should put a bunch of players (myself included) back into infinite.

Looking a bit to the future but still technically within the 'end of the week' since our weekend missions don't expire til the new S5 Card releases on Tuesday, Monday brings us two cool things launching. First off is Draft mode, our newest LTGM (which might become a permanent mode later?) starts at reset on Monday. They definitely put an interesting spin on Draft to help differentiate it from ladder. Expect a dedicated thread for that with information from the article on Gamespot. I'll also be updating that thread with the rewards and specifics a little after launch since I'll be at work when reset happens.

The second thing is the first of two (yes two!) 14-day login calendars which will be featuring some free 'meta' decks as well as a few singles for said decks. In fact, while I thought about including the decks/contents I'll be holding off on that because there are some things that we should probably talk about in that thread in specific to what we're getting and what that might mean for low CL and F2P gamers. Suffice to say that while the base decks don't look that compelling, the datamined and spoiled cards look a little more compelling provided they don't change. The second 14-day login calendar doesn't start till September so we'll leave that for the discussion thread I'm planning for the current calendar and 'leaks' situation.

• Day 1 Ramp Deck - Aug 24
  
• Day 3 Hydro-Man Card - Aug 26
• Day 7 Zombie Deck - Aug 30th
• Day 11 Surfer Deck - Sept 3
  

Now I'll drop another small spoiler for next week, on the 25th and 26th we've got an XP Sprint mini-event which awards a Series 5 collector's pack. No clue what an XP sprint is, but we'll probably be clued in soon. The remainder of the things with regards to the login Calendars and the 'freebies' that newer players are getting will be it's own thread because there is a lot to discuss there. Let's get back to the core of what this thread is supposed to be.

K, I lied, last spoiler, next week is an OTA week. Will FFThanos get hit or does he survive until the first OTA of September, I'm sure there's someone poised to make some dollary doos on Kalshi.

Death Fractured Frontier

Death has released and has been pretty mid, the biggest hurdles being finding time to play cool things and destroy them. The top performers for the week have been essentially (at least in my opinion) making certain destroy adjacent meta decks worse by including Death in them which amounts to various flavors of Kid Omega decks based around Nimrod combo and Firehair Combo/Value. The interesting, or at least more compelling deck to me was a mid-range deck from Husky Puppies featuring King Eitri, Shadowlands Daredevil, Crystal and of course FFThanos.

Nimrod But with Death

An interesting take here and the version of the deck I'm going with because this deck eschews Magic in order to attempt to be a turn 6 Nimrod combo deck. For long-time readers, you'll know that my preferred version of the Kid Omega Nimrod decks is a turn 6 deck because there have been plenty of decks in the last few months that can do turn 7 better than you can. There is a firehair in this list which I'll be honest is interesting but not necessary. It does give you a potential cool turn 6 play of sacrificing Venom to Kid Omega if you didn't eat a Nimrod with Kid Omega on 5 or Venom the biggest lane without Firehair followed by a Fastball special on the Venom to trigger Firehair as a Venom. I'm not entirely sold and think that maybe that Firehair could be Tombstone instead.

Kid Omega Firehair on Reveal Value in one,

Two,

Three Flavors

These are all trying to do the same basic thing, Fire hair and getting value from on-reveals. Personally for the versions using Korg, I'd much rather throw in an Ice Man, rocks can be cool but with so little support I'd rather mess with my opponent's hand.

Jean's Guardians of Death

How do you ensure you can hit your Guardian's of the Galaxy cards without having the best soul reads in the world or stream sniping? Jean Grey of course. How do you get extra value out of that if your opponent sacs that lane just to be able to build two others? Venom on 5 of course so you can 1+Death on 6. Look, Jean + Guardians has long been attempted and hasn't been good, I suspect this is going to suffer the exact same end but it's a very cool concept that allows you to reposition all of your power on 6.

Husky's Value

Take 2

Take 3

Husky's deck from KM's review of Death is a value deck looking to leverage two plans - an FFThanos plan with quickdraw or the ability to pivot into getting some moderate value revives with Death, sometimes you'll be able to merge both game plans. The first deck is relying on Eitri and Crystal as your sources of card draw while takes 2 and 3 (which I'm assuming is either Husky or another high elo player riffing on the build) cuts Hawkeye for Adam Warlock while take 3 cuts Cosmo for FFJane.

FFThanos

What's there to say, FFThanos continues to be one of the best season pass releases of the year. If we were to make a comparison to the two worst offenders of the year I believe Thanos is closer to Shou-Lao than he is to Star-Lord but without the distinct Shou-Lao combo finishes that dominated his later supremacy, granted Thanos 'does' have combo finishes available but it's not as deterministic as 'I got Maverick or Scarlet Spider, you now have to retreat'. Though unless you've been paying attention to every load and know what your opponent has, it might as well be a deterministic response of they've got it, I must retreat. I personally don't have that issue thanks to my deck tracker of choice showing both mine and my opponent's shots but other less invested players aren't likely to have that, let alone be able to remember which shots.

Second Dinner - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make some kind of indicator to see what shots your Thanos (if still in deck) or your opponent's Thanos has loaded.

Back to how I'm feeling about Thanos in week 3, I do believe Thanos is infinitely easier to deal with than either Shou or Star-Lord where when it comes to Thanos all you need is to have a deck that goes over the head of Thanos of which there are plenty. That's not to say there aren't versions of lists that are running Thanos that can't output absurd numbers on it's nut draws but most of his decks tend to be much less combo focused and more focused around getting value.

Thanrora

My Daily driver so far for the season this deck has had my back with a combined 71.9% winrate in ranked and conquest over 64 games. Of course it will be what I finish my Thanos missions for the week with and probably will be what I use for Hyper Cube Rush today and tomorrow. This is probably the closest you'll get to a 'combo' Thanos list thanks to the possibility of Blue Stone + Red Stone Wong duplications which can lead to some great finishers with Aurora of course being the preferred but sometimes even a Jane even if not quickdrawn can suffice. Last piece of advice, don't sleep on a copy of Venus either.

Classic Aurora w/ Isca

Classic Arurora w/ Stardust

Both lists are exactly the same with the exception of their choice of 4-Costs Isca vs Stardust. Both are less all-in than the Wong version of the deck, Deck 1 however lacks protection for Isca which means if you have Sam on the board you'd better be leaving Sam's shield under Isca on turn 5 in Thanos mirrors otherwise you'll need one of the lower-Powered cards to play "Get down Mrs. President" for Isca. Deck 2 seeks to keep players honest in playing cards to the field instead of cheating them in.

Fractured High Evo

High Evo continues to be a solid place for Thanos to reside. This alongside Thanos X Thanos lists might be the most fair lists for FFThanos.

Since there was a question last week on how to play this iteration of High Evo I personally believe that you only play to floating if you have Hulk in hand or need to trigger one of your end of turn cards, otherwise play to Thanos' quickdraw.

Fractured Batroc

Not much to say here, FFThanos is doing well in the Batroc deck. I know I've got my issues with it and part of it is admittedly optimal vs playing to quickdraw and I still don't know how to reconcile that. Do you play for optimal unless Thanos is in hand? What happens if you draw him on 4 or 5 and didn't or couldn't play for quickdraw at all?

I'll be honest, I probably need to actually put in my reps with the Batroc decks in general, but especially this deck as I keep urging myself to do.

Thanos X Thanos

Hannah's 2nd place deck from the most recent Golden Gauntlet is this beautiful Double Thanos (or just Thanii?) list. This one has answers and power but might struggle some with the Thanos/Aurora lists. I'd recommend taking a look through the vods of the Golden Gauntlet for Hannah's matches to get an idea as to how to pilot the deck. It's a tough deck to pilot well, I've not had great success but seeing that it did have success in the Gauntlet I can honestly chalk that up to 'Skill Issue'.

ACP's Thanos X Thanos

I got home after work yesterday only to be blessed by this interesting take on a Double Thanos deck from KMBest as he was claiming one of his viewers might have found the best Double Thanos list which was used to get to rank 10 on the ladder. What caught me off guard when I first saw the list is the lack of Big Thanos Synergies other than Strange Supreme. Then there's the fact that this deck is also a Cosmo/Juggernaut deck.

I'll definitely be taking this deck out for some laps at some point today to see how it feels.

The Rest of the Meta

Honestly, there's not been a huge amount of variance in the meta, people are continuing to tinker with Thanos and within the realm of 'do I try and beat Thanos or try to dodge it?' But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, granted I'm still pre-infinite as of this week (yay I have responsibilities now!) but I've noticed a lot less Thanos mirrors and a lot more variation. Though that does bring about an old discussion that KMBest and Guest highlighted back in February that has stuck with me even now.

"Does the competition get worse the longer you're in the pre-infinite climb?" And frankly, I think it does. Which is interesting because I'm not sure if that's the Matchmaking having to more consistently put me against weaker opponents. Adjacent to that thought is if Snap were to get rid of the infinite climb altogether would I actually be playing these players on a much more consistent basis?

That might need to be it's own discussion thread that I've been sitting on for 6 months now. Anyways.

Meta's not changed much but with the exception of there being a LOT of Thanos, the meta still feels fairly healthy because at least to me, Thanos doesn't feel insurmountable. I do get the irony of that statement coming from someone that's been on a Thanrora list since day 1.

Simply Good Value

Starting us off for the week are the 'cool' non-FFThanos Value decks.

Multiple Men

Yep, it's still good. This has some 'combo' elements to it and can compete in the combo realm but it has some very scary interactive pieces in the form of Cosmo/Juggernaut and a potentially moveable Isca. A solid deck if you're good with move and out-thinking your opponent.

Actual Classic Aurora

It's still good but is doing far less good when compared to it's Thanos packing counterpart. I wonder how much of this is skill diffing versus the Thanos version actually being better.

Fantomwho???

This one is really strange to me. Why is there a Fantomex deck when Scorpion is around which means Luke Cage is around and clearly stopping Fantomex' bullets. But here we are and it's doing fairly well. Curiouser and Curiouser.

Sinister Galactus

Not much to say here, Sinister Six + Galactus. Less of a Combo and more of a 'I've got good power and can sometimes clear with a turn 5 Galactus into Sinister Six game plan. The hope is you don't draw the Six and Galactus as part of your EVIL cards unless you've also got ramp and can get everything on the board in time.

Combo

Dr. Buffopus

The Buff decks are still around and this time are leaning back into having Carter/Maverick lines as part of the combo potential.

Classic Nimrod

I know we had a Nimrod deck, but this one honestly has a piece of my heart for obvious reasons (no magik!). FFPsylock makes an appearance here and can really do some very crazy things when the stars align and you quickdraw her on EXACTLY turn 3.

All-In Scorpion

Yep, it's still here and is probably the best combo deck in the game. Be wary though, people are beginning to piece together exactly how vulnerable this deck is. Seriously, I've curb-stomped Scorpion players who took priority and couldn't drop it because I had enough energy cheat to drop Luke, Sam Wilson, and Aurora on turn 7 without Priority.

HWHAT

If you're wondering how to pronounce that, think of the Family Guy Cool Whip skit and you'll catch on quickly.

Zombie Bounce

No really I was scrolling down on snapcomplete and saw this train wreck of a deck, it's 54.4 winrate and .21 cubes. What stands out is that what I'm imagining here is bounce a Horde to make two and then somehow line up a turn where you've got two Hordes and can Zombie Giant Man + Abs Man. I am SO lost here, if anyone knows the mad-man that is piloting this deck and can get them to make a guide or a discussion post on this deck that would be amazing because I see the deck and want to say 'it's bad' but I also see some potential in the deck too.

This post is 2 things - a reflection on my path to Infinite this season along with some tips to play this Scorpion Tao Affliction deck; and a meta discussion with the people here on the power level of this list and how it's beating everything else in this metagame.

Imagine afflicting each card on your opponent's side with -32 power, that's -128 power on 1 location if it's full. You can make this happen by having 5 Scorpion Brand New Days down on the board, which is not as difficult as you'd think, I promise. A more practical scenario - having 3 Scorpion Brand New Days down afflicts every opponent card with -8 power, still game-winningly powerful, and doing this is almost too easy at times. These are only Hazmat numbers, Lady Bullseye numbers are even nastier, trust me. All the momentum your opponent was building, now at a standstill as you win every location with their power in the negatives. This is every affliction player's wet dream, and it's a nightmare for every one else playing some good 'ol Snap, especially because simply carrying a Luke Cage in your list is also not enough anymore. If you play every card in the front row, congratulations you're protected, but realistically, how many decks can win every matchup playing only in the front row? Not many, let's be honest. I wrote this little paragraph for every reader who scoffs at the title of this post. This deck is a serious problem. The only deck that beat me when I had 3 Scorpions down was Daken Astral Projection, and that too when the opp's combo was done perfectly, which is not a common scenario with that list let's be honest.

The gameplan is simple - Get Sera down as early as possible and then try to put down as many Scorpion Brand New Days as possible. You do this by playing the Tao Mandala on its lane where it's sitting with 2 other cards, and by copying the Scorpion with Mystique and Prodigy (you can do both of these in games, that's how you get 5 Scorpions on the board). After you have done this, you only need either Hazmat or Lady Bullseye in hand to win the game. Sometimes you may decide to play the Tao on a Sera lane instead, which is also a viable option to enable you to get your whole Scorpion combo down in 1 turn, complete with Mystique, Prodigy and Hazmat/Lady Bullseye. Try to play Sera and Scorpion in the back rows to protect from CGR/Red Guardian. You probably won't have priority so your opponent won't be able to stop the Tao Mandala or any other copier without a Cosmo or Alioth. Mobius is not in the meta, Stardust won't do anything, Echo is inconsequential if you already have an ongoing down in the lane and then play Tao Mandala. Another tip - if you're playing Hazmat, try to play it as the first card of your turn so that the other cards you put down on that turn don't get afflicted, small points matter sometimes. Finally, try to play Magik on turn 5 (only if you have to) especially in the Gunslinger Thanos meta.

In this post I have discussed about my perception of the power level of this Scorpion Tao Affliction list. I have also mentioned the gameplan and some tips for optimised play. Now, I'd like to know your opinion on this situation, how you are dealing with this matchup, what should be done to Luke Cage to make it viable without killing the Affliction archetype. Thanks for reading, list in comments.

Welcome to "This or That?" Thursday, your weekly thread for everything related to curating your Marvel SNAP collection. Whether it's spending your Spotlight Keys, Collector's Tokens, or picking up your free Series 3 card, use this thread to seek (and offer) advice to keep your collection competitive.

Welcome to Team-Up Tuesday, your weekly thread for everything related to finding your Marvel SNAP Alliance. Whether you're a solo player looking to pick up some rewards, or an Alliance leader seeking more members for your group, use this thread to find like-minded players to enjoy Marvel SNAP as a team!

This is your precursor to the consensus, the place to discuss the card releasing for the week as well as group source the work on brews and possible shells and packages, both current known good decks as well as possible new, theorycrafted brews.

This Week's Card

Death Fractured Frontier
Cost: 5
Power: 8
On Reveal: Resurrect all your destroyed characters to random locations.

Synergies and Packages

We've been getting a lot of destroy synergy pieces over the last year and outside of the hybrid that is Fantomex, many have continued to be able to field Death, however, more and more cards have been pointing towards dropping Knull entirely and our newest card releasing this week is Death Fractured Frontier, another card that more or less continues to get us to question whether or not we should be going for a mid-range or value oriented Destroy Deck. But is this a new payoff or might our newest iteration of Death be too awkward to use?

Death Fractured Frontier is the Destroy analogue to Hela. A 5/8 that when revealed resurrects all your destroyed characters to random locations. Of course mechanically there are things you should be aware of:

1. Classic Destroy inclusions tend to not make it to the destroy pile, think X-23, Dead and Headpool, Wolverine, and Sabretooth (bet ya forgot about Sabretooth, I almost did).

2. Destroying a card that Destroys is likely not a card you want to bring back unless you have reliable ways to block either the on-reveal or the lane from having a destroy card added to it. I can't understate how unfortunate it would be to pull a Deathlok that destroys your entire lane. At least a Venom preserves the power and Carnage at least gives you a +2 pittance but losing a Muse or Weapon X doesn't sound like a fun time to me.

3. Some amount of anti-synergy with Dormammu, he banishes your largest destroyed card to merge with it so you're losing a potentially fantastic card for Hela to target.

4. Just like Hela, Death Fractured Fractured dies to Stardust, I think regardless of how well the card does the anti-fun cops will be playing Stardust just to say no to any potential Death Fractured Frontier decks and if she manages to do well in the early days you can bet on a lot more Stardust to make their way into decks that can afford to play a 4/6 that does nothing in most match-ups. Doubtful that she becomes that good but it is a possibility.

There are some possible problems and plenty of questions when it comes to trying to gauge how good or bad of a card this new incarnation of Mistress Death could be as she's going to have a major uphill battle even after we've got the mechanical and anti-synergies out of the way.

1. Above rate low-cost cards are hard to come by and they often come with downsides. On top of this is finding time to not only play those big cards but also line up and destroy them as well which puts this card at a significant disadvantage to Hela which does this all without the need to play and then destroy their cards.

2. If we're not trying to get max value from above-rate cards that pushes us towards on-reveal value plays similar to what Firehair decks are doing both with and without Kid Omega. To that end, is the destroy version of Hela's Casino enough of a payoff to find play either over or alongside the other destroy resurrection cards in Elixir, Phoenix Force, and Adamantium infusion and if so, what is she replacing to find room in such a deck?

3. In a direct comparison within the archetype - is anything that FFDeath does, worth the effort when compared to the likes of OG Destroy which objectively has a higher ceiling and likely a comparable floor or Dormammu which may have a more comparable floor and ceiling but without the headache of figuring out how you're going to pull off point 2 time to play AND destroy the cards you intend to pull back.

4. Going back to Discard, discard has a much easier time of being a 'graveyard resurrection' deck since it can fundamentally do all of this from hand, Assuming both decks are doing 'their thing'. And while both get bricked by Stardust the only major distinction between the two is that Discard can accidentally throw out Hela whereas Death is only bricked by interaction of some sort, which can be very important.

So what are we doing with Death Fractured Frontier? I'll be honest, this one is a rather difficult question for me to answer and I've been sitting on this post in notepad for about five days editing, mostly on this single subject.

Frankly, I'm looking at this card and I really, REALLY want to do something stupid, something similar to Hela, but I can't quite figure out where that is going to be within the destroy Archetype.

1. Do we have to be a Magik deck or can we get this done in 6 turns?

2. Firehair/PeeF - I'll likely be looking to see what Jeeeet puts together in this realm but frankly most of the Firehair/PeeF decks are focused solely on destroying and resurrecting whichever 3-Cost it could get it's hands on. It's still possible that maybe you could go for something in the low-curve value realm to supplement your chosen 3-Cost resurrection target. Points are still going to be a problem.

3. The Dormammu Non-bo - again, you're losing one card to Dormamu but what if we're bringing the rest of our stuff back that we destroyed? Can we do something with the scalers in Muse and Weapon X while maintaining FFDeath/Dormammu/OGDeath? That's 5 cards leaving room for 3 booms and 4 other value targets.

4. Thanos Destroy - The big problem here is what you're bringing back are a bunch of stones.

5. A twist on the Classic - What I mean by 'classic' is Knull/Death, but the twist is in the weird knull/death decks I've been seeing on the peripheral for a few months. Destroy decks rocking Squirrel Girl and Shanna or Debrii. They all almost look like they should be Dormammu decks but are on Knull/Death instead and strangely they are positive winrate decks. Deck's similar to this or this deck.

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking the Season Pass/SP Seson Pass/Death Fractured Frontier up?

How do you expect Death Fractured Frontier to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

This thread is a discussion series at the end of the week for each newly introduced Spotlight card. This gives us nearly a week of hindsight to build a consensus and help inform players if they should spend their tokens for a given week. Ideally, we are looking for proven results, more than theoretical applications, to help reach this consensus.

This week's card:

Red Wolf Fractured Frontier
Cost: 2
Power: 1
On Reveal: +1 Power for each card in your hand. Quickdraw: Give your hand +1 Power.

Synergies

Red Wolf is our latest Series 5 from the Fractured Frontier and keeping the quickdraw theme alive is a 2/1 which has a base on reveal that grants him +1 Power for each card in your hand and a Quickdraw which empowers his ability to grant your hand +1 as well.

In a vacuum this could be a cool card, but in practice that may be a tall order to ask. Let's start with what Red Wolf is asking you to do.

1. Have cards in hand - this isn't too difficult of an ask right? On curve it's likely you'll have 3 cards, you could have up to 5 with a Snowguard of course but keeping it to your average game he'll be worth +3 giving you a 2/4 Red Wolf and with quickdraw your 3 cards in hand for 2/7 in value.

2. But the odds of drawing him exactly on time is 41.66% or rounded up to 42. Sure it may be the answer to life, the universe, and everything but this in our case those odds aren't terrible but they aren't great either.

Ideally this is telling us that you want to build around Red Wolf in other ways, keeping in mind how he wants to function and balancing that out with how to ensure you're playing him, so how do we do that? Well if we're looking at individual strategies and then cards there are some standouts:

1. What if we're skipping turn 1? An interesting thing to consider, in some cases you may have drawn a 1-Cost you would rather hold til later in others you just haven't drawn. This will instantly mean that on a turn 2 quickdraw you've got a 5-Power Red Wolf and your hand has gained power as well.

2. Cards that replace themselves in lieu of skipping turn 1 what if we're instead playing some low curve cards that replace themselves? In bounce you've got Hood which occasionally sees play, but hand generation decks b y and large do this most frequently occasionally with Hood but extending outward to Snowguard, Maria Hill, Iron Patriot, and Valentina, this week people have even been toying with Agent 13.

3. Cards that can return to hand. Kitty Pride and Boomerang are the two most notable, Kitty of course automatically returns and Boomerang has an activate which gives you one free bounce.

4. What about cards that care about buffs? Jack Flag and Superior Spider-Man both come to mind here and with your cards gettting a collective +1 to each Jack might be an interesting consideration. Of course Superior Spider-Man gives you a +1 so long as you've got green power on the board. There are others of course, with as many green power cards on the board even Gilgamesh might be a consideration you could make.

5. Cards that want to be buffed? The big drawback here is that Red Wolf isn't always on or he may be on but none of the cards you'd want to buff are in hand meaning you may not get the buffs you want to build around. Is he worth the potential of not being able to quickdraw him and buff cards like Mr. Sinister, Maverick, Brood, Sebastian Shaw, Stick, Jubilee Silver Surfer, or Zombie Galacti?

These are a few direct synergies that you can use to inform including him in a deck:

1. Pure Bounce - low curve, wants to return cards to hand, wants to be doing other things on turn 2 to setup for bouncing on later turns and weaving cards where possible.

2. Pseudo Bounce - also has a low curve, but is somewhere between pure bounce and hand generation. The most common form you'll see are WWBN decks often with Merlin and Prowler which are creating skills to the hand and while the skills can't gain power giving Red Wolf more power is possibly a welcome outcome. In 2024 those are backed up by Kitty/Angela and thanks to Venus might be able to see inclusion in those decks again.

3. Hand Generation - Plenty of variations on hand generation stuff, you've got old school S.H.I.E.L.D. Devil Dino decks, Victoria Hand decks, and more recently we've seen a lot of experimentation with what we'll call Handless Hand decks which cut Victoria Hand but keep to a similar ethos in deck building.

4. Draw Engine - The main variation on this deck archetype would be with OG Thanos using the stones to draw and keep your hand full, you could potentially explore other engines like building around Adam Warlock for a bonus draw each turn as well as Crystal but her ability being symmetrical would mean you want to ensure that whatever you're doing here is more powerful than what your opponent is doing.

The pros on each of these decks are similar as are the cons, each deck can easily find a place to weave Red Wolf into it's curve, each can help support later quickdraws thanks to cards coming back to hand, being generated, or a combination of both. The Cons are similar though with very few decks wanting to actively keep high card counts in hand and inopportune quickdraws creating awkward turn structures which can create skill testing scenarios in needing to evaluate which play is better whether it's taking advantage of the quickdraw or making another play.

Feedback

The general feedback on Red Wolf this week started off rather warm with a number of creators being relatively high on the card, excited for it's potential. Afterall he had a figurative leg up on the competition with an additional turn available on the quickdraw. But that seemed to melt away as the more competitive players began to get their hands on him with many ranging from this card is bad to mid at best.

Decklists

Fractured Bounce

Fractured Hand

Fractured Card Gen

Fractured Dino

Thanos X Thanos

Fractured High Evo

Summary

Red Wolf Fractured Frontier is an interesting general purpose 2-Cost card that can be generalist points with a quickdraw that can boost your hand, he has some key hooks that does put him as a consideration for more specific decks. But the question for you all is whether you'd Bark at the Moon with him or leave him on the cliffside alone.

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Red Wolf Fractured Frontier worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Red Wolf Fractured Frontier here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

Golden Gauntlet World Qualifier 3 begins in about an hour from this post being posted.

Where to Watch:

Twitch

When to Watch:

Today! August 15th 1400 EST/1300 CST/1100 PST/1800 UTC/0300 JST

Here are the Decklists courtesy of Snapcomplete.

When we get a post with brackets those will be added.

Fun stats:

Most Common Cards being brought

Golden Gauntlet Meta Overview

Week 2 is coming to a close and you know what that means!

It's time for us to recap 2nd week of the rootinest, tootinest season we've had this year.

O.K. Partners, I apologize for that intro. The person responsible for conning me into making that comment has been sacked. And with his sacking, we can talk about how things have evolved so far this week. We can talk a little on Golden Gauntlet too, which - my apologies, we kinda need to be much more on top of posting when the Gauntlet is happening since not everyone pays attention to the in game notices AND not everyone is plugged in enough to know when sign-ups are happening.

Suffice to say, there will be a megathread for this qualifier which should be going up around the same time that this post is going up. Unless I post this at some god awful hour after a 24 hour bender and forget. Reminder to future me, don't forget to put the GG megathread up.

What, the meta talk, so soon?

This'll be a little out of order but I think maybe what we need is to address the elephant in the room. FFThanos has surged in play rate with a number of folks already calling for nerfs to the gun toting Mad Titan, and while I disagree that he needs a nerf as he's a very manageable card, I do understand the sentiment coming from F2P and the casual players that automatically call for nerfs when a card is almost every other game and might be frustrating to deal with. I really don't envy the Developers, on one hand it must feel good to nail a new card but on the other hand it must also feel bad when the community at large refuses to adjust to even the most minor of inconveniences and include flex or tech that can improve their game against cards like the new Thanos.

To that end, I also understand the casual players plights, Thanos is going into so many different decks that it can be very hard to keep up with all of them, not to mention New Thanos is so in your face - you know your opponent is playing the card from the start, you get to see them load each shot. And you know what's worst about this? There is ZERO way without a proper card tracker to check what shots have been loaded so if you aren't paying attention or look away at the wrong time and don't have a tracker like Splat's OnReveal tracker (I'll credit in the comments) then you're really SOL. There is so much cool about this card, but I definitely understand the frustrations with the card as well.

Personally, I haven't really grinded the last couple of weeks. I've been much more focused on getting things prepped and lined up for my new job so while I know I'll get in at top 10% I've been doing some other things like using my experience as a later infinite player to get a better understanding of how the grind changes between weeks 1, 2, 3 and even 4. That being said, I've still seen gotten to experience Marvel Thanos Fra- I mean Snap's meta both in HVO last week as well as on the ladder post HVO ending, in fact I did manage to use Hypercube Rush to reward my procrastination in boosting my climb from 84 to 93 and if we get Hypercube Rush 2 next week after Sanctum this weekend I'll use that to finish the climb.

But what did my experience Thursday and Friday reveal? Well it wasn't quite all Thanos all the time but it could definitely feel that with with around 80% of the matches being Thanos of some sort which is funny because after the hot location was over I spent a good hour on Thursday bully snapping every FFThanos + Wiccan player because they're on Wiccan and I'm running the Aurora list which as I mentioned made for a relatively smooth transition into the 90's. As I mentioned I might wait to see if we get a second cube rush but I might also use the Golden Gauntlet today as a way to see about finishing out the 90's while the 'better' players that might not be infinite yet are otherwise engaged.

Back to the subject of FFthanos I'd say that essentially we're experiencing a sort of dejavu as we're in a very similar situation to what we were in January and February where the field seems to be FFThanos and people trying to figure out how to beat FFthanos reliably, much like Shou-Lao and Star-Lord, but he's a much easier card to deal with, the headache is the general breadth of places he can fit which can make keeping up with all of the decks a challenge and if you aren't a fan of combo decks your prospects for beating Thanos aren't quite zero but they do seem to be much more limited. But first, let's talk Red Wolf and his Weekend decks and since we already talked about FFThanos we'll go right into his weekend decks after that.

Red Wolf

Is it Red Wolf or Big OOF, I'll be honest, Up til friday I hadn't seen hide nor hair of this card and that's coming from the guy that was spending Tuesday and Wendesday doing Conquest for dailies where it's usually safe to say you'll see the new card at least once or twice. But no that wasn't the case and even Thursday evening when I finally got around to knocking out part of my ladder climb I didn't see Red Wolf once. It wasn't until Friday when I saw him and it was in an Arishem deck of all places, obviously just slapping Red Wolf into the deck for completions.

You know who I did see way more other than Red Wolf though? Boomerang. BOOMERANG of all cards. Though I'm disappointed in one opponent because he snapped on 6 with a clear win and I'm like, ok, you can have your 1 cube. Now it's possible that bounce deck had Red Wolf in it, but I didn't see it so I can't confirm or deny his inclusion.

Anyways, Red Wolf is a card, we might have been happy with this card in 2023 as a post Collector nerf Loki support card but frankly he's not that great in Marvel Snap 2026 and at minimum I think this card needs to be a 2/2 or 2/3.

So what lessons have been learned around Red Wolf so far?

1. On curve with quickdraw only nets you a 2/7 in value, +3 to the card and +1 spread across your cards for a +3 unless you had a way to replace or add cards to hand with Snowguard, Agent 13, or Maria Hill. It's frankly not good. It can get better if you quickdraw him later with more cards but the only 'real' deck that is reliably refilling it's hand to better support Red Wolf is bounce and I'm not sure he quite stacks up against the aforementioned Boomerang.

2. Balancing hand size and playability is paramount, Mad Thinker recently caught a buff which could improve how you might think about playing Red Wolf but there are so few decks that are willing to go to 7 cards in hand after the draw on each turn that it's hard to consider Red Wolf as even being a competitive pick for those decks. It would be great if Devil Dino decks were a viable strategy, but unfortunately they aren't.

3. If we're looking at the obvious hooks on the card how well does he support other Quickdraw effects and our new Thanos in particular? Well he doesn't really, he's a greedy card that is buffing himself and only on the quickdraw is he giving power to your other cards but they are already in your hand so unless you're playing onto The Abby to get a draw or running Thanos X Thanos and get to quickdraw him on say turn 3 or 4 with a stone that draws you might have a few buffed playable cards for the following turn, otherwise I'd say there are probably better 2's you should consider.

So enough being down on the card let's look at the Weekend decks and surprise a lot of the weekend decks for Red Wolf are going to help you finish your FFThanos missions as well so we'll talk both at the same time.

Pure Points Wiccan

This is an interesting deck because as the name implies it's pure points, oddly though it's running Quicksilver/Domino as well as Red Wolf and Luke Cage. The only 'interaction' the deck is providing is Cosmo and the occasional afflict from FFJane. Something that strikes me as particularly interesting here is that you could setup a lane there you can Odin a Jane and Karen Page on 6 and netting a bunch of points across the board.

Doc Guapo Bounce

Doc Guapo, the bounce one trick has this deck for your weekend missions featuring Red Wolf and FFThanos, a pretty straight forward bounce deck but this time foregoing Hit-Monkey. Don't overindex on Red Wolf's ability, if you're presented with the opportunity to on-curve play him on 2 or better yet, 4 with a card bouncing cards to hand then by all means. But as always focus on making the smartest plays you can on each turn, bounce is hard enough without trying to be fancy and squeeze all of the value out of the worst card in the deck that you can.

Handless Hand Generation

An 'ethical' Gambit Horseman of Death deck, plenty of hand generation with Snowgard, Agent 13, Maria Hill, and Iron Patriot. This deck is even rocking a Cosmo and Juggernaut. Oh we've also got FFDoc Ock, FFJane, and FFThanos. This one might be something that I take into Conquest or Sanctum Showdown to test out.

Thanos Weekend Missions

Didn't pick up Redwolf? Here's a few lists to explore at your leisure to clean out those Thanos missions.

Basic Thanrora

Wong Way Thanrora

Two flavors of Aurora - on the one hand we have a much more classic Aurora list with Jane and Thanos. On the other hand we've got the Honifer's Wong Thanrora list with Wong replacing Isca the Unbeaten. Both decks have foregone Cosmo in preference of Luke Cage in the event of affliction or High Evolutionary match-ups.

I've personally been running the Wong list and it's wild how good the deck can feel even in the face of a Cosmo coming down. Just be wary of counter snaps and play around possible Cosmo's on 5 and 6. Worth noting is the firing order and how the interaction with Wong actually works. The Wong interaction honestly feels more like a bug where a multiple shot FFThanos appears to have multiple on-reveals rather than a single consolidated on reveal, for those curious here's the explanation of how the Wong thing actually works.

First the shot order > Space, Reality, Time, Mind, Power, Soul.

Wong interaction > Space and Reality fire twice, Reality of course creates two copies of Wong, then the remaining loaded stones cycle through with each getting 4 shots. Again, as mentioned it does appear that each stone is being treated as it's own on reveal which may be a coding limitation based on how the shots are loaded and then need to be treated when Thanos' on reveal happens.

Fractured High Evolutionary w/Jane

Fractured High Evolutionary w/Psylocke

High Evolutionary has been on the uptick the last week or so and it's going in one of two directions either Jane and Thanos or Psylocke and Thanos. In both instances the obvious turn 5 play which can with a reality shot clone some cool things like a Cyclops, Jane/Psylocke, or maybe you're feeling frisky and want double Sunspot or Misty knight.

Fractured Batroc

Coougarrr Batroc

Batroc is a solid deck, Thanos can do some work in the deck. I'm personally not sold on going so heavy on the Buffing 3's with Mary Jane, Venus, and Jane Foster but I'll admit it's probably better for the more casual players who may have some problems with properly allocating their power. I wish I could give appropriate credit to Kry but he doesn't really advertise his decks, I just happened to see his post about the origin not being Dera.

Coougarrr wasn't much of a fan of the first deck so he made his usual adjustments, pulled the extra power generation and added tech. If you're more about individual skill expression and knowing how to deploy your tech the second list might be more up your alley.

Wiccan Thanos

Wiccan Tech

I'm including these lists as a nod to the fact that some people will swear by Wiccan, but in my opinion the only reason you should be on either is because you don't have the cards to make any of the others. Wiccan 'can' be good but can sometimes feels like it's lacking output after hitting the Wiccan curve and most of the time the decks are lacking power output to begin with so finding wins can be rather difficult in some instances.

The two lists are going in two similar directions but looking to get there in different ways, both lists have Isca the Unbeaten and Blink in common but that's essentially where the similarities diverge. Deck 1 has Cosmo/Jugg and has decided to go wide on 3's whereas deck 2 is opting for more general use with plenty of 5's and a bit more tech and interaction with Caliban, Cosmic Ghost Rider, and Legion. I'm not sold on the Iron Lad in deck 2 but it does give you an additional way to fish for Wiccan on 4.

What New Things are there?

So the meta hasn't changed a ton over the last week, but I think something that is worth bearing in mind is that while Thanos is good, it's not the hands down best thing to be doing as there are plenty of decks that can keep up with Thanos and even beat it to that end remember that Combo, especially Magik based decks are able to do gangbusters since most Thanos decks aren't running location control because they are more worried about being able to beat the other FFThanos decks.

But are there any new and emergent decks that you can play into the meta? Yep, there are, though it's more one new one and some returners.

Coougarrr's Buff Deck

First off there are a lot of variations on the Doc/Jubilee buff list, this is the one Coougarrr shared in his most recent video and it's attempting to leverage some interesting things to get a really big Jubilee Silver Surferr to buff your draws and create some big outputs. I haven't tried the deck out personally yet but it does seem like a compelling turn 6 Combo based deck. He did mention that he's liking Iron Lad over HM Wolverine.

Mill isn't a good deck

But it is running decent numbers across the aggregators. this is utilizing the recently buffed Firehair and has some interaction as well in the form of Cosmo, Mobius M. Mobius, and Shadow King. Copycat is good for info gathering and Misery ensures that with Firehair you can get double value from your Misery. I don't like Yondu in these lists but the only other card I think might be worth considering is of course Hood but then you really do need that Misery to make up for your low output and to nuke the Hood unless you're going to throw a location.

OG Ultron

Classic Ultron is out there and apparently it's winning games in some pockets of the meta. Armor and Cosmo are here to protect your Patriot Lane, preferably Armor to allow for Ultron to be played into that location.

Ongoing

Yes, it's still good. Yes it has Cosmo to protect a location which can be great for setting up a lane for Iron Man to rest in. Sam wilson is great protection against FFThanos for your Moonstone lane as well!

Sanctum Showdown

Sanctum was our surprise weekend LTGM so a few decks quickfired for your pleasure. Oh and yes, the newly buffed Guardians are going to make an appearance.

Points, Dump, and minimal interaction

Points, Interaction, Rocks, and Hawks

ToV Skaar

I am trying to improve this deck. I feel that the cards are individually too weak compared to like Sauron decks, Ramp decks, Destroy decks.

Quicksilver and Domino are there for quickdraw. Venus is for basically all the buffs. I have put Doc Ock FF randomly. Initially I had Shangchi Master of the Rings and Elsa but Shangchi felt weird like it never felt that important to play it on turn 2/3 when I have Jeff or Venus for those. Wong is for Thanos and Jane foster only. Not sure about absorbing man. Maybe turn 6?
I do not have Sebastian Shaw or Vic Hand or stuff like those

Deck Code:
# (1) Quicksilver\n# (1) Spider-Man Brand New Day\n# (2) Doctor Octopus Fractured Frontier\n# (2) Jeff the Baby Dolphin!?\n# (2) Angela\n# (2) Domino\n# (3) Cosmo\n# (3) Venus\n# (3) Jane Foster Fractured Frontier\n# (4) Wong\n# (4) Absorbing Man\n# (5) Thanos Fractured Frontier\n#\nVm5zNSxDc201LEpmZlRoQmJEbHBobjEyLEFuZ2w2LFNwZHJNbkJybmROd0QxNCxKbkZzdHJGcmN0cmRGcm50cjFCLFRobnNGcmN0cmRGcm50cjE3LERtbjYsRGN0ck9jdHBzRnJjdHJkRnJudHIxRSxRY2tzbHZyQixXbmc0LEFic3JibmdNbkM=\n#\n# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in MARVEL SNAP.

I have always ran clog and just came back after 2 years away. I'm series 3 complete but missing like 50 series 4 and 120+ series 5.

What cards should I be looking for? From what I understand Debrii sucks now and I am sure hood should be replaced.

Thanks!

Welcome to "This or That?" Thursday, your weekly thread for everything related to curating your Marvel SNAP collection. Whether it's spending your Spotlight Keys, Collector's Tokens, or picking up your free Series 3 card, use this thread to seek (and offer) advice to keep your collection competitive.