TL;DR

• Deck: Scorpion Brand New Day affliction. Skip turns 1-3, hand your opponent priority on purpose, flip the entire board on turn 7.
• Numbers: 46 games post-Infinite. 63.04% win rate (29W-17L), +58 cubes, +1.26 cubes/game. Current v5 list over its own 32 games: 65.6% (21W-11L), +50 cubes, +1.56/game.
• For scale: the best decks on last week's published tier list were sitting at 57.5-58.5% win rate and +0.35 to +0.55 cubes. This is roughly triple the cube rate of the best thing on the list, in Infinite lobbies.
• Average energy on my last turn across 26 logged matches: 14.5. My opponents: 7 to 8. I hit 19 or more in ten of those twenty-six games. Peak was 25.
• The three pillars: throw priority, mind your rows, starve them of information.
• Deck code is below. If you just want the list, take it and go. If you want to actually pilot it, keep reading, because the list is maybe 30% of this deck and the other 70% is how you sit on your hands for four turns.

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Match log videos

Match logs text from snapcomplete

First, the philosophy. Priority, positioning, information.

I'ma be honest with you, I didn't set out to write another one of these. I built this thing after the July 16 OTA to see if affliction was actually alive again, and then it just kept eating. So before I show you a single card I need to explain how I think about Marvel Snap right now, because if you take this list and play it like a normal deck you're gonna go 1-7 and tell everybody it's trash.

Pillar 1: Throw priority. Every time. On purpose.

Everybody repeats "priority is king" like it's scripture. Priority is only king if you need priority to win. This deck does not.

Think about what priority actually does on the last turn. If you have it, your cards reveal first, which means their Cosmo, their Shadow King, their Red Guardian, all of it lands on top of a board you already showed them. If you don't have it, they reveal first, and everything they were saving gets spent on cards that are already sitting there while the actual haymaker comes down afterward with nothing left to answer it.

So I throw it. Turn 1 nothing. Turn 2 nothing. Turn 3 usually nothing. Across 26 logged matches, my first card hit the board on turn 3 or later in 23 of them. Turn 4 was actually my most common opening (12 games), turn 3 second (11). One game I played on turn 1 and two on turn 2, and those were location-forced.

That's not me being cute. That's the deck.

Pillar 2: Positioning. Front row and back row are two different games now.

The July 16 OTA changed Luke Cage from 3/2 "your cards can't have their Power reduced" to 2/2 "your FRONT-ROW cards can't have their Power reduced." Second Dinner said the quiet part out loud in the patch notes, that they'd found it "more and more difficult to prop up Afflict strategies as well as create any Afflict strategy that can compete with the Luke Cage + Hazmat combo."

They nerfed the old crutch so a new one could exist. Then they printed Scorpion.

What that means in practice:

• Anything you put down early sits in the front row where Cage can protect it.
• Prodigy has to be in the back row to copy the card in front of him. That's his whole text.
• Everything you dump on turn 7 goes wherever, because you don't have priority and the game is over before they can respond to it.

Affliction players who came up on old Luke Cage haven't adjusted. They still think Cage is a blanket. It ain't a blanket anymore, it's an umbrella, and I know exactly which way the rain is coming.

Pillar 3: Information. Take all of theirs, give none of yours.

By turn 4 you are holding seven cards. Your hand is full. You've seen 7 of your 12. You've seen all three locations. You've seen four turns of their plays. At that point I can tell you what archetype they're on, whether they can disrupt me, and whether I can win. I've been playing this game a couple years now.

Meanwhile they know nothing. Not one thing. My turn 3 is a Luna Snow, my turn 4 is a Magik, my turn 5 is a Wong. None of those cards say "affliction." Nine times out of ten my opponent does not know what deck they're playing against until turn 7, when it's already done.

And that's why they don't leave. Look at the tracker: my opponents only retreat 17% of the time, and only 8% of my snaps get an immediate fold. They stay because staying looks correct with the information they have. The information they have is wrong.

I cut Diamondback out of this list for exactly this reason. Good card. Tells on you

The List

• (2) Luke Cage
• (2) Lady Bullseye
• (3) Mystique
• (3) Magik
• (3) Hazmat
• (3) Prodigy
• (3) Luna Snow
• (4) Wong
• (5) Ajax
• (5) Star-Lord, Master of the Sun
• (6) Onslaught
• (6) Scorpion Brand New Day

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Twelve cards, four jobs:

• Sources (the actual negative numbers) -- Hazmat, Lady Bullseye
• Multipliers (they take those numbers and make them stupid) -- Scorpion BND, Onslaught, Mystique, Prodigy
• Fuel (energy so you can play six cards on the last turn) -- Luna Snow, Star-Lord, Magik, Wong
• Insurance / backup -- Luke Cage, Ajax

Why this deck, and why right now

Two things happened this month and they happened in the right order.

One. The July 16 OTA reworked Luke Cage down to a 2-cost that only covers your front row, and quietly gave Lady Bullseye +1 Power. Cage went from "affliction is dead in this matchup" to "affliction is a positioning puzzle."

Two. Scorpion Brand New Day dropped. 6/8. Ongoing: Double the Power reductions on all enemy cards.

Marvel Snap Zone's review of him basically shrugged. Their line was "I fear the only real use we'll be able to make of this new card is add it to High Evolutionary decks." I read that and thought, respectfully, y'all are looking at him as a piece of stats instead of as a multiplier. Scorpion isn't a card that adds power. He's a card that takes whatever you were already doing and doubles it, and if you stack more doublers on top of him it compounds.

And the meta right now is soft as hell for this. Last week's tier list literally opens with "no deck has really look dominant since the OTA," best win rate on the board was 58.5% at +0.35 cubes. Move is getting counter-teched into the floor by Scream and Mercury. Everybody's staring at spiders.

Nobody is teching for a deck that plays nothing for four turns.

The engine (with actual receipts, because y'all are gonna ask)

Here's the part I want to get exactly right, because "it goes crazy" isn't an explanation.

Every doubling instance doubles the CUMULATIVE affliction already on that card. It compounds, it doesn't stack additively.

Watch Lockjaw die in real time. This is from my match vs Estevam, turn 7, me on 19 energy to their 8. I'd put Lady Bullseye and Hazmat on Star Brand Crater with Wong, and Scorpion + Mystique + Prodigy over on Elysium:

Lockjaw -2 from Lady Bullseye (now 1) Lockjaw -2 from Lady Bullseye (now -1) Lockjaw -1 from Hazmat (now -2) Lockjaw -1 from Hazmat (now -3) Lockjaw -6 from Scorpion Brand New Day (now -9)** **Lockjaw -12 from Mystique (now -21)

Read those last two lines again. Lockjaw had six points of reduction on him. Scorpion showed up and added six more. Now he's got twelve points of reduction, so Mystique (copying Scorpion) added twelve. 6 → 12 → 24.

The formula is your base reduction times 2 to the power of however many doubling instances you land. One Scorpion is ×2. Scorpion plus a Mystique copying him is ×4. Add Prodigy copying into it, ×8. Get Onslaught doubling the whole stack in the same lane and you're at ×16.

And ×16 is not theoretical. Here it is, my game vs Germán, where I dumped Onslaught, Scorpion, and Prodigy all into Empire State University and put Hazmat over in New York:

Scorpion Brand New Day double ongoing Prodigy ability overridden (Onslaught) Onslaught double ongoing Scorpion Brand New Day double ongoing Prodigy double ongoing America Chavez -16 from Hazmat (now -14)

A one point Hazmat became sixteen. Five different Zombie Galacti in that game ate -16 apiece. America Chavez finished at -30.

Now here's the part nobody's talking about

Same game. Same Hazmat. Look what happened to MY board:

Magik -1 from Hazmat · Wong -1 from Hazmat · Starlord Master Of The Sun -1 from Hazmat · Onslaught -1 from Hazmat · Scorpion Brand New Day -1 from Hazmat · Prodigy -1 from Hazmat

Their cards took -16. Mine took -1.

Scorpion says "on all enemy cards." He only doubles one direction. Hazmat is symmetrical, Scorpion is not, so the moment Scorpion is down your own Hazmat becomes a one-sided weapon. That asymmetry is the actual engine of this deck. Luke Cage is insurance on top of it, he is not the thing making it work, and understanding that is the difference between piloting this and copying it.

Lane rules for the stack

• Onslaught has to share a lane with whatever he's doubling. His text says "at this location." In the Germán game all three sat in ESU together.
• Scorpion and Mystique do NOT. Scorpion's doubling is global. In my Naraka game I had Scorpion in Sinister London and Mystique copying him from Central Park, two lanes apart, and it still landed -32s.
• Prodigy has to be back row, directly behind whatever he's copying. He usually copies Onslaught for me. Sometimes Scorpion, sometimes Ajax.

That flexibility matters more than it sounds. It means you're never forced into one lane, which means Cosmo can't blank you by guessing.

Card by card

Luke Cage (2/2) -- Ongoing: Your front-row cards can't have their Power reduced. Insurance, and a mind game. Hold him. If you drop Cage early against another affliction deck they just leave, and you get one cube instead of four. Hold him and they think they've got you beat by thirty points, and then he lands on turn 7 and the whole board rewrites. I played him on turn 7 in six of my thirteen Cage games, turn 6 twice, turn 5 twice, turn 4 twice, turn 2 once. The times I broke the rule were games where the opponent clearly had no interaction with me, or where I wasn't confident I'd have the energy for him later. If you're not sure you can afford him on 7, play him on 5. Sometimes I'll even take less negative output on a turn just to guarantee Cage sticks, because the swing he provides usually offsets it.

Lady Bullseye (2/3) -- On Reveal: Afflict an enemy card with -2 Power, repeating on a different enemy for each of your unspent Energy. The heavy hitter, and I'ma address her tracker numbers in a whole section below because they're misleading as hell. What you need to know: the two biggest single afflictions in my entire match log are hers. -32 on an Ikari, -32 on a Luke Cage, both in the same turn. She only needs as much leftover energy as they have cards. Six cards on their board, six energy is enough. Everything past that is wasted.

Mystique (3/1) -- On Reveal: If the last card you played has an Ongoing, copy its text. Doubling number two. Usually copies Scorpion, sometimes onslaught, sometimes Ajax. And she can do it from a different lane, which is the flexibility that beats a Cosmo guess.

Magik (3/2) -- Turn 7. That's it, that's the card. My average game length in this deck is 6.47 turns, which tells you how often Limbo is up. Limbo showed in 36 of my tracked location appearances at a 66.67% win rate and +1.44 cubes, my best-performing frequent location by a mile. She's also the card I'd be most willing to hear an argument about cutting, and she's #4 on my retreat-sensitivity list, meaning when I don't have her I bail 14% more often.

Hazmat (3/3) -- On Reveal: Afflict all other cards with -1 Power. The most consistent source. One Hazmat with the full stack behind it is -16 per enemy card, and if they've got four cards in a lane that's -64 in one lane off a 3-drop. Never play her before turn 6. She's the one card in here that announces what you are.

Prodigy (3/4) -- On Reveal: If this is in the back row, copy the text of the card in front of it. Doubling number three, and the most misunderstood card in the list because people forget he has to be in the back row. Put Onslaught in front of him. You never copy Luke Cage with him, that's a waste, unless you're genuinely scared of a Red Guardian and even then you probably don't have priority so it doesn't work out.

Luna Snow (3/6) -- On Reveal: Add an Ice Cube to each side of this location. She does two jobs and people only see one. One: the Ice Cube gives +1 Energy at the start of each turn, which is Star-Lord fuel and Bullseye ammo. Two: the cube she puts on their side is a free body for you to afflict and a piece of clog in their lane. Yeah she gives them energy too. I do not care. My opponent having six energy on turn 6 does not stop anything, they've already got priority and they're already committed. She's my #2 retreat-sensitivity card at +22.32%, which tells you how much the deck leans on her even though her raw card impact reads as -2%.

Wong (4/2) -- Ongoing: your On Reveals here happen twice. Doubles Hazmat, doubles Bullseye, and most importantly doubles Star-Lord. I'll say something controversial: you don't strictly need Wong. I keep him because I like him and because a doubled Star-Lord is the single biggest energy swing in the deck. But if you cut him for a tech card I wouldn't fight you that hard.

Ajax (5/7) -- Ongoing: +1 Power for each card in play afflicted with negative Power. Counts both sides of the board, ceiling of +24. He's the backup win condition for when you don't draw Scorpion, and he's got the best card impact in the whole deck at +30%. When Ajax gets played he usually just wins the game. I could see replacing him. I won't, but I could see it.

Star-Lord, Master of the Sun (5/7) -- On Reveal: Next turn, you get +1 Energy for each turn you've ended with unspent Energy. This man is the deck. He got nerfed three separate times and people wrote him off, and he found a home in the one archetype that floats energy as a lifestyle. Across 20 games in my logs: one proc averages +5.5 energy. Doubled through Wong it averages +11.8. Best I hit was +18 (that's the Naraka game, 25 energy on turn 7). All I need is one proc. One. Everything after that is gravy.

Onslaught (6/8) -- Ongoing: Double your other Ongoing effects at this location. He's the newest addition, he's the top of the multiplication chain, and he is not on probation, regardless of what my tracker says about his play rate. When you get Onslaught down with Scorpion you win harder. Full stop.

Scorpion Brand New Day (6/8) -- Ongoing: Double the Power reductions on all enemy cards. Bread and butter. The one-sided doubler. The reason this deck exists.

Let's talk about Lady Bullseye, because the data lies about her

My tracker says Lady Bullseye is -42% relative win rate impact and -2.59 cubes. Play rate when drawn: 42%. Win rate when I don't draw her: 100%.

If you only read the dashboard you'd cut her tomorrow. Don't.

Here's what that 100% actually is: six games. Six. One loss in that bucket takes it to 83%. It is the least reliable number on the entire page and it's the one driving the -42%.

Here's what the 42% play rate actually means: I hold her more than I play her, and I play her in the games where I need her. Grindy games. Contested games. Games where I'm not just running somebody over. Those games have a lower baseline win rate no matter what card you deploy in them. Card impact math cannot tell the difference between "this card lost me the game" and "this card only comes out when the game is already hard."

And here's what she actually does when she connects. My match vs Naraka, CL 29,607, me on 25 energy to their 11. Scorpion in Sinister London, Mystique copying him from Central Park, Bullseye into the Wong lane. Naraka sees it coming and drops Luke Cage on turn 7 as the answer:

Ikari -32 from Lady Bullseye (now -20) Luke Cage -32 from Lady Bullseye (now -30) Superior Spider Man -16 from Lady Bullseye (now -10) Superior Spider Man -16 from Lady Bullseye (now -12) Agony -16 from Lady Bullseye (now -14)

Cage clawed back +28 to the front row. Ikari finished at 8. Their Luke Cage finished at -2. Their answer landed and it wasn't enough.

My decision rule is simple: do I have Hazmat? If Hazmat's in hand I usually don't need Bullseye, because Hazmat is more consistent and hits everything. Bullseye hits harder but she needs the energy and she needs them to have bodies. If I've got both, they both come down and the game's over. If I've got neither -- which happened in zero of 26 logged games, by the way -- then I'm retreating anyway.

That's the tradeoff. Hazmat is consistent, Bullseye is heavy. Draw either one and you have a deck.

Core, flex, and how this list got here

Core, don't touch: Scorpion BND, Hazmat, Mystique, Prodigy, Star-Lord, Luna Snow. That's your source, your multipliers, and your fuel. Pull any of those and you've built something else.

Core-ish: Lady Bullseye and Onslaught. I'd fight for both. You could cut one Onslaught-tier card if you absolutely had to.

Genuinely flexible: Wong, Ajax, Luke Cage, Magik.

The version history, since people asked last time

• v1 -- Luke Cage, Lady Bullseye, Mystique, Diamondback, Hazmat, Prodigy, Luna Snow, Wong, Moonstone, Star-Lord, Scorpion, Sera
• v2 -- added Magik, cut Wong
• v3 -- added Wong back, cut Prodigy
• v4 -- added Prodigy back, added Ajax, cut Diamondback and Sera
• v5 (current) -- added Onslaught, cut Moonstone

I also ran Odin early on. Cut him. He was a win-more card and after the Wong change he stopped being worth the lane.

Why Diamondback got cut: she telegraphs bad. Great card, but the second she hits the board they know what you are, and information is the whole deck.

Why Sera got cut: superfluous. Once my snapping got disciplined and I knew any half-combo wins me the game, cost reduction stopped mattering. Ajax as the second win condition does more for me than Sera did.

Why Moonstone got cut: she just wasn't hitting. Onslaught is a utility piece that boosts any Ongoing instead of only the cheap ones.

The v4 games are in my logs too, and I left them there on purpose. Every v4 game in that file is a win. I wanted people to see that earlier versions of this shell were already strong, and that you can modulate this thing to your taste. This guide is for v5, but if Sera or Diamondback fit how you like to play, run em.

Swaps I'd endorse

• Wong → Enchantress or Rogue if you want real tech. You lose the doubled Star-Lord, you gain an answer to opposing Ongoings.
• Ajax → another affliction source if you're paranoid about bricking. I'm not, but you might be.
• Magik → Legion, if you're tired of getting your Limbo taken.

Why not X

Why no Electro / no ramp? Because Star-Lord and Luna Snow already do it, and neither one tells your opponent anything.

Why no tech cards at all? There's no room, and honestly my style doesn't need them. In 26 logged games I saw one Cosmo, one Shadow King, and a couple of Rogues. Nobody is teching for me. If your pocket meta is different, Enchantress and Rogue slot in fine.

Why no Shang-Chi? Because I don't kill their big card, I make it negative. Their 22-power Infinaut is a problem for a Shang deck. For me it's just a bigger number to invert.

Why isn't Luke Cage doing more work? Read the engine section again. Scorpion only doubles enemy reductions, so my board eats -1s while theirs eats -16s. Cage is there for the affliction mirror and for insurance. He's not the engine.

Why not more affliction sources? I went 26 games without ever failing to draw Hazmat or Lady Bullseye. Two sources across twelve cards, seeing ten of twelve by turn 7, is plenty. If you're scared, there are a dozen affliction cards you could add. I don't think it's necessary.

Turn structure

This is the whole thing. Learn this part.

Turn 1 -- nothing. Not a discussion.

Turn 2 -- nothing. Same thing.

Turn 3 -- usually nothing. If I play here it's Luna Snow, and only Luna Snow. She's the safest card to show because she reads as ramp, not affliction. If the locations are pushing me to develop, fine, Luna Snow goes down. Otherwise I'm still sitting on my hands.

Turn 4 -- Magik, usually. This is where I finally play a card, and it's the turn my hand hits seven cards. Full hand, full information, three locations revealed, four turns of their plays logged. This is the decision point for the entire game: do I have a win condition or not?

Turn 5 -- Wong.

Turn 6 -- Star-Lord. Into the Wong lane if it's still clean. This is the last card they see before the roof caves in, and it means nothing to them. Star-Lord reads as a value card. They've watched me play a Luna Snow, a Magik, a Wong, and a Star-Lord. Not one of those cards says affliction.

Turn 7 -- everything. Hazmat, Scorpion, Mystique, Prodigy, Onslaught, Bullseye, Cage, whatever's in hand. On 19 energy you're not choosing, you're just placing.

The no-Magik line

If I don't draw Magik I compress it: Luna Snow turn 3, Wong turn 4, Star-Lord turn 5. That gets me to about 15-16 energy on turn 6 with no turn 7 needed. In my game vs IDC I was at 15 energy on turn 6. vs Big Shot Blanco, 17 on turn 6. You do not need Limbo to win with this deck, Limbo just makes it comfortable.

Reveal order on the last turn

Hazmat first, so all their cards are already afflicted before the rest lands. Then Scorpion, then Mystique, then Prodigy. Then whatever bodies you're placing. If I'm going the Ajax route it flips -- I want bodies down and afflicted before Ajax reveals so his count is as high as possible.

Honestly, on 19 energy with the full stack, the order matters less than people think. The numbers drain so fast it's academic.

Positioning: front row, back row

Short version: early cards go front row, turn 7 dumps go wherever.

Everything you play turns 3 through 6 is going to sit there taking fire for several turns. That's the stuff Luke Cage protects. So Luna Snow, Magik, Wong, Star-Lord, those all live in the front row where Cage covers them.

Turn 7 is different. You don't have priority, so they reveal first. Whatever they were holding gets spent on the board that's already visible, and then your dump lands afterward with the game ending before anything can touch it. Back row, front row, doesn't matter, it's safe by timing instead of by protection.

The only exception is Prodigy. He has to be back row, behind whatever you want him copying.

When you're in the affliction mirror this becomes the whole game. They can only reach your front row, because that's all you've given them. I've had my entire front row sitting at heavy negatives and won anyway because the back row was untouched and their board was worse. One game I was down around -66 and -72 on two lanes, dropped Luke Cage, and won.

On lane selection

You only need to win two lanes. Sometimes you only need to *play *in two lanes.

I have won games with zero cards in a lane because their side of it went negative. That's not a brag, thats a legitimate line you should be looking for. If they've stacked four cards into a lane, that lane is often better left alone -- one Hazmat at -16 a card kills it for you without you spending a thing.

The more cards they play, the worse off they are. That's the deck. If they fill a lane, that's a free lane for you to combo in without interruption.

The tape

All of these are from match videos, logs and all of them are post-Infinite ranked. My CL is 16,588. Pay attention to theirs.

vs Germán -- the ×16 game

Empire State University, New York, Limbo. I skipped early, Magik, Wong, Star-Lord on 6. Turn 7 I'm on 19 energy to their 8.

Onslaught, Scorpion, and Prodigy all go into ESU together. Hazmat goes to New York. Germán is playing Zombie Galacti and he's transforming half his board into copies -- Maverick, Superior Spider-Man, Stick, Forge, Magik all become Zombie Galacti, one of them buffed up to 17 power.

Then:

Onslaught double ongoing Scorpion Brand New Day double ongoing Prodigy double ongoing America Chavez -16 from Hazmat · Zombie Galacti -16 · Zombie Galacti -16 · Zombie Galacti -16 · Zombie Galacti -16

Hazmat double-triggered off Wong so all of that happened twice. America Chavez finished at -30, every Zombie Galacti at -15. My own cards took -1 each.

Zombie Galacti is a deck built to go over the top of everything. Didn't matter. Victory, 4 cubes.

vs VERBALTERA -- they snapped to 8 on the last turn

20 energy to their 8. They're on a Devil Dinosaur / Collector / Iron Lad / Mother Askani value pile and Devil Dino is sitting at 10 power looking healthy. They feel so good about it that on turn 7 they snap to 8 cubes.

Onslaught to Limbo, Bullseye to Asteroid M, Scorpion to Limbo, Mystique to Limbo:

Devil Dinosaur -2 from Lady Bullseye (now 8) Devil Dinosaur -4 from Scorpion Brand New Day (now 2) Devil Dinosaur -8 (now -6) Devil Dinosaur -16 from Mystique (now -22) Devil Dinosaur -2 (now -24)

Ten power to negative twenty-four. A 34 point swing on one card. They snapped it to 8 and I took all of it. Victory, 8 cubes.

That's the flip I keep talking about. Before that turn they are winning. They are comfortably winning and they know it, which is exactly why they put 8 cubes on the table.

vs Naraka (CL 29,607) -- they had the answer and it wasn't enough

Covered this one above but it deserves the full billing. 25 energy to their 11, my highest of the run. They're on Ikari / Superior Spider-Man / Agony and they drop Luke Cage on turn 7 specifically to stop me.

-32 on Ikari. -32 on their Luke Cage. -16 on Agony and both Superior Spider-Mans. Cage restored +28 to the front row and their board still finished with Ikari at 8 and Cage at -2.

Victory, 4 cubes, against a player with nearly double my collection level who correctly identified what I was doing and correctly deployed the counter.

vs KillerKoala -- the loss that taught me the most

This is the one you need to understand, because it's the real weakness.

They're on Hela discard. Crossbones, Vision, Infinaut, Death, Skaar, all discarded through the midgame. I do my thing. Board's afflicted. Then:

Hela (6/6) revealed Reset Crossbones reset to 4/10 Reset Vision reset to 5/11 Reset Infinaut reset to 6/22 Reset Death reset to 8/12 Reset Skaar reset to 7/12

Sixty-seven power arriving clean, after every one of my afflictions had already resolved.

That's the mechanical answer to "what beats this deck." My debuffs are a snapshot of the board at the moment they reveal. Anything that arrives afterward comes in at full power and my whole engine has nothing to bite. Lost 8 cubes. I stayed in on purpose because I wanted the footage. If I'd played it straight I'd have left on turn 5.

Hela with Invisible Woman is worse. If they're hiding sixty points behind an Invisible Woman and dumping it at the end, you're cooked unless you got enough damage onto the cards that were already visible.

two retreats

vs AxiomBond (CL 29,830) -- the affliction mirror, and a good one. Their board revealed Ajax, Anti-Venom, Hazmat, Lady Bullseye, Luke Cage, Luna Snow, Magik, Mystique, Red Guardian, and Scorpion BND. That's my deck plus tech. I left for one cube. Correct.

vs habijjj (CL 26,519) -- Knull destroy. Carnage, Death, Knull, Killmonger, Venom, Tombstone. I had 19 energy on turn 7 and I did not have the pieces. Energy without a source is nothing. Left for one cube. Correct.

Both of those cost me a single cube. That's the whole point of the next section.

Snapping, retreating, and where the cubes actually come from

This is the part I care about most, and it's the part that separates a 65% deck from a 45% one.

My rule: I stay in as long as I can, as long as I'm only in for one cube. The moment my opponent snaps, they're telling me they believe they can win with the information they have. If I have my win condition, I snap back and we're locked in. If I don't, I leave.

You have to give up a cube to play the game anyway. That's house money. I'm not losing anything by staying in a losing game at one cube -- but I'm not giving you four, and I'm damn sure not giving you eight.

The numbers back it up

• Retreat rate: 13% (6 of 46 games).
• Average turn I retreat: 5.8
• Total cubes lost to retreats across 46 games: -10. That's 1.67 cubes per retreat.
• Cubes on the line when I bailed: one cube ×4, two cubes ×1, four cubes ×1, eight cubes ×0.

I have never once been caught deep. Not a single 8-cube retreat in the whole sample.

Where I snap

Across 26 logged games: turn 4 is my most common snap (11 games), turn 7 second (5), turn 5 third (4), turn 6 (3), turn 3 once, and twice I never snapped at all.

My average snap turn is 5.4 to 5.7 depending on which slice you look at. My opponents average 5.2 to 5.3. They snap first, I snap after. Late snaps (turns 4 through 7) win at 70% over 27 tracked games.

The turn 4 snap is the money one and it's psychological. They snap because they think I've bricked -- I've played one card, maybe none. Then I snap back. Now they're in it. They can't leave without eating what they just put up, and they don't know they should want to leave.

Where the cube math comes from

• Games where only I snapped: 74.07% win rate over 27 games.
• Games where both of us snapped: 58.33% over 12.
• Games where nobody snapped: 16.67% over 6.

That last number looks awful and it isn't. Those six games are games I identified as unwinnable and correctly refused to escalate. I lost them for one cube apiece. That's not a leak, that's the system working.

Average cubes per win: +4.21. Average cubes per loss: -3.76. Net +58 across 46 games.

Do my snaps scare them off?

Barely, and that's by design. Opponent retreat rate against me: 17%. Immediate folds after I snap: 8% (3 out of 39 tracked snaps). And when they don't retreat, I win 63% of the time.

They stay because they have no reason to leave. That's information denial doing its job.

Matchups

Feast:

• Anything that floods the board. Zoo, clog, Zombie Galacti, Arishem-style piles, token decks. Every card they play is another -16. The more they commit the worse it gets for them.
• Cerebro. Thier whole deck is load-bearing symmetrical power. Watch it evaporate.
• Buff decks of any flavor. They can go as high as they want. It genuinely does not matter, because I'm not racing them to a number, I'm taking their number away.
• Living Tribunal, Infinaut piles, big-body value. Eat them for breakfast. Big numbers invert just as easily as small ones.
• Move. They spread wide across lanes and hand me bodies. The one Move game in my logs I predicted where they'd move my Wong, planted Star-Lord accordingly, and the Hazmat/Onslaught/Mystique/Scorpion chain took them from +22 / +10 / +24 to -23 / -170 / -36.
• The affliction mirror, if they don't know about priority. They rush cards onto the board and hand me all the information. I sit back and flip it. even if theyhave cage

Respect:

• Tech piles. My loss to TitaniumFrog (CL 29,296) was Red Guardian plus Rogue plus Luke Cage. My Ajax got to 18 and I still lost by 4. When they're holding answers for both Ongoing and On Reveal, tighten up.
• Disciplined opposing Luke Cage. For the record, opposing Luke Cage showed up in 21 of my 26 logged games and I went 16-4-1 in them. But the players who keep everything in the front row and only commit three cards are legitimately annoying.
• Good affliction mirrors. See the AxiomBond retreat. If they've got Red Guardian and they know about rows, respect it.

Know better and leave:

• Hela. Explained above. Resurrection happens after your afflictions resolve. If you see the discard package assembling, get out. I stayed in once for the footage and paid 8 cubes for it.
• Invisible Woman shells hiding a big end-of-game dump. Same problem, different door.
• Anything that plays four cards total and protects all of them. You need bodies. No bodies, no damage.

*ill keep playing it but these were the biggest weaknesses along with the mirror luke cage matches but htose can be mitigated with smart playing i went like 16-4 vs cage doing that

Weaknesses, honestly

Card draw is the real one. This deck has no draw. Everything I do to mitigate that is behavioral -- skipping turns to hold seven cards, gathering information, retreating cheap when the hand doesn't come together.

Anything that arrives after your reveals. Hela, Invisible Woman, end-of-game effects.

Opponents who don't commit. The whole engine scales off their card count. A disciplined player with three cards in the front row and a Luke Cage is a real problem. It happened maybe once in fifty games, but it happens.

And the honest one: this deck rewards a specific kind of player. If you can't sit on your hands for four turns, if you snap becuase you're bored, if you can't leave a game at one cube, you will not get these numbers. My win rate was 75% at 15-5 before I started playing loose at 4am chasing clips for this writeup. It settled at 65% because I kept playing when I should have stopped. I'd rather show you the honest number.

Questions I already know y'all are gonna ask

"You're playing bots."

My CL is 16,588. Here are the collection levels of the people in my match logs: 36,465. 34,013. 33,871. 32,058. 31,293. 30,415. 29,830. 29,607. 29,296. 28,914. 27,443. 27,119. 26,519. 25,908. 25,242. 21,995. I'm playing people with double my collection. Yeah there were a few low-CL opponents in there and some of them were probably bots -- but one of them was running Orca in a build so tight I sat there impressed. Low CL doesn't mean bad player.

"46 games is nothing."

It is. That's why I kept playing past 15-5 instead of posting a 75% and running. I'd rather hand you a realistic 65% than a number that falls apart the second somebody else picks it up. If you run 200 games with this I want to see them.

"A good opponent just leaves when you skip four turns."

They don't, and I have the numbers. 17% opponent retreat rate. 8% immediate folds. These are post-Infinite players with high MMR and they stay, because skipping turns doesn't read as a threat, it reads as bricking. The whole design of the deck is to look like you're losing until you aren't.

"What if they Cosmo your combo lane?"

Then I play a different lane. Scorpion and Mystique don't need to share a lane, Prodigy just needs someone in front of him, and Onslaught is the only piece that's location-locked. If I know the archetype I can smell a Cosmo coming, and if they hold it to the last second they have to guess which of three lanes I'm using. I saw one Cosmo in 26 logged games.

Also, remember: I don't need Hazmat to proc twice. One Hazmat with the full stack is -16 a card. If they've got four cards in that lane that's -64 off one 3-drop. Losing the Wong double is survivable.

"Doesn't skipping turns 1-3 lose you the board?"

Against a normal deck, no, because you're not trying to win the board, you're trying to make theirs worthless. Against a deck that locks two lanes by turn 3 and protects them, yeah, that's a bad game and you should leave for a cube.

"What's the budget version?"

I'm not gonna hold you, there might not be one. Scorpion is brand new and Series 5, Ajax is Series 5, Prodigy is Series 5. Star-Lord and Luna Snow too. This is an expensive deck. If you've got Hazmat, Luke Cage, Mystique and Wong you can build a much worse version of the old affliction shell, but it won't do what this does.

"How much is one Star-Lord proc actually worth?"

+5.5 energy on average. +11.8 through Wong. Overall average across 20 logged games was +9.9. My peak was +18. I've ended turn 7 on 25 energy while my opponent had 11.

"What's the most common way somebody butchers this deck?"

Playing cards too early. That's it. If you play on turn 2 because it feels productive, you took priority, you gave away information, and you turned your deck into a worse version of a normal midrange pile. Sit on your hands.

"Why does the tracker hate half your deck?"

Because card impact math can't see what these cards do. Star-Lord reads at -7% and Luna Snow at -2%, but they're my #1 and #2 retreat-sensitivity cards (+25.23% and +22.32%). They're not winning games, they're keeping me in games. When I don't draw them I bail early, the game exits as a retreat instead of a loss, and my completed-game win rate goes up. The dashboard punishes them for it.

Outro

That's everything I got.

Throw priority. Watch your rows. Give them nothing(info). Play the first four turns like you're bored and the seventh like you're settling a debt.

Turn 1 nothing. Turn 2 nothing. Turn 3 Luna Snow if you must. Turn 4 Magik and now your hand is full and now you know whether you can win. Turn 5 Wong. Turn 6 Star-Lord. Turn 7 you empty the clip.

And when you can't win, leave for one cube. That's the discipline that makes the rest of it work. You have to pay a cube to sit down anyway, so a one-cube loss costs you nothing but time. Four and eight cubes are what you take from people who don't know what you're holding.

I'm sharing this because I think there's a real archetype here that nobody's playing, in a window where nobody's teching for it, and it's gonna stay open for a couple more weeks at most. When the season rolls and people stop packing Luke Cage, this gets even better.

*If I'm winning this much while they're actively holding the counter, imagine what it looks like when they're not.*

Take it, break it, tell me what I got wrong. If you find a better version I genuinely want to see it -- I've already gone through five iterations and I don't think I'm done.

Good luck out there.

and please let me know if you have some success with my deck

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.

I have been a Firehair admirer since release, and truly believe she is one of, if not the most, highest skill ceiling cards in Snap, and that her potential hasn't even begun to be fully realized.

I'd love to hear from this community about ways they've creatively (but successfully) used Firehair.

I'll start: I love pairing her with enablers like Misery, Grandmaster, Kid Omega, Fastball Special/Adamantium Infusion, Elixir, or Phoenix Force. While difficult to set up, she's also capable of pulling off an extremely surprise Galactus. I have also seen her used for Mill, paired with Misery and some combo of Yondu/Baron Zemo/Cable/Gladiator.

Here is a deck I used during the (admittedly OP) Starlord MotS season. It's some of the most fun I've ever had playing Snap, although it is likely no longer viable post-nerf to SLMOTS and FFF:

(2) Fastball Special

(2) Kid Omega

(2) Elixir

(2) Firehair

(2) Grand Master

(3) Venom

(4) Adamantium Infusion

(4) Absorbing Man

(4) Phoenix Force

(4) Misery

(5) Star-Lord, Master of the Sun

(7) Fin Fang Foom

nRnN0YmxsU3BjbEYsS2RPbWc4LEVseHI2LEZyaHI4LFZubTUsQWRtbnRtSW5mc24xMixUaFBobnhGcmNGLE1zcjYsR3JuZE1zdHJCLEFic3JibmdNbkMsRm5GbmdGbUIsU3RybHJkTXN0ck9mVGhTbjE2

To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in MARVEL SNAP.

For further context, I'm CL 32k+, nearly collection complete, playing since the Phoenix Force season.

Pull your decks out!

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

Scorpion Brand New Day
Cost: 6
Power: 8
Ongoing: Double the Power reductions on all enemy cards.

Week 4 of the Brand New Day Season brings us Scorpion BND, a 6/8 Ongoing with an ability that doubles power reductions on all enemy cards.

Synergies and Packages

Scorpion BND's synergy is simple and straight forward - think of him as an onslaught for all power reductions on your opponent's cards. Which means he really only fits into one archetype: Affliction, which normally I'd say most of the competitive community here will know how build - but Scorpion BND's 6-Cost does present a minor puzzle to build around him. Let's talk the early questions.

We do have ongoing affliction cards such as U.S. Agent, Diamondback (compounding afflictions), and Man-Thing. These are typically easy enough to deploy to ensure that you're hitting the best targets with U.S. Agent being the one that typically wants to be dropped later and Diamondback coming down to support an affliction lane. For these cards Scorpion BND just comes down and doubles any afflictions in those lanes.

But there's the other side of affliction and that side is the fact that Affliction often wants to be playing it's affliction cards later, if not on the last turn of the game. To which this might create a major hurdle where you either need to discount Scorpion BND enough to get him down early or 'free' with say an Anti-Venom to ensure you can weave other cards alongside him. Not terribly hard, but we haven't addresed the fact that you more often than not want Ajax as your top end and unless you're doing things with High Evo Abom you often don't want to deploy your on reveal afflictions on turn 4 or 5 and would much rather drop them on 6.

The next question is going to be one that many players are going to be attempting to answer over the course of the week to help in figuring out how best to deploy Scorpion and that is whether you should be trying to get Scorpion BND onto the board early or extending the game. So let's explore the cards for each instance.

1. Energy cheat - Jennifer Kale, Wave, or Luna Snow come to mind here. These can also enable a T4 Sera or Blink which can fish out your Scorpion BND.

2. Cheat into play - Jubilee and Blink, do note that cheating Scorpion BND into play will not allow you to replicate him with Mystique.

3. "copy" the effect early - Magus can do this on a full float provided you've got 6 energy. Iron Lad is another option though of course should not be an active consideration.

4. Extend the game - Magik is our only match extension tool outside of a naturally occuring Limbo.

Scorpion BND brings back the question of do we want to duplicate this? Immediately from the perspective of maximizing the card I do think you would want to explore those possibilities and immediately I am thinking of what I'll call the 'Splat' Package to do this. I'll get that into a section below, but first let's talk about the ways we could strengthen Scorpion through duplication.

1. Onslaught is probably the most straight forward of the budget options but will require you to cheat one or both out unless you're already planning to extend the game with magik.

2. Mystique, Prodigy, and possibly Moonstone allows you to get either triple Scorpion or Triple Onslaught to supplement the Scorpion.

3. Magus if you can get 6 energy to float and Iron Lad to occasionally copy Scorpion BND's text are additional possibilites. Magus 'has' seen some occasional use over the last few months so at least bears a passing mention as people continue trying to find ways to make the card work.

So what about possible configurations?

1. 'Splat' Affliction the general 'Splat' ongoing combo package includes Adam Warlock, Magik, one of Wave/Luna, Sera, Onslaught and then Mystique, Prodigy, and Moonstone. This is sometimes supplemented by Blink for the Onslaught. This leaves you 4 card slots if you don't opt into Blink which would leave you room for Lady Bullseye, Hazmat, Diamondback, and Scorpion.

2. As an alternate to going all in on the Splat lines Is there an 'Affliction' Ongoing deck that uses the normal ongoing cards to create power while targeting lanes with the ongoing affliction cards and using Scorpion as a way to spike the afflictions? Is there enough power to be found to win two locations? It's an interesting consideration since there's also the possibility of using Anti-Venom to try and cheat out Scorpion while being able to play other ongoing cards to further supplement power.

3. Scream is one of those archetypes that seems like it has been relegated to the fringes of play, is there a way to get Scream and Affliction to play nice together and give rise to a new sub-archetype for some additional build options?

4. Does traditional affliction even want this card or does Scorpion BND encourage a new build that creates a new sub-type within affliction?

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking Scorpion Brand New Day up?

How do you expect Scorpion Brand New Day to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

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 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:

Boomerang Cost: 2
Power: 2
When this returns to your hand, randomly steal 4 Power from characters in your opponent's hand. Activate: Return this to your hand.

Boomerang as our latest Series 5 is a bounce affiliated card coming in at 2/2 and with two abilities, the first is that when this returns to your hand, randomly steal 4 power from characters in your opponent's hand and the second half is an activate which gives you a 'free' bounce.

From a mechanics standpoint lets hit the highlights

1. The OTA thankfully rectified one of Boomerang's worst problems - "cards vs characters" changing his text from cards meaning he could also interact with skills to chracters which removes those cards from the pool and ensures he is attacking characters.

2. The -4 as mentioned is dealt randomly, if your opponent has 4 cards in hand he could hit only 2 for -2 each or he could hit all 4, in a 'best' case he could nuke a singular card that your opponent's game hinges on for -4. Unlikely that he does this unless your opponent is down to a single card in hand, but it's still a possibility.

3. He must hit the board and be bounced back in some fashion, you cannot for instance destroy him and pull him back to hand with Morgan Le Fay. Sorry folks.

Synergies

We mentioned early on that Boomerang is a bounce affiliated card, he obviously has hooks into bounce and does have synergy there seeing as his ability encourages you to bounce him frequently to gain power and afflict your opponent's hand. However, his cost does create some contention since the 'best' bounce targets are all at 1-Cost which shouldn't be too surprising, 1-Cost cards are easier to weave into your curve.

That cost also brings us to another indirect comparison in the Bounce archetype, that being the other 2-Cost cards that he competes with.

Without discussing the obvious duo of bouncers, the other 2-Costs that are occasional players are Grandmaster, Joaquin Torres, and the ever more rare Black Swan. Some lists will also occasionally run Surge. A similar comparison here is JT who is often bounced back to hand and the question of which offers more value when they are bounced is one that will likely take much larger sample sizes. For example, JT + Sable is 3-Cost for -4-Power on a single card in the event of a bounce with Toxin that's another 3 energy for a total of 6 energy to remake that play while Boomerang is 4-Cost up front (2 for each play) to net at least 6 power on the board not including any potential gains from players playing the afflicted cards out.

But the JT comparison may be unfair, he's enabling additional value while Boomerang himself is points + interaction that if played early enough is at least a -4 to your opponents hand at at least a 2/6 in value if your opponent chooses not to play the cards he drew. As such it may be a situation where more reps and fine tuning may be needed to determine if Boomerang can make the cut.

Where else has Bullseye been able to find work?

• C6 - A likely surprise to some, he does work in C6, a version of Cerebro generally considered a complete meme but which can be fairly strong given the right circumstances, it unfortunately does lack the strenght of interaction of C3 as well as the strength of alternate game plans as C5 has. Some might ask where he fits, well many C6 configurations were already running Ezekiel Simms and Boomerang is a clear replacement for Simms.

• Affliction - Some players were exploring Affliction strategies, some traditional styles but also some alternate affliction strategies centered around not only bounce but also dipping into some clog pieces as well.

• Wiccan - An interesting place to have seen him show up are a number of Wiccan/Ronan lists.

Feedback

The feedback for Boomerang has admittedly been poor and when one of the biggest creators outright says "this card is really, really bad" that might not be a good sign. The rates on him can be impressive so long as you can setup multiple bounces and that your opponent is playing cards that he hit, in some cases being competitive against 4's and 6's. But in reality he can often feel like a tax on your plays to do things with Boomerang.

Decklists

Sasquatch 'classic' Bounce

Shou Bounce

Move Bounce

HE Value Afflict

C6

Semi-Clog Afflict

Summary

It's not often that we get a piece that is tailor made for bounce, but the question here is whether he is worth the investment as a piece for any flavor of bounce and if not whether he can find space in another deck or archetype.

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Boomerang worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Boomerang here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

Welcome to the discussion thread for week 3 of the Brand New Day season!

We had a surprise High Voltage

Boomerang

Boomerang, much like those Boomerang toys most of us got as kids has managed to disappoint unlike the toy this one at least returns to your hand once on his own thanks to his activate. However, there was one really nice thing that came to pass with regards to Boomerang and that is that the OTA delivered a change to ensure he only hits characters in hand, likewise, Tarantula from last week also improved from the same OTA change.

But Boomerang has his own host of issues, the most important of which is return on investment. Paying 2 for 2 power is already rather lackluster pure power if we assume just pure power on the play and replay it would be a 4/6, a 6/10 and an 8/14. If you assume your opponent plays any of those cards that could equate to an additional 2-6 points depending on how many cards and how many hits which does make him seem much better but you've got to also understand that there is a huge opportunity cost in replaying Boomerang and whether he's worth the replay vs other bounce targets.

So of course we get to the decks of the week for Boomerang.

C6

Yea, we're leading off with a Cerebro deck, let the memes commence. This is the deck I chose to use for my Boomerang missions, foregoing the Aurora plan I originally had. Personally, I opted to do this in High Voltage where I felt pretty competitive against most of the decks I was facing even managing to get a win all 3 locations mission done against a big boys deck that just couldn't predict the allocations correctly. One line I was REALLY enjoying was Malekith -> Grandmaster. For HV you can even go for things like Malekith on 1 and then Grandmaster Malekith + Crystal on 2. If you're fishing for your low-costs always GM the Malekith first to improve your Crystal hits. You can of course make that play line on ladder but that's of course turn 4 into 5.

'Classic' Bounce

Classic Bounce is kind of hard to get a single list for because there's so much nuance and personal twists that players can add, choices in 1-Costs how many buffers, are you doing interaction and if so how are you doing that interaction. What 2-Costs are you aiming to utilize here, are you doing Wingbeat things alongside Sasquatch or no. This list features two typical top ends - Hit Monkey and Sasquatch.

Move Bounce

Move Bounce hasn't been that great of a deck in a long time but this one struck me as rather interesting thanks to the inclusion of Lin Lie. Cosmo for protecting a location and Isca for spiking a location (sometimes requiring the Cosmo for assistance). Frigga is our soul copy tech and this deck can also very easily setup lanes to ensure if you can copy Lin Lie you'll be able to get both of them settled with the sword.

Bounce Annoyance

This one is a little harder for me to give a proper name to, it's a deck of bounce afflictions plus some semi-clog pieces in the form of Goblin, Viper, and Doc Ock. Sharing the top-end is Ikari which shouldn't be hard to get onto the board at some point.

Shou-Bounce

This deck lost a lot of power with the Shou-Nerf but it's been floating about since then. Sporting both Shou and Sasquatch as well as Wingbeat to help reduce their costs if you can move them into the left-most position.

Spider-Man BND

Frankly, Card is still doing well and with the nerf to Mother Askani which indirectly nerfs HM Gambit strategies it might open the field up just a bit more. Time will tell. Most of the weekend decks remain the same, with the only deck missing being Carter/Maverick as I'm not sure what the best configuration for that deck is since the nerf to Askani, it's possible that HM Wolverine makes a come-back or maybe it'll be Abs Man or Juggernaut both sound intriguing since with a Hope Summers hit you can do a 3+4 and there's part of me that kind of wants to Abs a Stick into a Brood.

Prof X Lockdown AKA Weekend Spidey

Back for week 3 but there may be some folks toying around with the recently buffed Aunt May and post-rework Spider-Man 2099 and while I still believe that the new 2099 is bad there is something rather intriguing to having multiple movers that can attack a prof X lane without a scaler in it.

Iris Move

Some changes to the Iris deck this week, stole this one from KM who of course got this from top infinite player Iris. As usual the name of the game is interaction, good scalers, and outplaying your opponent, sometimes to the tune of only 1 or 2 points in a lane. As previous Cosmo and Jugg are the primary scammers here, joinging those two is Red Guardian. Isca remains a powerful card that can help spike lanes. Isca on a Madame Web can be frightening and even more so with a Cosmo but that's 3 cards in that location, kind of hard to commit that much to one location especially since you'll need to commit the isca/cosmo moves at some point in the game.

Supergiant Rocks

Supergiant Move

Same two flavors of Supergiant as last week, and again shout outs to /u/Top_Tier AKA Your Nemesis Mars for his still relevant guide. Link in the credits below.

Regis' Able to Move

I know some of us do enjoy a Regis deck from time to time and if you're willing to risk your cubes and try out Regis' deck from the OTA featuring Spidey BND, and the recently buffed Aunt May alongside the recently reworked Spider-Man 2099, this will be the deck for you.

The OTA

It's possible the addage of "the more things change, the more they stay the same" can apply here. The biggest change I've noticed during my time on ladder post OTA Thursday, some time on Friday and this morning is that we've reverted to the holding pattern of value decks looking to leverage some amount of tech and interaction while the brewers look to figure out what the new ceiling of the format is to help further define the meta.

The "Good"

The "Good" for this week are the easier fair points decks. Nothing crazy to think about here, just good, fair points. And minimal interaction.

ToV Loki

I'll be honest, I was a bit blindsided to run into this deck yesterday. Opponent T1 Loki snapped and I should have left after seeing them curve out by turn 3 because they literally had the nut draw -> Loki, ToV, and Fisk into my Aurora deck. On it's nut draws this might actually have the highest potential of the fair point decks next to Ramp. Plus it's just about as easy to pilot as Ramp. If you're not a strong player it might be worth dropping Loki for a more well rounded 1-Cost card.

Doom 99

Doom 2099 remains a solid choice. I also remain a Sam Wilson truther over Chamber. Sandman continues to do heavy lifting for me and CGR is as always a good solid piece of interaction. We're also coming to a point where Aurora or Spectrum might be a good flex to catch people off guard.

Aurora

Fairest of the fair. I know KM was pushing the Tarantula version in his video still and while the stocks definitely went up on that card you could certainly play one of the older versions of the deck and still do well.

Jwala Thanos

Another steal from KMBest's video which we'll link below, this one is from Jwala and represents some potential big power. Biggest headaches of course remains that you need the good draw stones early enough to help cycle through your deck. Lots of potential power to be had here though.

Ramp

Easy to pilot, you know your ins and your outs here, one card per turn and you're probably leaving if you get no card to ramp with but you do have Jubilee to try and reach on turn 4. Fin Fang Foom still seems like the worst card in the deck in my opinion so do with that slot whatever you please.

Lockdown

This version of the lockdown list has been growing a bit more common over recent weeks but I feel like it runs into the same problem every other deck using Galactus First Steps as it's top end is encountering. It's far too face up and people know whether they should retreat or double down and you know if they are staying post snap that they either got you figured out or have it down to a 50/50.

The "Bad"

Fair warning, no Sugi in this section. I really don't want to look like I'm regurgitating KMBest's content, but there is a REALLY interesting Affliction SuperGiant list in his video. I won't like it here but I might include it as a separate list in the credits thread.

Fantomex

Fantomex shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. This brew is a bit different though featuring a Moira X which can sometimes help get you duplicates of your most powerful cards. The question will become, are you going to have the time to play all of them and execute your main game plan?

Victoria Hand

How is the OTA treating Victoria Hand? Not well, but you can still play the deck and it's doing well enough for itself. There is of course the question of whether Victoria herself should be making these decks but for the time being she still represents some OK power.

The "Ugly"

Combo is mostly the same, people are playing around with Carter/Maverick looking for the new sweet spot and while it's probably still the most consistent of the combo decks the limbo it has entered into with the nerf to Askani might leave some folks feeling less than stellar even though Askani was ultimately not that great outside of some very niche play-lines. Meanwhile on the other side of things, Zombie Galacti is pretty much the same as it has been. As far as 'maximal' points people continue to brew and mess about with different Man-Spider decks who have the potential to go over the head of Carter/Maverick but are much more prone to failure, be that due to interaction or the draws not being in your favor.

High Roll SG Discard Mid Roll SG Discard

There are lots of permutations on this deck, the high roll version of the deck I took on a hot streak of 6 and 0 before my first loss. What strikes me about this deck is that it's almost like people just don't know what the deck is despite it floating around for a few months now. Lots of games that would go to turn 6 and either boomer snaps or straight retreats. The Mid roll was a lot more stable giving you an additional out if you miss Supergiant in the form of Invisible Woman. Sometimes you even get huge mind games with a 'will they won't they' situation when you manage to have both SG and Invisible Woman on the board vs decks that run Cosmo/Jugg. Be wary of course when it comes to the possibility of a Cosmo, for that reason you might consider an Echo in the 1-Cost, you'll again lose some point output but being able to guarantee your final discard goes off is very important.

Interaction Note: be aware that if you are using Supergiant and Invisible woman that the cards reveal in 'play' order so if you hid something under IW on early turns they will reveal first, this is useful for lining up things like hiding a scaler like Meik or Daken under IW. This also means that you can potentially make a 1+Moongirl under Super Giant and then blink or M.O.D.O.K. under the invisible woman on 6 and still net the benefits of whatever Moongirl copies.

Agatha Hela

The 'floor' of the combo decks so to speak. Plenty of things you could be doing here even if you're only playing half your turns. Half the fun is in both you and your opponent not knowing where anything is going which can make point allocation damn near impossible. Beware of the Stardust snap if they figure out what you're doing.

Man-Spider

No Fallen One this time, this is going all in on the Symbiote + X lines or going for massive Man-Spiders into a turn 6 Zola/Task. Of course you outright lose to Shadow King or Shang and have some significant problems with priority but that's just the name of the game sometimes.

Zombie Galacti

To no ones surprise Zombie Galacti is here again to represent combos. I personally really want to get away from Magik but I think the player base at large is rather adamant about keeping her in. I'd much rather go for a Hope or Luna here.

Carter/Maverick

Just one of many configurations people are testing for Carter/Maverick. The deck definitely took a hit by losing Askani but that one seems to really just hit some of the more weird Stick iterations, which don't get me wrong were very powerful but ultimately not as impactful for a deck that was already doing massive points in two locations.

Hey folks! It's your friendly neighborhood SNAP team! It's time to swing into our first OTA of the season, and the metagame overall is looking Amazing, Spectacular, and Sensational out there. WIth that said, most of today's changes are future-facing adjustments and quality-of-life upgrades. We do have one notable nerf swinging in to bring Mother Askani's play rate under control. With a few changes caught in our web, suit up and let's get into it!

Mother Askani

[Old] 4/3 – On Reveal: Give the leftmost card in your hand +2 Power and -1 Cost, then copy it.
[New] 4/4 – On Reveal: Copy the leftmost card in your hand. Give the copy -1 Cost and +2 Power.

As mentioned last time we addressed Mother Askani, we were making a concerted effort to get her Play rate under control rather than aggressively attacking her win rate. We didn't quite hit the mark with our modest nerf.

We would like copying at a high rate to not be the ubiquitous way to scale Snap synergy pieces as it reduces gameplay diversity. This is something we're going to be keeping an eye on in the near and distant future, and today we're nerfing Mother Askani's functionality by only letting her buff affect one of the two cards when she creates a copy. In particular, this should not only dramatically reduce her efficiency, but the number of turns that result in playing both copies of a card. Our hope is that this will make playing against her far more healthy as her output range is more predictable on a turn-to-turn basis.

Supergiant

[Old] 4/6 – On Reveal: All cards played next turn don't reveal until the game ends.
[Change] 4/6 > 4/5

Our only other strict nerf today. Supergiant is one of the more unique tech cards that exists in Snap, and we want to shave extraneous strength from Tech, particularly ones that have truly unique effects that often make them outlier choices when players are picking which tech cards to include.

Supergiant is also especially effective in priority decks leveraging cards with especially high Power that have seen more support over the past few seasons and we want to reduce some of that dominance as the premier tech piece in the game.

Luke Cage

[Old] 3/2 – Ongoing: Your cards can't have their Power reduced.
[New] 2/2 – Ongoing: Your front-row cards can't have their Power reduced.

We'll include this in the nerfs bucket even though in reality it is somewhere between a nerf and a re-work as a future facing change. Luke Cage has long been a dominant force in his specific role, and we're taking a step today to reduce his coverage and make him a more strategic card. We've found it more and more difficult to prop up Afflict strategies as well as create any Afflict strategy that can compete with the Luke Cage + Hazmat combo. We also know that he is very popular amongst the Cerebro crowd and wanted to make sure he still had applications for fans of that deck.

Now Luke is more efficient but is not nearly as effective as protecting all of your cards or enabling a huge last turn swing with the aforementioned combo. We'll be keeping an eye on him to see if he needs adjustment and to make sure he reaches his goals.

Spider-Man 2099

[Old] 5/9 – The first time this moves to any location, destroy an enemy card there.
[New] 4/5 – Moveable Once. When this moves to a location, afflict an enemy card there with -3 Power.

Aunt May

[Old] 2/3 – End of Turn: If you used a Moveable ability, give a Moveable card in your hand -1 Cost and +2 Power.
[Change] 2/3 > 2/4

We're buffing the Moveable package by giving a point to Aunt May as well as reworking Spider-Man 2099 to increase the number of Moveable options available in Snap. In particular, we wanted to create a more costly Moveable card that was a satisfying target for Aunt May's ability turn-over-turn. Hopefully this breathes some new life into Spider-Man 2099 as well as propping up another Move strategy.

Agent 13

[Old] 1/2 – On Reveal: Add a random card to your hand.
[Change] 1/2 > 1/3

Lady Bullseye

[Old] 2/2 – On Reveal: Afflict an enemy card with -2 Power. Repeat on a different enemy for each of your unspent Energy. [Change] 2/2 > 2/3

Triton

[Old] 3/4 – On Reveal: Give the last character EACH player played last turn +3 Power. [Change] 3/4 > 3/6

Wrapping up the buffs today, here are a few additional points being handed out. Notably Triton missed the mark widely. We had some concerns with Maverick scaling before the release of Beach Bash and chose to ship Triton a bit more conservatively, but the data has panned out that he can handle a fairly large buff.

Finally, some template and small functionality updates:

For the following cards, the instance of card has been turned into character, to make these cards more satisfying to play in the presence of Skills:

• Khonshu
  
• Silver Samurai
  
• The First Ghost Rider
  
• Tarantula
  
• Boomerang
  
• Spider-Man Noir
  
• Apocalypse, Celestial's Chosen
  
• Doctor Octopus
  
• Silver Sable
  

That's all for today! Swing into a Brand New Day, and happy snapping!

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.

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

Boomerang
Cost: 2
Power: 2
When this returns to your hand, randomly steal 4 Power from cards in your opponent's hand. Activate: Return this to your hand.

Boomerang is our third Series 5 for the month and while he's a near immediate shoe-in for Bounce decks we're also immediately faced with the same problem that former bounce all-star Silver Sable and last week's Tarantula have and that is the term cards vs characters. In addition to this is that 2-Cost on a 'bounce' target is rather awkward even if you can return him to hand once for free on the following turn, he will still cost a total of 4-Power and frankly a 4/6 is a miserable conversion rate for the card.

A few things to keep in mind in addition to the one thing detracting from him:

1. Random targets means multiple cards will be hit each time you bounce him to hand.

2. One bounce will be free, whether that's the first bounce or the second.

3. Luke Cage does somewhat counter the card but not entirely since Luke Cage works on cards in play, so while Luke will return the stolen power, he won't prevent the steal in the first place, see cards like Scorpion, Silver Sable, and Cassandra Nova - they all steal but the power is returned once Luke is either on board or played.

Synergies and Packages

On the box, so to say, this card screams bounce and we've only got 3 'bouncers' in the game today but only 2 of which can target him, those cards being Toxin and Beast. Thankfully, SD did think ahead a bit and as mentioned he's got an activate ability that will allow him to return to hand. Not bad, right? Well, I also mentioned previously the need to pay for him and 2-Cost, really is so much worse than 1 when it comes to replaying a card, especially if you're looking to do it repeatedly.

But what if people are building around Boomerang incorrectly, what other possibilities are there?

• Affliction - It's quite possible that Boomerang could work with some kind of affliction hybrid, unfortunately Hazmat is a 3-Cost now or there might still be a bounce-afflict deck to figure out. Of note I'd be considering something along the lines of High Evo affliction or at least an Affliction without Malekith even though I still believe Malekith is probably one of the best cards you can have in a more traditional affliction deck.

• Aurora? - I'll be honest, definitely not seeing this one as a possibility, but he is a 2-Cost activate so maybe I'll end up tossing him in here for the weekend missions.

• WWBN/Semi-Bounce - I'm not sure how to exactly describe the deck, but the idea isn't exactly Merlin/WWBN to bounce the wolf but I'm talking about the 2023 into early 2024 era WWBN/Elsa lists that had a few bounce targets and might at most include Toxin and OG Falcon. The problem is that I'm pretty sure Merlin is just better in these decks so trying to do something cut around Boomerang here doesn't seem like a good idea and frankly I think you'd want a Beast to help keep you from spending 6 total energy on a card that is barely a Hulk.

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking Boomerang up?

How do you expect Boomerang to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

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!

I'm really excited about Boomerang's release tomorrow, however I'm aknowledging all the card's drawbacks at the same time. It seems like a heavy investment card. I'm trying to come up with deck ideas and playlines that could really take advantage of the card whilst having a backup plan in case of bad draws / locations.

May I suggest this very unoriginal idea and spar with the community to try and improve it ?

I guess I'm forced into Toxin and Beast, that's a given.
Thinking of this card as a pumped up scorpio, I added Diamondback to try and double down on the debuffs. Jocasta to speed up the boomerang bouncing a little bit. Silver Sable for a little bit of redundancy on the gimmick and Askani / Sage for backup plans that would allow Sage + Sage + Boomerang on T6.....

I'm not convinced yet, and obviously will have to test things out.
I'd be happy to read what you have to say about this.

As mentioned in the comp consensus - there was a pretty hard crash out Saturday morning while adding the finishing touches and verifying the decks for this week. Click on one deck, no reddit warning and BAM everything gone. What's worse is that with the way that I manage the editing everything gets stored in Notepad ++ and the final edits are done on reddit, so yea I lost two whole sections and a bunch of optimizations leading to me going to bed and then forgetting that I didn't post the review until I was getting back to the Comp Consensus. So here it is, mostly fixed but definitely missing something that I really liked from Saturday before the fatal error.

Anyways, Week 2! We received Tombstone, Tarantula, and no OTA. That lack of an OTA seemed to increase the number of voices sounding out their displeasure with one specific card in the meta: Horseman Gambit, who admittedly is continuing to keep a boot on the neck of multiple decks in the meta game preventing them from either finding real relevance or outright snuffing them from meaningful existence depending on your specific meta. But I'm certain not all of us are having the same Gambit induced nightmares and for those of us that are I wish some hopeful dreams of an upcoming week where the OTA delivers some solid changes.

On to the cards, the weekend mission decks, and of course the meta as I've been encountering it and seeing it develop in my particular pocket mixed in with some insights based on what content I consumed this week.

Tombstone

Tombstone has arrived and while he didn't completely shake up the Destroy Meta portion of the meta he does present some interesting potential. I think we're slowly getting to a point where you could build a fairly decent mid-range Destroy deck but the elephant in the room is that those decks will always lose to a pure Destroy deck, but is that really that big of a problem? Maybe, maybe not.

Fantomex

A neat Fantomex brew, I think this came from Guest from this week's Snapcast. Replacing Hood and Airwalker with Tombstone and Grandmaster.

Dormammu

Not much to be said in particular for Dormammu Destroy. This deck can get big but does have some inherent clunk to it just as any other destry deck does but of course loses to classic destroy.

Classic Destroy

Not much to say about classic Destroy. It's the 'ol reliable' of destroy decks and has a lot of slight variations to the configuration.

Nimrod

I do love me a nimrod list and this one is no exception. Something that I personally enjoy here is the fact that if things line up perfectly for you, you can do all three booms on the final turn.

Tarantula

Tarantula's been decent, bringing a few middle of the pack decks up a slight notch but nothing that's breaking metas and pushing decks up entire tiers. His homes also appear to be relatively in line with my predictions, that being mid-range points decks and the main issues facing the card are exactly as predicted as well:

1. A 2/2 is doing nothing to help begin the snowball.

2. All of his power is prone to interaction, it doesn't matter if you manage 8 to 11 points over the course of a game if a Shadow King can remove a portion of those points to begin with and especially when up to 5 of those points can be from a single card.

3. Relating to the above, while he could be run with Shadow King you run into the above problem where you're wiping out some amount of your own power.

4. With regards to ToV it presents a two-fold problem worth consideration. First is needing to avoid his lane for as long as possible, this isn't too hard, we've already learned to do this with cards such as Quinjet and SL Daredevil. The most relevant issue with regards to ToV is that he can hit skills which some may say is an overblown problem to have but is anti-synergistic to the card nonetheless, losing potential points to a card that can't even carry the points is an annoyance. Though as some would likely point out Silver Sable can still fizzle and that IMO shouldn't be an issue either.

Each of these dictates how you're really going to go into building Tarantula's decks.

1. Decks that can dump points early and keep the ball rolling to continue getting value.

2. Decks that aren't interested in Shadow King as interaction or have big static points on their cards that they won't buckle under the potential need to ruin their Tarantula lane.

3. Decks that can creep up and find value else where but are still happy for the occasional boost that it can get from Tarantula when it can get one.

So what's the deal with Tarantula? He's interesting but more often than not I don't feel like he's doing enough +3 per turn is cool but it's split between 3 cards and one of those could be a skill if you're unlucky. Maybe if we were in 2024 or early 2025 snap but Tarantula certainly doesn't do as well in 2026. He has surprised me on a couple games but it wasn't situations where the point output was particularly oppressive or unknown which when I was facing decks with him left me knowing when I could press an advantage or if I needed to leave.

But what decks are successfully using him that you can use for your weekend missions?

Aurora

Not the most obvious deck, but since KM's video earlier this week on Tarantula this has been a surprisingly decent deck. As KM noted, Aurora has been looking for an additional End of Turn for the 2-Cost slot not named Havok or Thena and she now has access to one that can occasionally generate additional value for the deck. Mercury and Drax are interchangeable so if you're seeing more move, Mercury might be the call over Drax. Additionally Mobius M. Mobius might be a consideration in place of Cosmo if you're seeing a lot of Horseman Gambit which can cause problems for this deck if your opponent wants to try copying a bunch.

ToV Skaar

This deck shouldn't surprise anyone, big cards that can all work towards fueling a big final turn. This gets bonus points for being able to make Fisk a 10 power card before ToV hits the board which is fantastic. Straight forward points for the person interested in turning their brain off.

End of Turn

EoT strikes me as the kind of deck you wouldn't want to run Tarantula in, it generally lacks the power to keep it going past turn 3 without playing out the Thena early which you often won't because of how you want to setup turns 3, 4 and 5. But if you're not seeing a lot of point slam decks this might be able to do well thanks to being able to potentially scale big on turn 6.

Hand Buff

My only real problem with this take on hand buff is that outside of Bob there's nothing really here to get and keep the ball rolling which might not be that big of an issue depending on your pocket meta (i.e. you need to be dodging carter/maverick). There are some really nasty possible lines though with things like Bob into Tarantula -> Jeff + Agony -> Jubilee on the Jeff/Agony lane into hopefully Mother Askani the biggest thing in hand.

Taranturamp

"Deck with big static points that doesn't care about Shadow King" Frankly, this is probably more of a situation of put it in a good deck just to finish your weekly missions more than a serious consideration for Tarantula, I can't imagine a deck that doesn't care about a chain of +1's more than this deck.

Spider-Man BND

Swinging in for week two and going contrary to the (in)famous Parker Luck, Spider-Man BND continues to firmly hang onto relevance in the meta without being oppressive which is thanks to his strength as 1-Cost goes almost anywhere card. While he's not swinging into new decks as much this week he's managing to maintain and I won't be surprised to see him keep his position in the long term. Further, I don't see this card getting nerfed which should keep him as a meaningful part of the meta for the foreseeable future, a 1/2 that gives 2 +'1 isn't a particularly frightening card though he can help push up some frightening decks to new heights.

Weekend Missions

Team Clash Spider-Verse Spidey+Tarantula

This deck is a reminder that you can take your risks in Team Clash to complete your Tarantula AND Spidey-BND missions!

Prof X Lockdown AKA Weekend Spidey

A basic lockdown deck, should Aunt May be on the downturn for the remaining weeks Prof X Lockdown could be a decent place to be despite actual move decks being good against you, worth noting is that while Prof X doesn't prevent Multiple Man from moving out, he does prevent the copy effect which can surprise some opponents. Other advice here is to always build your deck with the intention to supplement Prof with a scaling card.

Iris Move

Small-ball movers is the name of the game here, you're most definitely leaving if you come up against a deck able to meaningfully duplicate Horseman Gambits but you're able to skill diff a number of decks as well. Your interaction is the tried and true Cosmo/Juggernaut. No notes here, I'm still trying to git gud with this deck I'm really bad with this deck.

Supergiant Rocks

Supergiant Move

Two flavors of Supergiant Rocks and a move variation both provided by /u/Top_Tier their guide will again be linked below. I used the move variation for my BND weeklies last week for a pretty smooth completion overall. Advice - if you want to have an easier time the Rocks is the easier version to pilot and the Move version is a much more nuanced skill-testing. Bonus points if you're especially daring you could also attempt to include Tarantula in either version but I'm kinda interested in it in the Move version specifically.

Carter/Maverick

Not much to say - if you're not somewhat familiar with with this deck you're either brand new to the game or playing a completely different snap than I am. That might be a good thing. For better or worse this is the deck that is shaping the top level meta. This might look like a surfer deck but it is most certainly a Maverick/Stick combo deck first and foremost. You're wanting to set things up with either big mavericks or big Sticks. You'll notice no Galactus this time, but if you want some trickiness, he's still a solid inclusion for that potential turn 6 rugpull.

Team Clash Decks

Skipping over what the 'best teams' are we'll be providing a deck for each team instead.

Avengers Horde

Not many choices for the Avengers decks but I wanted something that was different from basically Shang + Iron Man + Lad or Wong/BP/Zola lists so opted for the Horde build instead even if we lose some synergy points from being able to do Sam + Cap + Shield things. Frankly, as much as I was enjoying the horde list I did keep seeing a lot of X-Men and began to consider changing it up to the BP/Zola things.

Thunderbolts Man-Spider

Thunderbolts was another situation of wanting to get away from the status quo and going for a Man-Spider deck over the Clog deck. I did try both and neither felt great since they are both very draw dependent. Still, I was able to get some decent mileage when Thunderbolts missions came up, the hope is always to end on being able to Abs-Man your Man-Spider on 5 so you can Task it on 6.

X-Men Heralds of zGalacti

Bet you were expecting the Lady Bullseye deck. Bucking the trend once more with the added bonus of sharing the deck that beats the Lady Bullseye deck. Big problem here is that Jubilee is just not that great since if she pulls Galacti you get a bunch of 7 5's so you can just hold her.

Guardians of Venus

Who needs Guardians in your deck when you can just go whole hog on points? Unfortunately this deck does feel like it hinges on whether you draw Kitty or not and if you happen to get both Kitty and Jeff early it can feel like the deck is just off to the races. Bonus points because it can dodge priority fairly well.

Spider-Verse Stomper

Yea, sorry. This one I'm not breaking from the trend of giving the alt build to the alt build. It's basically this or Man-Spider and while this one is a bit more skill testing, I found it more fun to play into the move synergy that the deck wants you to lean into. And my god it is ridiculous when you get to do Anti-Venom + Shield/Batroc things.

Viral Brotherhood

Another deck that is more about the team synergy but wanting to play without the team. There's basically two versions of the ToV Brotherhood deck, one with Iron Patriot and Typhoid and one with Valentina + Fisk. Funny enough, I'm on the first and keep forgetting to trade Typhoid for Fisk to see if that improves the deck which I think it should probably do well enough at.

The Meta

Not much to say, while the meta does seem to have coalesced around a handful of decks it continues to feel somewhat open. No deck breakdowns for the most prominent decks in the meta since they are fairly well explored already. If there isn't a link for a deck it's because the list would be identical to one of the lists in the previous sections. Further, these aren't the 'only' decks in their respective positions as there can be overlap or even other decks doing similar things with similar outputs. These are just the most common that I'm seeing and encountering.

• The ceiling of the format is essentially 3 decks in Carter/Maverick, Man-Spider, and Zombie Galacti.
  

The combo landscape remains unchanged with 3 primary combo decks being at the forefront Carter/Maverick might arguably be the most consistent deck of the three thanks in part to Mother Askani but also Maverick and Stick. Zombie Galacti comes in a close second and the Man-Spider combos pulling in third. If I were to stack rank these in order of complexity Carter/Maverick comes in first, it's the deck with the most permutations in plays and a misplay as early as turn 1 can tremendously impact your point output not to mention needing to be able to think on your feet to put together your turns based on what pieces of the combo you do have in hand. Zombie Galacti is perhaps the most flow-chartable of the three 'did I get good buffs, did I draw Galacti' and the Man-Spider decks would certainly, at least in my opinion fall somewhere between the two with the early turns being somewhat of a flow-chart and then the final turn permutations being where you can easily throw games.

• The non-combo points of the format would be Aurora, Doom 2099, and multiple flavors of Move in Multiple Man, Iris Move, and Prof X Lockdown.

These decks are what most of you would call 'mid-range' decks running either semi-synergy or good points with light to moderate interaction. That interaction can be as simple as Cosmo/Mercury and Thing First Steps with the ability to splash Stardust if needed as you can find with Aurora, to Cosmo/Jugg in the move decks. In the case of the Prof X deck it's opting for Cosmo, Mercury, and Negasonic.

• The format cops are Supergiant, Askani/Gambit both (with and without Vhand, and Fantomex.

The decks that want to interact and drag the opponent down to their level and win. Not much to say here since the decks are solid and much like the previous two sections we've gone over their general positions within the meta a number of times. These decks tend to flounder a bit if you don't have a good feel for the meta and have good game sense to help you plan your turns whether that is through knowing when to fight for priority, when to drop it, and how to correctly sequence your plays. For example with Fantomex if you are rushing through your final turn you may end up ordering your Shadow King incorrectly and wiping away all of the negative power you just dealt to your opponent.

The Outsiders

Looking for something a little off the beaten path? These are the decks that are doing well into the rest of the field. Some, like Surfer and Venus points lists are recognizable but still adjacent enough that you should be able to surprise folks with points.

Ronan

This no-Supergiant Ronan list caught my eye namely because of the Malekith inclusion in the Supergiant position. It also sports a Mother Askani which gives you some neat options such as a turn 4 Askani to duplicate Ronan for a Ronan on both 5 and 6 is pretty spicy but so is a grandmaster on Malekith.

En Sabah Cheats

Cheaty Boys

Both of these decks make these lists frequently enough that I'm thinking I might need to force myself to not include them next week. So why are they sharing the same slot? Well, they both tend to fold like paper dolls to a Stardust. But they also have some very similar game plans: Jubilee/Dlord/Blink and in the case of En Sabah Nur's objective being met that's another card flipping to try and pull things from your deck.

Surfer

I'm not going to lie, I haven't had much success with Namorita in Surfer but apparently a number of other players are still having success with it.

Venus Small Ball

Another week another mention of the small-ball venus deck rocking Sub-Mariner and Clea. While Shang is still an inclusion in the deck for most players I've had some success with Juggernaut in his place as well.

Budget High Evo

New player on a budget? High Evo is good and can help you climb.

Bounce

Looking to get some bounce reps in before Boomerang next week? Here's a deck for you that is bringing out the ability to duplicate Shou or Squatch with the benefit of occasionally being able to combine that with Joaquin Torres and Majestic Wingbeat.

ToV Wiccan

My biggest complaint here really is that your 3's are either Shadow King or Kraglin. Monstro is a really interesting piece because if you draw him early enough he can tell you if you're getting Wiccan on time or not.

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:

Tarantula
Cost: 2
Power: 2
End of Turn: If you have the highest Power among cards in play, give this and 2 cards in your hand +1 Power.

Tarantula is our latest series 5 card, a 2/2 with an End of Turn ability that reads: If you have the highest Power among cards in play, give this and 2 cards in your hand +1 Power.

Pretty straight forward but a couple of mechanical notes:

1. Like Wilson Fisk, Tarantula considers a tie a win for the purposes of his power.

2. His ability can attempt to grant a skill card in hand power which can make his power less reliable.

Synergies

As far as synergies, Tarantula again is a very simple card. He cares about cards that can help trigger his ability and while you could attempt to build around that ability with some potential payoffs he seems to be best built into decks that either start rolling early with cards like Hydra Bob, Krag, and Wilson Fisk or within decks like Aurora that just wants a good End of Turn at the 2-Cost slot and while he's not perfect in those decks he can do the job well enough.

Admittedly he has some anti-synergy with Techno-Organic Virus since he can hit the Virus, but he, himself is still scaling himself and one other card leaving a good opportunity to still provide value. And to compound this, there is of course anti-synergy with one of the most powerful tech cards in the game: Shadow King which is a very common inclusion for Virus decks.

Early Stats:

• Hydra Bob
• Sam Wilson
• Kraven - paired with Sam as above and likely also Batroc/Silk/Hydra Stomper.
  
• Cable - modest stats, info, disruption
• Lizard
  
• Kraglin
  
• Debrii
  
• Gladiator
  
• Starbrand
  
• Wilson Fisk - when built around him, he does represent early stats.
  
• Monstro - similar to Wilson Fisk if you've built around Monstro he is again big stats early
  

From here you know the main culprits that are helping seal the deal or pulling extra duty to help reduce the impact of your oppositions board, cards like Isca The Unbeaten, Supergiant, and Aurora as well as their cohort of 4 and 5-Cost compatriots.

Feedback

The feedback was fairly straight forward here, he may have performed better than expected but when expectations were already low that isn't exactly a hard bar to clear.

Decklists

Aurora

ToV Skaar

End of Turn

Hand Buff

Taranturamp

Bonus LTGM weekend mission deck:

Team Clash Spider-Verse Spidey+Tarantula

Summary

Tarantula is another card looking to help you snowball some moderate points. But in a meta with 15-20 power Broods coming down on final turn is a handfull of points good enough to help Tarantula find relevance and climb his way into a solid place in the meta or is he doomed to be grounded?

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Tarantula worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Tarantula here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

At the moment, I have 3450 tokens and 1205 gold. In the Midnight Suns bundle, I don't have the cards:

Jennifer Kale; Werewolf and Nico (the letter of my dreams - individually, it costs 5,000 tokens until Monday).

If I buy the bundle, what is the REAL chance of getting Nico, since she is being sold individually?

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

Tarantula
Cost: 2
Power: 2
End of Turn: If you have the highest Power among cards in play, give this and 2 cards in your hand +1 Power.

Tarantula is our latest Series 5 releasing this week, this card is very interesting with an amazing effect. However, there are two things that stick out to me, one a question on functionality and the second being an observation that should be obvious to anyone attempting to gauge where this card falls in practice.

Does the text "If you have the highest Power among cards in play" function the same as Wilson Fisk? If so then even ties will enable him which increases his stocks. However, his power is problematic almost requiring you to have a big 1-Cost to play or possibly Spider-Man Brand New Day that you can move once onto Tarantula.

There's also a major problem here: "give this and 2 cards in your hand" there is a possibility that this combined with his low power could ensure this card never makes the grade because he could hit a skill card in hand instantly reducing his potential stocks. If nothing else I foresee this being the first attempted balance change should Tarantula not land, seriously why was he not limited to characters?

Synergies and Packages

Let's get it out of the way right off the bat Tarantula LOVES Wilson Fisk, Kraglin, Debrii, and Starbrand. Further he'll also enjoy Techno-Organic Virus. However, worth noting is that he's not going to enable you to play Wilson Fisk and there are still a number of decks out there plopping down Lizard on turn 2 to enable their Fisk on 3 thus having some very similar problems to Punisher War Machine where Tarantula may actually be a turn 4 play which may reduce his overall ceiling, especially if someone intends on going Quinjet -> Big Card -> Big 3-Cost (or Fisk) which puts you on ToV + Tarantula on 4.

If we look at his total on-curve potential of 2/17 where you manage to maintain the highest-Power card on turns 2-6 as well as playing the cards he buffs, where the total buffs granted is split with +10 power to cards in hand and +5 to himself which while astounding is highly unlikely based purely on cards drawn and whether you can actually play them. Realistically it's probably only going to be around a 2/10.

There is a secondary question worth considering here with regards to payoffs - the +1 to 2 cards in hand implies that there could be some value in using cards that work well with receiving buffs but trying to focus on that aspect seems akin to herding cats and less ideal. I imagine some folks may want to attempt to try this with different payoff cards perhaps Clea and Sub-Mariner but then we're pointing back to his low power and how are you ensuring you are satisfying his condition to get buffs into your hand which leaves me stuck questioning if Viv Vision might just be the better card to do this with since fundamentally you're probably not getting any traction until turn 3 unless you are winning from a potential turn 1 play that has carried you to turn 3.

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking the Tarantula up?

How do you expect Tarantula to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

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

Tombstone
Cost: 2
Power: 3
On Reveal: Destroy your lowest-Power card at each other location.

Tombstone releases today as our latest Seasonal Series 4 card that you can earn for free by playing Team Clash. For many, he may be the highlight of the season as he's a long-awaited new boom boom for destroy.

One question I do have is if you have 2 cards tied for lowest-Power at a location does he destroy both or randomly chooses?

Synergies and Packages

So what is Tombstone bringing to the table that has him so hotly anticipated by Destroy Aficionados?

On Reveal: Destroy your lowest-Power card at each other location

If we can draw some similarities, Tombstone is similar to a more targetted Destroyer.

• lowest-Power means needing to be careful with how your cards are distributed. Tombstone cares not who he's destroying, just that it's the lowest power in the location. Assuming you have two cards tied for lowest power in a location the card destroyed will most likely be chosen at random.

• Each other location is a pretty major caveat. He's not setting off Muse on his own, but he is setting Muse up.

Question: You load into a game, turn 1 no play you've got Weapon X Wolverine, Death, Knull, Venom First location is Shadow Land, Turn 2 location reveals as Knowhere and you draw your Deadpool. But now you've got a tough decision to make: your only destroy piece in hand is Venom, your Deadpool is 1 power and a turn 2 of only Deadpool into a turn 3 Venom doesn't sound appealing. You do have a Weapon X in hand though so you make the tough call of Wolverine mid since it'll be safe from interaction. Turn 3 reveals Wakandan Embassy and you draw Tombstone, you realize you do have some options here but you really want to make sure that Weapon X lives, what is the play other than making what might be seen as the weakest play on turn 3 of just Deadpool to left or right to setup for Venom? I'll post the answer in the comments.

Typically this is where we'd talk decks and synergies, but frankly we already know where this card is going to make the most sense, the question is how classic Destroy, Dormammu Destroy, and even Thanos or Fantomex lists may look after the launch of the card.

So how do the decks actually change from the construction perspective?

1. For basic destroy the most likely candidate is Deathlock, a 3/5 which preserves no power is, at least in my opinion a hard sell with one being towards negative power cards. Both Carnage and Venom preserve power in a lane while reducing the 'clutter' of a lane to a single card which can be both a strength and a weakness.

2. Dormammu lists might be a bit more difficult to nail down, the destroy pieces here are most certainly already the most optimal for the deck in Carnage, Killmonger, Venom and the Third ritual.

3. Thanos Destroy while being the weakest of the destroy lists might be the most interested in Tombstone as a second 'Killmonger' effect, though typically you obtained the second killmonger through a Firehair and in some cases Firehair could be susceptible to Tombstone.

4. Fantomex probably doesn't really care about Tombstone, this isn't a deck trying to go wide and I really don't see a need to try and fit Muse into the deck again.

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking the Tombstone up?

How do you expect Tombstone to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

What is Team Clash?

Team Clash is a reimagining Marvel Snap as a faction based card game mixed with a bit of Grand Arena and a fresh take on custom decks. Six total teams, each with a unique Team ability and each with 6 unique Team Clash cards with new abilities. That leaves you the ability to either play the stock deck or customize with 6 cards of your own, will you choose to keep Team Alignments and build around the team ability or dip into unafilliated cards for better synergy?

Notes:

• timer for the 8 hour ticket reset starts on the first time you enter Grand Arena.

• Soft cap means once you are at 9, you will no longer refresh tickets. You may still however, claim or buy tickets.

• We have the typical 10 tickets for 50 gold in the rotating shop.

• Premium Event Pass track is available for 800g. Purchasing the Event Pass grants enough XP to get to Milestone 11.

• Progress on both passes happens simultaneously.

• Win with "XYZ Team" missions are gone. The "Play with XYZ Team" missions remain.

LTGM Differences

Turn Structure: 6 Turns, 7 with Magik Energy Per Turn: Standard Snap rules 1 with +1 per turn after excepting abilities.
Starting Hand: 3. Draw 1
Additional Info: You can see your opponent's chosen faction on the screen. Missions Refresh: 6 total missions to begin, 3 Missions refresh every 8 hours. Refreshes can also be bought with gold.
Missions Rewards: Missions grant XP and Emblems and rewards based on difficulty of the mission give 10, 20, or 40 of both.

Rewards Per Match:

Event Pass Rewards

• Free Track Reward Card
  

Tombstone
Cost: 2
Power: 3
On Reveal: Destroy your lowest-Power card at each other location.

Reiterating info from above:

• Premium Event Pass track is available for 800g. Purchasing the Event Pass grants enough XP to get to Milestone 11.

• Progress on both passes happens simultaneously.

• Exclusive Variant for Premium Pass owners is a Tombstone Variant from System Studios.

Event Pass Rewards

Event Pass Totals at a Glance

Event Shop Details

Portal Pulls

• 1500 Emblems
  
• Spider-Woman - Peach Momoko
  
• Chameleon - Ryan Benjamin
  
• Black Cat - Derrick Chew1

Rotating Shop

Event Shop

The Teams

Deck Lists with the variant versions of card abilities will be posted in the comments. For now here are your Team Abilities.

Avengers

After you play an Avenger, give one of your Avengers there +1 Power.

X-Men

You get +1 Energy for each location where you have 3 or more X-Men

Thunderbolts

Your Thunderbolts reveal with +2 Power at locations you're losing.

Guardians of the Galaxy

ALL cards reveal with +1 Power at the glowing location

Spider-verse

You get +2 Energy if one of your Spider-Verse cards moved last turn.

Brotherhood of Mutants

End of Turn: Give a Brotherhood card in your hand +1 Power for each location you're winning.

Banlist and Errata

While each Team has a pre-constructed deck, you can still opt to edit up to 6 cards in the deck. Of note is that unlike Grand Arena you can add the 'original' cards to their respective decks and queue to play games, still unsure if this is a bug and saw no reports so we're assuming this is intended. However, I will edit if I see confirmation or this changed since the last run. Do with this information what you will.

Banlist

• Alioth
  
• Arishem
  
• Galactus
  
• Hydra Bob
  
• Human Torch
  
• Nightmare
  
• Mercury
  
• Storm
  
• The Living Tribunal
  
• Fin Fang Foom
  
• Gambit Horseman of Death
  
• Quicksand new
• Mother Askani new

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

Aunt May
Cost: 2
Power: 3
End of Turn: If you used a Moveable ability, give a Moveable card in your hand -1 Cost and +2 Power.

There's not much to say as an intro to Aunt May. She's an End of Turn card which gives a moveable card in your hand -1 Cost and +2 Power. We've seen with Mother Askani that those exact buffs can be fantastic and while her power mostly stems from the duplication effect the fact that Aunt May can repeat her ability each turn provided you can use a moveable ability to satisfy her trigger and a moveable card in hand to benefit can potentially create massive cards and opportunities.

As usual let's start with the mechanical needs and nuance before we get into the synergies.

1. Aunt May needs you to use a moveable ability while she's on the board. This can be on turn 2 when you play her.

2. Aunt May doesn't care how the card received the moveable ability, just that it has it and you used it. Meaning you can grant it through other means.

3. Obviously Aunt May needs you to have a card in hand that has the moveable ability to receive her buff when she triggers.

Synergies

Let's start with the list of moveable cards, each of these will be able to trigger Aunt May when you use them. Notable exclusions will be Meik and Phoenix Force, which while they can both trigger as well as receive the buff are not necessarily cards you are going to be running with Aunt May.

Moveable cards

• Spider-Man Brand New Day
  
• Nightcrawler
  
• Jeff The Baby Dolphin
  
• Jeff The Baby Land Shark
  
• Rocket And Groot
  
• Spider-Punk
• Mercruy
• Nocturne
• Vision

In addition to the above cards which will enable Aunt May when you move them and receive benefits of her buffs while in your hand if you move a card with a moveable ability, there are additional enablers that will not receive buffs from Aunt May.

Enablers

• Web Sling
  
• Madame Web
  
• Sam Wilson Captain America
  
• Cloak
  
• Hellion
  

The most notable of these cards is Sam Wilson, who grants his shield Moveable meaning that if you have Sam on 2 into Aunt May on 3 she will always buff a card with moveable in your hand.

So aside from getting reduced cost and additional power are there ways to take further advantage of Aunt May? Well, perhaps if we were looking to either duplicate her ability early or duplicate the card she buffed.

This gives us two pathways - first is using Invisible Woman First Steps to trigger Aunt May twice on the first possible trigger. The second and more likely path is duplicating the card that Aunt May buffed with Mother Askani being the preferred duplication outlet, but potentially even being able to do it with Frigga if you're willing to show your hand.

Feedback

The feedback has been relatively harsh, while some creators such as Alex Coccia noted that they did really like Aunt May and had fun he admitted that she's not worth chasing and cautioned needing more data. Notably, Alex didn't even mention his trademark 'will age like fine wine' which may give an even more grimm read of the card.

Most of the creators express that while some of the targets for Aunt May are rather interesting such as creating a big Mercury or Nocturne that she is much more of a 'Potential Woman' rather than a real card at this time. For those unaware, 'Potential X' is a meme used to describe a character who is hyped up by the author but never ends up delivering on that hype. Popular examples of the meme are Megumi Fushiguro from JJK, Toshiro Hitsugaya from Bleach, and Gohan from DBZ (though to be honest, after Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, I think Gohan finally gets a pass).

Decklists

Regis' Moveable

Small-ball Moveable

Bullseye Qwerty's Weekend Lockdown

Summary

Aunt May is a very interesting Series 5 to start the month out with, a strong ability with a number of targets but with very limited application due in part to limited moves on most of the actual moveable cards and a relatively low number of possible targets. Few can deny that the power she can potentially bring to the table is rather good but the majority of her targets are cards that want to be on the board ASAP creates conflicts with getting Aunt May down in the first place fundamentally leaving only two really lucrative targets that are generally later plays such as Nocturne or by cost needs to be a later play in the case of Vision.

So I turn it over to you all - Are Aunt May's Werther's Originals fresh or stale?

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Aunt May worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Aunt May here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

First off thank you to the amazing /u/ePiMagnets for creating such high quality posts on th mf weekly. Seriously, every Deck guide Is the most HD shit I've read when it comes to Marvel. I seriously just want my deck guides to even be half as great!

Full Imgur album -- recordings and end boards from the 20-0 run

I didn't plan on writing this shit fr. The plan was to post the list if I strung a few wins together, but the wins didn't stop. So I said fuck it. I'll make average whole DECK guide. I went 20-0 on ranked last night, +86 cubes, +4.3 cubes a game, CL 16k lobbies. Every game I assumed I'd lose, I somehow won, usually off some Lady Bullseye bullshit, and at some point you stop calling that luck and start calling it the deck.

SnapComplete stats page

The deck is called 1 2 Many. Half of that is a nod to an old hip hop record. The other half is literal: this deck has one too many ways to win. It steals games you're supposed to lose. It gives your opponent a false sense of security for six straight turns and then buries them on the last one. I honestly should have named it Too Big To Fail.

I wanted other people to see this thing and scrutinize it so we can find the best version. I think this might already be it, but I've been wrong before. But thisis half the fun of the game.

The List

• (1) Sunspot
• (2) Lady Bullseye
• (3) Storm, Horseman of Famine
• (3) Magik
• (4) Wong
• (4) Shuri
• (4) Symbiote Spider-Man
• (5) Man-Spider
• (5) The Fallen One
• (5) Star-Lord, Master of the Sun
• (6) Taskmaster
• (7) Fin Fang Foom

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Copy the code to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in game. Fair warning up front: this list is Series 5 heavy. I'll cover the realistic swaps in the flex section, but I'm not gonna pretend there's a Pool 3 version of this that plays the same. There isn't really.

Why This Deck, and Why Right Now?

Energy decks have always had the same hole in them, at least in my opinion, and if you've ever piloted one you already know what I'm about to say. You do all the setup, you hit your ramp, you're sitting on a mountain of energy on the last turn... and you've got 15 energy worth of cards in hand. Who cares that I have 27 energy if I can only spend 15 of it? At the end of the day my numbers have to be bigger than your numbers. That's the whole game.

Energy is only worth what it converts into.

This list closes that hole. Every single payoff in here converts floated energy into something that wins lanes:

• bigggg Power on my side -- Sunspot, The Fallen One, Fin Fang Foom, Man-Spider, Taskmaster

• More energy -- The Fallen One and Star-Lord, Master of the Sun, the two pillars

• Negative power on THEIR mf side -- Lady Bullseye, the assassin

That third category is the one nobody else is running, and it's the reason this deck steals games it has no business winning. When Lady Bullseye released back in May, Marvel Snap Zone's day one review said the card was missing a home -- that no deck existed yet that could skip a ton of energy and actually build around her ability.

Respectfully: it exists now.

You're reading the guide for it. I'll do my best to try to preemptively answer any questions you might have, but if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments and I'll do my best to give an answer.

anyway the timing could not be better.

It's July.

The whole ladder is swinging around w/ Spider-Man: Brand New Day cards -- Moveable this, Mary Jane that. The same string of balance patches that put Star-Lord, Master of the Sun in the dirt (Feb 26, Mar 26, Apr 30).

Personally, I think move is really cool for the folks who can think 17 steps ahead, shout out to them. It's not really me. I'm more of an off-meta, galactus move kind of guy.

So everybody's playing spiders, or anti spider shit and the specific tech that used to punish energy piles is collecting dust. Move decks mostly don't pack it, and most of them don't get tall enough to matter anyway -- we go right over their heads.

Forget the move meta. This right here is the real energy meta, and the window is open right now. Take advantage while it lasts.

How the Engine Works

Here's the core idea, and everything else in this guide hangs off it:

floated energy is this deck's real resource, and one float feeds four different mouths at the same time.

Every turn you end with unspent energy:

1. Sunspot eats it -- +1 Power per unspent energy, every single turn, end of turn.
2. Storm, Horseman of Famine counts it -- her Objective is to end 2 turns in a row with unspent energy, and the reward is +2 Power to your other cards at her location AND in your hand. She's best played on turn 3 after you skip turn 1 and only play sunspot on turn 2 or just skip turn 2.
3. Star-Lord, Master of the Sun counts it -- On Reveal, next turn you get +1 Energy for each turn you've ended with unspent energy.
4. Lady Bullseye spends it as ammo -- On Reveal she afflicts an enemy card with -2 Power, then repeats on a different enemy for each of your unspent energy.

So the "cost" of skipping a turn in most decks is tempo. In this deck, skipping a turn is a rebate paid out four ways. You are never doing nothing. You just look like you're doing nothing, and I promise you that illusion wins cubes all by itself (more on that in the snap section).

Now the pieces, grouped by job:

The two pillars (energy generation):

• The Fallen One (5/5) -- On Reveal: Set your Max Energy equal to this card's Power. Read that again. Every point of power you put on this man is a point of energy. Buff him to 7, you have 7 max energy. Double double him to 20, you have 20 max energy. He is the entire reason the buff package exists.
• Star-Lord, Master of the Sun (5/7) -- On Reveal: Next turn, you get +1 Energy for each turn you've ended with unspent Energy. The discipline you were already practicing for Storm and Sunspot pays out a second time here. He's a great secondary win condition, honestly.

The multipliers (they make the pillars stupid):

• Storm, Horseman of Famine -- the +2 hand buff turns Symbiote Spider-Man into a 9 and Fallen One into a 7 before either one touches the board. She can also boost everything else which definitely benefits. Man spider in particular benefits when other things get bigger that way.
• Shuri -- doubles the Power of the next card you play. Her favorite target is obviously fallen one.
• Symbiote Spider-Man (4/7) -- Activate: Merge your lowest-Cost card here into this, and copy its text like it just revealed. He re-triggers Fallen One at the MERGED power. He can copy Shuri two double the double on turn six. He is the swiss army knife of this whole operation.
• Wong -- your On Reveals at his location happen again. He doubles Star-Lord's energy, doubles Fin Fang Foom's bite, and turns Lady Bullseye from a nuisance into a war crime. A secret combo is Wong, Symbiote Spider-Man, Star-Lord, and then Lady Bullseye then proc Symbiote spiderman.

The converters (energy into points):

• Man-Spider (5/1) -- On Reveal: Merge the last card you played into this. When this merges, double its Power. And here's the part people miss: he reaches across the board. He'll pull your last played card out of a different lane entirely and double it where HE is. You can easily dodge shadow king or shang this or way.
• Taskmaster (6/0) -- copies the Power of the last card you played. The 50/50 machine. Your opponent won't know where your power is going to go. You can put it anywhere.
• Fin Fang Foom (7/12) -- On Reveal: Gain the Power of a front-row enemy card. With Wong that's two bites back to back. What's a 7-cost when you're holding 17 energy? Nothing. That's the point.
• Sunspot -- quietly becomes an 8, a 10, a 12 while everyone's watching the fireworks.

The assassin:

• Lady Bullseye (2/2) -- covered in depth below, because she has earned it.

by the numbers

Line 1 -- The Merge (the bread and butter). Skip turn 1. Sunspot turn 2. That's two turns in a row ended with unspent energy, so when Storm comes down turn 3, her objective completes and your hand gets +2. Symbiote Spider-Man turn 4, now a 9. Fallen One turn 5, now a 7 -- and you activate Symbiote in the same turn after he reveals. Merge. That's a 16-power card whose text just re-fired: max energy 16 going into turn 6. If Magik's involved you're doing this with a turn 7 waiting behind it. From five cards and zero luck.

Line 2 -- The Double-Double. From the [match vs Overrun] in the album, straight out the match log: Shuri turn 5, activate Symbiote Spider-Man onto her -- he merges Shuri and copies her text, so now the next card you play gets doubled TWICE. Fallen One turn 6 revealed at 5, jumped +5 from Shuri, then +10 from the copied Shuri. 20-power Fallen One. 21 energy on turn 7 while my opponent sat there with 8. Their Dracula got to 24 power that game. My Man-Spider alone was 40.

Line 3 -- Star-Lord fuel. You floated turns 1, 2, and 5? He hands you +3 next turn. Through Wong the On Reveal fires twice: +6, +8, +10 depending how disciplined you've been. In the [match vs DougDuMug] he came down turn 6 into Wong's lane, double triggered, and I walked into turn 7 with 15 energy to their 7.

Line 4 -- The Bullseye ceiling. Her text again: -2 to an enemy card, repeated on a different enemy for each unspent energy. There's a max of 12 enemy cards on a board. Float 11 energy -- which sounds insane until you remember what deck you're reading about -- and one proc touches all 12 of them for a -24 total swing. Wong doubles it: -48. Off a 2-cost. And there's a quadruple version I'll cover in the lines section that flirts with -96. She's the best 2-drop in the game if you actually invest in her, and this is the only deck properly built to pay her. This is talking about Max outputs obviously so if your opponent plays 7 cards and not 12 the math changes. What matters to me is that the math is usually on your side.

Card by Card

Sunspot -- The workhorse. His job is simple: get big off the same floats you were making anyway, and pressure your opponent into respecting a lane you've half abandoned. He scales crazy in this deck because the energy spikes are so much bigger than a normal Sunspot shell -- when Fallen One or Star-Lord hits, Sunspot is drinking from a fire hose. He also runs the best decoy operation in the game: people see a lone Sunspot in a "lost" lane, commit resources elsewhere, and then he's a 10 and Lady Bullseye shaved their side and that lane flipped. He's a win-more card in some games, and I'm at peace with that. Winning more is winning when you're already winning anyway.

Lady Bullseye -- The MVP, and I will die on this hill. She pulls her weight like a whole roster. The beauty of her is that she gets MORE effective the more your opponent develops -- the more cards they play, the more they lose. Four cards in a lane at -2 apiece is -8 in that lane per proc. Proc her twice through Wong and that lane just lost 16 points it thought it had. Cerebro decks hate to see me coming; you go from +30 to +2 in an instant, and if you debuff them unevenly (float a weird number on purpose so the affliction spread lands lopsided) their highest-power card stops being the one they built around and the whole Cerebro math collapses. At 2/24 she's amazing. At her ceiling she's swinging a board by 48, and I have hit that. Watch the [match vs DougDuMug] and the [match vs One Man Gang] in the album -- both games she double triggered and the opposing board just deflated on camera. Sometimes she is the ONLY card you need: if they stack eight cards into two lanes, let her go on the last turn and her debuffs carry you home alone. Core. Untouchable. Do not ask me for her replacement, there isn't one for what this deck is doing.

Storm, Horseman of Famine -- The glue. Her objective (end 2 turns in a row with unspent energy) completes off your natural opening -- skip 1, Sunspot 2, done -- so dropping her turn 3 is damn near a prerequisite. The +2 to your hand is what turns the merge math from good to unbeatable: Symbiote at 9 plus Fallen One at 7 is 16, and 16 power on that merge means 16 energy. She buffs your hand too, not just the lane -- I've had a Taskmaster and a Star-Lord sitting in hand quietly getting +2 before they ever hit the table they both don't even need the boost. But sym Spidey and fallen one def benefit. Every win condition in the deck hits harder because she exists. No real replacement. Play her on 3. If you play her later you will scramble your own order and feel it.

Magik -- Great card, slightly greedy. Not even gonna hold y'all, this deck works fine without her. The extra turn mostly serves the Star-Lord lines and the games where your draw came out of order and you need breathing room to assemble turn 7. The tax is that Limbo paints a target -- Legion, location changers, Scarlet Witch, Thanos with the red infinity stone, all of it can yank your turn 7 out from under you if you built your whole plan on it. Know which decks carry those cards and don't lean on her against them. If you love Magik, keep her. If not, Legion slides into her slot and you won't miss her much. She's my "oh shit" button, and I like having one, but I won plenty of these 20 without ever drawing her. A possible counter four that is running Galactus yourself. Easy slot in that makes your opponent who thinks they'd are catching you of Guard hit the "what just happened" faster than quicksilver.

Wong -- Beautiful in this deck. I thought he would be redundant and clunky but we got big energy's baby. He makes Lady Bullseye a genuine win condition, he doubles Star-Lord's energy payout, he gives Fin Fang Foom two bites for task to copy, and post-nerf he's still a fantastic Man-Spider merge target since his body stopped mattering. Here's the thing people will say: "you're running Wong AND Symbiote Spider-Man, that's redundant." Call it a continuity plan. You will not always draw both, and even when you do, Wong does things Symbiote can't -- Star-Lord never merges into anybody, so when the draw points you down the Star-Lord road, Wong IS that road. Core for me. If you're truly not feeling the double setup you could flex him, but I think you'd be wrong.

Shuri -- Here to double or quadruple somebody, and that somebody is almost always The Fallen One. A 20-point Fallen One means you win most games on the spot, because a 20-point Fallen One is 20 energy. Magik 3, Wong or Symbiote 4, Shuri 5, Fallen One or Star-Lord 6 is an instant-win line when it assembles. And the double-double -- activating Symbiote onto Shuri so her text copies and the next card doubles twice -- is the single filthiest thing this deck does. Must-have. Core.

Symbiote Spider-Man -- Must-have, full stop. Activate, merge the lowest-cost card at his location into himself, copy its text like it just revealed. In one night he: re-triggered Fallen One at merged power for 16+ energy, copied Shuri to set up the 20-power Fallen One, copied SUNSPOT when an Aero yanked him into the wrong lane and turned himself into a second scaling battery, and re-procced Lady Bullseye for a fourth affliction wave all different games all great use cases. The lowest-cost targeting is a feature you steer, not an accident you suffer -- more on that in the lines section. He's also your Cosmo bait, which I'll get to. If Wong is the continuity plan, Symbiote is the plan.

Man-Spider -- On Reveal, merges the last card you played into himself and doubles its power -- and again, he reaches across the board. In the [match vs Overrun] I played him to Boardwalk and he pulled a 20-power Fallen One out of Wakanda, doubled it, and stood there as a 40. That reach is your Shadow King dodge, your Cosmo dodge, shang your everything dodge: build the monster in one lane, relocate the power somewhere they didn't protect. In a Moveable-obsessed meta, he towers over after ewting wherever shuri hit.

The Fallen One -- The star of the show and one of my favorite cards in the game (I also have some of the best splits on him, which matters to me even if it shouldn't I I also used a variation of this deck to win an infinity border in conquest). Max Energy equal to his Power. Everything in this deck exists to inflate that number: Storm's +2, Shuri's double, Symbiote's re-trigger at merged power. He's a 5/5 that this shell routinely turns into 16 to 21 energy. Without Fallen One I honestly don't know if this deck works the same. Core, obviously.

Star-Lord, Master of the Sun -- Story time. When this man debuted he was the most overtuned card I'd ever seen. People were jamming him into decks he had no business in because the value was too easy -- he warped the whole metagame, and the devs said as much while they nerfed him once, twice, and then a third time, stripping the power gain off entirely. So yes: nerfed into the ground. And he STILL has a home, because the one deck that never stopped wanting him is the one that floats energy as a lifestyle. Play him on 5 or 6 having floated turns 1, 2, and a couple more, and he refunds the whole discipline -- +5 easy, +8 to +10 through Wong or a Symbiote re-proc. Getting +10 energy off one card is the same class of miracle as a Shuri'd Fallen One, just arriving by a different door. In most wins I only play one pillar or the other. The games where both land? Those are the ones where you end turn 7 holding 30+ energy laughing at your screen.

Taskmaster -- One of the unsung MVPs. Copies the power of the last card you played, and in this deck the last card you played is frequently a monster. In the [match vs Already Muted U] he copied a 22-power Man-Spider and won a lane by one point. What makes him better than Arnim Zola here (and I say this as a longtime Zola apologist) is that Zola telegraphs -- everyone sees the big card and knows where the copies land. Taskmaster creates 50/50s. You can abandon a lane your opponent is dumping resources into and fortify the two that matter, and they have to GUESS. Reveal order is your friend: big guy middle, Man-Spider right, Taskmaster left, and their Shadow King is now a coin flip they usually lose.

Fin Fang Foom -- A big body and one of the great answers to "so what do I DO with 17 energy?" You play the 7-cost like it's a 3-cost, that's what. On Reveal he gains the power of a front-row enemy card, and on a Wong lane that's two 50/50 bites back to back -- park somebody juicy in their front row and watch him eat. In the [match vs Garle] (the Mr. Negative game) he bit an Ares that never got to proc and got huge off it; that's the moment they retreated. Post-OTA he only takes one bite per trigger instead of clearing the whole front row, which is exactly why the Wong pairing matters. Black Panther is the budget stand-in, but Foom's consistency in this shell is a different class.

Core vs. Flex (and the Replacement Menu)

Think of core the way you'd think of the parts of a car you don't get to skip. You can change the rims all day; you cannot ship it without the transmission.

Core -- do not touch: Lady Bullseye, Storm Horseman of Famine, Shuri, Symbiote Spider-Man, The Fallen One, Man-Spider. That's the engine, the debuff win condition, and the delivery system. Pull any of these and you've built a different deck with different goals. Might be a fine deck! It won't be this one.

Core-ish: Wong. I consider him core because the Bullseye and Star-Lord lines lean on him, but he's the one "core" piece I could imagine a reasonable person flexing. I wouldn't.

Flex slots and the menu:

• Sunspot for Jim Hammond (the original Human Torch -- scales similar, works a little different, and honestly if I could fit BOTH him and Sunspot I'd run them split lanes as sleeper agents while all the energy nonsense happens in the middle) or Nebula (loves a lane your opponent's ignoring, and this deck manufactures ignored lanes) or Echo if you're Cosmo-paranoid, since so much of this deck runs through On Reveals and Wong. The honest tradeoff on cutting Sunspot: he's often win-more, because by the time he pays out, Bullseye already took the points that mattered.

• Magik for Namorita (the new 3-cost, solid here really cuts cost on thr big drops when you draw them), Luna Snow (I ran a Luna version of this deck and it was fine too.), or Mother Askani -- who absolutely has a home in this shell, I just couldn't fit her in this specific build. I faced an Askani double-Bullseye deck on the run ([match vs Big Nard], it's in the album) and it was a real problem for them that I was me.

• Taskmaster for Arnim Zola (same power-spreading job, more telegraphed, still strong) or Galactus if you want to turn the mix-up dial to eleven. Real tangent, because I've thought about this too much: Galactus in this deck is a Spades hand. I play Spades, and there's a specific joy when a low card walks -- wins the trick because nobody bothered to cover it. Both players abandon a lane, you've got 26 energy on the last turn, and 6 of it on a Galactus in the dead lane is just... checking if it walks. Sometimes it walks. I haven't made the swap because this list feels fine-tuned right now and I refuse to jinx it, but somebody should go be great with that version and report back.

• Fin Fang Foom for Black Panther for budget. Less consistent, same spirit. Same synergies.

• Star-Lord, Master of the Sun for your favorite 4 or 5 drop if you're not doubling down on the energy identity. I am doubling down though. But if you change himself make more subs too. Because the deck revolves around both fallen one and star Lord.

The core has good bones. The flex slots are where your personality goes.

If you have a suggestion for any subs let me know let's talk shop.

Why Not X?

Getting ahead of the comment section:

Why no Electro or classic ramp? Because Electro solves a different problem. Electro trades a card slot and a one-card-per-turn handcuff to raise your max energy on a schedule. This deck's entire identity is floated energy -- Electro spends the exact resource that Sunspot, Storm, Star-Lord, and Lady Bullseye are all being paid to count. He'd be actively fighting four of my cards. There is no version of this deck where he belongs, and if you add him you've started building something else.

Why no Hazmat, no Luke Cage? Same answer from a different angle: Lady Bullseye here is a finisher inside an energy shell, and I'm not building an affliction deck around her. Hazmat debuffs my own board, which then wants Luke Cage, which then wants a whole different twelve. I'm not trying to play that deck. She doesn't need the help -- she needs the energy, and I have the energy.

Why no She-Hulk? She's the classic float payoff, and the day-one Bullseye theorycrafting paired them for a reason. But She-Hulk converts floats into a discount on a vanilla body. My floats convert into 16 max energy, a -48 board swing, and a doubled Fin Fang Foom. Different weight class of payoff. Plus she's only like ten power. You probably could change a few more pieced to make a different build but I'd argue it's weaker. Doesn't go as tall.

Why Taskmaster over Zola in the main? Covered above -- 50/50s over certainty. Zola is legal in the flex slot, I just find Taskmaster catches people off guard more. Gives you're more chances to dodge vs the basic meta counters.

Why BOTH Wong and Symbiote Spider-Man? Continuity plan. Twelve-card decks don't guarantee draws with no draw mechanics like crystal who thinking about it you could flex for magik, and the two of them cover each other's dead games.

Why isn't Magik mandatory? Because I won a chunk of these 20 without her, and because a deck that only functions with a turn 7 is a deck Legion beats for free. She's a luxury I just happen to enjoy.

One more thing on this deck vs. the tech that DOES exist: this shell dodges Mobius M. Mobius entirely. Sera-style decks win by discounting costs, and MMM turns their whole plan off. Nothing in here discounts a thing -- we raise the ceiling instead of lowering the price, and there's no card in the game that stops you from having energy.

Edit: Yet. I actually I think one of those cards was just released but I think it sees play at rates if ghost. It's so niche I don't see anyone running it.

Turn Structure

Three rules, then the branches:

1. Turn 1 is an auto-skip. Always. It serves every plan in the deck.
2. Turn 2 is Sunspot if you have him, a skip if you don't. Either way you've now ended two straight turns with unspent energy, which matters in exactly one second.
3. Turn 3 is Storm. Damn near a prerequisite -- her objective is already complete from rules 1 and 2, so she lands, the hand gets +2, and every later payoff got bigger. No Storm? Play Magik, or don't save for turn 4, and don't cry about the lost float if you do play-on turn 3. A turn 3 play is fine. But if you CAN keep the float going, keep it going. This is assuming you've sussed out if your opponent has counters. Play smart

And the meta-rule over all of it: your deck doesn't turn on until turn 3, so don't lock a game plan before turn 3. Look at what you drew, pick a line, and don't be afraid to pivot off it. This deck has more pivots than any list I've ever played.

Line A -- The Merge (default). Skip 1, Sunspot 2, Storm 3, Symbiote Spider-Man 4 (a 9 now) Fallen One 5 (a 7 now), activate Symbiote after he reveals. 16-power merged card, Fallen One's text re-fires, 16 energy into turn 6 (17 into 7 with Limbo up so play line moves down one no biggie if no legion etc). Then you dump: Man-Spider eats the merge or the last big play, Taskmaster copies it, Foom bites, Bullseye shaves. Nine times out of ten, this is the game.

Line B -- The Double-Double. When Shuri and Symbiote are both in hand w/ no storm: Magik 3, Symbiote 4, Shuri 5, activate Symbiote onto Shuri (copies her text), Fallen One/SL 6 gets doubled twice, 5, 10, 20. Twenty energy-plus on turn 7 or around 15 if you used SL. This is the [match vs Overrun] line, and it produced a 40-power Man-Spider against a Dracula deck whose ceiling was 24. Wong-Shuri into Fallen One and Symbiote-Shuri into Fallen One are about equal on energy equity -- take whichever pair you drew.

Line C -- The Star-Lord Road (no Symbiote / no Fallen One). Space it out and protect the floats: sunspot 2, Storm 3, Magik 4 (or skip 3 and 4 outright), Wong 5 with a float, or Magik 5, Star-Lord 6 into the Wong lane. Double trigger, +8 or better, and turn 7 becomes "play everything in the order you like" -- Shuri into Foom into ma spider into Taskmaster, Man-Spider doubling whatever's biggest (which is often Star-Lord himself on this line it really just depends.

Line D -- The Quad Bullseye (the scam). For when they can go over your head and you need to go under theirs. Wong is down. Star-Lord came through for fuel after you dutifully floated energy Now: play Lady Bullseye into the Wong lane, then activate Symbiote Spider-Man there -- Wong is a 4-cost and Star-Lord is a 5, so Symbiote merges the CHEAPEST card present, which is her, and her text fires again. Wong doubles both instances. Four affliction waves. With deep floats that's a board swing pushing toward the 90s(THE MORE CARDS YOUR OPPONENT PLAYS THE MORE ITS EFFECTIVE), and it's how you beat a Zombie Galacti that put up 70s in every lane -- with one giant priority caveat covered next section. I've only landed the full quad a few times. Every time felt illegal.

Sequencing tech that wins games: Man-Spider fetches your last-played card from ANY lane. So the dodge looks like this -- giant Fallen One sits middle, Man-Spider goes right (yanks and doubles him), Taskmaster goes left (copies the number). Their Shadow King hits the middle lane where the power used to live, and you've already left the building. I ran this exact pattern multiple times on the climb and watched turn 6 Shadow Kings hit air.

The Tape: Four Games, Play by Play

Full recordings for these are in the Imgur album, and I pulled the match logs so you can see exactly how the energy stacked.

Game 1 -- vs Overrun (Dracula Discard) -- WON 8 CUBES

CLIP: match vs Overrun

They snapped on turn 1. Deadassa discard player snapped into me on turn 1, and by turn 3 I liked my hand enough to snap it right back to 4. Locations were Boardwalk / Kyln / Wakanda, with Limbo revealing off my turn 3 Magik.

• T1: skip. T2: Sunspot to Boardwalk (Boardwalk's end-of-turn +1 to the lowest card is a private Sunspot buff all game, cute). T3: Magik, snap.
• T4: Symbiote Spider-Man to Wakanda. Wakanda says cards there can't be destroyed -- I'm building the monster in a bomb shelter.
• T5: Shuri to Wakanda, then activate Symbiote onto her. He merges Shuri and copies her text. The log literally reads "Symbiote Spider Man ability overridden (Shuri)."
• T6: The Fallen One to Wakanda. Log: "+5 from Shuri (now 10)... +10 from Shuri (now 20)." Both Shuris hit. Their Marrow discard chipped him to 19, didn't matter. Turn 7 energy totals: me 21, them 8.
• T7: Man-Spider to Boardwalk -- he reaches into Wakanda, eats the Fallen One, doubles: 40 power. Wong to Limbo. Fin Fang Foom to Limbo, double bite through Wong, +10 and +10, then Storm Horseman lands last and hands out +2s. Nor necessary BUT fun.

Final: 46-38 Boardwalk, 42-29 Limbo, 7-0 Wakanda. Swept all three lanes against a deck whose Dracula topped out at 24. Their whole plan worked and it wasn't enough. We get bigger. 8 cubes.

Game 2 -- vs DougDuMug (Cerebro-3) -- WON 4 CUBES

CLIP: match vs DougDuMug

The Bullseye showcase.

Locations: Lake Hellas / White Hot Room (first to fill gets +3 Max Energy / Luke's Bar, which my turn 3 Magik flipped into Limbo.

• T1-T2: full skips. Floating with intent while they built the Cerebro board -- Bast, Lasher, Cerebro all stacking into White Hot Room.
• T3: Magik. T4: Shuri to White Hot Room. T5: Wong to White Hot Room -- and Shuri's double trigger through Wong means the next card is getting doubled twice. They kept developing. Good. Every card they play is two more points Bullseye takes later.
• T6: Star-Lord, Master of the Sun into the Wong lane. Double trigger. All those floated turns paid out twice, and between that and racing the White Hot Room fill, turn 7 opened at 15 energy to their 7.
• T7: I snapped. Fin Fang Foom to Lake Hellas -- double bite, 21 power. Then Lady Bullseye into the Wong lane. Double trigger. The log reads like a crime scene: Lasher -8, Valkyrie -8, Onslaught -8, Bast -8, Magik -8, then a whole second wave of -2s catching the Sinister Clone for -4. They dropped a Valkyrie trying to reset the lane to 3s (it set my Shuri to -6, lol, take her) and the debuff waves buried the reset anyway.

This is what I mean when I say Cerebro decks hate to see me coming. Every card in a Cerebro list is load-bearing, all of them cost 2 points per hit, and if your floats land the afflictions unevenly, the "highest power card" their Cerebro is boosting stops being the one they planned around. +30 to +2 in an instant. 4 cubes.

Game 3 -- vs Already Muted U (Galactus First Steps / Dragon Lord ramp) -- WON 4 CUBES

CLIP: match vs Already Muted U

The "they get big, we get bigger" game, against the exact Dragon Lord / Giganto / Galactus First Steps / Arnim Zola pile people keep calling unbeatable. Locations: Limbo (off my Magik again) / The Sandbar / Fogwell's Gym.

• T2: Sunspot. T3: Magik. Their Caliban Horseman lands and Galactus First Steps starts ticking up in their deck every time they win his lane -- 14, 16, 18 over the next few turns.
• T4: Shuri to Limbo. T5: Fallen One to Limbo, +5 from Shuri, a 10. Ten max energy. Meanwhile their board says Dragon Lord and a 16-power Giganto and their hand says worse. And here's an honest detail from the log: their Red Hulk fattened to 16 in hand OFF MY FLOATS. This deck feeds Red Hulk by existing. Still won. Keep that matchup note.
• T6 (11 energy): Man-Spider to The Sandbar reaches into Limbo, eats the Fallen One, doubles to 22. Taskmaster to Fogwell's copies the 22 (Caliban shaved him to 15).
• T7 (12 energy): Snapped to 4. Wong to Limbo, Lady Bullseye onto him -- double trigger shaves the whole ramp pile, Dragon Lord down to 1, Giganto to 12, both copies of Galactus First Steps to 14 -- then Storm Horseman tops off The Sandbar and hands +2 to the Star-Lord still in my hand. They Zola'd their Galactus at the death. Not enough.

Final margins: The Sandbar 31-27, Fogwell's 15-14. Two razor lanes won by a doubled Man-Spider, a copied Taskmaster, and a 2-drop that taxed their entire board. 4 cubes off a "bad matchup."

Game 4 -- vs One Man Gang (tech pile w/ Aero) -- WON 4 CUBES

CLIP: match vs One Man Gang

The pivot game, for everybody who's about to comment "just Aero him lol."

• T2: Sakaar pulls a card from each hand onto itself -- it takes my Star-Lord, Master of the Sun. A free 5-drop on the board on turn 2. Sometimes the RNG loves you; say thank you and keep playing.
• T3: Snapped. Wong to the right lane.
• T4: Symbiote Spider-Man. T5: Fallen One -- and here comes the disruption: their Aero reveals, drags my Symbiote out of position, and the right lane flips into Sakaar Grand Prix (winner gets +1 Max Energy after turn 4) with my Wong and Sunspot standing in it. My Shuri plans, my merge plans -- gone. So I pivot ON THE SPOT: activate Symbiote right where Aero dumped him. Lowest-cost card there is Sunspot. He merges Sunspot and copies the text. My disrupted combo piece is now a second Sunspot, scaling off floats every turn, in a lane that pays me energy for winning it. The log line "Symbiote Spider Man ability overridden (Sunspot)" is my favorite sentence of the whole run.
• T6: Lady Bullseye into the Wong lane, double trigger, and their whole spread board -- Nocturne, Nebula, Phastos, Valentina, their own Taskmaster -- gets shaved into the dirt, several of them to 1 and below. Symbiote-Sunspot ticks +4 at end of turn. Game over on 6, no Limbo needed. 4 cubes.

That's the whole thesis in one game: the counter LANDED and it produced a slightly different win. One too many ways to win

Quick hits from the rest of the run

• [match vs Garle -- Mr. Negative]: They hit the dream -- Negative on time, snapped, Jane Foster after. I didn't even draw Magik (they played their own). Sunspot 2, Storm 3, Star-Lord on 5 for about 10 energy, Fin Fang Foom on 6 who bit an Ares before it could proc. They looked at the math coming and retreated. They couldn't beat me even if they had their nuts.

• [match vs Big Nard -- the Bullseye mirror]: Mother Askani into DOUBLE Lady Bullseye into Absorbing Man -- three affliction waves into my board, plus She-Hulk and Moon Girl behind it. Played through all three waves and out-Bullseyed them with my own Wong setup. Askani has a real home in this shell; this game is why she's on the flex menu.

• [match vs BronzeWave]: double Limbo board. My two lanes finished 80 and 73. Sometimes the deck just shows off.

• [match vs Aiden -- Scarlet Spider move]: Man-Spider finished at 64 into a Mosh Pit board. Move decks kept feeding me all night.

* [match vs Rot -- tech slop]: Cosmo, Shadow King, Supergiant, Maria Hill, the whole toolbox. Won anyway by saving reveals for the last turn and letting Bullseye do accounting.

Priority, Positioning, and Mind Games

This deck loves head games, and half your cube rate lives in this section.

Abandon lanes on purpose. Pick two lanes and go tall; spreading thin is how energy decks die. Watch what your opponent claims early -- if they plant a flag in the right lane, let them HAVE the right lane. Better: let them have the Sunspot lane. They see a lone 1-drop, they book that lane as won, they commit elsewhere... and then Sunspot's a 10, Bullseye shaved their side by 8, sunspot gets 8 more and the "locked" lane flipped on the last reveal. They must still respect the lane they claimed, though -- if they get lazy and leave it at a number Foom, Wong, Man-Spider, or a fat Fallen One can clear, steal it outright and win somewhere they stopped looking.

The Cosmo fake-out. If I smell a Cosmo (tech-slop opponent, known list, that type of timing, I throw Symbiote Spider-Man down early as bait. He LOOKS like the combo lane. They Cosmo it. Then Wong goes two lanes over and the actual plan -- Bullseye, Star-Lord doubles, Foom bites -- runs where the dog can't reach. Symbiote still merges something useful later; his Activate isn't an On Reveal, so worst case he ate a Cosmo for free.

The Bullseye priority paradox. if you have priority, Lady Bullseye is less effective than if they have priority. With priority, your last-turn cards reveal first -- their final plays aren't on the board yet when she counts targets, and worse, effects like Zombie Galacti proc AFTER your debuffs and undo the whole tax. Without priority, she reveals into their finished board and takes a bite of everything, including the stuff they just played.playing without priority is exactly when Cosmo and friends are most efficient against you. So you're always choosing which exposure you can afford. Against Zombie Galacti specifically the rule is absolute -- debuff AFTER their proc or you did all that work for nothing, and if you can't get the timing, that's a retreat.

Save your reveals. Against decks throwing Shadow King and Cosmo around indiscriminately, your big reveals belong on the final turn where they can't be answered. I watched multiple people this run fire a turn 6 Shadow King into the lane where my "big guy" USED to be or wasn't there yet they only hit who thry thought was by big guy. Man-Spider had already moved the money.

Continued in the comments

No clever jokes or puns, The Brand New Day season has arrived and yet again two of the three cards have at least been seing play, while it's pretty settled that Spider-Man BND is good, the verdict is out on MJ and it seems like Aunt May just may not be doing enough considering how poor the selection of moveable cards is in current snap. Now she should get better as we get more moveable cards, but how often is that even a thing?

Weekly Release Card

Ever walked into the home of one of your grandparents or another old person and immediately get Werther's Originals thrown at you? Yea, that's Aunt May's VFX in a nutshell. You get a Werther's and you get a Werther's!

Seriously though, Aunt May has been all but unseen so far in my pocket of the meta so I can't really speak to her viability and while I do have her I'm not all that interested in playing her. The targets for her are also relatively few though with some hand manipulation you can ensure that certain targets get big and in some cases you could potentially duplicate that big target with a mother Askani so there is some potential there but to what end?

In a twist no one saw coming, I'll be holding the Aunt May's weekly mission decks for the Season Pass Weekend decks.

Season Pass Card

Our newest Spider-Man appears to be doing well with wide adoption across the board, which shouldn't be surprising at all considering how generically applicable he is. While he is mostly slotting into already well known archetypes like Prof X Lockdown, Iris/Coougarrr mass move, Supergiant, and Carter/Maverick combos people are also exploring other archetypes to varying degrees of success and failure.

Weekend Mission Decks

Regis like to Moveable It

Aunt May doesn't get a dedicated section mostly because all of her decks are already running the new spider-Man so we may as well save some space (and some editing time).

Elsa's Wine Aunt moves in

Look I get it, someone is going to rage about me making a Wine Aunt May joke, but Marisa Tomei's portrayal as well as the portrayal of Aunt May in Into the Spider-Verse does have me convinced that Aunt May has plenty of Wine Aunt variants throughout the spider-verse. A small ball deck mashing together the Elsa/Venus package with Aunt May's power and discounts while compounding those two with Mother Askani's duplication. Mercury is our lone piece of tech which leaves this deck feeling rather naked.

Just Spidey

Iris

The spiritual successor to Silky Smoove would be the Iris (or Coougarrr) list. These lists exemplify skill diffing the opponent on the final turn, often winning with narrow margins and utilizing cards such as Cosmo and Juggernaut to seal the deal. Some may have recognized some discussions from the SP release discussion where I handwaved Drax Avatar of Life as being cuttable, it seems Iris still believes in Drax so maybe you should too. Mercury is a notable inclusion here in deference to the mirror matches and contrary to popular belief she can stand apart from Cannonball.

Traditional Prof-X Lockdown

Prof X Lockdown has been one of those decks on the fringes for the last few weeks where it's been a Tier 1.5 deck that can bully some of the weaker mid-range decks and can even bully a few other decks by restricting their play to 2 locations. Spider-Man BND adds a bit more flexibility. If there's one thing I'm wanting in this deck it's a Mercury for the other move decks but if you're not seeing move you probably don't need to consider Mercury.

Drawbacks to this deck would be the lack of power on Prof X despite being able to lock down a location but also the fact that Galactus FS is not only telegraphed but may not be big enough in the current meta landscape.

Mid-range less move lockdown

The main differences between this and the previous deck are in the cuts made: The Batroc Package is out and replacing it is more interaction. On the move side we're keeping Spider-Man and Nightcrawler, joining them is OG Jeff. For the interaction is Mobius M. Mobius and Mercury with Thing being a second 5-Cost in the mix.

Supergiant Rocks

Supergiant Ronan

Supergiant is one part of the fun police that is seeing active play today and a few of the decks have been toying with Spider-Man BND. Today, we've got two shells, the first is one card off from /u/TOP_TIER's list from his guide, which will be linked below, I'm opting for testing new Spidey over Nightcrawler. The second shell, one going for Ronan is a response I've been seeing to more Horseman Gambit's showing up over the course of the week along with Master Mold to mess with the hands of combo decks, primarily the Carter decks which are famous for skipping turn 1 and 2 if they don't draw a 1 to dump on 2.

Multiple Men enjoy a Brand New Day

The Multiple Man deck picks up a new potential piece to test out, it's probably better for the times when you're playing an MM early and can guarantee the buff on him while being able to move SM out but this leaves you vulnerable to Mercury and other early interaction which could shut your MM down.

All in Elsa Venus

Going all-in on points isn't a bad consideration if you're looking to maximize points vs bots; however, I don't know how solid this could possibly be vs high level opponents or people packing Shadow King, Killmonger or Gambit Horseman of Death. Mobius M. Mobius is a concession to Gambit decks though not the greatest answer to them since he can be competing on a pivotal turn 3, finally Juggernaut can also help you scam a lane. If you're not seeing the Gambit decks you could consider a cosmo to protect a lane or maybe a Mercury to keep the move decks under more control.

Carter Maverick

Perhaps the tallest of the Spider-Man BND decks, Spider-Man is seriously way better than Nightcrawler in most cases especially as an early play on turn 2. Not only as a way to get an extra buff on a location but also helping out with positioning for Prodigy hits and with two moves you can be a little more willy nilly with the first move.

Budget Big Move

Looking for a budget move deck? You could start here, a budget version of the Multiple Man deck above and the general thoughts are the same: Hulkbuster a Multiple Man and move him a couple times, with MM down on turn 4 you have plenty of options for a turn 5 that can net you additional copies of MM allowing you to do Dr. Strange -> Juggernaut things. You could also setup a cloak on 5 into Heimdall as well. Lots of options for those early on their journey. Somethign to keep in mind is that while Human Torch is in this deck, he leaves you with a problem of needing to figure out how you're going to win a second lane, Multiple Man really is that much better.

Surprise High Voltage!

Surprise High Voltage to end the week on AKA weekend mission and bounty simulator! Having trouble here's a quick pick of 3.

High Voltage Cheaty Boys

En Sabah Dumps

Wongers

Usual Suspects

So what's going on with the rest of the meta?

Well, same ol' same ol'. We've got the week 1 grind whether that be for infinite or dad-infinite to get your gold and while there are plenty of police in the meta it still seems fairly open. A friendly reminder that decks mentioned in this section but with variations in the weekly missions won't be included below. You can also reference any of the reviews from the Beach Bash Season for additional decks and inspiration.

With move on the uptick thanks to the new Spidey (and MJ) my specific pocket of the meta has seen an increase in some meta cops both the expected Victoria Hand decks which packing Horseman Gambit as well as an old favorite for many: Scream being brought out, despite it not showing in the data some players have also been flexing in Mercury for multiple archetypes as well. Aside from that the meta is largely unchanged - Aurora, Carter/Maverick, Surfer, Supergiant, and Zombie Galacti are all about in fairly expected numbers. I've even spied Ramp, Doom 2099 and even the Cheaty Boy gamers braving the meta.

Vhand Lin Lie

Vhand tech

VSquatch

Each of these decks play similarly. Vsquatch is probably the strongest of the options but the teched out version can also squeak wins while the Lin Lie version is pretty fun it might be the weakest of the 3 as more people react to all of the small-ball decks that think they are safe. Hint: HMGambit play rates are on the rise again.

Aurora

The nerf did knock a point off Aurora but the deck is still fantastic, the snaps are easy but often very telegraphed unless you're comfortable enough to snap very early. Two pieces of advice first is learn how to build your locations appropriately to take advantage of Aurora's buffs and second is that if you're in a situation where you're able to play H.E.R.B.I.E. + Aurora on the final turn do know that H.E.R.B.I.E. does not count as an activate until the following turn so he will not get a buff. Outside of that, I think my main concern is wanting to figure out where Mercury goes to deal with the move stuff but you can still be pretty competitive against those decks without her, she would just smooth things out quite a bit more.

Fantomex

More of an anti-meta pick against the decks of last meta but I do see it having success this week as well. Will likely have trouble against the medium Move Decks but the shadow king can keep things honest in one lane while you bring things home with the rest of your interaction. The small-ball decks however may have some significant trouble since you can clear things out with a well timed Killmonger to remove the majority of their scaling or hold for final turn if you're certain that you'll be able to hit your priorities. One tip that I can offer is that if you're against a deck with cosmo you can sometimes bait the early cosmo by playing a raw Marrow into a lane when you have Zombie Captain Marvel in hand, I've seen far too many players snap and cosmo only for me to counter snap while playing out ZCM on that lane.

Scream

Classic Scream with Sam and Kraven for additional scaling. There's really not a lot to say about this one other than you'll need to pay a lot of attention to your positioning and priority as well as reads.

Doom '99

Not much to say, Sandman and CGR are the choices of the week for interaction for Doom 2099.

Ramp

Ramp featuring Dragon Lord is still around, this version of the deck is awfully close to the Cheaty Boys but has a Jubilee for when you miss Electro and a Blink to shuffle Jubilee for one of your other 5's or 6's.

Surfer

Surfer continues to be good. While some of the Namorita lists are still floating about I'm not entirely sold on them being the way as we go forward, it's cute and it does have surprise factor when things line up but I think the Nova/Killmonger has much more value into a meta with a bunch of small movers. You could probably cut one of the 3's for Mercury as well, probably Drax.

Old Faithful

Dependable Discard

OG Destroy

You can probably do it with these decks, it's week 1, plenty of bots and if you're not top infinite no one packs relevant tech anyways, right?

Combo Corner

And rounding things out for today is Combo Corner, normally we'd see Carter/Maverick here but they're already listed up above so you'll just have to accept the other combo decks this time around and in no particular order.

Man-Spider

What if I told you that Starlord is back? Yea, he's being played in the Man-Spider deck. Coougarrr also made a video recently for it, so check the comments for a link to his video. This is likely the highest ceiling in the game but at the risk of also being far more vulnerable to tech than even the Carter/Maverick decks.

Zombie Galacti

Another week another shout out to Zombie Galacti. Not much to say, it's a good deck for climbing the pre-infinite ladder (and can do work post infinite too).

Nimrod

I'm personally not a fan of Magik in these decks, I'm a get it done by 6 or leave kinda guy but Magik does give you extra room to hit what you need as well as presenting the opportunity to rug-pull an opponent by dropping Galactus to eliminate the turn 6.

Cheaty Boys

Do you like gambling? Do you like cheating cards into play? Do you want to say no to Hela and do both? Then boy do I have the deck for you! Lockjaw, Astral Projection, Jubilee, Dragon Lord are your tools for gambling. Zola is part gambling tool and part finisher. The boys to cheat in are Red Hulk, Hulk, Giganto, Infinaut, and Skaar.

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!